title: Al Snow

text: On August 29, 2017, Prowrestling.net broke the news that Snow had signed a deal with ECW Press to release an autobiography. Co-written by Ross Owen Williams, who also co-authored Bob Holly's autobiography "The Hardcore Truth", the book was released in April 2019. In the press release, Snow said "we want the book to cover more than what I did in front of the cameras. There are so many stories from the road—things that only seem to happen to me—that have made me who I am today. I've always considered every new situation as a potential learning experience and this book will give me the opportunity to share that, for better or for worse."


title: Selenium (software)

text: Selenium is an open source umbrella project for a range of tools and libraries aimed at supporting browser automation. It provides a playback tool for authoring functional tests across most modern web browsers, without the need to learn a test scripting language (Selenium IDE). It also provides a test domain-specific language (Selenese) to write tests in a number of popular programming languages, including JavaScript (Node.js), C#, Groovy, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Scala. Selenium runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. It is open-source software released under the Apache License 2.0.


title: Selenium (software)

text: Selenium was originally developed by Jason Huggins in 2004 as an internal tool at ThoughtWorks. Huggins was later joined by other programmers and testers at ThoughtWorks, before Paul Hammant joined the team and steered the development of the second mode of operation that would later become "Selenium Remote Control" (RC). The tool was open sourced that year.


title: Selenium (software)

text: In 2005 Dan Fabulich and Nelson Sproul (with help from Pat Lightbody) made an offer to accept a series of patches that would transform Selenium-RC into what it became best known for. In the same meeting, the steering of Selenium as a project would continue as a committee, with Huggins and Hammant being the ThoughtWorks representatives.


title: Selenium (software)

text: In 2007, Huggins joined Google. Together with others like Jennifer Bevan, he continued with the development and stabilization of Selenium RC. At the same time, Simon Stewart at ThoughtWorks developed a superior browser automation tool called WebDriver. In 2009, after a meeting between the developers at the Google Test Automation Conference, it was decided to merge the two projects, and call the new project Selenium WebDriver, or Selenium 2.0.


title: Selenium (software)

text: In 2008, Philippe Hanrigou (then at ThoughtWorks) made "Selenium Grid", which provides a hub allowing the running of multiple Selenium tests concurrently on any number of local or remote systems, thus minimizing test execution time. Grid offered, as open source, a similar capability to the internal/private Google cloud for Selenium RC. Pat Lightbody had already made a private cloud for "HostedQA" which he went on to sell to Gomez, Inc.


title: Selenium (software)

text: The name Selenium comes from a joke made by Huggins in an email, mocking a competitor named Mercury, saying that you can cure mercury poisoning by taking selenium supplements. The others that received the email took the name and ran with it.


title: Selenium (software)

text: Selenium is composed of several components with each taking on a specific role in aiding the development of web application test automation.


title: Selenium (software)

text: Selenium IDE is a complete integrated development environment (IDE) for Selenium tests. It is implemented as a Firefox Add-On and as a Chrome Extension. It allows for recording, editing and debugging of functional tests. It was previously known as Selenium Recorder. Selenium-IDE was originally created by Shinya Kasatani and donated to the Selenium project in 2006. Selenium IDE began being actively maintained in 2018.


title: Selenium (software)

text: Scripts may be automatically recorded and edited manually providing autocompletion support and the ability to move commands around quickly. Scripts are recorded in "Selenese", a special test scripting language for Selenium. Selenese provides commands for performing actions in a browser (click a link, select an option) and for retrieving data from the resulting pages.


title: Selenium (software)

text: The 2.x version of the Selenium IDE for Firefox stopped working after the Firefox 55 upgrade and has been replaced by Selenium IDE 3.x.


title: Selenium (software)

text: In addition to the official Selenium IDE project, two alternative Selenium IDE browser extensions are actively maintained: Kantu (Open-Source GPL license) and Katalon Recorder (Open-Source).


title: Selenium (software)

text: As an alternative to writing tests in Selenese, tests can also be written in various programming languages. These tests then communicate with Selenium by calling methods in the Selenium Client API. Selenium currently provides client APIs for Java, C#, Ruby, JavaScript, R and Python.


title: Selenium (software)

text: With Selenium 2, a new Client API was introduced (with "WebDriver" as its central component). However, the old API (using class "Selenium") is still supported.


title: Selenium (software)

text: Selenium Remote Control (RC) is a server, written in Java, that accepts commands for the browser via HTTP. RC makes it possible to write automated tests for a web application in any programming language, which allows for better integration of Selenium in existing unit test frameworks. To make writing tests easier, Selenium project currently provides client drivers for PHP, Python, Ruby, .NET, Perl and Java. The Java driver can also be used with JavaScript (via the Rhino engine). An instance of selenium RC server is needed to launch html test case - which means that the port should be different for each parallel run. However, for Java/PHP test case only one Selenium RC instance needs to be running continuously.


title: Selenium (software)

text: Selenium Remote Control was a refactoring of Driven Selenium or Selenium B designed by Paul Hammant, credited with Jason as co-creator of Selenium. The original version directly launched a process for the browser in question, from the test language of Java, .NET, Python or Ruby. The wire protocol (called 'Selenese' in its day) was reimplemented in each language port. After the refactor by Dan Fabulich and Nelson Sproul (with help from Pat Lightbody) there was an intermediate daemon process between the driving test script and the browser. The benefits included the ability to drive remote browsers and the reduced need to port every line of code to an increasingly growing set of languages. "Selenium Remote Control" completely took over from the Driven Selenium code-line in 2006. The browser pattern for 'Driven'/'B' and 'RC' was response/request, which subsequently became known as Comet.


title: Selenium (software)

text: Selenium RC served as the flagship testing framework of the entire project of selenium for a long-standing time. And significantly Selenium RC is the first and foremost automated web testing tool that enabled users to adopt their preferred programming language.


title: Selenium (software)

text: With the release of Selenium 2, Selenium RC has been officially deprecated in favor of Selenium WebDriver.


title: Selenium (software)

text: At the core of Selenium is Selenium WebDriver, an interface to write instructions that work interchangeably across browsers. It is the successor to Selenium RC. Selenium WebDriver accepts commands (sent in Selenese, or via a Client API) and sends them to a browser. This is implemented through a browser-specific browser driver, which sends commands to a browser and retrieves results. Most browser drivers actually launch and access a browser application (such as Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, or Microsoft Edge); there is also an HtmlUnit browser driver, which simulates a browser using the headless browser HtmlUnit.


title: Selenium (software)

text: Unlike in Selenium 1, where the Selenium server was necessary to run tests, Selenium WebDriver does not need a special server to execute tests. Instead, the WebDriver directly starts a browser instance and controls it. However, Selenium Grid can be used with WebDriver to execute tests on remote systems (see below). Where possible, WebDriver uses native operating system level functionality rather than browser-based JavaScript commands to drive the browser. This bypasses problems with subtle differences between native and JavaScript commands, including security restrictions.


title: Selenium (software)

text: In practice, this means that the Selenium 2.0 API has significantly fewer calls than does the Selenium 1.0 API. Where Selenium 1.0 attempted to provide a rich interface for many different browser operations, Selenium 2.0 aims to provide a basic set of building blocks from which developers can create their own domain-specific language (DSL). One such DSL already exists: the Watir project in the Ruby language has a rich history of good design. Watir-webdriver implements the Watir API as a wrapper for Selenium WebDriver in Ruby. Watir-webdriver is created entirely automatically, based on the WebDriver specification and the HTML specification.


title: Selenium (software)

text: As of early 2012, Simon Stewart (inventor of WebDriver), who was then with Google, and David Burns of Mozilla were negotiating with the W3C to make WebDriver an Internet standard. In July 2012, the working draft was released and the recommendation followed in June 2018. Selenium WebDriver (Selenium 2.0) is fully implemented and supported in JavaScript (Node.js), Python, Ruby, Java, Kotlin (programming language), and C#. As of 2021, Selenium 4 is a release candidate.


title: Selenium (software)

text: Selenium Grid is a server that allows tests to use web browser instances running on remote machines. With Selenium Grid, one server acts as the central hub. Tests contact the hub to obtain access to browser instances. The hub has a list of servers that provide access to browser instances (WebDriver nodes), and lets tests use these instances. Selenium Grid allows running tests in parallel on multiple machines and to manage different browser versions and browser configurations centrally (instead of in each individual test).


title: Selenium (software)

text: The ability to run tests on remote browser instances is useful to spread the load of testing across several machines and to run tests in browsers running on different platforms or operating systems. The latter is particularly useful in cases where not all browsers to be used for testing can run on the same platform.


title: Mark Steyn

text: Mark Steyn (; born December 8, 1959) is a Canadian author and a radio and television presenter. He has written several books, including "The New York Times" bestsellers "America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It", "After America: Get Ready for Armageddon", and "Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now". In the US he has guest-hosted the nationally syndicated "Rush Limbaugh Show", as well as "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox News, on which he regularly appears as a guest and fill-in host away. In 2021, Steyn began hosting his own show on British news channel GB News.


title: Mark Steyn

text: He was baptized a Catholic and later confirmed in the Anglican Church which he left to become a Baptist. He has stated that "the last Jewish female in my line was one of my paternal great-grandmothers" and that "both my grandmothers were Catholic". His parents were married in Elliot Lake, Ontario. Steyn's great-aunt was artist Stella Steyn. His mother's family was Belgian.


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, the same school that author J.R.R. Tolkien attended and where Steyn was assigned a Greek dictionary that had also been used by Tolkien. Although it was reported by "The Age" in 2006 that Steyn had left school at age 16, his name appears in the King Edward's School yearbook for 1977-78 as a member of "Cl.VI", that is, the "Classics [Upper] 6th form", which is the normal final year for students at that school. He worked as a disc jockey before becoming musical theatre critic at the newly established "The Independent" in 1986. He was appointed film critic for "The Spectator" in 1992. After writing predominantly about the arts, Steyn shifted his focus to political commentary and wrote a column for "The Daily Telegraph", a conservative broadsheet, until 2006.


title: Mark Steyn

text: He has written for many publications, including "The Washington Post", "The Jerusalem Post", "Orange County Register", "Chicago Sun-Times", "National Review", "The New York Sun", "The Australian", "Maclean's", "The Irish Times", "National Post", "The Atlantic", "Western Standard", and "The New Criterion". He subsequently stepped back from writing and now devotes most of his time to his show.


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn's books include "Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now" (a history of the musical theatre) and "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It", a "New York Times" bestseller. He has also published collections of his columns and his celebrity obituaries and profiles from "The Atlantic".


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn held a Eugene C. Pulliam Visiting Fellowship in Journalism at Hillsdale College in spring 2013. As of 2010, Steyn was no longer the back-page columnist for the print edition of "National Review", conservative writer James Lileks having taken over that space in the print edition. Steyn's back-page column for "National Review", "Happy Warriors", resumed with the March 21, 2011 issue.


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn has guest-hosted "The Rush Limbaugh Show", but was not selected to host after Limbaugh's passing.


title: Mark Steyn

text: From December 2016 to February 2017, Steyn hosted "The Mark Steyn Show" on the CRTV Digital Network. Following the cancellation of the show, CRTV sued Mark Steyn who countersued. Steyn claimed to be suing on behalf of his employees. This was described by former show supervisor Mike Young as "bullshit" in an interview with "The Daily Beast". Former employees provided sworn declarations that Steyn was "incredibly disorganised", tyrannical, and impossible to work with. CRTV lost completely and Steyn prevailed in a judgment that was originally ordered by Judge Elaine Gordon and later confirmed by Judge Eileen Bransten in New York Supreme Court


title: Mark Steyn

text: In October 2021, Steyn began covering for Nigel Farage on his prime time show "Farage" on GB News on Fridays and was a relief presenter for Farage on other days. On November 19, 2021, Steyn received a permanent prime time host billing on GB News, with the Friday show renamed "Mark Steyn". In January 2022, the show began airing five nights a week, Monday to Friday, which in February was reduced to Monday to Thursday. In March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Steyn presented the show from Western Ukraine.


title: Mark Steyn

text: In December 2022, Steyn suffered a heart attack while broadcasting the Mark Steyn Show on GB News TV. He did not recognise the symptoms as a heart attack, but later suffered a second, while in France, where he was hospitalised.


title: Mark Steyn

text: In a May 2004 column Steyn commented that editors were encouraging anti-Bush sentiments after the "Daily Mirror" and "The Boston Globe" had published faked pictures, which originated on American and Hungarian pornographic Web sites, of British and American soldiers supposedly sexually abusing Iraqis. Steyn argues that media only wanted to show images to Westerners "that will shame and demoralize them."


title: Mark Steyn

text: In a July 2005 column for "National Review", Steyn criticized Andrew Jaspan, then the editor of "The Age", an Australian newspaper. Jaspan was offended by Douglas Wood, an Australian kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq, who after his rescue referred to his captors as "arseholes." Jaspan claimed that "the issue is really largely, speaking as I understand it, he was treated well there. He says he was fed every day, and as such to turn around and use that kind of language I think is just insensitive." Steyn argued that there is nothing at all wrong with insensitivity toward murderous captors, and that it was Jaspan, not Wood, who suffered from Stockholm syndrome. He said further, "A blindfolded Mr. Wood had to listen to his captors murder two of his colleagues a few inches away, but how crude and boorish would one have to be to hold that against one's hosts?"


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn wrote articles and maintained a blog for "Maclean's" covering the 2007 business fraud trial of his friend and patron Conrad Black in Chicago, from the point of view of one who was never convinced Black committed any crime. Doing this, he later wrote, "cost me my gig at the [Chicago] "Sun-Times"" and "took me away from more lucrative duties such as book promotion". Steyn expressed dismay at "the procedural advantages the prosecution enjoys—the inducements it's able to dangle in order to turn witnesses that, if offered by the defence, would be regarded as the suborning of perjury; or the confiscation of assets intended to prevent an accused person from being able to mount a defence; or the piling on of multiple charges which virtually guarantees that a jury will seek to demonstrate its balanced judgment by convicting on something. All that speaks very poorly for the federal justice system."


title: Mark Steyn

text: After Black's conviction, Steyn published a long essay in "Maclean's" about the case, strongly criticizing Black's defense team.


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn opposes unfettered Muslim immigration to the United States, which he describes as dangerous. According to Steyn, the West faces a choice "between liberty and mass Muslim immigration."


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn believes that if mass Muslim migration to Europe is not stopped, Europe will turn into what he calls "Eurabia", a future society where the European continent will be dominated by Islam. He has written: "much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear in our lifetimes, including many, if not most Western European countries."


title: Mark Steyn

text: In his book "America Alone", Steyn likened Europe to Bosnia in the lead-up to its civil war and genocide:


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn has written about Muslim demographic projections to back up Bat Ye'or's Eurabia theory and has been on the board of advisors of the International Free Press Society, both key components of the international counter-jihad movement.


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn was an early proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2007 he reiterated his support while attacking Democrat John Murtha, stating that Murtha's plan for military action in Iraq was designed "to deny the president the possibility of victory while making sure Democrats don't have to share the blame for the defeat. ... [Murtha] doesn't support them in the mission, but he'd like them to continue failing at it for a couple more years".


title: Mark Steyn

text: In 2013, Steyn blamed the United States' lack of success in Iraq on "geopolitical ADHD," writing "the unceasing drumbeat of 'quagmire' and 'exit strategy' communicated to the world an emptiness at the heart of American power...An awareness that America lacks "credibility" and "will" is what caused crowds to attack U.S. embassies and the consulate in Benghazi." Steyn's column prompted "The Atlantic" to call Steyn an "unapologetic hawk," observing how Steyn's column failed to take account of his own declarations of victory in Iraq in 2004 when Steyn wrote: "After 15 months of running Iraq, the Americans are out...the Americans have bequeathed them a better Iraq than the one the British invented for them eight decades ago...So I'm relaxed about Iraq: its future lies somewhere between good enough and great."


title: Mark Steyn

text: In one of his first books, "The Story of Miss Saigon" (1991) co-written with Edward Behr, Steyn offered up his stance on the "Miss Saigon" controversy of 1990. Steyn accused the Asian-American activists opposed to the musical "Miss Saigon" of a "new tribalism" that threatened to bring in "a new era of conformity and sanctimoniousness".


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn's work "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" is a "New York Times" bestselling nonfiction book published in 2006. It deals with the global war on terror and wider issues of demographics in Muslim and non-Muslim populations. It was recommended by George W. Bush. The paperback edition, released in April 2008 with a new introduction, was labeled "Soon to Be Banned in Canada", alluding to a possible result that Steyn then anticipated from the Canadian Islamic Congress' human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine.


title: Mark Steyn

text: In an essay about "America Alone", Christopher Hitchens wrote that "Mark Steyn believes that demography is destiny, and he makes an immensely convincing case," then detailed many points at which he disagreed with Steyn. Hitchens believed Steyn erred by "considering European Muslim populations as one. Islam is as fissile as any other religion, and considerable friction exists among immigrant Muslim groups in many European countries. Moreover, many Muslims actually have come to Europe for the advertised purposes; seeking asylum and to build a better life." Nevertheless, Hitchens expressed strong agreement with some of Steyn's points, calling the book "admirably tough-minded."


title: Mark Steyn

text: In 2011, Steyn published "", a follow-up to "America Alone". In it, he argues that the U.S. is now on the same trajectory towards decline and fall as the rest of the West due to unsustainable national spending and the subsequent borrowing involved to pay for expanding government. Within its pages, "After America" discusses the U.S. federal debt specifically and more generally the rise of bureaucratic state control as individual initiative declines.


title: Mark Steyn

text: Should decline continue to affect peoples' lives and the expansion of debt go on, Steyn's ultimate worries are apocalyptic, with him declaring,


title: Mark Steyn

text: The book achieved significant commercial success. "After America" peaked at number four on the "New York Times" bestseller list for non-fiction. Although written in a polemical style about controversial issues, praise came from publications such as "The Washington Times", where Steyn received comparison to George Orwell, and "The Spectator", where Steyn's sense of prose received comparison to pyrotechnics.


title: Mark Steyn

text: On August 17, 2011, Steyn discussed the book and a variety of related issues while delivering the first lecture in "The NHIOP Bookmark Series", a program of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. C-SPAN recorded Steyn's comments.


title: Mark Steyn

text: In 2007, a complaint was filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission related to an article "The Future Belongs to Islam", written by Mark Steyn, published in "Maclean's" magazine. The complainants alleged that the article and the refusal of "Maclean"'s to provide space for a rebuttal violated their human rights. The complainants also claimed that the article was one of twenty-two (22) "Maclean's" articles, many written by Steyn, about Muslims. Further complaints were filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, later stripped of its mandate by the Canadian parliament in 2011, and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.


title: Mark Steyn

text: The Ontario Human Rights Commission refused in April 2008 to proceed, saying it lacked jurisdiction to deal with magazine content. However, the Commission stated that it, "strongly condemns the Islamophobic portrayal of Muslims ... Media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism." Critics of the Commission claimed that "Maclean's" and Steyn had been found guilty without a hearing. John Martin of "The Province" wrote, "There was no hearing, no evidence presented and no opportunity to offer a defence—just a pronouncement of wrongdoing."


title: Mark Steyn

text: The OHRC defended its right to comment by stating, "Like racial profiling and other types of discrimination, ascribing the behaviour of individuals to a group damages everyone in that group. We have always spoken out on such issues. "Maclean's" and its writers are free to express their opinions. The OHRC is mandated to express what it sees as unfair and harmful comment or conduct that may lead to discrimination."


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn subsequently criticized the Commission, commenting that "Even though they (the OHRC) don't have the guts to hear the case, they might as well find us guilty. Ingenious!"


title: Mark Steyn

text: Soon afterwards, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission issued a public letter to the editor of "Maclean's" magazine. In it, Jennifer Lynch said, "Mr. Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be given . History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred." The "National Post" subsequently defended Steyn and sharply criticized Lynch, stating that Lynch has "no clear understanding of free speech or the value of protecting it" and that "No human right is more basic than freedom of expression, not even the "right" to live one's life free from offence by remarks about one's ethnicity, gender, culture or orientation."


title: Mark Steyn

text: The federal Canadian Human Rights Commission dismissed the Canadian Islamic Congress' complaint against "Maclean's" in June 2008. The CHRC's ruling said of the article that, "the writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike." However, the Commission ruled that overall, "the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature, as defined by the Supreme Court."


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn later wrote a lengthy reflection of his turmoil with the commissions and the tribunals. The reflection appears as the introduction to "The Tyranny of Nice", a book authored by Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere on Canada's human rights commissions.


title: Mark Steyn

text: In July 2012, Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) blogger Rand Simberg accused American climatologist Michael E. Mann of "deception" and "engaging in data manipulation" and alleged that the Penn State investigation that had cleared Mann was a "cover-up and whitewash" comparable to the recent Jerry Sandusky sex scandal, "except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data." The CEI blog editor then removed the sentence as "inappropriate", but a "National Review" blog post by Steyn cited it and alleged that Mann's hockey stick graph was "fraudulent".


title: Mark Steyn

text: Mann asked CEI and "National Review" to remove the allegations and apologize, or he would take action. The CEI published further insults, and "National Review" Editor Rich Lowry responded in an article headed "Get Lost" with a declaration that, should Mann sue, the discovery process would be used to reveal and publish Mann's emails. Mann's lawyer filed the defamation lawsuit in October 2012.


title: Mark Steyn

text: Before the case could go to discovery, CEI and "National Review" filed a court motion to dismiss it under anti-SLAPP legislation, with the claim that they had merely been using exaggerated language which was acceptable against a public figure. In July 2013, the judge ruled against this motion, and when the defendants took this to appeal a new judge also denied their motion to dismiss, in January 2014." National Review" changed its lawyers, and Steyn decided to represent himself in court. Journalist Seth Shulman, at the Union of Concerned Scientists, welcomed the judge's statement that accusations of fraud "go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable."


title: Mark Steyn

text: The defendants again appealed against the decision, and on August 11, 2014, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press with 26 other organizations, including the ACLU, Bloomberg, Gannett ("USA Today"), Comcast (NBC), Time, Fox News and The Seattle Times Company, filed an amicus brief arguing that the comments at issue were Constitutionally protected as opinion. Steyn chose to be represented by attorney Daniel J. Kornstein.


title: Mark Steyn

text: An appeal to have the lawsuit thrown out, filed by Steyn's co-defendants ("National Review", CEI and Simberg), was heard in the D.C. Court of Appeals on November 25, 2014. Steyn was present for oral arguments but did not join the appeal, preferring to go to trial. On December 22, 2016, the D.C. appeals court ruled that Mann's case against Simberg and Steyn could go ahead. A "reasonable jury" could find against the defendants, and though the context should be considered, "if the statements assert or imply false facts that defame the individual, they do not find shelter under the First Amendment simply because they are embedded in a larger policy debate.". A counterclaim Steyn filed through his attorneys on March 17, 2014, was dismissed with prejudice by the D.C. court on August 29, 2019, leaving Steyn to pay litigation costs.


title: Mark Steyn

text: The defendants filed for "certiorari" with the U.S. Supreme Court in the hope it would hear their appeal. On November 25, 2019, it denied the petition without comment. In a dissenting opinion, associate justice Samuel Alito wrote that he had favored hearing the case on the basis that, even though the defendants might yet prevail in the case or the outcome itself come before the Court for review, the expense of litigating the case this far may itself have a chilling effect which would deter speakers. Mann said that he looked forward to the trial.


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn's writing draws supporters and detractors for both content and style. Martin Amis, who was harshly criticized in "America Alone" but gave it a positive review, said of the style: "Mark Steyn is an oddity: his thoughts and themes are sane and serious—but he writes like a maniac." His style was described by Robert Fulford as "bring[ing] to public affairs the dark comedy developed in the Theatre of the Absurd." Longtime editor and admirer Fulford also wrote, "Steyn, a self-styled 'right-wing bastard,' violates everyone's sense of good taste." According to Simon Mann, Steyn "gives succour to the maxim the pen is mightier than the sword, though he is not averse to employing the former to advocate use of the latter." Dan Kennedy, professor of journalism at North Eastern University, has described Steyn's journalistic technique as "write, twist, smear and sneer, repeat!" Charlie Pierce told the "Boston Phoenix" in 2004 that "If a guy who is that nakedly, intellectually dishonest can become a successful conservative writer, then conservative intellectualism is dead in this country. If it began with Buckley and the people who taught him, it ends with the likes of Mark Steyn."


title: Mark Steyn

text: Susan Catto in "Time" believed Steyn had an interest in controversy: "Instead of shying away from the appearance of conflict, Steyn positively revels in it." Canadian journalist Steve Burgess wrote: "Steyn wields his rhetorical rapier with genuine skill" and that national disasters tended to cause Steyn "to display his inner wingnut."


title: Mark Steyn

text: In 2009, Canadian journalist Paul Wells accused Steyn of dramatically exaggerating the rise of fascist political parties in Europe. Wells also accused Steyn of repeatedly "shrieking" about Islam in his political writings.


title: Mark Steyn

text: In 2005, Mark Steyn received the Henry Salvatori Prize in the American Founding at the Claremont Institute established by philanthropist and conservative leader Henry Salvatori. It is awarded in honour of those who "distinguish themselves by an understanding of, and actions taken to preserve and foster the principles upon which the United States was built".


title: Mark Steyn

text: Mark Steyn was awarded the 2006 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism for writing which "best reflects love of this country and its democratic institutions". Roger Ailes of Fox News Channel presented the prize, which included a check for $20,000.


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn received the Center for Security Policy's Mightier Pen award in 2007, receiving it at an event featuring a convocation by Jewish scholar and rabbi Yitz Greenberg and remarks by Board of Regents Honorary Chairman Bruce Gelb. In 2010, Steyn was presented the Sappho Award from the International Free Press Society in Copenhagen, Denmark for what was described as both "his ample contributions as a cultural critic" and "his success in influencing the debate on Islam, the disastrous ideology of multiculturalism and the crisis of the Western civilization."


title: Mark Steyn

text: Steyn received the inaugural George Jonas Freedom Award at a gala hosted by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms in Toronto in 2018.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Hugo Strange is a supervillain appearing in comic books published by DC Comics, commonly as an adversary of the superhero Batman. The character is one of Batman's first recurring villains and is also one of the first Batman villains to discover the hero's secret identity. The character first appeared in "Detective Comics" #36 (February 1940).


title: Hugo Strange

text: A notorious enemy of Batman, the character has appeared in various forms of non-comics media, including animation, video games, and the live-action television series "Gotham", where he is portrayed by BD Wong.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Professor Hugo Strange first appears in "Detective Comics" #36 (February 1940) as a scientist and criminal mastermind who uses a stolen "concentrated lightning" machine to generate a dense fog every night so his gang can rob banks unseen, though he knows that Batman poses a threat to him. Batman, who already knows of Strange's experiments, begins investigating him after one of his henchmen commits a murder. When the robbers are apprehended, Strange vows to set a trap for Batman and deal with him personally. He has a dozen of his men ambush the vigilante, and one of them knocks him out with a blackjack. Batman wakes up in Strange's lair, where Strange hangs him from his wrists and lashes him with a whip. Batman breaks the ropes, gases the room, and defeats Strange, who is jailed but quickly begins planning his escape. In "Batman" #1 (spring 1940), he carries out his escape plan, recruits a new gang of criminals, then breaks out "five insane patients" from the local asylum and uses them as test subjects, turning them into hulking 15 ft. tall monsters by administering a powerful artificial growth hormone that acts on the pituitary gland. He outfits them with bulletproof clothing, and uses them to rampage through Gotham City and distract the police while his men commit robberies. Strange administers the serum to Batman after the giants capture him, saying it will work in 18 hours. Batman tricks two of the monsters into killing each other, and then formulates a drug that prevents any abnormal secretions from the pituitary gland, preventing the transformation. He is then able to kill all the other monsters, and sends Strange to his apparent death in a fall from a cliff, although he suspects that the mad scientist has survived. In "Detective Comics" #46 (December 1940), Strange returns and starts spreading a fear-inducing powder around the city until a punch from Batman again sends him falling off a cliff to his apparent death.


title: Hugo Strange

text: He returned years later in the 1970s in the "Strange Apparitions" story arc in "Detective Comics" #469-479 (May 1977-September–October 1978). Having survived his earlier "death" (how this happened is never explained, seen or shown), Strange left Gotham City and went to Europe for several years, where his criminal career prospered with no one to challenge him. Bored and hoping to pit his wits against Batman again, Strange, now using the alias of Dr. Todhunter, opens a private hospital, Graytowers Clinic, for Gotham's wealthiest citizens, where he holds them for ransom before mutating them into mindless monsters. When Bruce Wayne checks into the hospital to recover discreetly from radiation burns he sustained while fighting Doctor Phosphorus, Strange finds out that Wayne is Batman and uses this information to wreak havoc on his personal life. Strange then attempts to auction off the identity of Batman to Gotham City Councilman "Boss" Rupert Thorne, the Penguin, and the Joker. Not wanting to lose, Thorne has Strange abducted and beaten by his men to reveal Batman's identity, but Strange apparently dies without ever telling him. Strange's ghost then comes back to haunt Thorne, driving the Councilman insane. Thorne confesses his long career of corruption and is sent to Arkham Asylum.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Strange's ghost returns again to haunt Thorne in "Detective Comics" #513 (April 1982), #516 (July 1982), #518 (September 1982), and #520 (November 1982) and "Batman" #354 (December 1982), leading up to the appearance of the "real" Hugo Strange in the last panel of the last page of the fifth issue mentioned here. As revealed two issues later in "Batman" #356 (February 1983), Strange had indeed survived the beating from Thorne's men by using yoga techniques to slow his heartbeat to an undetectable level. It is also revealed that Strange also artificially created the "ghost" of himself that haunted Thorne by using strategically-placed devices that simulated the appearance of a spirit. Upon his return, Strange used the devices again to bring back the "ghost" so he could punish Thorne for double-crossing him. Subsequently, Strange attempts to weaken Bruce Wayne through the use of drugs and lifelike robots called Mandroids, with the ultimate goal of destroying Wayne so completely that Strange could take his place as Batman. The plan fails, and Strange apparently dies once more when he attempts to kill Batman by blowing up a replica of Wayne Manor with himself in it, stating that if "he" cannot be Batman, then "no" one can. Batman survives the explosion, but no trace of Strange is found.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Later, Strange returns yet again (the Hugo Strange that "died" in the explosion was revealed by the real Strange to be a Mandroid) in "Batman Annual" #10 (1986), in another attempt to destroy Batman and Bruce Wayne, this time attempting to financially bankrupt Wayne by using various tricks to force three Wayne Enterprises shareholders to sell their stock holdings to him so he could bankrupt the company. He also attempts to frame Batman as a criminal. However, Strange is defeated and sent to prison. Batman is able to stop Strange from further exploiting his knowledge of his secret identity by falsely claiming that he hypnotized Strange to give him a fake idea of Batman's true identity just before Commissioner Gordon shows up to arrest him; his explanation is so convincing that Strange begins to wonder if Batman is attempting a complex double-bluff by letting him "think" that Bruce Wayne is Batman and thus doubts whether his original conclusion was correct.


title: Hugo Strange

text: The Earth-Two version of Strange has a similar early history to the Earth-One version and also survives the fall that he experienced in "Detective Comics" #46. In "The Brave and the Bold" #182 (January 1982), it is revealed that he is left paralyzed by the fall but, after years of physical therapy, he regains enough movement to write out the surgical techniques needed to repair the damage to his body - and bribes a surgeon to perform the operation. The surgeon lacks Strange's skill, and the operation leaves Strange physically deformed (the surgeon is then killed for his failure). Strange uses one of his devices to capture Starman's Cosmic Rod to use its power to attack everyone and everything that Batman holds dear. He generates a storm in Gotham to obtain the device, which creates a dimensional doorway to Earth-One, bringing that universe's Batman over to Earth-Two, which allows him and Earth-Two's Robin to join with Earth-Two's Batwoman in defeating Strange. Strange realizes that he is, in fact, angry at his own wasted life and deformed body, so he uses the Cosmic Rod to commit suicide.


title: Hugo Strange

text: In the Post-"Crisis" continuity, Strange was reintroduced in the "" storyline as an eccentric private psychiatrist enlisted to help a task force assigned to capture Batman by providing them with a psychological profile of the vigilante. While brilliant at his work, Strange is depicted as being equally unbalanced: he becomes so obsessed with the case, he starts wearing a replica Batman costume in private, convinced that he alone understands the darkness that drives Batman.


title: Hugo Strange

text: According to Commissioner Gordon, Strange was "abandoned as a child, grew up in state homes. A bright kid, but he apparently had a hell of a temper. Nobody knows "how" he put himself through college and medical school." Strange was raised in an orphanage on the lower East Side of Gotham City, in a neighborhood known as "Hell's Crucible". As an adult, he became a professor of psychiatry at Gotham State University, but had his tenure suspended after using his position to promote a series of increasingly bizarre genetic engineering theories. He is approached by an Indian man named Sanjay, who seeks Strange's aid in curing his sick brother. Strange agrees to help, and Sanjay works loyally by his side from that point onward. Borrowing money from gangster Sal Maroni, who is in the employ of Gotham kingpin Carmine Falcone, Strange sets up a private laboratory to test his theories. He then bribes a corrupt orderly to supply him with ideal test subjects: incurably insane inmates from Arkham Asylum who have been institutionalized for so long that they will not be missed.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Strange's experiments have literally monstrous results, with his test subjects turning into gigantic, mindless "Monster Men", possessing superhuman strength and cannibalistic instincts. Strange uses the Monster Men to commit crimes so he can put together the money needed to pay back his Mafia connections. Batman becomes involved after discovering some of the gruesome remains of the Monster's Men's cannibalistic rampages. When Strange sets his creations free at an illegal poker game, helping himself to the victims' money after the slaughter, the Gotham Mafia begins to grow suspicious. Batman tracks Strange down, but is captured by Sanjay and thrown to the Monster Men as an intended meal. Batman not only holds off the creatures, but uses them as part of an inventive escape. Strange is enthralled by Batman, believing that he has found a genetically perfect man. He creates one final Monster Man using a drop of Batman's blood, and while his creation still has many of the flaws of its "brothers", it lacks most of the grotesque disfigurements that had plagued Strange's earlier creations. Strange is subsequently forced to destroy his lab in order to evade capture. Soon after, he turns the Monster Men loose, including Sanjay's brother (who had also been mutated as a result of Strange's "treatments"), at Falcone's private estate in a bid to wipe out the Mob's leaders, erasing his debt and covering up their ties to his work. In the battle that follows, all of the Monster Men are killed, along with Sanjay (who abandons Strange and dies trying to avenge his brother). Strange escapes amid the chaos, and succeeds in eradicating all links between himself and his experiments. Confident that his criminal past is permanently buried, he begins to appear on TV by reinventing himself as a "psychological expert" on Batman.


title: Hugo Strange

text: It is possible that the events of Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy's "Prey" storyline take place at this point. Partly due to Strange's appearances on TV claiming to understand Batman's motives, Captain James Gordon is ordered to assemble a task force to apprehend the vigilante, with Strange assisting him as a consultant in order to deduce Batman's secret identity. As the task force's investigation progresses, Strange grows increasingly maniacal in his obsession with Batman, going so far as expressing a desire to become Batman and dressing up in a replica Batsuit. To that end, Strange attempts to kill the Caped Crusader. However, Strange repeatedly underestimates the level of physical conditioning that is needed to be Batman (e.g., incorrectly theorizing that Batman has only been active for the past five years while Gordon correctly deduces that it would take a lifetime of training to achieve Batman's abilities). Strange also diagnoses Batman with various mental illnesses, such as explaining Batman's use of a costume as symptomatic of a multiple personality disorder, whereas Gordon more accurately explains the Batsuit's intended purpose as "scaring the pants off criminals". Strange eventually concludes that Bruce Wayne is most likely Batman, brainwashes the task force's commander to impersonate Batman to turn the public against him and sends him to kidnap the Mayor's daughter while dressed as the Dark Knight. Despite Strange's attempt to psychologically "break" Batman by creating recordings and setting up mannequins of Thomas and Martha Wayne blaming Bruce for their deaths, even using Wayne Manor itself to enhance his illusions, Bruce is able to collect himself and focus in the Batcave. The following day, he confronts Strange and tricks the professor into doubting his own hypothesis about Batman's secret identity, claiming that his parents are alive and living in Paraguay. Strange is ultimately exposed, and is shot twice by the task force when he attempts to escape dressed in his replica Batsuit before falling into a river and disappearing. Strange is then presumed dead.


title: Hugo Strange

text: In Doug Moench's "Terror" storyline, Strange mysteriously returns. He decides to work with another of Batman's enemies, the Scarecrow, and use him as a tool to help him capture Batman, while simultaneously having fallen into a further delusional state, as he engages in a "relationship" with a female mannequin dressed in Batman's cowl, reflecting his warped dual admiration and loathing of Batman. The Scarecrow turns on Strange when the professor's therapy proves effective enough to turn the Scarecrow against his "benefactor", tricking Strange into falling into the cellar of his mansion base where the twisted psychiatrist is impaled on a weather vane that the Scarecrow had left in the cellar earlier. The Scarecrow then uses Strange's mansion as a trap for Batman, but his attempt to use Strange's plan fails when he tries to use Crime Alley as the scene of a trap while ignorant of the reasons "why" that alley is so significant to Batman, with his "trap" merely consisting of luring Batman into the alley and decapitating a former classmate of Crane's in front of the hero. With Catwoman's help, Batman locates the Scarecrow's hideout and catches the Scarecrow in the cellar with Strange's body before the house is destroyed in a fire, but loses sight of Strange, with it being unclear whether Strange had actually survived the fall onto the weather vanehe claimed that he lured rats to himself by using his sweat so that he could eat themor if the Scarecrow and Batman were hallucinating from exposure to Crane's new fear gas, although Batman concludes that the subsequent explosion of the house has definitely killed Strange.


title: Hugo Strange

text: "Dark Moon Rising: Batman and the Monster Men", "Prey" and "Terror" all take place during Batman's early years. In the modern timeline, Strange returns in a four-part storyline called "Transference". Initially appearing in his own Batsuit, he captures Catwoman with the aid of his henchwoman Doraa former patient whom he has subjected to extensive mental conditioning by Strange to act as a new "Catwoman"and attempts to interrogate her about Batman's current status, Strange dismissing the existence of Batman's new allies by proclaiming them to be "parasites", as he cannot accept that Batman would share his "power" with anyone. He is then shown posing as a psychiatrist doing standard stress evaluations at Wayne Enterprises. While Bruce Wayne is on the couch, Strange drugs him with a powerful hallucinogen in order to coax Wayne into admitting that he is Batman. Wayne is able to escape by using cleaning fluid to start a fire, fakes Batman's death by destroying the Batmobile with him supposedly in it, and triggers a post-hypnotic suggestion in himself, forcing him to completely repress the Batman aspect of his mind until Robin and Nightwing can defeat Strange. Faced with Nightwing and Robin each denying that Wayne is Batman and witnessing Wayne's complete lack of combat reflexes and training, Strange becomes concerned that his theory that Bruce Wayne is Batman has been disproved and realizes that he will never be able to learn the truth now that he ""killed"" the Dark Knight. Faced with this conflicting situation, Strange has a mental breakdown and voluntarily turns himself in at Arkham Asylum.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Strange next reappears as the head of a gang of supervillains attempting to take control of Gotham's East Side, then controlled by Catwoman. Catwoman joins Strange's gang, then allows its members to "find out" that she intends to betray them, faking her death when they attempt to eliminate her. Although she defeats and imprisons most of the gang, and even convinces Strange to leave the East Side alone, Strange still mocks her by pointing out that he had faked his own death far more often than she had.


title: Hugo Strange

text: In "Batman" #665, Batman tells Tim Drake that a huge man dressed like a combination of Bane and Batman had beaten him up and he suspects that the impostor had used "Hugo Strange's monster serum and daily Venom shots" to gain his size and strength.


title: Hugo Strange

text: In the story arc "Gotham Underground", Strange is associating with other supervillains such as the Mad Hatter, Doctor Death and Two-Face. Strange and the others are rounded up by the Suicide Squad.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Strange takes part in the miniseries "Salvation Run". He is among the supervillains imprisoned on another planet.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Strange also appears in "The Batman Adventures", which is set in the DC Animated Universe. Issues #35-36 of the comic book provide him with a tragic backstory: he witnessed the murder of his son David by Mob boss Rupert Thorne and was so overcome with grief that he sought to literally erase the memory with his mind control technology. The plan backfired, however; following the experiment, he could remember nothing "but" his son's death. After Batman stops him from killing Thorne, Strange is imprisoned in Arkham Asylum.


title: Hugo Strange

text: In the continuity of "The New 52", the 2011 reboot of the DC Universe, "Detective Comics" (vol. 2) introduces the reader to Hugo Strange's son, Eli Strange, for the first time. Eli is first seen playing a game of poker with members of the Russian Mob, betting a valuable bracelet, winning big and cleaning house. Before he can walk away with his winnings, one of the mobsters forces him to play another hand, then discovers Eli's sleeve is loaded with cards. Before he can give the order to have him killed, the criminals realize that their bracelet (Eli's was a fake replica) had been stolen. Catwoman then pounces from the ceiling and takes out the entire group. She thanks Eli for being her distraction (the two having been working together the entire time) and tells him to run home to his father, which he is last seen doing.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Later, Strange tasks his son with overseeing an operation to dose Gotham with fear gas. The Scarecrow led Batman to believe that a small boy in a picture would be harmed unless he put a stop to it. Arriving at the scene, Batman realizes that the small boy was actually Eli. He manages to avert the disaster and Eli is arrested. Later, Batman reveals that "Eli Strange" is actually an alias and that the boy's real name is Elliot Montrose.


title: Hugo Strange

text: During the "Forever Evil" storyline, Hugo Strange is among the supervillains recruited by the Crime Syndicate to join the Secret Society of Super Villains.


title: Hugo Strange

text: In the continuity of "DC Rebirth", DC Comics' 2016 relaunch of its monthly superhero books, Hugo Strange appears during the "Night of the Monster Men" crossover story line. Although apparently now ignorant of Batman's identity, he is now determined to prove his superiority by attacking Gotham with a group of "Monster Men" created from the corpses of his former patients as representations of what Strange perceives as Batman's greatest flaws - his ego, grief, and fear - which ultimately provokes Batman into a confrontation at Strange's office penthouse headquarters. Strange wears what he terms a "suicide suit" - a near-replica of the Batsuit without the cape and cowl that is rigged to detonate if its wearer is subjected to any physical attack - on the assumption that Batman will have no choice but to surrender the cowl to him as the "true" Batman since he cannot take a life. Nightwing is able to defeat the final monster - an amalgamation of the previous ones - by literally leaping inside it to inject it with a prepared antidote, while Batman outwits Strange by having his ally Clayface cover the penthouse in an airtight seal prior to the confrontation. Strange, delirious and running out of oxygen, loses consciousness while Batman is still standing, Nightwing musing that Strange failed to realize that Batman's flaws were actually his motivation in protecting Gotham.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Hugo Strange later appears as a member of the Cabal, alongside Doctor Psycho, Per Degaton, the Queen Bee I, and Amazo.


title: Hugo Strange

text: In the "Batman '66" universe, Hugo Strange is initially a psychiatrist at the Arkham Institute, until being revealed as a villain in "Batman '66 Meets the Man from U.N.C.L.E.".


title: Hugo Strange

text: In the "DC Bombshells" universe, Hugo Strange is a eugenicist attempting to improve the gene pool. He weeds out what he considers unclean.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Following Killer Frost's plan to create a race of superhumans, Strange allied himself with the Penguin and Harvey Dent. With Harvey Dent at the head of Gotham City, Strange would have had access to all Gothamites' genes and control the generations to come. When the Batgirls attempted to stop the Penguin and his allies, Hugo Strange used his modified gun to force the Batgirls to fight each other. However, Dent eventually betrayed the Penguin and him in favor of the Batgirls. Strange fled in response, promising to find other scientists who share his dream. Strange found new allies within the Soviets. They fund his researches and he created several clones using Supergirl's DNA, of which two of them are Power Girl, who became the U.S.S.R.'s secret weapon, and Superman, who he considered a failure.


title: Hugo Strange

text: One year later, Strange captured Supergirl and Steve Trevor. With Supergirl as a guinea pig, Strange intended to create a perfect army in order to purge the world. During the tests, Supergirl was able to turn Power Girl against Strange, and the Reaper and Lois Lane, who had found the laboratory thanks to Killer Frost, blew up the laboratory's security system. Strange attempted to stop the Reaper, Lois Lane, Steve Trevor, Power Girl and Supergirl using his remaining clones. However, they were able to leave the place without a fight, taking Superman with them.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Hugo Strange makes his live action debut in season two of "Gotham", portrayed by BD Wong. He is depicted as the corrupt and manipulative Chief of Psychiatry at Arkham Asylum and overseer of Indian Hill, a secret division of Wayne Enterprises that performs experiments on metahumans. His chief project is resurrecting the dead, an endeavor funded by a mysterious council known as the Court of Owls, and which he initiates with Theo Galavan (James Frain), whom he revives as the warrior Azrael. A friend and colleague of Bruce Wayne's father Thomas (Grayson McCouch), it is revealed that he played a role in the murder of Wayne and his wife Martha (Brette Taylor) by hiring Patrick Malone (Michael Bowen) to kill them.


title: Hugo Strange

text: After being investigated by Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) and the GCPD, he is arrested for numerous crimes. Strange is later placed in federal custody, only to be kidnapped by one of his resurrected experiments, gangster Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith). Strange cures Mooney of her terminal illness in exchange for his freedom. He is then recruited once more to work for the Court of Owls improving a dispersal method for a virus that would turn people into homicidal maniacs. After giving the dispersal device to the Sensei (Raymond J. Barry), Strange tries to escape Gotham before the detonation.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Strange becomes the target of a gang war between the League of Assassins, Mooney, the Riddler (Cory Michael Smith), and the GCPD because he is the only one who knows how to cure the virus. He ultimately chooses to work with the GCPD in exchange for a pardon for his earlier crimes, and develops the cure.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Following his pardon, Strange goes into hiding until Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor) recruits him to cure his minion Butch Gilzean (Drew Powell) of the illness that has turned him into the zombie-like Solomon Grundy and resurrect the Riddler and Leslie Thompkins (Morena Baccarin) following their deaths. Strange succeeds doing all three, only to betray Cobblepot by switching allegiances to the League of Assassins.


title: Hugo Strange

text: Under the orders of Nyssa al Ghul (Jaime Murray), he turns the Riddler and Thompkins into sleeper agents with a microchip that can be controlled remotely. After the Riddler discovers his microchip, he confronts Strange and orders it removed. Gordon and Eduardo Dorrance (Shane West) interrupt the operation and discover what Strange has done. Before he can be arrested, Dorrance reveals to Gordon that he is loyal to Nyssa. Strange escapes after the Riddler is remotely ordered by Dorrance to kill Gordon. After Dorrance is critically injured by Gordon, Nyssa asks Strange to save Dorrance's life. Strange does so by injecting him with a serum known as Venom, but the process turns his patient into a mutant named Bane. Strange later implants a mind control microchip into U.S. Army General Wade, who is now controlled by Nyssa. After attempting to turn Gordon into another Bane-like creature, Strange is defeated once again, but disappears before he can be arrested.


title: Sanjana Kapoor

text: Sanjana Kapoor (born 1967) is an Indian theatre personality and former film actress. She is the daughter of actors Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kapoor. She ran the Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai from 1993 to February 2012.


title: Sanjana Kapoor

text: Sanjna Kapoor was born in the Kapoor family. Her paternal grandfather was Prithviraj Kapoor and her paternal uncles were Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor. Her brothers Kunal Kapoor and Karan Kapoor have also acted in some films. Her maternal grandparents, Geoffrey Kendal and Laura Kendal, were actors who toured India and Asia with their theatre group, Shakespeareana, performing Shakespeare and Shaw. The Merchant Ivory film, "Shakespeare Wallah", was loosely based on the family, which starred her father and her aunt, actress Felicity Kendal. Sanjana attended the Bombay International School in Mumbai.


title: Sanjana Kapoor

text: She made her acting debut in the 1981 film "36 Chowringhee Lane" which was produced by her father and starred her mother Jennifer Kendal in the lead. She played the younger version of the character her mother played. She later appeared in "Utsav" (1984), also produced by her father, and played her first leading role in a Bollywood film titled "Hero Hiralal" (1989), which was successful at the box office.


title: Sanjana Kapoor

text: She then appeared in Mira Nair's critically acclaimed film "Salaam Bombay" in 1988 but has since quit acting in films, shifting her focus to theatre in the 1990s. In 1991, she played the role of the Japanese wife in the theatre Production of Akira Kurosawa's immortalised film "Rashomon" based on the Broadway play by Fay and Michael Kanin. She has also acted in A.K. Bir's "Aranyaka" (1994).


title: Sanjana Kapoor

text: In 2011, she announced her decision to leave Prithvi Theatre, and launched "Junoon Theatre" in 2012, an arts based organization which would work with traveling groups; staging plays at smaller venues across India.


title: Sanjana Kapoor

text: Sanjna Kapoor was awarded the French honour of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) for her outstanding contribution to theatre in 2020.


title: Sanjana Kapoor

text: Sanjana Kapoor has been married twice. Her first husband was actor and director Aditya Bhattacharya (famous for "Mandi" and "Raakh"), son of filmmaker Basu Bhattacharya and Rinki Bhattacharya (daughter of noted filmmaker Bimal Roy).


title: Sanjana Kapoor

text: Kapoor then married the tiger conservationist, Valmik Thapar, son of the journalist Romesh Thapar. Valmik is a nephew of JNU historian Romila Thapar (sister of Romesh Thapar). Sanjana and Valmik have a son together, Hamir Thapar.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The McDonnell F-101 Voodoo is a supersonic jet fighter which served the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF).


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: Initially designed by McDonnell Aircraft Corporation as a long-range bomber escort (known as a "penetration fighter") for the USAF's Strategic Air Command (SAC), the Voodoo was instead developed as a nuclear-armed fighter-bomber for the USAF's Tactical Air Command (TAC), and as a photo reconnaissance aircraft based on the same airframe. An F-101A set a number of world speed records for jet-powered aircraft, including fastest airspeed, attaining per hour on 12 December 1957. They operated in the reconnaissance role until 1979.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: Delays in the 1954 interceptor project led to demands for an interim interceptor aircraft design, a role that was eventually won by the B model of the Voodoo. This required extensive modifications to add a large radar to the nose of the aircraft, a second crew member to operate it, and a new weapons bay using a rotating door that kept its four AIM-4 Falcon missiles or two AIR-2 Genie rockets hidden within the airframe until it was time to be fired. The F-101B entered service with USAF Air Defense Command in 1959 and the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1961. US examples were handed off to the USAF Air National Guard where they served until 1982. Canadian examples remained in service until 1984.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The Voodoo's career as a fighter-bomber was relatively brief, but the reconnaissance versions served for some time. Along with the US Air Force's Lockheed U-2 and US Navy's Vought RF-8 Crusaders, the RF-101 reconnaissance variant of the Voodoo was instrumental during the Cuban Missile Crisis and saw extensive service during the Vietnam War. Interceptor versions served with the Air National Guard until 1982, and in Canadian service, they were a front line part of NORAD until their replacement with the CF-18 Hornet in the 1980s.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: While the Voodoo was a moderate success, it may have been more important as an evolutionary step towards its replacement in most roles, the F-4 Phantom II, one of the most successful Western fighter designs of the 1950s. The Phantom would retain the twin engines, twin crew for interception duties, and a tail mounted well above and behind the jet exhaust but was an evolution of the F3H Demon while the Voodoo was developed from the earlier XF-88 Voodoo.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: Initial design on what would eventually become the Voodoo began just after World War II in response to a USAAF Penetration Fighter Competition in 1946. This called for a long-range, high-performance fighter to escort a new generation of bombers, much as the North American P-51 Mustang had escorted the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses and Consolidated B-24 Liberators in World War II. Several companies responded with designs, and the Air Force provided funds for several of them to produce prototypes.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: After being awarded a contract (AC-14582) on 14 February 1947, McDonnell built two prototypes, designated the XF-88 Voodoo. The first prototype (serial number "46-6525"), powered by two 3,000 lbf (13.3 kN) Westinghouse XJ34-WE-13 turbojets, flew from Muroc on 20 October 1948. Preliminary testing revealed that while handling and range was adequate, the top speed was a disappointing 641 mph (1,032 km/h) at sea level. After fitting McDonnell-designed afterburners to the second prototype, thrust was increased to 3,600 lbf (16.1 kN) with corresponding performance increases in top speed, initial rate of climb and reduced takeoff distance. Fuel consumption was greatly increased by use of the afterburners, however, reducing the range.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: Although the XF-88 won the "fly-off" competition against the competing Lockheed XF-90 and North American YF-93, the detonation of the first nuclear weapon by the Soviet Union resulted in the USAF (created in 1947) re-evaluating its fighter needs, with interceptors being more important and bomber escorts being of reduced priority, and it terminated the Penetration Fighter program in 1950. Analysis of Korean War missions, however, revealed that contemporary USAF strategic bombers were vulnerable to fighter interception. In 1951, the USAF issued a new requirement for a bomber escort with all major US manufacturers submitting designs. The McDonnell design was a larger and higher-powered version of the XF-88 and won the bid in May 1951. The F-88 was redesignated the "F-101 Voodoo" in November 1951.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The new design was considerably larger, carrying three times the initial fuel load and designed around larger, more powerful Pratt & Whitney J57 turbojets. The greater dimensions of the J57 engines required modifications to the engine bays, and modification to the intakes to allow a larger amount of airflow to the engine. The new intakes were also designed to be more efficient at higher Mach numbers. In order to increase aerodynamic efficiency, reduce structural weight and alleviate pitch-up phenomena recently identified in-flight testing of the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket, an aircraft with a control surface configuration similar to the XF-88, the horizontal tail was relocated to the top of the vertical stabilizer, giving the F-101 its signature "T-tail". In late 1952, the mission of the F-101 was changed from "penetration fighter" to "strategic fighter", which entailed equal emphasis on both the bomber escort mission and on nuclear weapons delivery. The new Voodoo mock-up with the reconfigured inlets, tail surfaces, landing gear, and dummy nuclear weapon was inspected by Air Force officials in March 1953. The design was approved, and an initial order for 29 F-101As was placed on 28 May 1953, no prototypes being required as the F-101 was considered a simple development of the XF-88, with the Cook-Cragie production policy, in which initial low-rate production would be used for testing without the use of separate prototypes, chosen instead.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: F-101A serial number "53-2418" was the first production aircraft; its maiden flight was on 29 September 1954 at Edwards AFB where it reached at . This aircraft, which is privately owned, has been moved to the Evergreen Maintenance Center in Marana, Arizona, restored, and now on display at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. It was previously on display at the Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The end of the war in Korea and the development of the jet-powered Boeing B-52 Stratofortress negated the need for fighter escort and Strategic Air Command withdrew from the program.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: Despite SAC's loss of interest, the aircraft attracted the attention of Tactical Air Command (TAC), and the F-101 was reconfigured as a fighter bomber, intended to carry a single nuclear weapon for use against tactical targets such as airfields. With the support of TAC, testing was resumed, with Category II flight tests beginning in early 1955. A number of problems were identified during development, with many of these fixed. The aircraft had a dangerous tendency toward severe pitch-up at high angle of attack that was never entirely solved. Around 2,300 improvements were made to the aircraft in 1955–56 before full production was resumed in November 1956.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The first F-101A was delivered on 2 May 1957 to the 27th Strategic Fighter Wing, which transferred to TAC in July that year, replacing their F-84F Thunderstreak. The F-101A was powered by two Pratt & Whitney J57-P-13 turbojets, allowing good acceleration, climb-performance, ease in penetrating the sound barrier in level flight, and a maximum performance of Mach 1.52. The F-101's large internal fuel capacity allowed a range of approximately nonstop. The aircraft was fitted with an MA-7 fire-control radar for both air-to-air and air-to-ground use, augmented by a Low Altitude Bombing System (LABS) for delivering nuclear weapons, and was designed to carry a Mk 28 nuclear bomb. The original intended payload for the F-101A was the McDonnell Model 96 store, a large fuel/weapons pod similar in concept to that of the Convair B-58 Hustler, but was cancelled in March 1956 before the F-101 entered service. Other operational nuclear payloads included the Mk 7, Mk 43, and Mk 57 weapons. While theoretically capable of carrying conventional bombs, rockets, or Falcon air-to-air missiles, the Voodoo never used such weapons operationally. It was fitted with four 20mm M39 cannon, with one cannon often removed in service to make room for a TACAN beacon-receiver.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The F-101 set a number of speed records, including: a JF-101A (the ninth F-101A modified as a testbed for the more powerful J-57-P-53 engines of the F-101B) setting a world speed record of 1,207.6 mph (1,943.4 km/h) on 12 December 1957 during "Operation Firewall", beating the previous record of 1,132 mph (1,811 km/h) set by the Fairey Delta 2 in March the previous year. The record was then subsequently taken in May 1958 by a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. On 27 November 1957, during "Operation Sun Run," an RF-101C set the Los Angeles-New York City-Los Angeles record in 6 hours 46 minutes, the New York to Los Angeles record in 3 hours, 36 minutes, and the Los Angeles to New York record in 3 hours 7 minutes.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: A total of 77 F-101As were built. They were gradually withdrawn from service starting in 1966. Twenty-nine survivors were converted to "RF-101G" specifications with a modified nose, housing reconnaissance cameras in place of cannons and radar. These served with the Air National Guard through 1972.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: In October 1953, the USAF requested that two F-101As be built as prototype YRF-101A tactical reconnaissance aircraft. These were followed by 35 RF-101A production aircraft. The RF-101A shared the airframe of the F-101A, including its 6.33 "g" (62 m/s²) limit, but replaced the radar and cannons with up to six cameras in the reshaped nose. Like all other models of the F-101, it had provision for both flying boom and probe-and-drogue in-flight refueling capability, as well as for a buddy tank that allowed it to refuel other aircraft. It entered service in May 1957, replacing the RB-57 Canberra.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: USAF RF-101As from the 363d Tactical Reconnaissance Wing at Shaw AFB, SC flew reconnaissance sorties over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: In October 1959, eight RF-101As were transferred to Taiwan, which used them for overflights of the Chinese mainland. These ROCAF RF-101A were modified with the C-model vertical fins and air intake. The intake is used to cool the drag chute compartment and eliminates the 5-minute limit on using the afterburners on the A model. Two were reportedly shot down.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: In the late 1940s, the Air Force had started a research project into the future interceptor aircraft that eventually settled on an advanced specification known as the 1954 interceptor. Contracts for this specification eventually resulted in the selection of the F-102 Delta Dagger, but by 1952 it was becoming clear that none of the parts of the specification other than the airframe would be ready by 1954; the engines, weapons, and fire control systems were all going to take too long to get into service. An effort was then started to quickly produce an interim supersonic design to replace the various subsonic interceptors then in service, and the F-101 airframe was selected as a starting point.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: Although McDonnell proposed the designation F-109 for the new aircraft (which was to be a substantial departure from the basic Voodoo), the USAF assigned the designation F-101B. It was first deployed into service on 5 January 1959, with the 60th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron. The production ended in March 1961. The Voodoo featured a modified cockpit to carry a crew of two, with a larger and more rounded forward fuselage to hold the Hughes MG-13 fire control radar of the F-102. It had a data link to the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) system, allowing ground controllers to steer the aircraft towards its targets by making adjustments through the plane's autopilot. The F-101B had more powerful Pratt & Whitney J57-P-55 engines, making it the only Voodoo not using the −13 engines. The new engines featured a substantially longer afterburner than J57-P-13s. To avoid a major redesign, the extended afterburners were simply allowed to extend out of the fuselage by almost 8  ft (2.4 m). The more powerful engines and aerodynamic refinements allowed an increased speed of Mach 1.85.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The F-101B was stripped of the four M39 cannons and carried four AIM-4 Falcon air-to-air missiles instead, arranged two apiece on a rotating pallet in the fuselage weapons bay. The initial load was two GAR-1 (AIM-4A) semi-active radar homing and two GAR-2 (AIM-4B) infrared-guided weapons with one of each carried on each side of the rotating pallet. After the first two missiles were fired, the door turned over to expose the second pair. Standard practice was to fire the weapons in SARH/IR pairs to increase the likelihood of a hit. Late-production models had provision for two 1.7-kiloton MB-1/AIR-2 Genie nuclear rockets on one side of the pallet with IR-guided GAR-2A (AIM-4C) on the other side. "Project Kitty Car" upgraded most earlier F-101Bs to this standard beginning in 1961.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: From 1963–66, F-101Bs were upgraded under the Interceptor Improvement Program (IIP; also known as "Project Bold Journey"), with a fire control system enhancement against hostile ECM and an infrared sighting and tracking (IRST) system in the nose in place of the in-flight refueling probe.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The F-101B was made in greater numbers than the F-101A and C, with a total of 479 being delivered by the end of production in 1961. Most of these were delivered to the Air Defense Command (ADC) beginning in January 1959. The only foreign customer for the F-101B was Canada. For more details on the history of the Voodoo in Canada, see McDonnell CF-101 Voodoo.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The F-101B was withdrawn from ADC service from 1969 to 1972, with many surviving USAF aircraft transferred to the Air National Guard (replacing F-102s), serving until 1982. The last Voodoo in US service (F-101B-105-MC, AF Ser. No. "58-300") was finally retired by the 2nd Fighter Weapons Squadron at Tyndall AFB, Florida on 21 September 1982.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The F-101A fighter-bomber had been accepted into Tactical Air Command (TAC) service despite a number of problems. Among others, its airframe had proven to be capable of withstanding only 6.33 "g" (62 m/s²) maneuvers, rather than the intended 7.33 "g" (72 m/s²). An improved model, the F-101C, was introduced in 1957. It had a 500 lb (227 kg) heavier structure to allow 7.33-"g" maneuvers as well as a revised fuel system to increase the maximum flight time in afterburner. Like the F-101A it was also fitted with an underfuselage pylon for carrying nuclear weapons, as well as two hardpoints for drop tanks. A total of 47 were produced.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: Originally serving with the 27th Tactical Fighter Wing at Bergstrom AFB, Texas, the aircraft was transferred in 1958 from TAC to the 81st Tactical Fighter Wing, part of United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) which operated three squadrons from the twin RAF air stations Bentwaters & Woodbridge. The 78th Tactical Fighter Squadron was stationed at Woodbridge, while the 91st and 92nd were stationed at Bentwaters. The 81st TFW served as a strategic nuclear deterrent force, the Voodoo's long-range putting almost all of the Warsaw Pact countries, and targets up to deep into the Soviet Union within reach.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: Both the A and C model aircraft were assigned to the 81st TFW and were used interchangeably within the three squadrons. Operational F-101A/C were upgraded in service with Low Angle Drogued Delivery (LADD) and Low Altitude Bombing System (LABS) equipment for its primary mission of delivering nuclear weapons at extremely low altitudes. Pilots were trained for high speed, low-level missions into Soviet or Eastern Bloc territory, with primary targets being airfields. These missions were expected to be one-way, with the pilots having to eject behind Soviet lines.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The F-101C never saw combat and was replaced in 1966 with the F-4C Phantom II. Thirty-two aircraft were later converted for unarmed reconnaissance use with the "RF-101H" designation. They served with Air National Guard units until 1972.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: Using the reinforced airframe of the F-101C, the RF-101C first flew on 12 July 1957, entering service in 1958. Like the RF-101A, the RF-101C had up to six cameras in place of radar and cannons in the reshaped nose and retained the bombing ability of the fighter-bomber versions. 166 RF-101Cs were built, including 96 originally scheduled to be F-101C fighter-bombers.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: On 27 November 1957 during Operation Sun Run, an RF-101C piloted by then-Captain Robert Sweet set the Los Angeles-New York City-Los Angeles record in 6 hours 46 minutes, and New York to Los Angeles record in 3 hours, 36 minutes. Another RF-101C, piloted by then-Lieutenant Gustav Klatt, set a Los Angeles to New York record of 3 hours 7 minutes.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The 1964 Project "Toy Tiger" fitted some RF-101C with a new camera package and a centerline pod for photo-flash cartridges. Some were further upgraded under the Mod 1181 program with automatic control for the cameras.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: The RF-101C saw service during the Cuban Missile Crisis and soon followed the North American F-100 Super Sabres in October 1961, into combat when RF-101s from the 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing deployed to Vietnam. The RF-101C was deployed operationally during the Vietnam War, sustaining losses with the first F-101 being lost in November 1964 to ground fire. From 1965 through November 1970, its role was gradually taken over by the RF-4C Phantom II. In some 35,000 sorties, 39 aircraft were lost, 33 in combat, including five to SAMs, one to an airfield attack, and one in air combat to a MiG-21 in September 1967. The RF-101C's speed made it largely immune to MiG interception. 27 of the combat losses occurred on reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam. In April 1967, ALQ-71 ECM pods were fitted to provide some protection against SAMs. Although the Voodoo was again able to operate at medium altitudes, the added drag and weight decreased the speed enough to make RF-101 vulnerable to the maneuverable (and cannon-equipped) MiGs and thus requiring fighter escort.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: In service, the RF-101C was nicknamed the "Long Bird"; it was the only version of the Voodoo to see combat.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: Some of the F-101Bs were completed as dual-control operational trainer aircraft initially dubbed "TF-101B", but later redesignated "F-101F". Seventy-nine new-build F-101Fs were manufactured, and 152 more existing aircraft were later modified with dual controls. Ten of these were supplied to Canada under the designation "CF-101F". These were later replaced with 10 updated aircraft in 1971.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: In the early 1970s, a batch of 22 former Royal Canadian CF-101Bs was returned to the US Air Force and converted to "RF-101B" reconnaissance aircraft with their radar and weapons bay replaced with a set of three KS-87B cameras and two AXQ-2 TV cameras. An in-flight refueling boom receptacle was also fitted. These aircraft served with the 192d Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron of the Nevada Air National Guard through 1975. They were expensive to operate and maintain and had a short service life.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: Following the type's retirement, a large number of F-101s are preserved in museums or on display as gate guards.


title: McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

text: All models of the aircraft were known by the nickname "One-oh-Wonder" and this was reflected on the aircraft type patches worn by crews.


title: Sarah Jeffery

text: Sarah Marie Jeffery is a Canadian actress, singer, and dancer. She is known for her work on the NBC series "Shades of Blue" and Disney Channel's "Descendants" franchise. From 2018 to 2022, she has portrayed the lead role of Maggie Vera on the CW reboot series "Charmed".


title: Sarah Jeffery

text: Jeffery was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and is of mixed African, Indigenous Canadian, and English descent. Jeffery has been singing, dancing and acting in musicals and theatrical productions since she was three years old.


title: Sarah Jeffery

text: Jeffery's first major acting role was in the Cartoon Network television film "Aliens in the House". Shortly after, she landed a lead role in the DirecTV original series "Rogue", working opposite Thandie Newton, playing the role of her daughter, Evie Travis. She subsequently joined the cast of Fox's sci-fi drama series "Wayward Pines" playing the recurring role of Amy, opposite Matt Dillon and Carla Gugino.


title: Sarah Jeffery

text: In 2015, Jeffery played the role of Princess Audrey, daughter of Princess Aurora, in the Disney Channel Original Movie, "Descendants". She followed this up by playing the role of Audrey in the animated spinoff to the film "". In 2019, she reprised her role as Audrey in the third and final installment of the franchise, "Descendants 3".


title: Sarah Jeffery

text: In January 2016, she began a lead role in Adi Hasak's American police procedural crime series "Shades of Blue", playing Cristina Santos, the daughter of Jennifer Lopez's character; the series was renewed for a second season. The same year Jeffery starred in the comedy film "Be Somebody" with Matthew Espinosa.


title: Sarah Jeffery

text: In February 2018, Jeffery was cast in the lead role of Maggie Vera in The CW's fantasy drama series "Charmed", a reboot of the 1998 series of the same name. The reboot "centers on three sisters in a college town who discover they are witches."


title: Sarah Jeffery

text: In December 2019, Jeffery revealed through Instagram that she struggles with obsessive–compulsive disorder.


title: 13th (film)

text: 13th is a 2016 American documentary film by director Ava DuVernay. The film explores the "intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States"; it is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1865, which abolished slavery throughout the United States and ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for conviction of a crime.


title: 13th (film)

text: DuVernay contends that slavery has been perpetuated since the end of the American Civil War through criminalizing behavior and enabling police to arrest poor freedmen and force them to work for the state under convict leasing; suppression of African Americans by disenfranchisement, lynchings, and Jim Crow; politicians declaring a war on drugs that weighs more heavily on minority communities and, by the late 20th century, mass incarceration affecting communities of color, especially American descendants of slavery, in the United States. She examines the prison-industrial complex and the emerging detention-industrial complex, discussing how much money is being made by corporations from such incarcerations.


title: 13th (film)

text: "13th" garnered acclaim from a number of film critics. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards,


title: 13th (film)

text: and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special at the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards.


title: 13th (film)

text: The film begins with an audio clip of President Barack Obama stating that the US had 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the world's prisoners. This film features several activists, academics, political figures from both major US political parties, and public figures, such as Angela Davis, Bryan Stevenson, Michelle Alexander, Jelani Cobb, Van Jones, Newt Gingrich, Cory Booker, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and others.


title: 13th (film)

text: It explores the economic history of slavery and post-Civil War racist legislation and practices that replaced it. DuVernay contends as "systems of racial control" and forced labor from the years after the abolition of slavery to the present. Southern states criminalized minor offenses, arresting freedmen and forcing them to work when they could not pay fines; institutionalizing this approach as convict leasing (which created an incentive to criminalize more behavior). She contends they disenfranchised most black people across the South at the turn of the 20th century, excluding them from the political system (including juries), at the same time that lynching of black people by white mobs reached a peak. In addition, Jim Crow legislation was passed by Democrats, to legalize segregation and suppress minorities, forcing them into second-class status. Following the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s that restored civil rights, the film notes the Republican Party's appeal to southern white conservatives, including the claim to be the party to fight the war on crime and war on drugs, which began to include mandatory, lengthy sentencing. A new wave of minority suppression began, reaching African Americans and others in the northern, mid-western and western cities where many had migrated in earlier decades. After their presidential candidates lost to Republicans, Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton joined the war on drugs.


title: 13th (film)

text: As a result, from the early 1970s to the present, the rate of incarceration and the number of people in prisons has climbed dramatically in the United States, while at the same time the rate of crime in the United States has continued to decline since the late 20th century. As late as the 2016 presidential election, the eventual winner Donald Trump worked to generate fear of crime, claiming high rates in New York City, for instance, which was not true according to the documentary. The documentary states that crime was lower overall than it had been in decades, but that Republican candidates raised it to generate fear. Private prison contractors entered the market to satisfy demand as arrests and sentences increased, forming an independent group with its own economic incentives to criminalize minor activities and lengthen sentences in order to keep prisons full. Politicians and businessmen in rural areas encouraged construction of prisons to supply local jobs, and they also have had incentives to keep prisons full.


title: 13th (film)

text: The federal Bureau of Prisons announced in 2016 its intention to stop contracting with private providers for prison services. According to the film, the over-incarceration of adults has severely damaged generations of black and minority families and their children.


title: 13th (film)

text: The film explores the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council, backed by corporations, that has provided Republican state and federal legislators with draft legislation to support the prison-industrial complex. It contends that only after some of the relationships were revealed did corporations like Walmart and others receive criticism and drop out of the organization.


title: 13th (film)

text: The film explores the demonization of minority poor through these decades to serve political ends, contributing to fears of minorities by whites and to problems of police brutality against minority communities. In the 21st century, the regularity of fatal police shootings of unarmed minorities in apparently minor confrontations has been demonstrated by videos taken by bystanders and by the increasing use of cameras in police cars or worn by officers; DuVernay ends the film with graphic videos of fatal shootings of black people by police, what Manohla Dargis describes as, after the previous discussion, having the effect of "a piercing, keening cry."


title: 13th (film)

text: The film was written by Ava DuVernay, who wrote and directed "Selma" (2014), and Spencer Averick. Averick also edited the film. Produced and filmed in secrecy, "13th" was revealed only after it was announced as the opening film for the 2016 New York Film Festival, the first documentary ever to open the festival.


title: 13th (film)

text: The film was released on October 7, 2016, on Netflix. A companion piece "13th: A Conversation with Oprah Winfrey & Ava DuVernay" was released on January 26, 2017, in the United States and on January 31, 2017, worldwide on the service. On April 17, 2020, Netflix released the film for free on YouTube.


title: 13th (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 97% based on 102 reviews, with an average rating of 8.77/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""13th" strikes at the heart of America's tangled racial history, offering observations as incendiary as they are calmly controlled." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 83 out of 100, based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: 13th (film)

text: Manohla Dargis of "The New York Times" praised what she called the power of DuVernay's film and its meticulous marshaling of facts. She said, summarizing the film, "The United States did not just criminalize a select group of black people. It criminalized black people as a whole, a process that, in addition to destroying untold lives, effectively transferred the guilt for slavery from the people who perpetuated it to the very people who suffered through it." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" awarded the film four stars and named it one of the best films of 2016.


title: 13th (film)

text: Dan Berger of "Black Perspectives" wrote "13th" was at its best in chronicling the lives of individuals in the American prison system, but also said the film "makes several significant factual errors" such as using outdated statistical data and overstating the role of for-profit prisons.


title: 13th (film)

text: The film was nominated for dozens of awards, winning best documentary at the British Academy Film Awards and the Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award for excellence, and receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. DuVernay received a Primetime Emmy Award for her writing, and was nominated for directing. The song "Letter to the Free" was nominated for several awards with Common, Robert Glasper, and Karriem Riggins winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.


title: Working memory

text: Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, but some theorists consider the two forms of memory distinct, assuming that working memory allows for the manipulation of stored information, whereas short-term memory only refers to the short-term storage of information. Working memory is a theoretical concept central to cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and neuroscience.


title: Working memory

text: The term "working memory" was coined by Miller, Galanter, and Pribram, and was used in the 1960s in the context of theories that likened the mind to a computer. In 1968, Atkinson and Shiffrin used the term to describe their "short-term store". What we now call working memory was formerly referred to variously as a "short-term store" or short-term memory, primary memory, immediate memory, operant memory, and provisional memory. Short-term memory is the ability to remember information over a brief period (in the order of seconds). Most theorists today use the concept of working memory to replace or include the older concept of short-term memory, marking a stronger emphasis on the notion of manipulating information rather than mere maintenance.


title: Working memory

text: The earliest mention of experiments on the neural basis of working memory can be traced back to more than 100 years ago, when Hitzig and Ferrier described ablation experiments of the prefrontal cortex (PFC); they concluded that the frontal cortex was important for cognitive rather than sensory processes. In 1935 and 1936, Carlyle Jacobsen and colleagues were the first to show the deleterious effect of prefrontal ablation on delayed response.


title: Working memory

text: Numerous models have been proposed for how working memory functions, both anatomically and cognitively. Of those, the two that have been most influential are summarized below.


title: Working memory

text: In 1974, Baddeley and Hitch introduced the multicomponent model of working memory. The theory proposed a model containing three components: the central executive, the phonological loop, and the visuospatial sketchpad with the central executive functioning as a control center of sorts, directing info between the phonological and visuospatial components. The central executive is responsible for, among other things, directing attention to relevant information, suppressing irrelevant information and inappropriate actions, and coordinating cognitive processes when more than one task is simultaneously performed. A "central executive" is responsible for supervising the integration of information and for coordinating subordinate systems responsible for the short-term maintenance of information. One subordinate system, the phonological loop (PL), stores phonological information (that is, the sound of language) and prevents its decay by continuously refreshing it in a rehearsal loop. It can, for example, maintain a seven-digit telephone number for as long as one repeats the number to oneself again and again. The other subordinate system, the visuospatial sketchpad, stores visual and spatial information. It can be used, for example, for constructing and manipulating visual images and for representing mental maps. The sketchpad can be further broken down into a visual subsystem (dealing with such phenomena as shape, colour, and texture), and a spatial subsystem (dealing with location).


title: Working memory

text: In 2000, Baddeley extended the model by adding a fourth component, the episodic buffer, which holds representations that integrate phonological, visual, and spatial information, and possibly information not covered by the subordinate systems (e.g., semantic information, musical information). The episodic buffer is also the link between working memory and long-term memory. The component is episodic because it is assumed to bind information into a unitary episodic representation. The episodic buffer resembles Tulving's concept of episodic memory, but it differs in that the episodic buffer is a temporary store.


title: Working memory

text: Anders Ericsson and Walter Kintsch have introduced the notion of "long-term working memory", which they define as a set of "retrieval structures" in long-term memory that enable seamless access to the information relevant for everyday tasks. In this way, parts of long-term memory effectively function as working memory. In a similar vein, Cowan does not regard working memory as a separate system from long-term memory. Representations in working memory are a subset of representations in long-term memory. Working memory is organized into two embedded levels. The first consists of long-term memory representations that are activated. There can be many of these—there is theoretically no limit to the activation of representations in long-term memory. The second level is called the focus of attention. The focus is regarded as having a limited capacity and holds up to four of the activated representations.