title: Ira Glass

text: After Glass graduated from high school, he was accepted into Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and was initially a pre-medical student. He attended with fellow alums Mary Zimmerman and David Sedaris, though he did not know them at the time. He spent a lot of time at the university's radio station making its promos. He transferred to Brown University, where he concentrated in semiotics. There, he was introduced to "S/Z" by Roland Barthes, an analysis that, in hindsight, "made [him] understand what [he] could do in radio". He graduated in 1982.


title: Ira Glass

text: After his freshman year, 19-year-old Glass looked around Baltimore for work in television, radio, and advertising without success; meanwhile, he was employed in the shock trauma unit at a medical center. After someone at the local rock station recommended that he seek out Jay Kernis at National Public Radio's headquarters in Washington, DC, he found work as an unpaid intern editing promotional announcements, before becoming the production assistant to Keith Talbot. At the end of the summer, he chose to stay with NPR and abandon medicine, a decision that disappointed his parents. When he graduated from college, they placed a sardonic ad in the classified section of their local newspaper that read, "Corporate office seeks semiotics grad for high paying position."


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass worked at NPR for 17 years, where he eventually graduated to being a tape-cutter, before becoming a reporter and host on several NPR programs, including "Morning Edition", "All Things Considered", and "Talk of the Nation". In an interview, Glass recalled that his first show was with NPR's Joe Frank, and says the experience influenced him in a "huge way", adding: "Before I saw Joe put together a show, I had never thought about radio as a place where you could tell a certain kind of story." He has also said that editing for Noah Adams, an early host of "All Things Considered", taught him how "to step back from the action and move to some bigger thought and then return to the plot", a technique that he still uses to structure "This American Life". As he approached 30, he tried reporting his own stories, but said he was not good at it and that he performed poorly on air, took a long time to create a single piece, and did not have strong interviewing skills. During this time, he dated a lawyer for seven years who, according to him, made him feel terrible and did not take his work seriously or love him. He says that while she was away working in Texas, he felt his writing improved in her absence, and their relationship ended by the end of the summer.


title: Ira Glass

text: In 1989, Glass followed his then-girlfriend, cartoonist Lynda Barry, to Chicago and settled into the Lakeview neighborhood. Although he began producing award-winning reports for NPR's "All Things Considered", specifically on school reform at Taft High School and Irving Elementary School, Glass said it was a piece he did on the 75th anniversary of Oreo cookies that taught him how to write for radio. Soon, he and Gary Covino created and co-hosted a Friday-night WBEZ Chicago Public Radio program called "The Wild Room", which featured eclectic content with a loose style and aired for the first time in November 1990. By this time, Barry and Glass were no longer a couple, but she initially collaborated on the project, even giving the show its title after she and Glass agreed that Covino's suggestion ("The Rainbow Room") was "stupid". The first show aired in November 1990. In Glass's first professional interview (with Cara Jepsen in 1993), he said: "I like to think of it as the only show on public radio other than "Car Talk" that both NPR news analyst Daniel Schorr and Kurt Cobain could listen to." During this time they spent two years reporting on the Chicago Public Schools—one year at a high school, and another at an elementary school. The largest finding of their investigations was that smaller class sizes would contribute to more success in impoverished, inner-city schools.


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass eventually tired of "free-form radio" and, looking at other opportunities, began sending grant proposals to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.


title: Ira Glass

text: In 1995, the MacArthur Foundation approached Torey Malatia, the general manager of Chicago Public Radio, with an offer of to produce a show featuring local Chicago writers and performance artists. Malatia approached Glass with the idea, who countered that he wanted to do a weekly program, but with a different premise, a budget of , and a desire to make it a national show. He then took two months off without pay to work on the pilot. Glass, however, didn't include his co-host in his plans, assuring him that the deal was unlikely to happen. When the show went on without him, Covino says he felt "betrayed". He continued to produce "The Wild Room" alone until February 1996.


title: Ira Glass

text: Early on, the idea was to make a show telling stories of "nobody who's famous, nothing you've ever heard of, nothing in the news". The everyday stories would be placed between works from journalists, fiction authors, or performing artists. Glass invited David Sedaris to read his essays on the program before producing Sedaris' commentaries on NPR and contributing to Sedaris's success as an independent author. The show—then called "Your Radio Playhouse"—first aired on November 17, 1995; the episode was titled "New Beginnings". It included interviews with talk-show host Joe Franklin and Shirley Glass—who maintained her position that her son should consider work in television because of his resemblance to Hugh Grant—as well as stories by Kevin Kelly (the founding editor of "Wired") and performance artist Lawrence Steger. The show's name changed to "This American Life" beginning with the episode on March 21, 1996, and was syndicated nationally in June 1996 by Public Radio International after NPR passed on it.


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass devoted himself to the effort by making the daily commute from his North Side apartment and spending 70 to 80 hours per week in the offices on the Navy Pier.


title: Ira Glass

text: The show quickly received wide acclaim and is often credited with changing the landscape of journalistic radio in the US. It won a Peabody Award within six months of its first broadcast for excellence in broadcast media. The fictional pieces were gradually replaced with more reporting in a storytelling format, such as in the show's coverage of victims of Hurricane Katrina. Over the years, guest contributors included Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, Michael Chabon, Tobias Wolff, Anne Lamott and Spalding Gray. On November 17, 2005, "This American Life" reached its tenth anniversary and the following week, in celebration, broadcast for the first time outside of Chicago.


title: Ira Glass

text: The television network Showtime approached the show's production team and proposed to convert "This American Life" into a television program; the team originally refused, as they did not want to compromise the format and make something "tacky and awful", but agreed to make the program for television after Showtime conceded to various conditions, including a format that did not resemble a news magazine. After viewing the pilot, Showtime ordered six episodes in January 2007 and the first half-hour episode aired on March 22, 2007. Glass had to move to New York for filming, and said in an interview with Patt Morrison on Southern California Public Radio that he lost over the project. The show aired for thirteen episodes over two seasons before ending in 2009 because of the heavy workload needed to produce it.


title: Ira Glass

text: Chicago Public Media announced it would begin self-distribution of "This American Life" starting on July 1, 2014, through Public Radio Exchange (PRX).


title: Ira Glass

text: By 2020, "This American Life" reached more than 4.7 million listeners each week. Glass can be heard in all but four episodes. In July 2013, the 500th episode premiered. For the 2013 fiscal year, the WBEZ board voted to raise Glass's salary from $170,000 annually to $278,000. However, he requested that it be lowered to $146,000 the following year, and has since asked for it be lowered again, calling the original sum "unseemly". He supplements his income with speaking engagements, which earn him "five figures per talk".


title: Ira Glass

text: In May 2009, the "This American Life" radio show episode "Return to the Scene of the Crime" was broadcast live to more than 300 movie theaters.


title: Ira Glass

text: Outside of radio, Glass has also worked as a print author. In September 1999, he collaborated on a comic book, "Radio: An Illustrated Guide", with Jessica Abel. The book describes how "This American Life" is produced and instructs the reader into building their own radio program. In October 2007, he published the anthology "The New Kings of Nonfiction".


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass has collaborated on several feature films. In the show's contract with Warner Bros., "This American Life" has first pick options on any films that emerge from stories of that program. By extension, Glass goes to Warner Bros. with any movie idea he may have. In 2006, he was an executive producer of the feature film "Unaccompanied Minors", which is based on the true story of what happened to "This American Life" contributing editor Susan Burton and her sister Betsy at an airport one day before Christmas. Burton had already produced a segment on "This American Life" about the same experience before the story was adapted to film. In 2007, he and Dylan Kidd wrote a screenplay based on the nonfiction book "Urban Tribes" about a man who must choose between his friends and his girlfriend. Glass also produced the 2018 Netflix movie "Come Sunday".


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass regularly collaborates with comedian Mike Birbiglia. In 2012, Glass co-wrote and produced Birbiglia's film "Sleepwalk with Me" and they both went on a country-wide promotional tour for the film to give interviews and visit theaters to introduce the film. On September 17, 2012, Glass made a special voice appearance on "The Colbert Report" with Stephen Colbert to promote "Sleepwalk with Me" and invite Colbert to participate in a "This American Life" episode. Glass was credited as a co-producer in Birbiglia's 2016 film "Don't Think Twice", alongside Miranda Bailey and Amanda Marshall. Glass is also the producer for Birbiglia's 2018 one-man Broadway show "The New One".


title: Ira Glass

text: In 2013, Glass partnered with Monica Bill Barnes & Company to produce "Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host" and worked alongside Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass.


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass toured Google's headquarters in November 2013 and met the Google Doodle team, who collectively agreed to collaborate with "This American Life". Glass suggested that for Valentine's Day 2014 they interview "random" people about their experiences with love. Users in the American market could click on a candy heart that corresponded to each letter in "Google" and listen to a different story of unusual love in the same style as the radio program. Roger Neill composed the music, while Glass, fellow "American Life" producer Miki Meek, and Birbiglia conducted the interviews.


title: Ira Glass

text: In 2019, Glass went on tour with the show "Seven Things I've Learned", where he talks about the art of storytelling. The titles of the show's acts include "How to tell a story", "Save the cat", "Failure is Success", "Amuse yourself, and "It's war". Two dancers from Monica Bill Barnes & Company, whom Glass had collaborated with before, performed in the show.


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass made several appearances on late-night television, his first being "The Late Show With David Letterman". He has also been on "The Colbert Report".


title: Ira Glass

text: In 2004, UCLA commissioned a one-night storytelling event called "Visible and Invisible Drawings: An Evening With Chris Ware and Ira Glass." In February 2005, Glass visited the Orpheum Theater in New Orleans to present "Lies and Sissies and Fiascoes, Oh, My!", which shares a name with a . Glass served as the monologist for ASSSSCAT at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York on February 21, 2010. On September 17, 2011, Glass participated in the Drunk Show at the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival, during which Glass became so drunk he blacked out and vomited backstage.


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass has been a guest on various podcasts, such as "TBTL". On February 24, 2010, the podcast Freakonomics published a bonus episode (after its first) interviewing Glass on how to make a great podcast. On June 17, 2011, he and his wife at the time, Anaheed Alani, appeared on the podcast "How Was Your Week", where he revealed that, if he were not in radio, he would be a professional poker player. Glass appeared on the edition of June 24, 2011, of "The Adam Carolla Podcast", where he and Adam Carolla discussed the podcast claiming the title of "Most Downloaded Podcast" from the "Guinness Book of World Records". On September 19, 2011, Glass appeared on "WTF Live with Marc Maron". Glass guest co-hosted Dan Savage's sex-advice podcast, "Savage Love", on January 31, 2012. On Monday, November 24, 2014, Glass appeared on the "Here's The Thing" podcast. In 2022, Glass's interview with Debbie Millman was featured on the Storybound season 5 premiere.


title: Ira Glass

text: On May 18, 2012, Glass gave the commencement address for the Goucher College class of 2012 graduation ceremony, where he also received an honorary degree. Glass was one of the voice artists for the audiobook "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories" by Etgar Keret.


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass also lent his voice to "The Simpsons" in Season 22 in the episode "Elementary School Musical" and appeared in a green motion capture suit in a John Hodgman segment on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on November 4, 2010, where he acted as the main character of the "" video game. Archival footage of Glass is used in the film "We Cause Scenes", which premiered at the 2013 South by Southwest conference. In 2014, Glass appeared as himself in the film adaption of the U.S. television series "Veronica Mars". and in the extended cut of John Hodgman's Netflix comedy special "". In 2018, Glass made a cameo appearance in the film "Ocean's 8". In 2019 Glass appeared as himself in the episode "The Struggle for Stonewall" (season 1, episode 8) of the Fox legal drama "Proven Innocent".


title: Ira Glass

text: Ben Sinclair, a co-creator of HBO's TV show "High Maintenance", sought out Glass to appear in the 2020 season premiere.


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass has been called a visionary for his work in radio. In 2001, "Time" magazine named Glass the "Best Radio Host in America". Critics remark on the dedication and distinct vision he brings to the show. Steve Johnson with the "Chicago Tribune" called Glass "the deliberately mysterious, apparently highly romantic force who is the program's host, co-founder and executive producer". After remarking that, unlike on most shows, Glass serves as the director, senior producer, host, administrator, librarian, and researcher, Chicago writer Sarah Vowell said, "Part of that is that he's a control freak. Part of it is he has so much experience. Part of it is he really does have a vision for the show." Glass is credited with being a forebearer of podcasting and modern audio storytelling. Samuel Fishwick of the "Evening Standard" called Glass the "godfather of podcasting".


title: Ira Glass

text: The nature of his voice also inspires commentary in the media. "Vogue" called his voice "the aural embodiment of Sensitive Guy Who Is Friends with All the Girls." "American Journalism Review" called his voice "adenoidal" and said it has a "slight stutter, not a speech defect, but a verbal tic, a device". Johnson said Glass' voice sounds like it does not belong on the radio and that it is "kind of querulous, decidedly conversational."


title: Ira Glass

text: Jenji Kohan has said that Glass is part of the inspiration behind the character Maury Kind on her show "Orange Is the New Black", in particular, his glasses. She offered Glass a role on the show, but he "politely declined" the offer due to his busy schedule.


title: Ira Glass

text: For a time, Glass dated cartoonist and author Lynda Barry. She briefly joined him in Washington, D.C., but she moved to Chicago to be near fellow cartoonists in the summer of 1989, with Glass following her. Reflecting on the relationship, Barry called it the "worst thing [she] ever did", and said he told her she "was boring and shallow, and...wasn't enough in the moment for him." She later drew a comic based on their relationship titled "Head Lice and My Worst Boyfriend", which was later included in her book "One! Hundred! Demons!..." Glass did not deny her assertions, and told the "Chicago Reader": "I was an idiot. I was in the wrong...about so many things with her. Anything bad she says about me I can confirm."


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass married Anaheed Alani, a writer and editor, in August 2005. They had dated before splitting harshly, but decided to give the relationship another try. "We have the entire Middle East crisis in our house," joked Glass. "Her mom is Christian and her dad is Muslim, from Iraq." They shared a pit bull named Piney. In March 2017, Glass announced on "This American Life" that he and Alani had separated, and in an interview later that year, specified that they had been separating over the previous three years. On April 17, 2017, Glass reportedly filed for divorce. He has since resumed dating, calling it "kind of nice and sort of sweet," and saying, "[t]here's a lot of hope to it."


title: Ira Glass

text: His older sister, Randi Glass Murray, is a literary agent based in San Francisco, while his younger sister, Karen Glass Barry, was a senior vice president in film development at Disney Studios. He is a first cousin once removed of composer Philip Glass, who has appeared on Glass' show and whose music can often be heard on the program.


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass has donated to Prison Performing Arts and dedicated a whole episode of "This American Life" around one of the organization's productions of "Hamlet".


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass likes the shows "Gilmore Girls" and "Family Guy", and says he never missed an episode of "The O.C." His favorite podcasts include "WTF with Marc Maron", "The Daily", "Reply All", "Radiolab", "Heavyweight", "Stay Tuned with Preet", and "Armchair Expert".


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass has stated on "This American Life" that he is a staunch atheist. "It's not like I don't feel like I'm a Jew," he explained. "I feel like I don't have a choice about being a Jew. Your cultural heritage isn't like a suitcase you can lose at the airport...But even when I was 14 or 15, it didn't make that much sense to me that there was this Big Daddy who created the world and would act so crazy in the Old Testament. That we made up these stories to make ourselves feel good and explain the world seems like a much more reasonable explanation. I've tried to believe in God but I simply don't." Atheism aside, he said, "Some years I have a nostalgic feeling to go into a shul and I'll go in for a High Holiday service. Rabbi Seymour Essrog was really funny, a great storyteller. He was so good that even the kids would stay and watch him. He'd tell a funny anecdote, something really moving, and go for a big finish. That's what the show is."


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass stated that "Christians get a really bad rap in the media" and that contrary to the way they are portrayed in pop-culture, the Christians in his life "were all incredibly wonderful and thoughtful".


title: Ira Glass

text: Glass was named the recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Radio in 2009. In 2011, he earned the George Polk Award in Radio Reporting for "Very Tough Love", an hour-long report that showed alarmingly severe punishments being meted out by a county drug court judge in Georgia. The episode prompted Georgia's Judicial Qualifying Commission to file 14 ethical misconduct charges against Judge Amanda Williams and, within weeks, Williams stepped down from the bench and agreed never to seek other judicial offices.


title: Ira Glass

text: In 2012, Glass was awarded a Doctorate of Humane Letters "honoris causa" from Goucher College in Baltimore. In May 2013, Glass received the Medal for Spoken Language from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was on the team that won the Gold Award for best documentary from the Third Coast International Audio Festival in 2013 for "Harper High School", and was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in November 2014.


title: Ira Glass

text: In 2020, Glass and the rest of the "This American Life" staff (together with Molly O'Toole of the "Los Angeles Times" and Emily Green of "Vice News") won the inaugural Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting for the episode "The Out Crowd," which demonstrated "revelatory, intimate journalism that illuminates the personal impact of the Trump Administration's "Remain in Mexico" policy".


title: Simplified molecular-input line-entry system

text: The simplified molecular-input line-entry system (SMILES) is a specification in the form of a line notation for describing the structure of chemical species using short ASCII strings. SMILES strings can be imported by most molecule editors for conversion back into two-dimensional drawings or three-dimensional models of the molecules.


text: The original SMILES specification was initiated in the 1980s. It has since been modified and extended. In 2007, an open standard called OpenSMILES was developed in the open-source chemistry community.


text: The original SMILES specification was initiated by David Weininger at the USEPA Mid-Continent Ecology Division Laboratory in Duluth in the 1980s. Acknowledged for their parts in the early development were "Gilman Veith and Rose Russo (USEPA) and Albert Leo and Corwin Hansch (Pomona College) for supporting the work, and Arthur Weininger (Pomona; Daylight CIS) and Jeremy Scofield (Cedar River Software, Renton, WA) for assistance in programming the system." The Environmental Protection Agency funded the initial project to develop SMILES.


text: It has since been modified and extended by others, most notably by Daylight Chemical Information Systems. In 2007, an open standard called "OpenSMILES" was developed by the Blue Obelisk open-source chemistry community. Other 'linear' notations include the Wiswesser Line Notation (WLN), ROSDAL and SLN (Tripos Inc).


text: In July 2006, the IUPAC introduced the InChI as a standard for formula representation. SMILES is generally considered to have the advantage of being more human-readable than InChI; it also has a wide base of software support with extensive theoretical backing (such as graph theory).


text: The term SMILES refers to a line notation for encoding molecular structures and specific instances should strictly be called SMILES strings. However, the term SMILES is also commonly used to refer to both a single SMILES string and a number of SMILES strings; the exact meaning is usually apparent from the context. The terms "canonical" and "isomeric" can lead to some confusion when applied to SMILES. The terms describe different attributes of SMILES strings and are not mutually exclusive.


text: Typically, a number of equally valid SMILES strings can be written for a molecule. For example, codice_1, codice_2 and codice_3 all specify the structure of ethanol. Algorithms have been developed to generate the same SMILES string for a given molecule; of the many possible strings, these algorithms choose only one of them. This SMILES is unique for each structure, although dependent on the canonicalization algorithm used to generate it, and is termed the canonical SMILES. These algorithms first convert the SMILES to an internal representation of the molecular structure; an algorithm then examines that structure and produces a unique SMILES string. Various algorithms for generating canonical SMILES have been developed and include those by Daylight Chemical Information Systems, OpenEye Scientific Software, MEDIT, Chemical Computing Group, MolSoft LLC, and the Chemistry Development Kit. A common application of canonical SMILES is indexing and ensuring uniqueness of molecules in a database.


text: The original paper that described the CANGEN algorithm claimed to generate unique SMILES strings for graphs representing molecules, but the algorithm fails for a number of simple cases (e.g. cuneane, 1,2-dicyclopropylethane) and cannot be considered a correct method for representing a graph canonically. There is currently no systematic comparison across commercial software to test if such flaws exist in those packages.


text: SMILES notation allows the specification of configuration at tetrahedral centers, and double bond geometry. These are structural features that cannot be specified by connectivity alone, and therefore SMILES which encode this information are termed isomeric SMILES. A notable feature of these rules is that they allow rigorous partial specification of chirality. The term isomeric SMILES is also applied to SMILES in which isomers are specified.


text: In terms of a graph-based computational procedure, SMILES is a string obtained by printing the symbol nodes encountered in a depth-first tree traversal of a chemical graph. The chemical graph is first trimmed to remove hydrogen atoms and cycles are broken to turn it into a spanning tree. Where cycles have been broken, numeric suffix labels are included to indicate the connected nodes. Parentheses are used to indicate points of branching on the tree.


text: From the view point of a formal language theory, SMILES is a word. A SMILES is parsable with a context-free parser. The use of this representation has been in the prediction of biochemical properties (incl. toxicity and biodegradability) based on the main principle of chemoinformatics that similar molecules have similar properties. The predictive models implemented a syntactic pattern recognition approach (which involved defining a molecular distance) as well as a more robust scheme based on statistical pattern recognition.


text: Atoms are represented by the standard abbreviation of the chemical elements, in square brackets, such as codice_4 for gold. Brackets may be omitted in the common case of atoms which:


text: All other elements must be enclosed in brackets, and have charges and hydrogens shown explicitly. For instance, the SMILES for water may be written as either codice_5 or codice_6. Hydrogen may also be written as a separate atom; water may also be written as codice_7.


text: When brackets are used, the symbol codice_8 is added if the atom in brackets is bonded to one or more hydrogen, followed by the number of hydrogen atoms if greater than 1, then by the sign codice_9 for a positive charge or by codice_10 for a negative charge. For example, codice_11 for ammonium (). If there is more than one charge, it is normally written as digit; however, it is also possible to repeat the sign as many times as the ion has charges: one may write either codice_12 or codice_13 for titanium(IV) Ti. Thus, the hydroxide anion () is represented by codice_14, the hydronium cation () is codice_15 and the cobalt(III) cation (Co) is either codice_16 or codice_17.


text: Bonds between aliphatic atoms are assumed to be single unless specified otherwise and are implied by adjacency in the SMILES string. Although single bonds may be written as codice_10, this is usually omitted. For example, the SMILES for ethanol may be written as codice_20, codice_21 or codice_22, but is usually written codice_1.


text: Double, triple, and quadruple bonds are represented by the symbols codice_24, codice_25, and codice_26 respectively as illustrated by the SMILES codice_27 (carbon dioxide ), codice_28 (hydrogen cyanide HCN) and codice_29 (gallium arsenide).


text: An additional type of bond is a "non-bond", indicated with codice_30, to indicate that two parts are not bonded together. For example, aqueous sodium chloride may be written as codice_31 to show the dissociation.


text: Single bonds adjacent to double bonds may be represented using codice_33 or codice_34 to indicate stereochemical configuration; see below.


text: Ring structures are written by breaking each ring at an arbitrary point (although some choices will lead to a more legible SMILES than others) to make an acyclic structure and adding numerical ring closure labels to show connectivity between non-adjacent atoms.


text: For example, cyclohexane and dioxane may be written as codice_35 and codice_36 respectively. For a second ring, the label will be 2. For example, decalin (decahydronaphthalene) may be written as codice_37.


text: SMILES does not require that ring numbers be used in any particular order, and permits ring number zero, although this is rarely used. Also, it is permitted to reuse ring numbers after the first ring has closed, although this usually makes formulae harder to read. For example, bicyclohexyl is usually written as codice_38, but it may also be written as codice_39.


text: Multiple digits after a single atom indicate multiple ring-closing bonds. For example, an alternative SMILES notation for decalin is codice_40, where the final carbon participates in both ring-closing bonds 1 and 2. If two-digit ring numbers are required, the label is preceded by codice_41, so codice_42 is a single ring-closing bond of ring 12.


text: Either or both of the digits may be preceded by a bond type to indicate the type of the ring-closing bond. For example, cyclopropene is usually written codice_43, but if the double bond is chosen as the ring-closing bond, it may be written as codice_44, codice_45, or codice_46. (The first form is preferred.) codice_47 is illegal, as it explicitly specifies conflicting types for the ring-closing bond.


text: Ring-closing bonds may not be used to denote multiple bonds. For example, codice_48 is not a valid alternative to codice_49 for ethylene. However, they may be used with non-bonds; codice_50 is a peculiar but legal alternative way to write propane, more commonly written codice_51.


text: Choosing a ring-break point adjacent to attached groups can lead to a simpler SMILES form by avoiding branches. For example, cyclohexane-1,2-diol is most simply written as codice_52; choosing a different ring-break location produces a branched structure that requires parentheses to write.


text: In the latter case, bonds between two aromatic atoms are assumed (if not explicitly shown) to be aromatic bonds. Thus, benzene, pyridine and furan can be represented respectively by the SMILES codice_62, codice_63 and codice_64.


text: Aromatic nitrogen bonded to hydrogen, as found in pyrrole must be represented as codice_65; thus imidazole is written in SMILES notation as codice_66.


text: When aromatic atoms are singly bonded to each other, such as in biphenyl, a single bond must be shown explicitly: codice_67. This is one of the few cases where the single bond symbol codice_10 is required. (In fact, most SMILES software can correctly infer that the bond between the two rings cannot be aromatic and so will accept the nonstandard form codice_69.)


text: The Daylight and OpenEye algorithms for generating canonical SMILES differ in their treatment of aromaticity.


text: Branches are described with parentheses, as in codice_70 for propionic acid and codice_71 for fluoroform. The first atom within the parentheses, and the first atom after the parenthesized group, are both bonded to the same branch point atom. The bond symbol must appear inside the parentheses; outside (E.g.: codice_72) is invalid.


text: Substituted rings can be written with the branching point in the ring as illustrated by the SMILES codice_73 (see depiction) and codice_74 (see depiction) which encode the 3 and 4-cyanoanisole isomers. Writing SMILES for substituted rings in this way can make them more human-readable.


text: Branches may be written in any order. For example, bromochlorodifluoromethane may be written as codice_75, codice_76, codice_77, or the like. Generally, a SMILES form is easiest to read if the simpler branch comes first, with the final, unparenthesized portion being the most complex. The only caveats to such rearrangements are:


text: The one form of branch which does "not" require parentheses are ring-closing bonds. Choosing ring-closing bonds appropriately can reduce the number of parentheses required. For example, toluene is normally written as codice_78 or codice_79, avoiding the parentheses required if written as codice_80 or codice_81.


text: Configuration around double bonds is specified using the characters codice_33 and codice_34 to show directional single bonds adjacent to a double bond. For example, codice_84 (see depiction) is one representation of "trans"-1,2-difluoroethylene, in which the fluorine atoms are on opposite sides of the double bond (as shown in the figure), whereas codice_85 (see depiction) is one possible representation of "cis"-1,2-difluoroethylene, in which the fluorines are on the same side of the double bond.


text: Bond direction symbols always come in groups of at least two, of which the first is arbitrary. That is, codice_86 is the same as codice_84. When alternating single-double bonds are present, the groups are larger than two, with the middle directional symbols being adjacent to two double bonds. For example, the common form of (2,4)-hexadiene is written codice_88.


text: As a more complex example, beta-carotene has a very long backbone of alternating single and double bonds, which may be written codice_89.


text: Configuration at tetrahedral carbon is specified by codice_90 or codice_91. Consider the four bonds in the order in which they appear, left to right, in the SMILES form. Looking toward the central carbon from the perspective of the first bond, the other three are either clockwise or counter-clockwise. These cases are indicated with codice_91 and codice_90, respectively (because the codice_90 symbol itself is a counter-clockwise spiral).


text: For example, consider the amino acid alanine. One of its SMILES forms is codice_95, more fully written as codice_96. -Alanine, the more common enantiomer, is written as codice_97 (see depiction). Looking from the nitrogen–carbon bond, the hydrogen (codice_8), methyl (codice_99), and carboxylate (codice_100) groups appear clockwise. -Alanine can be written as codice_101 (see depiction).


text: While the order in which branches are specified in SMILES is normally unimportant, in this case it matters; swapping any two groups requires reversing the chirality indicator. If the branches are reversed so alanine is written as codice_102, then the configuration also reverses; -alanine is written as codice_103 (see depiction). Other ways of writing it include codice_104, codice_105 and codice_106.


text: Normally, the first of the four bonds appears to the left of the carbon atom, but if the SMILES is written beginning with the chiral carbon, such as codice_107, then all four are to the right, but the first to appear (the codice_108 bond in this case) is used as the reference to order the following three: -alanine may also be written codice_109.


text: The SMILES specification includes elaborations on the codice_90 symbol to indicate stereochemistry around more complex chiral centers, such as trigonal bipyramidal molecular geometry.


text: Isotopes are specified with a number equal to the integer isotopic mass preceding the atomic symbol. Benzene in which one atom is carbon-14 is written as codice_111 and deuterochloroform is codice_112.


text: To illustrate a molecule with more than 9 rings, consider cephalostatin-1, a steroidic 13-ringed pyrazine with the empirical formula CHNO isolated from the Indian Ocean hemichordate "Cephalodiscus gilchristi":


text: The SMILES notation is described extensively in the SMILES theory manual provided by Daylight Chemical Information Systems and a number of illustrative examples are presented. Daylight's depict utility provides users with the means to check their own examples of SMILES and is a valuable educational tool.


text: SMARTS is a line notation for specification of substructural patterns in molecules. While it uses many of the same symbols as SMILES, it also allows specification of wildcard atoms and bonds, which can be used to define substructural queries for chemical database searching. One common misconception is that SMARTS-based substructural searching involves matching of SMILES and SMARTS strings. In fact, both SMILES and SMARTS strings are first converted to internal graph representations which are searched for subgraph isomorphism.


text: SMIRKS, a superset of "reaction SMILES" and a subset of "reaction SMARTS", is a line notation for specifying reaction transforms. The general syntax for the reaction extensions is codice_115 (without spaces), where any of the fields can either be left blank or filled with multiple molecules deliminated with a dot (codice_30), and other descriptions dependent on the base language. Atoms can additionally be identified with a number (e.g. codice_117) for mapping, for example in .


text: SMILES corresponds to discrete molecular structures. However many materials are macromolecules, which are too large (and often stochastic) to conveniently generate SMILES for. BigSMILES is an extension of SMILES that aims to provide an efficient representation system for macromolecules.


text: SMILES can be converted back to two-dimensional representations using structure diagram generation (SDG) algorithms. This conversion is not always unambiguous. Conversion to three-dimensional representation is achieved by energy-minimization approaches. There are many downloadable and web-based conversion utilities.


title: Grandma Moses

text: Anna Mary Robertson Moses (September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961), or Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78 and is a prominent example of a newly successful art career at an advanced age. Her works have been shown and sold worldwide, including in museums, and have been merchandised such as on greeting cards. "Sugaring Off" was sold for in 2006.


title: Grandma Moses

text: Moses appeared on magazine covers, television, and in a biographical documentary. Her autobiography is "My Life's History", she won numerous awards, and she held two honorary doctoral degrees.


title: Grandma Moses

text: "The New York Times" said: "The simple realism, nostalgic atmosphere and luminous color with which Grandma Moses portrayed simple farm life and rural countryside won her a wide following. She was able to capture the excitement of winter's first snow, Thanksgiving preparations and the new, young green of oncoming spring... In person, Grandma Moses charmed wherever she went. A tiny, lively woman with mischievous gray eyes and a quick wit, she could be sharp-tongued with a sycophant and stern with an errant grandchild."


title: Grandma Moses

text: She was a live-in housekeeper for a total of 15 years, starting at age 12. An employer noticed her appreciation for their prints made by Currier and Ives, and they supplied her with drawing materials. Moses and her husband began their married life in Virginia, where they worked on farms. In 1905, they returned to the Northeastern United States and settled in Eagle Bridge, New York. They had ten children, five of whom survived infancy. She embroidered pictures with yarn, until disabled by arthritis.


title: Grandma Moses

text: Anna Mary Robertson was born in Greenwich, New York on September 7, 1860; she was the third of ten children born to Margaret Shanahan Robertson and Russell King Robertson. She was raised with four sisters and five brothers. Her father ran a flax mill and was a farmer. She briefly attended a one-room school. That school is now the Bennington Museum in Vermont, which has the largest collection of her works in the United States. She was inspired to paint by taking art lessons at school. As a child, she started painting using lemon and grape juice to make colors for her "landscapes" and used ground ocher, grass, flour paste, slack lime, and sawdust.


title: Grandma Moses

text: At age 12, she left home and performed farm chores for a wealthy neighboring family. She continued to keep house, cook, and sew for wealthy families for 15 years. One of these families, the Whitesides, noticed her interest in their Currier and Ives prints and bought her chalk and wax crayons.


title: Grandma Moses

text: At age 27, she worked on the same farm with Thomas Salmon Moses, a "hired man". They were married and established themselves near Staunton, Virginia where they spent nearly two decades, living and working in turn on five local farms. Four of them are The Bell Farm or Eakle Farm, The Dudley Farm, Mount Airy Farm (now included within Augusta County's Millway Place Industrial Park), and Mount Nebo. To supplement the family income at Mount Nebo, Anna made potato chips and churned butter from the milk of a cow that she purchased with her savings. Later, the couple bought a farm, Mount Airy, near Verona, Virginia; it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. Having bought the house in January 1901, it was the first residence the family owned. They lived there until September 1902.


title: Grandma Moses

text: Five of the ten children born to them survived infancy. Although she loved living in the Shenandoah Valley, in 1905 Anna and Robert moved to a farm in Eagle Bridge, New York at her husband's urging. When Thomas Moses was about 67 years of age in 1927, he died of a heart attack, after which Anna's son Forrest helped her operate the farm. She never married again. She retired and moved to a daughter's home in 1936. She was known as either "Mother Moses" or "Grandma Moses", and although she first exhibited as "Mrs. Moses", the press dubbed her "Grandma Moses", and the nickname stuck.


title: Grandma Moses

text: As a young wife and mother, Moses was creative in her home; for example, in 1918 she used housepaint to decorate a fireboard. Beginning in 1932, Moses made embroidered pictures of yarn for friends and family. She created quilted objects, a form of "hobby art". Lucy R. Lippard stated in "The Word in Their Hands" that she found "hobby art" to be "an activity so 'low' on the art lists that it still ranks way below 'folk art...'" She found that hobby art often involves reuse of otherwise discarded objects.


title: Grandma Moses

text: By the age of 76, Moses had developed arthritis, which made embroidery painful. Her sister Celestia suggested that painting would be easier for her, and this idea spurred Moses's painting career in her late 70s. Grandma Moses also told reporters that she turned to painting in order to create the postman's Christmas gift, seeing as it "was easier to make [a painting] than to bake a cake over a hot stove". Being practical, painted works would last longer than her embroidered compositions made of worsted wool, which risked being eaten by moths. Judith Stein noted that "her sense of accomplishment in her painting was rooted in her ability to make 'something from nothing'". When her right hand began to hurt, she switched to her left hand.


title: Grandma Moses

text: What appeared to be an interest in painting at a late age was actually a manifestation of a childhood dream. With no time in her difficult farm-life to pursue painting, she was obliged to set aside her passion to paint. At age 92 she wrote, "I was quite small, my father would get me and my brothers white paper by the sheet. He liked to see us draw pictures, it was a penny a sheet and lasted longer than candy."


title: Grandma Moses

text: Moses painted scenes of rural life from earlier days, which she called "old-timey" New England landscapes. Moses said that she would "get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live." From her works of art, she omitted features of modern life, such as tractors and telephone poles.


title: Grandma Moses

text: Her early style is less individual and more realistic or primitive, with a lack of knowledge of, or perhaps rejection of, basic perspective. Initially she created simple compositions or copied existing images. As her career advanced, she created complicated, panoramic compositions of rural life.


title: Grandma Moses

text: She was a prolific painter, generating more than 1,500 canvasses in three decades. She initially charged $3 to $5 for a painting, depending upon its size, and as her fame increased her works were sold for $8,000 to $10,000. Her winter paintings are reminiscent of some of the known winter paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, although she had never seen his work. A German fan said, "There emanates from her paintings a light-hearted optimism; the world she shows us is beautiful and it is good. You feel at home in all these pictures, and you know their meaning. The unrest and the neurotic insecurity of the present day make us inclined to enjoy the simple and affirmative outlook of Grandma Moses."


title: Grandma Moses

text: During a visit to Hoosick Falls in 1938, Louis J. Caldor, an art collector who worked as an engineer in the state of New York, saw paintings made by Moses in the window of a drug store. He bought their supply and ten more from her Eagle Bridge house for $3 or $5 each. The next year, three Grandma Moses paintings were included in New York's Museum of Modern Art exhibition titled "Contemporary Unknown American Painters". Her first solo exhibition, "What a Farm Wife Painted", opened in New York in October 1940 at Otto Kallir's Galerie St. Etienne. A meet-and-greet with the artist and an exhibition of 50 paintings at Gimbel's Department Store was held next on November 15. Her art displays included samples of her baked goods and preserves that won Moses prizes at the county fair. Her third solo show in as many months, was held at the Whyte Gallery, Washington, D.C. In 1944, she was represented by the American British Art Center and the Galerie St. Etienne, which increased her sales. Her paintings were exhibited throughout Europe and the United States over the next 20 years. Otto Kallir established the Grandma Moses Properties, Inc. for her.


title: Grandma Moses

text: The paintings of Grandma Moses were used to publicize American holidays, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Mother's Day. A Mother's Day feature in "True Confessions" (1947) written by Eleanor Early noted how "Grandma Moses remains prouder of her preserves than of her paintings, and proudest of all of her four children, eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren." During the 1950s, her exhibitions broke attendance records around the world. Art historian Judith Stein noted: "A cultural icon, the spry, productive nonagenarian was continually cited as an inspiration for housewives, widows and retirees." Her paintings were reproduced on Hallmark greeting cards, tiles, fabrics, and ceramics. They were also used to market products, like coffee, lipstick, cigarettes, and cameras.


title: Grandma Moses

text: In 1950, the National Press Club cited her as one of the five most newsworthy women and the National Association of House Dress Manufacturers honored her as their 1951 Woman of the Year. When she reached 88, "Mademoiselle" magazine named her a "Young Woman of the Year". She was awarded two honorary doctoral degrees. The first was bestowed in 1949 from Russell Sage College and the second two years later from the Moore College of Art and Design.


title: Grandma Moses

text: President Harry S. Truman presented her with the Women's National Press Club trophy Award for outstanding accomplishment in art in 1949. Jerome Hill directed the 1950 documentary of her life, which was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1952, she published her autobiography, "My Life's History". In it she said "I look back on my life like a good day's work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it. I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be." In 1955, she appeared as a guest on "See It Now", a television program hosted by Edward R. Murrow.


title: Grandma Moses

text: She was a member of the Society of Mayflower Descendants and Daughters of the American Revolution. Her 100th birthday was proclaimed "Grandma Moses Day" by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. "LIFE" magazine celebrated her birthday by featuring her on its September 19, 1960, cover. The children's book "Grandma Moses Story Book" was published in 1961.


title: Grandma Moses

text: Grandma Moses died at age 101 on December 13, 1961, at the Health Center in Hoosick Falls, New York. She is buried there at the Maple Grove Cemetery. President John F. Kennedy memorialized her: "The death of Grandma Moses removed a beloved figure from American life. The directness and vividness of her paintings restored a primitive freshness to our perception of the American scene. Both her work and her life helped our nation renew its pioneer heritage and recall its roots in the countryside and on the frontier. All Americans mourn her loss." After her death, her work was exhibited in several large traveling exhibitions in the United States and abroad.


title: Grandma Moses

text: A 1942 piece, "The Old Checkered House, 1862", was appraised at the Memphis 2004 "Antiques Roadshow". It was not as common as her winter landscapes. Originally purchased in the 1940s for under $10, the piece was assigned an insurance value of $60,000 by the appraiser, Alan Fausel.


title: Grandma Moses

text: Otto Kallir of the Galerie St. Etienne gave her painting "Fourth of July" (1951) to the White House as a gift in 1952. The painting also appears on a U.S. commemorative stamp that was issued in Grandma Moses' honor in 1969.


title: Grandma Moses

text: The character Daisy "Granny" Moses (Irene Ryan) on "The Beverly Hillbillies", was named as an homage to Grandma Moses, who died shortly before the series began.


title: Grandma Moses

text: Norman Rockwell and Grandma Moses were friends who lived over the Vermont-New York state border from each other. Moses lived in Eagle Bridge, New York and after 1938 the Rockwells had a house in nearby Arlington, Vermont. She appears on the far left edge in the Norman Rockwell painting "Christmas Homecoming," which was printed on "The Saturday Evening Post"s December 25, 1948, cover.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Maud Kathleen Lewis (née Dowley; March 7, 1903 – July 30, 1970) was a Canadian folk artist from Nova Scotia. She lived most of her life in poverty in a small house in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia. She achieved national recognition in 1964 and 1965 for her cheerful paintings of landscapes, animals and flowers, which offer a nostalgic and optimistic vision of her native province. Several books, plays and films have been produced about her. She remains one of Canada's most celebrated folk artists. Her works are displayed at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, as well as her restored house, whose walls she adorned with her art.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Lewis was born in South Ohio, Nova Scotia, the daughter of John and Agnes (Germain) Dowley. She had one brother, Charles. She was born with birth defects and ultimately developed rheumatoid arthritis, which reduced her mobility, especially in her hands. Lewis's father was a blacksmith and harness maker who owned a harness shop in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. His business enabled Lewis to enjoy a middle-class childhood. She was introduced to art by her mother, who instructed her in the making of watercolour Christmas cards to sell. Lewis began her artistic career by selling hand-drawn and painted Christmas cards.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Lewis's father John died in 1935, and her mother followed him in 1937. After living with her brother for a short while, she moved to Digby, Nova Scotia to live with her aunt.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Dowley married Everett Lewis, a fish peddler from Marshalltown, on January 16, 1938, at the age of 34. He also worked as the watchman at the county Poor Farm. According to Everett, Maud showed up at his doorstep in response to an ad he had posted in the local stores for a "live-in or keep house" for a 40-year-old bachelor. Several weeks later, they married.


title: Maud Lewis

text: They lived in Everett's one-room house with a sleeping loft, in Marshalltown, a few miles west of Digby. Maud used the house as her studio, while Everett took care of the housework. They lived mostly in poverty.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Maud Lewis accompanied her husband on his daily rounds peddling fish door-to-door, bringing along Christmas cards she had painted. She sold the cards for five cents each, the same price her mother had charged for the cards she had made when Maud was a girl. These cards proved popular with her husband's customers. When Everett was hired as a night watchman at the neighbouring Poor Farm in 1939, Lewis began selling her Christmas cards and paintings directly from their home. Everett encouraged Lewis to paint, and he bought her her first set of oils.


title: Maud Lewis

text: She expanded her range, using other surfaces for painting, such as pulp boards (beaverboards), cookie sheets, and Masonite. Lewis was a prolific artist and also painted on more or less every available surface in their tiny home: walls, doors, breadboxes, and even the stove. She completely covered the simple patterned commercial wallpaper with sinewy stems, leaves, and blossoms.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Lewis used bright colours in her paintings, and her subjects were often flowers or animals, including oxen teams, horses, birds, deer, and cats. Many of her paintings are of outdoor scenes, including Cape Island boats bobbing on the water, horses pulling a sleigh, skaters, and portraits of dogs, cats, deer, birds, and cows. Her paintings were inspired by childhood memories of the landscape and people around Yarmouth and South Ohio, as well as Digby locations such as Point Prim and Bayview. Commercial Christmas cards and calendars also influenced her.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Lewis returned to the same subjects again and again, each time painting them slightly differently. For instance, she made dozens, if not hundreds, of images of cats over the course of her career. The serial nature of her practice was partly motivated by customer demand; she repeated compositions that sold well while discarding less popular ones. “I put the same things in, I never change,” she said of her style on the CBC program Telescope in 1965. “Same colours and same designs.”


title: Maud Lewis

text: Many of her paintings are quite small, no larger than eight by ten inches, although she is known to have done at least five paintings that are 24 inches by 36 inches. For several years, Everett cut the boards for the paintings to size, although near the end of her career she was purchasing Masonite pre-cut to set dimensions. The size of her paintings was limited by the extent she could move her arms, which were affected by arthritis. She used mostly wallboard and tubes of Tinsol, an oil-based paint. Her technique consisted of first coating the board with white, then drawing an outline, and applying paint directly out of the tube. She never blended or mixed colours.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Early Maud Lewis paintings from the 1940s are quite rare. A large collection of Lewis' work can be found in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS). It occasionally displays the Chaplin/Wennerstrom shutters (now part of the Clearwater Fine Foods Inc. collection) comprising 22 exterior house shutters Lewis painted in the early 1940s for some Americans who owned a cottage on the South Shore. Most of the shutters are quite large, at 5 ft x 1 ft.6 inches. Lewis was paid 70 cents a shutter.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Between 1945 and 1950, people began to stop at Lewis' Marshalltown home on Highway No. 1, Nova Scotia's main highway and tourist route, buying her paintings for two or three dollars each. Only in the last three or four years of her life did Lewis's paintings begin to sell for seven to ten dollars. She achieved national attention as a folk artist following an article in the Toronto-based "Star Weekly" in 1964. In 1965, she was featured on CBC-TV's "Telescope". Two of Lewis' paintings were ordered by the White House in the 1970s during Richard Nixon's presidency. Her arthritis limited her ability to complete many of the orders that resulted from her national recognition.


title: Maud Lewis

text: In the last year of her life, Lewis stayed in one corner of her house, painting as often as she could while traveling back and forth to the hospital for treatment of health issues. She died in Digby on July 30, 1970, from pneumonia. Her husband Everett was killed in 1979 by a burglar during an attempted robbery of the house.


title: Maud Lewis

text: After Everett Lewis's death, their painted house began to deteriorate. A group of concerned citizens from the Digby area started the Maud Lewis Painted House Society to save the landmark. In 1984, it was sold to the Province of Nova Scotia and transferred to the care of the AGNS, which restored the house and installed it as part of its permanent Lewis exhibit.


title: Maud Lewis

text: A steel memorial sculpture based on the Lewis's house has been erected at the original homesite in Marshalltown, designed by architect Brian MacKay-Lyons. A replica of the Maud Lewis House was built in 1999 by retired fisherman Murray Ross, complete with finished interior. It is a few kilometres north of Marshalltown on the road to Digby Neck in Seabrook.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Lewis was recognized as the provincial Heritage Day honouree for 2019, and a limited edition postage stamp featuring her art was released. Canada Post announced that Maud Lewis paintings would be featured on the 2020 Christmas and holiday postage stamps. Her paintings were featured on three stamps issued on November 2, 2020, at Digby, Nova Scotia. "Family and Sled" (ca. 1960s) appeared on the domestic-rate stamp. "Team of Oxen in Winter" (1967) was released with a face value of $1.30 (the rate for mail to the United States), and "Winter Sleigh Ride" (early 1960s) carried a face value of $2.71 (the first-class rate for mail to other international addresses). The stamps were issued as a gummed souvenir sheet set of three, and in three separate booklets of self-adhesive stamps.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Lewis's paintings have sold at auction for ever increasing prices. On November 30, 2009, "A Family Outing" sold for C$22,200 at a Bonham's auction in Toronto. Another, "A View of Sandy Cove", sold in 2012 for C$20,400. A painting found in 2016 at an Ontario thrift store, "Portrait of Eddie Barnes and Ed Murphy, Lobster Fishermen", sold in an online auction for C$45,000. "Black Truck", depicting the eponymous vehicle driving on road bordered with flowers, sold at auction in Toronto for C$350,000 in May 2022.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Lewis is the subject of a book by Lance Woolaver, "The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis", and three National Film Board of Canada documentaries: "Maud Lewis - A World Without Shadows" (1976), "The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis" (1998), and "I Can Make Art ... Like Maud Lewis" (2005). The latter is a short film in which a group of Grade 6 students are inspired by Lewis' work to create their own folk art painting.


title: Maud Lewis

text: In 2009, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, in conjunction with Greg Thompson Productions, produced a new play about Lewis at the AGNS. "A Happy Heart: The Maud Lewis Story" was written and produced by Greg Thompson, who produced "Marilyn: Forever Blonde" at the AGNS in January 2008. Thompson wrote the one-woman play about Lewis while in Nova Scotia in 2008. It ran until October 25, 2009.


title: Maud Lewis

text: Screenwriter Sherry White wrote "Maudie", a feature dramatic film about Lewis that made its Canadian debut at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. Directed by Aisling Walsh, it stars Sally Hawkins as Maud and Ethan Hawke as Everett.


title: Maud Lewis

text: The Russian-Canadian composer Nikolai Korndof (1947-2001) wrote an orchestral piece The Smile of Maud Lewis (1998). Recorded in a performance for orchestra conducted by Leslie Dala (Redshift TK516) released in 2022. Review: www.gramophone.co.uk October 2022.


title: Coffee percolator

text: A coffee percolator is a type of pot used for the brewing of coffee by continually cycling the boiling or nearly boiling brew through the grounds using gravity until the required strength is reached.


title: Coffee percolator

text: Coffee percolators once enjoyed great popularity but were supplanted in the early 1970s by automatic drip coffee makers. Percolators often expose the grounds to higher temperatures than other brewing methods, and may recirculate already brewed coffee through the beans. As a result, coffee brewed with a percolator is particularly susceptible to overextraction. However, percolator enthusiasts maintain that the potential pitfalls of this brewing method can be eliminated by careful control of the brewing process.


title: Coffee percolator

text: A coffee percolator consists of a pot with a small chamber at the bottom which is nearest to the heat source. A removable vertical tube leads from there to the top of the percolator. Just below the upper end of this tube is a perforated "basket" to hold the grounds to be brewed.


title: Coffee percolator

text: Water is poured into the pot, keeping the level below the bottom of the basket, and the desired amount of a fairly coarse-ground coffee is placed in the basket.


title: Coffee percolator

text: The percolator is placed on a range or stove, heating the water in the bottom chamber. Water at the very bottom of the chamber gets hot first and starts to boil. The boiling creates bubbles of steam that are directed up the vertical tube, pushing hot water along with it up and out the top of the tube in a process similar to the principle behind a gas lift pump. The hot water hits the underside of the lid, and flows out and over the inner lid of the coffee basket. Perforations in the inner lid distribute the water over the top of the coffee grounds in the basket. From there the freshly brewed coffee drops into the gradually warming water below. This whole cycle repeats continuously, making the characteristic intermittent "perking" sound of the hot water hitting the underside of the lid.


title: Coffee percolator

text: As the brewing coffee nears the boiling point, the "perking" sound becomes a continuous gurgle, signalling that the coffee is ready to drink. In a manual percolator the pot is removed from the stove or the heat reduced to stop the percolation. Brewed coffee left continuously percolating at the boiling point will overextract, making the resulting coffee harsh and excessively bitter.


title: Coffee percolator

text: Some coffee percolators have an integral electric heating element and are not used on a stove. Most of these automatically reduce the heat at the end of the brewing phase, keeping the coffee at drinking temperature but not boiling.


title: Coffee percolator

text: The first modern percolator incorporating the rising of boiling water through a tube to form a continuous cycle and capable of being heated on a kitchen stove was invented in 1819 by the Parisian tinsmith Joseph-Henry-Marie Laurens. Its principle was then often copied and modified. There were also attempts to produce closed systems, in other words "pressure cookers".


title: Coffee percolator

text: The first US patent for a coffee percolator was issued to James Nason of Franklin, Massachusetts, in 1865, . This mechanism did not use the conventional percolation method as described above.


title: Coffee percolator

text: An Illinois farmer named Hanson Goodrich patented the modern U.S. stove-top percolator as it is known today, and he was granted on August 13, 1889. It had the key elements of a conventional percolator: the broad base for boiling, the upflow central tube and a perforated basket hanging on it. Goodrich's design could transform any standard coffee pot of the day into a stove-top percolator. Subsequent patents have added very little.


title: Coffee percolator

text: There has also been a claim that the world's first electric coffee percolator was invented by the British company Russell Hobbs in 1952. However, electric percolators have been in production since at least the 1920s and automatic electric percolators have been available since the 1940s or earlier.


title: Coffee percolator

text: In addition to being used in the home, percolators are also popular among campers and outdoorspeople because of their ability to make coffee without electricity, although a simple filter holder can also be used with boiled water poured from a pot – e.g., the type of holder invented by Melitta Bentz in 1908. Non-pressure percolators may also be used with paper filters. Large percolators, called coffee urns, are often found in use at offices, cafeterias, community events, church gatherings and other large group activities where large quantities of coffee are needed at one time.


title: Coffee percolator

text: The method for making coffee in a percolator had changed very little since the introduction of the electric percolator in the early part of the 20th century. However, in 1970 commercially available "ground coffee filter rings" were introduced to the market. The coffee filter rings were designed for use in percolators, and each ring contained a pre-measured amount of coffee grounds that were sealed in a self-contained paper filter. The sealed rings resembled the shape of a doughnut, and the small hole in the middle of the ring enabled the coffee filter ring to be placed in the metal percolator basket around the protruding convection (percolator) tube.


title: Coffee percolator

text: Prior to the introduction of pre-measured self-contained ground coffee filter rings, fresh coffee grounds were measured out in scoopsful and placed into the metal percolator basket. This process enabled small amounts of coffee grounds to leak into the fresh coffee. Additionally, the process left wet grounds in the percolator basket. The benefit of the pre-packed coffee filter rings was two-fold: First, because the amount of coffee contained in the rings was pre-measured, it negated the need to measure each scoop and then place it in the metal percolator basket. Second, the filter paper was strong enough to hold all the coffee grounds within the sealed paper. After use, the coffee filter ring could be easily removed from the basket and discarded. This relieved the consumer from the task of cleaning out the wet coffee grounds from the percolator basket.


title: Coffee percolator

text: With better brands of instant coffee and the introduction of the electric drip coffee maker in the early 1970s, the popularity of percolators plummeted, and so did the market for the self-contained ground coffee filters. In 1976, General Foods discontinued the manufacture of Max Pax, and by the end of the decade, even generic ground coffee filter rings were no longer available. However, as of 2019, coffee percolator filters are still produced by the major coffee device maker Melitta and are readily available in stores and from online sources.


title: Coffee percolator

text: The name is derived from the word "percolate" which means "to cause (a solvent) to pass through a permeable substance especially for extracting a soluble constituent". In the case of coffee-brewing the solvent is water, the permeable substance is the coffee grounds, and the soluble constituents are the chemical compounds that give coffee its color, taste, aroma, and stimulating properties.


title: Coffee percolator

text: While many popular brewing methods and devices use percolation to make coffee, the term "percolator" tends to narrowly refer to devices similar to the stove-top coffee pots developed by Hanson Goodrich in the 1880s. His percolator was one of the earliest coffee brewing devices to use percolation rather than infusion or decoction as its mode of extraction, and he named it accordingly. Other brewing methods based on percolation followed, and this early naming convention can cause confusion with other percolation methods.


title: Coffee percolator

text: In 1813, Benjamin Thomson, Count Rumford published his essay, "Of the Excellent Qualities of Coffee", in which he disclosed several designs for percolation methods which would now be most closely related to drip brewing.


title: Coffee percolator

text: Siphon brewers appeared in the early 1830s. Using a combination of infusion and percolation, they were the first development in coffee percolation. However, the complex, fragile devices remained a curiosity. Siphon brewing relies on vapor pressure to raise water from a pressure chamber up to the brewing chamber where the coffee is infused. Once the heat source has been removed from the pressure chamber, the atmosphere within cools, lowering the pressure and drawing the coffee through a filter and back into the pressure chamber. Distinctions from percolator brewing include the fact that the majority of the extraction takes place during the infusion phase (as an immersion brewer) and that the water is not recycled through the grounds.


title: Coffee percolator

text: Filter drip brewing (invented 1908, Melitta Bentz) uses a bed of coffee grounds placed in a holder with a filter to prevent passage of the grounds into the filtrate and hot water is passed through the grounds by gravity. This is distinct from percolator brewing due to the fact that the water is not recycled through the grounds, and the water does not have to be boiled to reach the brew chamber. (In many automatic drip machines, the water is boiled or nearly boiled to raise it through a tube to the brewing chamber, but this is an implementation detail specific to those machines, and not required by the process, which was first used manually.)


title: Coffee percolator

text: Moka brewing (invented 1933, Alfonso Bialetti) uses a bed of coffee grounds placed in a filter basket between a pressure chamber and receptacle. Vapor pressure above the water heated in the pressure chamber forces the water through the grounds, past the filter, and into the receptacle. The amount of vapor pressure that builds up, and the temperature reached, are dependent on the grind and packing ("tamping") of the grounds. This is distinct from percolator brewing in that pressure, rather than gravity, moves the water through the grounds; that the water is not recycled through the grounds; and that the water does not have to be boiled to reach the brew chamber. In the South of Europe, in countries like Italy or Spain, the domestic use of the moka expanded quickly and completely substituted the percolator by the end of the 1930s.


title: Coffee percolator

text: Since both percolator and drip brewing were available and popular in the North American market throughout the 20th century, there is little confusion in the United States and Canada between these methods. However, moka pots have only recently become readily available in that market; and vendors and customers alike often conflate moka pots with percolators, despite their fairly disparate mechanics and results.


title: Errol Morris

text: Errol Mark Morris (born February 5, 1948) is an American film director known for documentaries that interrogate the epistemology of its subjects. In 2003, his documentary film "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara" won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. His film "The Thin Blue Line" placed fifth on "Sight & Sound"'s poll of the greatest documentaries ever made. Morris is known for making films about unusual subjects; "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" interweaves the stories of a wild animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist and a naked mole rat specialist.


title: Errol Morris

text: Morris was born on February 5, 1948, into a Jewish family in Hewlett, New York. His father died when he was two and he was raised by his mother, a piano teacher. He had one older brother, Noel, who was a computer programmer. After being treated for strabismus in childhood, Morris refused to wear an eye patch. As a consequence, he has limited sight in one eye and lacks normal stereoscopic vision.


title: Errol Morris

text: In the 10th grade, Morris attended The Putney School, a boarding school in Vermont. He began playing the cello, spending a summer in France studying music under the acclaimed Nadia Boulanger, who also taught Morris's future collaborator Philip Glass. Describing Morris as a teenager, Mark Singer wrote that he "read with a passion the 14-odd "Oz" books, watched a lot of television, and on a regular basis went with a doting but not quite right maiden aunt ('I guess you'd have to say that Aunt Roz was somewhat demented') to Saturday matinées, where he saw such films as "This Island Earth" and "Creature from the Black Lagoon"—horror movies that, viewed again 30 years later, still seem scary to him."


title: Errol Morris

text: Morris attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts in history. For a brief time, Morris held small jobs, first as a cable-television salesman, and then as a term-paper writer. His unorthodox approach to applying for graduate school included "trying to get accepted at different graduate schools just by showing up on their doorstep." Having unsuccessfully approached both the University of Oxford and Harvard University, Morris was able to talk his way into Princeton University, where he began studying the history of science, a topic in which he had "absolutely no background." His concentration was in the history of physics, and he was bored and unsuccessful in the prerequisite physics classes he had to take. This, together with his antagonistic relationship with his advisor Thomas Kuhn ('You won't even look through my telescope.' And his response was 'Errol, it's not a telescope, it's a kaleidoscope.') ensured that his stay at Princeton would be short.


title: Errol Morris

text: Morris left Princeton in 1972, enrolling at Berkeley as a doctoral student in philosophy. At Berkeley, he once again found that he was not well-suited to his subject. "Berkeley was just a world of pedants. It was truly shocking. I spent two or three years in the philosophy program. I have very bad feelings about it," he later said.


title: Errol Morris

text: After leaving UC Berkeley, he became a regular at the Pacific Film Archive. As Tom Luddy, the director of the archive at the time, later remembered: "He was a film noir nut. He claimed we weren't showing the real film noir. So I challenged him to write the program notes. Then, there was his habit of sneaking into the films and denying that he was sneaking in. I told him if he was sneaking in he should at least admit he was doing it."


title: Errol Morris

text: Inspired by Hitchcock's "Psycho", Morris visited Plainfield, Wisconsin, in 1975. While in Wisconsin, he conducted multiple interviews with Ed Gein, the infamous serial killer who resided at Mendota State Hospital in Madison. He later made plans with German film director Werner Herzog, whom Tom Luddy had introduced to Morris, to return in the summer of 1975 to secretly open the grave of Gein's mother to test their theory that Gein himself had already dug her up. Herzog arrived on schedule, but Morris had second thoughts and was not there. Herzog did not open the grave. Morris later returned to Plainfield, this time staying for almost a year, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews. Although he had plans to either write a book or make a film (which he would call "Digging up the Past"), Morris never completed his Ed Gein project.


title: Errol Morris

text: In the fall of 1976, Herzog visited Plainfield again, this time to shoot part of his film "Stroszek".


title: Errol Morris

text: Morris accepted $2,000 from Herzog and used it to take a trip to Vernon, Florida. Vernon was nicknamed "Nub City" because its residents participated in a particularly gruesome form of insurance fraud in which they deliberately amputated a limb to collect the insurance money. Morris's second documentary was about the town and bore its name, although it made no mention of Vernon as "Nub City", but instead explored other idiosyncrasies of the town's residents. Morris made this omission because he received death threats while doing research; the town's residents were afraid that Morris would reveal their secret.


title: Errol Morris

text: After spending two weeks in Vernon, Morris returned to Berkeley and began working on a script for a work of fiction that he called "Nub City." After a few unproductive months, he happened upon a headline in the "San Francisco Chronicle" that read, "450 Dead Pets Going to Napa Valley." Morris left for Napa Valley and began working on the film that would become his first feature, "Gates of Heaven", which premiered in 1978. Herzog had said he would eat his shoe if Morris completed the documentary. After the film premiered, Herzog publicly followed through on the bet by cooking and eating his shoe, which was documented in the short film "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe" by Les Blank.


title: Errol Morris

text: "Gates of Heaven" was given a limited release in the spring of 1981. Critic Roger Ebert was and remained a champion of the film, including it on his all-time top-10 best films list. Morris returned to Vernon in 1979 and again in 1980, renting a house in town and conducting interviews with the town's citizens. "Vernon, Florida" premiered at the 1981 New York Film Festival. "Newsweek" called it, "a film as odd and mysterious as its subjects, and quite unforgettable." The film, like "Gates of Heaven", suffered from poor distribution. It was released on video in 1987, and DVD in 2005.


title: Errol Morris

text: After finishing "Vernon, Florida", Morris tried to get funding for a variety of projects. The "Road" story was about an interstate highway in Minnesota; one project was about Robert Golka, the creator of laser-induced fireballs in Utah; and another story was about Centralia, Pennsylvania, the coal town in which an inextinguishable subterranean fire ignited in 1962. He eventually got funding in 1983 to write a script about John and Jim Pardue, Missouri bank robbers who had killed their father and grandmother and robbed five banks. Morris's pitch went, "The great bank-robbery sprees always take place at a time when something is going wrong in the country. Bonnie and Clyde were apolitical, but it's impossible to imagine them without the Depression as a backdrop. The Pardue brothers were apolitical, but it's impossible to imagine them without Vietnam." Morris wanted Tom Waits and Mickey Rourke to play the brothers, and he wrote the script, but the project eventually failed. Morris worked on writing scripts for various other projects, including a pair of ill-fated Stephen King adaptations.


title: Errol Morris

text: In 1984, Morris married Julia Sheehan, whom he had met in Wisconsin while researching Ed Gein and other serial killers. He would later recall an early conversation with Julia: "I was talking to a mass murderer but I was thinking of you," he said, and instantly regretted it, afraid that it might not have sounded as affectionate as he had wished. But Julia was actually flattered: "I thought, really, that was one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me. It was hard to go out with other guys after that."


title: Errol Morris

text: In 1985, Morris became interested in Dr. James Grigson, a psychiatrist in Dallas. Under Texas law, the death penalty can only be issued if the jury is convinced that the defendant is not only guilty, but will commit further violent crimes in the future if he is not put to death. Grigson had spent 15 years testifying for such cases, and he almost invariably gave the same damning testimony, often saying that it is "one hundred per cent certain" that the defendant would kill again. This led to Grigson being nicknamed "Dr. Death." Through Grigson, Morris met the subject of his next film, 36-year-old Randall Dale Adams.


title: Errol Morris

text: Adams was serving a life sentence that had been commuted from a death sentence on a legal technicality for the 1976 murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer. Adams told Morris that he had been framed, and that David Harris, who was present at the time of the murder and was the principal witness for the prosecution, had in fact killed Wood. Morris began researching the case because it related to Dr. Grigson. He was at first unconvinced of Adams's innocence. After reading the transcripts of the trial and meeting David Harris at a bar, however, Morris was no longer so sure.


title: Errol Morris

text: At the time, Morris had been making a living as a private investigator for a well-known private detective agency that specialized in Wall Street cases. Bringing together his talents as an investigator and his obsessions with murder, narration, and epistemology, Morris went to work on the case in earnest. Unedited interviews in which the prosecution's witnesses systematically contradicted themselves were used as testimony in Adams's 1986 "habeas corpus" hearing to determine if he would receive a new trial. David Harris famously confessed, in a roundabout manner, to killing Wood.


title: Errol Morris

text: Although Adams was finally found innocent after years of being processed by the legal system, the judge in the "habeas corpus" hearing officially stated that, "much could be said about those videotape interviews, but nothing that would have any bearing on the matter before this court." Regardless, "The Thin Blue Line", as Morris's film would be called, was popularly accepted as the main force behind getting its subject, Randall Adams, out of prison. As Morris said of the film, ""The Thin Blue Line" is two movies grafted together. On one simple level is the question, Did he do it, or didn't he? And on another level, "The Thin Blue Line", properly considered, is an essay on false history. A whole group of people, literally everyone, believed a version of the world that was entirely wrong, and my accidental investigation of the story provided a different version of what happened."


title: Errol Morris

text: "The Thin Blue Line" ranks among the most critically acclaimed documentaries ever made. According to a survey by "The Washington Post", the film made dozens of critics' top ten lists for 1988, more than any other film that year. It won the documentary of the year award from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Despite its widespread acclaim, it was not nominated for an Oscar, which created a small scandal regarding the nomination practices of the academy. The academy cited the film's genre of "non-fiction", arguing that it was not actually a documentary. It was the first of Morris's films to be scored by Philip Glass.


title: Errol Morris

text: Morris wanted to make a film about what happened to Albert Einstein's brain and approached Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment about it. Gordon Freeman had acquired the rights to Stephen Hawking's bestseller "A Brief History of Time" and Spielberg suggested Morris direct it. After Hawking's book, Morris agreed to direct a documentary adaptation of it, as he had studied the philosophy of science at Princeton. Morris's film "A Brief History of Time" is less an adaptation of Hawking's book than a portrait of the scientist. It combines interviews with Hawking, his colleagues and his family with computer animations and clips from movies like Disney's "The Black Hole". Morris said he was "very moved by Hawking as a man", calling him "immensely likable, perverse, funny...and yes, he's a genius."


title: Errol Morris

text: Morris's "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" interweaves interviews with a wild animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist and a naked mole rat specialist with stock footage, cartoons and clips from film serials. In a profile of Morris, Roger Ebert said of the film "If I had to describe it, I'd say it's about people who are trying to control things - to take upon themselves the mantle of God." Morris agreed there was a "Frankenstein element", adding "They're all involved in some very odd inquiry about life. It sounds horribly pretentious laid out that way, but there's something mysterious in each of the stories, something melancholy as well as funny. And there's an edge of mortality. For the end of the movie I showed the gardener clipping the top of his camel, clipping in a heavenly light, and then walking away in the rain. You know that this garden is not going to last much longer than the gardener's lifetime." The film was scored by Caleb Sampson of the Alloy Orchestra and photographed by Robert Richardson. Morris dedicated the film to his mother and stepfather, who had recently died. The film was described by several critics as one of the best films of 1997.


title: Errol Morris

text: Although Morris has achieved fame as a documentary filmmaker, he is also an accomplished director of television commercials. In 2002, Morris directed a series of television ads for Apple Computer as part of a popular "Switch" campaign. The commercials featured ex-Windows users discussing their various bad experiences that motivated their own personal switches to Macintosh. One commercial in the series, starring Ellen Feiss, a high-schooler friend of his son Hamilton Morris, became an Internet meme. Morris has directed hundreds of commercials for various companies and products, including Adidas, AIG, Cisco Systems, Citibank, Kimberly-Clark's Depend brand, Levi's, Miller High Life, Nike, PBS, The Quaker Oats Company, Southern Comfort, EA Sports, Toyota and Volkswagen. Many of these commercials are available on his website.


title: Errol Morris

text: In 2002, Morris was commissioned to make a short film for the 75th Academy Awards. He was hired based on his advertising resume, not his career as a director of feature-length documentaries. Those interviewed ranged from Laura Bush to Iggy Pop to Kenneth Arrow to Morris's 15-year-old son Hamilton. Morris was nominated for an Emmy for this short film. He considered editing this footage into a feature-length film, focusing on Donald Trump discussing "Citizen Kane" (this segment was later released on the second issue of "Wholphin"). Morris went on to make a second short for the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, this time interviewing the various nominees and asking them about their Oscar experiences.


title: Errol Morris

text: In 2003, Morris won the Oscar for Best Documentary for "The Fog of War", a film about the career of Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In the haunting opening about McNamara's relationship with U.S. General Curtis LeMay during World War II, Morris brings out complexities in the character of McNamara, which shaped McNamara's positions in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. Like his earlier documentary, "The Thin Blue Line," "The Fog of War" included extensive use of re-enactments, a technique which many had believed was inappropriate for documentaries prior to his Oscar win.


title: Errol Morris

text: In July 2004, Morris directed another series of commercials in the style of the "Switch" ads. This campaign featured Republicans who voted for Bush in the 2000 election giving their personal reasons for voting for Kerry in 2004. Upon completing more than 50 commercials, Morris had difficulty getting them on the air. Eventually, the liberal advocacy group MoveOn PAC paid to air a few of the commercials. Morris also wrote an editorial for "The New York Times" discussing the commercials and Kerry's losing campaign.


title: Errol Morris

text: In late 2004, Morris directed a series of noteworthy commercials for Sharp Electronics. The commercials enigmatically depicted various scenes from what appeared to be a short narrative that climaxed with a car crashing into a swimming pool. Each commercial showed a slightly different perspective on the events, and each ended with a cryptic weblink. The weblink was to a fake webpage advertising a prize offered to anyone who could discover the secret location of some valuable urns. It was in fact an alternate reality game. The original commercials can be found on Morris's website.


title: Errol Morris

text: Morris directed a series of commercials for Reebok that featured six prominent National Football League (NFL) players. The 30-second promotional videos were aired during the 2006 NFL season.


title: Errol Morris

text: In 2013, Morris stated that he has made around 1,000 commercials during his career. Since then he has continued in the field, including a 2019 campaign for Chipotle.


title: Errol Morris

text: Morris encountered controversy when he agreed to film commercials for disgraced medical technology firm Theranos. The commercials advocate the advantages of Theranos' proposed single drop blood draws, which were being operated in Walgreens wellness centers in California and Arizona and intended to launch nationwide. Theranos was later found to be a fraudulent company, and when asked about his work for the company by Alex Gibney, Morris refused to discuss it at all, even off the record. In a 2019 "New Yorker" interview, Morris reflected, "To me, what really is interesting about Elizabeth [Holmes] ... did she really see herself as a fraud? ... Was it calculation? I have a hard time squaring that with my own experience. Could I have been self-deceived, delusional? You betcha. I'm no different than the next guy. I'd like to think I'm a little different. But I’m still fascinated by her."


title: Errol Morris

text: In early 2010, a new Morris documentary was submitted to several film festivals, including Toronto International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and Telluride Film Festival. The film, "Tabloid", features interviews with Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming, who was convicted "in absentia" for the kidnap and indecent assault of a Mormon missionary in England during 1977.


title: Errol Morris

text: Morris has also written long-form journalism, exploring different areas of interest and published on "The New York Times" website. A collection of these essays, titled "Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography," was published by Penguin Press on September 1, 2011. In November 2011, Morris premiered a documentary short titled "The Umbrella Man"—featuring Josiah "Tink" Thompson—about the Kennedy assassination on "The New York Times" website.


title: Errol Morris

text: In 2012, Morris published his second book, "", about Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret physician convicted of killing his wife and two daughters on February 17, 1970. Morris first became interested in the case in the early 1990s and believes that MacDonald is not guilty after undertaking extensive research. Morris explained in a July 2013 interview, prior to the reopening of the case: "What happened here is wrong. It's wrong to convict a man under these circumstances. And if I can help correct that, I will be a happy camper." He now states that he does not believe that Macdonald is guilty, but thinks it possible that Macdonald is guilty.


title: Errol Morris

text: To conduct interviews, Morris invented a machine, called the Interrotron, which allows Morris and his subject to talk to each other through the camera lens itself. He explains the device as follows:


title: Errol Morris

text: Author Marsha McCreadie, in her book "Documentary Superstars: How Today's Filmmakers Are Reinventing the Form", had paired Morris with Werner Herzog as practitioners and visionaries in their approach in documentary filmmaking.


title: Errol Morris

text: Morris employs the use of narrative elements within his films. These include but are not limited to: stylized lighting, musical score, and re-enactment. The use of these elements is rejected by many documentary filmmakers who followed the cinema vérité style of the previous generations. Cinema vérité is characterized by its rejection of artistic additions to documentary film. While Morris faced backlash from many of the older-era filmmakers, his style has been embraced by the younger generations of filmmakers, as the use of re-enactment is present in many contemporary documentary films.


title: Errol Morris

text: Morris advocates the reflexive style of documentary filmmaking. In Bill Nichols's book "Introduction to Documentary" he states that reflexive documentary "[speaks] not only about the historical world but about the problems and issues of representing it as well." Morris uses his films not only to portray social issues and non-fiction events but also to comment on the reliability of documentary making itself.


title: Errol Morris

text: Even when interviewing controversial figures, Morris does not generally believe in adversarial interviews:I don’t really believe in adversarial interviews. I don’t think you learn very much. You create a theater, a gladiatorial theater, which may be satisfying to an audience, but if the goal is to learn something that you don’t know, that’s not the way to go about doing it. In fact, it’s the way to destroy the possibility of ever hearing anything interesting or new. ... the most interesting and most revealing comments have come not as a result of a question at all, but having set up a situation where people actually want to talk to you, and want to reveal something to you.However, in "American Dharma", his interview with Steve Bannon about the 2016 election of Donald Trump, he "came out from behind the camera," in voice if not in face, and challenged his subject much more than he has in most of his previous films.


"Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" (also titled "Against All Odds") is a song by English drummer, singer and songwriter Phil Collins. It was recorded for the soundtrack to the 1984 film of the same name. It is a power ballad in which its protagonist implores an ex-lover to "take a look at me now," knowing that reconciliation is "against all odds," but worth the gamble. The single reached No. 1 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the United States, the first of seven US No. 1's for Collins in his solo career. "Against All Odds (Take a Look At Me Now)" also topped the charts in Canada, Ireland, and Norway, while peaking at No. 2 in the United Kingdom.


title: Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)

text: The song has been covered by several singers, some versions of which have been successful in both the US and UK markets. The song has twice reached No. 1 in the UK singles chart: the pairing of Mariah Carey and boyband Westlife, in September 2000, and then again by Steve Brookstein, the first winner of "The X Factor", in January 2005.


text: Collins was approached to write the title song to the film "Against All Odds" while it was still in its preliminary "rough cut form". At the time the soundtrack was being completed, Collins was on tour with Genesis. Director Taylor Hackford flew into Chicago to see one of the band's concerts. Collins watched the movie on a videocassette recorder in his hotel room and agreed to appear on the soundtrack.


text: Originally titled "How Can You Just Sit There?", the song's music was written by Collins during sessions for his debut solo album "Face Value" (1981), but it fell by the wayside as it was his least favourite of the several ballads he wrote at the time. Neither was it included on "Hello, I Must Be Going!", as many newer songs were written for it. Eventually, Collins presented the demo to Taylor Hackford when approached to write a song for the "Against All Odds" movie, which he loved. Then Collins penned the lyrics, which were for the film. Due to lack of time available (as he was on tour with Genesis), he had arranger Arif Mardin produce it, and they worked on it over two days. The piano performance is by New York musician Rob Mounsey. Piano, keyboard bass and a string section arranged and conducted by Mardin were recorded at RCA Studios, New York, while Collins recorded vocals and drums in Los Angeles.


text: On episode 339 of "This American Life", "Break Up", Collins relays that the song was inspired and written shortly after the breakup between him and his first wife. In the interview he says that the divorce transformed him from being a musician into also being a lyricist.


text: The song was first included on a Collins album on the 1998 compilation "Hits", and it also appeared on his compilation "" (2004). A live performance of the song also appears on the "Serious Hits... Live!" album. In 2015, Collins released the original demo recording from the "Face Value" sessions as part of his "Take A Look At Me Now" project.


text: "Against All Odds" was created explicitly for the movie, although it was based on an earlier unreleased song Collins had written in 1981. Hackford, who previously used a song for the 1982 American drama film "An Officer and a Gentleman", planned the same for the neo-noir 1984 film "Against All Odds", which is a remake of "Out of the Past". When he signed with Atlantic Records, he was provided with a roster of artists, among whom Collins was chosen to render the film's theme song based on the quality of his voice. Hackford said that it was a "textbook case of designing a song to reflect what the film is". The song appears in the movie as background music during the closing credits.


text: Writing for the soundtrack's review, Allmusic editor Heather Phares claimed that the film is best remembered for the inclusion of Collins' "classic theme song". Phares added that the song "remains not only one of Collins' definitive singles, but one of the 1980s' best love songs". Director Hackford also had the same view, stating that it "decidedly" helped the film: people identified the song with the film and came to watch it. When the single reached the top five, it contributed to the increased box office sales of the movie.


text: "Against All Odds" won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male in 1985, was nominated for Song of the Year and for an Academy Award as well as for a Golden Globe both in the Best Original Song categories. At the Academy Awards ceremony, Collins was not invited to sing his song on stage and instead sat in the audience as dancer Ann Reinking gave a mostly lip-synced vocal performance accompanied by a dance routine. Reinking's performance was poorly received by critics from the "Los Angeles Times" and "People", as well as by Collins himself in a "Rolling Stone" interview.