title: Stanley Baker

text: Born into a coal mining family in Glamorgan, Baker began his acting career in the West End. Following national service in the Royal Army Service Corps after the Second World War, he befriended actor Richard Burton and began appearing in film and television roles. He played the lead role in "Hell Drivers" and supporting role in "The Guns of Navarone". He was producer and lead actor in the 1964 film "Zulu", in which he portrayed John Chard.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker's performance in the 1959 film "Yesterday's Enemy" was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Actor, and he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for his turn in the BBC serial "How Green Was My Valley". He was awarded a knighthood in 1976, although he died before the investiture ceremony: a heavy smoker, he developed lung cancer and he died in 1976.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker was born in Ferndale, Glamorgan, Wales, the youngest of three children. His father was a coal miner who lost a leg in a pit accident but continued working as a lift operator at the mine until his death. Baker grew up a self-proclaimed "wild kid" interested in only "football and boxing". He thought he would most likely be a miner or maybe a boxer.


title: Stanley Baker

text: His artistic ability was spotted at an early age by a local teacher, Glynne Morse, who encouraged Baker to act. When he was 14 he was performing in a school play when seen by a casting director from Ealing Studios, who recommended him for a role in "Undercover" (1943), a war film about the Yugoslav guerrillas in Serbia. He was paid £20 a week, caught the acting bug, and pursued a professional acting career. Six months later Baker appeared with Emlyn Williams in a play in the West End called "The Druid's Rest", appearing alongside Richard Burton.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker worked for a time as an apprentice electrician, then through Morse's influence, he managed to secure a position with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1944. He was there for three years when he had to do his national service. He served in the Royal Army Service Corps from 1946 until 1948, attaining the rank of sergeant. Following his demobilisation Baker returned to London determined to resume his acting career. He was recommended by Richard Burton for casting in a small role in Terence Rattigan's West End play, "Adventure Story" (1949).


title: Stanley Baker

text: He began appearing in films and on television, as well as performing on stage for the Middlesex Repertory Company. He had small roles in "All Over the Town" (1949), "Obsession" (1949), "Your Witness" (1950), "Lilli Marlene" (1950), "Something in the City" (1950), "The Rossiter Case" (1951), "Cloudburst" (1951), "Home to Danger" (1951) and "Whispering Smith Hits London" (1952).


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker attracted attention when cast as the bosun's mate in the Hollywood-financed "Captain Horatio Hornblower" (1951). It was the ninth most popular film at the British box office that year.


title: Stanley Baker

text: In 1951 he toured England in a play by Christopher Fry, "A Sleep of Prisoners" which was part of the Festival of Britain. It was about four POWs spending a night in a bombed out church and was staged in actual churches; the rest of the cast includes Denholm Elliott, Hugh Pryse and Leonard White. The project was transferred in its entirety to New York for a limited run, and also toured throughout the US.


title: Stanley Baker

text: While in New York, Baker read the novel "The Cruel Sea" by Nicholas Monsarrat. Although the role of the cowardly officer Bennett was an Australian in the book, the Englishman Donald Sinden was originally screen-tested for the part and the Welsh Baker was screen-tested for the part of Lockhart. Subsequently, at Jack Hawkins' suggestion and after further screen-tests, the roles were swapped. "The Cruel Sea (1953 film)" was the most successful film at the British box office in 1953 and Baker was now established in films.


title: Stanley Baker

text: On television was in "A Cradle in Willow" and played Petruchio in a version of "Taming of the Shrew" (1952). He had a small role in a British-US co-production for Warwick Films, "The Red Beret" (1953), with Alan Ladd, another big hit in Britain. Warwick liked his work so much they promptly reteamed him with Ladd in "Hell Below Zero" (1954), with Baker billed fourth as the main villain.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker got another break when George Sanders fell ill and was unable to play Sir Mordred in the expensive epic "Knights of the Round Table" (1953), made by MGM in Britain. Baker stepped in and got excellent reviews; the movie was very popular.


title: Stanley Baker

text: He had his biggest role in a purely British film to date with "The Good Die Young" (1954), directed by Lewis Gilbert, playing a boxer who commits a robbery. Baker was cast in "Twist of Fate" (1954) opposite Ginger Rogers, replacing Walter Rilla, who quit the production ten days into filming.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Hollywood came calling again and offered him the choice support role of Achilles in "Helen of Troy" (1955), shot in Italy for Robert Wise.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Most of Baker's film roles until this stage had been playing villains. His career received another boost when Laurence Olivier selected him to play Henry Tudor in "Richard III" (1955).


title: Stanley Baker

text: On TV he was in "The Creature" (1955) by Nigel Kneale, later filmed (without Baker) as "The Abominable Snowman" (1957). He was in another epic, playing Attalus in "Alexander the Great" (1956), which starred Burton in the title role and was shot in Spain for Robert Rossen. He also portrayed Rochester in a British TV adaptation of "Jane Eyre" (1956).


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker's first leading role in a feature film came with "Child in the House" (1956), written and directed by Cy Endfield. He had a support role as a psychotic corporal in "A Hill in Korea" (1956), a Korean War film that also featured early performances from Michael Caine, Stephen Boyd and Robert Shaw. He was the villain in a racing car drama, "Checkpoint" (1956), opposite Anthony Steel. It was made by the team of Betty E. Box and Ralph Thomas for the Rank Organisation.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker finally broke away from supporting parts when cast as the lead in "Hell Drivers" (1957), a truck driving drama directed by Endfield. Before it was released he played another villain role for Box and Thomas, "Campbell's Kingdom" (1957), opposite Dirk Bogarde, shot in Italy (substituting for Canada). Following this he was meant to make "Tread Softly Stranger" with Diana Dors but George Baker was cast instead. "Hell Drivers" was a minor hit, and at the end of the year exhibitors voted Baker the seventh most popular British star at the British box office for 1957 (after Bogarde, Kenneth More, Peter Finch, John Gregson, Norman Wisdom and John Mills, and before Ian Carmichael, Jack Hawkins and Belinda Lee). The success of "Hell Drivers" saw Baker play a series of tough anti-heroes. In the words of David Thomson:


title: Stanley Baker

text: Until the early 1960s, Baker was the only male lead in the British cinema who managed to suggest contempt, aggression and the working class. He is the first hint of proletarian male vigor against the grain of Leslie Howard, James Mason, Stewart Granger, John Mills, Dirk Bogarde and the theatrical knights. Which is not to disparage these players, but to say that Baker was a welcome novelty, that he is one of Britain's most important screen actors, and that he has not yet been equalled – not even by Michael Caine.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker was a detective in "Violent Playground" (1958), a drama about juvenile delinquency from the director-producer team Basil Dearden and Michael Relph. He was reunited with Endfield for "Sea Fury" (1958), an action drama, playing a tugboat captain. He was voted the tenth biggest British star in Britain at the end of the year.


title: Stanley Baker

text: He made the Hollywood-financed "The Angry Hills" (1959) in Greece with Robert Aldrich opposite Robert Mitchum. Baker said Aldrich offered to engage him in a 28-part series about an Englishman in New York, but he had turned it down to stay in Britain.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker had the lead in "Yesterday's Enemy" (1959), a World War II drama set in Burma for Hammer Films, directed by Val Guest.


title: Stanley Baker

text: He was a detective in "Blind Date" (1959) for director Joseph Losey, one of Baker's favourite roles. He made a fourth film with Endfield, "Jet Storm" (1959) playing an airline captain. None of these films were particularly huge at the box office but at the end of the year Baker was voted the fourth most popular British star. "Hell Is a City" (1960) had him as another hardbitten detective, a second collaboration with Val Guest. He was reunited with Losey for "The Criminal" (1960), playing an ex-con, and Baker's favourite role.


title: Stanley Baker

text: He played the relatively small role of "Butcher Brown", a war-weary commando, in the Hollywood blockbuster war epic "The Guns of Navarone" (1961) shot in Greece. It was a massive hit at the box office.


title: Stanley Baker

text: A third collaboration with Losey was "Eva" (1962), a French-Italian film where Baker acted opposite Jeanne Moreau. Aldrich asked him to play another villain role, in the Biblical epic "Sodom and Gomorrah" (1962). There was some talk he would play Rufio in "Cleopatra" (1963) but it did not eventuate. He was a tough army officer committing a robbery in "A Prize of Arms" (1962) but the film failed at the box office and it seemed the market for the tough action films in which Baker had specialised might be drying up. He appeared opposite Jean Seberg in "In the French Style" (1962), a French-American romance produced by Irwin Shaw. He was in "The Man Who Finally Died" (1963) for British TV.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker's widow later claimed that he was originally offered the role of James Bond, but turned it down not wanting to commit to a long-term contract. She also says he was going to star in "This Sporting Life" but had to drop out when "Guns of Navarone" went over schedule. She says Baker never regretted losing the part of Bond to Sean Connery but regretted not making "This Sporting Life".


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker formed his own company, 'Diamond Films' with Cy Endfield. They developed a script about the Battle of Rorke's Drift written by Endfield and John Prebble. While making "Sodom and Gomorrah" Baker struck up a relationship with that film's producer, Joseph E. Levine which enabled him to raise the $3 million budget for "Zulu" (1964), directed by Endfield, shot partly on location in South Africa. "Zulu" was a big hit at the box office and made a star of Michael Caine. Baker played the lead part of Lieutenant John Chard VC in what remains his best-remembered role. He later owned Chard's Victoria Cross and Zulu War Medal from 1972 until his death in 1976. (Chard died at age 49 in 1897, only a year older than Baker at his death; both died of cancer).


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker made two more films in South Africa: "Dingaka" (1965), on which he worked as an actor only but which was distributed by Levine, and "Sands of the Kalahari" (1965), which he starred in and produced, directed by Endfield and financed by Levine. Both were box-office failures commercially and Baker made no further films with Endfield. Baker had plans to film Wilbur Smith's debut novel "When the Lion Feeds" and "The Coral Strand" by John Masters. but neither project was realised.


title: Stanley Baker

text: He made a TV movie for the United Nations entitled "Who Has Seen the Wind?" (1965), and appeared in two episodes of "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre": "After the Lion, Jackals" (1966) and "" (1967). In 1966 he made a deal with Universal to produce and star in a film. He made a final film with Losey, "Accident" (1967), cast against type as an academic.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker formed the production company Oakhurst Productions with Michael Deeley. Its first cinema film was "Robbery" (1967), a heist film with Baker in the lead role. It was a solid success in Britain and launched the Hollywood career of director Peter Yates. Baker announced he would make another film for Levine, "A Nice Girl Like Me" acting opposite Hayley Mills who would play a girl who constantly gets pregnant. The film would be made by Levine, but not with Baker or Mills. He was also going to film the John Roeburt novel "The Climate of Hell" with James Goldstone. and the Norman Lewis novel "Everyman's Brother". He appeared in "The Girl with the Pistol" (1968), an Italian comedy, then worked as a producer only on two films for Oakhurst: "The Other People" (1968), which was never released, and "The Italian Job" (1969) a heist comedy with Michael Caine, a big hit. He was also part of the consortium which set up Harlech Television. At the end of 1968 exhibitors voted him the ninth biggest star in Britain, after John Wayne, Julie Christie, Steve McQueen, Tommy Steele, Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood and Julie Andrews.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker produced and starred in "Where's Jack?" (1969) for Oakhurst opposite Tommy Steele for director James Clavell. It was a box office failure.


title: Stanley Baker

text: As an actor only, he appeared in "The Games" (1970) for 20th Century Fox. He appeared in two films for producer Dimitri de Grunwald: "The Last Grenade" (1970), playing a mercenary, and "Perfect Friday" (1970), a heist movie directed by Peter Hall which Baker helped produce.


title: Stanley Baker

text: In the 1970s, Baker announced a number of projects as producer: an adaptation of George MacDonald Fraser's novel "Flashman", to be directed by Richard Lester; "Summer Fires" with Peter Hall."I don't make films to see myself perform, I do it to act", said Baker. "I've enjoyed everything I've worked on, including the bad pictures... I enjoy being a working actor. I've been accused by journalists of lack of discretion, lack of taste. Well I'd rather have that lack than the lack of having made them... Producing is total involvement and compatible with acting, while I don't think directing is. Producing gives you a continuity of effort that helps with acting."


title: Stanley Baker

text: He also expanded his business interests. He was one of the founder members of Harlech Television, and was a director of it until his death.


title: Stanley Baker

text: With Michael Deeley and Barry Spikings, he formed 'Great Western Enterprises', which was involved in a number of projects in the entertainment field, notably music concerts, and in the late 1960s it bought Alembic House (now called Peninsula Heights) on the Albert Embankment, where Baker occupied the penthouse apartment for a number of years. Baker, Deeley, and Spikings were also part of a consortium that bought British Lion Films and Shepperton Studios, selling Alembic House to finance it. Baker said in 1972 that:


title: Stanley Baker

text: I love business for the activity it creates, the total commitment. The acting bit is great for the ego, (but) all the real excitement is in business... I'm still surprised how good I am at business.


title: Stanley Baker

text: However, Baker was the victim of bad timing. The British film industry went into serious decline at the end of the 1960s, and a number of Oakhurst films were unsuccessful at the box office. Plans to make a costume drama called "Sunblack", directed by Gordon Flemyng, did not come to fruition. His commercial foray into pop music festivals was financially disastrous, with the Great Western Bardney Pop Festival in Lincoln ending up losing £200,000. The British stock market crashed at the end of 1973, throwing the over-leveraged British Lion into turmoil.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker was forced to keep acting to pay the bills, often accepting roles in poor films which adversely affected his status as a star. His son Glyn later said that:"My dad had to accept any and everything to keep the companies afloat. Doing staggeringly-bad stuff like "Popsy Pop", which was an Italian–Venezuelan co-production and "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin" [both 1971] – a movie which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. At the slowest period, Stanley still had a payroll of at least 100 in his employ. So it was, 'Here we go – take the money, make this trash, hopefully, no one will ever see it.' Famous last words."'


title: Stanley Baker

text: According to Michael Deeley, the financiers of British Lion Films were reluctant for Baker to be involved in the management of the company because they felt his focus was more on his acting career.


title: Stanley Baker

text: "The Butterfly Affair" (1970) was with Claudia Cardinale; "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin" (1971) was an Italian "giallo" movie; "Innocent Bystanders" (1972) was directed by Peter Collinson who had done "The Italian Job".


title: Stanley Baker

text: Towards the end of his life Baker pulled back on his business activities and worked mostly as an actor, taking roles in television including two of the BBC's "Play of the Month" series: "The Changeling" and "Robinson Crusoe" (both 1974), plus "Who Killed Lamb?" (1974) and "Graceless Go I" (1974).


title: Stanley Baker

text: He made a series of films in Spain: "Zorro" (1975), starring Alain Delon, where Baker played the main villain; "Bride to Be" (1975), with Sarah Miles.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker's final British performance was in a BBC Wales adaptation of "How Green Was My Valley" (1975), broadcast shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. Shortly before his death he was planning on producing a prequel to "Zulu", "Zulu Dawn". His last role was in an Italian TV miniseries, "" (1976), based on the novel "Orzowei".


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker was a heavy cigarette and cigar smoker, and was diagnosed with lung cancer on 13 February 1976. He underwent surgery later that month. However, the cancer had spread to his bones and he died from pneumonia on 28 June 1976, in Málaga, Spain, aged 48.


title: Stanley Baker

text: His body was cremated at Putney Vale Crematorium; his ashes being scattered on a hillside overlooking his childhood home. He told his wife shortly before he died:


title: Stanley Baker

text: I have no regrets. I've had a fantastic life; no one has had a more fantastic life than I have. From the beginning I have been surrounded by love. I'm the son of a Welsh miner and I was born into love, married into love and spent my life in love.


title: Stanley Baker

text: In 1950 Baker married the actress Ellen Martin, who had been introduced to him by Burton. Their marriage lasted until his death and they had four children, Martin and Sally (twins), Glyn and Adam. Glyn appeared in "The Wild Geese" (1978), opposite Richard Burton, and in "Return of the Jedi" (1983), as Lieutenant Endicott, the imperial officer who said, "Inform the commander that Lord Vader's shuttle has arrived."


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker was politically a socialist, and a personal acquaintance of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He was an opponent of Welsh nationalism and recorded television broadcasts in support of the Welsh Labour Party. In a 1969 interview he said, "I'm a Welshman and proud of it, but I'm no nationalist. I think the Welsh Nationalists are foolish and misguided people." Baker was heavily criticised for earning vast sums of money despite propounding left-wing politics, sending all his children to English public schools, and owning a large holiday home in Spain.


title: Stanley Baker

text: He considered becoming a tax exile in the 1960s but ultimately decided he would miss Britain too much. Many of his friends believed Baker had damaged his acting career through his attempts to transform himself into a businessman.


title: Stanley Baker

text: In an interview shortly before his death he admitted to being a compulsive gambler all his life, although he claimed he always had enough money to look after his family.


title: Stanley Baker

text: On 27 May 1976, it was announced that he had been awarded a knighthood in the 1976 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours, although he did not live to be invested in person at Buckingham Palace.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Ferndale RFC, a rugby club in the Rhondda Valleys, South Wales, established a tribute to Baker in the form of their "Sir Stanley Baker Lounge". Officially opened by his widow, Ellen Lady Baker, on Friday 24 November 2006, the day's events featured a presentation to Sir Stanley's sons and family members, and a fitting and moving tribute to the man himself via speeches and tales from celebrities and various local people who knew him best. The afternoon also featured a BBC Radio Wales tribute to Sir Stanley, hosted by Owen Money and recorded live in Ferndale RFC itself. The Sir Stanley Baker Lounge features many pictures and memorabilia from his successful career, including a wall plaque commemorating the official opening in both English and Welsh.


title: Stanley Baker

text: Baker featured several times in the annual poll of British exhibitors for "Motion Picture Annual" listing the most popular stars at the local box office:


title: Minor Arcana

text: Ordinary tarot cards first appeared in northern Italy in the 1440s and were designed for tarot card games. They typically have four suits each of 10 unillustrated pip cards numbered one (ace) to ten, along with 4 court cards (face cards). Tarot games are still widely played in central and southern Europe and French Tarot is the second most popular card game in France after Belote.


title: Minor Arcana

text: By contrast, cartomantic tarot cards emerged in France in the late 18th century popularised by occultists such as Etteilla. The terms "Major" and "Minor Arcana" originate with Jean-Baptiste Pitois (1811–1877), writing under the name Paul Christian.


title: Minor Arcana

text: In their contemporary versions, the Minor Arcana are often illustrated—a convention popularized by the Rider-Waite Tarot in 1910. Used in a tarot card reading in conjunction with the Major Arcana, the cards of the Minor Arcana suggest subtleties and details and signify day-to-day insights.


title: Minor Arcana

text: Tarot variations derived from Latin-suited packs typically have a Minor Arcana of 56 cards, with 14 cards in each suit: Wands (alternately batons, clubs, staffs, or staves), Cups (chalices, goblets, or vessels), Swords (or blades), and Pentacles (coins, disks, or rings). The four court cards are commonly page, knight, queen, and king. Some variations have princess and prince cards replacing the page and knight cards; the historic Visconti-Sforza Tarot expands the court with two additional cards: the damsel and the mounted lady. While the historical Tarot of Marseilles contains 56 cards, later decks based on the French suits of clubs (♣), hearts (), spades (♠), and diamonds () have only three face cards per suit, with a jack (or knave) in addition to the queen and king.


title: Minor Arcana

text: In divinatory, esoteric and occult tarot, the Minor Arcana are believed to represent relatively mundane features of life. The court cards represent the people whom one meets.


title: Minor Arcana

text: Illustrations from the Rider–Waite Tarot, the most popular amongst English speakers, divided by suit and arranged in ascending order of face value.


title: Minor Arcana

text: In the Order of the Golden Dawn, number cards are associated with planets, corresponding to their placement in Kabbalah.


title: Danny Wood

text: Daniel William Wood (born May 14, 1969) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and occasional actor. He is a member of the American boy band New Kids on the Block and also served as a choreographer for the band in late 80s and 90s.


title: Danny Wood

text: Wood is a member of the band New Kids on the Block (NKOTB). He joined the band at the age of 16 after being recruited by friend and bandmate Donnie Wahlberg. NKOTB was the brainchild of producer Maurice Starr who wrote and produced a number of the band's hits including their self-titled debut studio album, released in 1986, as well as "Hangin' Tough" (1988) and "Step by Step" (1990).


title: Danny Wood

text: Wood was married to Patricia Alfaro from 1997 to 2006. He is the father of three children, son Daniel Jr., and daughters Chance and Vega.


title: Danny Wood

text: "Remember Betty" is a charity that Wood set up in 2008 in memory of his mother who died, aged 55, of breast cancer in 1999. The mission of the charity is "to help minimize the financial burden associated with breast cancer for patients & survivors by providing direct financial support to them so that they can focus on recovery & quality of life."


title: Danny Wood

text: In 2014, Wood ran the Boston Marathon to raise funds for "Remember Betty." The New Kids on the Block member finished the race in a time of 3:50:00. Fellow bandmate Joey McIntyre ran the Marathon with Wood in support of the Alzheimers Association.


title: Death Race 2000

text: produced by Roger Corman, directed by Paul Bartel, and starring David Carradine. The film takes place in a dystopian American society in the year 2000, where the murderous Transcontinental Road Race has become a form of national entertainment. The screenplay is based on the short story "The Racer" by Ib Melchior.


title: Death Race 2000

text: After the "World Crash of '79", massive civil unrest and economic ruin occurs. The United States government is restructured into a totalitarian regime under martial law. To pacify the population, the government has created the Transcontinental Road Race, where a group of drivers race across the country in their high-powered cars and which is infamous for violence, gore, and innocent pedestrians being struck and killed for bonus points. In the year 2000, the five drivers in the 20th annual race, who all adhere to professional wrestling-style personas and drive appropriately themed cars, include Frankenstein, the mysterious black-garbed champion and national hero; Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, a Chicago tough guy gangster; Calamity Jane, a cowgirl; Matilda the Hun, a Neo-Nazi; and Nero the Hero, a Roman gladiator. Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, the second-place champion, is the most determined of all to defeat Frankenstein and win the race.


title: Death Race 2000

text: A resistance group led by Thomasina Paine, a descendant of the 1770s American Revolutionary War hero Thomas Paine, plans to rebel against the regime, currently led by a man known only as Mr. President, by sabotaging the race, killing most of the drivers, and taking Frankenstein hostage as leverage against Mr. President. The group is assisted by Paine's great-granddaughter Annie Smith, Frankenstein's navigator. She plans to lure him into an ambush in order to have him replaced by a double. Despite a pirated national broadcast made by Ms. Paine herself, the Resistance's disruption of the race is covered up by the government and instead blamed on the French, who are also blamed for ruining the country's economy and telephone system. At first, the Resistance's plan seems to bear fruit: Nero the Hero is killed when a "baby" he runs over for points turns out to be a bomb, Matilda the Hun drives off a cliff while following a fake detour route set up by the Resistance, and Calamity Jane, who witnessed Matilda the Hun's death, inadvertently drives over a land mine. This leaves only Frankenstein and Machine Gun Joe Viterbo in the race. As Frankenstein nonchalantly survives every attempt made on his life during the race, Annie comes to discover that Frankenstein's mask and disfigured face are merely a disguise; he is, in fact, one of a number of random wards of the state who are trained exclusively to race under that identity, and each time they die or are brutally mutilated, they are secretly replaced so that Frankenstein appears to be indestructible.


title: Death Race 2000

text: The current Frankenstein reveals to Annie his own plan to kill Mr. President: when he wins the race and shakes hands with Mr. President, he will detonate a grenade which has been implanted in his prosthetic right hand. However, the plan goes awry when Machine Gun Joe Viterbo attacks Frankenstein and Annie is forced to kill him using Frankenstein's "hand grenade". Having successfully outmaneuvered both the rival drivers and the Resistance, Frankenstein is declared the winner of the race, although he is wounded and unable to carry out his original "hand grenade" attack plan. Annie instead dons Frankenstein's costume and plans to stab Mr. President while standing in for him on the podium. Before she is able to do so, Thomasina shoots "Frankenstein", convinced that he killed Annie. The real Frankenstein takes advantage of the confusion and rams Mr. President's stage with his car, finally fulfilling his lifelong desire to kill him. Frankenstein becomes the new president, marries Annie and appoints Thomasina as the Minister of Domestic Security to rebuild the state and dissolve the dictatorship. Junior Bruce, the announcer of the Transcontinental Road Race, opposes the race's abolition and impertinently claims that the public needs performances of violence. Annoyed by his complaints, Frankenstein hits Bruce with his car and drives off with Annie to the cheers and applause of the crowd.


title: Death Race 2000

text: Roger Corman wanted to make a futuristic action sports film to take advantage of the advance publicity of "Rollerball" (1975). He optioned a short story by Ib Melchior and hired Robert Thom to adapt it. Director Paul Bartel felt this was unshootable, so Charles B. Griffith rewrote it. Corman wanted Peter Fonda to play the lead, but he read the script and said it was too ridiculous to make, so David Carradine was cast instead; Carradine wanted to take on a role that would make people think of him as more than just Caine on "Kung Fu" and give him a leg up on a movie career. Carradine was paid 10% of the film's gross.


title: Death Race 2000

text: Bartel later recalled "We had terrible script problems; David had to finish his "Kung Fu" series before starting and we had bad weather. We all worked under terrible pressure. Roger and I had an essential disagreement over comedy. He took out a lot of the comedy scenes. He may have been right and was probably more objective."


title: Death Race 2000

text: In a 1982 interview, Bartel said, "Most of my guilty pleasures in this film were ripped out by the roots by Roger Corman before the film ever saw the light of day and substituted with crushed heads and blood squibs. Nevertheless, there is a joke about the French wrecking our economy and telephone system that I still find amusing. And I am pleased by the scene introducing the Girl Fan (played very effectively by my sister Wendy) who is to sacrifice herself beneath the wheels of David Carradine's race car and wants to meet him so that the gesture will have 'meaning'."


title: Death Race 2000

text: Previous video editions were released on VHS and DVD by Buena Vista Home Entertainment and New Concorde, among other studios.


title: Death Race 2000

text: Contemporary reviews were mixed. Lawrence Van Gelder of "The New York Times" wrote that the film had "nothing to say beyond the superficial about government or rebellion. And in the absence of such a statement, it becomes what it seems to have mocked—a spectacle glorifying the car as an instrument of violence." "Variety" called the film "cartoonish but effective entertainment, with some good action sequences and plenty of black humor." Richard Combs of "The Monthly Film Bulletin" wrote that the comic conceits were "too shaky to hold the movie together and tend to self-destruct some distance short of any pop allegory for America." Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film one star out of four and wrote that it "may be the goofiest and sleaziest film I've seen in the last five years." Tom Shales of "The Washington Post" praised the film as "one of the zippier little B pictures of the year," adding that "it is designed primarily as a spectacle of kinetic titillation, and on that level, it's a foregone smash hit." Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" was also positive, calling it "a fine little action picture with big ideas" and finding Carradine "terrific" in his role. In a February 2021 retrospective review, James Berardinelli gave the film 1 star out of 4; he said that it was similar to present-day releases by Blumhouse in that Roger Corman also made a lot of those types of low-budget horror/exploitation films and some were/are good but most aren't, and simply summed up the 1975 film by calling it "bad."


title: Death Race 2000

text: Roger Ebert gave the film zero stars in his review, deriding its violence and lamenting its appeal to small children. However, during a review of "The Fast and the Furious" on "Ebert & Roeper and the Movies", Ebert named "Death Race 2000" as part of a "great tradition of summer drive-in movies" that embrace a "summer exploitation mentality in a clever way". While Ebert hinted that he did not find the film as awful decades later as he did in 1975, he made it plain he would not alter or disavow his original zero-stars rating for it either. He also gave a scathing review of the 2008 sort-of-remake "Death Race".


title: Death Race 2000

text: The film has garnered critical acclaim over the years, having a score of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 37 reviews, with an average rating of 6.7/10, deeming it "fresh". The site's critical consensus states, ""Death Race 2000" is a fun, campy classic, drawing genuine thrills from its mindless ultra-violence."


title: Death Race 2000

text: The film has long been regarded as a cult hit and was often viewed as superior to "Rollerball", a much more expensive major studio drama released later in the same year; another dystopian science-fiction sports film similarly focusing on the use of dangerous sports as an "opiate" for the masses.


title: Death Race 2000

text: The 1982 video game "Maze Death Race" for Sinclair ZX81 computers (and 1983 for Sinclair ZX Spectrum computers) resembles the film by its cover artwork, title, and car-driving content.


title: Death Race 2000

text: The "Carmageddon" video game series ("Carmageddon", "Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now" and "Carmageddon 3: TDR 2000") all borrow heavily from the plot, characters and car designs from the film "Death Race 2000". The original game was supposed to be a game based on the comic series in the 1990s, but the plans were later changed.


title: Death Race 2000

text: A comic book sequel series titled "Death Race 2020" was published in April–November 1995 by Roger Corman's short-lived "Roger Corman's Cosmic Comics" imprint. It was written by Pat Mills of "2000 AD" fame, with art by Kevin O'Neill (and additional art by Trevor Goring). Mills and O'Neill had already worked together on several comics, including "Marshal Law". The comic book series, as the title indicates, takes place 20 years after the film ended and deals with Frankenstein's return to the race. New racers introduced here included Von Dutch, the Alcoholic, Happy the Clown, Steppenwolf, Rick Rhesus, and Harry Carrie.


title: Death Race 2000

text: The comic book series lasted eight issues before being canceled and the story was left unfinished at the end.


title: Death Race 2000

text: Paul W. S. Anderson directed a remake entitled "Death Race", which was released August 22, 2008, starring Jason Statham. The remake began production in late August 2007. Besides Statham, this new version also stars Ian McShane, Joan Allen, and Tyrese Gibson. It also includes a cameo (by voice-over) of David Carradine, reprising his role of Frankenstein. Two direct-to-DVD prequels, titled "Death Race 2" (2010) and "" (2013), starring Luke Goss, Tanit Phoenix, Danny Trejo and Ving Rhames, and a direct-to-DVD sequel, titled "" (2018), were also produced.


title: Death Race 2000

text: An official sequel film to the original film, "Death Race 2050", was produced by Roger Corman and released in early 2017.


title: Tizen

text: Tizen () is a Linux-based mobile operating system backed by the Linux Foundation, mainly developed and used primarily by Samsung Electronics.


title: Tizen

text: The project was originally conceived as an HTML5-based platform for mobile devices to succeed MeeGo. Samsung merged its previous Linux-based OS effort, Bada, into Tizen, and has since used it primarily on platforms such as wearable devices and smart TVs.


title: Tizen

text: Much of Tizen is open source software, although the software development kit contains proprietary components owned by Samsung, and portions of the OS are licensed under the Flora License, a derivative of the Apache License 2.0 that grants a patent license only to "Tizen certified platforms".


title: Tizen

text: In May 2021, Google announced that Samsung would partner with the company on integrating Tizen features with its Android-derived Wear OS, and committed to use it on future wearables, leaving Tizen to be mainly developed for Samsung Smart TV.


title: Tizen

text: The project was initiated as mobile Linux and was launched by Intel in July 2007, in April 2009 the operating system had managed to updated to version 2.0 which the core was based on Fedora. However, on the same month, Intel turned Moblin over to the Linux Foundation for future development. Eventually, the operating system was merged with Nokia Maemo, a Debian based Linux distro, into MeeGo which mainly developed by Nokia, Intel and Linux Foundation.


title: Tizen

text: In 2011, after Nokia abandoned the project, Linux Foundation initiate the Tizen project as a successor to MeeGo, another Linux-based mobile operating system, with its main backer Intel joining Samsung Electronics, as well as Access Co., NEC Casio, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile, SK Telecom, Telefónica, and Vodafone as commercial partners. Tizen would be designed to use HTML5 apps, and target mobile and embedded platforms such as netbooks, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, and in-car entertainment systems. U.S. carrier Sprint Corporation (which was a backer of MeeGo) joined the Tizen Association in May 2012. On September 16, 2012, Automotive Grade Linux announced its intent to use Tizen as the basis of its reference distribution.


title: Tizen

text: In January 2013, Samsung announced its intent to release multiple Tizen-based phones that year. In February 2013, Samsung merged its Bada operating system into Tizen.


title: Tizen

text: In October 2013, the first Tizen tablet was shipped by Systena. The tablet was part of a development kit exclusive to Japan.


title: Tizen

text: In 2014, Samsung released the Gear 2 smartwatch that used a Tizen-based operating system as opposed to Android.


title: Tizen

text: On May 14, 2014, it was announced that Tizen would ship with Qt. This project was abandoned in January 2017.


title: Tizen

text: On February 21, 2016, Samsung announced the Samsung Connect Auto, a connected car solution offering diagnostic, Wi-Fi, and other car-connected services. The device plugs directly into the OBD-II port underneath the steering wheel.


title: Tizen

text: On November 16, 2016, Samsung said they would be collaborating with Microsoft to bring .NET Core support to Tizen.


title: Tizen

text: According to Strategy Analytics research, approximately 21% of the smart TVs sold in 2018 run on the Tizen platform making it the most popular smart TV platform.


title: Tizen

text: On May 19, 2021, during Google I/O, Google announced that Samsung had agreed to work on integrating features of Tizen with the next version of Wear OS, and that it had committed to using Wear OS for its future wearable products. Samsung will continue to use Tizen for its smart TVs.


title: Tizen

text: On December 31, 2021, the Tizen app store permanently closed. The last smartphone based on the Tizen operating system is the Samsung Z4 which was released in 2017. The company switched to Google's Wear OS 3 platform on its Galaxy Watch 4 smartwatches.


title: Tizen

text: On April 3, 2017, "Vice" reported on its "Motherboard" website that Amihai Neiderman, an Israeli security expert, has found more than 40 zero-day vulnerabilities in Tizen's code, allowing hackers to remotely access a wide variety of current Samsung products running Tizen, such as Smart TVs and mobile phones. After the article was published, Samsung, whom Neiderman tried to contact months before, reached out to him to inquire about his allegations.


title: Pointless

text: Pointless is a British television quiz show produced by Banijay subsidiary Remarkable Television for the BBC. It is hosted by Alexander Armstrong. In each episode four teams of two contestants attempt to find correct but obscure answers to four rounds of general knowledge questions, with the winning team eligible to compete for the show's cash jackpot. All questions used on the show are factual in nature, and are asked of a panel of 100 individuals in a pre-conducted public survey. A correct answer scores one point for each survey subject who gave it, and the objective is to achieve as low a score as possible. "Pointless" answers, correct responses that were not given by anyone surveyed, score zero points and are the most desirable. Every pointless answer given during the main game increases the jackpot by £250, and the team that reaches the final round has three chances to win it by giving one such answer.


title: Pointless

text: "Pointless" debuted on BBC Two on 24 August 2009. The success of its first three series led the BBC to move it to BBC One from 2011. From late June to mid-July, the programme usually takes a two-week break to make way for the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. On occasions when BBC1 carries live broadcasts of major news or sport events, the programme is transferred to BBC2, for example during the pandemic of 2020. the programme is airing its 27th series and has had peak audience figures of over 7 million viewers. An offshoot of the show entitled "Pointless Celebrities" was first shown in 2011, and had reached series 15. The format has been exported internationally.


title: Pointless

text: On 8 April 2022, Richard Osman announced that he would step down as co-presenter of the series to focus more on his writing career, although he will still co-present with Armstrong on "Pointless Celebrities" on a short-term contract before leaving the series fully. Rotating guest-presenters will take his place until a new permanent presenter is found.


title: Pointless

text: Teams of two contestants attempt to provide answers that are not only correct, but also as obscure as possible. The programme initially featured five teams per episode, but the field was later reduced to four. On each episode, contestants answer a series of questions that were put to 100 members of the general public in a previously conducted online survey, which had a time limit of 100 seconds. Once a question is asked at the start of a round, the contestants are given details as to what constitutes a valid answer. If a team's answer is correct, they score one point for each participant who gave it during the survey; an answer given by none of the participants is termed "pointless" and adds nothing to the team's score. If the answer is incorrect, the team scores the maximum of 100 points. Once a question or pass is complete, depending on the specific format of the round, any remaining pointless answers are stated along with the high-scoring answers given in the survey, usually the top three.


title: Pointless

text: The game begins with two elimination rounds, in which teams must achieve as low a score as possible. The rounds are scored independently of one another, and the team with the highest score in each round is eliminated from the game. If two or more teams are tied for the highest score in either of these rounds, a "lockdown" tiebreaker is played among them, using the last question from the round and the same scoring rules. If the score remains tied, an "emergency question" is asked to break it. In the third "Head-to-Head" round, the two surviving teams compete against each other to find low-scoring answers; the first team to win two questions moves on to the final round.


title: Pointless

text: Teams may return to the programme until they have either reached the final round once or been eliminated in three consecutive episodes, whichever occurs first. The team that reaches the final round is awarded a pair of trophies to keep. They must then supply three responses to a question with many correct answers (e.g. name films directed by a specified director, or name a song by a specified singer). If any of the answers is pointless, they win the jackpot as it stands for that game; otherwise, the money rolls over to the next show.


title: Pointless

text: The jackpot increases by £250 for every pointless answer given in any round except the final. If a team reaches the final but fails to win the jackpot, the whole amount is rolled over to the next game and increased by £1,000. the highest recorded jackpot won on the show was £24,750 on 8 March 2013. Once the jackpot is won, the amount is reset to £1,000. For the celebrity version, the jackpot is set at £2,500 and increases by £250 for each pointless answer found, while special editions have the jackpot set at £5,000 and increased by £500 for each pointless answer found; in neither version does the jackpot roll over to another show. Instead for Pointless Celebrities, £500 is awarded to each of the four pairings.


title: Pointless

text: Prior to series 25, teams became ineligible to return after appearing on two consecutive episodes or reaching the final once, whichever occurred first. This rule was relaxed for the programme's 1,000th episode, in which four past jackpot-winning teams were invited to compete again.


title: Pointless

text: During an elimination round, teams aim to score as few points as possible. Each round consists of a question derived from a subject, with each member of a team required to give an answer during a pass; each round consists of two passes, and teams must decide who will play which pass before the question is asked. Teammates may not confer on answers during the round. Order of play for the first pass is determined by random draw in the first round, and by ascending order of first-round scores in the second. For the second pass in each round, the order of play is reversed.


title: Pointless

text: After both passes are complete, the team with the highest score for the round is eliminated from the game. In the event of a tie for high score, the affected teams are allowed to confer and offer one more answer to the question as a tiebreaker. If the scores remain tied after this pass, the question is thrown out and a new one is played. All scores are reset to zero at the beginning of the second round.


title: Pointless

text: Six different formats for the questions have been used during the programme's run for the elimination rounds in each game:


title: Pointless

text: As of Series 25, the most common format for the elimination rounds involves "Clues and Answers" for one, and either "Open-Ended" or "Picture Board" for the other. For all formats except "Open-Ended" and "Picture Board," the last contestant or team to play on a particular board is invited to answer as many remaining items as they wish before selecting one to use on that turn.


title: Pointless

text: The two remaining teams compete against each other, answering questions with the intention of finding the lowest scores possible. Both teams can now confer, and the winning team of this round moves on to the Final. The format of this round has differed, as listed below:


title: Pointless

text: Midway through series 23, a new round was added to give the contestants more opportunities to increase the jackpot. It is played between the second elimination round and the head-to-head, and is similar to the previously retired "Possible Answers" format. Both pairs of contestants are shown a question and six possible answers. Two of the answers are pointless, two are also correct but score some points, and the other two are incorrect (often with a tangential and humorous link to the question). Each pair may offer one answer, with no risk of elimination, and all four contestants may confer with one another, if desired. Any chosen pointless answers add £250 to the jackpot.


title: Pointless

text: The last remaining team receives a pair of trophies to keep, regardless of what happens in the final round, and now attempts to win the game's jackpot. The team chooses one category from a list, whereupon the host reads a series of questions associated with it that have multiple correct answers (e.g. characters in the play "King Lear", or films starring Emily Watson). The contestants have 60 seconds to discuss the questions, after which they must jointly give three answers. If any individual response is pointless, the team wins the jackpot; otherwise, it is rolled over to the next show.


title: Pointless

text: Originally, contestants could choose from one of three categories, with unused ones remaining in the list for five days or until they were selected, and had to provide answers to a single question within the chosen category. This format was used between the first and fifth series. The number of available categories was increased to five at the start of the sixth series, then reduced to four in the ninth. By the start of the second half of the ninth series, the round was modified to require the contestants to provide answers to any or all of three questions connected to their chosen category. They must specify which question they are attempting with each of their three responses, and can only win the jackpot if a response is pointless for its nominated question.


title: Pointless

text: Following the success of "Pointless" and its transfer to BBC One, the BBC commissioned a celebrity edition of the programme, entitled "Pointless Celebrities". Like the main show, the celebrity edition featured teams of two celebrities competing against each other to win the jackpot for their chosen charities. While the show used the same format for rounds, the celebrity edition featured notable differences. Unlike the regular show, the celebrity version was reserved for the weekend and placed in a prime-time evening slot for its broadcast. In addition, celebrities can return in more than one episode, with the same partner or a different partner, most episodes usually featured a theme in regards to the celebrity contestants that took part - for example, a celebrity edition aired in December 2015 consisted of celebrities who were made famous on reality television shows like "Big Brother" and "Made in Chelsea".


title: Pointless

text: Any money won by a team is split equally between the two charities represented by its members. Teams compete for a jackpot of £2,500 for their charity, plus £250 for every pointless answer given before the final round; these values have been doubled for certain special episodes. The jackpot does not roll over if not won, but the programme donates £500 to every team who fails to either reach the final or win the jackpot.


title: Pointless

text: The show's format (originally to be called "Obviously") was conceived by Tom Blakeson, Simon Craig, David Flynn, Nick Mather, Richard Osman and Shaun Parry, producers at Endemol UK, in 2009. They envisaged it as a "reverse "Family Fortunes"...rewarding obscure knowledge, while allowing people to also give obvious answers...a quiz which could be sort of highbrow and populist simultaneously". Osman was not intended to be co-presenter; originally, he filled the role only as part of a demonstration laid on for the BBC. However, the BBC executives asked him to continue when they commissioned the first series. Osman then approached comedian Alexander Armstrong to be the main presenter; the two men had been peers during their university days. Armstrong, who the previous year had been lined up to present Channel 4's "Countdown" only to back out for fear of being pigeonholed as a presenter, agreed to present what was perceived as a lower-profile show, with the presence of Osman helping to convince him.


title: Pointless

text: In 2016, Richard Osman told the "Belfast Telegraph", "It's never been a show that's had posters, or trailers, and it's presented by these two slightly inept guys. Everyone who's ever watched it feels like it's their programme. We've never changed it, but have always done it in the same way, which is slightly shoddy, enjoying ourselves." On the programme's future, he said, "Every programme has a shelf-life, but as long as people are enjoying it, we will stick with it. If Channel 4 wanted to offer three times as much money, we wouldn't take it. We would stay with the BBC. We love the BBC. "Pointless" is not for sale. We owe the BBC an enormous debt, because they've looked after us."


title: Pointless

text: After series 27, Richard Osman resigned from "Pointless" and for series 28 is replaced by six presenters in rotation: Sally Lindsay, Alex Brooker, Lauren Laverne, Stephen Mangan, Konnie Huq and Ed Gamble. Osman will continue to host "Pointless Celebrities".


title: Pointless

text: Note: On 27.11.2022, Pointless Celebrities aired a BBC 100 Years edition, and was counted as Series 16, Episode 1


title: Pointless

text: Pointless 500 and 1000 had the same jackpot as Pointless Celebrities but for pointless answers: ‘500 added £500 to the jackpot and ‘1000 added £1k to the jackpot.


title: Pointless

text: The first series aired on BBC Two between August and October 2009, with the corporation announcing on the day of the final episode's broadcast that it had commissioned a second series. The series' audience had peaked at 1.69 million viewers, 17.2% of audience share for the timeslot, while averaging around 1 million viewers per episode. The second series saw audiences grow modestly; the format was tweaked prior to the start of series three, reducing the number of rounds and giving more time for banter between the hosts which had previously been edited out. The change saw strong viewer growth, and the show was moved to the BBC's main channel BBC One in 2011. By 2013, the programme records four episodes in one day, and averaged 3.6 million viewers daily, gaining more viewers than ITV game show "The Chase", which airs in roughly the same time slot.


title: Pointless

text: In February 2014, "Pointless" was extended for another 204 episodes, giving three more series, taking the total commissioned to 13 in February 2014. A further 24 celebrity episodes were also ordered. For the 1,000th episode, which aired on 16 January 2017, Armstrong and Osman traded host and assistant duties, and four previous couples who had distinguished themselves in various ways were invited to compete again. The jackpot for this episode began at £2,500 (the usual starting value for "Pointless Celebrities"), and every pointless answer during the main game added £1,000 to it. On 23 February 2016, it was announced that the show had been recommissioned by the BBC to make 165 more regular daytime editions along with 45 prime-time celebrity specials, taking "Pointless" to the end of 2017. On 4 September 2017, it was announced that the BBC had commissioned a further 204 episodes, including 165 regular and 39 celebrity specials.


title: Pointless

text: With the start of the 11th series of "Pointless Celebrities" on 23 December 2017, the show's set design was changed, with some new graphics, and an updated intro replaced the one used since the show's debut. This extended to the 19th series of "Pointless", which started on 2 April 2018.


title: Pointless

text: In Australia, "Pointless" has aired on both BBC UKTV (series 10 and 11) and ABC (series 9–11, as of April 2017).


title: Pointless

text: Following a news-themed edition of "Pointless Celebrities" which aired on 27 October 2014, several fans criticised the presence of former "The Sun" editor Kelvin MacKenzie, who was responsible for the newspaper's infamous front-page report concerning the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. Osman responded to this criticism with at least twenty comments on Twitter, stating that he had not known MacKenzie would appear until "about an hour before" recording, and that he had "strongly argued against it".


title: Pointless

text: An American version was set to be developed by GSN in 2017. A pilot episode presented by Alison Sweeney as her assistant was Doug Mirabello was produced by Endemol Shine America and never aired.


title: Pointless

text: On 26 February 2014, Endemol's in-house App-publishing division released the official "Pointless" app, "Pointless" Quiz, was released for iOS, with an iPad, Android and an Amazon version released a few months later. The Pointless app features animated versions of Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman, and allows the player to tackle questions in a similar format to the TV show.


title: Pointless

text: Five books have been released of the show: "The 100 Most Pointless Things in the World", "The 100 Most Pointless Arguments in the World", "The Very Pointless Quiz Book" (not to be mistaken for "The Pointless Book"), "The A-Z of Pointless: A brain-teasing bumper book of questions and trivia" and "A Pointless History of the World". All five were released by Coronet. In the books, Armstrong and Osman give their insight to pointless matters.


title: Pointless

text: Three editions of the official board game have also been released, plus two mini-sized versions, each of which contains updated questions. All of them were published by University Games.


title: Pointless

text: "Pointless" appeared in the BBC sitcom "Not Going Out" (series 7, episode 5); Armstrong and Osman both played themselves. "Pointless" was also parodied in several sketches of the satirical show "Newzoids", in which a caricature of Osman interrupts people in regular situations with phrases used in the game show.


title: 2014–15 NBA season

text: The 2014–15 NBA season was the 69th season of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The NBA draft took place on June 26, 2014, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where Andrew Wiggins was selected first overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers. The regular season began on October 28, 2014, when the defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs hosted the first game against the Dallas Mavericks at AT&T Center in San Antonio. The 2015 NBA All-Star Game was played on February 15, 2015, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, with the West defeating the East 163–158. Oklahoma City's Russell Westbrook won the NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Award. The regular season ended on April 15, 2015 and the playoffs began on April 18, 2015 and ended with the 2015 NBA Finals on June 16, 2015, after the Golden State Warriors defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers in six games to win their fourth NBA title and first since 1975. The Charlotte Bobcats played their first official game as the Charlotte Hornets since 2002.


title: 2014–15 NBA season

text: Free agency negotiations began on July 1, 2014, when players began to sign starting on July 10, after the July moratorium ended. Some notable moments from free agency are:


title: 2014–15 NBA season

text: The regular season began on October 28, 2014, with the defending NBA champions San Antonio Spurs hosting the first game against the Dallas Mavericks. The regular season ended on April 15, 2015. Christmas Day games were played on December 25, 2014. The NBA is mulling a week-long All-Star break in February 2015, and the full schedule was released during a one-hour schedule release special on August 13, 2014 at 6:00 p.m. EDT on NBA TV.


title: 2014–15 NBA season

text: The 2015 NBA playoffs began on April 18, 2015, and concluded with the 2015 NBA Finals which began on June 4, 2015 on ABC. ESPN broadcast the Western Conference Finals and TNT televised the Eastern Conference Finals. ABC broadcast the NBA Finals.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: In object-oriented design, the dependency inversion principle is a specific methodology for loosely coupling software modules. When following this principle, the conventional dependency relationships established from high-level, policy-setting modules to low-level, dependency modules are reversed, thus rendering high-level modules independent of the low-level module implementation details. The principle states:


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: By dictating that high-level and low-level objects must depend on the same abstraction, this design principle the way some people may think about object-oriented programming.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: The idea behind points A and B of this principle is that when designing the interaction between a high-level module and a low-level one, the interaction should be thought of as an abstract interaction between them. This not only has implications on the design of the high-level module, but also on the low-level one: the low-level one should be designed with the interaction in mind and it may be necessary to change its usage interface.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: In many cases, thinking about the interaction in itself as an abstract concept allows the coupling of the components to be reduced without introducing additional coding patterns, allowing only a lighter and less implementation-dependent interaction schema.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: When the discovered abstract interaction schema(s) between two modules is/are generic and generalization makes sense, this design principle also leads to the following dependency inversion coding pattern.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: In conventional application architecture, lower-level components (e.g., Utility Layer) are designed to be consumed by higher-level components (e.g., Policy Layer) which enable increasingly complex systems to be built. In this composition, higher-level components depend directly upon lower-level components to achieve some task. This dependency upon lower-level components limits the reuse opportunities of the higher-level components.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: The goal of the dependency inversion pattern is to avoid this highly coupled distribution with the mediation of an abstract layer, and to increase the re-usability of higher/policy layers.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: With the addition of an abstract layer, both high- and lower-level layers reduce the traditional dependencies from top to bottom. Nevertheless, the "inversion" concept does not mean that lower-level layers depend on higher-level layers directly. Both layers should depend on abstractions (interfaces) that expose the behavior needed by higher-level layers.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: In a direct application of dependency inversion, the abstracts are owned by the upper/policy layers. This architecture groups the higher/policy components and the abstractions that define lower services together in the same package. The lower-level layers are created by inheritance/implementation of these abstract classes or interfaces.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: The inversion of the dependencies and ownership encourages the re-usability of the higher/policy layers. Upper layers could use other implementations of the lower services. When the lower-level layer components are closed or when the application requires the reuse of existing services, it is common that an Adapter mediates between the services and the abstractions.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: In many projects the dependency inversion principle and pattern are considered as a single concept that should be generalized, i.e., applied to all interfaces between software modules. There are at least two reasons for that:


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: If the mocking tool used relies only on inheritance, it may become necessary to widely apply the dependency inversion pattern. This has major drawbacks:


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: The presence of interfaces to accomplish the Dependency Inversion Pattern (DIP) has other design implications in an object-oriented program:


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: Principles are ways of thinking. Patterns are common ways to solve problems. Coding patterns may be missing programming language features.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: A direct implementation packages the policy classes with service abstracts classes in one library. In this implementation high-level components and low-level components are distributed into separate packages/libraries, where the interfaces defining the behavior/services required by the high-level component are owned by, and exist within the high-level component's library. The implementation of the high-level component's interface by the low-level component requires that the low-level component package depend upon the high-level component for compilation, thus inverting the conventional dependency relationship.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: Figures 1 and 2 illustrate code with the same functionality, however in Figure 2, an interface has been used to invert the dependency. The direction of dependency can be chosen to maximize policy code reuse, and eliminate cyclic dependencies.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: In this version of DIP, the lower layer component's dependency on the interfaces/abstracts in the higher-level layers makes re-utilization of the lower layer components difficult. This implementation instead ″inverts″ the traditional dependency from top-to-bottom to the opposite, from bottom-to-top.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: A more flexible solution extracts the abstract components into an independent set of packages/libraries:


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: The separation of each layer into its own package encourages re-utilization of any layer, providing robustness and mobility.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: A genealogical system may represent relationships between people as a graph of direct relationships between them (father-son, father-daughter, mother-son, mother-daughter, husband-wife, wife-husband, etc.). This is very efficient and extensible, as it is easy to add an ex-husband or a legal guardian.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: But some higher-level modules may require a simpler way to browse the system: any person may have children, parents, siblings (including half-brothers and -sisters or not), grandparents, cousins, and so on.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: Depending on the usage of the genealogical module, presenting common relationships as distinct direct properties (hiding the graph) will make the coupling between a higher-level module and the genealogical module much lighter and allow one to change the internal representation of the direct relationships completely without any effect on the modules using them. It also permits embedding exact definitions of siblings or uncles in the genealogical module, thus enforcing the single responsibility principle.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: Finally, if the first extensible generalized graph approach seems the most extensible, the usage of the genealogical module may show that a more specialized and simpler relationship implementation is sufficient for the application(s) and helps create a more efficient system.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: In this example, abstracting the interaction between the modules leads to a simplified interface of the lower-level module and may lead to a simpler implementation of it.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: If local and remote files offers the same abstract interfaces, high-level modules that implement the dependency inversion pattern can use them indiscriminately. The application will be able to save its documents locally or remotely transparently.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: Designing a module as a set of abstract interfaces, and adapting other modules to it, can provide a common interface for many systems.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: UI and ApplicationLayer packages contain mainly concrete classes. Controllers contains abstracts/interface types. UI has an instance of ICustomerHandler. All packages are physically separated. In the ApplicationLayer there is a concrete implementation of CustomerHandler that Page class will use. Instances of the iCustomerHandler interface are created dynamically by a Factory (possibly in the same Controllers package). Concrete types Page and CustomerHandler depend on ICustomerHandler, not on each other.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: Since the UI doesn't reference the ApplicationLayer or any other concrete package implementing ICustomerHandler, the concrete implementation of CustomerHandler can be replaced without changing the UI class. Also, the Page class implements interface IPageViewer which could be passed as an argument to ICustomerHandler methods, allowing the concrete implementation of CustomerHandler to communicate with UI without a concrete dependency. Again, both are linked by interfaces.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: Applying the dependency inversion principle can also be seen as an example of the adapter pattern. That is, the high-level class defines its own adapter interface which is the abstraction on which the other high-level classes depend. The adapted implementation also depends necessarily on the same adapter interface abstraction, while it can be implemented by using code from within its own low-level module. The high-level module does not depend on the low-level module, since it only uses the low-level functionality indirectly through the adapter interface by invoking polymorphic methods to the interface which are implemented by the adapted implementation and its low-level module.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: Various patterns such as Plugin, Service Locator, or Dependency injection are employed to facilitate the run-time provisioning of the chosen low-level component implementation to the high-level component.


title: Dependency inversion principle

text: The dependency inversion principle was postulated by Robert C. Martin and described in several publications including the paper "Object Oriented Design Quality Metrics: an analysis of dependencies", an article appearing in the C++ Report in May 1996 entitled "The Dependency Inversion Principle", and the books "Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices", and "Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#".


title: Radical centrism

text: Radical centrism (also called the radical center, the radical centre or the radical middle) is a concept that arose in Western nations in the late 20th century.


title: Radical centrism

text: The "radical" in the term refers to a willingness on the part of most radical centrists to call for fundamental reform of institutions. The "centrism" refers to a belief that genuine solutions require realism and pragmatism, not just idealism and emotion. One radical centrist text defines radical centrism as "idealism without illusions", a phrase originally from John F. Kennedy. This approach typically leads to endorsing evidence, rather than ideology, as the guiding principle.


title: Radical centrism

text: Radical centrists borrow ideas from the left and the right, often melding them together. Most support market-based solutions to social problems, with strong governmental oversight in the public interest. There is support for increased global engagement and the growth of an empowered middle class in developing countries. In the US, many radical centrists work within the major political parties, but they also support independent or third-party initiatives and candidacies.


title: Radical centrism

text: One common criticism of radical centrism is that its policies are only marginally different from conventional centrist policies. Some observers see radical centrism as primarily a process of catalyzing dialogue and fresh thinking among polarized people and groups.


title: Radical centrism

text: Some influences on radical centrist political philosophy are not directly political. Robert C. Solomon, a philosopher with radical-centrist interests, identifies a number of philosophical concepts supporting balance, reconciliation or synthesis, including Confucius' concept of "ren", Aristotle's concept of the mean, Desiderius Erasmus's and Michel de Montaigne's humanism, Giambattista Vico's evolutionary vision of history, William James' and John Dewey's pragmatism, and Aurobindo Ghose's integration of opposites.


title: Radical centrism

text: However, most commonly cited influences and precursors are from the political realm. For example, British radical-centrist politician Nick Clegg considers himself an heir to political theorist John Stuart Mill, former Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George, economist John Maynard Keynes, social reformer William Beveridge and former Liberal Party leader Jo Grimond. In his book "Independent Nation" (2004), John Avlon discusses precursors of 21st-century U.S. political centrism, including President Theodore Roosevelt, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, and Senator Edward Brooke. Radical centrist writer Mark Satin points to political influences from outside the electoral arena, including communitarian thinker Amitai Etzioni, magazine publisher Charles Peters, management theorist Peter Drucker, city planning theorist Jane Jacobs and futurists Heidi and Alvin Toffler. Satin calls Benjamin Franklin the radical middle's favorite Founding Father since he was "extraordinarily practical", "extraordinarily creative" and managed to "get the warring factions and wounded egos to transcend their differences".


title: Radical centrism

text: According to journalist William Safire, the phrase "radical middle" was coined by Renata Adler, a staff writer for "The New Yorker". In the introduction to her second collection of essays, "Toward a Radical Middle" (1969), she presented it as a healing radicalism. Adler said it rejected the violent posturing and rhetoric of the 1960s in favor of such "corny" values as "reason, decency, prosperity, human dignity [and human] contact". She called for the "reconciliation" of the white working class and African-Americans.


title: Radical centrism

text: In the 1970s, sociologist Donald I. Warren described the radical center as consisting of those "middle American radicals" who were suspicious of big government, the national media and academics, as well as rich people and predatory corporations. Although they might vote for Democrats or Republicans, or for populists like George Wallace, they felt politically homeless and were looking for leaders who would address their concerns.


title: Radical centrism

text: In the 1980s and 1990s, several authors contributed their understandings to the concept of the radical center. For example, futurist Marilyn Ferguson added a holistic dimension to the concept when she said: "[The] Radical Center ... is not neutral, not middle-of-the-road, but a view of the whole road". Sociologist Alan Wolfe located the creative part of the political spectrum at the center: "The extremes of right and left know where they stand, while the center furnishes what is original and unexpected". African-American theorist Stanley Crouch upset many political thinkers when he pronounced himself a "radical pragmatist". Crouch explained: "I affirm whatever I think has the best chance of working, of being both inspirational and unsentimental, of reasoning across the categories of false division and beyond the decoy of race".


title: Radical centrism

text: In his influential 1995 "Newsweek" cover story "Stalking the Radical Middle", journalist Joe Klein described radical centrists as angrier and more frustrated than conventional Democrats and Republicans. Klein said they share four broad goals: getting money out of politics, balancing the budget, restoring civility and figuring out how to run government better. He also said their concerns were fueling "what is becoming a significant intellectual movement, nothing less than an attempt to replace the traditional notions of liberalism and conservatism".


title: Radical centrism

text: In 1998, British sociologist Anthony Giddens claimed that the radical center is synonymous with the Third Way. For Giddens, an advisor to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and for many other European political actors, the Third Way is a reconstituted form of social democracy.


title: Radical centrism

text: Some radical centrist thinkers do not equate radical centrism with the Third Way. In Britain, many do not see themselves as social democrats. Most prominently, British radical-centrist politician Nick Clegg has made it clear he does not consider himself an heir to Tony Blair and Richard Reeves, Clegg's longtime advisor, emphatically rejects social democracy.


title: Radical centrism

text: In the United States, the situation is different because the term Third Way was adopted by the Democratic Leadership Council and other moderate Democrats. However, most U.S. radical centrists also avoid the term. Ted Halstead and Michael Lind's introduction to radical centrist politics fails to mention it and Lind subsequently accused the organized moderate Democrats of siding with the "center-right" and Wall Street. Radical centrists have expressed dismay with what they see as "split[ting] the difference", "triangulation" and other supposed practices of what some of them call the "mushy middle".


title: Radical centrism

text: The first years of the 21st century saw publication of four introductions to radical centrist politics: Ted Halstead and Michael Lind's "The Radical Center" (2001), Matthew Miller's "The Two Percent Solution" (2003), John Avlon's "Independent Nation" (2004) and Mark Satin's "Radical Middle" (2004). These books attempted to take the concept of radical centrism beyond the stage of "cautious gestures" and journalistic observation and define it as a political philosophy.


title: Radical centrism

text: The authors came to their task from diverse political backgrounds: Avlon had been a speechwriter for New York Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; Miller had been a business consultant before serving in President Bill Clinton's budget office; Lind had been an exponent of Harry Truman-style "national liberalism"; Halstead had run a think tank called Redefining Progress; and Satin had co-drafted the U.S. Green Party's foundational political statement, "Ten Key Values". However, there is a generational bond: all these authors were between 31 and 41 years of age when their books were published (except for Satin, who was nearing 60).


title: Radical centrism

text: While the four books do not speak with one voice, among them they express assumptions, analyses, policies and strategies that helped set the parameters for radical centrism as a 21st-century political philosophy:


title: Radical centrism

text: Along with publication of the four overviews of radical centrist politics, the first part of the 21st century saw a rise in the creation and dissemination of radical centrist policy ideas.


title: Radical centrism

text: Several think tanks are developing radical centrist ideas more thoroughly than was done in the overview books. By the early 2000s, these included Demos in Britain; the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership in Australia; and New America (formerly the New America Foundation) in the United States. New America was started by authors Ted Halstead and Michael Lind, as well as two others, to bring radical centrist ideas to Washington, D.C. journalists and policy researchers.


title: Radical centrism

text: In the 2010s, new think tanks began promoting radical centrist ideas. "Radix: Think Tank for the Radical Centre" was established in London in 2016; its initial board of trustees included former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. Writing in "The Guardian", Radix policy director David Boyle called for "big, radical ideas" that could break with both trickle-down conservatism and backward-looking socialism. In 2018, a policy document released by the then four-year-old Niskanen Center of Washington, D.C. was characterized as a "manifesto for radical centrism" by Big Think writer Paul Ratner. According to Ratner, the document – signed by some of Niskanen's executives and policy analysts – is an attempt to "incorporate rival ideological positions into a way forward" for America.


title: Radical centrism

text: A radical centrist perspective can also be found in major periodicals. In the United States, for example, "The Washington Monthly" was started by early radical centrist thinker Charles Peters and many large-circulation magazines publish articles by New America fellows. Columnists who have written from a radical centrist perspective include John Avlon, Thomas Friedman, Joe Klein, and Matthew Miller. Prominent journalists James Fallows and Fareed Zakaria have been identified as radical centrists.


title: Radical centrism

text: In Britain, the news magazine "The Economist" positions itself as radical centrist. An editorial ("leader") in 2012 declared in bolded type: "A new form of radical centrist politics is needed to tackle inequality without hurting economic growth". An essay on "The Economist"s website the following year, introduced by the editor, argues that the magazine had always "com[e] ... from what we like to call the radical centre".


title: Radical centrism

text: Many books are offering radical centrist perspectives and policy proposals on specific topics. Some examples include foreign policy, environmentalism, food and agriculture, underachievement among minorities, women and men, bureaucracy and overregulation, economics, international relations, political dialogue, political organization and what one person can do.


title: Radical centrism

text: In Australia, Aboriginal lawyer Noel Pearson is building an explicitly radical centrist movement among Aboriginal people. The movement is seeking more assistance from the Australian state, but is also seeking to convince individual Aboriginal people to take more responsibility for their lives. To political philosopher Katherine Curchin, writing in the "Australian Journal of Political Science", Pearson is attempting something unusual and worthwhile: casting public debate on indigenous issues in terms of a search for a radical centre. She says Pearson's methods have much in common with those of deliberative democracy.


title: Radical centrism

text: While not using the term formally, the political party Science Party is founded on principles that are typical of the radical centre.


title: Radical centrism

text: In the late 2010s, Brazil's Marina Silva was identified by "The Economist" as an emerging radical-centrist leader. Formerly a member of the left-wing Workers' Party, by 2017 she had organized a new party whose watchwords included environmentalism, liberalism, and "clean politics". She had already served six years as Minister of the Environment, and in 2010 she was the Green Party candidate for President of Brazil, finishing third with 20% of the vote.


title: Radical centrism

text: The Social Democratic Party, a breakaway of Democratas founded in 2011, is a self-described radical centrist party.


title: Radical centrism

text: Following the 2010 election, Nick Clegg, then leader of the Liberal Democrats (Britain's third-largest party at the time), had his party enter into a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition agreement to form a majority government. In a speech to party members in the spring of 2011, Clegg declared that he considers himself and his party to be radical centrist:


title: Radical centrism

text: For the left, an obsession with the state. For the right, a worship of the market. But as liberals, we place our faith in people. People with power and opportunity in their hands. Our opponents try to divide us with their outdated labels of left and right. But we are not on the left and we are not on the right. We have our own label: Liberal. We are liberals and we own the freehold to the centre ground of British politics. Our politics is the politics of the radical centre.


title: Radical centrism

text: In the autumn of 2012, Clegg's longtime policy advisor elaborated on the differences between Clegg's identity as a "radical liberal" and traditional social democracy. He stated that Clegg's conception of liberalism rejected "statism, paternalism, insularity and narrow egalitarianism".


title: Radical centrism

text: In the late 1970s, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau claimed that his Liberal Party adhered to the "radical centre". One thing this means, Trudeau said, is that "sometimes we have to fight against the state". Paul Hellyer, who served in Trudeau's first cabinet and spent over half a century in Canadian political life, said in 2010, "I have been branded as everything from far left to far right. I put myself in the radical centre – one who seeks solutions to problems based on first principles without regard to ideology. I believe that it is the kind of solution the world desperately needs at a time when niggling change or fine tuning is not good enough".


title: Radical centrism

text: Justin Trudeau, elected Prime Minister of Canada in 2015, has been characterized as radical centrist by Stuart Trew of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Trew argues that both Justin Trudeau and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron are optimists, moderate redistributionists, internationalists, feminists and good listeners. According to Trew, consultation is key.


title: Radical centrism

text: In 2017, "The Economist" described Chile's Andrés Velasco as a rising radical-centrist politician. A former finance minister in Michelle Bachelet's first government, he later unsuccessfully ran against her for the presidential nomination and then helped establish a new political party. According to "The Economist", Velasco and his colleagues say they support a political philosophy that is both liberal and egalitarian. Like Amartya Sen, they see freedom not just as freedom-from, but as the absence of domination and the opportunity to fulfill one's potential. Like John Rawls, they reject the far left's emphasis on state redistribution in favor of an emphasis on equal treatment for all with special vigilance against class- and race-based discrimination.


title: Radical centrism

text: Finland's Centre Party has been generally viewed as a radical centrist party, with wide-ranging views from the left and right-wing political spectrums, such as supporting lower taxes for businesses and lowering the capital gains tax, while also encompassing strong welfare and environmental policies and legislation. The Centre Party's former chairmen and Finland's former Prime Ministers, Juha Sipilä and Matti Vanhanen as well as former President Urho Kekkonen have been viewed as radical centrists.


title: Radical centrism

text: Several observers have identified Emmanuel Macron, elected President of France in 2017, as a radical centrist. Anne Applebaum of "The Washington Post" says Macron "represents the brand-new radical center", as does his political movement, En Marche!, which Applebaum translates as "forward". She notes a number of politically bridging ideas Macron holds – for example, "He embraces markets, but says he believes in 'collective solidarity'". A professor of history, Robert Zaretsky, writing in "Foreign Policy", argues that Macron's radical centrism is "the embodiment of a particularly French kind of center – the extreme center". He points to Macron's declaration that he is "neither left nor right", and to his support for policies, such as public-sector austerity and major environmental investments , that traditional political parties might find contradictory.


title: Radical centrism

text: U.S. politician Dave Andersion, writing in "The Hill" newspaper, says that Macron's election victory points the way for those "who wish to transcend their polarized politics of [the present] in the name of a new center, not a moderate center associated with United States and United Kingdom 'Third Way' politics but what has been described as Macron's 'radical center' point of view. … [It] transcends left and right but takes important elements of both sides".


title: Radical centrism

text: Writing at The Dahrendorf Forum, a joint project of the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin) and the London School of Economics, Forum fellow Alexandru Filip put the German Green party of 2018 in the same camp as Emmanuel Macron's French party (see above) and Albert Rivera's Spanish one (see below). His article "On New and Radical Centrism" argued that the Greens did relatively well in the 2017 German federal election not only because of their stance against the "system" but also as a result of "a more centrist, socio-liberal, pro-European constituency that felt alienated by the power-sharing cartel" of the larger parties.


title: Radical centrism

text: Following the 2017 federal election, Deutsche Welle correspondent Rina Goldenberg traced the evolution of the German Greens from the idealism of the 1980s to a more pragmatic but still principled stance. She wrote, in pertinent part:


title: Radical centrism

text: The internal make-up of the Greens has evolved as the first generation has grown older. Many have changed their priorities, morphing from former hippies to urban professionals. Green supporters are generally well-educated, high-earning urbanites with a strong belief in the benefits of a multicultural society. No other party fields more candidates with an immigrant background than the Greens.


title: Radical centrism

text: Traditionally, the German Greens elect co-leaders of their party – one male and one female; one from the party's leftist wing and one from its pragmatic, centrist wing. In 2018 the party broke with tradition by electing both co-leaders from its moderate wing, federal MP Annalena Baerbock and northern-state politician Robert Habeck.


title: Radical centrism

text: In an article for "Israel Hayom" in 2012, conservative Knesset member Tzipi Hotovely named Israeli politician Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid (There Is a Future) party as examples of "the radical center" in Israel, which she warned her readers against. In 2013, Yossi Klein Halevi – author of books addressing Israelis and Palestinians alike – explained why he voted for Lapid, saying, in part:


title: Radical centrism

text: He emerged as the voice of middle class disaffection, yet included in his [party] list two Ethiopians, representatives of one of the country's poorest constituencies. ... Yair has sought dialogue. ... Some see Yair's Israeli eclecticism as an expression of ideological immaturity, of indecisiveness. In fact it reflects his ability – alone among today's leaders – to define the Israeli center. ... These voters agree with the left about the dangers of occupation and with the right about the dangers of a delusional peace.


title: Radical centrism

text: In 2017, Lapid and his party were surging in the polls. In May 2020, following three elections, Lapid was named leader of the opposition in Israel. A month prior, Lapid had written an essay in which he described his version of centrism as "the politics of the broad consensus that empowers us all. Together, we are creating something new".


title: Radical centrism

text: According to journalist Angelo Persichilli, Italian Christian Democratic Party leader Aldo Moro's call for a "parallel convergence" prefigured today's calls for radical centrism. Until being killed by the Red Brigades in the late 1970s, Moro had been promoting a political alliance between Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party. Moro acknowledged that the two parties were so different that they ran on parallel tracks and he did not want them to lose their identities, but he emphasized that in the end their interests were convergent—hence the phrase "parallel convergence", which he popularized.


title: Radical centrism

text: In the 2010s, Spanish radical centrist Albert Rivera reportedly cited Italian politician Matteo Renzi as a soulmate.


title: Radical centrism

text: According to the Dutch opinion magazine "HP/De Tijd", the Dutch political party D66 can be seen as radical centrist. Radical centrism is a possibility in another Dutch party as well. In a report presented in 2012 to the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party, CDA member and former minister of social affairs Aart Jan de Geus recommends that the CDA develop itself into a radical centrist "("radicale midden")" party. The D66 has been seen as the more progressive and individualistic of the two parties, and the CDA as the more conservative and personalistic / communitarian.


title: Radical centrism

text: The Opportunities Party (TOP abbreviated), founded by economist Gareth Morgan, identifies itself as radical centrist. TOP advocates for evidence-based policy on a universal basic income, legalised cannabis, and putting a stop to the New Zealand housing crisis.


title: Radical centrism

text: In South Korea, the term "Jungdogaehyeok" () bears resemblance to the term radical centrism. The Peace Democratic Party, founded in 1987, officially put forward a "jungdogaehyeok". But from then until 2016, the term was rarely used in South Korean politics.


title: Radical centrism

text: After 2016, the People's Party, the Bareunmirae Party, the Party for Democracy and Peace, the New Alternatives party, the Minsaeng Party, and the People Party all called themselves "jungdogaehyeok".


title: Radical centrism

text: In Spain, Albert Rivera and his Ciudadanos (Citizens) party have been described as radical centrist by "Politico", as well as by Spanish-language commentators and news outlets. Rivera himself has described his movement as radical centrist, saying, "We're the radical center. We can't beat them when it comes to populism. What Ciudadanos aspires to is radical, courageous changes backed by numbers, data, proposals, economists, technicians and capable people". Rivera has called for politics to transcend the old labels, saying, "We have to move away from the old left-right axis". "The Economist" has likened Rivera and his party to Emmanuel Macron and his party En Marche! in France. Rivera's party has taken on the established parties of the left and right and has had some success, most notably in the 2017 Catalan regional election. In the subsequent years, though, Ciudadanos became almost irrelevant in Spanish politics, leading to Rivera's resignation as party leader.


title: Radical centrism

text: Some commentators identify Ross Perot's 1992 U.S. presidential campaign as the first radical centrist national campaign. However, many radical centrist authors were not enthusiastic about Perot. Matthew Miller acknowledges that Perot had enough principle to support a gasoline tax hike, Halstead and Lind note that he popularized the idea of balancing the budget and John Avlon says he crystallized popular distrust of partisan extremes. However, none of those authors examines Perot's ideas or campaigns in depth and Mark Satin does not mention Perot at all. Joe Klein mocked one of Perot's campaign gaffes and said he was not a sufficiently substantial figure. Miller characterizes Perot as a rich, self-financed lone wolf. By contrast, what most radical centrists say they want in political action terms is the building of a grounded political movement.


title: Radical centrism

text: The phrase "militant moderates" was used by national media during Perot's 1992 groundbreaking Presidential campaign. One of Perot's most intriguing contributions to American politics is his challenge to the entire paradigm of "left-center-right." He claimed at a meeting of the national Reform Party in 1995 that the paradigm was no longer operative and that left-center-right was being replaced. The replacement was a "top versus the rest of us" paradigm, and that the very wealthy like himself, could choose to be with the people at the "bottom, like most of the American people." This brand of "militant moderation" -- a form of populism -- is what endeared Perot to his ardent followers and was not traditional "centrism."


title: Radical centrism

text: Also in the 1990s, political independents Jesse Ventura, Angus King and Lowell Weicker became governors of American states. According to John Avlon, they pioneered the combination of fiscal prudence and social tolerance that has served as a model for radical centrist governance ever since. They also developed a characteristic style, a combination of "common sense and maverick appeal".


title: Radical centrism

text: In the decade of the 2000s, a number of governors and mayors – most prominently, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg – were celebrated by "Time" magazine as "action heroes" who looked beyond partisanship to get things done. A similar article that decade in "Politico" placed "self-styled 'radical centrist'" governor Mark Warner of Virginia in that camp.


title: Radical centrism

text: In the 2010s, the radical centrist movement in the U.S. is mostly being played out in the national media. In 2010, for example, "The New York Times" columnist Thomas Friedman called for "a Tea Party of the radical center", an organized national pressure group. Friedman later co-wrote a book with scholar Michael Mandelbaum discussing key issues in American society and calling for an explicitly radical centrist politics and program to deal with them. At "The Washington Post", columnist Matthew Miller was explaining "Why we need a third party of (radical) centrists".


title: Radical centrism

text: In 2011, Friedman championed Americans Elect, an insurgent group of radical centrist Democrats, Republicans and independents who were hoping to run an independent Presidential candidate in 2012. Meanwhile, Miller offered "[t]he third-party stump speech we need". In his book "The Price of Civilization" (2011), Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs called for the creation of a third U.S. party, an "Alliance for the Radical Center".


title: Radical centrism

text: While no independent radical-centrist presidential candidate emerged in 2012, John Avlon emphasized the fact that independent voters remain the fastest-growing portion of the electorate.