title: Soldering iron

text: A variety of means are used to control temperature. The simplest of these is a variable power control, much like a light dimmer, which changes the equilibrium temperature of the iron without automatically measuring or regulating the temperature. Another type of system uses a thermostat, often inside the iron's tip, which automatically switches power on and off to the element. A thermal sensor such as a thermocouple may be used in conjunction with circuitry to monitor the temperature of the tip and adjust power delivered to the heating element to maintain a desired temperature. In some models, the firmware for the control circuitry is free software that can be modified by the end-user.


title: Soldering iron

text: Another approach is to use magnetized soldering tips which lose their magnetic properties at a specific temperature, the Curie point. As long as the tip is magnetic, it closes a switch to supply power to the heating element. When it exceeds the design temperature it opens the contacts, cooling until the temperature drops enough to restore magnetisation. More complex Curie-point irons circulate a high-frequency AC current through the tip, using magnetic physics to direct heating only where the surface of the tip drops below the Curie point.


title: Soldering iron

text: A soldering station has a temperature control and consists of an electrical power supply, control circuitry with provision for user adjustment of temperature and display, and a soldering iron or soldering head with a tip temperature sensor. The station will normally have a stand for the hot iron when not in use, and a wet sponge for cleaning. It is most commonly used for soldering electronic components. Other functions may be combined; for example a rework station, mainly for surface-mount components may have a hot air gun, vacuum pickup tool, and a soldering head; a desoldering station will have a desoldering head with vacuum pump for desoldering through-hole components, and a soldering iron head.


title: Soldering iron

text: For soldering and desoldering small surface-mount components with two terminals, such as some links, resistors, capacitors, and diodes, soldering tweezers can be used; they can be either free-standing or controlled from a soldering station. The tweezers have two heated tips mounted on arms whose separation can be manually varied by squeezing gently against spring force, like simple tweezers; the tips are applied to the two ends of the component. The main purpose of the soldering tweezers is to melt solder in the correct place; components are usually moved by simple tweezers or vacuum pickup.


title: Soldering iron

text: A hot knife is a form of soldering iron equipped with a double-edged blade that is situated on a heating element. These tools can reach temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (538 degrees Celsius) allowing for cuts of fabric and foam materials without worry of fraying or beading. Hot knives can be utilized in automotive, marine, and carpeting applications, as well as other industrial and personal uses.


title: Soldering iron

text: A soldering iron stand keeps the iron away from flammable materials, and often also comes with a cellulose sponge and flux pot for cleaning the tip. Some soldering irons for continuous and professional use come as part of a "soldering station," which allows the exact temperature of the tip to be adjusted, kept constant, and sometimes displayed.


title: Soldering iron

text: Most soldering irons for electronics have interchangeable tips, also known as "bits", that vary in size and shape for different types of work. Common tip shapes include: "bevel", "chisel", and "conical". An example of a more specialist tip is spoon or gull wing, which features concavity. See the image for renderings of a few different tip shapes and some of the names given to them.


title: Soldering iron

text: Pyramid tips with a triangular flat face and chisel tips with a wide flat face are useful for soldering sheet metal. Fine conical or tapered chisel tips are typically used for electronics work. Tips may be straight or have a bend. Concave or wicking tips with a chisel face with a concave well in the flat face to hold a small amount of solder are available. Tip selection depends upon the type of work and access to the joint; soldering of 0.5mm pitch surface-mount ICs, for example, is quite different from soldering a through-hole connection to a large area. A concave tip well is said to help prevent bridging of closely spaced leads; different shapes are recommended to correct bridging that has occurred. Due to patent restrictions not all manufacturers offer concave tips everywhere; in particular there are restrictions in the USA.


title: Soldering iron

text: Older and very cheap irons typically use a bare copper tip, which is shaped with a file or sandpaper. This dissolves gradually into the solder, suffering pitting and erosion of the shape. Copper tips are sometimes filed when worn down. Iron-plated copper tips have become increasingly popular since the 1980s. Because iron is not readily dissolved by molten solder, the plated tip is more durable than a bare copper one, though it will eventually wear out and need replacing. This is especially important when working at the higher temperatures needed for modern lead-free solders. Solid iron and steel tips are seldom used because they store less heat, conduct it poorly, and rusting can break the heating element.


title: Soldering iron

text: Iron-plated tips may feature a layer of nickel between the copper core and the iron surface. A nickel-chrome outer plating may be used further back from the very tip, as solder does not stick well to this material: this avoids solder wetting parts of the tip where it would be unwanted.


title: Soldering iron

text: Some tips have a heater and a thermocouple-based temperature sensor embedded to facilitate a more precise temperature control (TS100 and T12, for instance).


title: Soldering iron

text: When the iron tip oxidises and burnt flux accumulates on it, solder no longer wets the tip, impeding heat transfer and making soldering difficult or impossible; tips must be periodically cleaned in use. Such problems happen with all kinds of solder, but are much more severe with the lead-free solders which have become widespread in electronics work, which require higher temperatures than solders containing lead. Exposed iron plating oxidises; if the tip is kept tinned with molten solder oxidation is inhibited. A clean unoxidised tip is tinned by applying a little solder and flux.


title: Soldering iron

text: A wet small sponge, often supplied with soldering equipment, can be used to wipe the tip. For lead-free solder a slightly more aggressive cleaning, with brass shavings, can be used. Soldering flux will help to remove oxide; the more active the flux the better the cleaning, although acidic flux used on circuit boards that is not carefully cleaned off will cause corrosion. A tip which is cleaned but not retinned is susceptible to oxidation.


title: Soldering iron

text: Soldering iron tips are made of a copper core plated various metals including iron. The copper is used for heat transfer and the other platings are for durability. Copper is very easily corroded, eating away the tip, particularly in lead-free work; iron is not. Cleaning tips requires the removal of oxide without damaging the iron plating and exposing the copper to rapid corrosion. The use of solder already containing a small amount of copper can slow corrosion of copper tips.


title: Soldering iron

text: In cases of severe oxidation not removable by gentler methods, abrasion with something hard enough to remove oxide but not so hard as to scratch the iron plating can be used. A brass wire scourer, brush, or wheel on a bench grinder, can be used with care. Sandpaper and other tools may be used but are likely to damage the plating.


title: Soldering iron

text: Although some manufacturers' mains-powered models are built with the element shaft (and hence the tip) electrically connected to ground via the iron's mains lead, other models' tips may float at arbitrary voltages unless an additional grounding wire is used.


title: Soldering iron

text: The wattage of the soldering iron is one of the most important factors in a soldering iron. Most of the soldering irons used in the electronics have wattage in the range of 20–60 Watts.


title: Soldering iron

text: Temperature-controlled soldering irons with higher wattage (40W-60W) are better than low-wattage irons. It does not mean that temperature-controlled soldering irons with higher wattage apply more heat to the solder joint - it simply means that temperature-controlled soldering irons with higher wattage have more power available to heat the soldering joint if needed.


title: Soldering iron

text: On the other hand, a soldering iron with low wattage (20W-30W) can lose heat faster than it can re-heat itself. This may result in poor solder joints, particularly when soldering bigger solder joints or thick wires.


title: Joan Bennett Kennedy

text: Virginia Joan Kennedy ( Bennett, born September 2, 1936) is an American socialite who was the first wife of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.


title: Joan Bennett Kennedy

text: Virginia Joan Bennett was born at Mother Cabrini Hospital in New York City. She was raised in a Roman Catholic family, in suburban Bronxville, New York. Her parents were Harry Wiggin Bennett Jr. (1907–1981), and Virginia Joan Stead (1911–1976). Her father was a graduate of Cornell University and later worked as an advertising executive. Bennett grew up with one younger sister, Candace "Candy," (born 1938). She attended Manhattanville College (then a Sacred Heart college), in Purchase, New York. Manhattanville was also the alma mater of her future mother-in-law, Rose Kennedy, as well as her future sisters-in-law Jean Kennedy Smith and Ethel Skakel Kennedy. In 1982, Bennett received an MA in Education from Lesley College, now known as Lesley University. As a teenager, she worked as a model in television advertising.


title: Joan Bennett Kennedy

text: In October 1957, at the dedication of a gymnasium at Manhattanville College in memory of another Kennedy sister, Kathleen – who had died in a plane crash in France in 1948 – Jean Kennedy Smith introduced Joan to her younger brother Edward ( Ted), then a student at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. The couple became engaged quickly and Joan grew nervous about marrying someone she did not know that well. Joe Kennedy insisted that the wedding should proceed, and they were married on November 29, 1958, in Bronxville, New York. The small family wedding was held just a few weeks after Ted's older brother U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy won his landslide re-election for his United States Senate seat representing Massachusetts in 1958. Joan had three children with Ted Kennedy: Kara Kennedy (1960–2011), Edward M. Kennedy Jr. (Ted Jr.) (b. 1961), and Patrick J. Kennedy (b. 1967).


title: Joan Bennett Kennedy

text: Two of their children were cancer victims. Ted Jr. developed bone cancer at age 12, which resulted in the removal of a portion of his right leg in 1973, and Kara was treated for lung cancer in 2003. Daughter Kara Kennedy died of a heart attack at age 51 on September 16, 2011.


title: Joan Bennett Kennedy

text: Ted suffered a severe back injury in a 1964 airplane crash, while campaigning for his first full Senate term. Joan assumed the full campaign-appearance schedule for his successful re-election in 1964. He had earlier won a special election in November 1962, to serve out the final two years of his brother John's Senate six-year term; John had resigned from the U.S. Senate upon his November 1960 election as the 35th U.S. President.


title: Joan Bennett Kennedy

text: In July 1969, Ted Kennedy was involved in a car accident at a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts that resulted in the death of his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne. Although pregnant and confined to bed in the wake of two previous miscarriages, Joan attended Kopechne's funeral. Three days later, she stood beside her husband in a local court when he pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. She suffered a third miscarriage shortly thereafter.


title: Joan Bennett Kennedy

text: The couple separated in 1978 after twenty years of marriage. She subsequently told "McCall's" magazine about her alcoholism and her work to stay sober. They remained together officially married during his failed 1980 U.S. presidential campaign, later announcing plans to divorce in 1981; the divorce was finalized in 1983.


title: Joan Bennett Kennedy

text: In 1992, she published the book "The Joy of Classical Music: A Guide for You and Your Family". Kennedy has worked with children's charities, remains an accomplished pianist and has taught classical music to children.


title: Joan Bennett Kennedy

text: Kennedy's later years have been shaped by chronic alcoholism, which had developed during her marriage. The alcohol problem escalated with sporadic, uneven sobriety, repeated drunk-driving arrests, court-ordered rehabilitation, and a return to drinking. This ultimately led to kidney damage, with the possibility of dialysis and protracted complications. In July 2004, her son, Ted Jr., had been appointed her legal guardian; in 2005, her children were granted temporary guardianship. That year, she was hospitalized with a concussion and a broken shoulder after being found lying in a Boston street near her home. In 2005, she requested that her second cousin, financial planner Webster E. Janssen of Connecticut, establish a trust to control her estate. This was in violation of her sons' guardianship. Her children later took successful legal action against Janssen, removing him as trustee and later filing a complaint against him with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That October, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery. She agreed to strict court-ordered guardianship and her estate has since been placed in a new trust overseen by two court-appointed trustees.


title: Joan Bennett Kennedy

text: Apart from a brief relationship shortly after her divorce, she has neither remarried nor pursued another relationship. She attended Ted's funeral at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. As of 2005, she resided in Boston, Massachusetts, and Cape Cod.


title: Queen for Seven Days

text: Queen for Seven Days () is a South Korean television series starring Park Min-young as the titular Queen Dangyeong, with Yeon Woo-jin and Lee Dong-gun. It aired on KBS2 every Wednesday and Thursday at 22:00 (KST) from May 31, 2017 to August 3, 2017.


title: Queen for Seven Days

text: In March 2017, it was announced that Park Min-young will be re-teaming with director Lee Jung-sub on "Queen for Seven Days". They previously worked together on "Glory Jane" (2011) and "Healer" (2014-15). It is the first production of Monster Union, the independent content company set up by KBS in July 2016.


title: Queen for Seven Days

text: Prior to broadcast, lead actress Park stated that the audience could think of the drama "as "Love in the Moonlight" five years later," pertaining to KBS2's popular historical series starring Park Bo-gum and Kim Yoo-jung.


title: Charli (album)

text: Charli is the third studio album by English singer and songwriter Charli XCX. It was released through Asylum and Atlantic Records UK on 13 September 2019.


title: Charli (album)

text: The album is supported by a world tour, beginning in Atlanta on 20 September 2019. "Charli" was preceded by the singles "1999" with Troye Sivan, "Blame It on Your Love" featuring Lizzo, and "Gone" with Christine and the Queens. "Charli" was also promoted by the promotional singles "Cross You Out" featuring Sky Ferreira, "Warm" featuring Haim, "February 2017" featuring Clairo and Yaeji, and "2099" also featuring Sivan. The album was acclaimed by critics, who applauded the production and songwriting. Musically, it has been described as avant-pop, electropop, futurepop, and hyperpop.


title: Charli (album)

text: In 2017, Charli XCX was preparing to release her third studio album. However, a hacker was able to steal several demo tracks from her Google Drive and leaked them online. Fans gave the collection of leaks the unofficial title "XCX World", though a title and track list was never finalised for the album. After the leaks, Charli XCX decided to scrap the entire project and decided to remake a new album.


title: Charli (album)

text: After a series of monthly single drops in the summer of 2018, Charli XCX released the lead single of the album, "1999" in October 2018. Charli XCX and executive producer A. G. Cook continued recording the album in November 2018 at Flume's studio in Los Angeles, California. The project was initially intended to be the third release in a trilogy of mixtapes, following the release of "Number 1 Angel" and "Pop 2". The title was to include the number "3", continuing the numbering motif, but the plan was never finalised. After two weeks of recording, Charli XCX decided that the work would instead be her third studio album. Recording continued in Eagle Rock from January to March 2019, where the majority of the album's songwriting and production took place. The song "White Mercedes" was recorded in Andrew Watt's home. Initially trying to keep the "3" in the title, a working title for the album was "Best Friends" before Cook suggested the title "Charli".


title: Charli (album)

text: On 13 June 2019, Charli XCX announced "Charli", along with its cover art, release date, and track list that featured 15 tracks and 14 collaborations. Charli XCX debuted "Gone" with Christine and the Queens at Primavera Sound in Barcelona on 30 May and "2099" with Troye Sivan at the Go West Fest in Los Angeles on 6 June.


title: Charli (album)

text: The album was supported by the Charli Live Tour. The tour was announced alongside the album's official reveal on 13 June 2019. The tour started on 20 September 2019 in Atlanta, United States and concluded in February 2020 in Australia.


title: Charli (album)

text: The album's lead single is a collaboration with Australian singer Troye Sivan, titled "1999". It was released on 8 October 2018, and its music video was released on 11 October 2018. The album's second single is the original version of "Track 10", a song from Charli XCX's mixtape "Pop 2", titled "Blame It on Your Love". It features American singer and rapper Lizzo, and was released on 15 May 2019. The album's third single, "Gone", is a collaboration with French singer and songwriter Christine and the Queens, the single features lyrics in both English, and French. It was released on 17 July 2019 alongside the track's music video. The fourth single "White Mercedes" was released on 23 October 2019. Its music video was released on 11 October 2019.


title: Charli (album)

text: The first promotional single, "Cross You Out", features American singer-songwriter Sky Ferreira, and was released on 16 August 2019. The second promotional single, "Warm", features American pop-rock band Haim, and was released on 30 August 2019. The third promotional single, "February 2017", features American singer-songwriter Clairo and Korean-American electronic music artist Yaeji, and was released on 6 September 2019. The fourth and final promotional single, "2099", features Sivan and was released on 10 September 2019. A music video for "2099", showcasing Charli XCX and Sivan riding on jet skis, was released a week later on 17 September 2019.


title: Charli (album)

text: The No Boys remix of "Click" was released on 11 October 2019. The remix keeps Kim Petras' verse from the original but replaces Tommy Cash with Slayyyter.


title: Charli (album)

text: "Charli" was met with positive reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from professional critics, the album received an average score of 80, based on 22 reviews. At AnyDecentMusic?, which uses a weighted formula to find an average rating out of 10, it received a score of 7.6 based on 22 reviews.


title: Charli (album)

text: In a five-star review, Bethany Davison of "The Skinny" wrote ""Charli" is an expansive record, flooded with joy and heartache, consolidated in its array of features. Alongside indulgently unadorned ruminations on fear and love, the record is boundlessly liberating, decadently indulgent, and irresistibly danceable. Aitchison has delivered her greatest work yet". Valerie Magan of "Clash" awarded the album 9/10, commenting: ""Charli" is no doubt an album of too many features and too many parts, but it somehow all fits together in a way that allows her penchant for unconventional songwriting and her ear for an exciting melody to work in concert, creating a project better than most anything she's done in the past". Hannah Mylrea of "NME" stated that "Charli" is "Bold, brash and brilliant, this is Charli XCX at her most genuine, and it's dazzling." Neil McCormick of "The Telegraph" commented that "The sexy android cover and star-studded collaborations (including alternative icons Lizzo, Haim and Christine and the Queens) on her third album, "Charli", suggest an all-guns-blazing pitch for blockbuster status. But the contents are far weirder than that implies. [...] Come the century's end, you can almost imagine future critics scratching their AI-augmented brains and still touting Charli XCX as the next big thing." "The Line of Best Fit" gave the album the "Album of the Week" designation, with Claire Biddles adding that "Charli is almost there. Ultimately she's too gloriously messy and multitudinous to produce such a thing. Although she could often benefit from an editor, her process and vision doesn't adhere to the music industry's prioritisation of the album format – which feels right for an artist whose music could be read as an attempt to dissolve time itself."


title: Charli (album)

text: Mick Jacobs, writing for "PopMatters", gave the album a 6/10 rating, noting that "compared to the previous compilations' sense of liberation, "Charli" sounds at odds with its some of its invested players and parts: the label, the fans, and Charli the artist." Jacobs praised the track "Silver Cross", but criticised others such as "Thoughts" and "Blame It on Your Love", which he described as "a unneeded revamp [that] seems to exists just because her and Lizzo share both a label and rising profiles in the industry." Rachel Aroesti of "Q" gave the album a mixed review, writing, "Between Cook's trademark production and the song-stealing brilliance of her collaborators, it often feels as if Aitchison's nasal croon and counter-intuitive toplines are the least interesting bits of her own project."


title: Charli (album)

text: "Charli" debuted at number 14 on the UK Albums Chart with sales of 4,177 combined units. It opened at number forty-two on the US "Billboard" 200 with sales of 13,200 album-equivalent units, of which 5,500 were pure album sales.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow is a city in San Bernardino County, California, in the Mojave Desert of Southern California. Located in the Inland Empire region of California, the population was 25,415 at the 2020 census. Barstow is an important crossroads for the Inland Empire and home to Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow.


title: Barstow, California

text: The settlement of Barstow began in the late 1840s in the Mormon Corridor. Every fall and winter, as the weather cooled, the rain produced new grass growth and replenished the water sources in the Mojave Desert. People, goods, and animal herds would move from New Mexico and later Utah to Los Angeles, along the Old Spanish Trail from Santa Fe, or after 1848, on the Mormon Road from Salt Lake City. Trains of freight wagons traveled back to Salt Lake City and other points in the interior. These travelers followed the course of the Mojave River, watering and camping at Fish Ponds on its south bank (west of Nebo Center) or 3.625 miles up river on the north bank, at a riverside grove of willows and cottonwoods, festooned with wild grapes, called Grapevines (later the site of North Barstow). In 1859, the Mojave Road followed a route that was established from Los Angeles to Fort Mojave through Grapevines that linked eastward with the Beale Wagon Road across northern New Mexico Territory to Santa Fe.


title: Barstow, California

text: Troubles with the Paiute, Mojave, and Chemehuevi tribes followed, and from 1860 Camp Cady, a U.S. Army post east of Barstow, was occupied sporadically until 1864, then permanently, by soldiers occupying other posts on the Mojave Road or patrolling in the region until 1871. Trading posts were established at Grapevines and Fish Ponds that supplied travelers on the roads and increasingly the miners that came into the Mojave Desert after the end of hostilities with the native people.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow's roots also lie in the rich mining history of the Mojave Desert following the discovery of gold and silver in the Owens Valley and in mountains to the east in the 1860s and 1870s. Due to the influx of miners arriving in Calico and Daggett, railroads were constructed to transport goods and people. The Southern Pacific built a line from Mojave, California through Barstow to Needles in 1883. In 1884, ownership of the line from Needles to Mojave was transferred to the Santa Fe Railroad. Paving the major highways through Barstow led to further development of the city. Much of its economy depends on transportation. Before the advent of the interstate highway system, Barstow was an important stop on both Routes 66 and 91. The two routes met in downtown Barstow and continued west together to Los Angeles.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow is named after William Barstow Strong, former president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Some early Barstow names were Camp Sugarloaf, Grapevine, Waterman Junction and Fishpond.


title: Barstow, California

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , 99.98% land and 0.02% water.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow experiences an arid climate, and has four seasons. Summer days are very hot, with highs typically exceeding . Winter, in contrast, is characterized by cold mornings, with lows near . Daily temperature ranges are largely a result of the low atmospheric moisture, typically between difference. There are an average of 133 days with highs of or higher, an average of 68 days with highs of degrees or higher, and an average of 32 days with lows of or lower.


title: Barstow, California

text: The average annual precipitation is , with nearly 80% of rain typically falling during the cooler months (Nov–Apr). Snowfall is uncommon in winter, and many years can go by without any measurable snowfall. There are an average of 24 days annually with measurable precipitation.


title: Barstow, California

text: The record high was on July 23, 1996, and the record low was on January 13, 1963. The wettest year was 1918 with and the driest year was 1904 with . The most rainfall in one month was in February 1998. The heaviest rainfall in 24 hours was on September 10, 1976. The most snowfall in one month was in January 1949, including January 12; that month was one of the coldest and snowiest in southern California history.


title: Barstow, California

text: The native vegetation is dominated by high and low desert shrubs such as creosote bush. City residents have introduced many non-native plants, prominent among which are trees such as Aleppo pine, Morus alba, Italian cypress, fan palm, ailanthus, ash, palo verde and redbud.


title: Barstow, California

text: The 2010 United States Census reported that Barstow had a population of 22,639. The population density was . The makeup of Barstow was 11,840 (52.3%) White (34.2% Non-Hispanic White), 3,313 (14.6%) African American, 477 (2.1%) Native American, 723 (3.2%) Asian, 278 (1.2%) Pacific Islander, 4,242 (18.7%) from other races, and 1,766 (7.8%) from two or more ethnicities/cultures. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 9,700 persons (42.8%).


title: Barstow, California

text: The Census reported that 22,271 people (98.4% of the population) lived in households, 195 (0.9%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 173 (0.8%) were institutionalized.


title: Barstow, California

text: There were 8,085 households, out of which 3,196 (39.5%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 3,182 (39.4%) were married couples living together, 1,619 (20.0%) had a female householder with no husband present, 612 (7.6%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 701 (8.7%) unmarried partnerships, and 58 (0.7%) same-sex married couples or partnerships, while 2,174 households (26.9%) were made up of individuals, and 670 (8.3%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.75. There were 5,413 families (67.0% of all households); the average family size was 3.34.


title: Barstow, California

text: The population was spread out, with 6,739 people (29.8%) under the age of 18, 2,481 people (11.0%) aged 18 to 24, 5,723 people (25.3%) aged 25 to 44, 5,277 people (23.3%) aged 45 to 64, and 2,419 people (10.7%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31.1 years. For every 100 females, there were 99.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.9 males.


title: Barstow, California

text: There were 9,555 housing units at an average density of , of which 3,964 (49.0%) were owner-occupied, and 4,121 (51.0%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 5.0%; the rental vacancy rate was 16.0%. 10,829 people (47.8% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 11,442 people (50.5%) lived in rental housing units.


title: Barstow, California

text: During 2009–2013, Barstow had a median household income of $42,354, with 26.2% of the population living below the federal poverty line.


title: Barstow, California

text: As of the census of 2000, there were 21,119 people, 7,647 households, and 5,253 families residing in the city. The population density was 628.8 inhabitants per square mile (242.8/km). There were 9,153 housing units at an average density of .


title: Barstow, California

text: The racial makeup of the city was 57.1% White, 11.6% African American, 2.4% Native American, 3.1% Asian, 1.0% Pacific Islander, 18.4% from other races, and 6.5% from two or more races. 36.5% of the population were Hispanic, Latino or Latin American of any race.


title: Barstow, California

text: There were 7,647 households, out of which 36.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 45.4% were married couples living together, 17.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 31.3% were non-families. Of all households, 25.9% were made up of individuals, and 8.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.7 and the average family size was 3.3.


title: Barstow, California

text: In the city, the population was spread out, with 30.8% under the age of 18, 10.4% from 18 to 24, 27.4% from 25 to 44, 19.3% from 45 to 64, and 12.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females, there were 99.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.1 males.


title: Barstow, California

text: The median income for a household in the city was $35,069, and the median income for a family was $40,160. Males had a median income of $37,425 versus $25,380 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,132. About 15.6% of families and 20.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 30.8% of those under age 18 and 4.3% of those age 65 or over.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow has a series of murals along Main Street, depicting scenes from the city's history. These murals were created by Main Street Murals, a local non-profit organization.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow Branch Library is located at 304 E. Buena Vista Street. It is a community venue, running various activities such as a summer reading program for children, story and craft sessions as well as a mystery book club.


title: Barstow, California

text: Skyline Drive-In, a drive-in theater located in the north-east outskirts of the city at 31175 Old Highway 58, is one of the last operating in San Bernardino County. It has two screens; each screen shows two movies every night.


title: Barstow, California

text: Hollywood Theatre Barstow Cinema 6 is the city's indoor cinema. It has six screens and can be found at 1503 East Main Street, in the east side of the city. As of September 30, 2011, Skyline Drive-In took over Hollywood Theatre, changing its name back to Barstow Station Cinema.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow Community College has a $22 million Performing Arts Center which hosts college theatre and music performances, and traveling professional performances.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow has a number of museums: Mojave River Valley Museum, Route 66 Mother Road Museum, the Western America Rail Museum, and the Desert Discovery Center. Once a year a family opens their Black History collection to the public and nearby Fort Irwin is home to the 11 Cavalry and ACR Museum. The Old Woman meteorite, the largest meteorite found in California and the second largest in the United States, is housed in the Desert Discovery Center.


title: Barstow, California

text: The Casa Del Desierto, built in 1911 as a Harvey House hotel and train station, now houses the Route 66 Mother Road Museum, the Western America Railroad Museum and still functions as an (unstaffed) Amtrak station. The Barstow Chamber of Commerce sponsors an annual sandcastle contest in the dry riverbed across from the Harvey House.


title: Barstow, California

text: Opened in 1975 and operating 365 days a year, Barstow Station is built to resemble a railway station. The location serves 20,000 tour buses a year and is a popular stop for travelers on Interstate 15. It includes a number of gift shops, an ice cream parlour, a Panda Express, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, KHWY radio station, and a Greyhound ticket terminal. In November 2013, Dunkin' Donuts opened inside Barstow Station, becoming only the second location of that chain within the entire state of California (following a shop on Camp Pendleton) and the first to be accessible to the general public.


title: Barstow, California

text: The McDonald's restaurant at Barstow Station consists of three side-by-side railroad cars—a reference to Barstow's railroad heritage. In September 1986, the restaurant was destroyed by fire when a customer's car burst into flames at the drive-up window. In June 1997, the re-built restaurant received national attention when a gunman opened fire during a botched robbery, injuring several people and killing a nine-year-old girl. The gunman was mortally wounded by an off-duty police officer after the ensuing gun battle and later died in a hospital.


title: Barstow, California

text: Other casual dining options include: In-N-Out Burger, Starbucks, IHOP, Denny's, and Jack in the Box. The oldest still operating franchise of Del Taco restaurant can be found at 401 N. First Street. Barstow is also home to several privately owned restaurants, such as DiNapoli's Firehouse: Italian Eatery, Canton Restaurant, and Los Domingos.


title: Barstow, California

text: Located southwest of the town is the upscale Tanger Center Barstow, of the Tanger Factory Outlet Centers chain, which is a popular stop for tourists traveling between Greater Los Angeles and Las Vegas. An older shopping center of outlet stores, the Barstow Factory Outlet, is located opposite the Tanger Outlet Center.


title: Barstow, California

text: The city has an enclosed shopping mall, Barstow Mall, built in the 1970s. It was renovated in 2010 and now includes the County of San Bernardino's new social service office for the Transition Assistance Department and Children and Family Services.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow also has stores such as Walmart, Stater Bros., Food 4 Less, 99 Cents Only Stores, Marshalls, The Home Depot, and Harbor Freight Tools.


title: Barstow, California

text: The United States Army’s National Training Center (NTC) and NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex are located at the nearby Fort Irwin, north of Barstow. The Goldstone Complex includes the Pioneer Deep Space Station, which has been designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark.


title: Barstow, California

text: Calico Ghost Town is one of the few remaining original mining towns of the western United States, now preserved as a museum by Walter Knott.


title: Barstow, California

text: Rainbow Basin is an Area of Critical Environmental Concern due to landscape features and paleontological resources in the area. Located north of Barstow, its landscape, multi-colored rock formations and canyons are visited by photographers, hikers, and campers. The fossiliferous Barstow Formation (Miocene) is well exposed there. Rainbow Basin is managed by the Bureau of Land Management's Barstow Field Office.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow was home to the Barstow Riffians, a developmental semi-professional football team. The Barstow Riffians were members of the UFAL. The team ceased operations following the 2010–11 season.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow Community College's athletics department offers four competitive intercollegiate sports programs: men's and women's basketball, baseball, and softball.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow has two main parks: the Barstow Skate Park, a 12,000 square-foot skate park, and the Robert A. Sessions Memorial Sportspark, which includes six lighted ball fields, three soccer fields, volleyball courts, batting cages as well as basketball courts. The Robert A. Sessions Memorial Sportspark also plays host to regional softball tournaments.


title: Barstow, California

text: The city also has the Dana Park Community Center open on weekdays, the Cora Harper Fitness Center and Tennis Courts open Monday to Saturday, and the outdoor Eda Henderson Pool open Tuesdays to Sundays throughout the school summer holidays.


title: Barstow, California

text: Founded in the 1970s by two local residents, the thriving Barstow Senior Center serves Barstow's seniors. In addition to daily, weekly, and monthly activities, there is also an onsite thrift store and lunches are served every weekday. The center is funded via annual membership fees and sponsorship.


title: Barstow, California

text: According to the city's most recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the city's various funds had $33.1 million in revenues, $37.2 million in expenditures, $149.8 million in total assets, $25.3 million in total liabilities, and $52.6 million in cash and investments. The structure of the management and coordination of city services is:


title: Barstow, California

text: The Barstow Youth Advisory Council (BYAC) was established in March 2009. Thirteen teen advocates advise Barstow City Council members on the needs of young people in the city and promote youth community involvement through voluntary activities.


title: Barstow, California

text: Its long distance from larger cities and urban centers has created economic problems, and Barstow is seeking projects to boost the economy. However, there are three casinos planned for the area. Additionally, various construction projects have been announced for Barstow, which include retail growth, an increase in lodging accommodation, and other businesses.


title: Barstow, California

text: In October 2022, BNSF committed to expanding the Barstow Rail yard into the Barstow International Gateway, over 4,500 acres at a cost of 1.5 billion dollars in order to reduce dwell time at the port of Los Angeles.


title: Barstow, California

text: In response, the city changed logo and it's motto to the hub of the west. It is also in the process of changing zoning in order to accommodate the logistics industry that surrounds the expanded BNSF facility


title: Barstow, California

text: Grades 7–8 are taught at Barstow Junior High School and grades 9–12 are taught at Barstow High School.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow Community College is the only college in the area, and its primary objectives are to enable students to transfer to a four-year college or university and learn vocational trades through career technical education.


title: Barstow, California

text: Park University has a campus located at the Marine Corps logistics base, which accepts local civilian students as well as military personnel and their dependents. Park also offers classes on the community college campus.


title: Barstow, California

text: Founded in 1910 and renamed in 1958, the Desert Dispatch is Barstow's local newspaper. The newspaper has a daily circulation of 3,259 and was awarded second place for Sports Page Design, Opinion Page Design and Editorial Comment at the 2008 Better Newspapers Contest, hosted by the California Newspaper Publishers Association.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow's main radio station is KDUC (or "K-DUCK"), which plays adult contemporary music and also serves Victorville, Apple Valley, Hesperia and Ridgecrest, California.


title: Barstow, California

text: "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold" is the opening sentence of Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow City Council has a dedicated film office, which acts as a point of liaison and resources for film locations, equipment and accommodation for filmmakers and their crews. A number of notable motion pictures were shot in the city, including "Broken Arrow", "Courage Under Fire", "From Dusk till Dawn", "Gattaca", "Erin Brockovich", and "". Other notable mentions of Barstow include the 2008 movie "Leaving Barstow", which tells the story of a high school senior who must choose between his ambitions to leave Barstow or stay in the city to care for his mother. The fictional Brian O'Conner in "2 Fast 2 Furious" grew up in Barstow and travels to the city to persuade a former childhood best friend Roman Pearce to join him in an FBI operation.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow is also mentioned in the 2009 movie "The Hangover" before the road trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. The movie version of "Hair" was partially filmed in Barstow in the late 1970s.


title: Barstow, California

text: In 2015, Barstow was one of the filming locations for the film "Sky" as well as Bombay Beach, Hinkley, Joshua Tree, Landers, Lenwood, Ludlow, Newberry Springs, and Victorville, California.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow is the topic of the documentary "Barstow, California" (2018) by German director Rainer Komers featuring voice overs of Spoon Jackson's poems and memoir "By Heart".


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow is mentioned in the lyrics of "Route 66" composed by Bobby Troup. Sheryl Crow's "Leaving Las Vegas" mentions spending the night in Barstow.


title: Barstow, California

text: Composer Harry Partch wrote "Barstow," inspired by eight pieces of graffiti written by hitchhikers on highway railings in the city.


title: Barstow, California

text: The Residents' song "Death in Barstow" tells the story of two friends who visit and fall asleep in Barstow. One of the friends awakes to find that his friend has died.


title: Barstow, California

text: Bill Morrissey's song "Barstow" (1984, the first song on his first record) is about a group of men drinking one night in a Barstow train yard, with the notable line "I can't believe it gets this cold in Barstow".


title: Barstow, California

text: Goodnight, Texas's song "Barstow" is a tale of a gold miner chasing his dream to the town, only to find that Barstow does not have any gold, nor what he wants. See main chorus "Barstow Oh Barstow! Your torture isn't fair!. I left my home for riches but there ain't gold nowhere. Oh Barstow I don't know what's keepin' me around. The toughest godforsaken place that I have ever found."


title: Barstow, California

text: Victor Valley Transit Authority is the local transportation system. It covers the city of Barstow and the surrounding areas in San Bernardino County. BAT operates three fixed city bus routes on an hourly schedule, a dial-a-ride service for seniors and persons with disabilities and two county routes serving Hinkley, Yermo, Daggett, and Newberry Springs. The county services operate on a fixed route with a "deviation zone" and a flexible time schedule. When requested in advance, the county bus travels off the fixed route to pick up or drop off passengers within the deviation zone. Unless passengers hold a monthly or day pass, there is an additional charge for this service. All city and county buses connect at Barstow City Hall Transport Center. Intercity buses that serve Barstow include Greyhound, Orange Belt Stages, Intercalifornias, TUFESA, and Fronteras del Norte, and FlixBus.


title: Barstow, California

text: The Harvey House Railroad Depot is served twice daily by Amtrak's Southwest Chief, from Chicago to Los Angeles and reverse. Connections can also be made on multiple Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach bus services to Las Vegas and other destinations. Rail freight is provided by the BNSF Railway and the Union Pacific Railroad.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow-Daggett Airport is the local airport that serves general aviation but has no commercial service.


title: Barstow, California

text: Roads are the main method of transport. The primary arteries serving Barstow are Interstate 40, Interstate 15, and California State Route 58. A Tesla Supercharger station is available.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow Community Hospital is a 56-bed hospital serving the surrounding High Desert community. Opened in 1958, the hospital was named one of the "100 Top Hospitals in the Nation" for two consecutive years in the late 1990s.The new Barstow Community Hospital, which opened its doors to the community in October 2012, is a 30-bed acute care facility with inpatient and outpatient services, and medical, surgical and emergency care.


title: Barstow, California

text: Barstow has its own police department, plus a regional station of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, which serves the unincorporated areas around the city, including Newberry Springs, Trona, Baker and Ludlow.


title: Barstow, California

text: On November 19, 2010, Barstow residents were warned that the area water system was contaminated. A local area military base, Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow notified Golden State Water that samples taken from their water system showed the chemical perchlorate at levels above the maximum contaminant level of 6 parts per billion. Perchlorate is found in rocket propellant, fireworks, explosives, flares, matches and industrial byproducts. Golden State Water Co. handed out free bottled water to residents. The "Do Not Drink" water advisory ended five days later on November 24, 2010.


title: Barstow, California

text: The Mountain View Memorial Park (also called Mt. View Cemetery), located on Irwin Road, was established in 1937; an Independent Special District for the cemetery was created in 1947. Notable burials include MLB pitcher Bob Rhoads.


title: Maestro (debit card)

text: Mastercard Maestro is a brand of debit cards and prepaid cards owned by Mastercard that was introduced in 1991. Maestro is accepted at around fifteen million point of sale outlets in 93 countries.


title: Maestro (debit card)

text: Starting July 1, 2023, Mastercard will phase out Maestro across Europe. European banks and other card issuers will be required to replace expired or lost Maestro cards with Debit Mastercard.


title: Maestro (debit card)

text: Maestro debit cards are obtained from associate banks and are linked to the cardholder's savings account, current account or any of several other types of accounts, while prepaid cards do not require a bank account to operate. Maestro cards can be used at point of sale (POS) and ATMs. Payments are made by swiping cards through the payment terminal, insertion into a chip and PIN device or by a contactless reader. The payment is authorized by the card issuer to ensure that the cardholder has sufficient funds in their account to make the purchase. The cardholder then confirms the payment by either signing the sales receipt or entering their 4- to 6-digit PIN, except with contactless transactions below a specified amount for which no further verification is required.


title: Maestro (debit card)

text: Maestro often requires on-line electronic authorization for every transaction, although Mastercard's rules permit the establishment of floor limits on Maestro EMV chip transactions only. Not only must the information stored in either the chip or the magnetic stripe be read, but this has to be sent from the merchant to the issuing bank, the issuing bank then has to respond with an affirmative authorization. If the information is not read, the issuer will decline the transaction, regardless of any disposable amount on the connected account, except in the Asia Pacific region, where manual keyed entry is permitted under some circumstances. This is different from most other debit and credit cards, where the information can be entered manually into the terminal (i.e. by typing the 13 to 19 digits and the expiry date on the terminal) and still be approved by the issuer or stand-in processor. In most countries, other than those specified in Mastercard's rules, a PIN rather than a signature is always required to authorise a Maestro transaction, except where no CVM (Cardholder Verification Method) is required.


title: Malhun Hatun

text: According to some historians, she was the daughter of the Anatolian Turkish Bey, Ömer Bey. There have been many speculations that she was the daughter of Sheikh Edebali, as most of the historians during the Ottoman period accept that she was indeed his daughter, although her name has been a subject of conflict to this date. Other sources say that she was the daughter of Ömer Abdülaziz Bey, Seljuk Vizier of Anatolia.


title: Malhun Hatun

text: The 1324 endowment deed for a Dervish Monastery built by Sultan Orhan suggests that his mother was not, as popular historical tradition maintains, Edebali's daughter but rather Mal Hatun, the daughter of one "Umar Bey or Ömer Bey". The title "Bey", used by the princely dynasties of Anatolia, suggests that Mal Hatun's father was a person of some status and authority. One possibility is that he was the eponymous ruler of an "Amouri" (Umeri) Principality, which was located northeast of the emerging Ottoman State and disappeared in the late 13th or the early 14th century.


title: Malhun Hatun

text: The Amouri are described by the Byzantine historian George Pachymeres, who says that a son of Umar fought with Osman in one of his first raids against local Byzantine lords (the victory of Baphaion). The Ottomans, according to Pachymeres, went on to assume the role played by Amouri until their demise as the principal aggressor against the Byzantines in the northwest Anatolia. If Pachymeres's report is correct, the timing and the political context are appropriate for a marriage between Osman and 'Umar Bey's daughter.


title: Ground meat

text: Ground meat, called mince or minced meat outside North America, is meat finely chopped by a meat grinder or a chopping knife. A common type of ground meat is ground beef, but many other types of meats are prepared in a similar fashion, including pork, veal, lamb, goat meat, and poultry.


title: Ground meat

text: Ground meat is used in a wide variety of dishes, by itself, or mixed with other ingredients. It may be formed into meatballs which are then fried, baked, steamed, or braised. They may be cooked on a skewer to produce dishes such as "adana kebabı" and "ćevapi". It may be formed into patties which are then grilled or fried (hamburger), breaded and fried ("menchi-katsu", Pozharsky cutlet), or braised (Salisbury steak). It may be formed into meatloaves or pâtés and baked. It may also be used as a filling or stuffing for meat pies and "böreks", and also as stuffing. It may be made into meat sauce such as ragù, which in turn is used in dishes like pastitsio and moussaka, or mixed with sauce and served on a bun as a sloppy joe sandwich. It may also be cooked with beans, tomatoes, and/or spices to make chili con carne.


title: Ground meat

text: In the Indian subcontinent, minced meat is used in a variety of dishes such as a stewed or fried curry dish of minced beef, mutton (i.e., goat meat or chevon) or other kinds of meat with green peas or potatoes. It usually includes ghee/butter, onions, garlic, ginger, chilis, and spices. Minced meat is called "keema" or "qeema" in the Indian subcontinent. "Keema" can be grilled on a skewer and is then called "seekh" kebab, or it is used as a filling for samosas or naan.


title: Ground meat

text: The word ultimately comes from the Turkic word "qıyma" meaning 'minced meat', and is thus related to the Persian "qeyme", Turkish "kıyma", and Greek "kimás".


title: Ground meat

text: Ground meat has food safety concerns very different from whole cuts of meat. If undercooked, it can lead to food poisoning. In a whole cut from an animal, the interior of the meat is essentially sterile, even before cooking; any bacterial contamination is on the outer surface of the meat. This is why, for example, it is typically safe for humans to consume steak that is cooked "rare" in such a way that the interior of the cut remains red in colour - the searing of the exterior of the meat is enough to kill any bacteria on the surface. However, when meat is ground, bacterial contamination from the surface can be distributed throughout the meat. If ground beef is not well cooked all the way through, there is a significant chance that enough pathogenic bacteria will survive to cause illness. Moreover, the warming will speed the reproduction of bacteria. Undercooked Jack in the Box hamburgers contaminated in this manner were responsible for four deaths and the illness of hundreds of people in 1993.


title: Ground meat

text: To ensure the safety of ground meat distributed through the National School Lunch Program, food banks, federal food and nutrition programs, the United States Department of Agriculture has established food safety and quality requirements for the ground beef that it purchases. A 2010 United States National Research Council report reviewed the scientific basis of the Department's ground beef safety standards, evaluated how the standards compare to those used by large retail and commercial food service purchasers of ground beef, and looked at ways to establish periodic evaluations of the Federal Purchase Ground Beef Program. The report found that although the safety requirements could be strengthened using scientific concepts, the prevention of future outbreaks of food-borne disease will depend on eliminating contamination during production and ensuring meat is properly cooked before it is served.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Isaac Bashevis Singer (; November 11, 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born American Jewish writer who wrote and published first in Yiddish and later translated himself into English with the help of editors and collaborators. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. A leading figure in the Yiddish literary movement, he was awarded two U.S. National Book Awards, one in Children's Literature for his memoir "A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw" (1970) and one in Fiction for his collection "A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories" (1974).


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in 1903 to a Jewish family in Leoncin village near Warsaw, Poland. The Polish form of his birth name was Icek Hersz Zynger. The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but most sources say it was probably November 11, a date similar to the one that Singer gave to his official biographer Paul Kresh, his secretary Dvorah Telushkin, and Rabbi William Berkowitz. The year 1903 is consistent with the historical events that his brother refers to in their childhood memoirs, including the death of Theodor Herzl. The often-quoted birth date, July 14, 1904 was made up by the author in his youth, possibly to make himself younger to avoid the draft.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: His father was a Hasidic rabbi and his mother, Bathsheba, was the daughter of the rabbi of Biłgoraj. Singer later used her first name in an initial literary pseudonym, "Izaak Baszewis", which he later expanded. Both his older siblings, sister Esther Kreitman (1891–1954) and brother Israel Joshua Singer (1893–1944), became writers as well. Esther was the first of the family to write stories.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: The family moved to the court of the Rabbi of Radzymin in 1907, where his father became head of the Yeshiva. After the Yeshiva building burned down in 1908, the family moved to Warsaw, a flat at Krochmalna Street 10. In the spring of 1914, the Singers moved to No. 12.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: The street where Singer grew up was located in the impoverished, Yiddish-speaking Jewish quarter of Warsaw. There his father served as a rabbi, and was called on to be a judge, arbitrator, religious authority and spiritual leader in the Jewish community. The unique atmosphere of pre-war Krochmalna Street can be found both in the collection of "Varshavsky-stories", which tell stories from Singer's childhood, as well as in those novels and stories which take place in pre-war Warsaw.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: In 1917, because of the hardships of World War I, the family split up. Singer moved with his mother and younger brother Moshe to his mother's hometown of Biłgoraj, a traditional "shtetl," where his mother's brothers had followed his grandfather as rabbis. When his father became a village rabbi again in 1921, Singer returned to Warsaw. He entered the Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary and soon decided that neither the school nor the profession suited him. He returned to Biłgoraj, where he tried to support himself by giving Hebrew lessons, but soon gave up and joined his parents, considering himself a failure. In 1923, his older brother Israel Joshua arranged for him to move to Warsaw to work as a proofreader for the Jewish magazine "", of which the brother was an editor.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: In 1935, four years before the Nazi invasion, Singer emigrated from Poland to the United States. He was fearful of the growing threat in neighboring Germany. The move separated the author from his common-law first wife Runia Pontsch and son Israel Zamir (1929–2014); they emigrated to Moscow and then Palestine. The three met again in 1955.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer settled in New York City, where he took up work as a journalist and columnist for "The Jewish Daily Forward" (), a Yiddish-language newspaper. After a promising start, he became despondent and for some years felt ""Lost in America"" (title of his 1974 memoir published in Yiddish; published in English in 1981).


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: In 1938, he met Alma Wassermann née Haimann (1907–1996), a German-Jewish refugee from Munich. They married in 1940, and their union seemed to release energy in him; he returned to prolific writing and to contributing to the "Forward". In addition to his pen name of "Bashevis", he published under the pen names of "Warszawski" (pron. Varshavsky) during World War II, and "D. Segal". They lived for many years in the Belnord apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: In 1981, Singer delivered a commencement address at the University at Albany, and was presented with an honorary doctorate.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer died on July 24, 1991, in Surfside, Florida, after suffering a series of strokes. He was buried in Cedar Park Cemetery, Paramus, New Jersey. A street in Surfside, Florida is named Isaac Singer Boulevard in his honor; and so is a city square in Lublin, Poland, and a street in Tel-Aviv. The full academic scholarship for undergraduate students at the University of Miami is also named in his honor.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer's first published story "Oyf der elter" ("In Old Age", 1925) won the literary competition of the "Literarishe Bletter", where he worked as a proofreader. A reflection of his formative years in "the kitchen of literature" can be found in many of his later works. Singer published his first novel, "Satan in Goray", in installments in the literary magazine "Globus", which he had co-founded with his lifelong friend, the Yiddish poet Aaron Zeitlin in 1935. It is set in the years following 1648, when the Chmielnicki massacres, considered one of the greatest Jewish catastrophes, occurred. The story describes the Jewish messianic cult that arose in the village of Goraj. It explores the effects of the faraway false messiah, Shabbatai Zvi, on the local population. Its last chapter imitates the style of a medieval Yiddish chronicle. With a stark depiction of innocence crushed by circumstance, the novel appears to foreshadow coming danger. In his later work "The Slave" (1962), Singer returns to the aftermath of 1648 in a love story between a Jewish man and a gentile woman. He portrays the traumatized and desperate survivors of the historic catastrophe with even deeper understanding.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer became a literary contributor to "The Jewish Daily Forward" only after his older brother Israel died in 1944. That year, Singer published "The Family Moskat" in his brother's honor. His own style showed in the daring turns of his action and characters, with double adultery during the holiest of nights of Judaism, the evening of Yom Kippur (despite being printed in a Jewish family newspaper in 1945). He was nearly forced to stop writing the novel by his editor-in-chief, Abraham Cahan, but was saved by readers who wanted the story to continue. After this, his stories—which he had published in Yiddish literary newspapers before—were printed in the "Forward" as well. Throughout the 1940s, Singer's reputation grew.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer believed in the power of his native language and thought that there was still a large audience, including in New York, who longed to read in Yiddish. In an interview in "Encounter" (February 1979), he said that although the Jews of Poland had died, "something—call it spirit or whatever—is still somewhere in the universe. This is a mystical kind of feeling, but I feel there is truth in it."


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Some of his colleagues and readers were shocked by his all-encompassing view of human nature. He wrote about female homosexuality ("Zeitl and Rickel", "Tseytl un Rikl"), published in "The Seance and Other Stories", transvestism ("Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" in "Short Friday"), and of rabbis corrupted by demons ("Zeidlus the Pope" in "Short Friday"). In those novels and stories which refer to events in his own life, he portrays himself unflatteringly (with some degree of accuracy) as an artist who is self-centered yet has a keen eye for the sufferings and tribulations of others.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer had many literary influences. Besides the religious texts he studied, he grew up with a rich array of Jewish folktales and worldly Yiddish detective-stories about "Max Spitzkopf" and his assistant "Fuchs". He read Russian, including Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" at the age of fourteen. He wrote in memoirs about the importance of the Yiddish translations donated in book-crates from America, which he studied as a teenager in Bilgoraj: "I read everything: Stories, novels, plays, essays... I read Rajsen, Strindberg, Don Kaplanowitsch, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Maupassant and Chekhov." He studied the philosophers Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Otto Weininger. Among his Yiddish contemporaries, Singer considered his elder brother to be his greatest artistic example. He was also a life-long friend and admirer of the author and poet Aaron Zeitlin.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: His short stories, which some critics feel contain his most lasting contributions, were influenced by Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant. From Maupassant, Singer developed a finely grained sense of drama. Like those of the French master, Singer's stories can pack enormous visceral excitement in the space of a few pages. From Chekhov, Singer developed his ability to draw characters of enormous complexity and dignity in the briefest of spaces. In the foreword to his personally selected volume of his finest short stories he describes the two aforementioned writers as the greatest masters of the short story form.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Of his non-Yiddish-contemporaries, he was strongly influenced by the writings of Knut Hamsun, many of whose works he later translated, while he had a more critical attitude towards Thomas Mann, whose approach to writing he considered opposed to his own. Contrary to Hamsun's approach, Singer shaped his world not only with the egos of his characters, but also from Jewish moral tradition embodied by his father in the stories about Singer's youth. There was a dichotomy between the life his heroes lead and the life they feel they should lead—which gives his art a modernity his predecessors did not express. His themes of witchcraft, mystery and legend draw on traditional sources, but they are contrasted with a modern and ironic consciousness. They are also concerned with the bizarre and the grotesque.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: An important strand of his art is intra-familial strife, which he experienced when taking refuge with his mother and younger brother at his uncle's home in Biłgoraj. This is the central theme in Singer's family chronicles such as "The Family Moskat" (1950), "The Manor" (1967), and "The Estate" (1969). Some critics believe these show the influence of Thomas Mann's novel "Buddenbrooks"; Singer had translated Mann's "Der Zauberberg" ("The Magic Mountain") into Yiddish as a young writer.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer always wrote and published in Yiddish. His novels were serialized in newspapers, which also published his short stories. He edited his novels and stories for publication in English, which was used as the basis for translation into other languages. He referred to his English versions as his "second original". This has led to an ongoing controversy whether the "real Singer" is the Yiddish original, with its finely tuned language and sometimes rambling construction, or in the more tightly edited American versions, where the language is usually simpler and more direct. Some of Singer's stories and novels have not been translated.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: The artists who have illustrated Singer's novels, short stories, and children's books, include Raphael Soyer, Maurice Sendak, Larry Rivers, and Irene Lieblich. Singer personally selected Lieblich to illustrate two of his books for children, "A Tale of Three Wishes" and "The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah," after seeing her paintings at an Artists Equity exhibition in New York City. A Holocaust survivor, Lieblich was from Zamosc, Poland, a town adjacent to the area where Singer was raised. As their memories of "shtetl" life were so similar, Singer found Lieblich's images ideally suited to illustrate his texts. Of her style, Singer wrote that "her works are rooted in Jewish folklore and are faithful to Jewish life and the Jewish spirit."


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer published at least 18 novels, 14 children's books, a number of memoirs, essays and articles. He is best known as a writer of short stories, which have been published in more than a dozen collections. The first collection of Singer's short stories in English, "Gimpel the Fool", was published in 1957. The title story was translated by Saul Bellow and published in May 1953 in the "Partisan Review". Selections from Singer's "Varshavsky-stories" in the "Daily Forward" were later published in anthologies such as "My Father's Court" (1966). Later collections include "A Crown of Feathers" (1973), with notable masterpieces in between, such as "The Spinoza of Market Street" (1961) and "A Friend of Kafka" (1970). His stories and novels reflect the world of the East European Jewry in which he grew up. After his many years in America, his stories also portrayed the world of the immigrants and their pursuit of an elusive American dream, which seems always beyond reach.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Prior to Singer's winning the Nobel Prize, English translations of dozens of his stories were published in popular magazines such as "Playboy" and "Esquire" that published literary works.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Throughout the 1960s, Singer continued to write about questions of personal morality. Because of the controversial aspects of his plots, he was a target of scathing criticism from many quarters, some of it for not being "moral" enough, some for writing stories that no one wanted to hear. To his critics, he replied, "Literature must spring from the past, from the love of the uniform force that wrote it, and not from the uncertainty of the future."


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Between 1981 and 1989, Singer contributed articles to Moment Magazine, an independent magazine which focuses on the life of the American Jewish community.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: His novel "Enemies, a Love Story" was adapted as a film by the same name (1989) and was quite popular, bringing new readers to his work. It features a Holocaust survivor who deals with varying desires, complex family relationships, and a loss of faith.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer's story, "Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy" was adapted into a stage version by Leah Napolin (with Singer), which was the basis for the film "Yentl" (1983) starring and directed by Barbra Streisand.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Alan Arkin starred as Yasha, the principal character in the film version of "The Magician of Lublin" (1979), which also featured Shelley Winters, Louise Fletcher, Valerie Perrine and Lou Jacobi. In the final scene, Yasha achieves his lifelong ambition of being able to fly, though not as the magic trick he had originally planned.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Perhaps the most fascinating Singer-inspired film is "Mr. Singer's Nightmare and Mrs. Pupkos Beard" (1974) directed by Bruce Davidson, a renowned photographer who became Singer's neighbor. This unique film is a half-hour mixture of documentary and fantasy for which Singer wrote the script and played the leading role.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: The 2007 film "Love Comes Lately", starring Otto Tausig, was adapted from several of Singer's stories.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer's relationship to Judaism was complex and unconventional. He identified as a skeptic and a loner, though he felt a connection to his Orthodox roots. Ultimately, he developed a view of religion and philosophy which he called "private mysticism". As he put it, "Since God was completely unknown and eternally silent, He could be endowed with whatever traits one elected to hang upon Him."


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer was raised Orthodox and learned all the Jewish prayers, studied Hebrew and learned Torah and Talmud. As he recounted in the autobiographical short story "In My Father's Court", he broke away from his parents in his early twenties. Influenced by his older brother, who had done the same, he began spending time with non-religious Bohemian artists in Warsaw. Although Singer believed in a God, as in traditional Judaism, he stopped attending Jewish religious services of any kind, even on the High Holy Days. He struggled throughout his life with the feeling that a kind and compassionate God would never support the great suffering he saw around him, especially the Holocaust deaths of so many of the Polish Jews from his childhood. In one interview with the photographer Richard Kaplan, he said, "I am angry at God because of what happened to my brothers": Singer's older brother died suddenly in February 1944, in New York, of a thrombosis; his younger brother perished in Soviet Russia around 1945, after being deported with his mother and wife to Southern Kazakhstan in Stalin's purges.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Despite the complexities of his religious outlook, Singer lived in the midst of the Jewish community throughout his life. He did not seem to be comfortable unless he was surrounded by Jews; particularly Jews born in Europe. Although he spoke English, Hebrew, and Polish fluently, he always considered Yiddish his natural tongue. He always wrote in Yiddish and he was the last notable American author to be writing in this language. After he had achieved success as a writer in New York, Singer and his wife began spending time during the winters in Miami with its Jewish community, many of them New Yorkers.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Eventually, as senior citizens, they moved to Miami. They identified closely with the Ashkenazi Jewish community. After his death, Singer was buried in a traditional Jewish ceremony in a Jewish cemetery in Paramus, New Jersey.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer was a prominent Jewish vegetarian for the last 35 years of his life and often included vegetarian themes in his works. In his short story "The Slaughterer", he described the anguish of an appointed slaughterer trying to reconcile his compassion for animals with his job of killing them. He felt that the ingestion of meat was a denial of all ideals and all religions: "How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood?" When asked if he had become a vegetarian for health reasons, he replied: "I did it for the health of the chickens."


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Vegetarianism is a recurrent theme in Singer's novel "Enemies, a Love Story." One character, a Holocaust survivor, declares that "God himself eats meat—human flesh. There are no vegetarians—none. If you had seen what I have seen, you would know that God approves of slaughter," and another character points out "that what the Nazis had done to the Jews, man was doing to animals." In "The Letter Writer", Singer wrote "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka," which became a classic reference in the discussions about the legitimacy of the comparison of animal exploitation with the Holocaust.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: In the preface to Steven Rosen's "Food for Spirit: Vegetarianism and the World Religions" (1986), Singer wrote, "When a human kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It's unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give. It is inconsistent. I can never accept inconsistency or injustice. Even if it comes from God. If there would come a voice from God saying, 'I'm against vegetarianism!' I would say, 'Well, I am for it!' This is how strongly I feel in this regard."


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer described himself as "conservative," adding that "I don't believe by flattering the masses all the time we really achieve much." His conservative side was most apparent in his Yiddish writing and journalism, where he was openly hostile to Marxist sociopolitical agendas. In "Forverts" he once wrote, "It may seem like terrible "apikorses" [heresy], but conservative governments in America, England, France, have handled Jews no worse than liberal governments... The Jew's worst enemies were always those elements that the modern Jew convinced himself (really hypnotized himself) were his friends."


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Issac Bashevis was ambivalent on the question of Zionism, and he viewed the immigration of Jews to Palestine critically. As a Polish Jew from Warsaw, he was historically confronted with the question of the Jewish fate during Nazi persecution. He exercised social responsibility towards the immigration of European and American Jewish groups to Israel after World War II. Strictly based on Jewish family doctrine rather than politics and socialism, his former partner Runya Pontsch and his son Israel Zamir emigrated to Palestine in 1938, in order to live a typical kibbutz life there. In his story "The Certificate" (1967), which has autobiographical character, he fictionalizes this question from a time in the mid-1920s when he was himself considering moving to the British Mandate Palestine. The protagonist of the story decides to leave Palestine, however, to move back into his shtetl. For Singer then, Zionism becomes the "road not taken". However, through his journalistic assignments in late 1955, Singer made his first trip to Israel, accompanied by his wife Alma. Describing the trip to his Yiddish readers, he introduces the world for the first time to the young state of Israel. In a change of mind, he then describes the Land of Israel as a "reality, and part of everyday life." Interestingly enough, he notes the cultural tensions between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish people during the boat trip from Naples to Haifa and during his stay in the new nation. With the description of Jewish immigration camps in the new land, he foresaw the difficulties and socio-economic tensions in Israel, and hence turned back to his critical views of Zionism. He scrutinized the ideology further, as he was advancing his thought of critical Zionism.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Singer is the only American Nobel Laureate in Literature to not receive a Pulitzer Prize award or citation.


title: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: Note: Publication dates refer to English editions, not the Yiddish originals, which often predate the versions in translation by 10 to 20 years.


title: Pyramiden

text: Pyramiden (; ; literally 'The Pyramid') is an abandoned Soviet coal mining settlement on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard which has become a tourist destination. Founded by Sweden in 1910 and sold to the Soviet Union in 1927, Pyramiden was closed in 1998 and has since remained largely abandoned with most of its infrastructure and buildings still in place, the cold climate preserving much of what has been left behind.


title: Pyramiden

text: Since 2007, there have been efforts to make it a tourist attraction; the town's hotel was renovated and reopened in 2013. In summer there is a population of six caretakers.


title: Pyramiden

text: Pyramiden was founded by Sweden in 1910 and sold to the Soviet Union in 1927. It lies at the foot of the Billefjorden on the island of Spitsbergen and is named after the pyramid-shaped mountain with the same name adjacent to the town. The nearest settlements are Svalbard's capital, Longyearbyen, some to the south, Barentsburg approximately southwest and the small research community of Ny-Ålesund, to the west. In Soviet times, the population was mostly Ukrainian, consisting of miners from Donbass and staff from Volyn.


title: Pyramiden

text: Owned by the state-owned Russian mining company Arktikugol Trust, which also owns the settlement of Barentsburg, Pyramiden once had over 1,000 inhabitants. Among its amenities were a cultural center with a theater, a library, art and music studios; a sports complex; and a cantina open 24 hours a day. It also had a primary school. The northernmost monument to Vladimir Lenin and the northernmost swimming pool were also found here.


title: Pyramiden

text: In 1996, a charter flight for Arktikugol crashed on the approach to Svalbard Airport with the loss of 141 lives.


title: Pyramiden

text: Between 1955 and 1998, as much as nine million tonnes of coal were extracted from the mine. Mining ceased on 31 March 1998 and the settlement closed that same year. The last permanent resident departed on 10 October, leaving Pyramiden as a ghost town.


title: Pyramiden

text: Until 2007, the former settlement remained uninhabited and largely untouched. The buildings' interiors remained largely as they were when the settlement was abandoned. In 2012, Aleksandr Romanovsky became the first person to return to live in Pyramiden. He has since been joined by five others. Romanovsky, a musician and tour guide in the settlement, has called himself the "world's most northern head-banger".


title: Pyramiden

text: On 27 August 2019, the world's northernmost film festival was held in Pyramiden, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Soviet cinema.


title: Pyramiden

text: Pyramiden is accessible by boat or snowmobile from Longyearbyen, either as part of a guided tour or independently. There is also the Pyramiden Heliport. There are no restrictions on visiting Pyramiden, but visitors are not allowed to enter any buildings without permission even if they are open. While most buildings are now locked, breaking into the buildings, vandalism and theft of artifacts have become a serious threat to Pyramiden as it contributes to the accelerating deterioration of the buildings.


title: Pyramiden

text: Pyramiden is maintained as a tourist destination by Arctic Travel Company Grumant, a division of Arktikugol Trust. Tours through many buildings are available upon request at the Pyramiden Hotel. The movie theater has been restored to fully functioning, and movies may now be booked on request. An archive of over 1000 Soviet films is preserved in the storerooms on the site.


title: Pyramiden

text: Since 2007, Arktikugol has been renovating the hotel and upgrading the infrastructure, including building a new power station with diesel generators, in order to accommodate tourists in the old settlement. Up to 30 workers have been living in the settlement year round to maintain the facilities and guide tourists visiting from Longyearbyen.


title: Pyramiden

text: , the Pyramiden hotel has been reopened and it is possible to stay overnight in Pyramiden. The Pyramiden hotel also houses the Pyramiden Museum as well as a post office and a souvenir shop. There was a small hotel built of old shipping containers near the harbour, but this has closed since the hotel is now renovated and open for guests. There are no plans to renovate and reopen the whole settlement.


title: Abhinav Shukla

text: Abhinav Shukla (born 27 September 1982) is an Indian actor who primarily works in Hindi television and films. He participated in "Bigg Boss 14" and "".


title: Abhinav Shukla

text: Shukla was born on 27 September 1982 in Ludhiana, Punjab. His father, Dr. K.K. Shukla, worked as an entomologist at Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana and his mother, Mrs. Radha Shukla was a teacher at Guru Nanak Public School (Sarabha Nagar, Ludhiana).


title: Abhinav Shukla

text: He graduated from Guru Nanak Public School in 2000, and completed his Bachelor of Technology in Electronics & Communication Engineering from Lala Lajpat Rai Institute of Engineering and Technology (Moga, Punjab) in 2004.


title: Abhinav Shukla

text: Shukla started his career in the Indian television industry with "Jersey No. 10" in 2007. Later in 2008, he played Shantanu in Colors TV's "Jaane Kya Baat Hui". In 2009, he played Vikram in Zee TV's "Chotti Bahu". In 2010, he was cast in Star One's "Geet – Hui Sabse Parayi" where he plays the role of Dev. In 2011, he left the show and was replaced by Samir Sharma


title: Abhinav Shukla

text: In 2011 to 2012, Shukla then was a part of the show "Ek Hazaaron Mein Meri Behna Hai" where he played Dr. Manan. In January 2012, he participated in "Survivor India" as a contestant and was voted out in episode 21. In April 2012 he played Sumer in Zee TV's "Hitler Didi".


title: Abhinav Shukla

text: In 2013, he played a cameo in Zee TV's show "Badalte Rishton Ki Dastaan". In 2014, he made his Bollywood debut with the film "" starring opposite Nora Fatehi, which released in October. Later in December 2014, he participated in "Box Cricket League" in its first season. In 2015, he made an episodic appearance as Vikram in "MTV Big F".


title: Abhinav Shukla

text: In 2016, he participated in the second season of "Box Cricket League". Later he entered Star Plus's "Diya Aur Baati Hum" playing the role of Om. In 2017, he appeared in the Colors TV's "Kasam Tere Pyaar Ki" playing the role of Vishal. He later acted in the film "Aksar 2" opposite Gautam Rode and Zarine Khan.


title: Abhinav Shukla

text: In 2018 he opted to play a negative role on Colors TV show "Silsila Badalte Rishton Ka" as Rajdeep. He however quit the show later in November. In 2019, he acted in "Luka Chuppi" which released in March. He later participated in "Khatra Khatra Khatra". He directed a short film based on female-foeticide "Bareilly Ki Beti: The Youngest Survivor" starring his wife Rubina Dilaik. In 2020, he along with his wife Rubina Dilaik entered Colors TV's "Bigg Boss 14" as a contestant. He got evicted on Day 130.


title: Abhinav Shukla

text: On "Bigg Boss 14", Dilaik revealed, "I and Abhinav were going for a divorce and had given each other time till November and that is the reason we decided to enter Bigg Boss 14 together." Post the show, they decided to continue their marriage. Shukla mentioned, "Everything is fine now. There's no divorce happening. The show made us stronger and strengthened our bond."


title: Abhinav Shukla

text: Shukla who is a self-confessed adventure lover successfully climbed the peak of Stok Kangri in pure Alpine style along with his brother on 23 July 2017 and announced that this marked his foray into mountaineering. In 2016 he along with his brother completed a 7-day trek from Chandra Taal to Bara-lacha la in alpine style. A year before he had cycled from Manali to Leh solo in six days.


title: Abhinav Shukla

text: He is known for his outdoor and adventure activities, whenever not shooting or working he likes to trek and camp out in the woods. On 4 January 2014 while on a trek to a fort in Matheran forests of Maharashtra he got stuck on a ledge of a rock face and had to be rescued by a team of rock climbers. He said he had mentally prepared himself for days of survival, even had stored his urine for emergency.


title: File Explorer

text: File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file systems. It is also the component of the operating system that presents many user interface items on the screen such as the taskbar and desktop. Controlling the computer is possible without Windows Explorer running (for example, the command in Task Manager on NT-derived versions of Windows will function without it, as will commands typed in a command prompt window).


title: File Explorer

text: Windows Explorer was first included with Windows 95 as a replacement for File Manager, which came with all versions of Windows 3.x operating systems. Explorer could be accessed by double-clicking the new My Computer desktop icon or launched from the new Start Menu that replaced the earlier Program Manager. There is also a shortcut key combination: . Successive versions of Windows (and in some cases, Internet Explorer) introduced new features and capabilities, removed other features, and generally progressed from being a simple file system navigation tool into a task-based file management system.


title: File Explorer

text: While "Windows Explorer" or "File Explorer" is a term most commonly used to describe the file management aspect of the operating system, the Explorer also houses the operating system's search functionality and File Type associations (based on filename extensions), and is responsible for displaying the desktop icons, the Start Menu, the Taskbar, and the Control Panel. Collectively, these features are known as the Windows shell.


title: File Explorer

text: After a user logs in, the explorer process is created by the userinit process. Userinit performs some initialization of the user environment (such as running the login script and applying group policies) and then looks in the registry at the Shell value and creates a process to run the system-defined shell – by default, Explorer.exe. Then Userinit exits. This is why Explorer.exe is shown by various process explorers with no parent – its parent has exited.


title: File Explorer

text: In 1995, Microsoft first released test versions of a shell refresh, named the Shell Technology Preview, and often referred to informally as "NewShell". The update was designed to replace the Windows 3.x Program Manager/File Manager based shell with Windows Explorer. The release provided capabilities quite similar to that of the Windows "Chicago" (codename for Windows 95) shell during its late beta phases, however was intended to be nothing more than a test release. There were two public releases of the Shell Technology Preview, made available to MSDN and CompuServe users: May 26, 1995 and August 8, 1995. Both held Windows Explorer builds of 3.51.1053.1. The Shell Technology Preview program never saw a final release under NT 3.51. The entire program was moved across to the Cairo development group who finally integrated the new shell design into the NT code with the release of NT 4.0 in July 1996.


title: File Explorer

text: With the release of the Windows Desktop Update (packaged with Internet Explorer 4 as an optional component, and included in Windows 98), Windows Explorer became "integrated" with Internet Explorer, most notably with the addition of navigation arrows (back and forward) for moving between recently visited directories, as well as Internet Explorer's Favorites menu.


title: File Explorer

text: An address bar was also added to Windows Explorer, which a user could type in directory paths directly, and be taken to that folder.


title: File Explorer

text: Another feature that was based on Internet Explorer technology was customized folders. Such folders contained a hidden web page that controlled the way the Windows Explorer displayed the contents of the folder.


title: File Explorer

text: The "Web-style" folders view, with the left Explorer pane displaying details for the object currently selected, is turned on by default. For certain file types, such as pictures and media files, a preview is also displayed in the left pane. The Windows 2000 Explorer featured an interactive media player as the previewer for sound and video files. However, such a previewer can be enabled in Windows ME through the use of folder customization templates. Windows Explorer in Windows 2000 and Windows ME allows for custom thumbnail previewers and tooltip handlers. The default file tooltip displays file title, author, subject and comments; this metadata may be read from a special NTFS stream, if the file is on an NTFS volume, or from a COM Structured Storage stream, if the file is a structured storage document. All Microsoft Office documents since Office 95 make use of structured storage, so their metadata is displayable in the Windows 2000 Explorer default tooltip. File shortcuts can also store comments which are displayed as a tooltip when the mouse hovers over the shortcut.


title: File Explorer

text: The right-hand pane, which usually just lists files and folders, can also be customized. For example, the contents of the system folders aren't displayed by default, instead showing in the right pane a warning to the user that modifying the contents of the system folders could harm their computer. It's possible to define additional Explorer panes by using DIV elements in folder template files. This feature was abused by computer viruses that employed malicious scripts, Java applets, or ActiveX controls in folder template files as their infection vector. Two such viruses are VBS/Roor-C<ref name="VBS/Roor-C">Sophos, VBS/Roor-C threat analysis . Accessed August 26, 2007.</ref> and VBS.Redlof.a.


title: File Explorer

text: Other Explorer UI elements that can be customized include columns in "Details" view, icon overlays, and search providers: the new DHTML-based search pane is integrated into Windows 2000 Explorer, unlike the separate search dialog found in all previous Explorer versions.


title: File Explorer

text: Search capabilities were added, offering full-text searches of documents, with options to filter by date (including arbitrary ranges like "modified within the last week"), size, and file type. The Indexing Service has also been integrated into the operating system and the search pane built into Explorer allows searching files indexed by its database. The ability to customize the standard buttons was also added.


title: File Explorer

text: There were significant changes made to Windows Explorer in Windows XP, both visually and functionally. Microsoft focused especially on making Explorer more discoverable and task-based, as well as adding several new features to reflect the growing use of a computer as a digital hub.


title: File Explorer

text: Windows Explorer in Windows Server 2003 contains all the same features as Windows XP, but the task panes and search companion are disabled by default.


title: File Explorer

text: The task pane is displayed on the left-hand side of the window instead of the traditional folder tree view. It presents the user with a list of common actions and destinations that are relevant to the current directory or file(s) selected. For instance, when in a directory containing mostly pictures, a set of "Picture tasks" is shown, offering the options to display these pictures as a slide show, to print them out, or to go online to order prints. Conversely, a folder containing music files would offer options to play those files in a media player or to go online to purchase music. Windows XP had a Media bar but it was removed with SP1. The Media Bar was only available with Windows XP RTM.


title: File Explorer

text: Every folder also has "File and Folder Tasks", offering options to create new folders, share a folder on the local network, publish files or folders to a website, and other common tasks like copying, renaming, moving, and deleting files or folders. File types that have identified themselves as being printable also have an option listed to print the file.


title: File Explorer

text: Underneath "Other Places" is a "Details" pane which gives additional information – typically file size and date, but depending on the file type, a thumbnail preview, author, image dimensions, or other details.


title: File Explorer

text: The "Folders" button on the Windows Explorer toolbar toggles between the traditional tree view of folders, and the task pane. Users can get rid of the task pane or restore it using the sequence: Tools – Folder Options – General – Show Common Tasks/Use Windows Classic Folders.


title: File Explorer

text: Microsoft introduced animated "Search Companions" in an attempt to make searching more engaging and friendly; the default character is a puppy named Rover (previously used in Microsoft Bob), with three other characters (Merlin the magician, Earl the surfer, and Courtney) also available. These search companions use the same technology as Microsoft Office's Office Assistants, even incorporating "tricks" and sound effects, and they can be used as Office Assistants if their files are copied into the C:\Windows\msagent\chars folder.


title: File Explorer

text: The search capability itself is fairly similar to Windows ME and Windows 2000, with one major addition: Search can also be instructed to search only files that are categorical "Documents" or "Pictures, music and video"; this feature is noteworthy largely because of how Windows determines what types of files can be classified under these categories. In order to maintain a relevant list of file types, Windows Explorer connects to Microsoft and downloads a set of XML files that define what these file types are. The Search Companion can be disabled in favor of the classic search pane used in Windows 2000 by using the Tweak UI applet from Microsoft's PowerToys for Windows XP, or by manually editing the registry.


title: File Explorer

text: Windows XP improves image preview in Explorer by offering a Filmstrip view. "Back" and "Previous" buttons facilitate navigation through the pictures, and a pair of "Rotate" buttons offer 90-degree clockwise and counter-clockwise (lossy) rotation of images. Aside from the Filmstrip view mode, there is a 'Thumbnails' mode, which displays thumbnail-sized images in the folder. A Folder containing images will also show thumbnails of four of the images from that folder overlaid on top of a large folder icon.


title: File Explorer

text: Web sites that offer image hosting services can be plugged into Windows Explorer, which the user can use to select images on their computer, and have them uploaded correctly without dealing with comparatively complex solutions involving FTP or web interfaces.


title: File Explorer

text: Windows Explorer includes significant changes from previous versions of Windows such as improved filtering, sorting, grouping and stacking. Combined with integrated desktop search, Windows Explorer allows users to find and organize their files in new ways, such as stacks. The new Stacks viewing mode groups files according to the criterion specified by the user. Stacks can be clicked to filter the files shown in Windows Explorer. There is also the ability to save searches as virtual folders or search folders. A search folder is simply an XML file, which stores the query in a form that can be used by the Windows search subsystem. When accessed, the search is executed and the results are aggregated and presented as a virtual folder. Windows Vista includes six search folders by default: recent documents, recent e-mail, recent music, recent pictures and videos, recent changed, and "Shared by Me". Additionally, search operators for properties were introduced, such as codice_4. Since at least Windows 7, comparison operators "greater than" and "less than" are supported to search for any supported attribute such as date ranges and file sizes, like codice_5 to search for all files that are greater than 100MB. Attributes sortable and searchable in Windows Explorer include pictures' dimensions, Exif data such as aperture and exposure, video duration and framerate and width.


title: File Explorer

text: When sorting items, the sort order no longer remains consistently Ascending or Descending. Each property has a preferred sort direction. For example, sort by date defaults to descending order, as does size. But name and type default to ascending order.