title: Late bloomer

text: Marjorie Rice, an amateur mathematician with no formal education in mathematics beyond high school, did not begin studying tessellations until December 1975; as she was born in 1923, this means she was either 51 or 52 when she began, depending on her birthday. She discovered four new types of tessellating pentagons in 1976 and 1977.


title: Late bloomer

text: Yitang Zhang, a Chinese-born American mathematician, established a theorem akin to the twin prime conjecture at the age of 58.


title: Late bloomer

text: Musical ability is inherent in almost all people, to a greater or lesser extent. However, those who develop it to a high level are generally encouraged to play an instrument or to sing at an early age. Late bloomers in music are generally composers or artists who became prominent later in life, but had displayed musical ability much earlier.


title: Late bloomer

text: Anton Bruckner is an example of a musical late bloomer. Although he played church organ some in his twenties he did not become a composer until his 40s. Singer K. T. Oslin released her first album at age 47 which was a major country music success. Al Jarreau is also an example, who released his first album at age 35. AERIA Recording Artist Colie Brice released his 10th solo album Late Bloomer at 39. Elliott Carter did not achieve compositional maturity until his Cello Sonata (1948), when he was 40. César Franck and Leoš Janáček also matured late as composers: Franck at 56, with his "Symphony no. 1 in D"; and Janáček at 50, with "Jenůfa"" (1904). Iannis Xenakis did not even begin studying composition until 30, with Messiaen. Leonard Cohen did not release his first album until he was 32 years old. Doug Seegers did not reach fame until he was 61–62 years old.


title: Late bloomer

text: Though many filmmakers begin directing in their late 20s or early 30s, many of the most notable directors in film history waited until their mid-to-late-30s to direct their first feature. These directors include Nicholas Ray, Alain Resnais, Edward Yang, Michael Mann, Frank Tashlin, Robert Aldrich, Satyajit Ray, Anthony Mann, Terry Gilliam, Jerry Lewis, Tsai Ming-liang, Don Siegel, Melvin Van Peebles, Gaspar Noé, Lloyd Bacon, Alexander Kluge, Mrinal Sen, Jean-Marie Straub, Ida Lupino, Sam Mendes, Alexander Payne, Ang Lee and Jacques Rivette. David Mamet directed his first feature at 40, having already found success and been awarded a Pulitzer Prize as a playwright. Éric Rohmer directed his first feature film at 39, though he did not become a full-time filmmaker until he was in his late 40s.


title: Late bloomer

text: Many notable directors started even later: Robert Bresson, Jacques Tati, and Takeshi Kitano directed their first features at 42; Maurice Pialat at 43; Michael Haneke at 47; Jim Sheridan at 40; and his peer and collaborator Terry George at 46. Yevgeni Bauer at 48. Clint Eastwood, the oldest person to win the Academy Award for Best Director, directed his first film at 41.


title: Late bloomer

text: One of the most shining examples of late bloomers in filmmaking is the Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira. Born in 1908, he worked sporadically in filmmaking from the 1930s. He completed his first feature film in 1941 called "Aniki-Bobo". Due to circumstances beyond his control (difficulty in financing, having to deal with his family's business), he did not complete his second feature film until 1971 (when he turned 63). Two years later, he completed his third feature film, "Benilde or the Virgin Mother" (1973). Five years later, he made his breakthrough film (originally commissioned by Portuguese TV) called "Doomed Love". After his critically acclaimed film "Francisca" (1981), he became a full-time filmmaker (at the age of 73).


title: Late bloomer

text: It is common for politicians to achieve prominence late in life, often after a career in business, law or academia. For example, in the United States Congress of January 2009, of 540 elected officials, 215 had worked in the legal profession, and 189 had worked in private sector business. The average age of senators was 62. Also, Donald Trump was the first U.S. President to reach the age of seventy prior to his election to the presidency and first to reach seventy years of age before entering office, as well as the first U.S. President to assume the office without any prior military or political experience.


title: Late bloomer

text: Václav Havel, born in 1936, was a playwright and writer with an interest in human rights. He became the voice of the opposition in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s and President of Czechoslovakia at age 53 after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. Ronald Reagan, a former actor, union leader, and corporate spokesman, was first elected to public office at 55 when he became Governor of California and was the oldest man to have served as U.S. President until Trump was. Melchora Aquino was an uneducated Filipino peasant woman, the mother of six children, who became an activist in the fight to gain independence from Spain. Known as the Grand Woman of the revolution, she was 84 when the Philippine Revolution broke out in 1896. Marjory Stoneman Douglas's career might also fit. Her first environmental work of note occurred when she was almost 60, at 78 she founded "Friends of the Everglades", and she continued until she was over age 100.


title: Late bloomer

text: A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, a proponent of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness ( the Hare Krishna movement) in 1966 at the age of 70. Within the final twenty years of his life, Prabhupada translated over sixty volumes of classic Vedic scriptures (such as the "Bhagavad Gita" and "Bhagavata Purana") into the English language.


title: Late bloomer

text: Augustine of Hippo, as he detailed in the "Confessions", was a frequent loser in the battle with lustful passions from the age of 16 to 32. At the age of 31 he converted to Christianity and began to pray to overcome his passions and lust. He eventually went on to lead a life of celibacy and became one of the most influential bishops in the history of the Church.


title: Late bloomer

text: Many writers have published their first major work late in life. Mary Wesley might be a classic example. She wrote two children's books in her late fifties, but her writing career did not gain note until her first novel at 70, written after the death of her husband.


title: Late bloomer

text: At the age of 74, Norman Maclean published his first and only novel, the 1976 best-selling book "A River Runs Through It", which fictionalizes Maclean's memories of the early twentieth century in Montana. Harriet Doerr published her first novel at age 74, and went on to great praise. A possibly more well-known example might be Laura Ingalls Wilder. She became a columnist in her forties, but did not publish her first novel in the "Little House" series of children's books until her sixties. Charles Bukowski wrote his first novel in 1971, when he was 51 years old.


title: Late bloomer

text: Memoirist and novelist Flora Thompson was first published in her thirties but is most famous for the semi-autobiographical "Lark Rise to Candleford" trilogy, the first volume of which was published when she was 63. Frank McCourt didn't publish his first book "Angela's Ashes", which he later won the Pulitzer Prize for, until he was 66. Children's author Mary Alice Fontenot wrote her first book at 51 and wrote almost thirty additional books, publishing multiple volumes in her eighties and nineties. Kenneth Grahame was born in 1859 and joined the Bank of England in 1879, rising through the ranks to become its secretary. Although he had written various short stories while working at the bank, it was only after his retirement in 1908 that he published his masterpiece and final work "The Wind in the Willows". Penelope Fitzgerald launched her literary career in 1975, at the age of 58, when she published a biography of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. She won the Booker Prize for 1979 with "Offshore", and in 2012, "The Observer" named her final novel, "The Blue Flower", as one of "the ten best historical novels".


title: Late bloomer

text: Richard Adams's first novel, the bestseller "Watership Down", was published when he was in his fifties. The Marquis de Sade published his first novel, "Justine", after turning 51. Raymond Chandler published his first short story at 45, and his first novel, "The Big Sleep", at 51. Paul Torday published his debut novel "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" at the age of 59, after a career in the engineering industry. Jean Rhys is best known for her novel "Wide Sargasso Sea", which was published in October 1966, when she was 76.


title: Late bloomer

text: Aron Ettore Schmitz published his first novel "Senilità" in his 38th year; however it was not until he published "Zeno's Conscience" that he made a breakthrough, aged 61. Even this was self-published.


title: Late bloomer

text: In other areas of writing, historian Gerda Lerner, born in 1920, published her first book, "The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina," in 1967, when she was either 47 or 46 depending on her birthday. Poet Wallace Stevens started poetry late in life after years as an insurance salesman and executive. Although he was first published at 38, his "canonical works" came out in his fifties. In philosophy Mary Midgley had her first book when she was 56. Edmond Hoyle wrote a booklet on whist in his late sixties. To avoid unauthorized copies he wrote the copyrighted "A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist" at age 70.


title: Late bloomer

text: The Indian writer and polymath Nirad C. Chaudhuri wrote his autobiography "The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian" at the age of 54. He wrote a sequel to it "Thy Hand, Great Anarch!" at the age of 90. He published his next work (and his final work) "Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse" at the age of 100.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: The Organisation of African Unity (OAU; , OUA) was an intergovernmental organization established on 25 May 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with 32 signatory governments. One of the main heads for OAU's establishment was Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. It was disbanded on 9 July 2002 by its last chairman, South African President Thabo Mbeki, and replaced by the African Union (AU). Some of the key aims of the OAU were to encourage political and economic integration among member states, and to eradicate colonialism and neo-colonialism from the African continent.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: The absence of an armed force like that of the United Nations left the organization with no means to enforce its decisions. It was also not willing to become involved in the internal affairs of member nations prompting some critics to claim the OAU as a forum for rhetoric, not action. Recognizing this, the OAU in September 1999 issued the Declaration, calling for a new body to take its place. On 9 July 2002, this happened with the creation of the African Union. The African Union continues to this day to uphold many of the founding principles of the OAU.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: The OAU was founded in May 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by 32 African states with the main aim of bringing the African nations together and resolve the issues within the continent. Its first ever conference was held on 1 May 1963 in Addis Ababa. At that conference, the late Gambian historian—and one of the leading Gambian nationalists and Pan-Africanists at the time—Alieu Ebrima Cham Joof delivered a speech in front of the member states, in which he said:


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: A Liberation Committee was established to aid independence movements and look after the interests of already-independent states. The OAU also aimed to stay neutral in terms of global politics, which would prevent them from being controlled once more by outside forces – an especial danger with the Cold War.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: Soon after achieving independence, a number of African states expressed a growing desire for more unity within the continent. Not everyone was agreed on how this unity could be achieved, however, and two opinionated groups emerged in this respect:


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: Some of the initial discussions took place at Sanniquellie, Liberia. The dispute was eventually resolved when Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I invited the two groups to Addis Ababa, where the OAU and its headquarters were subsequently established. The Charter of the Organisation was signed by 32 independent African states.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: At the time of the OAU's disbanding, 53 out of the 54 African states were members; Morocco left on 12 November 1984 following the admission of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as the government of Western Sahara in 1982.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: The organisation was widely derided as a bureaucratic "talking shop" with little power. It struggled to enforce its decisions, and its lack of armed force made intervention exceedingly difficult. Civil wars in Nigeria and Angola continued unabated for years, and the OAU could do nothing to stop them.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: The policy of non-interference in the affairs of member states also limited the effectiveness of the OAU. Thus, when human rights were violated, as in Uganda under Idi Amin in the 1970s, the OAU was powerless to stop them.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: The Organisation was praised by Ghanaian former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan for bringing Africans together. Nevertheless, in its 39 years of existence, critics argue that the OAU did little to protect the rights and liberties of African citizens from their own political leaders, often dubbing it as a "Dictators' Club" or "Dictator's Trade Union".


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: The OAU was, however, successful in some respects. Many of its members were members of the UN, too, and they stood together within the latter organisation to safeguard African interests – especially in respect of lingering colonialism. Its pursuit of African unity, therefore, was in some ways successful.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: Total unity was difficult to achieve, however, as the OAU was largely divided. The former French colonies, still dependent on France, had formed the Monrovia Group, and there was a further split between those that supported the United States and those that supported the USSR in the Cold War of ideologies. The pro-Socialist faction was led by Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, while Félix Houphouët-Boigny of the Ivory Coast led the pro-capitalists. Because of these divisions, it was difficult for the OAU to take action against states involved in internal conflicts because it could rarely reach an agreement on what was to be done.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: The OAU did play a pivotal role in eradicating colonialism and white minority rule in Africa. It gave weapons, training and military bases to rebel groups fighting white minority and colonial rule. Groups such as the ANC and PAC, fighting apartheid, and ZANU and ZAPU, fighting to topple the government of Rhodesia, were aided in their endeavours by the OAU. African harbours were closed to the South African government, and South African aircraft were prohibited from flying over the rest of the continent. The UN was convinced by the OAU to expel South Africa from bodies such as the World Health Organization.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: The OAU also worked with the UN to ease refugee problems. It set up the African Development Bank for economic projects intended to make Africa financially stronger. Although all African countries eventually won their independence, it remained difficult for them to become totally independent of their former colonisers. There was often continued reliance on the former colonial powers for economic aid, which often came with strings attached: loans had to be paid back at high interest-rates, and goods had to be sold to the aiders at low rates.


title: Organisation of African Unity

text: The US and Soviet Union intervened in post-colonial Africa in pursuit of their own objectives. Help was sometimes provided in the form of technology and aid-workers. Despite the fight to keep "Westerners" (colonialists) out of African affairs, the OAU has failed to achieve to meet goals set up to advocate African affairs. The Organisation still heavily depends on Western help (military and economic) to intervene in African affairs, despite African leaders' displeasure at dealing with the international community, especially Western countries.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: The Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (YaNAO; , ; , ) or Yamalia () is a federal subject of Russia and an autonomous okrug of Tyumen Oblast. Its administrative center is the town of Salekhard, and its largest city is Noyabrsk. The 2010 Russian Census recorded its population as 522,904.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: The Autonomous Okrug borders Krasnoyarsk Krai to the east, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug to the south, Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Komi Republic to the west.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: The West Siberian petroleum basin is the largest hydrocarbon (petroleum and natural gas) basin in the world covering an area of about 2.2 million km, and is also the largest oil and gas producing region in Russia.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: The Nenets people are an indigenous tribe who have long survived in this region. Their prehistoric life involved subsistence hunting and gathering, including the taking of polar bears; the practice of hunting polar bears ("Ursus maritimus") continues up to the present time.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug is traversed by the northeasterly line of equal latitude and longitude, that is, at the point 70°N and 70°E, with equal degrees. The Polar Urals rise in the western part and the highest point of the okrug, as well as of the whole Ural mountain system, is Mount Payer.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: The area consists of arctic tundra and taiga, with three large peninsulas - the Yamal Peninsula, Taz Peninsula and the Gyda Peninsula (itself containing the Yavay Peninsula and Mamonta Peninsula). There are nearly 300,000 lakes in the okrug, some of the main ones being Pyakuto, Chyortovo, Neito, Yambuto, Yarroto and Nembuto.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: The Ob River flows through Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug to the Kara Sea via the Gulf of Ob, which dominates the geography of the Okrug (together with its two sub-bays, the Taz Estuary and Khalmyer Bay.<ref name="http://russiatrek.org/yamalo-nenets-okrug">Yamalo-Nenets region, Russia facts, resources, climate, photos: Yamalo-Nenets region, Russia facts, resources, climate, photos, accessdate: May 5, 2017</ref>


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: A number of islands are off the okrug's coast - from west to east, the main ones are Torasovey Island, Bolotnyy Island, Litke Island, Sharapovy Koshki Islands, Bely Island, Shokalsky Island, Petsovyye Islands, Proklyatyye Islands, Oleny Island, and Vilkitsky Island.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: From 1960 to 2016, Yamal Nenets population increased from 60 000 people to more than 530 000 due to the natural resources discovered in the region. Currently, Yamal Nenets is the only Arctic Region in the Russian Federation that is not experiencing population decline. Despite the growing pressure on the regional environment, former governor Dmitry Kobylkin assured in 2016 that industrial developments are not affecting the traditional lifestyles of the native population. Official data accounts for an increment of 11 percent of the indigenous population from 2006 to 2016.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: The Nenets make up 5.9% of the population, preceded by ethnic Russians (61.7%) and Ukrainians (9.7%), followed by Tatars (5.6%). Other prominent ethnic groups include Belarusians (1.3%), Khants (1.9%), Azerbaijanis (1.8%), Bashkirs (1.7%), Komi (1%), and Moldovans (0.9%) (all figures are from the 2010 Census). Due to the area's oil and natural gas wealth, it is one of the few places in Russia where the ethnic Russian population is growing.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: According to a 2012 survey 42.2% of the population of Yamalia adhere to the Russian Orthodox Church, 14% are unaffiliated generic Christians, 1% are believers in Orthodox Christianity who do not belong to any church, 1% are members of the Slavic neopaganism (Rodnovery) or practitioners of local shamanic religions, and 1% are members of Protestant churches; Muslims, mostly Caucasian peoples and Tatars, make up 18% of the total population. In addition, 14% of the population declare to be "spiritual but not religious", 8% are atheist, and 0.8% follow other religions or did not give an answer to the question.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: In 2009, Yamalo-Nenetsky Avtonomny Okrug is Russia's most important source of natural gas, with more than 90% of Russia's natural gas being produced there. The region also accounts for 12% of Russia's oil production. The region is the most important to Russia's largest company Gazprom, whose main production fields are located there. Novatek – the country's second-largest gas producer – is also active in the region, with its headquarters located in Tarko-Sale. According to Novatek on 22 October 2019, the natural gas reserves in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug represent 80% of Russia's natural gas and 15% of the world's natural gas supply.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: Since the early 2010s Gazprom has been developing Yamal project in the Yamal Peninsula area. As of 2020, Yamal produces over 20% of Russia's gas, which is expected to increase to 40% by 2030. The shortest pipeline routes from Yamal to the northern EU countries are the Yamal–Europe pipeline through Poland and Nord Stream 1 to Germany. The proposed gas route from Western Siberia to China is known as Power of Siberia 2 pipeline.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: Following the 14 September 2019 attack by Houthi movement on Saudi Arabian oil fields at Khurais and Abqaiq ("Biqayq" in Arabic) during the 2019–2021 Persian Gulf crisis, the United States imposed sanctions under Executive Order 13846 against several international companies, including Cosco Shipping Tanker (Dalian) Seaman and Ship Management Company Ltd and the Cosco Shipping Tanker Dalian (大連中遠海運油品運輸有限公司). Both of these are Cosco Shipping Company subsidiaries that support LNG shipments from Sabetta.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: Ships operated by these companies and their partnerships are directly affected by the sanctions. As of late September 2019, China LNG Shipping Ltd (CLNG) - a joint venture between the Cosco Shipping Tanker Dalian company and the Canadian firm Teekay - operates six of Sabetta's LNG ice fleet of 15 ARC7 LNG tankers, including:


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: Also affected are five ARC7 tankers which supplied by Dynagas in a partnership between Sinotrans&CSC and CLNG, as well as three ARC7 tankers from a joint venture between the Cosco subsidiary Shanghai LNG and Japan's MOL (株式会社商船三井). While these ARC7 tankers are not directly sanctioned by the United States, US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) rules require caution to be exercised when dealing with these related companies. Of the fifteen ARC7 tankers operating out of Sabetta, only Sovcomflot's "Christophe de Margerie" is not affected by the sanctions.


title: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

text: Service for these ships was previously provided at Honningsvåg, Norway, but this will be phased out and future LNG tanker shipments in the Northern Sea Route are expected to occur between Murmansk and Kamchatka, remaining in Russia coastal waters. On 30 January 2020, the United States lifted sanctions on Cosco Shipping Tanker (Dalian) and its TC LNG .


title: Larry Crowne

text: Larry Crowne is a 2011 American romantic comedy film starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. The film was produced and directed by Hanks, who co-wrote its screenplay with Nia Vardalos. The story was inspired by Hanks' time studying at Chabot College. The film tells the story of Larry Crowne, a middle-aged man who unexpectedly loses his job and returns to education. It was released in the United States on .


title: Larry Crowne

text: Larry Crowne, a middle-aged Navy veteran, is fired from his job at a big-box store due to a lack of college education, despite his seniority and exemplary work. Larry, who is divorced and lives alone, cannot find a job and could lose his house. His neighbor, Lamar, suggests he enroll at East Valley Community College and get an education.


title: Larry Crowne

text: Subsisting on unemployment benefits and unable to afford to drive his SUV, Larry buys a scooter from Lamar. At the college, he becomes part of a colorful community trying to find a better future, he is nicknamed "Lance Corona" by classmate Talia. Two of the classes he takes are speech, taught by Mercedes Tainot and economics, taught by Dr. Ed Matsutani. While initially struggling in speech class, he does very well in economics.


title: Larry Crowne

text: Mercedes drinks at home after school because she is unhappily married to Dean, a former professor-turned-writer-turned-blogger. In reality, Dean spends his days looking at internet porn.


title: Larry Crowne

text: Talia invites Larry to join a club of scooter riders led by her boyfriend Dell Gordo. She also updates Larry's home decor, hair style, and wardrobe. His friend Frank, who runs the diner, offers him a job to help make ends meet, as Larry had been a Navy cook.


title: Larry Crowne

text: After a night with Dean goes horribly wrong, Mercedes is left alone at a bus stop, where Larry and his scooter gang notice her. He offers her a ride home, which she reluctantly accepts. On their way home they witness Dean getting arrested for drunk driving.


title: Larry Crowne

text: At her front door, Mercedes invites Larry to kiss her and they hug, before she passionately starts kissing him. She wants to have sex as well, but Larry declines, not wanting to take advantage of her inebriated state. When Dean arrives home the following morning he finds all of his possessions on the front lawn.


title: Larry Crowne

text: Realizing there is no way he will not lose his house, Larry uses the knowledge he gained in his Economics class to begin a strategic foreclosure. Mercedes, meanwhile, warns Larry not to disclose the events of the previous night, and remains under the false impression that he is romantically involved with the much-younger Talia. It disappoints Larry, who had been excited about Mercedes' interest in him. He goes back to concentrating on his studies and his new job instead.


title: Larry Crowne

text: Mercedes runs into Talia, who is telling Frances, her English teacher, that she will be dropping out of college to start a thrift store. There, she finds out that Talia and Larry are just friends. Later, Frances comes over to Mercedes' to provide emotional support due to her divorce.


title: Larry Crowne

text: Finals arrive, and Larry is scheduled last. His speech is about his travels around the world while in the Navy, and also manages to include all of his classmates' topics within his own. He is given a big round of applause by his classmates and an A-plus grade from Mercedes, who is now happier in her life, and has rediscovered her passion for teaching.


title: Larry Crowne

text: A short while later, Mercedes and Frances show up at Larry's diner. She lets him know that he was an excellent student, to which he replies that she was an excellent teacher. When the next term begins, some of the students from Mercedes' speech course register for her Shakespeare class, but Larry is not with them. He is seen taking Dr. Matsutani's second-term Economics class.


title: Larry Crowne

text: Mercedes walks to her office and sees a note from Larry on the door, which is an invitation for French toast, with the address to his new apartment. She drives there and they kiss.


title: Larry Crowne

text: "Larry Crowne" was first announced as "Talk of the Town" in February 2006. Universal Pictures set up the project as a star vehicle for Tom Hanks with Nia Vardalos hired to write the screenplay based on the life of Jim Chandler, a friend of Hanks', about a man who goes through an unexpected career change. In January 2010, Julia Roberts was cast opposite Hanks. In the following October, Bryan Cranston joined the cast. Later in the month, filming began in Los Angeles. The film's production budget totaled .


title: Larry Crowne

text: "Larry Crowne" was released in theaters on , 2011. In the United States and Canada, Summit Entertainment originally intended to distribute the film, but Universal Pictures claimed the distribution rights. Universal released "Larry Crowne" in . The film grossed over the four-day opening weekend that included the U.S. holiday Independence Day, ranking fourth at the box office.


title: Larry Crowne

text: The studio reported that 71% of the audience was over 50 years old. The independent firm CinemaScore said its exit polling showed that 93% of the audience was over 25 years old, which "The Hollywood Reporter" said was "old even for an adult-skewing pic". CinemaScore reported that theatergoers gave the film a "B" grade. The film's box office performance was considered a disappointment, particularly with Hanks and Roberts as the stars.


title: Larry Crowne

text: "Larry Crowne" grossed in the United States and Canada, though tallies for international box office has varied depending on source. "The-Numbers.com" reports a worldwide total of whereas Box Office Mojo states a worldwide gross of . According to "Box Office Magazine", the movie has grossed worldwide.


title: Larry Crowne

text: "Larry Crowne" received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a rating of 36%, based on 191 reviews, with an average rating of 5/10. The site's consensus reads, "Despite the relaxed, easy chemistry of stars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, "Larry Crowne" is surprisingly bland and conventional." At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score, the film received a score of 41 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Larry Crowne

text: Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four, stating that the film has "a good premise and a colorful supporting cast, but what it doesn't have is a reason for existing".


title: Permanent revolution

text: Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as early as 1850, but since then it has been used to refer to different concepts by different theorists, most notably Leon Trotsky.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Trotsky's permanent revolution is an explanation of how socialist revolutions could occur in societies that had not achieved advanced capitalism. Trotsky's theory also argues that the bourgeoisie in late-developing capitalist countries are incapable of developing the productive forces in such a manner as to achieve the sort of advanced capitalism which will fully develop an industrial proletariat; and that the proletariat can and must therefore seize social, economic and political power, leading an alliance with the peasantry. He also opposed the socialism in one country principle, stating that socialist revolutions needed to happen across the world in order to combat the global capitalist hegemony.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Marx first used the term in the phrase "by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution" in the following passage from "The Holy Family" (1844) in which he also wrote:


title: Permanent revolution

text: Napoleon presented the last battle of revolutionary terror against the bourgeois society which had been proclaimed by this same Revolution, and against its policy. Napoleon, of course, already discerned the essence of the modern state; he understood that it is based on the unhampered development of bourgeois society, on the free movement of private interest, etc. He decided to recognise and protect this basis. He was no terrorist with his head in the clouds. Yet at the same time he still regarded the state as an end in itself and civil life only as a treasurer and his subordinate which must have no will of its own. He perfected the terror by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution. He fed the egoism of the French nation to complete satiety but demanded also the sacrifice of bourgeois business, enjoyments, wealth, etc., whenever this was required by the political aim of conquest. If he despotically suppressed the liberalism of bourgeois society—the political idealism of its daily practice—he showed no more consideration for its essential material interests, trade and industry, whenever they conflicted with his political interests. His scorn of industrial "hommes d'affaires" [businessmen] was the complement to his scorn of ideologists. In his home policy, too, he combated bourgeois society as the opponent of the state which in his own person he still held to be an absolute aim in itself. Thus he declared in the State Council that he would not suffer the owner of extensive estates to cultivate them or not as he pleased. Thus, too, he conceived the plan of subordinating trade to the state by appropriation of "roulage" [road haulage]. French businessmen took steps to anticipate the event that first shook Napoleon's power. Paris exchange-brokers forced him by means of an artificially created famine to delay the opening of the Russian campaign by nearly two months and thus to launch it too late in the year.


title: Permanent revolution

text: In this passage, Marx says that Napoleon prevented the bourgeois revolution in France from becoming fulfilled; that is, he prevented bourgeois political forces from achieving a total expression of their interests. According to Marx, he did this by suppressing the "liberalism of bourgeois society" and did it because he saw "the state as an end in itself", a value which supported his "political aim of conquest". Thus, he substituted "permanent war for permanent revolution". However, the final two sentences show that the bourgeoisie did not give up hope, but continued to pursue their interests. For Marx, permanent revolution involves a revolutionary class (in this case, the bourgeoisie) continuing to push for and achieve its interests despite the political dominance of actors with opposing interests.


title: Permanent revolution

text: By 1849, Marx and Engels were able to quote the use of the phrase by other writers (Eugen Alexis Schwanbeck, a journalist on the "Kölnische Zeitung" [Cologne Newspaper]; and Henri Druey), suggesting that it had achieved some recognition in intellectual circles.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Marx's most famous use of the phrase permanent revolution is his March 1850 "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League". His audience is the proletariat in Germany, faced with the prospect that "the petty-bourgeois democrats will for the moment acquire a predominant influence", i.e. temporary political power. He enjoins them as such:


title: Permanent revolution

text: While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.


title: Permanent revolution

text: In the remainder of the text, Marx outlines his proposal that the proletariat "make the revolution permanent". In essence, it consists of the working class maintaining a militant and independent approach to politics both before, during and after the struggle which will bring the petty-bourgeois democrats to power.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Marx is concerned that throughout the process of this impending political change the petty-bourgeoisie will "seek to ensnare the workers in a party organization in which general social-democratic phrases prevail while their particular interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the proletariat may not be presented. Such a unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose all its hard-won independent position and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of official bourgeois democracy".


title: Permanent revolution

text: Marx outlines how the proletariat should respond to this threat. First, he says that "above all the [Communist] League, must work for the creation of an independent organization of the workers' party, both secret and open, and alongside the official democrats, and the League must aim to make every one of its communes a center and nucleus of workers' associations in which the position and interests of the proletariat can be discussed free from bourgeois influence". That is, "it is essential above all for them to be independently organized and centralized in clubs". Marx does say that "an association of momentary expedience" is permissible if and only if "an enemy has to be fought directly", although this is not an excuse for a long term alliance since emergency alliances will arise satisfactorily when needed.


title: Permanent revolution

text: In an article two years earlier, Marx had referred to "a programme of permanent revolution, of progressive taxes and death duties, and of organisation of labour". This confirms the impression that Marx's theory of permanent revolution is not about revolution "per se", but rather more about the attitude that a revolutionary class should adopt in the period of their political subjection, including the programme of political demands they should propose. This aspect is raised in the "Address". As well as overtures for organisational alliance with the petty bourgeoisie, Marx is concerned about attempts to "bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable". Therefore, the workers' party must use their autonomous organisation to push a political programme which threatens the bourgeois "status quo" along the following lines:


title: Permanent revolution

text: 1. They can force the democrats to make inroads into as many areas of the existing social order as possible, so as to disturb its regular functioning and so that the petty-bourgeois democrats compromise themselves; furthermore, the workers can force the concentration of as many productive forces as possible – means of transport, factories, railways, etc. – in the hands of the state.2. They must drive the proposals of the democrats to their logical extreme (the democrats will in any case act in a reformist and not a revolutionary manner) and transform these proposals into direct attacks on private property. If, for instance, the petty bourgeoisie propose the purchase of the railways and factories, the workers must demand that these railways and factories simply be confiscated by the state without compensation as the property of reactionaries. [...] The demands of the workers will thus have to be adjusted according to the measures and concessions of the democrats.


title: Permanent revolution

text: In this passage, we can see that Marx believes the proletariat should refuse to moderate its demands to the petty-bourgeois consensus and advocate extensive nationalisation. Furthermore, the demand of the workers should always seek to push the bourgeois further than they are prepared to go, without the revolution threatening them as well.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Although the German workers cannot come to power and achieve the realization of their class interests without passing through a protracted revolutionary development, this time they can at least be certain that the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated. But they themselves must contribute most to their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat. Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Since Marxism emphasises the contingency of political developments on material historical circumstances (as against idealism), it is worthwhile to have some idea of how Marx saw the context in which he advocated permanent revolution. It seems that he believed that "the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama [in Germany] will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated". That is, the petty-bourgeois are expected to come to power in Germany at the same time as the direct victory of the proletariat in France. Furthermore, Marx seems to believe that the former and hence of both is "imminent" (c.f. the third paragraph of the "Address"). Therefore, Marx clearly believes that Europe is entering a time and is at a level of development of the productive forces in which the proletariat have the social revolution within their reach. Although circumstances did not develop as anticipated, this observation proved accurate at the dawn of the 20th century leading into the First World War and the Russian Revolution.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Marx and Engels advocated permanent revolution as the proletarian strategy of maintaining organisational independence along class lines and a consistently militant series of political demands and tactics. However, at no stage does Marx make the central claim with which Trotsky's conception of permanent revolution is concerned, i.e. that it is possible for a country to pass directly from the dominance of the semi-feudal aristocrats, who held political power in Russia in the early part of the 19th century, to the dominance of the working class, without an interceding period of dominance by the bourgeoisie. On the contrary, Marx's statements in his March 1850 "Address" explicitly contradict such a view, assuming a "period of petty-bourgeois predominance over the classes which have been overthrown and over the proletariat". In his "History of the Russian Revolution", Trotsky argues that this was shortened to the period between February and October 1917.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Marx and Engels do not claim that socialism is impossible in one country, but they do say that "in all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity" (Engels' "The Principles of Communism", Sections 17 and 19). "The Communist Manifesto" alludes to Marx's view that the dominance of the bourgeoisie is a necessary prelude to that of the proletariat, arguing that "the bourgeoisie therefore produces [...] its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable". In this sense, Trotsky's version of the theory represents both a development and to some observers a contradiction of the expressed opinions of Marx and Engels.


title: Permanent revolution

text: It must be borne in mind that for Marx the dominance of the bourgeoisie as a prerequisite for subsequent proletarian rule holds on a world scale as "The Communist Manifesto" makes clear: "Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle" (loc. cit.). Trotsky's theory took it for granted (as did Vladimir Lenin in "The State and Revolution") that the domination of the world by the bourgeoisie was complete and irreversible after the emergence of imperialism in the late 19th century. The uncertain relationship between international and national parameters in relation to class power underlies many of the disputes concerning the theory of the permanent revolution.


title: Permanent revolution

text: In the preface to the 1882 Russian edition of "The Communist Manifesto", Marx and Engels explicitly raised the issues Trotsky would later develop: "Now the question is: can the Russian "obshchina", though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West? The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development".


title: Permanent revolution

text: By stating that this is "[t]he only answer possible today", they incontrovertibly emphasized the priority of the international class situation over national developments.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Leon Trotsky's conception of permanent revolution is based on his understanding—drawing on the work of fellow Russian Alexander Parvus—that a Marxist analysis of events begins with the international level of development, both economic and social. National peculiarities are only an expression of the contradictions in the world system. According to this perspective, the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution could not be achieved by the bourgeoisie itself in a reactionary period of world capitalism. The situation in the backward and colonial countries, particularly Russia, bore this out. This conception was first developed in the essays later collected in his book "1905" and in his essay "Results and Prospects" and later developed in his 1929 book "The Permanent Revolution".


title: Permanent revolution

text: The basic idea of Trotsky's theory is that in Russia the bourgeoisie would not carry out a thorough revolution which would institute political democracy and solve the land question. These measures were assumed to be essential to develop Russia economically. Therefore, it was argued the future revolution must be led by the proletariat, who would not only carry through the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, but would also commence a struggle to surpass the bourgeois-democratic revolution itself.


title: Permanent revolution

text: How far the proletariat would be able to continue would depend upon the further course of events and not upon the designation of the revolution as bourgeois-democratic. In this sense, the revolution would be made permanent. Trotsky believed that a new workers' state would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well. This notion later became a point of contention with Stalinist faction within the Bolshevik Party, which held that socialism in one country could be built in the Soviet Union.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Trotsky's theory was developed in opposition to the social-democratic theory that undeveloped countries must pass through two distinct revolutions. First, the bourgeois-democratic revolution which socialists would assist and at a later stage the socialist revolution with an evolutionary period of capitalist development separating those stages. This is often referred to as the theory of stages, the two-stage theory or stagism.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks initially held to an intermediate theory. Lenin's earlier theory shared Trotsky's premise that the bourgeoisie would not complete a bourgeois revolution. Lenin thought that a democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants could complete the tasks of the bourgeoisie. By 1917, Lenin was arguing not only that the Russian bourgeoisie would not be able to carry through the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and therefore the proletariat had to take state power, but also that it should take economic power via a soviet. This position was put forward to the Bolsheviks on his return to Russia in his "April Theses". The first reaction of the majority of Bolsheviks was one of rejection. Initially, only Alexandra Kollontai rallied to Lenin's position within the Bolshevik Party.


title: Permanent revolution

text: After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks, now including Trotsky, did not discuss the theory of permanent revolution as such. However, its basic theses can be found in such popular outlines of communist theory as "The ABC of Communism" which sought to explain the program of the Bolshevik Party by Yevgeni Preobrazhensky and Nikolai Bukharin.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Later on after Lenin's death in the 1920s, the theory did assume importance in the internal debates within the Bolshevik Party and was a bone of contention within the opposition to Joseph Stalin. In essence, a section of the Bolshevik Party leadership, whose views were voiced at the theoretical level by Bukharin, argued that socialism could be built in a single country, even an underdeveloped one like Russia. Bukharin argued that Russia's pre-existing economic base was sufficient for the task at hand, provided the Soviet Union could be militarily defended.


title: Permanent revolution

text: The question of the Chinese Revolution and the subjection of the Chinese Communist Party to control by the Kuomintang at the behest of the Bolshevik Party was a topic of argument within the opposition to Stalin in the party. On the one hand, figures such as Karl Radek argued that a stagist strategy was correct for China, although their writings are only known to us now second hand, having perished in the 1930s (if original copies exist in the archives, they have not been located since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991). On the other hand, Trotsky generalised his theory of permanent revolution which had only been applied in the case of Russia previously and argued that the proletariat needed to take power in a process of uninterrupted and permanent revolution in order to not only carry out the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, but to implement socialism.


title: Permanent revolution

text: His position was put forward in his essay entitled "The Permanent Revolution" which can be found today in a single book together with "Results and Prospects". Not only did Trotsky generalise his theory of permanent revolution in this essay, but he also grounded it in the idea of uneven and combined development. In contrast to the conceptions inherent within stagist theory, this argument goes to argue that capitalist nations, indeed all class-based societies, develop unevenly and that some parts will develop more swiftly than others. However, it is also argued that this development is combined and that each part of the world economy is increasingly bound together with all other parts. The conception of uneven and combined development also recognises that some areas may even regress further economically and socially as a result of their integration into a world economy.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Since the assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1940, the theory of permanent revolution has been maintained by the various Trotskyist groups which have developed since then. However, the theory has been extended only modestly, if at all. While their conclusions differ, works by mainstream Trotskyist theoreticians such as Robert Chester, Joseph Hansen, Michael Löwy and Livio Maitan related it to post-war political developments in Algeria, Cuba and elsewhere.


title: Permanent revolution

text: An attempt to elaborate an exception to the theory was made by Tony Cliff of the Socialist Workers Party. In a 1963 essay, Cliff develops the idea that where the proletariat is unable to take power, a section of the intelligentsia may be able to carry out a bourgeois revolution. He further argues that the use of Marxist concepts by such elements (most notably in Cuba and China, but also for example by regimes espousing Arab socialism or similar philosophies) is not genuine, but is the use of Marxism as an ideology of power. This reflects his view that these countries are state capitalist societies rather than deformed workers states.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Cliff's views have been criticised by more orthodox Trotskyists as an abandonment of Trotsky's theory in all but name in favour of the stagist theory, countering that Cliff was more cautious than Trotsky about the potential of the working class in underdeveloped countries to seize power. Cliff saw such revolutions as a detour or deflection on the road to socialist revolution rather than a necessary preliminary to it.


title: Permanent revolution

text: Saumyendranath Tagore, the founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party of India and an international communist leader, argued that "the theory of Permanent Revolution has two aspects, one relating to the revolution of a particular country, the immediate passing over from the bourgeois democratic phase of the revolution to the socialist revolution. The second aspect [...] is related to the international tasks of the revolution [...] which makes it imperative for the first victorious revolution to operate as the yeast of revolution in the world arena. [...] Trotsky became the target of Stalin's vengeance only so far as he drew the attention of the communists throughout the world to the betrayal of world revolution (Permanent Revolution) by Stalin". Tagore also argued that the theory of permanent revolution has nothing to do with Trotskyism, but it is pure Marxism and Leninism. As an example, he points out that the term permanent revolution itself was coined by Marx and Engels back in 1850 in their "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League."


title: Permanent revolution

text: According to Tagore, Lenin was just as much a champion of the permanent revolution as Trotsky was and with a "much more sure grasp of revolutionary reality". However, he argues that Trotsky "certainly had done a great service to revolutionary communism by drawing out attention over and over again to the theory of permanent revolution since Lenin died in 1924 and the sinister anti-revolutionary reign of Stalin started". In the face of what Tagore termed "the next diabolical machineries of vilification and terror of Stalinocracy", Trotsky kept "the banner of revolutionary communism flying in the best traditions of Marx and Lenin. Therein lies Trotsky's invaluable service in the theory of Permanent Revolution. So far as the Theory itself is concerned, it is pure and simple revolutionary Marxism".


title: Cogeneration

text: Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) is the use of a heat engine or power station to generate electricity and useful heat at the same time.


title: Cogeneration

text: Cogeneration is a more efficient use of fuel or heat, because otherwise-wasted heat from electricity generation is put to some productive use. Combined heat and power (CHP) plants recover otherwise wasted thermal energy for heating. This is also called combined heat and power district heating. Small CHP plants are an example of decentralized energy. By-product heat at moderate temperatures (100–180 °C, 212–356 °F) can also be used in absorption refrigerators for cooling.


title: Cogeneration

text: The supply of high-temperature heat first drives a gas or steam turbine-powered generator. The resulting low-temperature waste heat is then used for water or space heating. At smaller scales (typically below 1 MW), a gas engine or diesel engine may be used. Cogeneration is also common with geothermal power plants as they often produce relatively low grade heat. Binary cycles may be necessary to reach acceptable thermal efficiency for electricity generation at all. Cogeneration is less commonly employed in nuclear power plants as NIMBY and safety considerations have often kept them further from population centers than comparable chemical power plants and district heating is less efficient in lower population density areas due to transmission losses.


title: Cogeneration

text: Cogeneration was practiced in some of the earliest installations of electrical generation. Before central stations distributed power, industries generating their own power used exhaust steam for process heating. Large office and apartment buildings, hotels, and stores commonly generated their own power and used waste steam for building heat. Due to the high cost of early purchased power, these CHP operations continued for many years after utility electricity became available.


title: Cogeneration

text: Many process industries, such as chemical plants, oil refineries and pulp and paper mills, require large amounts of process heat for such operations as chemical reactors, distillation columns, steam driers and other uses. This heat, which is usually used in the form of steam, can be generated at the typically low pressures used in heating, or can be generated at much higher pressure and passed through a turbine first to generate electricity. In the turbine the steam pressure and temperature is lowered as the internal energy of the steam is converted to work. The lower-pressure steam leaving the turbine can then be used for process heat.


title: Cogeneration

text: Steam turbines at thermal power stations are normally designed to be fed high-pressure steam, which exits the turbine at a condenser operating a few degrees above ambient temperature and at a few millimeters of mercury absolute pressure. (This is called a "condensing" turbine.) For all practical purposes this steam has negligible useful energy before it is condensed. Steam turbines for cogeneration are designed for "extraction" of some steam at lower pressures after it has passed through a number of turbine stages, with the un-extracted steam going on through the turbine to a condenser. In this case, the extracted steam causes a mechanical power loss in the downstream stages of the turbine. Or they are designed, with or without extraction, for final exhaust at "back pressure" (non-condensing). The extracted or exhaust steam is used for process heating. Steam at ordinary process heating conditions still has a considerable amount of enthalpy that could be used for power generation, so cogeneration has an opportunity cost.


title: Cogeneration

text: A typical power generation turbine in a paper mill may have extraction pressures of 160 psig (1.103 MPa) and 60 psig (0.41 MPa). A typical back pressure may be 60 psig (0.41 MPa). In practice these pressures are custom designed for each facility. Conversely, simply generating process steam for industrial purposes instead of high enough pressure to generate power at the top end also has an opportunity cost (See: Steam supply and exhaust conditions). The capital and operating cost of high-pressure boilers, turbines, and generators is substantial. This equipment is normally operated continuously, which usually limits self-generated power to large-scale operations.


title: Cogeneration

text: A combined cycle (in which several thermodynamic cycles produce electricity), may also be used to extract heat using a heating system as condenser of the power plant's bottoming cycle. For example, the RU-25 MHD generator in Moscow heated a boiler for a conventional steam powerplant, whose condensate was then used for space heat. A more modern system might use a gas turbine powered by natural gas, whose exhaust powers a steam plant, whose condensate provides heat. Cogeneration plants based on a combined cycle power unit can have thermal efficiencies above 80%.


title: Cogeneration

text: The viability of CHP (sometimes termed utilisation factor), especially in smaller CHP installations, depends on a good baseload of operation, both in terms of an on-site (or near site) electrical demand and heat demand. In practice, an exact match between the heat and electricity needs rarely exists. A CHP plant can either meet the need for heat ("heat driven operation") or be run as a power plant with some use of its waste heat, the latter being less advantageous in terms of its utilisation factor and thus its overall efficiency. The viability can be greatly increased where opportunities for trigeneration exist. In such cases, the heat from the CHP plant is also used as a primary energy source to deliver cooling by means of an absorption chiller.


title: Cogeneration

text: CHP is most efficient when heat can be used on-site or very close to it. Overall efficiency is reduced when the heat must be transported over longer distances. This requires heavily insulated pipes, which are expensive and inefficient; whereas electricity can be transmitted along a comparatively simple wire, and over much longer distances for the same energy loss.


title: Cogeneration

text: A car engine becomes a CHP plant in winter when the reject heat is useful for warming the interior of the vehicle. The example illustrates the point that deployment of CHP depends on heat uses in the vicinity of the heat engine.


title: Cogeneration

text: Thermally enhanced oil recovery (TEOR) plants often produce a substantial amount of excess electricity. After generating electricity, these plants pump leftover steam into heavy oil wells so that the oil will flow more easily, increasing production.


title: Cogeneration

text: Cogeneration plants are commonly found in district heating systems of cities, central heating systems of larger buildings (e.g. hospitals, hotels, prisons) and are commonly used in the industry in thermal production processes for process water, cooling, steam production or CO fertilization.


title: Cogeneration

text: "Trigeneration" or "combined cooling, heat and power" ("CCHP") refers to the simultaneous generation of electricity and useful heating and cooling from the combustion of a fuel or a solar heat collector. The terms "cogeneration" and "trigeneration" can also be applied to the power systems simultaneously generating electricity, heat, and industrial chemicals (e.g., syngas). Trigeneration differs from cogeneration in that the waste heat is used for both heating and cooling, typically in an absorption refrigerator. Combined cooling, heat, and power systems can attain higher overall efficiencies than cogeneration or traditional power plants. In the United States, the application of trigeneration in buildings is called building cooling, heating, and power. Heating and cooling output may operate concurrently or alternately depending on need and system construction.


title: Cogeneration

text: Topping cycle plants primarily produce electricity from a steam turbine. Partly expanded steam is then condensed in a heating condensor at a temperature level that is suitable e.g. district heating or water desalination.


title: Cogeneration

text: Bottoming cycle plants produce high temperature heat for industrial processes, then a waste heat recovery boiler feeds an electrical plant. Bottoming cycle plants are only used in industrial processes that require very high temperatures such as furnaces for glass and metal manufacturing, so they are less common.


title: Cogeneration

text: Large cogeneration systems provide heating water and power for an industrial site or an entire town. Common CHP plant types are:


title: Cogeneration

text: Smaller cogeneration units may use a reciprocating engine or Stirling engine. The heat is removed from the exhaust and radiator. The systems are popular in small sizes because small gas and diesel engines are less expensive than small gas- or oil-fired steam-electric plants.


title: Cogeneration

text: Some cogeneration plants are fired by biomass, or industrial and municipal solid waste (see incineration). Some CHP plants use waste gas as the fuel for electricity and heat generation. Waste gases can be gas from animal waste, landfill gas, gas from coal mines, sewage gas, and combustible industrial waste gas.


title: Cogeneration

text: Some cogeneration plants combine gas and solar photovoltaic generation to further improve technical and environmental performance. Such hybrid systems can be scaled down to the building level and even individual homes.


title: Cogeneration

text: Micro combined heat and power or 'Micro cogeneration" is a so-called distributed energy resource (DER). The installation is usually less than 5 kW in a house or small business. Instead of burning fuel to merely heat space or water, some of the energy is converted to electricity in addition to heat. This electricity can be used within the home or business or, if permitted by the grid management, sold back into the electric power grid.


title: Cogeneration

text: Delta-ee consultants stated in 2013 that with 64% of global sales the fuel cell micro-combined heat and power passed the conventional systems in sales in 2012. 20.000 units were sold in Japan in 2012 overall within the Ene Farm project. With a Lifetime of around 60,000 hours. For PEM fuel cell units, which shut down at night, this equates to an estimated lifetime of between ten and fifteen years. For a price of $22,600 before installation. For 2013 a state subsidy for 50,000 units is in place.


title: Cogeneration

text: MicroCHP installations use five different technologies: microturbines, internal combustion engines, stirling engines, closed-cycle steam engines, and fuel cells. One author indicated in 2008 that MicroCHP based on Stirling engines is the most cost-effective of the so-called microgeneration technologies in abating carbon emissions. A 2013 UK report from Ecuity Consulting stated that MCHP is the most cost-effective method of using gas to generate energy at the domestic level. However, advances in reciprocation engine technology are adding efficiency to CHP plants, particularly in the biogas field. As both MiniCHP and CHP have been shown to reduce emissions they could play a large role in the field of CO reduction from buildings, where more than 14% of emissions can be saved using CHP in buildings. The University of Cambridge reported a cost-effective steam engine MicroCHP prototype in 2017 which has the potential to be commercially competitive in the following decades. Quite recently, in some private homes, fuel cell micro-CHP plants can now be found, which can operate on hydrogen, or other fuels as natural gas or LPG. When running on natural gas, it relies on steam reforming of natural gas to convert the natural gas to hydrogen prior to use in the fuel cell. This hence still emits (see reaction) but (temporarily) running on this can be a good solution until the point where the hydrogen is starting to be distributed through the (natural gas) piping system.


title: Cogeneration

text: Another MicroCHP example is a natural gas or propane fueled Electricity Producing Condensing Furnace. It combines the fuel saving technique of cogeneration meaning producing electric power and useful heat from a single source of combustion. The condensing furnace is a forced-air gas system with a secondary heat exchanger that allows heat to be extracted from combustion products down to the ambient temperature along with recovering heat from the water vapor. The chimney is replaced by a water drain and vent to the side of the building.


title: Cogeneration

text: A plant producing electricity, heat and cold is called a trigeneration or polygeneration plant. Cogeneration systems linked to absorption chillers or adsorption chillers use waste heat for refrigeration.


title: Cogeneration

text: In the United States, Consolidated Edison distributes 66 billion kilograms of 350 °F (180 °C) steam each year through its seven cogeneration plants to 100,000 buildings in Manhattan—the biggest steam district in the United States. The peak delivery is 10 million pounds per hour (or approximately 2.5 GW).


title: Cogeneration

text: Cogeneration is still common in pulp and paper mills, refineries and chemical plants. In this "industrial cogeneration/CHP", the heat is typically recovered at higher temperatures (above 100 deg C) and used for process steam or drying duties. This is more valuable and flexible than low-grade waste heat, but there is a slight loss of power generation. The increased focus on sustainability has made industrial CHP more attractive, as it substantially reduces carbon footprint compared to generating steam or burning fuel on-site and importing electric power from the grid.


title: Cogeneration

text: Smaller industrial co-generation units have an output capacity of 5 MW – 25 MW and represent a viable off-grid option for a variety of remote applications to reduce carbon emissions.


title: Cogeneration

text: Industrial cogeneration plants normally operate at much lower boiler pressures than utilities. Among the reasons are: 1) Cogeneration plants face possible contamination of returned condensate. Because boiler feed water from cogeneration plants has much lower return rates than 100% condensing power plants, industries usually have to treat proportionately more boiler make up water. Boiler feed water must be completely oxygen free and de-mineralized, and the higher the pressure the more critical the level of purity of the feed water. 2) Utilities are typically larger scale power than industry, which helps offset the higher capital costs of high pressure. 3) Utilities are less likely to have sharp load swings than industrial operations, which deal with shutting down or starting up units that may represent a significant percent of either steam or power demand.


title: Cogeneration

text: A heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) is a steam boiler that uses hot exhaust gases from the gas turbines or reciprocating engines in a CHP plant to heat up water and generate steam. The steam, in turn, drives a steam turbine or is used in industrial processes that require heat.


title: Cogeneration

text: HRSGs used in the CHP industry are distinguished from conventional steam generators by the following main features:


title: Cogeneration

text: Biomass refers to any plant or animal matter in which it is possible to be reused as a source of heat or electricity, such as sugarcane, vegetable oils, wood, organic waste and residues from the food or agricultural industries. Brazil is now considered a world reference in terms of energy generation from biomass.


title: Cogeneration

text: A growing sector in the use of biomass for power generation is the sugar and alcohol sector, which mainly uses sugarcane bagasse as fuel for thermal and electric power generation


title: Cogeneration

text: In the sugarcane industry, cogeneration is fueled by the bagasse residue of sugar refining, which is burned to produce steam. Some steam can be sent through a turbine that turns a generator, producing electric power.


title: Cogeneration

text: Energy cogeneration in sugarcane industries located in Brazil is a practice that has been growing in last years. With the adoption of energy cogeneration in the sugar and alcohol sector, the sugarcane industries are able to supply the electric energy demand needed to operate, and generate a surplus that can be commercialized.


title: Cogeneration

text: In comparison with the electric power generation by means of fossil fuel-based thermoelectric plants, such as natural gas, the energy generation using sugarcane bagasse has environmental advantages due to the reduction of emissions.


title: Cogeneration

text: In addition to the environmental advantages, cogeneration using sugarcane bagasse presents advantages in terms of efficiency comparing to thermoelectric generation, through the final destination of the energy produced. While in thermoelectric generation, part of the heat produced is lost, in cogeneration this heat has the possibility of being used in the production processes, increasing the overall efficiency of the process.


title: Cogeneration

text: In sugarcane cultivation, is usually used potassium source's containing high concentration of chlorine, such as potassium chloride (KCl). Considering that KCl is applied in huge quantities, sugarcane ends up absorbing high concentrations of chlorine.


title: Cogeneration

text: Due to this absorption, when the sugarcane bagasse is burned in the power cogeneration, dioxins and methyl chloride ends up being emitted. In the case of dioxins, these substances are considered very toxic and cancerous.


title: Cogeneration

text: In the case of methyl chloride, when this substance is emitted and reaches the stratosphere, it ends up being very harmful for the ozone layer, since chlorine when combined with the ozone molecule generates a catalytic reaction leading to the breakdown of ozone links.


title: Cogeneration

text: After each reaction, chlorine starts a destructive cycle with another ozone molecule. In this way, a single chlorine atom can destroy thousands of ozone molecules. As these molecules are being broken, they are unable to absorb the ultraviolet rays. As a result, the UV radiation is more intense on Earth and there is a worsening of global warming.


title: Cogeneration

text: A heat pump may be compared with a CHP unit as follows. If, to supply thermal energy, the exhaust steam from the turbo-generator must be taken at a higher temperature than the system would produce most electricity at, the lost electrical generation is "as if" a heat pump were used to provide the same heat by taking electrical power from the generator running at lower output temperature and higher efficiency. Typically for every unit of electrical power lost, then about 6 units of heat are made available at about . Thus CHP has an effective Coefficient of Performance (COP) compared to a heat pump of 6. However, for a remotely operated heat pump, losses in the electrical distribution network would need to be considered, of the order of 6%. Because the losses are proportional to the square of the current, during peak periods losses are much higher than this and it is likely that widespread (i.e. citywide application of heat pumps) would cause overloading of the distribution and transmission grids unless they were substantially reinforced.


title: Cogeneration

text: It is also possible to run a heat driven operation combined with a heat pump, where the excess electricity (as heat demand is the defining factor on se) is used to drive a heat pump. As heat demand increases, more electricity is generated to drive the heat pump, with the waste heat also heating the heating fluid.


title: Cogeneration

text: As the efficiency of heat pumps depends on the difference between hot end and cold end temperature (efficiency rises as the difference decreases) it may be worthwhile to combine even relatively low grade waste heat otherwise unsuitable for home heating with heat pumps. For example, a large enough reservoir of cooling water at can significantly improve efficiency of heat pumps drawing from such a reservoir compared to air source heat pumps drawing from cold air during a night. In the summer when there's both demand for air conditioning and warm water, the same water may even serve as both a "dump" for the waste heat rejected by a/c units and as a "source" for heat pumps providing warm water. Those considerations are behind what is sometimes called "cold district heating" using a "heat" source whose temperature is well below those usually employed in district heating.


title: Cogeneration

text: Most industrial countries generate the majority of their electrical power needs in large centralized facilities with capacity for large electrical power output. These plants benefit from economy of scale, but may need to transmit electricity across long distances causing transmission losses. Cogeneration or trigeneration production is subject to limitations in the local demand and thus may sometimes need to reduce (e.g., heat or cooling production to match the demand). An example of cogeneration with trigeneration applications in a major city is the New York City steam system.


title: Cogeneration

text: Every heat engine is subject to the theoretical efficiency limits of the Carnot cycle or subset Rankine cycle in the case of steam turbine power plants or Brayton cycle in gas turbine with steam turbine plants. Most of the efficiency loss with steam power generation is associated with the latent heat of vaporization of steam that is not recovered when a turbine exhausts its low temperature and pressure steam to a condenser. (Typical steam to condenser would be at a few millimeters absolute pressure and on the order of 5 °C/11 °F hotter than the cooling water temperature, depending on the condenser capacity.) In cogeneration this steam exits the turbine at a higher temperature where it may be used for process heat, building heat or cooling with an absorption chiller. The majority of this heat is from the latent heat of vaporization when the steam condenses.


title: Cogeneration

text: Typical cogeneration models have losses as in any system. The energy distribution below is represented as a percent of total input energy:


title: Cogeneration

text: Conventional central coal- or nuclear-powered power stations convert about 33-45% of their input heat to electricity. Brayton cycle power plants operate at up to 60% efficiency. In the case of conventional power plants, approximately 10-15% of this heat is lost up the stack of the boiler. Most of the remaining heat emerges from the turbines as low-grade waste heat with no significant local uses, so it is usually rejected to the environment, typically to cooling water passing through a condenser. Because turbine exhaust is normally just above ambient temperature, some potential power generation is sacrificed in rejecting higher-temperature steam from the turbine for cogeneration purposes.


title: Cogeneration

text: For cogeneration to be practical power generation and end use of heat must be in relatively close proximity (<2 km typically).


title: Cogeneration

text: Even though the efficiency of a small distributed electrical generator may be lower than a large central power plant, the use of its waste heat for local heating and cooling can result in an overall use of the primary fuel supply as great as 80%. This provides substantial financial and environmental benefits.


title: Cogeneration

text: Typically, for a gas-fired plant the fully installed cost per kW electrical is around £400/kW (US$577), which is comparable with large central power stations.


title: Cogeneration

text: The EU has actively incorporated cogeneration into its energy policy via the CHP Directive. In September 2008 at a hearing of the European Parliament's Urban Lodgment Intergroup, Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs is quoted as saying, “security of supply really starts with energy efficiency.” Energy efficiency and cogeneration are recognized in the opening paragraphs of the European Union's Cogeneration Directive 2004/08/EC. This directive intends to support cogeneration and establish a method for calculating cogeneration abilities per country. The development of cogeneration has been very uneven over the years and has been dominated throughout the last decades by national circumstances.


title: Cogeneration

text: The European Union generates 11% of its electricity using cogeneration. However, there is large difference between Member States with variations of the energy savings between 2% and 60%. Europe has the three countries with the world's most intensive cogeneration economies: Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland. Of the 28.46 TWh of electrical power generated by conventional thermal power plants in Finland in 2012, 81.80% was cogeneration.


title: Cogeneration

text: Other European countries are also making great efforts to increase efficiency. Germany reported that at present, over 50% of the country's total electricity demand could be provided through cogeneration. So far, Germany has set the target to double its electricity cogeneration from 12.5% of the country's electricity to 25% of the country's electricity by 2020 and has passed supporting legislation accordingly. The UK is also actively supporting combined heat and power. In light of UK's goal to achieve a 60% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, the government has set the target to source at least 15% of its government electricity use from CHP by 2010. Other UK measures to encourage CHP growth are financial incentives, grant support, a greater regulatory framework, and government leadership and partnership.


title: Cogeneration

text: According to the IEA 2008 modeling of cogeneration expansion for the G8 countries, the expansion of cogeneration in France, Germany, Italy and the UK alone would effectively double the existing primary fuel savings by 2030. This would increase Europe's savings from today's 155.69 Twh to 465 Twh in 2030. It would also result in a 16% to 29% increase in each country's total cogenerated electricity by 2030.


title: Cogeneration

text: Governments are being assisted in their CHP endeavors by organizations like COGEN Europe who serve as an information hub for the most recent updates within Europe's energy policy. COGEN is Europe's umbrella organization representing the interests of the cogeneration industry.


title: Cogeneration

text: The European public–private partnership Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking Seventh Framework Programme project ene.field deploys in 2017 up 1,000 residential fuel cell Combined Heat and Power (micro-CHP) installations in 12 states. Per 2012 the first 2 installations have taken place.


title: Cogeneration

text: In the United Kingdom, the "Combined Heat and Power Quality Assurance" scheme regulates the combined production of heat and power. It was introduced in 1996. It defines, through calculation of inputs and outputs, "Good Quality CHP" in terms of the achievement of primary energy savings against conventional separate generation of heat and electricity. Compliance with Combined Heat and Power Quality Assurance is required for cogeneration installations to be eligible for government subsidies and tax incentives.


title: Cogeneration

text: Perhaps the first modern use of energy recycling was done by Thomas Edison. His 1882 Pearl Street Station, the world's first commercial power plant, was a combined heat and power plant, producing both electricity and thermal energy while using waste heat to warm neighboring buildings. Recycling allowed Edison's plant to achieve approximately 50 percent efficiency.


title: Cogeneration

text: By the early 1900s, regulations emerged to promote rural electrification through the construction of centralized plants managed by regional utilities. These regulations not only promoted electrification throughout the countryside, but they also discouraged decentralized power generation, such as cogeneration.


title: Cogeneration

text: By 1978, Congress recognized that efficiency at central power plants had stagnated and sought to encourage improved efficiency with the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), which encouraged utilities to buy power from other energy producers.


title: Cogeneration

text: Cogeneration plants proliferated, soon producing about 8% of all energy in the United States. However, the bill left implementation and enforcement up to individual states, resulting in little or nothing being done in many parts of the country.


title: Cogeneration

text: 20% of generation capacity by 2030. Eight Clean Energy Application Centers have been established across the nation. Their mission is to develop the required technology application knowledge and educational infrastructure necessary to lead "clean energy" (combined heat and power, waste heat recovery, and district energy) technologies as viable energy options and reduce any perceived risks associated with their implementation. The focus of the Application Centers is to provide an outreach and technology deployment program for end users, policymakers, utilities, and industry stakeholders.


title: Cogeneration

text: High electric rates in New England and the Middle Atlantic make these areas of the United States the most beneficial for cogeneration.


title: Cogeneration

text: Any of the following conventional power plants may be converted to a combined cooling, heat and power system:


title: To Paradise

text: To Paradise is a 2022 novel by American novelist Hanya Yanagihara. The book, Yanagihara's third, takes place in an alternate version of New York City, and has three sections, respectively set in 1893, 1993, and 2093. Though a bestseller, the novel received mixed reviews from critics.


title: To Paradise

text: Yanagihara began writing the book in 2016, after a conversation with her friend Jared Hohlt about the Henry James novel "Washington Square". Hohlt and Yanagihara discussed how the novel would change if it were re-imagined to feature same-sex marriage. Yanagihara found "Washington Square" appealing due to its depiction of the contentious relationship between a father and daughter, and characterizes the father, Sloper, as "one of James's most honest characters". After the conversation with Hohlt, Yanagihara began writing a work set in an alternate reality in which same-sex marriage was made legal in New York in the eighteenth century.


title: To Paradise

text: Before beginning to write the piece inspired by "Washington Square", Yanagihara had begun writing two other stories, respectively set in a time near the present and in a dystopian future. American novelist Michael Cunningham served as an influence on "To Paradise", both through conversations with Yanagihara and through her interest in his work. Cunningham's novel "Specimen Days" has a three-act structure set in the past, present, and future of New York City, and Yanagihara has said that "To Paradise" is "to some extent in conversation with" "Specimen Days". To combine the three stories she had developed into a single novel, Yanagihara set each in the same townhouse adjacent Washington Square Park.


title: To Paradise

text: Though the final portion of the book takes place in a future version of New York City in which climate change and pandemics have devastated the city, Yanagihara had written most of the novel before the coronavirus pandemic began. Pandemics feature prominently in the novel, as Yanagihara is "interested in disease". To guarantee the pandemic in the portion of "To Paradise" set in the future was accurate, she spoke with virologists at Rockefeller University, and the book was read by David Morens of the National Institutes of Health.


title: To Paradise

text: Yanagihara wrote the novel intending to challenge the reader's conceptions of the United States, and to leave citizens of the country with "more questions than they had going in".


title: To Paradise

text: Yanagihara sold the book to publisher Doubleday in April 2021. Doubleday paid more than US$1 million for the rights to publish the novel. Through "New York" outlet "The Cut", Yanagihara, soon after the sale, revealed some details about the book's contents, including its three-part structure. Yanagihara revealed the novel's cover on Instagram in August 2021. The cover incorporates the 1898 painting "I'okepa, Hawaiian Fisher Boy" by Dutch painter Hubert Vos, and was created by designer Na Kim.


title: To Paradise

text: "To Paradise" has received mixed reviews. Critics praised the book as "ambitious". Gish Jen, in "The New York Times", wrote that the novel "[tackled] major American questions and [answered] them in an original, engrossing way". Maggie Doherty qualified her praise for the book's ambition writing that despite Yanagihara's goals, the novel was nevertheless her "least successful".


title: To Paradise

text: In a negative review written for "The Wall Street Journal", Sam Sacks contrasted "To Paradise" with Yanagihara's second book, writing that, despite being "as big and grueling and terror-strewn as its predecessor", "To Paradise" "is strangely lifeless". Sacks further remarked that, unlike "A Little Life", "To Paradise" is "boring". He also questioned the role of including an alternative history of same-sex marriage in the United States, referring to it as "just randomly switching stuff around". Sacks compared the presence and purpose of the speculative history unfavorably to explorations of gender, sexuality, and related themes in other works – including "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Sparsholt Affair".


title: To Paradise

text: The novel was the top-selling newly released hardcover book the week ending January 15th, 2022, with 16,000 copies sold. The novel was the top-selling hardcover fiction book on "The New York Times" best seller list the week of January 23rd, 2022.


title: Chris Metzen

text: Christopher Vincent Metzen (born November 22, 1973) is an American game designer, artist, voice actor, and author known for his work creating the fictional universes and scripts for Blizzard Entertainment's three major award-winning media franchises: "Warcraft", "Diablo" and "StarCraft". Metzen was hired by Blizzard Entertainment as an animator and an artist; his first work for the company was with the video game "Justice League Task Force".


title: Chris Metzen

text: Metzen was the Senior Vice President of Story and Franchise Development at Blizzard Entertainment and assisted the company's projects by providing voice talent for a number of characters, most notably the orc character Thrall, as well as contributing to artistic character design. Metzen retired in September 2016 to spend more time with his family, but returned to the company as a creative advisor in December 2022.


title: Chris Metzen

text: In his most recent work, Metzen co-authored graphic novels, "Transformers: Autocracy" and "Transformers Monstrosity" with author Flint Dille and artist Livio Ramondelli.


title: Chris Metzen

text: Metzen began his career in design after applying to Blizzard Entertainment, then known as Chaos Studios, on the recommendation of a friend who had seen his work. He was quickly recruited by the company, although Metzen states that at the time he did not really know what Blizzard Entertainment dealt with, assuming it was a graphic design studio rather than a video game developer.


title: Chris Metzen

text: Metzen's first work for the company was with the game "Justice League Task Force", in which he provided artwork and character animation. Around the same time, Metzen also contributed to 1994's "" by working on artwork, illustrations and the game's documentation. Later video games by Blizzard Entertainment would frequently include Metzen's work in manual design, illustration and concept art. However, Metzen's role in developing later "Warcraft" games increased significantly with 1995's "", which gave him the opportunity to work on the game's fantasy-based fictional universe in addition to designing the game's various scenarios and missions.


title: Chris Metzen

text: In 1996, Blizzard Entertainment launched its second major franchise with the role-playing game "Diablo". "Diablo"s fictional universe was created by David Brevik, Metzen and fellow designer Bill Roper, and Metzen also provided voice acting for some of the game's characters. On occasion, Metzen would provide voice talent for later video games. In 1998 he took the role of lead designer on the science fiction strategy game "StarCraft". Along with James Phinney, Metzen again provided the game's extensive story and script, as well as organizing the voice casting for the game. In 1999, Metzen wrote a short story set in the "StarCraft" universe with fellow Blizzard Entertainment employee Sam Moore. The story, entitled "Revelations", was published in the spring issue of "Amazing Stories" with cover artwork by Samwise Didier. Returning to the "Diablo" series in 2000 with "Diablo II", Metzen worked on the game's story, script and artwork. In 2001, he published a novel set in the "Warcraft" universe, entitled "".


title: Chris Metzen

text: With 2002's "", Metzen was the creative director, a role he would hold in all of Blizzard's later video games, and provided the game's story concept and script. Metzen's work with 2004's massively multiplayer online role-playing game "World of Warcraft" was not as extensive as his earlier work, but he still contributed with script writing, artwork and voice work.


title: Chris Metzen

text: Metzen announced in early 2005 that he was working on a graphic novel series independent of Blizzard Entertainment. The series, entitled "Soldier: 76", is set in a second American civil war in 2010, with increased domestic and global terror threats and the increase in power for the US federal government over that of local state governments serving as a background. Metzen wrote the series' script, while Brazilian artist Max Velati was responsible for the illustration and painting of the book. Soldier: 76 would later appear as a character in "Overwatch", Blizzard's online first-person shooter game, released in May 2016.


title: Chris Metzen

text: Chris Metzen teamed with author Flint Dille and artist Livio Ramondelli to create the 12-part, bi-weekly digital comic series "Transformers: Autocracy". "Autocracy" was published by IDW Publishing in 2012. The series focused on the days just before the Great War. It is set after "Megatron Origin", and presents the Decepticons as an established force, sowing dissent across Cybertron primarily through terrorist actions. The series focuses on Orion Pax, an Autobot commander charged with rooting out these cells. "Transformers: Autocracy" was released as a collected Trade Paperback in July 2012 with a bonus forward authored by Metzen. "Autocracy" was followed by "Transformers: Monstrosity" in 2013 and "Transformers: Primacy" in 2014.


title: Chris Metzen

text: Metzen made a cameo appearance in the 2016 "Warcraft" film, as a turbaned perfume vendor in Stormwind. On September 12, 2016, Metzen announced that he was retiring from Blizzard Entertainment after nearly twenty-three years with the company. In November 2018, Metzen made an appearance at Blizzcon 2018 in the World of Warcraft Q&A line, where he inquired about the return of the Horde's "true Warchief". Afrasiabi responded that if a fictional job board opening were to be posted needing a Warchief, that he (Afrasiabi) would give Metzen a call. He returned to the role of Thrall for the "Safe Haven" cinematic, released in May 2019, and voiced Thrall in "". Metzen voiced the Dragon-King Avizandum in the third season of the Netflix's animated series "The Dragon Prince". He reprised his role as Thrall once again in "". Blizzard announced Metzen's return to the company in December 2022, as a creative advisor for the "Warcraft" franchise. His focus at Blizzard is planned to expand to other properties in the future.


title: Chris Metzen

text: He first started creating comics at the age of twelve, but he held an interest in drawing since at least six. A fan of "Dungeons & Dragons", Metzen cites the "Dragonlance" series of novels and "Star Wars" as the primary inspirations for his fantasy and science fiction creations, and names fantasy and comic book artists such as Walt Simonson and Keith Parkinson as his artistic inspirations.


title: Chris Metzen

text: He defines his artistic style as having been "heavily influenced by Walt Simonson's and Jim Lee's pencilling styles for form" while preferring the "costuming, themes and general feel of Larry Elmore and Keith Parkinson's fantasy paintings".


title: Leader of the Liberal Democrats

text: The Liberal Democrats are a political party in the United Kingdom. Party members elect the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the head and highest-ranking member of the party. Liberal Democrat members of Parliament also elect a deputy leader of the Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons, often colloquially referred to as the deputy leader. Under the federal constitution of the Liberal Democrats the leader is required to be a member of the House of Commons.


title: Leader of the Liberal Democrats

text: Before the election of the first federal leader of the party (the Liberal Democrats having a federal structure in their internal party organisation), the leaders of the two parties which merged to form the Liberal Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), served as joint interim leaders: David Steel and Bob Maclennan respectively.


title: Leader of the Liberal Democrats

text: If the leader dies, resigns or loses their seat in Parliament, the deputy leader (if there is one) serves as interim leader until a leadership election takes place. This has occurred three times, with Menzies Campbell serving as interim leader following the resignation of Charles Kennedy (Campbell was elected leader in the ensuing election) and Vince Cable serving as interim leader following Campbell's resignation. Jo Swinson lost her seat in the general election held on 12 December 2019, thus ceasing to be leader; Deputy Leader Ed Davey and Party President Sal Brinton became acting co-leaders. Brinton was replaced by Mark Pack following his assuming the office of party president on 1 January 2020. Davey won the Leadership election and became Leader on 27 August 2020 at the 2020 Liberal Democrats leadership election.


title: Eurovision Song Contest 2009

text: The Eurovision Song Contest 2009 was the 54th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Moscow, Russia, following the country's victory at the with the song "Believe" by Dima Bilan. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Channel One (C1R), the contest was held at the Olimpiysky Arena, and consisted of two semi-finals on 12 and 14 May, and a final on 16 May 2009. The semi-finals were presented by Russian model Natalia Vodianova and television presenter Andrey Malakhov, while the final was presented by Russian television presenter Ivan Urgant and former Russian contestant Alsou Abramova, becoming the first and to date only time that two different sets of presenters had hosted the semi-finals and finals.