title: Willard (1971 film)

text: Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" dismissed the film as "a dull movie of no major consequence", with the rats "no more scary than fat, friendly hamsters, except for one or two shots when they are seen by the hundreds — and hundreds of anything might be a scary sight, even hundreds of bishops". "Variety" said: "Neat little horror tale...some good jump moments, at least two stomach-churning murders committed by the rats, and superior production values with tight direction of Daniel Mann develop pic into sound nail-chewer". Roger Ebert gave the film 2 out of 4 stars. Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" also gave the film 2 out of 4 stars and wrote that although it "will have you keeping your feet up off the theater floor, Daniel Mann's slow direction will lower your eyelids. The acting credits, however, are top notch". Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote that "one could not ask for a more satisfying yet less pretentious hot weather suspense-horror entertainment. With its disturbed young hero, crumbling old mansion and macabre developments it immediately brings to mind "Psycho". The more apt comparison, however, is with that much-cherished English comedy of some years back, "The Green Man", in which Alastair Sim (at his drollest) went around blowing up a series of troublesome types". Tom Milne of "The Monthly Film Bulletin" thought that the rats were "so well-mannered and prettily groomed that they are more likely to elicit coos of delight than shudders of fear...when the horrors do come, they are very tame indeed: not one single shot to match the chilling menace dispensed by the brooding crows in "The Birds" or the prowling felines in "Eye of the Cat". Instead, Daniel Mann settles for facile effects, like the cut-in shot of rats tearing at a piece of raw meat while they are supposedly demolishing Ernest Borgnine, and gradually drives what might have been an unusually intriguing horror film pretty much into the ground". Leonard Maltin gave the film 2 out of 4 stars in his annual home video guide, writing: "Touching story of a boy and his rats captured public's fancy at the box office, but [the] film's lack of style prevents it from being anything more than a second-rate thriller".


title: Warp and weft

text: Warp and weft are the two basic components used in weaving to turn thread or yarn into fabric. The lengthwise or longitudinal warp yarns are held stationary in tension on a frame or loom while the transverse weft (sometimes woof) is drawn through and inserted over and under the warp. A single thread of the weft crossing the warp is called a "pick". Terms vary (for instance, in North America, the weft is sometimes referred to as the fill or the filling yarn). Each individual warp thread in a fabric is called a warp end or end.


title: Warp and weft

text: Inventions during the 18th century spurred the Industrial Revolution, with the "picking stick" and the "flying shuttle" (John Kay, 1733) speeding up the production of cloth. The power loom patented by Edmund Cartwright in 1785 allowed sixty picks per minute.


title: Warp and weft

text: The word "weft" derives from the Old English word "wefan", to weave. "Warp" means "that which is thrown away" (Old English "wearp", from "weorpan", to throw, cf. German "werfen", Dutch "werpen").


title: Warp and weft

text: The warp is the set of yarns or other things stretched in place on a loom before the weft is introduced during the weaving process. It is regarded as the "longitudinal" set in a finished fabric with two or more sets of elements.


title: Warp and weft

text: The term is also used for a set of yarns established before the interworking of weft yarns by some other method, such as finger manipulation, yielding wrapped or twined structures. Very simple looms use a spiral warp, in which the warp is made up of a single, very long yarn wound in a spiral pattern around a pair of sticks or beams.


title: Warp and weft

text: The warp must be strong to be held under high tension during the weaving process, unlike the weft which carries almost no tension. This requires the yarn used for warp ends, or individual warp threads, to be made of spun and plied fibre. Traditionally wool, linen, alpaca, and silk were used. However, improvements in spinning technology during the Industrial Revolution created cotton yarn of sufficient strength to be used in mechanized weaving. Later, artificial or man-made fibres such as nylon or rayon were employed.


title: Warp and weft

text: While most weaving is weft-faced, warp-faced textiles are created using densely arranged warp threads. In these the design is in the warp, requiring all colors to be decided upon and placed during the first part of the weaving process, which cannot be changed. Such limitations of color placement create weavings defined by length-wise stripes and vertical designs. Many South American cultures, including the ancient Incas and Aymaras, employed "backstrap weaving", which uses the weight of the weaver's body to control the tension of the loom.


title: Warp and weft

text: Because the weft does not have to be stretched on a loom the way the warp is, it can generally be less strong. It is usually made of spun fibre, originally wool, flax and cotton, today often of synthetic fibre such as nylon or rayon.


title: Warp and weft

text: The weft is threaded through the warp using a "shuttle", air jets or "rapier grippers". Handlooms were the original weaver's tool, with the shuttle being threaded through alternately raised warps by hand.


title: Warp and weft

text: The expression "warp and weft" (also "warp and woof" and "woof and warp") is used metaphorically the way "fabric" is; e.g., "the warp and woof of a student's life" equates to "the fabric of a student's life". Warp and weft are sometimes used even more generally in literature to describe the basic dichotomy of the world we live in, as in, up/down, in/out, black/white, Sun/Moon, yin/yang, etc. The expression is also used similarly for the underlying structure upon which something is built. The terms "warp" and "woof" are also found in some English translations of the Bible in the discussion of mildews found in cloth materials in Leviticus 13:48-59.


title: History of the web browser

text: A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. It further provides for the capture or input of information which may be returned to the presenting system, then stored or processed as necessary. The method of accessing a particular page or content is achieved by entering its address, known as a Uniform Resource Identifier or URI. This may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources.


title: History of the web browser

text: A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet.


title: History of the web browser

text: Precursors to the web browser emerged in the form of hyperlinked applications during the mid and late 1980s, and following these, Tim Berners-Lee is credited with developing, in 1990, both the first web server, and the first web browser, called WorldWideWeb (no spaces) and later renamed Nexus. Many others were soon developed, with Marc Andreessen's 1993 Mosaic (later Netscape), being particularly easy to use and install, and often credited with sparking the internet boom of the 1990s. Today, the major web browsers are Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Edge.


title: History of the web browser

text: The explosion in popularity of the Web was triggered in September 1993 by NCSA Mosaic, a graphical browser which eventually ran on several popular office and home computers. This was the first web browser aiming to bring multimedia content to non-technical users, and therefore included images and text on the same page, unlike previous browser designs; its founder, Marc Andreessen, also established the company that in 1994, released Netscape Navigator, which resulted in one of the early browser wars, when it ended up in a competition for dominance (which it lost) with Microsoft's Internet Explorer (for Windows).


title: History of the web browser

text: In 1984, expanding on ideas from futurist Ted Nelson, Neil Larson's commercial DOS Maxthink outline program added angle bracket hypertext jumps (adopted by later web browsers) to and from ASCII, batch, and other Maxthink files up to 32 levels deep. In 1986, he released his DOS Houdini knowledge network program that supported 2500 topics cross-connected with 7500 links in each file along with hypertext links among unlimited numbers of external ASCII, batch, and other Houdini files, these capabilities were included in his then popular shareware DOS file browser programs HyperRez (memory resident) and PC Hypertext (which also added jumps to programs, editors, graphic files containing hot spots jumps, and cross-linked thesaurus/glossary files). These programs introduced many to the browser concept and 20 years later, Google still lists 3,000,000 references to PC Hypertext. In 1989, Larson created both HyperBBS and HyperLan which both allow multiple users to create/edit both topics and jumps for information and knowledge annealing which, in concept, the columnist John C. Dvorak says pre-dated Wiki by many years.


title: History of the web browser

text: From 1987 on, Neil Larson also created TransText (hypertext word processor) and many utilities for rapidly building large scale knowledge systems. In 1989, his software helped produce, for one of the big eight accounting firms, a comprehensive knowledge system (integrated litigation knowledge system) of integrating all accounting laws/regulations into a CDROM containing 50,000 files with 200,000 hypertext jumps. Additionally, the Lynx (a very early web-based browser) development history notes their project origin was based on the browser concepts from Neil Larson and Maxthink. In 1989, he declined joining the Mosaic browser team with his preference for knowledge/wisdom creation over distributing information ... a problem he says is still not solved by today's internet.


title: History of the web browser

text: Another early browser, Silversmith, was created by John Bottoms in 1986. The browser, based on SGML tags, used a tag set from the Electronic Document Project of the AAP with minor modifications and was sold to a number of early adopters. At the time SGML was used exclusively for the formatting of printed documents. The use of SGML for electronically displayed documents signaled a shift in electronic publishing and was met with considerable resistance. Silversmith included an integrated indexer, full text searches, hypertext links between images text and sound using SGML tags and a return stack for use with hypertext links. It included features that are still not available in today's browsers. These include capabilities such as the ability to restrict searches within document structures, searches on indexed documents using wild cards and the ability to search on tag attribute values and attribute names.


title: History of the web browser

text: Peter Scott and Earle Fogel expanded the earlier HyperRez (1988) concept in creating HyTelnet in 1990 which added jumps to telnet sites ... and which offered users instant logon and access to the online catalogs of over 5000 libraries around the world. The strength of Hytelnet was speed and simplicity in link creation/execution at the expense of a centralized worldwide source for adding, indexing, and modifying telnet links. This problem was solved by the invention of the web server.


title: History of the web browser

text: In April 1990, a draft patent application for a mass market consumer device for browsing pages via links "PageLink" was proposed by Craig Cockburn at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) whilst working in their Networking and Communications division in Reading, England. This application for a keyboardless touch screen browser for consumers also makes reference to "navigating and searching text" and "bookmarks" was aimed at (quotes paraphrased) "replacing books", "storing a shopping list" "have an updated personalised newspaper updated round the clock", "dynamically updated maps for use in a car" and suggests such a device could have a "profound effect on the advertising industry". The patent was canned by Digital as too futuristic and, being largely hardware based, had obstacles to market that purely software driven approaches lacked.


title: History of the web browser

text: The first web browser, WorldWideWeb, was developed in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee for the NeXT Computer (at the same time as the first web server for the same machine) and introduced to his colleagues at CERN in March 1991. Berners-Lee recruited Nicola Pellow, a math student intern working at CERN, to write the Line Mode Browser, a cross-platform web browser that displayed web-pages on old terminals and was released in May 1991.


title: History of the web browser

text: In 1992, Tony Johnson released the MidasWWW browser. Based on Motif/X, MidasWWW allowed viewing of PostScript files on the Web from Unix and VMS, and even handled compressed PostScript. Another early popular Web browser was ViolaWWW, which was modeled after HyperCard. In the same year the Lynx browser was announced – the only one of these early projects still being maintained and supported today. Erwise was the first browser with a graphical user interface, developed as a student project at Helsinki University of Technology and released in April 1992, but discontinued in 1994.


title: History of the web browser

text: Thomas R. Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School started 1992, to develop Cello. When released on 8 June 1993 it was one of the first graphical web browsers, and the first to run on Windows: Windows 3.1, NT 3.5, and OS/2.


title: History of the web browser

text: However, the explosion in popularity of the Web was triggered by NCSA Mosaic which was a graphical browser running originally on Unix and soon ported to the Amiga and VMS platforms, and later the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms. Version 1.0 was released in September 1993, and was dubbed the killer application of the Internet. It was the first web browser to display images inline with the document's text. Prior browsers would display an icon that, when clicked, would download and open the graphic file in a helper application. This was an intentional design decision on both parts, as the graphics support in early browsers was intended for displaying charts and graphs associated with technical papers while the user scrolled to read the text, while Mosaic was trying to bring multimedia content to non-technical users. Mosaic and browsers derived from it had a user option to automatically display images inline or to show an icon for opening in external programs. Marc Andreessen, who was the leader of the Mosaic team at NCSA, quit to form a company that would later be known as Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape released its flagship Navigator product in October 1994, and it took off the next year.


title: History of the web browser

text: IBM presented its own WebExplorer with OS/2 Warp in 1994 and version 1.0 was released 6 January 1995.


title: History of the web browser

text: UdiWWW was the first web browser that was able to handle all HTML 3 features with the math tags released 1995. Following the release of version 1.2 in April 1996, Bernd Richter ceased development, stating "let Microsoft with the ActiveX Development Kit do the rest."


title: History of the web browser

text: Microsoft, which had thus far not marketed a browser, finally entered the fray with its Internet Explorer product (version 1.0 was released 16 August 1995), purchased from Spyglass, Inc. This began what is known as the "browser wars" in which Microsoft and Netscape competed for the Web browser market.


title: History of the web browser

text: Early web users were free to choose among the handful of web browsers available, just as they would choose any other application—web standards would ensure their experience remained largely the same. The browser wars put the Web in the hands of millions of ordinary PC users, but showed how commercialization of the Web could stymie standards efforts. Both Microsoft and Netscape liberally incorporated proprietary extensions to HTML in their products, and tried to gain an edge by product differentiation, leading to a web by the late 1990s where only Microsoft or Netscape browsers were viable contenders. In a victory for a standardized web, Cascading Style Sheets, proposed by Håkon Wium Lie, were accepted over Netscape's JavaScript Style Sheets (JSSS) by W3C.


title: History of the web browser

text: In 1996, Netscape's share of the browser market reached 86% (with Internet Explorer edging up 10%); but then Microsoft began integrating its browser with its operating system and bundling deals with OEMs. Within 4 years of its release IE had 75% of the browser market and by 1999 it had 99% of the market. Although Microsoft has since faced antitrust litigation on these charges, the browser wars effectively ended once it was clear that Netscape's declining market share trend was irreversible. Prior to the release of Mac OS X, Internet Explorer for Mac and Netscape were also the primary browsers in use on the Macintosh platform.


title: History of the web browser

text: Unable to continue commercially funding their product's development, Netscape responded by open sourcing its product, creating Mozilla. This helped the browser maintain its technical edge over Internet Explorer, but did not slow Netscape's declining market share. Netscape was purchased by America Online in late 1998.


title: History of the web browser

text: At first, the Mozilla project struggled to attract developers, but by 2002, it had evolved into a relatively stable and powerful internet suite. Mozilla 1.0 was released to mark this milestone. Also in 2002, a spinoff project that would eventually become the popular Firefox was released.


title: History of the web browser

text: Firefox was always downloadable for free from the start, as was its predecessor, the Mozilla browser. Firefox's business model, unlike the business model of 1990s Netscape, primarily consists of doing deals with search engines such as Google to direct users towards them – see Web browser#Business models.


title: History of the web browser

text: In 2003, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer would no longer be made available as a separate product but would be part of the evolution of its Windows platform, and that no more releases for the Macintosh would be made.


title: History of the web browser

text: AOL announced that it would retire support and development of the Netscape web browser in February 2008.


title: History of the web browser

text: In the second half of 2004, Internet Explorer reached a peak market share of more than 92%. Since then, its market share has been slowly but steadily declining and is around 11.8% as of July 2013. In early 2005, Microsoft reversed its decision to release Internet Explorer as part of Windows, announcing that a standalone version of Internet Explorer was under development. Internet Explorer 7 was released for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista in October 2006. Internet Explorer 8 was released on 19 March 2009, for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7. Internet Explorer 9, 10 and 11 were later released, and version 11 is included in Windows 10, but Microsoft Edge became the default browser there.


title: History of the web browser

text: Apple's Safari, the default browser on Mac OS X from version 10.3 onwards, has grown to dominate browsing on Mac OS X. Browsers such as Firefox, Camino, Google Chrome, and OmniWeb are alternative browsers for Mac systems. OmniWeb and Google Chrome, like Safari, use the WebKit rendering engine (forked from KHTML), which is packaged by Apple as a framework for use by third-party applications. In August 2007, Apple also ported Safari for use on the Windows XP and Vista operating systems.


title: History of the web browser

text: Opera was first released in 1996. It was a popular choice in handheld devices, particularly mobile phones, but remains a niche player in the PC Web browser market. It was also available on Nintendo's DS, DS Lite and Wii consoles. The Opera Mini browser uses the Presto layout engine like all versions of Opera, but runs on most phones supporting Java MIDlets.


title: History of the web browser

text: The Lynx browser remains popular for Unix shell users and with vision impaired users due to its entirely text-based nature. There are also several text-mode browsers with advanced features, such as w3m, Links (which can operate both in text and graphical mode), and the Links forks such as ELinks.


title: History of the web browser

text: A number of web browsers have been derived and branched from source code of earlier versions and products.


title: History of the web browser

text: This table focuses on operating system (OS) and browsers of the 1990 to 2000. The year listed for a version is usually the year of the first official release, with an end year being end of development, project change, or relevant termination. Releases of OS and browser from the early 1990s to before 2001–02 time frame are the current focus.


title: History of the web browser

text: Many early browsers can be made to run on later OS (and later browsers on early OS in some cases); however, most of these situations are avoided in the table. Terms are defined below.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: American Gladiators is an American competition television program that aired weekly in syndication from September 1989 to May 1996. The series matched a cast of amateur athletes against each other, as well as against the show's own "gladiators", in contests of strength and agility.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: The concept was originally created in 1982 by Johnny C. Ferraro and Dan Carr. Carr gathered the Gladiators and hosted the show, and Ferraro financed and produced the original competition at Erie Tech High School in Erie, Pennsylvania so Ferraro could have the event on film as to shop the new creation. In 1983 Ferraro financed, developed and packaged the American Gladiators as a movie project. In 1984 Carr sold his interest in a literary purchase to Flor-Jon Films. Ferraro had been the main driving force behind the American Gladiators brand since 1982. In 1987, Flor-Jon Films then licensed the unscripted rights to The Samuel Goldwyn Company (now part of MGM). Ferraro is the sole creator of the 1994 kids' version of the series, "Gladiators 2000" (a.k.a. "G2").


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: An all-star, one-off primetime celebrity special, "Superstar American Gladiators" aired on ABC on May 4, 1995.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: Flor-Jon Films, Inc and the Samuel Goldwyn Co in 1993 granted a license to Chariot Entertainment in an effort to launch a live "American Gladiators" show on the Las Vegas Strip, but the president of Chariot became mired in a securities fraud prosecution, through no fault of Flor-Jon Films or The Samuel Goldwyn Co, and the live show went unrealized. Episodes from the original series were played on ESPN Classic from 2007 to 2009. Several episodes are available for download on Apple's iTunes Service. The streaming service Pluto TV, has all episodes on demand as well as a live channel showing reruns from all 7 seasons, in the United States.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: MGM Television, the successor company to the Samuel Goldwyn Company, during the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike, sold to NBC a prime-time revival that was closer to the British version than the American, with hosts Hulk Hogan and Lalia Ali, and Van Earl Wright the play-by-play voice. That version lasted two seasons.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: In July 2014, a revival of "American Gladiators" was planned in the works by A. Smith & Co. Productions where it would have incorporated elements that were inspired by the popular film franchise "The Hunger Games" along with mixed martial arts.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: In August 2018, MGM Television, with Ferraro and actors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, announced plans to bring "American Gladiators" back again for the 2019–20 season, the 30th anniversary of the franchise's television debut.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: In September 2021, it was reported that MGM Television has teamed up with WWE (formerly WWF) for a reboot of "American Gladiators" that will feature WWE wrestlers. The project is currently being pitched to broadcasters and streaming platforms.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: "American Gladiators" featured four competitors, two men and two women, in most episodes. The players, referred to throughout the series as "contenders", faced off in a series of physical games against each other and against a cast of costumed athletes looking to prevent them from succeeding (the titular "Gladiators"). Each match saw the competitors trying to advance in a tournament, with one man and one woman crowned champion at its conclusion.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: When the series premiered in the fall of 1989, ten men and ten women were selected to participate with several more chosen to be alternates in case one or more of the contenders had to withdraw due to injury. The tournament was spread out over the course of thirteen episodes. The winning contenders from the first five episodes advanced to the quarterfinal round of the tournament, and the three highest scoring non-winners also received berths to set the


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: field at eight contenders per side. After the preliminary round, any injury alternates came from the pool of defeated contenders.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: Once the quarterfinals began, the tournament became a single-elimination affair. Reaching the semifinal round guaranteed a contender would leave with no less than $2,500 in cash. The tournament runner-up would receive $5,000, while the winner was to receive $10,000 and an opportunity to become a Gladiator.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: However, in response to the initial popularity of the show, the producers decided to produce a new tournament shortly after the first one concluded. Twenty more men and women were selected for the second competition, which began airing during the second half of the television season in 1990, and the same tournament rules were applied. The initial tournament's champions, in lieu of becoming Gladiators, were invited back to face off with the winners of the new tournament in what the show called its Grand Championship. The winners of this match would be declared the season's overall champions and be rewarded with additional prizes. When the show's second season premiered in the fall of 1990, the same format was used.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: In seasons three and four, the field competitors increased to 48 and the tournament format was adjusted. Six preliminary round matches were played and the winners of those matches automatically advanced to the quarterfinals. The winners of the three quarterfinal matches advanced to the semifinals, along with the highest scoring non-winner. The semifinals and finals went on as before with the winners of the half-season tournaments meeting in the Grand Championship.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: For season five, the tournament format was revamped again. A total of thirty-two men and women were selected to compete, with eight men and eight women chosen for each half-season tournament. The preliminary rounds were played for seeding purposes rather than to advance into the quarterfinals, with the eight contenders on each side ranked in order of how they performed in their initial matches. Once seeded, the tournament continued as it had in previous years, with the main difference being that there was no longer a need for wild card berths.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: In seasons six and seven, the tournament format was changed to resemble the format used on the British "Gladiators" series at the time. Each match was played for cash, with the winners earning $2,500 for a victory. Once all of the qualified contenders had competed, the four men and four women with the highest winning scores in their matches advanced in the tournament. Two semifinal matches were then conducted, with the winners of those matches winning an additional $7,500 and advancing to the Grand Championship.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: In season six, the Grand Championship winners would each receive an additional $15,000 on top of what they had already won, making their total cash prize out to $25,000. Season seven’s winners were given an additional $10,000, with their total cash winnings amounting to $20,000. That season’s Grand Champions were also given berths as the United States representatives in the second "International Gladiators" competition, held at the site of the British series in Birmingham, England.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: During the first half of the first season, the show's set resembled that of an ancient Roman gladiatorial arena, with the stands raised high above the ground. For the second half, the show's set was changed into a modern indoor sports arena style. An onscreen clock was added in the second half of the season, which allowed viewers to see how much time a contender had left to complete an event.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: The hooded figures that officiated the games were replaced by veteran NFL referee Bob McElwee (No. 95). Starting in Season 2, former Pacific-10 football referee Larry Thompson became the referee. In case of ruling explanations, a host would interview the referee for an explanation.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: The first two seasons were recorded on a soundstage at Universal Studios Hollywood. Beginning with the third season and continuing for the rest of the run, the show relocated production to the CBS Studio Center in Studio City, Los Angeles. The studio used to tape the show was referred to on air as “Gladiator Arena”.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: In each episode, the contenders competed in a series of events. Six to eight events were played per show, varying from season to season. Most of the events tested the contenders' physical abilities against the superior size and strength of the Gladiators, who were mostly pro or amateur bodybuilders and former football players. In most events, the contenders were not directly pitted against each other, but against the Gladiators. In each event, the contenders earned points based on their performance. In the first half of season one, the points in each event were given in minimum 5-point increments, with 100 points usually the maximum in every event. After the first half of the first season, single point increments were used.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: Some events had objectives where each contender had to perform a certain task against the Gladiator, while the Gladiator was trying to do the same thing to them (such as attempting to knock each other off the platforms in Joust). In these types of events, where a clear winner could emerge, contenders were usually awarded ten points for defeating the Gladiator and five points if the event was a draw. No points were awarded to the contender if the Gladiator won.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: Other events had no maximum score, with the objective being to perform a task as many times as possible (such as scoring goals in Powerball) within the set time limit for the event. Points in this case would be awarded based on how many times the contender accomplished the objective during the event.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: Starting with the fourth season, the final event before The Eliminator, was labeled "Crunch Time", and was played for more points.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: Season six used a format in which events were referred to as "rounds" due to more than one game played per round. Three games per show were played by both males and females and three were split between the males and females, two each in a round. In split rounds the men went first. Including the Eliminator, ten events appeared in each episode, and the lineup of single and split rounds changed during the season. The sole exception to this format was in the semi-finals and grand championship, in which each round was a single event.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: The Eliminator was the final event played in each episode, and determined which contender would win that day's competition. The contenders competed side-by-side to complete a large obstacle course as quickly as they could. In the first two seasons, the Eliminator had a time limit, and both contenders started the course at the same time. Contenders scored points for every second left on the clock when they finished the course; the contender with the highest final score won the day's competition. Beginning in season 3, the contender in the lead was given a head start with each point they led by worth a half-second; the first contender to cross the finish line won.


title: American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

text: Of the events that debuted in the show's first season, only six lasted the entire original run on American television: Breakthrough and Conquer, The Wall, Joust, Assault, Powerball, and the Eliminator, although The Wall did not debut until the second half of the first season.


title: Verilog

text: Verilog, standardized as IEEE 1364, is a hardware description language (HDL) used to model electronic systems. It is most commonly used in the design and verification of digital circuits at the register-transfer level of abstraction. It is also used in the verification of analog circuits and mixed-signal circuits, as well as in the design of genetic circuits. In 2009, the Verilog standard (IEEE 1364-2005) was merged into the SystemVerilog standard, creating IEEE Standard 1800-2009. Since then, Verilog is officially part of the SystemVerilog language. The current version is IEEE standard 1800-2017.


title: Verilog

text: Hardware description languages such as Verilog are similar to software programming languages because they include ways of describing the propagation time and signal strengths (sensitivity). There are two types of assignment operators; a blocking assignment (=), and a non-blocking (<=) assignment. The non-blocking assignment allows designers to describe a state-machine update without needing to declare and use temporary storage variables. Since these concepts are part of Verilog's language semantics, designers could quickly write descriptions of large circuits in a relatively compact and concise form. At the time of Verilog's introduction (1984), Verilog represented a tremendous productivity improvement for circuit designers who were already using graphical schematic capture software and specially written software programs to document and simulate electronic circuits.


title: Verilog

text: The designers of Verilog wanted a language with syntax similar to the C programming language, which was already widely used in engineering software development. Like C, Verilog is case-sensitive and has a basic preprocessor (though less sophisticated than that of ANSI C/C++). Its control flow keywords (if/else, for, while, case, etc.) are equivalent, and its operator precedence is compatible with C. Syntactic differences include: required bit-widths for variable declarations, demarcation of procedural blocks (Verilog uses begin/end instead of curly braces {}), and many other minor differences. Verilog requires that variables be given a definite size. In C these sizes are inferred from the 'type' of the variable (for instance an integer type may be 8 bits).


title: Verilog

text: A Verilog design consists of a hierarchy of modules. Modules encapsulate "design hierarchy", and communicate with other modules through a set of declared input, output, and bidirectional ports. Internally, a module can contain any combination of the following: net/variable declarations (wire, reg, integer, etc.), concurrent and sequential statement blocks, and instances of other modules (sub-hierarchies). Sequential statements are placed inside a begin/end block and executed in sequential order within the block. However, the blocks themselves are executed concurrently, making Verilog a dataflow language.


title: Verilog

text: Verilog's concept of 'wire' consists of both signal values (4-state: "1, 0, floating, undefined") and signal strengths (strong, weak, etc.). This system allows abstract modeling of shared signal lines, where multiple sources drive a common net. When a wire has multiple drivers, the wire's (readable) value is resolved by a function of the source drivers and their strengths.


title: Verilog

text: A subset of statements in the Verilog language are synthesizable. Verilog modules that conform to a synthesizable coding style, known as RTL (register-transfer level), can be physically realized by synthesis software. Synthesis software algorithmically transforms the (abstract) Verilog source into a netlist, a logically equivalent description consisting only of elementary logic primitives (AND, OR, NOT, flip-flops, etc.) that are available in a specific FPGA or VLSI technology. Further manipulations to the netlist ultimately lead to a circuit fabrication blueprint (such as a photo mask set for an ASIC or a bitstream file for an FPGA).


title: Verilog

text: Verilog was created by Prabhu Goel, Phil Moorby, Chi-Lai Huang, and Douglas Warmke between late 1983 and early 1984. Chi-Lai Huang had earlier worked on a hardware description LALSD, a language developed by Professor S.Y.H. Su, for his PhD work. The rights holder for this process, at the time proprietary, was "Automated Integrated Design Systems" (later renamed to Gateway Design Automation in 1985). Gateway Design Automation was purchased by Cadence Design Systems in 1990. Cadence now has full proprietary rights to Gateway's Verilog and the Verilog-XL, the HDL-simulator that would become the de facto standard (of Verilog logic simulators) for the next decade. Originally, Verilog was only intended to describe and allow simulation; the automated synthesis of subsets of the language to physically realizable structures (gates etc.) was developed after the language had achieved widespread usage.


title: Verilog

text: With the increasing success of VHDL at the time, Cadence decided to make the language available for open standardization. Cadence transferred Verilog into the public domain under the Open Verilog International (OVI) (now known as Accellera) organization. Verilog was later submitted to IEEE and became IEEE Standard 1364-1995, commonly referred to as Verilog-95.


title: Verilog

text: In the same time frame Cadence initiated the creation of Verilog-A to put standards support behind its analog simulator Spectre. Verilog-A was never intended to be a standalone language and is a subset of Verilog-AMS which encompassed Verilog-95.


title: Verilog

text: Extensions to Verilog-95 were submitted back to IEEE to cover the deficiencies that users had found in the original Verilog standard. These extensions became IEEE Standard 1364-2001 known as Verilog-2001.


title: Verilog

text: Verilog-2001 is a significant upgrade from Verilog-95. First, it adds explicit support for (2's complement) signed nets and variables. Previously, code authors had to perform signed operations using awkward bit-level manipulations (for example, the carry-out bit of a simple 8-bit addition required an explicit description of the Boolean algebra to determine its correct value). The same function under Verilog-2001 can be more succinctly described by one of the built-in operators: +, -, /, *, »>. A generate–endgenerate construct (similar to VHDL's generate–endgenerate) allows Verilog-2001 to control instance and statement instantiation through normal decision operators (case–if–else). Using generate–endgenerate, Verilog-2001 can instantiate an array of instances, with control over the connectivity of the individual instances. File I/O has been improved by several new system tasks. And finally, a few syntax additions were introduced to improve code readability (e.g. always, @*, named parameter override, C-style function/task/module header declaration).


title: Verilog

text: Verilog-2001 is the version of Verilog supported by the majority of commercial EDA software packages.


title: Verilog

text: Not to be confused with SystemVerilog, "Verilog 2005" (IEEE Standard 1364-2005) consists of minor corrections, spec clarifications, and a few new language features (such as the uwire keyword).


title: Verilog

text: A separate part of the Verilog standard, Verilog-AMS, attempts to integrate analog and mixed signal modeling with traditional Verilog.


title: Verilog

text: The advent of hardware verification languages such as OpenVera, and Verisity's e language encouraged the development of Superlog by Co-Design Automation Inc (acquired by Synopsys). The foundations of Superlog and Vera were donated to Accellera, which later became the IEEE standard P1800-2005: SystemVerilog.


title: Verilog

text: SystemVerilog is a superset of Verilog-2005, with many new features and capabilities to aid design verification and design modeling. As of 2009, the SystemVerilog and Verilog language standards were merged into SystemVerilog 2009 (IEEE Standard 1800-2009). The current version is IEEE standard 1800-2017.


title: Verilog

text: The codice_1 operator in Verilog is another aspect of its being a hardware description language as opposed to a normal procedural language. This is known as a "non-blocking" assignment. Its action does not register until after the always block has executed. This means that the order of the assignments is irrelevant and will produce the same result: flop1 and flop2 will swap values every clock.


title: Verilog

text: The other assignment operator codice_2 is referred to as a blocking assignment. When codice_2 assignment is used, for the purposes of logic, the target variable is updated immediately. In the above example, had the statements used the codice_2 blocking operator instead of codice_1, flop1 and flop2 would not have been swapped. Instead, as in traditional programming, the compiler would understand to simply set flop1 equal to flop2 (and subsequently ignore the redundant logic to set flop2 equal to flop1).


title: Verilog

text: The always clause above illustrates the other type of method of use, i.e. it executes whenever any of the entities in the list (the b or e) changes. When one of these changes, a is immediately assigned a new value, and due to the blocking assignment, "b" is assigned a new value afterward (taking into account the new value of a). After a delay of 5 time units, c is assigned the value of b and the value of c ^ e is tucked away in an invisible store. Then after 6 more time units, d is assigned the value that was tucked away.


title: Verilog

text: Signals that are driven from within a process (an initial or always block) must be of type reg. Signals that are driven from outside a process must be of type wire. The keyword reg does not necessarily imply a hardware register.


title: Verilog

text: The definition of constants in Verilog supports the addition of a width parameter. The basic syntax is:


title: Verilog

text: Verilog is widely considered to be a HDL (Hardware Description Language). There are several statements in Verilog that have no analog in real hardware, e.g. $display. Consequently, much of the language cannot be used to describe hardware. This would seem to imply that the very definition of the Verilog language in general needs to be properly recharacterized. However, the examples presented here are the classic (and limited) subset of the language that has a direct mapping to real gates.


title: Verilog

text: The next interesting structure is a transparent latch; it will pass the input to the output when the gate signal is set for "pass-through", and captures the input and stores it upon transition of the gate signal to "hold". The output will remain stable regardless of the input signal while the gate is set to "hold". In the example below the "pass-through" level of the gate would be when the value of the if clause is true, i.e. gate = 1. This is read "if gate is true, the din is fed to latch_out continuously." Once the if clause is false, the last value at latch_out will remain and is independent of the value of din.


title: Verilog

text: The flip-flop is the next significant template; in Verilog, the D-flop is the simplest, and it can be modeled as:


title: Verilog

text: The significant thing to notice in the example is the use of the non-blocking assignment. A basic rule of thumb is to use <= when there is a posedge or negedge statement within the always clause.


title: Verilog

text: A variant of the D-flop is one with an asynchronous reset; there is a convention that the reset state will be the first if clause within the statement.


title: Verilog

text: The next variant is including both an asynchronous reset and asynchronous set condition; again the convention comes into play, i.e. the reset term is followed by the set term.


title: Verilog

text: Note: If this model is used to model a Set/Reset flip flop then simulation errors can result. Consider the following test sequence of events. 1) reset goes high 2) clk goes high 3) set goes high 4) clk goes high again 5) reset goes low followed by 6) set going low. Assume no setup and hold violations.


title: Verilog

text: In this example the always @ statement would first execute when the rising edge of reset occurs which would place q to a value of 0. The next time the always block executes would be the rising edge of clk which again would keep q at a value of 0. The always block then executes when set goes high which because reset is high forces q to remain at 0. This condition may or may not be correct depending on the actual flip flop. However, this is not the main problem with this model. Notice that when reset goes low, that set is still high. In a real flip flop this will cause the output to go to a 1. However, in this model it will not occur because the always block is triggered by rising edges of set and reset – not levels. A different approach may be necessary for set/reset flip flops.


title: Verilog

text: The final basic variant is one that implements a D-flop with a mux feeding its input. The mux has a d-input and feedback from the flop itself. This allows a gated load function.


title: Verilog

text: Note that there are no "initial" blocks mentioned in this description. There is a split between FPGA and ASIC synthesis tools on this structure. FPGA tools allow initial blocks where reg values are established instead of using a "reset" signal. ASIC synthesis tools don't support such a statement. The reason is that an FPGA's initial state is something that is downloaded into the memory tables of the FPGA. An ASIC is an actual hardware implementation.


title: Verilog

text: There are two separate ways of declaring a Verilog process. These are the always and the initial keywords. The always keyword indicates a free-running process. The initial keyword indicates a process executes exactly once. Both constructs begin execution at simulator time 0, and both execute until the end of the block. Once an always block has reached its end, it is rescheduled (again). It is a common misconception to believe that an initial block will execute before an always block. In fact, it is better to think of the initial-block as a special-case of the always-block, one which terminates after it completes for the first time.


title: Verilog

text: These are the classic uses for these two keywords, but there are two significant additional uses. The most common of these is an always keyword without the @(...) sensitivity list. It is possible to use always as shown below:


title: Verilog

text: The always keyword acts similar to the C language construct while(1) {..} in the sense that it will execute forever.


title: Verilog

text: The other interesting exception is the use of the initial keyword with the addition of the forever keyword.


title: Verilog

text: The fork/join pair are used by Verilog to create parallel processes. All statements (or blocks) between a fork/join pair begin execution simultaneously upon execution flow hitting the fork. Execution continues after the join upon completion of the longest running statement or block between the fork and join.


title: Verilog

text: The way the above is written, it is possible to have either the sequences "ABC" or "BAC" print out. The order of simulation between the first $write and the second $write depends on the simulator implementation, and may purposefully be randomized by the simulator. This allows the simulation to contain both accidental race conditions as well as intentional non-deterministic behavior.


title: Verilog

text: The order of execution isn't always guaranteed within Verilog. This can best be illustrated by a classic example. Consider the code snippet below:


title: Verilog

text: What will be printed out for the values of a and b? Depending on the order of execution of the initial blocks, it could be zero and zero, or alternately zero and some other arbitrary uninitialized value. The $display statement will always execute after both assignment blocks have completed, due to the #1 delay.


title: Verilog

text: The IEEE 1364 standard defines a four-valued logic with four states: 0, 1, Z (high impedance), and X (unknown logic value). For the competing VHDL, a dedicated standard for multi-valued logic exists as IEEE 1164 with nine levels.


title: Verilog

text: System tasks are available to handle simple I/O and various design measurement functions during simulation. All system tasks are prefixed with $ to distinguish them from user tasks and functions. This section presents a short list of the most frequently used tasks. It is by no means a comprehensive list.


title: Verilog

text: The PLI provides a programmer with a mechanism to transfer control from Verilog to a program function written in C language. It is officially deprecated by IEEE Std 1364-2005 in favor of the newer Verilog Procedural Interface, which completely replaces the PLI.


title: Verilog

text: The PLI (now VPI) enables Verilog to cooperate with other programs written in the C language such as test harnesses, instruction set simulators of a microcontroller, debuggers, and so on. For example, it provides the C functions codice_6 and codice_7 which are used to write and read the argument of the current Verilog task or function, respectively.


title: Finishing school

text: A finishing school focuses on teaching young women social graces and upper-class cultural rites as a preparation for entry into society. The name reflects that it follows on from ordinary school and is intended to complete the education, with classes primarily on deportment and etiquette, with academic subjects secondary. It may consist of an intensive course, or a one-year programme. In the United States it is sometimes called a charm school.


title: Finishing school

text: Graeme Donald claims that the educational ladies' salons of the late 19th century led to the formal, finishing institutions evidenced in Switzerland around that time. At their peak, thousands of wealthy young women were sent to the dozens of finishing schools available. A primary goal was to teach students to acquire husbands.


title: Finishing school

text: The 1960s marked the decline of the finishing school. This can be attributed to the shifting conceptions of women's role in society, as well as succession issues within the typically family-run schools and sometimes commercial pressures driven by the high value of the properties the schools occupied. The 1990s saw a revival of the finishing school, although the business model has been radically altered.


title: Finishing school

text: Switzerland was known for its private finishing schools. Most resided in the French-speaking cantons near Lake Geneva. The country was favoured because of its reputation as a healthful environment, its multi-lingual and cosmopolitan aura, and the region's political stability.


title: Finishing school

text: The finishing schools that made Switzerland renowned for such institutions were Brillantmont, founded in 1882, now an international secondary school that offers a 'grade 14' or graduate year of cultural studies, and Château Mont-Choisi, founded in 1885, which closed in 1995 or 1996. Both were in Lausanne.


title: Finishing school

text: About a decade after these schools had closed a diverse group of public relations and image consultancy firms started to appear in London offering largely 1- or 2-day finishing courses and social skills at commercial rate fees far higher that those charged by the colleges that closed mostly by the millennium (Lucie Clayton had been the exception). They often appeal to new international money and corporate clientele. Some partner with 5 star hotels to offer their courses but none are taught by a body of teaching staff in a school or college environment like their predecessors. The model is more business and commercial than before.


title: Finishing school

text: The old finishing schools were stand-alone organisations that lasted 15–50 years and were often family run. Curricula varied between schools based on the proprietor's philosophy, much like the British private school model of the 18th and 19th centuries. Some schools offered some O-level and A-level courses or recognised arts and languages certificates. They sometimes allowed pupils to retake a course they may not have passed at secondary school level. They often taught languages and commercially applicable skills, such as cooking, secretarial and later business studies with the aim of broadening the students horizons from formal schooling education.


title: Finishing school

text: Through much of their history, American finishing schools emphasised social graces and de-emphasised scholarship: society encouraged a polished young lady to hide her intellectual prowess for fear of frightening away suitors. For instance, Miss Porter's School in 1843 advertised itself as Miss Porter's Finishing School for Young Ladies—even though its founder was a noted scholar offering a rigorous curriculum that educated the illustrious classicist Edith Hamilton.


title: Finishing school

text: Today, with a new cultural climate and a different attitude to the role of women, the situation has reversed: Miss Porter's School downplays its origins as a finishing school, and emphasises the rigour of its academics. Likewise, Finch College on Manhattan's Upper East Side was "one of the most famed of U.S. girls' finishing schools", but its last president chose to describe it as a liberal arts college, offering academics as rigorous as Barnard or Bryn Mawr. It closed in 1976.


title: Finishing school

text: The term "finishing school" is occasionally used, or misused, in American parlance to refer to certain small women's colleges, primarily on the East Coast, that were once known for preparing their female students for marriage. Since the 1960s, many of these schools have closed as a result of financial difficulties. These stemmed from changing societal norms, which made it easier for women to pursue academic and professional paths.


title: Finishing school

text: "The Finishing School", a 2004 novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark, concerns 'College Sunrise', a present-day finishing school in Ouchy on the banks of Lake Geneva near Lausanne in Switzerland. Unlike the traditional finishing schools, the one in this novel is mixed-sex.


title: Dust storm

text: A dust storm, also called a sandstorm, is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface. Fine particles are transported by saltation and suspension, a process that moves soil from one place and deposits it in another.


title: Dust storm

text: The arid regions of North Africa, the Arabian peninsula, Central Asia and China are the main terrestrial sources of airborne dust. It has been argued that poor management of Earth's drylands, such as neglecting the fallow system, are increasing the size and frequency of dust storms from desert margins and changing both the local and global climate, as well as impacting local economies.


title: Dust storm

text: The term "sandstorm" is used most often in the context of desert dust storms, especially in the Sahara Desert, or places where sand is a more prevalent soil type than dirt or rock, when, in addition to fine particles obscuring visibility, a considerable amount of larger sand particles are blown closer to the surface. The term "dust storm" is more likely to be used when finer particles are blown long distances, especially when the dust storm affects urban areas.


title: Dust storm

text: As the force of dust passing over loosely held particles increases, particles of sand first start to vibrate, then to move across the surface in a process called saltation. As they repeatedly strike the ground, they loosen and break off smaller particles of dust which then begin to travel in suspension. At wind speeds above that which causes the smallest to suspend, there will be a population of dust grains moving by a range of mechanisms: suspension, saltation and creep.


title: Dust storm

text: A study from 2008 finds that the initial saltation of sand particles induces a static electric field by friction. Saltating sand acquires a negative charge relative to the ground which in turn loosens more sand particles which then begin saltating. This process has been found to double the number of particles predicted by previous theories.


title: Dust storm

text: Particles become loosely held mainly due to a prolonged drought or arid conditions, and high wind speeds. Gust fronts may be produced by the outflow of rain-cooled air from an intense thunderstorm. Or, the wind gusts may be produced by a dry cold front: that is, a cold front that is moving into a dry air mass and is producing no precipitation—the type of dust storm which was common during the Dust Bowl years in the U.S. Following the passage of a dry cold front, convective instability resulting from cooler air riding over heated ground can maintain the dust storm initiated at the front.


title: Dust storm

text: In desert areas, dust and sand storms are most commonly caused by either thunderstorm outflows, or by strong pressure gradients which cause an increase in wind velocity over a wide area. The vertical extent of the dust or sand that is raised is largely determined by the stability of the atmosphere above the ground as well as by the weight of the particulates. In some cases, dust and sand may be confined to a relatively-shallow layer by a low-lying temperature inversion. In other instances, dust (but not sand) may be lifted as high as .


title: Dust storm

text: Drought and wind contribute to the emergence of dust storms, as do poor farming and grazing practices by exposing the dust and sand to the wind.


title: Dust storm

text: One poor farming practice which contributes to dust storms is dryland farming. Particularly poor dryland farming techniques are intensive tillage or not having established crops or cover crops when storms strike at particularly vulnerable times prior to revegetation. In a semi-arid climate, these practices increase susceptibility to dust storms. However, soil conservation practices may be implemented to control wind erosion.


title: Dust storm

text: A sandstorm can transport and carry large volumes of sand unexpectedly. Dust storms can carry large amounts of dust, with the leading edge being composed of a wall of thick dust as much as high. Dust and sand storms which come off the Sahara Desert are locally known as a simoom or simoon (sîmūm, sîmūn). The "haboob" (həbūb) is a sandstorm prevalent in the region of Sudan around Khartoum, with occurrences being most common in the summer.


title: Dust storm

text: The Sahara desert is a key source of dust storms, particularly the Bodélé Depression and an area covering the confluence of Mauritania, Mali, and Algeria. Sahara dust is frequently emitted into the Mediterranean atmosphere and transported by the winds sometimes as far north as central Europe and Great Britain.


title: Dust storm

text: Saharan dust storms have increased approximately 10-fold during the half-century since the 1950s, causing topsoil loss in Niger, Chad, northern Nigeria, and Burkina Faso. In Mauritania there were just two dust storms a year in the early 1960s; there are about 80 a year since 2007, according to English geographer Andrew Goudie, professor at the University of Oxford. Levels of Saharan dust coming off the east coast of Africa in June 2007 were five times those observed in June 2006, and were the highest observed since at least 1999, which may have cooled Atlantic waters enough to slightly reduce hurricane activity in late 2007.


title: Dust storm

text: Dust storms have also been shown to increase the spread of disease across the globe. Virus spores in the ground are blown into the atmosphere by the storms with the minute particles and interact with urban air pollution.


title: Dust storm

text: Short-term effects of exposure to desert dust include immediate increased symptoms and worsening of the lung function in individuals with asthma, increased mortality and morbidity from long-transported dust from both Saharan and Asian dust storms suggesting that long-transported dust storm particles adversely affects the circulatory system. Dust pneumonia is the result of large amounts of dust being inhaled.


title: Dust storm

text: Prolonged and unprotected exposure of the respiratory system in a dust storm can also cause silicosis, which, if left untreated, will lead to asphyxiation; silicosis is an incurable condition that may also lead to lung cancer. There is also the danger of keratoconjunctivitis sicca ("dry eyes") which, in severe cases without immediate and proper treatment, can lead to blindness.


title: Dust storm

text: Dust storms cause soil loss from the drylands, and worse, they preferentially remove organic matter and the nutrient-rich lightest particles, thereby reducing agricultural productivity. Also, the abrasive effect of the storm damages young crop plants. Dust storms also reduce visibility, affecting aircraft and road transportation.


title: Dust storm

text: Dust can also have beneficial effects where it deposits: Central and South American rainforests get most of their mineral nutrients from the Sahara; iron-poor ocean regions get iron; and dust in Hawaii increases plantain growth. In northern China as well as the mid-western U.S., ancient dust storm deposits known as loess are highly fertile soils, but they are also a significant source of contemporary dust storms when soil-securing vegetation is disturbed.


title: Dust storm

text: Dust storms are not limited to Earth and have been known to form on other planets such as Mars. These dust storms can extend over larger areas than those on Earth, sometimes encircling the planet, with wind speeds as high as . However, given Mars' much lower atmospheric pressure (roughly 1% that of Earth's), the intensity of Mars storms could never reach the kind of hurricane-force winds that are experienced on Earth. Martian dust storms are formed when solar heating warms the Martian atmosphere and causes the air to move, lifting dust off the ground. The chance for storms is increased when there are great temperature variations like those seen at the equator during the Martian summer.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: Benjamin Kirby "Ben" Tennyson, commonly known as Ben 10, is a fictional superhero and the title protagonist of the "Ben 10" franchise. An initially normal 10-year-old boy until he discovers the Omnitrix, a powerful watch-like device which allows him to turn into (initially ten but unlocks more) different aliens, he was created for "Ben 10" (2005–2008), in which he is voiced by Tara Strong. Strong was replaced by Yuri Lowenthal for the three sequel series "" (2008–2010), "" (2010–2012) and "" (2012–2014), with Strong returning to voice Ben in "Ultimate Alien" in one episode as well as "Omniverse" in flashbacks and in the rebooted "Ben 10" (2016–2021), with Lowenthal returning for the latter's 2021 series finale.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: The series primarily centers around Ben Tennyson (Tara Strong), a ten-year-old boy on a cross-country summer vacation with his cousin Gwen (Meagan Smith) and grandfather Max (Paul Eiding). During first night camping in Max's RV affectionately they call "The Rustbucket," and Ben goes out walking into a nearby forest, and in this forest, he realizes this crashed meteor and which is an alien pod with a mysterious watch-style device named the Omnitrix. This device soon permanently attaches itself to his wrist giving him the ability to transform into a variety of alien life-forms each with its own unique skills and powers. With his newfound superpowers, and later discovery of Max's career in a secret intergalactic government organization called The Plumbers, Ben has to learn the responsibilities of being a hero. During their vacation, the Tennysons are attacked by various enemies ranging aliens and criminals to supernatural entities, including Vilgax (Steve Blum), Sixsix and Kraab (Dee Bradley Baker and Billy West), Zs'Skayr (Steve Blum), Kevin Levin (Michael Reisz and Charlie Schlatter), The Forever Knights (Richard Doyle), Dr. Animo (Dwight Schultz), Hex (Khary Payton), and Zombozo (John Kassir).


title: Ben Tennyson

text: Set five years after the end of the original series, Ben Tennyson (Yuri Lowenthal), now a teenager, once again dons the Omnitrix to protect the earth and other parts of the universe from villainous alien activity. The storyline is notable for having matured the characters and taken a darker tone with more complex plots, more characters dying, and much less humor, Ben himself having matured dramatically and gained strength, leadership, and wisdom. The Omnitrix itself, a wristwatch-shaped device, allows Ben to transform into numerous alien forms, thereby inheriting the unique abilities of that alien race. At the age of fifteen, Ben fills the role of leader after Grandpa Max mysteriously disappears. The powerful Omnitrix has recalibrated, giving him access to a new set of alien heroes that are much stronger and more powerful than those in the original series, teaming up once again with his cousin Gwen (Ashley Johnson) and former enemy Kevin (Greg Cipes).


title: Ben Tennyson

text: Set several weeks after the destruction of the Omnitrix in the series finale of the , Ben Tennyson, now sixteen years old, must learn to master the powers of the Ultimatrix, a modified version of the Omnitrix which has the ability to evolve Ben's alien forms into much more powerful versions known as "ultimate forms." The series begins with the exposure of Ben's secret identity to the world by Jimmy Jones (Scott Menville), a young internet conspiracy theorist who deduces his identity by studying alien sightings in Ben's hometown of Bellwood. Ben's exposure polarizes public opinion, with younger fans idolizing him, and adults, in particular news anchor Will Harangue (John DiMaggio) deriding Ben as a menace to society. Ben is now forced to adjust to a new life that not only involves battling the forces of evil alongside his cousin Gwen Tennyson and his friend Kevin Levin, but also his struggle against the pitfalls of his new-found fame. "", a one-hour crossover with fellow Man of Action series "Generator Rex", aired on November 25, 2011, on Cartoon Network, featuring Ben travelling to the dimension in which "Generator Rex" takes place.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: The storylines alternate between that of eleven-year-old Ben (one year after the original series) and sixteen-year-old Ben (several months after ""). After Gwen leaves for college and Kevin leaves to be closer to her, sixteen-year-old Ben gets a new partner, a rookie by-the-book alien plumber named Rook Blonko (Bumper Robinson). On a mission to explore a secret underground alien city named Undertown, Ben explores the quirkier side of things in the alien underground and discovers that enemies from his past are looking for a rematch. In "T.G.I.S.", it is revealed that the "Ben 10" universe shares the same universe with "The Secret Saturdays".


title: Ben Tennyson

text: Building on the franchise about the kid hero Ben Tennyson, "Ben 10" introduces a re-imagined Ben, his cousin Gwen, and Grandpa Max, as they travel the country during summer vacation. When Ben finds the Omnitrix, a mysterious watch that transforms him into 10 different aliens, a world of extraterrestrial superpowers opens up to him, encountering villains such as Vilgax, The High Override, Forever Knight and Kevin 11. Set in an alternate universe from previous series, the new Benita encounters the Ben from the previous series in the series finale "Alien X-Tinction", teaming up with him and several other versions of Ben and Gwen to stop the titular Alien X from stealing their Omnitrixes and taking over the multiverse.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: "Ben 10" was created by Man of Action (consisting of comic book creators Duncan Rouleau, Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, and Steven T. Seagle) and was produced by Cartoon Network Studios. The group worked on the concept of "Ben 10" and its title character roughly three years before Cartoon Network picked up the series. Dave Johnson also helped in the design development. Early on in development, it was decided that a villain would be within the Omnitrix. After Ghostfreak was created the creators added dialogue into the first season to give the audience that there is something more to Ghostfreak. Originally Cannonbolt, the 11th alien transformation in the series, was going to be in the original set of aliens, but was replaced with Ghostfreak.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: When doing test animations for the series the first alien transformation to be tested was Four Arms. It was the most popular transformation out of all the aliens for "Man of Action". Many of the unused designs for Upchuck were recycled in the episode "Ben 10,000" as two of Ben's aliens "Spitter" and "Arctiguana", and as villain Sploot. Steven E. Gordon worked on an early version of the series. His concept work reveals that Ben Tennyson was originally going to be a red-headed young boy. Gordon also has early designs of the Omnitrix which look more like a watch than the final version, as well as different designs and names for the alien transformations. Some of the early names for the Omnitrix transformations were "StrongGuy", "Inferno", "RazorJaws", "Dragonfly", "Plantguy", and "Digger". Some of the early designs for the aliens are more human and superheroic, similar to "Dial H For Hero". The character's middle name, Kirby, was named as a reference to comic book artist Jack Kirby. Initial concepts for Ben's "Alien Force" and "Ultimate Alien" designs were made by Glen Murakami. His head and hair were reworked by Glenn Wong, who also gave him his green jacket, while colors were added by Chris Hooten.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: Initially cocky, childish and arrogant, Ben's immaturity and attention-seeking behavior often led him to joke around regardless of the situation, although most of this attitude comes from Ben using humor to mask his fears. His use of puns, witty quips, and other forms of humor is actually his inner coping mechanism that has apparently kept him sane all these years. Despite some of his childish behavior, Ben is heroic, caring and generally good-natured, always willing to save others at any time. Professor Paradox has praised Ben's good nature, going so far as to say he had the gift to make the right choices at the right moments. Ben does not give up and would not let anyone stop him from doing what is right for those in need, especially his family, friends and mentors, or to bring enemies down, even when he once got a broken arm.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: As he grew older, Ben displayed good leadership skills as well as the ability to adapt his attitude to a situation, becoming serious when the situation called for it. He became more mature, responsible, and sensible while still retaining a somewhat cocky personality. He is kind-hearted, more than willing to sacrifice his own life for others. But when it comes down to his family, there is no sacrifice in the universe too large. Especially when his cousin and best friend Gwen Tennyson's life is on the line. For her, he would give anything, even if it means letting the bad guys win. And he has, on multiple occasions.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: If Ben ever fails to save someone, or if someone gets hurt because of his failures, he becomes much more violent. One of the most notable was the third time Kevin mutated from the Omni-Energy feedback from the watch and almost killed both him and Gwen. Ben was set on killing Kevin, even fighting Gwen when she refused to help him. He also threatened to hunt down and destroy the Forever Knights once making Driscoll promise to cease the hunting of aliens.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: Though often stated to be silly or unintelligent because of his immaturity, Ben is cunning and resourceful when needed, quickly adapting when the Omnitrix doesn't provide him with the alien he wanted. Later on, Ben starts thinking of himself as more of a superhero than a Plumber, often remarking that he is not a cop, but a superhero. Although he once again became cocky, he retained his heroic nature. His idealistic views and unwillingness to compromise his values sometimes drive him to act against reason if he feels it is the right thing to do, such as helping his enemies if he feels they need it. Although he is often arrogant and overconfident, Ben is still extremely selfless and self-sacrificing overall.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: At some point in his future, Ben became so strict, cynical, and serious about the hero business to the point where it is almost obsessive. He rarely turned back to his human form, spending most of his time in alien form, skimming his patrol routes, and brutalizing criminals as quickly as he could. He also stopped naming his aliens. He stayed this serious for years until he met and had a talk with his younger self, after which Ben lightens up and he starts naming his aliens again.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: He likes to spend time with his son and, while he tries to be close to him, Ben sometimes doubts his abilities as a parent and becomes over-protective. He can also be somewhat obtuse, not realizing where his son got his attitude from and grasping the obvious. While Ben is a lot older, he still has a teasing side, jokingly calling his cousin Gwen "dweeb".


title: Ben Tennyson

text: Ben possesses a commendable amount of bravery and courage. Despite his change to a more light-hearted and relaxed person, Ben 10,000 has a ferocious temper that returns him to the more aggressive and grim personage he displayed before.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: 10-year-old Ben is voiced by Tara Strong in the original "Ben 10" series which aired from 2005 to 2008. She would later return as the 10-year-old Ben in "" in the episode "The Forge of Creation" and reprises her role as 11-year-old Ben in flashback episodes of "", which aired from 2012 to 2014. She reprises the role of the 10-year-old Ben Tennyson in the 2016 reboot. Strong voiced the 10-year-old Ben in all series to date except "", where 10-year-old Ben never spoke.


title: Ben Tennyson

text: "", the sequel series to the original, introduces teenage Ben (15 years old), voiced by Yuri Lowenthal (replacing Strong). Lowenthal would later reprise his role as teenage Ben (now 16 years old) in "" and "" (sharing the role in the latter with Tara Strong, who voices 11-year-old Ben). He cameos as an elderly Ben in the 2016 reboot in the episode "The 11th Alien: Part 2", and later returns to voice the aforementioned 15 and 16-year-old versions of Ben in "Alien X-Tinction".


title: Ben Tennyson

text: He is portrayed by Graham Phillips as the 10-year-old Ben in "" and was played by Ryan Kelley as the teenage Ben in "".


title: Emilio Rivera

text: Emilio Rivera (born February 24, 1961) is an American film and television actor and stand-up comedian. He is best known for his portrayal of Marcus Álvarez in "Sons of Anarchy" and its spin-off, "Mayans M.C." He is also known for his depiction of criminals and law enforcement officers.


title: Emilio Rivera

text: Rivera is of Mexican descent. He is the oldest sibling in his family, with four younger brothers and three younger sisters. He was raised in Elysian Valley also known as Frogtown, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. At 18 years old in 1979, Rivera enlisted in the U.S. Army.


title: Emilio Rivera

text: Rivera's first feature role was in the TV series "Renegade" with Lorenzo Lamas. He also had a role in the feature film "Con Air", co-starring Nicolas Cage. Emilio has appeared in several commercials, television programs and feature films including "Traffic", "The Cable Guy", "NYPD Blue", "Beverly Hills, 90210", "Walker, Texas Ranger", "Titus", "", "JAG", "ER", "A Man Apart" with Vin Diesel, John Cusack's film "Never Get Outta the Boat", "Ali G Indahouse", "Rush", Howard Stern's "Son of the Beach", "", "Z Nation", and Michael Mann's new series "Metro". He also played Marcus Álvarez in "Sons of Anarchy" for seven seasons and currently plays Álvarez in "Mayans M.C."


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices; and Section 4(b), which contains the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subject to preclearance based on their histories of discrimination in voting.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: On June 25, 2013, the Court ruled by a 5 to 4 vote that Section 4(b) was unconstitutional because the coverage formula was based on data over 40 years old, making it no longer responsive to current needs and therefore an impermissible burden on the constitutional principles of federalism and equal sovereignty of the states. The Court did not strike down Section 5, but without Section 4(b), no jurisdiction will be subject to Section 5 preclearance unless Congress enacts a new coverage formula. Some allege the ruling has made it easier for state officials to make it harder for ethnic minority voters to vote.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Research shows that preclearance led to increases in minority congressional representation and minority turnout. Five years after the ruling, nearly 1,000 U.S. polling places had closed, many of them in predominantly African-American counties. Research shows that changing and reducing voting locations can reduce voter turnout. There were also cuts to early voting, purges of voter rolls and imposition of strict voter ID laws. A 2020 study found that jurisdictions that had previously been covered by preclearance substantially increased their voter registration purges after the "Shelby" decision. Virtually all restrictions on voting subsequent to the ruling were enacted by Republicans.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to address entrenched racial discrimination in voting, "an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of our country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution". Section 5 of the Act contains a "preclearance" requirement that requires certain states and local governments to obtain a determination by the United States Attorney General or a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia that changes to their voting laws or practices do not "deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group" before those changes may be enforced. Section 4(b) contains the coverage formula that determines which states and local governments are subject to preclearance under Section 5. The formula covers jurisdictions that, as of November 1964, November 1968, or November 1972, maintained a prohibited "test or device" as a condition of registering to vote or voting and had a voting-age population of which less than 50 percent either were registered to vote or actually voted in that year's presidential election. Section 4(a) allows covered jurisdictions that have made sufficient progress in ending discriminatory voting practices to "bail out" of the preclearance requirement.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: The Supreme Court upheld the preclearance requirement and coverage formula as constitutional enforcement legislation under Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment in "South Carolina v. Katzenbach" (1966). The preclearance requirement initially was set to expire five years after enactment, but amendments to the Act in 1970, 1975, and 1982 reauthorized Section 5; the 1970 and 1975 amendments also updated the coverage formula. The Supreme Court upheld these reauthorizations as constitutional in "Georgia v. United States" (1973), "City of Rome v. United States" (1980), and "Lopez v. Monterey County" (1999). In 2006, Congress reauthorized Section 5 for an additional 25 years, but did not change the coverage formula from the 1975 version.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Shortly after the 2006 reauthorization, a Texas utility district sought to bail out from Section 5 preclearance and, in the alternative, challenged the constitutionality of Section 5. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in "Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder" that government entities that did not register voters, such as the utility district, had the right to file suit to bail out of coverage. Because this decision resolved the issue, the Court invoked constitutional avoidance and declined to address the constitutionality of Section 5. Judge Clarence Thomas dissented from this portion of the opinion and would have declared Section 5 unconstitutional.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Shelby County, in the covered jurisdiction of Alabama, sued the U.S. Attorney General in the U.S. District Court for D.C. in Washington, D.C., seeking a declaratory judgment that sections 4(b) and 5 are facially unconstitutional and a permanent injunction against their enforcement. On September 21, 2011, Judge John D. Bates upheld the provisions, finding that the evidence before Congress in 2006 was sufficient to justify reauthorizing Section 5 and continuing Section 4(b)'s coverage formula.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Arguing before Bates were Kristen Clarke, who argued that it was reasonable for Congress to "stay the course" in renewing Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in order to root out discrimination, and Bert Rein, a lawyer for Shelby County, who argued that the environment in the country was "totally different" when Section 5 was first enacted.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: On May 18, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the District Court's decision upholding the constitutionality of Section 4(b) and Section 5. After surveying the evidence in the Congressional record associated with the 2006 reauthorization of Section 5, the appellate court accepted Congress's conclusion that Section 2 litigation remained inadequate in the covered jurisdictions to protect the rights of minority voters, that Section 5 was therefore still justified, and that the coverage formula continued to pass constitutional muster.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: The Supreme Court granted "certiorari" to hear the case on the limited question of "whether Congress' decision in 2006 to reauthorize Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act under the pre-existing coverage formula of Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act exceeded its authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and thus violated the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the United States Constitution." The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on February 27, 2013. Media coverage of the justices' comments during oral arguments portrayed the Court as appearing likely to hold Section 5 or Section 4(b) unconstitutional. Justice Antonin Scalia drew criticism from civil rights leaders for expressing his belief during oral argument that Congress reauthorized Section 5 not because the legislation was necessary, but because it constituted a "racial entitlement" that Congress was unlikely to end.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: A coalition of four states provided an amicus brief to the Supreme Court expressing support for Section 5 and noting that the preclearance provision did not impose a burden on them. The coalition was led by New York and included Mississippi, North Carolina and California.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: The Supreme Court struck down Section 4(b) as unconstitutional in a June 25, 2013 ruling. The majority opinion was delivered by Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justices Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. The Court held that Section 4(b) exceeded Congress' power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, reasoning that the coverage formula conflicts with the constitutional principles of federalism and "equal sovereignty of the states" because the disparate treatment of the states is "based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day" and thus is not responsive to current needs. The Court held that Congress cannot subject a state to preclearance based simply on past discrimination. It noted that since the coverage formula was last modified in 1975, the country "has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions". The Court declared that the Fifteenth Amendment "commands that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race or color, and it gives Congress the power to enforce that command. The Amendment is not designed to punish for the past; its purpose is to ensure a better future."


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Roberts wrote that the Act was immensely successful "at redressing racial discrimination and integrating the voting process" and noted that the U.S. has made great progress thanks to the Act. But he added: "If Congress had started from scratch in 2006, it plainly could not have enacted the present coverage formula." According to the Court, "Regardless of how to look at the record no one can fairly say that it shows anything approaching the 'pervasive,' 'flagrant,' 'widespread,' and 'rampant' discrimination that faced Congress in 1965, and that clearly distinguished the covered jurisdictions from the rest of the nation."


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: The Court did not subject Section 4(b) to the "congruence and proportionality" standard of review or address whether that standard is the appropriate measure to use when determining the constitutionality of legislation passed pursuant to Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment. The Court also noted the federalism concerns the Section 5 preclearance requirement raised, but did not reach the issue of whether Section 5 is constitutional. However, because the Section 5 preclearance requirement applies only to jurisdictions covered by the Section 4(b) coverage formula, the decision rendered Section 5 inoperable unless Congress enacts a new coverage formula.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Thomas wrote a concurring opinion expressing his view that Section 5 is also unconstitutional for the same reasons the Court held Section 4(b) unconstitutional.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. The dissent would have held that Congress had sufficient evidence before it to determine that the coverage formula remained responsive to current needs. The dissent acknowledged that discrimination in voting has decreased in the covered jurisdictions since the Voting Rights Act's enactment, but it attributed much of that decrease to the Act itself, noting that "[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet."


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: The opinion was controversial, prompting heavy media coverage of reactions from political leaders, activists, and the legal community.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: President Barack Obama expressed deep disappointment with the decision and called on Congress "to pass legislation to ensure every American has equal access to the polls". Attorney General Eric Holder also expressed disappointment, and pledged that the Department of Justice "will not hesitate to take swift enforcement action—using every legal tool that remains available to us—against any jurisdiction that seeks to take advantage of the Supreme Court's ruling by hindering eligible citizens' full and free exercise of the franchise". On July 25, 2013, Holder announced that the Department of Justice would ask a federal court to subject the formerly covered state of Texas to preclearance under the "bail in" provision in Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, which was unaffected by the Court's decision.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: When asked whether a polarized Congress could agree on a new coverage formula, Speaker John Boehner acknowledged the Voting Rights Act's importance over the previous 40 years and said he was reviewing the decision and trying to determine the next steps. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor expressed hope that Congress would "put politics aside" and determine how to ensure that voting rights remain protected. Representative John Lewis, a leader in the civil rights movement who was present when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, said that the decision disregarded the country's history of voting discrimination and that he feared the decision would allow local election officials "to go back to another period". He added: "the purpose of the Voting Rights Act is not to increase the numbers of minority voters or elected officials. That is a byproduct of its effectiveness. The purpose of the act is to stop discriminatory practices from becoming law. There are more black elected officials in Mississippi today not because attempts to discriminate against voters ceased but because the Voting Rights Act kept those attempts from becoming law." House Judiciary Committee chair Bob Goodlatte said the committee would review new voting data but that he was unsure whether it would take any action in response to the decision. On July 18, 2013, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice held a hearing to discuss how the House should respond to the ruling.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that Democrats were concerned with the ruling in light of "Republicans doing everything they could to suppress voting" in the 2012 elections, and that the Senate would act to address the decision. Senator Bob Corker said that he "cannot imagine" Congress ever agreeing on the terms of a new coverage formula. On July 17, 2013, the Senate Judiciary Committee began to hold hearings on how to respond to the decision.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Republican Senator Ted Cruz supported the ruling: "Today, the Supreme Court recognized the enormous progress made toward voting equality in the United States since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. The Court rightly decided that the statutory standard used decades ago to subject democratically-elected state legislatures to second-guessing by unelected federal bureaucrats no longer survives constitutional scrutiny."


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: At the state level, Texas and Mississippi officials pledged within hours of the decision to enforce voter ID laws that the attorney general had precleared. Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner said it made no sense for five Florida counties to be subject to preclearance based on decades-old voting rights data and that the decision would save the state money. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the decision troubled him and called upon Congress to pass a new coverage formula.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Edward Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation, an Alexandria-based nonprofit legal defense foundation that provided counsel to Shelby County, commented that the Supreme Court restored "a fundamental constitutional order that America’s laws must apply uniformly to each state and jurisdiction. All 50 states are entitled to equal dignity and sovereignty under the law." Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute said that the decision "restore[d] the constitutional order, the status quo ante the temporary Sections 4/5, because there is no longer systemic racial disenfranchisement, or at the very least in the covered jurisdictions".


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: By contrast, Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that because of the decision, "[m]inority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades" and that their only recourse will be to pursue expensive litigation. Penda Hair, co-director of national racial justice organization Advancement Project, said, "The Supreme Court's ruling rolls back legislation that courageous Americans fought so hard for, even giving their lives in many cases, to ensure that all citizens can participate in our democracy. Today's decision threatens the promise of equal access to the ballot—especially when the majority of voters of color who voted last year, 65.8 percent, live in states covered by the Section 4 formula."


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Former White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig was highly critical of the decision, calling it not only "an assault on Congress" but also "the single greatest example of legislating from the bench in my lifetime". He added: "This decision resurrects the discarded proposition that states’ rights are more important than individual rights and that federal efforts to protect citizens’ rights should defer to the sovereignty of the states. The struggle between states’ rights and individual rights—and the proper role of the federal government in that struggle— [...] has been deeply divisive and, on occasion, violent. [...] What was once a bipartisan consensus, achieved after many years of pain and struggle, is no longer. We can add voting rights to the list of polarizing issues that will divide Congress."


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Richard H. Pildes, Professor at New York University School of Law, said that Sections 4 and 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act have limitations. He called for legislation protecting the right to vote in national and universal terms: "Such laws would be designed to eliminate unnecessary and unjustifiable barriers to political participation in general." He pointed to national laws enacted by Congress such as the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act as examples that "might be the most effective way today to protect the rights of all voters, including minority voters."


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: An October 2017 ProPublica investigation analyzed the data Roberts used in the ruling. Roberts wrote that the registration gap between blacks and whites had shrunk dramatically in southern states since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and questioned why six southern states were subject to stringent oversight. He included Hispanics as whites, including even those who could not register to vote because they were not U.S. citizens, thereby making the "white" registration rate lower than what it would otherwise have been.


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: According to the "New York Times", the United States has a long history of limiting access to voting. It began during the Founding Fathers' era and reached a peak during the Jim Crow era. The idea that disenfranchising legitimate voters was unethical gained momentum after the Civil rights movement and the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, but came to a halt almost "two decades after the Bush v. Gore stalemate", which "led to voting rules being viewed as key elements of election strategy ... the issue is playing an extraordinary role in the midterm elections." In light of this, restrictions on registering and voting after "Shelby County" was decided were made in most cases by Republicans. According to many Republicans, such restrictions are necessary to combat election fraud. "The New York Times" observed in 2018 that the aforementioned restrictions on registering and voting "reflect rising partisanship, societal shifts producing a more diverse America, and the weakening of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court in 2013."


title: Shelby County v. Holder

text: Since the ruling, 15 states have passed laws that removed provisions such as online voting registration, early voting, "Souls to the Polls" Sunday voting, in which shuttle services take people to the polls directly after church, same-day registration, and pre-registering people under the age of 18 to vote.