title: Michael Tucci

text: Tucci was born in New York City, New York, the son of Minerva D. (née LaRosa) and Nicholas Tucci, a business executive. He graduated from H. Frank Carey Junior-Senior High School in Franklin Square, New York and C.W. Post College of Long Island University, where he was President of local Sigma Beta Epsilon fraternity that had Marjorie Merriweather Post as its honorary house mother and later became a chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon national fraternity. Tucci also served as a dormitory Residence Manager. He also earned a J.D. degree from St. John's Law School. He is married to a former television network executive, Kathleen, with whom he has two daughters, Kate (b. 1989) and Kelly (b. 1994).


title: Michael Tucci

text: Tucci is best known for playing the T-Birds member Sonny LaTierri in the 1978 film version of the musical "Grease". He portrayed law student Gerald Golden in the TV series "The Paper Chase" from 1983 to 1986. He then played best friend Pete Schumaker on "It's Garry Shandling's Show" (1986–1990). He also spent more than three years touring with companies of the musical "Chicago," performing as Amos, Roxy Hart's husband. He also performed as the Green Apple in the play "Destination" by Uta Hagen. He was also in numerous productions on Broadway.


title: Michael Tucci

text: On television, he also played 's friend and hospital administrator Norman Briggs for the first four seasons of "". He played the father of Melissa McCarthy's character in "The Heat" (2013).


title: Michael Tucci

text: Tucci was also a teacher and theatre coach at St. Francis High School in La Cañada Flintridge, California. In 2014 he directed the school's rendition of "We're the Millers" starring American Croatian comedians George Dulcich and Stanko Zovak.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Olivia "Liv" Boeree (born 18 July 1984) is a British science communicator, television presenter and former professional poker player. She is a World Series of Poker and European Poker Tour champion, and is the only female player in history to win both a WSOP bracelet and an EPT event. Boeree is a 3× winner of the Global Poker Index European Female Player of the year. , having retired in late 2019, Boeree still ranks among the top ten women in poker history in terms of all-time money winnings.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Boeree was born in Kent in the South East of England on 18 July 1984 and studied at Ashford School before going on to earn a First Class Honours degree in Physics with Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. During this time she played lead guitar in heavy metal band "Dissonance" and modelled for a number of alternative clothing brands such as Alchemy Gothic.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Boeree was introduced to the poker industry when she was selected as one of five contestants for the reality TV show "Ultimatepoker.com Showdown", which aired on Five in autumn 2005. During the show she was coached by top poker players Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, and Dave Ulliott.


title: Liv Boeree

text: On 21 April 2010, Boeree won the European Poker Tour main event in Sanremo, at the time the largest ever poker tournament held on European soil. Boeree won €1,250,000 and thereby became the third woman ever to win an EPT title.


title: Liv Boeree

text: At the 2017 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Boeree won event #2 (the "$10,000 Tag Team No-Limit Hold'em Championship") for $273,964 with Russian poker player and boyfriend Igor Kurganov.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Other notable results include a runner-up finish in the 2014 UKIPT Edinburgh Main Event, 1st place on Poker After Dark in 2017 and a 3rd-place finish in the EPT Barcelona High Roller event for €391,000 in August 2015.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Awards: Boeree won Female Player of the Year in 2014, 2015 and 2016 at the European Poker Awards, as determined by Global Poker Index points she accumulated during those years. She was also awarded "Europe's Leading Lady" in 2010 at the European Poker Awards.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Boeree has been a member of Team PokerStars Pro since September 2010. As of January 2020, her total live tournament earnings exceed $3,800,000.


title: Liv Boeree

text: In February 2016, she was announced as the Team Manager of the Global Poker League team "The London Royals".


title: Liv Boeree

text: In November 2019, Liv Boeree announced on Twitter that she had left Team PokerStars after nine years and will quit professional poker.


title: Liv Boeree

text: In 2014, Boeree co-founded Raising for Effective Giving, an organization that promotes a rational approach to philanthropy often referred to as effective altruism, and provides advice on choosing charities based on certain criteria. The organization also publishes an annual guide to effective giving, highlighting which charities may be worthy of receiving funds, and for which ethical reasons.


title: Liv Boeree

text: As of July 2020, Raising for Effective Giving has raised over $14,000,000 for its supported charities.


title: Liv Boeree

text: In addition, in 2017 Boeree became a member of Giving What We Can, a community of people who have pledged to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Boeree has raised concerns about possible risks from the development of artificial intelligence and supports research that is directed at safe AI development.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Boeree's TV hosting credits include The Weather Channel's "Weird Earth", Discovery Channel's "The Mind Control Freaks" in 2015-2016 and Red Bull TV's "MindGamers" in 2017.


title: Liv Boeree

text: From 2011-2013, she co-hosted "UK and Ireland Poker Tour", a weekly show that aired on Channel 4 in the UK.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Her poker TV appearances include NBC's Heads Up Poker in 2011 and 2013, Channel 4's Shark Cage in 2014 and the European Poker Tour from 2010-2016 and Poker After Dark on Poker Central in 2017.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Other appearances include BBC4 Documentary "The Joy of Winning" discussing game theory with Presenter Hannah Fry, BBC Breakfast alongside Boris Becker in September 2010, and on ITV's GMTV by Lorraine Kelly about her European Poker Tour win.


title: Liv Boeree

text: In 2011, Boeree was a member of the Celebrity Graduate Manchester University team that took part in BBC2's seasonal general knowledge tournament, "Christmas University Challenge".


title: Liv Boeree

text: Boeree gave her first TEDx talk at TEDxManchester in February 2018 on the benefits of thinking in probabilities. One month later she spoke at the TED 2018 Conference in Vancouver during their inaugural "TED Unplugged" session. Her topic was "3 lessons on decision-making from a poker champion".


title: Liv Boeree

text: Boeree appeared as a guest speaker at Oxford University Union in May 2016, Jesus College, Cambridge in February 2017, the Cheltenham Science Festival in June 2016,


title: Liv Boeree

text: Boeree also appeared on Sean M. Carroll's Mindscape podcast (Episode 6 aired on 24 July 2018) to discuss probability and effective altruism.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Boeree appeared on Lex Fridman's podcast (aired 24 August 2022) to discuss poker, game theory, AI, simulation, aliens & existential risk.


title: Liv Boeree

text: Boeree has written a number of articles and opinion pieces on various scientific and rationality topics. Her publications include a Vox.com article discussing the philosophical implications of Future of Humanity Institute's 2018 Paper "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox", a Vice Media article on a discovered crystalline pattern in prime numbers and an opinion piece in The Independent on the importance of rational thinking classes in mainstream education. Her June 2020 byline in "Nature", reviewing the latest book by Maria Konnikova, lists her as a "science communicator and former professional poker player."


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: The Messinian salinity crisis (MSC), also referred to as the Messinian event, and in its latest stage as the Lago Mare event, was a geological event during which the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partial or nearly complete desiccation (drying-up) throughout the latter part of the Messinian age of the Miocene epoch, from 5.96 to 5.33 Ma (million years ago). It ended with the Zanclean flood, when the Atlantic reclaimed the basin.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Sediment samples from below the deep seafloor of the Mediterranean Sea, which include evaporite minerals, soils, and fossil plants, show that the precursor of the Strait of Gibraltar closed tight about 5.96 million years ago, sealing the Mediterranean off from the Atlantic. This resulted in a period of partial desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea, the first of several such periods during the late Miocene. After the strait closed for the last time around 5.6 Ma, the region's generally dry climate at the time dried the Mediterranean basin out nearly completely within a thousand years. This massive desiccation left a deep dry basin, reaching deep below normal sea level, with a few hypersaline pockets similar to today's Dead Sea. Then, around 5.5 Ma, less dry climatic conditions resulted in the basin receiving more freshwater from rivers, progressively filling and diluting the hypersaline lakes into larger pockets of brackish water (much like today's Caspian Sea). The Messinian salinity crisis ended with the Strait of Gibraltar finally reopening 5.33 Ma, when the Atlantic rapidly filled up the Mediterranean basin in what is known as the Zanclean flood.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Even today, the Mediterranean is considerably saltier than the North Atlantic, owing to its near isolation by the Strait of Gibraltar and its high rate of evaporation. If the Strait of Gibraltar closes again (which is likely to happen in the near future in geological time), the Mediterranean would mostly evaporate in about a thousand years, after which continued northward movement of Africa may obliterate the Mediterranean altogether.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: In the 19th century, the Swiss geologist and paleontologist Karl Mayer-Eymar (1826–1907) studied fossils embedded between gypsum-bearing, brackish, and freshwater sediment layers, and identified them as having been deposited just before the end of the Miocene Epoch. In 1867, he named the period the Messinian after the city of Messina in Sicily, Italy. Since then, several other salt-rich and gypsum-rich evaporite layers throughout the Mediterranean region have been dated to the same period.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Seismic surveying of the Mediterranean basin in 1961 revealed a geological feature some below the seafloor. This feature, dubbed the "M reflector", closely followed the contours of the present seafloor, suggesting that it was laid down evenly and consistently at some point in the past. The origin of this layer was largely interpreted as related to salt deposition. However, different interpretations were proposed for the age of salt and its deposition.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Earlier suggestions from Denizot in 1952 and Ruggieri in 1967 proposed that this layer was of Late Miocene age, and the same Ruggieri coined the term "Messinian Salinity Crisis".


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: New and high-quality seismic data on the M-reflector were acquired in the Mediterranean Basin in 1970. At the same time, the salt was cored during Leg 13 of the Deep Sea Drilling Program conducted from the "Glomar Challenger" under the supervision of co-chief scientists William B.F. Ryan and Kenneth J. Hsu. These deposits were dated and interpreted for the first time as deep-basin products of the Messinian salinity crisis.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: The first drilling of the Messinian salt at the deeper parts of the Mediterranean Sea came in the summer of 1970, when geologists aboard the "Glomar Challenger" brought up drill cores containing arroyo gravels and red and green floodplain silts; and gypsum, anhydrite, rock salt, and various other evaporite minerals that often form from drying of brine or seawater, including in a few places potash, left where the last bitter, mineral-rich waters dried up. One drill core contained a wind-blown cross-bedded deposit of deep-sea foraminiferal ooze that had dried into dust and been blown about on the hot dry abyssal plain by sandstorms, mixed with quartz sand blown in from nearby continents, and ended up in a brine lake interbedded between two layers of halite. These layers alternated with layers containing marine fossils, indicating a succession of drying and flooding periods.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: The massive presence of salt does not require a desiccation of the sea. The main evidence for the evaporative drawdown of the Mediterranean comes from the remains of many (now submerged) canyons that were cut into the sides of the dry Mediterranean basin by rivers flowing down to the abyssal plain. For example, the Nile cut its bed down to several hundred feet below sea level at Aswan (where Ivan S. Chumakov found marine Pliocene Foraminifera in 1967), and below sea level just north of Cairo.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: In many places in the Mediterranean, fossilized cracks have been found where muddy sediment had dried and cracked in the sunlight and drought. In the Western Mediterranean series, the presence of pelagic oozes interbedded within the evaporites suggests that the area was repeatedly flooded and desiccated over 700,000 years.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Based on palaeomagnetic datings of Messinian deposits that have since been brought above sea level by tectonic activity, the salinity crisis started at the same time over all the Mediterranean basin, at 5.96 ± 0.02 million years ago. This episode comprises the second part of what is called the "Messinian" age of the Miocene epoch. This age was characterised by several stages of tectonic activity and sea level fluctuations, as well as erosional and depositional events, all more or less interrelated (van Dijk et al., 1998).


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: The Mediterranean-Atlantic strait closed tight time and time again, and the Mediterranean Sea, for the first time and then repeatedly, partially desiccated. The basin was finally isolated from the Atlantic Ocean for a longer period, between 5.59 and 5.33 million years ago, resulting in a large or smaller (depending on the scientific model applied) lowering of the Mediterranean sea level. During the initial, very dry stages (5.6–5.5 Ma), there was extensive erosion, creating several huge canyon systems (some similar in scale to the Grand Canyon) around the Mediterranean. Later stages (5.50–5.33 Ma) are marked by cyclic evaporite deposition into a large "lake-sea" basin ("Lago Mare" event).


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: About 5.33 million years ago, at the start of the Zanclean age (at the start of the Pliocene epoch), the barrier at the Strait of Gibraltar broke one last time, re-flooding the Mediterranean basin in the Zanclean flood; Garcia-Castellanos et al., 2009), favouring slope destabilization. The basin has not desiccated since.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: The amount of Messinian salts has been estimated as around (but this estimate may be reduced by 50 to 75% when more information becomes available) and more than 1 million cubic kilometres, 50 times the amount of salt normally in the Mediterranean waters. This suggests either a succession of desiccations or a long period of hypersalinity during which incoming water from the Atlantic Ocean was evaporated with the level of the Mediterranean brine being similar to that of the Atlantic. The nature of the strata points strongly to several cycles of the Mediterranean Sea completely drying and being refilled (Gargani and Rigollet, 2007), with drying periods correlating to periods of cooler global temperatures; which were therefore drier in the Mediterranean region. Each refilling was presumably caused by a seawater inlet opening, either tectonically, or by a river flowing eastwards below sea level into the "Mediterranean Sink" cutting its valley head back west until it let the sea in, similarly to a river capture. The last refilling was at the Miocene/Pliocene boundary, when the Strait of Gibraltar broke wide open permanently. Upon closely examining the Hole 124 core, Kenneth J. Hsu found that:


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Research since then has suggested that the desiccation-flooding cycle may have repeated several times during the last 630,000 years of the Miocene epoch. This could explain the large amount of salt deposited. Recent studies, however, show that the repeated desiccation and flooding is unlikely from a geodynamic point of view.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Some major questions remain concerning the beginning of the crisis in the central Mediterranean Basin. The geometric physical link between the evaporitic series identified in marginal basins accessible for field studies, such as the Tabernas Desert and Sorbas Basin, and the evaporitic series of the central basins has never been made.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Using the concept of deposition in both shallow and deep basins during the Messinian (i.e. assuming that both Basin types existed during this period), two major groupings are evident: one that favours a synchronous deposition (image c) of the first evaporites in all the basins before the major phase of erosion; and the other that favours a diachronous deposition (image a) of the evaporites through more than one phases of desiccation which would first have affected the marginal basins and later the central basins.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Another school suggests that desiccation was synchronous, but occurred mainly in shallower basins. This model would suggest that the sea level of the whole Mediterranean basin fell at once, but only shallower basins dried out enough to deposit salt beds. See image b.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: and van Dijk et al. (1998) the history of desiccation and erosion was complexly interacting with tectonic uplift and subsidence events, and erosional episodes. They also questioned again like some previous authors had done, whether the basins now observed as "deep" were actually also deep during the Messinian Episode and gave different names to the end-member scenarios described above.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Distinguishing between these hypotheses requires the calibration of gypsum deposits. Gypsum is the first salt (calcium sulphate) to be deposited from a desiccating basin. Magnetostratigraphy offers a broad constraint on timing, but no fine detail. Therefore, cyclostratigraphy is relied upon to compare the dates of sediments.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: The typical case study compares the gypsum evaporites in the main Mediterranean basin with those of the Sorbas basin, a smaller basin on the flanks of the Mediterranean Sea that is now exposed in southern Spain. The relationship between these two basins is assumed to represent the relationships of the wider region.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Recent work has relied on cyclostratigraphy to correlate the underlying marl beds, which appear to have given way to gypsum at exactly the same time in both basins.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: The proponents of this hypothesis claim that cyclic variations in bed compositions are astronomically tuned, and the beds' magnitude can be calibrated to show they were contemporaneous—a strong argument. In order to refute it, it is necessary to propose an alternative mechanism for generating these cyclic bands, or for erosion to have coincidentally removed just the right amount of sediment everywhere before the gypsum was deposited. The proponents claim that the gypsum was deposited directly above the correlated marl layers, and slumped into them, giving the appearance of an unconformable contact. However, their opponents seize upon this apparent inconformity, and claim that the Sorbas Basin was exposed—therefore eroding—while the Mediterranean sea was depositing evaporites. This would result in the Sorbas Basin being filled with evaporites at 5.5 million years ago (Ma), compared to the main basin at 5.96 Ma.).


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Recent works have highlighted a pre-evaporite phase corresponding to a prominent erosional crisis (also named "Messinian erosional crisis"; the termination of the "Mes-1" unconformity bound depositional sequence of van Dijk, 1992) responding to a major drawdown of the Mediterranean seawater.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Assuming that this major drawdown corresponds to the major Messinian drawdown, they concluded that the Mediterranean bathymetry significantly decreased before the precipitation of central basins evaporites. Regarding these works, a deep water formation seems unlikely. The assumption that central basin evaporites partly deposited under a high bathymetry and before the major phase of erosion should imply the observation of a major detritic event above evaporites in the basin. Such a depositional geometry has not been observed on data. This theory corresponds to one of the end-member scenarios discussed by van Dijk et al.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Several possible causes of the series of Messinian crises have been considered. While there is disagreement on all fronts, the most general consensus seems to agree that climate had a role in forcing the periodic filling and emptying of the basins, and that tectonic factors must have played a part in controlling the height of the sills restricting flow between the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The magnitude and extent of these effects, however, is widely open to interpretation (see, e.g., van Dijk et al. (1998).


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: In any case, the causes of the closing and isolation of the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean must be found in the area where the Strait of Gibraltar is now. One of the tectonic boundaries between the African Plate and the European Plate and its southern fragments such as the Iberian Plate is there. This boundary Zone is characterised by an arc-shaped tectonic feature, the Gibraltar Arc, which includes southern Spain and northern Africa. In the present day area of the Mediterranean Sea, are three of these arc-shaped belts: the Gibraltar Arc, the Calabrian Arc, and the Aegean Arc. The kinematics and dynamics of this plate boundary and of the Gibraltar Arc during the late Miocene are strictly related to the causes of the Messinian salinity crisis: tectonic reconfiguration may have closed and re-opened passages, as the region where the connection with the Atlantic Ocean was situated is permeated by strike-slip faults and rotating blocks of continental crust. As faulting accommodated the regional compression caused by Africa's convergence with Eurasia, the geography of the region may have altered enough to open and close seaways. However, the precise tectonic activity behind the motion can be interpreted in a number of ways.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: There are three contending geodynamic models that may fit the data, models which have been discussed in an equal way for the other arc shaped features in the Mediterranean:


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Of these, only the first model, invoking rollback, seems to explain the rotations observed. However, it is difficult to fit it with the pressure and temperature histories of some metamorphic rocks


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: This has led to some interesting combinations of the models which at first hand looked bizarre, in attempts to approach the true state of affairs.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Changes in climate must almost certainly be invoked to explain the periodic nature of the events. They occur during cool periods of Milankovic cycles, when less solar energy reached the northern hemisphere. This led to less evaporation of the North Atlantic, hence less rainfall over the Mediterranean. This would have starved the basin of water supply from rivers and allowed its desiccation.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Contrary to many people's instincts, there is now a scientific consensus that global sea level fluctuations cannot have been the major cause, although it may have played a role. The lack of ice caps at the time means there was no realistic mechanism to cause significant changes in sea level—there was nowhere for the water to go, and the morphology of ocean basins cannot change on such a short timescale.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: The climate of the abyssal plain during the drought is unknown. There is no situation on Earth directly comparable to the dry Mediterranean, and thus it is not possible to know its climate by direct observation of comparable geographic settings. Simulation using a general circulation model can indicate physically consistent responses to the desiccation. There is no consensus as to whether the Mediterranean Sea dried out completely; it seems likeliest that at least three or four large brine lakes on the abyssal plains remained at all times. The extent of desiccation is very hard to judge, owing to the reflective seismic nature of the salt beds, and the difficulty in drilling cores, making it difficult to map their thickness.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Atmospheric forces can be studied to arrive at a speculation on the climate. As winds blew across the "Mediterranean Sink", they would heat or cool adiabatically with altitude. In the empty Mediterranean Basin, the summertime temperatures would probably have been extremely high. As a first approximation, using the dry adiabatic lapse rate of around per kilometer, the maximum possible temperature of an area below sea level would be about warmer than it would be at sea level. Under this extreme assumption, maxima would be near at the lowest points of the dry abyssal plain, permitting no permanent life but extremophiles. Further, the altitude below sea level would result in 1.45 to 1.71 atm (1102 to 1300 mmHg) air pressure, further increasing heat stress. However, these simple estimates are likely far too extreme. Murphy et al.'s 2009 general circulation model experiments showed that for completely desiccated conditions, the Mediterranean basin would warm by up to in summer and in winter, while for a depressed water surface, temperatures would warm by only about in summer and in winter. In addition, the model results indicated global stationary wave response to the introduction of the topographic depression causes patters of warming and cooling by up to around the Northern Hemisphere.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: Today the evaporation from the Mediterranean Sea supplies moisture that falls in frontal storms, but without such moisture, the Mediterranean climate that we associate with Italy, Greece, and the Levant would be limited to the Iberian Peninsula and the western Maghreb. Climates throughout the central and eastern basin of the Mediterranean and surrounding regions to the north and east would have been drier even above modern sea level. The eastern Alps, the Balkans, and the Hungarian plain would also be much drier than they are today, even if the westerlies prevailed as they do now. However, the Paratethys ocean provided water to the area north of the Mediterranean basin. The Wallachian-Pontic and Hungarian basins were underwater during the Miocene, modifying the climate of what is now the Balkans and other areas north of the Mediterranean basin. The Pannonian Sea was a source of water north of the Mediterranean basin until the middle Pleistocene before becoming the Hungarian plain. Debate exists whether the waters of the Wallachian-Pontic basin (and the possibly connected Pannonian Sea) would have had access (thus bringing water) to at least the eastern Mediterranean basin at times during the Miocene.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: The Messinian event also provided an opportunity for many African species, including antelopes, elephants and hippopotamuses, to migrate into the empty basin, close to the descending great rivers, to reach interior wetter cooler highlands such as Malta as the sea level was dropping, as such species would not have been able to cross the wide, hot, empty sink at maximum dryness. After the return of the sea water, they remained on the islands, where they underwent insular dwarfing during the Pleistocene, giving rise to species known from Crete ("Hippopotamus creutzburgi"), Cyprus ("H. minor"), Malta ("H. melitensis") and Sicily ("H. pentlandi"). Of these, the Cyprus dwarf hippopotamus survived until the end of the Pleistocene or early Holocene. But some of these species may have crossed the sea when it was flooded, washed out to sea on rafts of floating vegetation, or with some species (e.g. elephants) by swimming.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: The water from the Mediterranean would have been redistributed in the world ocean, raising global sea level by as much as . The Mediterranean basin also sequestered below its seabed a significant percentage of the salt from Earth's oceans; this decreased the average salinity of the world ocean and raised its freezing point.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: There is an opinion that during the Messinian, the Red Sea was connected at Suez to the Mediterranean, but was not connected with the Indian Ocean, and dried out along with the Mediterranean.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: When the Strait of Gibraltar was ultimately breached, the Atlantic Ocean would have poured a vast volume of water through what would have presumably been a relatively narrow channel. This refill has been envisaged as resulting in a large waterfall higher than today's Angel Falls at , and far more powerful than either the Iguazu Falls or the Niagara Falls, but recent studies of the underground structures at the Gibraltar Strait show that the flooding channel descended in a rather gradual way to the dry Mediterranean.


title: Messinian salinity crisis

text: An enormous deposit of unsorted debris washed in by a massive catastrophic flood-wash has been found in the seabed southeast of the south corner of Sicily. This is suspected to have been deposited by the Zanclean flood.


title: The Monster Squad

text: The Monster Squad is a 1987 American black comedy horror film directed by Fred Dekker, and written by Dekker and Shane Black, who met as classmates at UCLA. Peter Hyams and Rob Cohen served as executive producers. It was released by TriStar Pictures on August 14, 1987. The film features pastiches of the Universal Monsters, led by Count Dracula. They are confronted by a group of savvy kids out to keep them from controlling the world.


title: The Monster Squad

text: While being financially unsuccessful during its theatrical run and receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film has gained a positive reception from audiences and has become a cult classic in the years since its release.


title: The Monster Squad

text: The Monster Squad is a club of pre-teens who idolize classic monster movies and their non-human stars. Club leader Sean Crenshaw (Andre Gower), whose younger sister, Phoebe (Ashley Bank), desperately wants to join the club, is given the diary of legendary monster hunter Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Jack Gwillim), but his excitement abates when he finds it is written in German. Sean and the rest of the Monster Squadhis best friend and second in command Patrick Rhodes (Robby Kiger), clumsy overweight Horace (Brent Chalem), tough older kid Rudy Holloran (Ryan Lambert) and little Eugene (Michael Faustino), go to visit an elderly man, known as the "Scary German Guy" (Leonardo Cimino), actually a kind gentleman and a former concentration camp prisoner, to translate the diary.


title: The Monster Squad

text: The diary describes, in great detail, an amulet that is composed of concentrated good. One day out of every century, as the forces of good and evil reach a balance, the otherwise indestructible amulet becomes vulnerable to destruction. With the next day of balance happening within a few days, at the stroke of midnight, the kids realize they must gain possession of the amulet and use itwith an incantation from Van Helsing's diaryto open a wormhole in the universe and cast the monsters into Limbo. As shown in the film's prelude, Van Helsing had unsuccessfully attempted this one hundred years ago in order to defeat his old adversary Count Dracula (Duncan Regehr); his apprentices then emigrated to the United States to hide the amulet, where it was out of Dracula's immediate reach.


title: The Monster Squad

text: Nevertheless, Dracula seeks to obtain the amulet so that he can take over the world and plunge it into darkness. To this end, he assembles several of his most dangerous and monstrous allies: The Mummy (Michael MacKay), the Gill-man (Tom Woodruff Jr.), The Wolf Man (Carl Thibault), and in addition, three school girls (Mary Albee, Joan-Carrol Baron, and Julie Merrill) whom the Count transforms into his vampiric consorts. Dracula then steals a crate from a B-25 Mitchell in flight, containing Frankenstein's monster (Tom Noonan), thus completing his army. However, Frankenstein's monster is reluctant to aid Dracula, and wanders into the forest where he encounters Phoebe. Rather than being afraid, she shows him the kindness he has always sought, and they become friends. After Phoebe proves to the Monster Squad that Frankenstein's monster is not evil, he chooses to help the boys instead of Dracula. The Wolfman, when reverting to human form (Jonathan Gries), is a recalcitrant follower of Dracula, and has been making calls to the police about the forthcoming carnage, which are dismissed as prank calls.


title: The Monster Squad

text: The amulet is buried in a stone room beneath a house that Dracula and the other monsters now occupy and where Van Helsing's diary was found. The secret room is littered with wards which prevent the monsters from taking it. The Monster Squad break into the house and acquire the amulet and narrowly escape Dracula's grasp. They confer with The Scary German Guy who informs them that the incantation must be read by a female virgin. As midnight approaches, the Squad makes their way to a local cathedral to make their last stand. Meanwhile, Dracula destroys their clubhouse with dynamite, drawing the attention of Sean's father, Police Detective Del (Stephen Macht), who has been charged with investigating the strange occurrences in town (as caused by Dracula's cohorts), but remains quite skeptical about their supernatural causes until he sees Dracula in person.


title: The Monster Squad

text: Unfortunately, the doors to the cathedral are locked, so the incantation must be read on the stoop, leaving the Squad vulnerable. They enlist Patrick's beautiful elder sister Lisa (Lisa Fuller) to help them, as she is the only virgin they know. However, the incantation fails since Lisa is actually not a virgin anymore. As the monsters close in, the Squad deduces that Phoebe must complete the task of opening the portal, and the German Guy attempts to help her read the incantation as the rest of the Squad fends off the monsters.


title: The Monster Squad

text: In the ensuing battle, Dracula's consorts, the Mummy, the Gill-man, and the Wolfman are defeated. Dracula arrives to destroy the amulet when Frankenstein's monster intervenes, impaling him on a wrought-iron cross. Phoebe finishes the incantation, opening the portal which begins to consume the bodies of the monsters. Dracula, still alive, attempts to drag Sean in with him. Sean impales Dracula with a wooden stake as Patrick grabs Sean before he can be sucked into the portal. Having briefly escaped from Limbo, Van Helsing appears, gives a thumbs up to Sean on a job well done, and pulls Dracula to his doom. As Frankenstein's monster is drawn into the portal, Phoebe holds onto him and pleads for him to stay. Knowing he doesn't belong on Earth, Frankenstein's monster lets go of Phoebe's hand, but accepts her gift of a stuffed animal to remember her by. The portal then closes, ensuring the world's safety.


title: The Monster Squad

text: In the aftermath, the United States Army arrives on the scene, having received a letter from Eugene earlier on asking for their help against the monsters. When the confused general fails to make sense of the situation, Sean steps forward and presents the man with his business card, identifying himself and his friends as "The Monster Squad".


title: The Monster Squad

text: Though the film was a financial failure on its initial release, it subsequently developed a cult following. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 62% of 26 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating was 5.88/10 With the site's consensus stating, "A fun 80's adventure with a slightly scary twist, "The Monster Squad" offers tween-friendly horror with just enough of a kick". Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote that it is "fun for the kid in all of us". Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" called it "a feature-length commercial for a joke store that sells not-great, rubber monster masks".


title: The Monster Squad

text: "The Monster Squad" was first issued by Vestron Video in 1988 on VHS and LaserDisc. It was the film's only VHS release.


title: The Monster Squad

text: A 20th Anniversary Reunion of "The Monster Squad" was held with cast members and Dekker in attendance in April 2006 in Austin, Texas at the Alamo Drafthouse. This event was organized by the staff at "Ain't It Cool News", longtime fans who, on a whim, decided to contact and try to connect the cast for a special screening. Two shows were held; both sold out with lines formed around the block; some audience members flew from as far as California. It was at this screening that Dekker had urged any interested fans to write the copyright holders via snail-mail. "Ain't It Cool News" also broke the news of the DVD release nine months later in January 2007. Michael Felsher of Red Shirt Pictures approached Lionsgate to produce and release the 20th anniversary edition.


title: The Monster Squad

text: The 20th anniversary special edition was released as a two-disc DVD by Lionsgate on July 24, 2007, and contains a variety of special features, including a five-part retrospective documentary, two audio commentaries, deleted scenes, trailers and TV spots, animated storyboards and more. In 2007, a soundtrack was made available from the Intrada label; La-La Land Records issued another in 2015 with additional material, including the Michael Sembello-produced songs.


title: The Monster Squad

text: Lionsgate released a region-free Blu-ray on November 24, 2009, containing the same extras as the DVD. This edition is now out of print. On February 19, 2013, Olive Films released a region A locked barebones Blu-ray. It became available via direct streaming on Hulu in October 2017.


title: The Monster Squad

text: The Alamo Drafthouse held two further sold-out screenings on January 9, 2010 with Gower, Lambert and Gries along with Black and Dekker in attendance. The screenings were celebrated with a limited edition poster by artist Tyler Stout. Another event, with Gower and Lambert attending, will be held at the San Francisco branch on October 31, 2022.


title: The Monster Squad

text: In 2018, Gower directed and co-produced "Wolfman's Got Nards", a documentary exploring the film's influence over thirty years and its evolution from cult favorite to cult classic. The film was distributed by Pilgrim Media Group in cooperation with Flitterpiper Entertainment and 1620 Media Group. It earned honors as an official selection for a number of film festivals, including Cinepocalypse and Salem Horror Fest.


title: The Monster Squad

text: In 2008, producer Rob Cohen said that the film rights were back with Paramount and there were plans to remake the film; however, he had no desire to direct.


title: The Monster Squad

text: In 2010, it was announced that Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes had officially signed on to produce with Cohen to direct and Mark and Brian Gunn writing the screenplay. The announcement of a remake and Platinum Dunes' involvement was met with generally negative fan reaction.


title: The Monster Squad

text: In 2014, Platinum Dunes producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form confirmed that the remake was no longer in development.


title: Funeral (Arcade Fire album)

text: Funeral is the debut studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, released on September 14, 2004 by Merge Records. Preliminary recordings for "Funeral" were made during the course of a week in August 2003 at the Hotel2Tango in Montreal, Quebec, and the recording was completed later that year all in an analogue recording format.


title: Funeral (Arcade Fire album)

text: The album produced five singles, with "Rebellion (Lies)" being the most successful, having peaked at #19 on the UK Singles Chart. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2005 for Best Alternative Music Album. It received widespread critical acclaim and topped many year-end and decade-end lists, now being often considered one of the greatest albums of all time. According to the website Metacritic, the album had the second most appearances on end-of-decade Top 10 lists, only behind Radiohead's "Kid A". In the 2020 updated version of "Rolling Stone"s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, it was ranked at number 500.


title: Funeral (Arcade Fire album)

text: "Funeral" was largely recorded over the course of a week at the Hotel2Tango in Montreal, Quebec in August 2003. Additional recording also took place at Régine Chassagne and Win Butler's apartment, and the album was completed in 2004. The production cost of the album was estimated to be around $10,000.


title: Funeral (Arcade Fire album)

text: The album was given its title because several band members had recently lost members of their families; Régine Chassagne's grandmother died in June 2003, Win and William Butler's grandfather (swing musician Alvino Rey) in February 2004, and Richard Reed Parry's aunts in April 2004.


title: Funeral (Arcade Fire album)

text: The artwork for "Funeral" was designed by artist and photographer Tracy Maurice, depicting a scrawling quill with foliage growing from its feathers, painted onto a piece of a wooden planter. Maurice, then a Montreal-based artist, had been introduced by a mutual friend to Win Butler, who was looking for the artwork of the band's debut album. Chassagne and Butler took a liking to Maurice's drawings and commissioned her for the task. The design was inspired by Maurice's own collection of antique photographs and early 20th-century illustrated books, as well as the aesthetics of Japanese woodblock prints and Donovan's album "Barabajagal".


title: Funeral (Arcade Fire album)

text: "Funeral" was released in Canada and the US on September 14, 2004, and in the UK on February 28, 2005. A highly positive review from "Pitchfork", which gave the album a 9.7 out of 10 rating, was frequently cited as a key factor that propelled "Funeral" into widespread recognition and commercial success. The album entered the "Billboard" 200 chart, a first for Merge Records; it was also the fastest-seller in the label's history. By November 2005, the album had sold over half a million copies worldwide, and by March 2007 it had sold nearly 750,000 copies worldwide.


title: Funeral (Arcade Fire album)

text: The album is certified Gold by the Record Industry Association of America for over 500,000 copies sold in the US.


title: Funeral (Arcade Fire album)

text: "Funeral" received universal acclaim from music critics and is commonly hailed as a modern classic. At Metacritic, the album has received an average score of 90, based on 33 reviews. It is put at one of the top 100 albums on Metacritic's list of highest scored albums of all time. AllMusic reviewer James Christopher Monger gave the album a rating of five stars out of five. He described it as "brave, empowering, and dusted with something that many of the indie-rock genre's more contrived acts desperately lack: an element of real danger." Rock critic Robert Christgau gave the album an A−, saying that "Funeral" was "...too fond of drama, but aware of its small place in the big world, and usually beautiful." "Pitchfork "gave the album a 9.7 out of 10 rating, and ultimately ranked the album #1 on their Top 50 Albums of 2004 list, as well as #2 on their Top 200 Albums of the 2000s list, after Radiohead's "Kid A". "Kludge" called it a "glorious" debut album, in which Arcade Fire spins "elaborate art-rock full of passion and atmosphere."


title: Funeral (Arcade Fire album)

text: Drowned in Sound also highly praised "Funeral". Reviewer Jesus Chigley called the album "...empowering and hopeful and euphoric all at once", saying that "it says everything there is to say about mortality and it does it in 10 tracks." "Stylus"'s Josh Drimmer gave "Funeral" an A, calling it "celebratory, emotionally rich and life-affirming". Tiny Mix Tapes gave the album five stars out of five; ""Funeral"," the reviewer wrote, "is like nothing you've heard before, and altogether familiar." Reviewing the album in February 2005, Dave Simpson of "The Guardian" called it "one of the year's best already, by a mile." Zeth Lundy of PopMatters complimented "Funeral" on its eccentricity, calling it "bizarre at turns and recognizable elsewhere, equally beautiful and harrowing, theatrical and sincere, defying categorization while attempting to create new genres." "Entertainment Weekly" put it on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "Funerals are generally somber affairs, but the Canadian indie rockers' emotionally charged 2004 debut mostly just made us smile. And, okay, mist up a little." In 2017, Canadian music magazine Exclaim! ranked fifth single "Wake Up" as the best song in the band's entire catalogue.


title: Funeral (Arcade Fire album)

text: "A game-changing debut", "Funeral" has been designated as "one of the most triumphant rock records" of all time. "Stereogum" ranked it as "arguably the most influential indie-rock album" of its time, while Guitar.com saw it house "some of the most deliriously euphoric anthems" of the 2000s.


title: Funeral (Arcade Fire album)

text: "Pitchfork"s Stuart Berman saw "Funeral" change Arcade Fire into "instant indie-rock icons", helping the genre shift from "a fringe movement born of economic circumstance" to "an aspirational career model". "Stereogum"s Chris DeVille dubbed it "a how-to guide for grand, artful, [and] cathartic rock music" that turned out "impossible to replicate". He credited it with birthing future indie rock characteristics including "sing-songy" choral work, orchestral instrumentation, and more. He also saw the album popularize arena rock's granduer in the genre, replacing the "ironic detachment" of fellow indie group Pavement.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: The Marcomannic Wars (Latin: "bellum Germanicum et Sarmaticum", "German and Sarmatian War") were a series of wars lasting from about 166 until 180 AD. These wars pitted the Roman Empire against, principally, the Germanic Marcomanni and Quadi and the Sarmatian Iazyges; there were related conflicts with several other Germanic, Sarmatian and Gothic peoples along both sides of the whole length of the Roman Empire's northeastern European border, the river Danube.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: The struggle against the Germans and Sarmatians occupied the major part of the reign of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and it was during his campaigns against them that he started writing his philosophical work "Meditations".


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: Secure for many years following his ascension to power, the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius never left Italy; neither did he embark on substantial conquests, all the while allowing his provincial legates to command his legions entirely. Historian Adrian Goldsworthy posits that Pius's reluctance to take aggressive military action throughout his reign may have contributed to Parthian territorial ambitions. The resulting war between Parthia and Rome lasted from 161 to 166 AD (under the joint rule of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus) and, although it ended successfully, its unforeseen consequences for the Empire were great. The returning troops brought with them a plague (the so-called Antonine Plague), which would eventually kill an estimated 7 to 8 million people, severely weakening the Empire. Despite the consequences of the plague, historian Kyle Harper contends that the event should not be treated as a fatal blow to the Empire. Instead, Rome's resilience was demonstrated since the Empire remained intact and Roman birth rates in the decade following the plague subsequently increased.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: At the same time, in Central Europe during the second-century AD, the first movements of the Great Migrations were occurring, as the Goths began moving south-east from their ancestral lands at the mouth of River Vistula (see Wielbark culture), putting pressure on the Germanic tribes from the north and east. As a result, Germanic tribes and other nomadic peoples launched raids south and west across Rome's northern border, particularly into Gaul and across the Danube. Whether this sudden influx of peoples with which Marcus Aurelius had to contend was the result of climate change or overpopulation remains unknown. Theories exist that the various Germanic tribes along the periphery of the Empire may have conspired to test Roman resolve as part of an attempt to bring to possible fruition, Arminius's dream of a future united Germanic empire. Up until these subsequent wars, the Marcomanni and Quadi generally enjoyed amicable relations and access to the Empire's wares—archaeological evidence of Roman household goods and practices illustrate such contact. As with almost all areas within the Empire's reach, the Romans aimed for a combination of military-territorial dominance, while at the same time, engaging in mutually beneficial commerce.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: By the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 161 AD, the pressures along the Roman frontier had reached a critical point as the Germanic tribes along its borders at the Rhine and Danube came to the conclusion that their survival meant breaking into Rome's territories. Beginning in 162 and continuing until 165, an invasion of Chatti and Chauci in the provinces of Raetia and Germania Superior was repulsed. In late 166 or early 167, a force of 6,000 Langobardi and Lacringi invaded Pannonia. This invasion was defeated by local forces (vexillations of the "Legio I Adiutrix" commanded by a certain Candidus and the "Ala Ulpia contariorum" commanded by Vindex) with relative ease, but they marked the beginning of what was to come. In their aftermath, the military governor of Pannonia, Marcus Iallius Bassus, initiated negotiations with 11 tribes. In these negotiations, the Marcomannic king Ballomar, a Roman client, acted as a mediator. In the event, a truce was agreed upon and the tribes withdrew from Roman territory, but no permanent agreement was reached. In the same year, Vandals (Astingi and Lacringi) and the Sarmatian Iazyges invaded Dacia, and succeeded in killing its governor, Calpurnius Proculus. To counter them, "Legio V Macedonica", a veteran unit of the Parthian campaign, was moved from Moesia Inferior to Dacia Superior, closer to the enemy.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: During that time, as the Antonine plague was ravaging the empire, Marcus Aurelius was unable to do more, and the punitive expedition he was planning to lead in person was postponed until 168. In the spring of that year, Marcus Aurelius, together with Lucius Verus, set forth from Rome, and established their headquarters at Aquileia. The two emperors supervised a reorganization of the defences of Italy and the Illyricum, raised two new legions, "Legio II Italica" and "Legio III Italica", and crossed the Alps into Pannonia. The Marcomanni and the Victuali had crossed the Danube into the province, but, at least according to the "Historia Augusta", the approach of the imperial army to Carnuntum was apparently sufficient to persuade them to withdraw and offer assurances of good conduct. The two emperors returned to Aquileia for the winter, but on the way, in January 169, Lucius Verus died. Marcus returned to Rome to oversee his co-emperor's funeral.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: In the autumn of 169, Marcus set out from Rome, together with his son-in-law Claudius Pompeianus, who would become his closest aide during the war. The Romans had gathered their forces and intended to subdue the independent tribes (especially the Iazyges), who lived between the Danube and the Roman province of Dacia. The Iazyges defeated and killed Marcus Claudius Fronto, Roman governor of Lower Moesia. However, while the Roman army was entangled in this campaign, making little headway, several tribes used the opportunity to cross the frontier and raid Roman territory.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: To the east, the Costoboci crossed the Danube, ravaged Thrace and descended into the Balkans, reaching Eleusis, near Athens, where they destroyed the temple of the Eleusinian Mysteries.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: The most important and dangerous invasion, however, was that of the Marcomanni in the west. Their leader, Ballomar, had formed a coalition of Germanic tribes. They crossed the Danube and won a decisive victory over a force of 20,000 Roman soldiers near Carnuntum, in what is sometimes known the Battle of Carnuntum. Ballomar then led the larger part of his host southwards towards Italy, while the remainder ravaged Noricum. The Marcomanni razed Opitergium (Oderzo) and besieged Aquileia. This was the first time that hostile forces had entered Italy since 101 BC, when Gaius Marius defeated the Cimbri. The army of praetorian prefect Titus Furius Victorinus tried to relieve the city, but was defeated and possibly killed during the battle (other sources have him die of the plague).


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: There is no consensus amongst scholars as to the year that the great Germanic invasion towards Aquileia took place. Several authors, like Marcus Aurelius' biographer Frank McLynn, accepting the date of defeat near Carnuntum as 170, place the great Germanic invasion itself three years earlier. They maintain it happened in 167 because by the year 170 the Germans would have been checked by the "Praetentura Italiae et Alpium"—the fortifications which were erected in 168–169 to block a breakthrough of the Alps to Northern Italy – whereas all sources confirm it to be a military walkover. A further argument is that the panic which gripped Rome in 167–168 would make no sense if the Germanic tribes were still on the opposite side of the Danube. Also, no source mentions the emperor being near the front when the disaster occurred, whereas by 170 Marcus Aurelius had settled there. McLynn maintains that Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus went to Aquileia in 168 to restore morale after the disaster as Aquileia makes no geographical, logistical or military sense as a base of operations for launching a campaign on the Danube in Pannonia. The reason McLynn maintains that 170 is proposed by other authors is that too much weight is given to Lucian's testimony regarding the influence of Alexander of Abonoteichos as a scapegoat for the disaster whereas it is uncertain whether Alexander was still alive by 170 and Lucian's chronology is at certain points suspect.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: Deviating from the above discussion in English literature, researchers in Slovenia, one of the regions affected by the Germanic invasion, accept the year 168 as the proper date, based, among other arguments, on a portrait of Lucius Verus found in Ptuj.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: This disaster forced Marcus to re-evaluate his priorities. Forces from the various frontiers were dispatched against Ballomar. They came under the command of Claudius Pompeianus, with the future emperor Pertinax as one of his lieutenants. A new military command, the "praetentura Italiae et Alpium" was established to safeguard the roads into Italy, and the Danubian fleet was strengthened. Aquileia was relieved, and by the end of 171, the invaders had been evicted from Roman territory. Intense diplomatic activity followed, as the Romans tried to win over various barbarian tribes in preparation for a crossing of the Danube. A peace treaty was signed with the Quadi and the Iazyges, while the tribes of the Hasdingi Vandals and the Lacringi became Roman allies.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: In 172, the Romans crossed the Danube into Marcomannic territory. Although few details are known, the Romans achieved success, subjugating the Marcomanni and their allies, the Varistae or Naristi and the Cotini. This fact is evident from the adoption of the title ""Germanicus"" by Marcus Aurelius, and the minting of coins with the inscription ""Germania capta"" ("subjugated Germania"). During this campaign, the chief of the Naristi was killed by the Roman General Marcus Valerius Maximianus.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: In 173, the Romans campaigned against the Quadi, who had broken their treaty and assisted their kin, and defeated and subdued them. During this campaign, a famous incident, the so-called "miracle of the rain", occurred, which was later depicted on the column of Marcus Aurelius and on coins. According to Cassius Dio, the "legio XII Fulminata" was hemmed in by a superior Quadi force and almost forced to surrender because of the heat and thirst. They were saved, however, by a sudden shower, which refreshed the Romans, while lightning struck the Quadi. Contemporaries and historians attributed it to divine intervention: Dio stated that it was called by an Egyptian magician praying to Mercury, while Christian writers such as Tertullian attributed it to a prayer by Christians.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: In the same year, Didius Iulianus, the commander of the Rhine frontier, repelled another invasion of the Chatti and the Hermunduri, while the Chauci raided the shoreline of Gallia Belgica.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: In the next year, the Romans marched against the Quadi, whereupon the Quadi deposed their pro-Roman king, Furtius, and installed his rival, Ariogaesus, in his place. Marcus Aurelius refused to recognize him, and turning back, deposed and exiled him to Alexandria. Thus, by late 174, the subjugation of the Quadi was complete. In typical Roman fashion, they were forced to surrender hostages and provide auxiliary contingents for the Roman army, while garrisons were installed throughout their territory.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: After this, the Romans focused their attention on the Iazyges living in the plain of the river Tisza ("expeditio sarmatica"). After a few victories, in 175, a treaty was signed. According to its terms, the Iazyges King Zanticus delivered 100,000 Roman prisoners and, in addition, provided 8,000 auxiliary cavalrymen, most of whom (5,500) were sent to Britain. Upon this, Marcus assumed the victory title ""Sarmaticus"".


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: Marcus Aurelius may have intended to campaign against the remaining tribes, and together with his recent conquests establish two new Roman provinces, "Marcomannia" and "Sarmatia", but whatever his plans, they were cut short by the rebellion of Avidius Cassius in the East.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: Marcus Aurelius marched eastwards with his army, accompanied by auxiliary detachments of Marcomanni, Quadi and Naristi under the command of Marcus Valerius Maximianus. After the successful suppression of Cassius' revolt, the emperor returned to Rome for the first time in nearly 8 years. On 23 December 176, together with his son Commodus, he celebrated a joint triumph for his German victories (""de Germanis"" and ""de Sarmatis""). In commemoration of this, the Aurelian Column was erected, in imitation of Trajan's Column.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: The victory celebrations of the previous year were but a brief respite for in 177 A.D. the Quadi rebelled, followed soon by their neighbours, the Marcomanni. Marcus Aurelius once again headed north to begin his second Germanic campaign ("secunda expeditio germanica"). He arrived at Carnuntum in August 178 and set out to quell the rebellion in a repeat of his first campaign, moving first against the Marcomanni and against the Quadi between 179 and 180 A.D. Under the command of Marcus Valerius Maximianus, the Romans fought and prevailed against the Quadi in a decisive battle at Laugaricio (near modern Trenčín, Slovakia). The Quadi were chased deeper into Greater Germania westwards, where the praetorian prefect Publius Tarrutenius Paternus later achieved another decisive victory against them, but on 17 March 180, Marcus Aurelius died at Vindobona (modern Vienna).


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: His son and successor, Commodus, had little interest in pursuing the war after his father's death. Against the advice of his senior generals, Commodus negotiated a peace treaty with the Marcomanni and the Quadi. He then left for Rome in early autumn 180 A.D., where he celebrated a triumph on October 22.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: Operations continued against the Iazyges, the Buri and the so-called "free Dacians" living between the Danube and Roman Dacia. Not much is known about this war, except that the Roman generals included Marcus Valerius Maximianus, Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus. At any rate, the victories they achieved were deemed sufficient for Emperor Commodus to claim the victory title ""Germanicus Maximus"" in mid-182.


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: An inscription (CIL III 5937) describes a campaign against the Germanic tribe of the Lugii or Burii ("Expeditio Burica").


title: Marcomannic Wars

text: The wars had exposed the weakness of Rome's northern frontier, and henceforth, half of the Roman legions (16 out of 33) would be stationed along the Danube and the Rhine. Numerous Germans settled in frontier regions like Dacia, Pannonia, Germany and Italy itself. This was not a new occurrence, but this time the numbers of settlers required the creation of two new frontier provinces on the left shore of the Danube, Sarmatia and Marcomannia, including today's Czech Republic and Slovakia. Some Germans who settled in Ravenna revolted and managed to seize possession of the city. For this reason, Marcus Aurelius decided not to bring more barbarians into Italy, but even banished those who had previously been brought there. The Germanic tribes were temporarily checked, but the Marcomannic Wars were only the prelude of the invasions that would eventually disassemble and end the Western Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: Mychel Thompson (born June 1, 1988) is an American former professional basketball player. He played college basketball at Pepperdine University.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: Thompson was born on June 1, 1988, in Los Angeles, California to Mychal and Julie Thompson. His father, Mychal Thompson, was the first overall pick in the 1978 NBA draft and spent his 14-year career playing for the Portland Trail Blazers, Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs in the NBA and Juvecaserta Basket in Italy.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: Thompson has a younger brother, Klay, who played college basketball at Washington State University before being drafted in the first round of the 2011 NBA draft by the Golden State Warriors. His youngest brother, Trayce, was drafted in the 2nd round of the 2009 MLB Draft by the Chicago White Sox. All three were raised Catholic.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: Mychel played high school basketball at Jesuit High School in Portland, Oregon for two years, before finishing off his high school career at Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. After high school, he played one year at Stoneridge Prep, located in Simi Valley, California. He averaged 4.9 points and 3.1 rebounds per game that season.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: Heading into college, Thompson was rated as a two-star recruit by "Rivals.com" and the 91st-best fifth year player by "Hoop Scoop Online". On November 9, 2006, he committed to playing for Pepperdine University. In his freshman season at Pepperdine, he started 24 of 32 games and averaged 8.1 points and 2.7 rebounds per game. He led the team in three pointers made with 56 and in three-point field goal percentage with 37.3% of his attempts going in. Thompson made a three-pointer in 30 of the 32 games he played. Against Northern Arizona, he scored a season-high 22 points, including five three-pointers.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: Thompson started 30 of Pepperdine's 32 games in his sophomore season, averaging 9.6 points and 3.5 rebounds per game. He made 35 three-pointers that season, which tied him for the team lead. During the season, he made at least one three-pointer in 21 games. In the season opener, he scored a season-high 25 points against Cal State-Monterey Bay.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: As a junior, Thompson averaged 11.8 points and 5.0 rebounds per game, en route to being named to the All–West Coast Conference honorable mention team. For the third straight season, he led the team in three-pointers made with 48. He tied his career-high of 25 points against the Utah Utes on December 23, 2009, and was later named the Co–West Coast Conference Player of the Week for his performance against Loyola Marymount, a game in which he scored 22 points and made six of his seven three-point attempts.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: In his final season at Pepperdine, he averaged 14.6 points per game and 5.9 rebounds per game, both of which led the team. Thompson also led the team in three-pointers made for the fourth consecutive season with 53. For the second straight season, he was named to the All–WCC honorable mention team. Against the Nevada Wolf Pack, he scored a career-high 34 points. On February 2, 2011, he scored 31 points and grabbed 10 rebounds against the San Francisco Dons, becoming the first player from Pepperdine to record over 30 points and grab over 10 rebounds since 2005. Thompson finished his career at Pepperdine with 1,413 points, which is 14th best in school history. He also played in a school record 128 games and his 192 three-pointers made in his career was good enough for fourth highest in school history.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: Thompson went undrafted in the 2011 NBA draft. On November 3, 2011, he was selected by the Erie BayHawks in the third round of the 2011 NBA Development League Draft.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: On December 9, 2011, Thompson signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers. On February 6, 2012, he was waived by the Cavaliers after just five games.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: In July 2012, Thompson joined the New York Knicks for the 2012 NBA Summer League. On September 11, 2012, he signed with the Knicks. However, he was later waived by the Knicks on October 27, 2012. On November 1, 2012, he was re-acquired by the Erie BayHawks.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: On January 3, 2013, Thompson was traded to the Sioux Falls Skyforce in a three-way trade involving the Rio Grande Valley Vipers and the Erie BayHawks.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: In July 2013, Thompson joined the Minnesota Timberwolves for the 2013 NBA Summer League. On November 4, 2013, the Sioux Falls Skyforce traded Thompson's rights to the Santa Cruz Warriors. On November 19, 2013, he was acquired by the Warriors.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: During this season at Santa Cruz, Thompson played in the back court with Seth Curry. At the same time, their respective brothers Klay and Steph were playing together in the Golden State back court, Correspondingly, Mychel and Seth were dubbed the Splash Brothers of the D-League.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: On November 3, 2014, Thompson was reacquired by the Santa Cruz Warriors. On April 26, 2015, he won the D-League championship with the Warriors.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: On July 16, 2015, Thompson signed with Pallacanestro Varese of Italy. On December 22, he parted ways with Varese after appearing in nine league games and five FIBA Europe Cup games.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: On February 27, 2016, Thompson was reacquired by Santa Cruz. That night, he made his season debut in a 133–124 loss to the Reno Bighorns, recording 16 points, one rebound and one assist in 23 minutes.


title: Mychel Thompson

text: Thompson played for the Bahamas men's national basketball team during the 2022 FIBA AmeriCup qualification.


title: Moscow International Business Center

text: The Moscow International Business Center (MIBC), also known as Moscow-City, is an under-construction commercial development in Moscow, the capital of Russia. The project occupies an area of 60 hectares, and is located just east of the Third Ring Road at the western edge of the Presnensky District in the Central Administrative Okrug. Construction of the MIBC takes place on the Presnenskaya Embankment of the Moskva River, approximately west of Red Square.


title: Moscow International Business Center

text: The complex is home to the highest numbers of skyscrapers in Europe. The Government of Moscow first conceived the project in 1992, as a mixed development of office, residential, retail and entertainment facilities. An estimated 250,000 – 300,000 people will be working in, living in, or visiting the complex at any given time. By 2016, twelve of the twenty-three planned facilities of the MIBC were already built; seven buildings were under construction; and four were in the design stage.


title: Moscow International Business Center

text: Before construction began, the area was a stone quarry and industrial zone, where most of the buildings were old factories that had been closed or abandoned. A public company, CITY, was created in 1992, to oversee the initial creation and development of Moscow City as well as its subsequent usage. CITY is also a general contractor and both landlord and lessor. Overall responsibility for the architectural planning and design of Moscow City belongs to the architectural studio No. 6, which is a part of the large Moscow practice Mosproject-2 named after Mikhail Vasilyevich Posokhin. This group, headed by Gennady Lvovich Sirota, who is officially the Chief Architect of Moskva-Citi, is in charge of overseeing the design of the complex as a whole and agreeing the details of individual projects. Each building lot has its own investor and architect. By 2014, the volume of investments in Moskva-City was approximately $12 billion.


title: Moscow International Business Center

text: Established in the spring of 1992, the PJSC City Company manages the creation and development of the MIBC. On 30 December 1994, the Government of Moscow authorized PJSC City to act as the managing company for the MIBC and to negotiate with third parties to help develop the MIBC. As of February 2014, the company was owned by the Solvers Group, led by Oleg Malis.


title: Moscow International Business Center

text: Roof height, max height, and floors apply to the tallest building of the respective complex. Completion of construction applies to the building in each complex completed last.


title: Moscow International Business Center

text: The Bagration Bridge is a pedestrian bridge that goes over the Moskva River. It connects Tower 2000 and the rest of the MIBC complex.


title: Moscow International Business Center

text: Major thoroughfares that connect to the MIBC are the Third Ring Road, 3rd Magistralnaya street, and the Presnenskaya Embankment.


title: Moscow International Business Center

text: To correspond with the growing MIBC, new highways and interchanges were built to connect the MIBC with the main transport arteries of the city. These projects include the ten-lane Dorogomilovsky Bridge of the Third Ring Road over the Moskva River, the Third Ring Road interchange with Kutuzovsky Avenue, and the extension of the Presnenskaya Embankment. Existing roads were reconstructed and rearranged.


title: Moscow International Business Center

text: The MIBC is served by two metro lines, and three stations, and was for a time served by a further station and line. Two of the stations are named Delovoy Tsentr (Russian for "business center"). Vystavochnaya (formerly known as Delovoy Tsentr) and Mezhdunarodnaya are on the Filyovskaya line, while Delovoy Tsentr is on the incomplete Bolshaya Koltsevaya line. The first Delovoy Tsentr was on Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line since 2014, but was closed after four years operation, pending further development of the line.


title: Moscow International Business Center

text: The MIBC in addition is served by the Moscow Central Circle urban rail, with a station also named Delovoy Tsentr which opened in 2016. There are also plans to install a high-speed rail system between the MIBC and Sheremetyevo International Airport.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895 (though the title page says 1896). It is Hardy's last completed novel. The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man; he is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England (part of Hardy's fictional county of Wessex). He yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modeled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working first in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. But before he can try to do this the naïve Jude is seduced by Arabella Donn, a rather coarse, morally lax, and superficial local girl who traps him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. The marriage is a failure, and Arabella leaves Jude and later emigrates to Australia, where she enters into a bigamous marriage. By this time, Jude has abandoned his classical studies.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: After Arabella leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone, hoping to be able to enter the university later. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. But, shortly after this, Jude introduces Sue to his former school teacher, Mr. Phillotson, whom she eventually is persuaded to marry, despite the fact that he is some twenty years her senior. She soon regrets this, because, in addition to being in love with Jude, she is horrified by the notion of sex with her husband. Sue soon asks Phillotson for permission to leave him for Jude, which he grants, once he realizes how unwilling she is to fulfill what he believes are her marital duties to him. Because of this scandal—the fact that Phillotson willingly allows his wife to leave for another man—Phillotson has to give up his career as a schoolmaster.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: Sue and Jude spend some time living together without any sexual relationship. This is because of Sue's dislike both of sex and the institution of marriage. Soon after, Arabella reappears having fled her Australian husband, who managed a hotel in Sydney, and this complicates matters. Arabella and Jude divorce and she legally marries her bigamous husband, and Sue also is divorced. However, following this, Arabella reveals that she had a child of Jude's, eight months after they separated, and subsequently sends this child to his father. He is named Jude and nicknamed "Little Father Time" because of his intense seriousness and lack of humor.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: Jude eventually convinces Sue to sleep with him and, over the years, they have two children together and expect a third. But Jude and Sue are socially ostracised for living together unmarried, especially after the children are born. Jude's employers dismiss him because of the illicit relationship, and the family is forced into a nomadic lifestyle, moving from town to town across Wessex seeking employment and housing before eventually returning to Christminster. Their socially troubled boy, "Little Father Time", comes to believe that he and his half-siblings are the source of the family's woes. The morning after their arrival in Christminster, he murders Sue's two children and kills himself by hanging. He leaves behind a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too menny [*sic*]." Shortly thereafter, Sue has a miscarriage.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: Beside herself with grief and blaming herself for "Little Father Time"'s actions, Sue turns to the church that she has rebelled against. She comes to believe that the children's deaths were divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. Although horrified at the thought of resuming her marriage with Phillotson, she becomes convinced that, for religious reasons, she should never have left him. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who soon proposes they remarry. This results in Sue leaving Jude once again for Phillotson, and she punishes herself by allowing her husband sex. Jude is devastated and remarries Arabella after she plies him with alcohol to once again trick him into marriage.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: After one final, desperate visit to Sue in freezing weather, Jude becomes seriously ill and dies within the year in Christminster, thwarted in his ambitions both in love and in achieving fame in scholarship. It is revealed that Sue has grown "staid and worn" with Phillotson. Arabella fails to mourn Jude's passing, instead setting the stage to ensnare her next suitor.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: The novel explores several social problems in Victorian England, especially those relating to the institutions of marriage, the Church, and education. These themes are developed in particular through Hardy's use of contrast. For example, at the beginning of their relationship, Jude's Christian faith contrasts with Sue's religious scepticism, a contrast which is heightened even further by their later role-reversal. Although the central characters represent both perspectives, the novel as a whole is firmly critical of Christianity and social institutions in general.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: Jude's trajectory through the story sheds light on the ambivalent and conflicting roles of organized religion in his life. Jude, from his origins in Marygreen, always found religion to be the endgame of an otherwise troublesome and uninteresting life. But, as seen through his systematic exclusion from the University of Christminster, Jude's dream of entering the church would prove to be unattainable, leaving him to pursue other, less fulfilling interests. A similar track can be seen in Hardy's treatment of the traditional institution of marriage. From the original pairing of Arabella and Jude to their eventual reunion, Hardy depicts marriage as an oppressive social necessity, propelling the characters into a downward spiral of unhappiness.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: Although Hardy claimed that "no book he had ever written contained less of his own life", contemporary reviewers found several parallels between the themes of the novel and Hardy's life as a working-class man of letters. The unhappy marriages, the religious and philosophical questioning, and the social problems dealt with in "Jude the Obscure" appear in many other Hardy novels, as well as in Hardy's life. The struggle against fixed class boundaries is an important link between the novel and Hardy's life, especially concerning higher education and the working class. Although Jude wishes to attend the university at Christminster, he cannot afford the costs involved in studying for a degree, and he lacks the rigorous training necessary to qualify for a fellowship. He is therefore prevented from gaining economic mobility and getting out of the working class. This theme of unattainable education was personal for Hardy since he, like Jude, had not been able to afford to study for a degree at Oxford or Cambridge, in spite of his early interest in scholarship and the classics. Several specific details about Jude's self-directed studies actually appear in Hardy's autobiography, including late-night Latin readings while working full-time as a stonemason and then as an architect. However, unlike Jude, Hardy's mother was well-read, and she educated Thomas until he went to his first school at Bockhampton at age eight, and he attended school in Dorchester, where he learned Latin and demonstrated academic potential, until he became an apprentice at 16.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: Another parallel between the book's characters and themes and Hardy's actual life experience occurs when Sue becomes obsessed with religion after previously having been indifferent and even hostile towards it. Like Sue Bridehead, Hardy's first wife, Emma, went from being free-spirited and fairly indifferent to religion in her youth to becoming obsessively religious as she got older. Since Hardy was always highly critical of organised religion, as Emma became more and more religious, their differing views led to a great deal of tension in their marriage, and this tension was a major factor leading to their increased alienation from one another.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: Emma was also very disapproving of "Jude the Obscure", in part because of the book's criticisms of religion, but also because she worried that the reading public would believe that the relationship between Jude and Sue directly paralleled her strained relationship with Hardy (which, in a figurative sense, it did).


title: Jude the Obscure

text: Around 1887, Hardy began making notes for a story about a working-man's frustrated attempts to attend the university, perhaps inspired in part by the scholastic failure and suicide of his friend Horace Moule. From December 1894 to November 1895, a bowdlerised version of the novel ran in instalments in "Harper's New Monthly Magazine", originally under the title "The Simpletons", then "Hearts Insurgent". In 1895, the book was published in London under its present title, "Jude the Obscure" (dated 1896). In his Preface to the first edition, Hardy provides details of the conception and writing history of the novel, claiming that certain details were inspired by the death of a woman (most likely his cousin, Tryphena Sparks) in 1890.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: Called "Jude the Obscene" by at least one reviewer, "Jude the Obscure" received a harsh reception from some scandalized critics. Among the critics was Walsham How, Bishop of Wakefield; Hardy later claimed that the bishop had burned a copy. It has been suggested that negative criticism was the reason that Hardy stopped writing novels after "Jude", but poet C. H. Sisson describes this "hypothesis" as "superficial and absurd".


title: Jude the Obscure

text: D. H. Lawrence, an admirer of Hardy, was puzzled by the character of Sue Bridehead, and attempted to analyse her conflicted sexuality in his "A Study of Thomas Hardy" (1914).


title: Jude the Obscure

text: At least one recent scholar has postulated that "Jude" borrowed heavily from an earlier novel, "The Wages of Sin" by Lucas Malet.


title: Jude the Obscure

text: Marxist critic Terry Eagleton, in his introduction to a 1974 edition of the text, refutes the conventional reading of the novel as 'the tragedy of an oversexed peasant boy', instead examining the social background of the text and proposing it as a conflict between ideal and reality.


title: Sandeep Singh

text: Sandeep Singh (born 27 February 1986) is an Indian professional field hockey player from Haryana and an ex-captain of the Indian national hockey team. He generally features as a full back and is a penalty corner specialist for the team. He has been dubbed "Flicker Singh" in the media for his specialization of the drag-flick, one of the fastest in the world.


title: Sandeep Singh

text: Singh holds a DSP rank in the Haryana Police. He has been elected as MLA in 2019 from Pehowa constituency in Kurukshetra, Haryana from Bharatiya Janata Party and has been sworn in as the Sports Minister of Haryana.


title: Sandeep Singh

text: Singh hails from Shahabad town in Kurukshetra, Haryana. He was educated at Shivalik Public School, Mohali. Sandeep was born to Gurucharan Singh Saini and Daljeet Kaur Saini. Sandeep has an older brother, Bikramjeet, also a field hockey player who plays for Indian Oil.


title: Sandeep Singh

text: Sandeep's international debut was in January 2004 in Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Kuala Lumpur. He took over as the captain of the Indian national team in January 2009, and Rajpal Singh succeeded him later in 2010. Singh is a well known drag-flicker. At a time he was said to have the best speed in the world in drag flick (speed 145 km/h). Under his captaincy, the Indian team managed to clinch the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in 2009 after defeating Malaysia in the finals at Ipoh. India won the title after a long wait of 13 years. Singh was also the top goal scorer of the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup tournament.


title: Sandeep Singh

text: The India men's national field hockey team have qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London after a gap of 8 years. The team had a resounding victory over France in the finals of the Olympic qualifiers by beating France 9–1. Ace drag-flicker Singh starred in the final against France by scoring five goals – including a hat-trick – all from penalty corners (19th, 26th, 38th, 49th and 51st minutes). Singh was the highest scorer of the Olympic qualifiers tournament by scoring 16 goals.


title: Sandeep Singh

text: Sandeep Singh became the fifth highest-paid marquee player at the inaugural Hockey India League as the Mumbai franchise bought him for US$64,400 with his base price being US$27,800. The Mumbai team has been named Mumbai Magicians. Scoring 11 goals in 12 games, Singh emerged as the top scorer in the first edition of the league. In 2014, he was signed by Punjab Warriors. After playing two seasons for the team, he was signed by Ranchi Rays for US$81,000 in 2015 starting 2016.


title: Sandeep Singh

text: On 22 August 2006, Singh was seriously injured after being hit by an accidental gunshot in the "Kalka Shatabdi Express" train, while on his way to join the national team due to leave for the World Cup in Africa two days later. He was almost paralyzed and on the wheelchair for 1 year of his life. He was 20 at that time. Singh not only recovered from that serious injury but also established himself again and played world cup for India in 2010 Indian team.


title: Sandeep Singh

text: Sandeep Singh was elected from Pehowa constituency as Member of Legislative Assembly (Haryana) from Bharatiya Janata Party during the 2019 Haryana Legislative Assembly election. He was sworn in as Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs (MoS) and Minister of Printing and Stationery (MoS) (Independent Charge).


title: Sandeep Singh

text: Indian filmmaker Shaad Ali made a biographical film, titled "Soorma" (), based on Singh's life. Diljit Dosanjh played Sandeep Singh's role in the film. It was released on 13 July 2018. The film also stars Taapsee Pannu and Angad Bedi.


title: Sandeep Singh

text: Singh appeared as a judge on the Indian reality television series MTV Roadies ("Roadies: Real Heroes") on MTV India.


title: VSCO

text: VSCO (), formerly known as VSCO Cam, is a photography mobile app for iOS and Android devices. The app was created by Joel Flory and Greg Lutze. The VSCO app allows users to capture photos in the app and edit them, using preset filters and editing tools.


title: VSCO

text: Visual Supply Company was founded by Joel Flory and Greg Lutze in California, in 2011. VSCO was launched in 2012. It raised $40 million from investors in May 2014. In 2017, VSCO launched a subscription model. As of 2018, Visual Supply Company has $90 million in funding from investors and over 2 million paying members. In 2019, VSCO acquired Rylo, a video editing startup founded by the original developer of Instagram’s Hyperlapse. Visual Supply Company has locations in Oakland, California, where it is headquartered, and Chicago, Illinois. In December 2020 VSCO acquired AI-powered video editing app Trash.


title: VSCO

text: Photos can be taken or imported from the camera roll, as well as short videos or animated GIFs (known in the app as DSCO; iOS only). The user can edit their photos through various preset filters, or through the "toolkit" feature which allows finer adjustments to fade, clarity, skin tone, tint, sharpness, saturation, contrast, temperature, exposure, and other properties. Users have the option of posting their photos to their profile, where they can also add captions and hashtags. Photos can also be exported back into the camera roll or shared with other social networking services. The users also have an option to edit their own videos from their camera roll with the VSCO yearly membership, but they are not able to post camera roll videos to their account on VSCO.


title: Louis Kahn

text: Louis Isadore Kahn (born Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky; – March 17, 1974) was an Estonian-born American architect based in Philadelphia. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935. While continuing his private practice, he served as a design critic and professor of architecture at Yale School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957. From 1957 until his death, he was a professor of architecture at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.


title: Louis Kahn

text: Kahn created a style that was monumental and monolithic; his heavy buildings for the most part do not hide their weight, their materials, or the way they are assembled. He was awarded the AIA Gold Medal and the RIBA Gold Medal. At the time of his death he was considered by some as "America's foremost living architect."


title: Louis Kahn

text: Louis Kahn, whose original name was Itze-Leib (Leiser-Itze) Schmuilowsky (Schmalowski), was born into a poor Jewish family, at that time in the Russian Empire, but now in Estonia. His exact birthplace is disputed, but it is widely regarded to be Kuressaare, Saaremaa, although some sources mention Pärnu.


title: Louis Kahn

text: He spent his early childhood in Kuressaare on the island of Saaremaa, then part of the Russian Empire's Livonian Governorate. At the age of three, he saw coals in the stove and was captivated by the light of the coal. He put the coal in his apron, which caught on fire and burned his face. He carried these scars for the rest of his life.


title: Louis Kahn

text: In 1906, his family emigrated to the United States, as they feared that his father would be recalled into the military during the Russo-Japanese War. His birth year may have been inaccurately recorded in the process of immigration. According to his son's 2003 documentary film, the family could not afford pencils. They made their own charcoal sticks from burnt twigs so that Louis could earn a little money from drawings. Later he earned money by playing piano to accompany silent movies in theaters. He became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. on May 15, 1914. His father changed their name to Kahn in 1915.


title: Louis Kahn

text: Kahn excelled in art from a young age, repeatedly winning the annual award for the best watercolor by a Philadelphia high school student. He was an unenthusiastic and undistinguished student at Philadelphia Central High School until he took a course in architecture in his senior year, which convinced him to become an architect. He turned down an offer to go to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to study art under a full scholarship, instead working at a variety of jobs to pay his own tuition for a degree in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts. There, he studied under Paul Philippe Cret in a version of the Beaux-Arts tradition, one that discouraged excessive ornamentation.


title: Louis Kahn

text: After completing his Bachelor of Architecture in 1924, Kahn worked as senior draftsman in the office of the city architect, John Molitor. He worked on the designs for the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition.


title: Louis Kahn

text: In 1928, Kahn made a European tour. He was interested particularly in the medieval walled city of Carcassonne, France, and the castles of Scotland, rather than any of the strongholds of classicism or modernism. After returning to the United States in 1929, Kahn worked in the offices of Paul Philippe Cret, his former studio critic at the University of Pennsylvania, and then with Zantzinger, Borie and Medary in Philadelphia.


title: Louis Kahn

text: In 1932, Kahn and Dominique Berninger founded the Architectural Research Group, whose members were interested in the populist social agenda and new aesthetics of the European avant-gardes. Among the projects Kahn worked on during this collaboration are schemes for public housing that he had presented to the Public Works Administration, which supported some similar projects during the Great Depression. They remained unbuilt.


title: Louis Kahn

text: Among the more important of Kahn's early collaborations was one with George Howe. Kahn worked with Howe in the late 1930s on projects for the Philadelphia Housing Authority and again in 1940, along with German-born architect Oscar Stonorov, for the design of housing developments in other parts of Pennsylvania. A formal architectural office partnership between Kahn and Oscar Stonorov began in February 1942 and ended in March 1947, which produced fifty-four documented projects and buildings.


title: Louis Kahn

text: Kahn did not arrive at his distinctive architectural style until he was in his fifties. Initially working in a fairly orthodox version of the International Style, he was strongly influenced by a stay as architect-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome during 1950, which marked a turning point in his career. After visiting the ruins of ancient buildings in Italy, Greece, and Egypt, he adopted a back-to-the-basics approach. He developed his own style, as influenced by earlier modern movements, but not limited by their sometimes-dogmatic ideologies. In the 1950s and 1960s, as a consultant architect for the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Kahn developed several plans for the center of Philadelphia that were never executed.


title: Louis Kahn

text: In 1961 he received a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts to study traffic movement in Philadelphia and to create a proposal for a viaduct system.


title: Louis Kahn

text: He described this proposal at a lecture given in 1962 at the International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado:


title: Louis Kahn

text: In the center of town the streets should become buildings. This should be interplayed with a sense of movement which does not tax local streets for non-local traffic. There should be a system of viaducts which encase an area which can reclaim the local streets for their own use, and it should be made so this viaduct has a ground floor of shops and usable area. A model which I did for the Graham Foundation recently, and which I presented to Mr. Entenza, showed the scheme.


title: Louis Kahn

text: Kahn's teaching career began at Yale University in 1947. He eventually was named as the "Albert F. Bemis Professor" of Architecture and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956. Kahn then returned to Philadelphia to teach at the University of Pennsylvania from 1957 until his death, becoming the "Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture". He also was a visiting lecturer at Princeton University School of Architecture from 1961 to 1967.


title: Louis Kahn

text: Kahn was elected a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1953. He was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1964. He was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal in 1964. In 1965 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician. He was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968 and awarded the AIA Gold Medal, the highest award given by the AIA, in 1971, and the Royal Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), in 1972. In 1971, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.


title: Louis Kahn

text: In 1974, Kahn died of a heart attack in a restroom at Penn Station in Manhattan. He had just returned from a work trip to India. Owing to police miscommunications in both New York City and Philadelphia, his wife was initially not notified.


title: Louis Kahn

text: Kahn had three children with three women. With his wife Esther he had a daughter, Sue Ann. With Anne Tyng, who began her working collaboration and personal relationship with Kahn in 1945, he also had a daughter, Alexandra. When Tyng became pregnant in 1953, to mitigate the scandal, she went to Rome, for the birth of their daughter. With Harriet Pattison, he had a son, Nathaniel Kahn. Anne Tyng was an architect and teacher, while Harriet Pattison was a pioneering landscape architect. Kahn's obituary in "The New York Times", written by Paul Goldberger, mentions only Esther and his daughter by her as survivors.


title: Louis Kahn

text: In 2003 Nathaniel Kahn released a documentary about his father, "." The Oscar-nominated film provides views and insights into Kahn's architecture while exploring him personally through his family, friends and colleagues.


title: Louis Kahn

text: Louis Kahn's work infused the International style with a fastidious, highly personal taste. Isamu Noguchi called him "a philosopher among architects." He was concerned with creating strong formal distinctions between "served" spaces and "servant" spaces. What he meant by "servant" spaces was not spaces for servants, but rather spaces that serve other spaces, such as stairwells, corridors, restrooms, or any other back-of-house function such as storage space or mechanical rooms. His palette of materials tended toward heavily textured brick and bare concrete, the textures often reinforced by juxtaposition to highly refined surfaces such as travertine marble. Kahn argued that brick can be more than the basic building material:


title: Louis Kahn

text: If you think of Brick, you say to Brick, 'What do you want, Brick?' And Brick says to you, 'I like an Arch.' And if you say to Brick, 'Look, arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lintel over you. What do you think of that, Brick?' Brick says, 'I like an Arch.' And it's important, you see, that you honor the material that you use. ... You can only do it if you honor the brick and glorify the brick instead of shortchanging it.