title: Official Monster Raving Loony Party

text: The OMRLP are distinguished by having a deliberately bizarre manifesto, which contains things that seem to be impossible or too absurd to implement – usually to highlight what they see as real-life absurdities. Despite its satirical nature, some of the things that have featured in Loony manifestos have become law, such as "passports for pets", abolition of dog licences and all-day pub openings.


title: Official Monster Raving Loony Party

text: Other suggestions so far unadopted included minting a 99p coin and forbidding greyhound racing in order to "stop the country going to the dogs".


title: Official Monster Raving Loony Party

text: The Loonies generally field as many candidates as possible in United Kingdom general elections, some (but by no means all) standing under ridiculous names they have adopted via deed poll. Sutch himself stood against all three main party leaders (John Major, Neil Kinnock and Paddy Ashdown) in the 1992 general election. Parliamentary candidates have to pay their own deposit (which currently stands at £500) and cover all of their expenses. No OMRLP candidate has managed to get the required 5% of the popular vote needed to retain their deposit, but this does not stop people standing. Sutch came closest with 4.1% and over a thousand votes at the 1994 Rotherham by-election, whilst Stuart Hughes still holds the record for the largest number of votes for a Loony candidate at a Parliamentary election, with 1,442 at the 1992 general election in the Honiton seat in east Devon. The all-time highest vote achieved was by comedian Danny Blue, who secured 3,339 votes in the 1994 European elections under the pseudonym of "John Major". Bamford had also acted as an election agent for Lindi St Clair's rival Corrective Party, and was a former close associate of Stuart Hughes.


title: Official Monster Raving Loony Party

text: In the run-up to the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, the party adopted an equivocal stance, advising its supporters, on 8 April, to "vote as you see fit". In response to mainstream parties debating Brexit, the OMRLP suggested sending Noel Edmonds to the European Parliament "because he understands Deal or No Deal". They have advocated an "Al dente Brexit" rather than a hard or soft Brexit.


title: Official Monster Raving Loony Party

text: Screaming Lord Sutch appeared as himself in the opening episode of "The New Statesman", standing for election in the seat of Haltemprice, which was won by Alan B'Stard for the Conservative party. Sutch and his party polled second, ahead of B'Stard's Labour and SDP opponents.


title: Official Monster Raving Loony Party

text: The party's regular appearances at by-elections was satirised in the Blackadder the Third episode "Dish and Dishonesty", with a candidate from the Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party standing as one of Baldrick's rivals in a by-election held in a rotten borough.


title: Official Monster Raving Loony Party

text: A candidate was shown canvasing for a by-election on the "One Foot in the Grave" episode "I'll Retire to Bedlam" where a regional news programme filmed him knocking on the Meldrews' door. He explained the nature of the party, that they had some clearly set out policies, and that people could choose to vote for them as a protest vote; all while dressed vaguely as a bee. Later in the episode, another candidate for one of the major parties was shaking hands with patients in hospital, then came up to Victor to shake his hand and asked if Victor would be voting for him. Victor replied that he would be voting for the Monster Raving Loony Party and that he found their political platform the most sensible of all the major parties.


title: Eternal oblivion

text: Eternal oblivion (also referred to as non-existence or nothingness) is the philosophical or religious concept of one's consciousness forever ceasing upon death. Pamela Health and Jon Klimo write that this concept is mostly associated with religious skepticism, secular humanism, nihilism, and atheism.


title: Eternal oblivion

text: According to most modern neuroscience theories of consciousness, the brain is the basis of subjective experience, agency, self-awareness, and awareness of the surrounding natural world. When brain death occurs, all brain function forever ceases.


title: Eternal oblivion

text: Many neuroscientists and neurophilosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, believe that consciousness is dependent upon the functioning of the brain and death is a cessation of consciousness. Scientific research has discovered that some areas of the brain, like the reticular activating system or the thalamus, appear to be necessary for consciousness, because dysfunction of or damage to these structures causes a loss of consciousness. Through a naturalist analysis of the mind, it is regarded as being dependent on the brain, as shown from the various effects of brain damage.


title: Eternal oblivion

text: In the "Apology of Socrates" (written by Plato), after Socrates is sentenced to death, he addresses the court. He ponders the nature of death, and summarizes that there are two major schools of thought on the afterlife. The first is that it is a migration of the soul or consciousness from this existence into another, and that the souls of all previously deceased people will also be there. This excites Socrates, because he will be able to conduct his dialectic inquiries with all of the great Greek heroes and thinkers of the past. The other opinion about death is that it is oblivion, the complete cessation of consciousness, not only unable to feel but a complete lack of awareness, like a person in a deep, dreamless sleep. Socrates says that even this oblivion does not frighten him very much, because while he would be unaware, he would correspondingly be free from any pain or suffering. Socrates stated that not even the great King of Persia could say that he ever rested so soundly and peacefully as he did in a dreamless sleep.


title: Eternal oblivion

text: Cicero, writing three centuries later in his treatise "On Old Age", in the voice of Cato the Elder, similarly discussed the prospects of death, frequently referring to the works of earlier Greek writers. Cicero also concluded that death was either a continuation of consciousness or cessation of it, and that if consciousness continues in some form, there is no reason to fear death; while if it is in fact eternal oblivion, he will be free of all worldly miseries, in which case he should also not be deeply troubled by death.


title: Eternal oblivion

text: Similar thoughts about death were expressed by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius in his first-century BC didactic poem "De rerum natura" and by the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus in his "Letter to Menoeceus", in which he writes:


title: Eternal oblivion

text: Paraphrasing philosopher Paul Edwards, Keith Augustine and Yonatan I. Fishman note that "the greater the damage to the brain, the greater the corresponding damage to the mind. The natural extrapolation from this pattern is all too clear – obliterate brain functioning altogether, and mental functioning too will cease".


title: Eternal oblivion

text: Contemporary scientists Steven Pinker and Sean Carroll assert that death is equivalent to eternal oblivion, as science finds no mechanism to continue consciousness after death.


title: Eternal oblivion

text: The term "eternal Oblivion" has been used in international treaties, such as in Article II of the Treaty of Westphalia 1648. It has also been used in legislation such as in the English Indemnity and Oblivion Act 1660, where the phrase used is "perpetual Oblivion" (it appears in several of the articles in the act).


title: Eternal oblivion

text: Thomas W. Clark, founder of Center for Naturalism, wrote a paper titled "Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity" (1994). He critiqued what he saw as a flawed description of eternal oblivion as a "plunge into darkness". When some imagine their deaths (including the non-religious), they project themselves into a future self which experiences an eternal silent darkness. This is wrong, because without consciousness, there is no awareness of space and no basis for time. For Clark, in oblivion there is even an absence of experience, as we can only speak of experience when a subjective self exists.


title: Eternal oblivion

text: According to neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, consciousness is "all we are and all we have: lose consciousness and, as far as you are concerned, your own self and the entire world dissolve into nothingness."


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks () are Jews with roots in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, the northeastern Suwałki and Białystok regions of Poland, as well as adjacent areas of modern-day Russia and Ukraine). The term is sometimes used to cover all Haredi Jews who follow a "Lithuanian" (Ashkenazi, non-Hasidic) style of life and learning, whatever their ethnic background. The area where Lithuanian Jews lived is referred to in Yiddish as , hence the Hebrew term ().


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: No other famous Jew is more closely linked to a specifically Lithuanian city than Vilna Gaon (in Yiddish, "the genius of Vilna"). Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (1720–1797) to give his rarely used full name, helped make Vilna (modern-day Vilnius) a world center for Talmudic learning. Chaim Grade (1910–1982) was born in Vilna, the city about which he would write.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: The inter-war Republic of Lithuania was home to a large and influential Jewish community; its members either fled the country or were murdered during the Holocaust in Lithuania which began in 1941. Prior to World War II, the Lithuanian Jewish population comprised some 160,000 people, or about 7% of the total population. Vilnius had a Jewish community of nearly 100,000, about 45% of the city's total population. There were over 110 synagogues and 10 yeshivas in Vilnius alone. Census figures from 2005 recorded 4007 Jews in Lithuania – 0.12 percent of the country's total population


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: Vilna (Vilnius) was occupied by Nazi Germany in June 1941. Within a matter of months, this famous Jewish community had been devastated with over two-thirds of its population killed.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: Based on data by Institute of Jewish Policy Research, as of 1 January 2016, the core Jewish population of Lithuania is estimated to be 2,700 (0.09% of the wider population), and the enlarged Jewish population was estimated at 6,500 (0.23% of the wider population). The Lithuanian Jewish population is concentrated in the capital, Vilnius, with smaller population centres including Klaipėda and Kaunas.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: The Yiddish adjective means "Lithuanian": the noun for a Lithuanian Jew is . The term itself originates from , a Polish term denoting "a man from Lithuania", which however went out of use before the 19th century, having been supplanted in this meaning by , only to be revived around 1880 in the narrower meaning of "a Lithuanian Jew". The "Lithuania" meant here is the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: Of the main Yiddish dialects in Europe, the Litvishe Yiddish (Lithuanian Yiddish) dialect was spoken by Jews in Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia and northeastern Poland, including Suwałki, Łomża, and Białystok.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: However, following the dispute between the Hasidim and the Misnagdim, in which the Lithuanian academies were the heartland of opposition to Hasidism, "Lithuanian" came to have the connotation of Misnagdic (non-Hasidic) Judaism generally, and to be used for all Jews who follow the traditions of the great Lithuanian yeshivot, whether or not their ancestors actually came from Lithuania. In modern Israel, (Lithuanians) is often used for all Haredi Jews who are not Hasidim (and not Hardalim or Sephardic Haredim). Other expressions used for this purpose are and . Both the words and are somewhat misleading, because there are also Hasidic Jews from greater Lithuania and many Lithuanian Jews who are not Haredim. The term ("opponents") on the other hand is somewhat outdated, because the opposition between the two groups has lost much of its relevance. is also problematic because Hasidim now make use of yeshivot as much as the Litvishe Jews.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: The characteristically "Lithuanian" approach to Judaism was marked by a concentration on highly intellectual Talmud study. Lithuania became the heartland of the traditionalist opposition to Hasidism. They named themselves "misnagdim" (opposers) of the Hasidi. The Lithuanian traditionalists believed Hassidim represented a threat to Halachic observance due to certain Kabbalistic beliefs held by the Hassidim, that, if misinterpreted, could lead one to heresy as per the Frankists. Differences between the groups grew to the extent that in popular perception "Lithuanian" and "misnagged" became virtually interchangeable terms. However, a sizable minority of Lithuanian Jews belong(ed) to Hasidic groups, including Chabad, Slonim, Karlin-Stolin, Karlin (Pinsk), Lechovitch, Amdur and Koidanov. With the spread of the Enlightenment, many Lithuanian Jews became devotees of the "Haskala" (Jewish Enlightenment) movement in Eastern Europe pressing for better integration into European society, and today, many leading academics, scientists, and philosophers are of Lithuanian Jewish descent.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: The most famous Lithuanian institution of Jewish learning was Volozhin yeshiva, which was the model for most later yeshivas. Twentieth century "Lithuanian" yeshivas include Ponevezh, Telshe, Mir, Kelm, and Slabodka, which bear the names of their Lithuanian forebears. American "offspring" of the Lithuanian yeshiva movement include Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yisrael Meir HaKohen ("Chofetz Chaim"), and Beth Medrash Govoha ("Lakewood"), as well as numerous other yeshivas founded by students of Lakewood's founder, Rabbi Aharon Kotler.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: In theoretical Talmud study, the leading Lithuanian authorities were Chaim Soloveitchik and the Brisker school; rival approaches were those of the Mir and Telshe yeshivas. In practical halakha, the Lithuanians traditionally followed the Aruch HaShulchan, though today, the "Lithuanian" yeshivas prefer the Mishnah Berurah, which is regarded as both more analytic and more accessible.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: In the 19th century, the Orthodox Ashkenazi residents of the Holy Land, broadly speaking, were divided into Hasidim and Perushim, who were Lithuanian Jews influenced by the Vilna Gaon. For this reason, in modern-day Israeli Haredi parlance the terms "Litvak" (noun) or "Litvisher" (adjective), or in Hebrew "Litaim", are often used loosely to include any non-Hasidic Ashkenazi Haredi individual or institution. Another reason for this broadening of the term is the fact that many of the leading Israeli Haredi yeshivas (outside the Hasidic camp) are successor bodies to the famous yeshivot of Lithuania, though their present-day members may or may not be descended from Lithuanian Jewry. In reality, both the ethnic make-up and the religious traditions of the misnagged communities are much more diverse.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: Jews began living in Lithuania as early as the 13th century. In 1388, they were granted a charter by Vytautas, under which they formed a class of freemen subject in all criminal cases directly to the jurisdiction of the grand duke and his official representatives, and in petty suits to the jurisdiction of local officials on an equal footing with the lesser nobles ("szlachta"), boyars, and other free citizens. As a result, the community prospered.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: In 1495, they were expelled by Alexander Jagiellon, but allowed to return in 1503. The Lithuanian statute of 1566 placed a number of restrictions on the Jews, and imposed sumptuary laws, including the requirement that they wear distinctive clothing, including yellow caps for men and yellow kerchiefs for women.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: The Khmelnytsky Uprising destroyed the existing Lithuanian Jewish institutions. Still, the Jewish population of Lithuania grew from an estimated 120,000 in 1569 to approximately 250,000 in 1792. After the 1793 Second Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Lithuanian Jews became subjects of the Russian Empire.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: The Jewish Lithuanian population before World War II numbered around 160,000, or about 7% of the total population. At the beginning of the war, some 12,000 Jewish refugees fled into Lithuania from Poland; by 1941 the Jewish population of Lithuania had swelled to approximately 250,000, or 10% of the total population.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: During the German invasion of June 1941, 141,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis and Lithuanian collaborators. Notable execution locations were in the Paneriai woods (see Ponary massacre) and the Ninth Fort.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: Quoting the research done by H. G. Adler into Poland during World War II called , there were "80,000 Jews conscripted into Poland's independent army prior to the German invasion who identified themselves as Lithuanian Jews". Using different sources Holocaust researchers claim there were between 60,000 and 65,000 Jewish soldiers in Poland's independent army who identified themselves as Lithuanian Jews.


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: Litvaks have an identifiable mode of pronouncing Hebrew and Yiddish; this is often used to determine the boundaries of Lita (area of settlement of Litvaks). Its most characteristic feature is the pronunciation of the vowel holam as (as against Sephardic , Germanic and Polish ).


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: In the popular perception, Litvaks were considered to be more intellectual and stoic than their rivals, the Galitzianers, who thought of them as cold fish. They, in turn, disdained Galitzianers as irrational and uneducated. Ira Steingroot's "Yiddish Knowledge Cards" devote a card to this "Ashkenazi version of the Hatfields and McCoys". This difference is of course connected with the Hasidic/misnaged debate, Hasidism being considered the more emotional and spontaneous form of religious expression. The two groups differed not only in their attitudes and their pronunciation, but also in their cuisine. The Galitzianers were known for rich, heavily sweetened dishes in contrast to the plainer, more savory Litvisher versions, with the boundary known as the "Gefilte Fish Line".


title: Lithuanian Jews

text: The Lithuanian Jewish population may exhibit a genetic founder effect. The utility of these variations has been the subject of debate. One variation, which is implicated in familial hypercholesterolemia, has been dated to the 14th century, corresponding to the establishment of settlements in response to the invitation extended by Gediminas in 1323, which encouraged German Jews to settle in the newly established city of Vilnius. A relatively high rate of early-onset dystonia in the population has also been identified as possibly stemming from the founder effect.


title: Rohan Oza

text: Rohan Oza is an American businessman, investor, and marketing expert behind several large brands. Rohan has been a recurring guest on the television show "Shark Tank".


title: Rohan Oza

text: Oza went on to study manufacturing and industrial engineering at Nottingham University. He pivoted to marketing and corporate strategy while at the University of Michigan, where he received his MBA.


title: Rohan Oza

text: Oza got his start in marketing by advertising Snickers for Mars, Incorporated in Europe. He later was hired as a marketing manager for The Coca-Cola Company.


title: Rohan Oza

text: He has been credited for revitalizing the Sprite brand by signing Kobe Bryant as a spokesperson. Oza also worked with Andy Roddick, Michael Vick, Tom Brady, LeBron James, Jennifer Aniston, Gal Gadot, 50 Cent, Ne-Yo, Rihanna and Madonna as celebrity endorsements.


title: Rohan Oza

text: He left Coca-Cola in 2002 to join Glacéau, most famous for their Vitaminwater brand. In 2007, Coca-Cola purchased Glacéau in an acquisition for $4.2 billion, expanding the company's non-carbonated portfolio. Rohan was appointed Chief Marketing Officer of Coke's still brands, where he stayed until 2009.


title: Rohan Oza

text: As an investor, Oza made an early bet alongside Justin Timberlake on Bai Brands and helped persuade the Dr Pepper Snapple Group to buy the company for $1.7 billion. Additionally, he has backed Smartwater, Bulletproof Coffee and Health-Ade Kombucha.


title: Rohan Oza

text: Oza has also been a recurring guest “shark” for ABC’s "Shark Tank". He serves as an advisor to Impact Network, a non-profit organization bringing quality education to rural Zambians.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: The Mercedes-Benz W116 is a series of flagship luxury sedans produced from September 1972 until 1980. The W116 automobiles were the first Mercedes-Benz models to be officially called S-Class, although earlier sedan models had already unofficially been designated with the letter 'S' – for "Sonderklasse" or "special class." The "W116" was selected European Car of the Year in 1974.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: The 'new' S-class generation development began in 1966, which was only a year after the launch of the W108/09. This was the first Mercedes saloon to feature the brand new corporate styling theme which was to be continued until 1993 when the 190 was discontinued. The design, finalized in December 1969 was a dramatic leap forward, with more masculine lines that combined to create an elegant and sporty character. The basic design concept carried through the themes originally introduced on the R107 SL-Class roadster, especially the front and rear lights. As for the SL, the W116 received the ridged lamp covers which kept dirt accumulation at bay; this was to remain a Mercedes-Benz design theme into the 21st century. The W116 was Friedrich Geiger's last design for Mercedes-Benz; his career had started with the Mercedes-Benz 500K in 1933.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: The car was presented in September 1972. The model range initially included two versions of the M110 engine (straight-six with 2746 cc displacement) — the 280 S (using a Solex carburetor) and the 280 SE (using Bosch D-Jetronic injection), plus the 350 SE, powered by the M116 engine (V8 with 3499 cc displacement). After the 1973 oil crisis, a long-wheelbase 280 SEL was added to the model range.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: The larger 4.5-litre M117 V8 engines were developed in response to the US emission regulations and initially fitted to 350 SL and 350 SLC for the US market in 1972, which was renamed as 450 SL and 450 SLC in 1973. Mercedes-Benz introduced 450 SE and 450 SEL for both US and international markets in 1973. The 4.5-litre models were available with three-speed automatic gearboxes only while the models with smaller 3.5-litre V8 engine could be ordered with four-speed (and later five-speed) manual gearbox. The 450 SE and 450 SEL received a plusher interior with velour or leather seats rather than the checkered cloth of the lesser models. The door cards had the velour or leather inserts.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: The 4.5-litre M117 V8 engines had in most European and international markets, for the US market, and for Swedish amd Australian markets. The 450s received a plusher interior as well, with velour or leather seats rather than the checkered cloth of the lesser models. The door cards were also of a different design with pads being pulled up around the windows.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: The most notable W116 was the high-performance, limited-production 450 SEL 6.9, which was introduced in 1975. This model boasted the largest engine installed in a post-war Mercedes-Benz (and any non-American production automobile) up to that time, and also featured self-leveling hydropneumatic suspension.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: Exclusive to the North American and Japanese markets, 300 SD, the world’s first passenger car with turbocharged diesel engine was introduced in 1978. This particular model was never offered in Europe where diesel engines were well-received and had tax advantages until 1991 when W140 300SD was finally introduced in Europe and international market.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: The 450 SE was named the European Car of the Year in 1974, even though the W116 range was first introduced at the Paris Motor Show in the fall of 1972. The W116 range became the first production car to use an electronic four-wheel multi-channel anti-lock braking system (ABS) from Bosch as an option from 1978 on.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: Production totaled 473,035 units. The W116 was succeeded by the W126 S-Class in 1979. The W116 was sold throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: In 1975, the W116 was upgraded with a new fuel injection system to comply with revised exhaust emission standards in European markets. A slight power reduction was a result of this update. In 1978, a series of engine upgrades restored original performance levels with new fuel injection systems. Initially the early models (1973-1974) of the W116 with the Twin Cam inline 6 used the D-Jetronic fuels injection system with computers and MAP sensor that are both prone to failure after more than 20 years of use. From 1975 onward they used the K-Jetronic mechanical fuel injection system, a less complicated system that proved to be much more reliable in the long run and injectors cost 6x less than the D-jetronic system. The W116 equipped with the K-Jetronic system, used a cast-iron fuel distributor, which can be prone to rust over time if moisture or water is present in the fuel. This was changed to an alloy fuel distributor in the following model W126 and is not subject to corrosion.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: W116 was first model from Mercedes-Benz to feature the hydropneumatic suspension system. While the principle is similar to Citroën’s, Mercedes-Benz made some changes. The hydraulic pump was driven by the timing chain instead of rubber belt for more reliability (Citroën’s system would lead to loss of hydraulic power if belt failed). Mercedes-Benz utilised the hard rubber dampers as temporary dampers in event of hydraulic failure. The height adjustment had a smaller range of height as compared to Citroën (5 cm versus 50 cm). Unlike Citroën, the car did not “sink” to the ground after shutting off the engine, and the driver did not have to wait for the hydraulic power to spool up and lift the car to the operating height.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: The full hydropneumatic suspension system was fitted to the 450 SEL 6.9 as standard. In 1977, the self-levelling rear suspension system was offered for 450 SEL as extra cost option outside the North American market.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: North America was a key market for the W116. The model range for the U.S. market at launch was 280 SE, 450 SE, and 450 SEL. For 1975, 280 S was launched as a response to the 1973 oil crisis. The 6.9 was added in 1977 with the MSRP of $38,230 while 280 S and 450 SE were dropped due to slow sales. 300 SD TURBODIESEL, the world’s first passenger car with turbocharged diesel engine, was launched in the United States and Canada in 1978: the S-Class model with turbocharged diesel engine was exclusive to the North American and Japanese markets until 1991.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: Due to the modifications demanded by the U.S. Government, U.S. Models of the Mercedes-Benz W116 were described by journalists as if a "beautiful car was beaten with the malaise ugly stick."


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: The high-performance 450 SEL 6.9 version of the S-Class was built on its own assembly line by Daimler-Benz in Sindelfingen, Germany and based on the long-wheelbase version of the W116 chassis. The model was generally referred to in the company's literature as the "6.9", to separate it from the regular 450 SEL.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: The 450 SEL 6.9 was first shown to the motoring press at the Geneva Auto Show in 1974 and produced between 1975 and 1981 in extremely limited numbers. It was billed as the flagship of the Mercedes-Benz car line and the successor to Mercedes-Benz's original high-performance sedan, the 300 SEL 6.3.


title: Mercedes-Benz W116

text: In September 2013, a 1979 W116 300 SD was campaigned in the 24 Hours of LeMons at Carolina Motorsports Park, where it completed 166 laps at an average speed of 54.8 MPH. It won the highest prize of the event, the Index of Effluency. Other than mild issues relating to brake and tire wear, no mechanical issues were encountered. After numerous modifications to handling, the car was again run in February 2014 at Barber Motorsports park in Birmingham, AL. It placed 44th, but turned 281 laps at an average pace of 59.6 MPH. One of the key advantages of the 300 SD in long-distance racing is its exceptional fuel economy on track, where it burns just 2.5 GPH (Roughly 18MPG). In July 2014 it placed first in class at Sebring. It is still active in the series.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The institutions of the European Union are the seven principal decision-making bodies of the European Union and the Euratom. They are, as listed in Article 13 of the Treaty on European Union:


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: Institutions are distinct from advisory bodies to the European Union, and agencies of the European Union.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: Most EU institutions were created with the establishment of the European Community in 1958. Much change since then has been in the context of shifting the balance of power away from the council and towards the Parliament. The role of the commission has often been to mediate between the two or tip the balance. However, the commission is becoming more accountable to the Parliament: in 1999 it forced the resignation of the Santer Commission and forced a reshuffle of the proposed Barroso Commission in 2004. The development of the institutions, with incremental changes from treaties and agreements, is testament to the evolution of the Union's structures without one clear "master plan". Some such as Tom Reid of "The Washington Post" said of the institutions that "nobody would have deliberately designed a government as complex and as redundant as the EU".


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The first institutions were created at the start of the 1950s with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), based on the Schuman declaration, between six states. The ECSC was designed to bring the markets of coal and steel, the materials needed to wage war, under the control of a supranational authority with the aim of encouraging peace and economic development. It established the first institutions. At its core was an independent executive called the "High Authority" with supranational powers over the Community. The laws made by the Authority would be observed by a Court of Justice in order to ensure they were upheld and to arbitrate.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: During the negotiations, two supervisory institutions were put forward to counterbalance the power of the High Authority. The "Common Assembly" proposed by Jean Monnet to act as a monitor, counterweight and to add democratic legitimacy was composed of 78 national parliamentarians. The second was the Council of Ministers, pushed by the smaller states also to add an intergovernmental element and harmonise national policies with those of the authority.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: In 1957 the Treaties of Rome established two similar communities, creating a common market (European Economic Community) and promoting atomic energy co-operation (Euratom). The three institutions shared the Court of Justice and the Parliament, however, they had a separate Council and High Authority, which was called the Commission in these Communities. The reason for this is the different relationship between the Commission and Council. At the time the French government was suspicious of the supranational and wanted to limit the powers of the High Authority in the new Communities, giving the council a greater role in checking the executive.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The three communities were later merged in 1967, by the Merger Treaty, into the European Communities. The institutions were carried over from the European Economic Community (making the Commission of that community the direct ancestor of the current Commission). Under the Treaties of Rome, the Common Assembly (which renamed itself the Parliamentary Assembly, and then the European Parliament) was supposed to become elected. However, this was delayed by the council until 1979. Since then it gained more powers via successive treaties. The Maastricht Treaty also gave further powers to the council by giving it a key role in the two new pillars of the EU which were based on intergovernmental principles.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The 2009 Lisbon Treaty brought nearly all policy areas (including the budget) under the co-decision procedure (renamed ""ordinary legislative procedure""), hence increasing the power of the Parliament. The rules for the distribution of seats in the parliament were also changed to a formula system. The High Representative merged with the European Commissioner for External Relations and joined the commission. The appointment of the Commission President became dependent upon the last EU elections. The Council of Ministers adopted more qualified majority voting and the European Council was made a distinct institution with a permanent president. The Court of Justice had some minor renaming and adjustments. In addition, the central bank became a full institution.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: There are three political institutions which hold the executive and legislative power of the Union. The Council of the European Union represents governments, the Parliament represents citizens and the Commission represents the European interest. Essentially, the Council of the European Union, Parliament or another party place a request for legislation to the commission. The Commission then drafts this and presents it to the Parliament and the Council of the European Union, where in most cases both must give their assent. Although the exact nature of this depends upon the legislative procedure in use, once it is approved and signed by both bodies it becomes law. The commission's duty is to ensure it is implemented by dealing with the day-to-day running of the Union and taking others to Court if they fail to comply.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The "European Parliament" (EP) shares the legislative and budgetary authority of the Union with the Council of the European Union (of relevant national government ministers). Its 705 members are elected every five years by universal suffrage and sit according to political allegiance. They represent nearly 500 million citizens (the world's second largest democratic electorate) and form the only directly elected body in the Union. Despite forming one of the two legislative chambers of the Union, it has weaker powers than the Council in some sensitive areas, and does not have legislative initiative. It does, however, have powers over the Commission which the Council does not. It has been said that its democratic nature and growing powers have made it one of the most powerful legislatures in the world.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The Parliament's President (its speaker) is Roberta Metsola (European People's Party), who was elected from the Parliament's members in 2022.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The "European Council" is the group of heads of state or government of the EU member states. It meets four times a year to define the Union's policy agenda and give impetus to integration. The President of the European Council is the person responsible for chairing and driving forward the work of the institution, which has been described as the highest political body of the European Union.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The "Council of the European Union" (informally known as the "Council of Ministers" or just the "Council") is a body holding legislative and some limited executive powers and is thus the main decision-making body of the Union. Its Presidency rotates between the states every six months, but every three Presidencies now cooperate on a common programme. This body is separate from the European Council, which is a similar body, but is composed of national leaders.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The council is composed of twenty-seven national ministers (one per state). However the Council meets in various forms depending upon the topic. For example, if agriculture is being discussed, the council will be composed of each national minister for agriculture. They represent their governments and are accountable to their national political systems. Votes are taken either by majority or unanimity with votes allocated according to population. In these various forms they share the legislative and budgetary power of the Parliament, and also lead the Common Foreign and Security Policy.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The "European Commission" (EC) is the executive arm of the Union. It is a body composed of one appointee from each state, currently twenty-seven, but is designed to be independent of national interests. The body is responsible for drafting all law of the European Union and has the ability to propose new laws (bills). It also deals with the day-to-day running of the Union and has the duty of upholding the law and treaties (in this role it is known as the "Guardian of the Treaties").


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The commission is led by a President who is nominated by the council (in practice the European Council) and approved by Parliament. The remaining 26 Commissioners are nominated by member states, in consultation with the President, and have their portfolios assigned by the President. The Council then adopts this list of nominee-Commissioners. The council's adoption of the commission is not an area which requires the decision to be unanimous; their acceptance is arrived at according to the rules for qualified majority voting. The European Parliament then interviews and casts its vote upon the Commissioners. The interviews of individual nominees are conducted separately, in contrast to Parliament's vote of approval which must be cast on the commission as a whole without the ability to accept or reject individual Commissioners. Once approval has been obtained from the Parliament, the Commissioners can take office. The current President is Ursula von der Leyen (EPP); her commission was elected in 2019.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ( or ""CJUE""; Latin: Curia) is the judicial branch of the European Union (EU) and is responsible for interpreting EU law and treaties.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The "European Central Bank" (ECB) is the only among the 7 institutions, which also is an international entity with treaty capability in its own right. It is at the centre of the European System of Central Banks which comprises all EU national banks. The bank is governed by a board of national bank governors and a President. It is also the central bank for the eurozone (the states which have adopted the euro) and thus controls monetary policy in that area with an agenda to maintain price stability.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The "European Court of Auditors" (ECA), despite its name, has no judicial powers. It ensures that taxpayer funds from the budget of the European Union have been correctly spent. The court provides an audit report for each financial year to the Council and Parliament. The Parliament uses this to decide whether to approve the commission's handling of the budget. The Court also gives opinions and proposals on financial legislation and anti-fraud actions.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The Court of Auditors was set up in 1975. It was created as an independent institution due to the sensitivity of the issue of fraud in the Union (the anti-fraud agency, OLAF, is also built on its independence). It is composed of one member from each state appointed by the Council every six years. Every three years one of them is elected as the president of the court, who is currently Klaus-Heiner Lehne.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: There are a number of types of legislation which can be passed. The strongest is a regulation, an act or law which is directly applicable in its entirety. Then there are directives which bind members to certain goals which they must achieve. They do this through their own laws and hence have room to manoeuvre in deciding upon them. A decision is an instrument which is focused at a particular person/group and is directly applicable. Institutions may also issue recommendations and opinions which are merely non-binding declarations.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The ordinary legislative procedure is used in nearly all policy areas and provides an equal footing between the two bodies. Under the procedure, the Commission presents a proposal to Parliament and the council. They then send amendments to the Council which can either adopt the text with those amendments or send back a "common position". That proposal may either be approved or further amendments may be tabled by the Parliament. If the Council does not approve those, then a "Conciliation Committee" is formed. The committee is composed of the Council members plus an equal number of MEPs who seek to agree a common position. Once a position is agreed, it has to be approved by Parliament again by an absolute majority. There are other special procedures used in sensitive areas which reduce the power of Parliament.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: While the EU's system of governance is largely unique, elements can be compared to other models. One general observation on the nature of the distribution of powers would be that the EU resembles the federalism of Germany. There, powers are predominantly shared (states can exercise federal powers where the federation has not already exercised them) between the levels of government, and the states participate strongly with decision-making at the federal level. This is in contrast with other federations, for example the United States, where powers are more clearly divided between the levels of government, and the states have little say in federal decision-making.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The EU's institutional set up is also somewhat similar to the government of Switzerland (which, although in Europe, is not an EU member state). The Swiss consensus-driven system is seen as successfully uniting a state divided by language and religion, although the EU was not directly modelled on the Swiss system despite bearing a number of similarities. The European Commission has similarities to the Swiss Federal Council in that both have all-party representation and are appointed on the basis of nationality rather than popularity. The President of the Federal Council rotates between its members each year, in a fashion similar to that of the EU's Council Presidency. Due to this system of presidency Swiss leaders, like those of the EU, are relatively unknown with national politics viewed as somewhat technocratic resulting in low voter turnout, in a similar fashion to that of the European Parliament. Other parallels include the jealously guarded powers of states, the considerable level of translation and the choice of a lesser city as the capital.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: Furthermore, executive power in the EU isn't concentrated in a single institution. It becomes clearer under the Lisbon Treaty with the division of the European Council as a distinct institution with a fixed President. This arrangement has been compared to the dual executive system found in the French republic where there is a President (the Council President) and Prime Minister (the Commission President). However, unlike the French model, the Council President does not hold formal powers such as the ability to directly appoint and sack the other, or the ability to dissolve Parliament. Hence while the Council President may have prestige, it would lack power and while the Commission President would have power, it would lack the prestige of the former.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The nature of the European Parliament is better compared with the United States House of Representatives than with the national parliaments of the European Union. This is notable in terms of the committees being of greater size and power, political parties being very decentralised and it being separated from the executive branch (most national governments operate under a parliamentary system). A difference from all other parliaments is the absence of a Parliamentary legislative initiative. However, given that in most national parliaments initiatives not backed by the executive rarely succeed the value of this difference is in question. Equally, its independence and power means that the European Parliament has an unusually high success rate for its amendments in comparison to national parliaments; 80% average and 30% for controversial proposals.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The composition of the council can only be compared with the quite unique and unusual composition of the German upper house, the Bundesrat. Membership of the Bundesrat is limited to members of the governments of the states of Germany and can be recalled by those governments in the same manner as the EU's Council. They retain their state role while sitting in the Bundesrat and their term ends when they are recalled by their state governments (who are solely responsible for their appointment) or they cease to sit in their state government. Hence they also are not elected at the same time and the body as a whole cannot be dissolved like most parliaments. As government representatives, members do not vote as individual members but in state blocks, rather than political alignment, to their state governments' agreed line. Each state has unequal voting powers based on population, with an absolute majority required for decisions. Likewise, the presidency rotates equally between members, though each year rather than every six months like in the EU Council. However, unlike the EU's Council, the Bundesrat does not vary its composition depending on the topic being discussed. They both bear similar criticisms, because of the interference of executives in the legislative process.


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: The institutions are not concentrated in a single capital city; instead, their headquarters are spread across four cities: Brussels, Luxembourg, Strasbourg and Frankfurt. The current arrangement was approved in 1992 and attached to the Treaty of Amsterdam. The treaty states that the Commission and Council would be based in Brussels, the Courts in Luxembourg City, and the Parliament in Strasbourg. However some departments of the commission and meetings of the Council take place in Luxembourg City, while the Parliament has its committees and some sessions in Brussels and its secretariat in Luxembourg City. Of the new institutions, the Central Bank is based in Frankfurt, while the European Council is based in Brussels (but has some extraordinary meetings elsewhere).


title: Institutions of the European Union

text: Brussels' hosting of institutions has made it a major centre for the EU. Together with NATO it has attracted more journalists and ambassadors than Washington, D.C. However the three-city agreement has been criticised, notably concerning the Parliament, due to the large number of people that move between the cities. The European Green Party estimated that the arrangement costs 200 million euro and 20,268 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Brussels is preferred by some due to the presence of other institutions and other groups whereas Strasbourg is supported due to its historical importance to European unity.


title: Collette Wolfe

text: Collette Wolfe (born April 4, 1980) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles in films such as "Observe and Report" (2009), "Hot Tub Time Machine" (2010), "Young Adult" (2011), and "Interstellar" (2014).


title: Collette Wolfe

text: Wolfe was raised in Virginia, where she was the King George Fall Festival Pageant Queen of 1997. She graduated from King George High School and later attended Virginia Tech.


title: Collette Wolfe

text: Wolfe made her film debut in "The Foot Fist Way" (2006). She later starred as Nell in "Observe and Report" (2009). In September 2009, she was cast as Jill in the short-lived NBC sitcom "100 Questions", succeeding Joy Suprano, who played the role in the pilot episode. She had a recurring role in the ABC series "Cougar Town". In 2011, she signed up for the NBC pilot "Lovelives", but the series was not picked up. She co-starred in the never-aired 2013 mid-season replacement (four episodes filmed) "Next Caller". In June 2015, she was cast in the recurring role of improv teacher Dorothy Durwood in the FXX sitcom "You're the Worst". In 2016, she was cast in a recurring role on TNT's "Good Behavior".


title: Collette Wolfe

text: Wolfe was in a long-term relationship, from at least 2009, with writer-director Jody Hill, in whose movies "Observe and Report" and "The Foot Fist Way" she appears. They married in 2012 in Cabo San Lucas, but have since divorced.


title: Japan during World War I

text: Japan participated in World War I from 1914 to 1918 in an alliance with Entente Powers and played an important role in securing the sea lanes in the West Pacific and Indian Oceans against the Imperial German Navy as a member of the Allies. Politically, the Japanese Empire seized the opportunity to expand its sphere of influence in China, and to gain recognition as a great power in postwar geopolitics.


title: Japan during World War I

text: Japan's military, taking advantage of the great distances and Imperial Germany's preoccupation with the war in Europe, seized German possessions in the Pacific and East Asia, but there was no large-scale mobilization of the economy. Foreign Minister Katō Takaaki and Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu wanted to use the opportunity to expand Japanese influence in China. They enlisted Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), then in exile in Japan, but they had little success. The Imperial Japanese Navy, a nearly autonomous bureaucratic institution, made its own decision to undertake expansion in the Pacific area. It captured Germany's Micronesian territories north of the equator, and ruled the islands until they were transitioned to civilian control in 1921. The operation gave the Navy a rationale for enlarging its budget to double the Army budget and expanding the fleet. The Navy then gained significant political influence over national and international affairs.


title: Japan during World War I

text: In the first week of World War I Japan proposed to the United Kingdom, that Japan would enter the war if it could take Germany's Pacific territories. On 7 August 1914, the British government officially asked Japan for assistance in destroying the Imperial German Navy in and around Chinese waters. Japan sent Germany an ultimatum on 15 August 1914, which went unanswered; Japan then formally declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914 in the name of the Emperor Taishō. As Vienna refused to withdraw the Austro-Hungarian cruiser from Tsingtao (Qingdao), Japan declared war on Austria-Hungary, too, on 25 August 1914.


title: Japan during World War I

text: Japanese forces quickly occupied German-leased territories in the Far East. On 2 September 1914, Japanese forces landed on China's Shandong province and surrounded the German settlement at Tsingtao. During October, acting virtually independently of the civil government, the Imperial Japanese Navy seized several of Germany's island colonies in the Pacific - the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall Islands - with virtually no resistance as while they were part of German New Guinea the islands were administered by German colonial officers with only small police forces of local Pacific islanders to defend them. There were small clashes between the defenders and the landing Japanese troops, but this did little to stop the Japanese takeover. The Japanese Navy conducted the world's first naval-launched air raids against German-held land targets in Shandong province and ships in Qiaozhou Bay from the seaplane-carrier "Wakamiya". On 6 September 1914 a seaplane launched by "Wakamiya" unsuccessfully attacked the Austro-Hungarian cruiser "Kaiserin Elisabeth" and the German gunboat "Jaguar" with bombs.


title: Japan during World War I

text: In September 1914, by request of the Imperial Japanese Army, the Japanese Red Cross Society put together three squads, each composed of one surgeon and twenty nurses, which were dispatched to Europe on a five-month assignment. The teams left Japan between October and December 1914 and were assigned to Petrograd, Paris, and Southampton. The arrival of these nurses received wide press coverage, and their host countries subsequently asked for these teams to extend their assignment to fifteen months.


title: Japan during World War I

text: Japan also sent its battle cruiser HIJMS "Ibuki" to assist with the protection of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) troop convoy (which included contingents from New Zealand) as it sailed from Western Australian to Egypt on 1 November 1914.


title: Japan during World War I

text: With Japan's European allies heavily involved in the war in Europe, Japan sought to further consolidate its position in China by presenting the Twenty-One Demands to Chinese President Yuan Shikai in January 1915. If achieved, the Twenty-One Demands would have essentially reduced China to a Japanese protectorate, and at the expense of numerous privileges already enjoyed by the European powers in their respective spheres of influence within China. In the face of slow negotiations with the Chinese government, widespread and increasing anti-Japanese sentiments, and international condemnation (particularly from the United States), Japan withdrew the final group of demands, and a treaty was signed by China on 25 May 1915.


title: Japan during World War I

text: Throughout 1915–1916, German efforts to negotiate a separate peace with Japan failed. On 3 July 1916, Japan and Russia signed a treaty whereby each pledged not to make a separate peace with Germany, and agreed to consultation and common action should the territory or interests of each in China be threatened by an outside third party. Although Russia had a claim to Chinese territory by the Kyakhta and other treaties, Japan discouraged Russia from annexing Heilongjiang and began to slowly push the other powers out, such as the Germans in the Twenty-One Demands (1915). The delineating line between Russian (north) and Japanese (south) spheres of influences in China was the Chinese Eastern Railway.


title: Japan during World War I

text: In February 1915, marines from the Imperial Japanese Navy ships based in Singapore helped suppress a mutiny by Indian troops against the British government.


title: Japan during World War I

text: On 18 December 1916 the British Admiralty again requested naval assistance from Japan. The new Japanese cabinet under Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake was more favorably inclined to provide military assistance, provided that the British government back Japan's territorial claims to the newly acquired German possessions in the South Pacific and Shandong. When Germany announced the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February 1917, the British government agreed.


title: Japan during World War I

text: Two of the four cruisers of the First Special Squadron at Singapore were sent to Cape Town, South Africa, and four destroyers were sent to the Mediterranean for basing out of Malta, headquarters of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet. Rear-Admiral Kōzō Satō on the cruiser and 10th and 11th destroyer units (eight destroyers) arrived in Malta on 13 April 1917 via Colombo and Port Said. Eventually this Second Special Squadron totaled three cruisers ("Akashi", , , 14 destroyers (8 , 4 , 2 ex-British "Acorn"-class), 2 sloops, 1 tender ("Kanto").


title: Japan during World War I

text: The 17 ships of Second Special Squadron carried out escort duties for troop transports and anti-submarine operations against attacks from German and Austro-Hungarian submarines operating from bases along the eastern Adriatic, the Aegean Sea, from Constantinople, thus securing the vital eastern Mediterranean sea route between the Suez Canal and Marseilles, France.


title: Japan during World War I

text: The Japanese squadron made a total of 348 escort sorties from Malta, escorting 788 ships containing around 700,000 soldiers, thus contributing greatly to the war effort, for a total loss of 72 Japanese sailors killed in action. A total of 7,075 people were rescued by the Japanese from damaged and sinking ships. This included the rescue by the destroyers "Matsu" and "Sakaki" of nearly 3000 persons from the troopship which was hit by a German torpedo on 4 May 1917. No Japanese ships were lost during the deployment but on 11 June 1917 "Sakaki" was hit by a torpedo from Austro-Hungarian submarine U-27 off Crete; 59 Japanese sailors died.


title: Japan during World War I

text: With the American entry into World War I on 6 April 1917, the United States and Japan found themselves on the same side, despite their increasingly acrimonious relations over China and competition for influence in the Pacific. This led to the Lansing–Ishii Agreement of 2 November 1917 to help reduce tensions.


title: Japan during World War I

text: The British under Admiral George Alexander Ballard gave strong praise to the high operational rate of the Japanese squadron, and its quick response to all British requests. In return, the Japanese absorbed British anti-submarine warfare techniques and technologies and gained invaluable operational experience. After the end of the war, the Japanese Navy brought back seven German submarines as prizes of war, which greatly contributed to future Japanese submarine design and development.


title: Japan during World War I

text: In 1918, Japan continued to extend its influence and privileges in China via the Nishihara Loans. Following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Japan and the United States sent forces to Siberia in 1918 to bolster the armies of the White movement leader Admiral Alexander Kolchak against the Bolshevik Red Army. In this Siberian Intervention, the Imperial Japanese Army initially planned to send more than 70,000 troops to occupy Siberia as far west as Lake Baikal. The plan was scaled back considerably due to opposition from the United States.


title: Japan during World War I

text: Toward the end of the war, Japan increasingly filled orders for needed war material for its European allies. The wartime boom helped to diversify the country's industry, increase its exports, and transform Japan from a debtor to a creditor nation for the first time. Exports quadrupled from 1913 to 1918. The massive capital influx into Japan and the subsequent industrial boom led to rapid inflation. In August 1918, rice riots caused by this inflation erupted in towns and cities throughout Japan.


title: Japan during World War I

text: The year 1919 saw Japan's representative Saionji Kinmochi sitting alongside the "Big Four" (Lloyd George, Wilson, Clemenceau, Orlando) leaders at the Paris Peace Conference. Tokyo gained a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations, and the Paris Peace Conference confirmed the transfer to Japan of Germany's rights in Shandong. Similarly, Germany's more northerly Pacific islands came under a Japanese mandate, called the South Seas Mandate. During the conference, the Japanese delegation proposed that a "racial equality clause" be attached to the Covenant of the League of Nations, similar to the covenant's religious equality clause; however, this proposal was ultimately unsuccessful despite a majority of delegations voting for it. This rejection of the proposal has been seen by some historians as an event which contributed to Japan turning away from the Western world in the years after World War I. Japan, by now a great power, continued to expand its influence after the war.


title: Japan during World War I

text: The prosperity brought on by World War I did not last. Although Japan's light industry had secured a share of the world market, Japan returned to debtor-nation status soon after the end of the war. The ease of Japan’s victory, the negative impact of the Shōwa recession in 1926, and internal political instabilities helped contribute to the rise of Japanese militarism in the late 1920s to 1930s.


title: Trinidad Scorpion Butch T pepper

text: The Trinidad Scorpion Butch T is a "Capsicum chinense" cultivar that is among the hottest peppers in the world. It is indigenous to Trinidad and Tobago. It was named by Neil Smith from The Hippy Seed Company, after he got the seeds originally from Butch Taylor (the owner of Zydeco Farms in Woodville/Crosby, Mississippi, and a hot sauce company) who is responsible for propagating the pepper's seeds. The "scorpion" peppers are referred to as such because the pointed end of the pepper is said to resemble a scorpion's stinger.


title: Trinidad Scorpion Butch T pepper

text: The Trinidad scorpion 'Butch T' pepper was, for three years, ranked the most pungent ("hot") pepper in the world according to "Guinness World Records". A laboratory test conducted in March 2011 measured a specimen at 1,463,700 Scoville heat units, officially ranking it the hottest pepper in the world at the time. One possible secret to the chili's heat, according to a cultivator of the pepper, is fertilizing the soil with the liquid runoff of a worm farm. In August 2017, Guinness World Records recognized the Carolina Reaper as the hottest pepper in the world, at 1,641,183 SHU.


title: Atomism

text: Atomism (from Greek , "atomon", i.e. "uncuttable, indivisible") is a natural philosophy proposing that the physical universe is composed of fundamental indivisible components known as atoms.


title: Atomism

text: References to the concept of atomism and its atoms appeared in both ancient Greek and ancient Indian philosophical traditions. Leucippus is the earliest figure whose commitment to atomism is well attested and he is usually credited with inventing atomism. He and other ancient Greek atomists theorized that nature consists of two fundamental principles: "atom" and "void". Clusters of different shapes, arrangements, and positions give rise to the various macroscopic substances in the world.


title: Atomism

text: The particles of chemical matter for which chemists and other natural philosophers of the early 19th century found experimental evidence were thought to be indivisible, and therefore were given by John Dalton the name "atom", long used by the atomist philosophy. Although the connection to historical atomism is at best tenuous, elementary particles have become a modern analogue of philosophical atoms.


title: Atomism

text: Philosophical atomism is a reductive argument, proposing not only that everything is composed of atoms and void, but that nothing they compose really exists: the only things that really exist are atoms ricocheting off each other mechanistically in an otherwise empty void. Atomism stands in contrast to a substance theory wherein a prime material continuum remains qualitatively invariant under division (for example, the ratio of the four classical elements would be the same in any portion of a homogeneous material).


title: Atomism

text: Indian Buddhists, such as Dharmakirti ( 6th or 7th century) and others, developed distinctive theories of atomism, for example, involving momentary (instantaneous) atoms ("kalapa"s) that flash in and out of existence.


title: Atomism

text: In the 5th century BC, Leucippus and his pupil Democritus proposed that all matter was composed of small indivisible particles which they called "atoms". Nothing whatsoever is known about Leucippus except that he was the teacher of Democritus. Democritus, by contrast, wrote prolifically, producing over eighty known treatises, none of which have survived to the present day complete. However, a massive number of fragments and quotations of his writings have survived. These are the main source of information on his teachings about atoms. Democritus's argument for the existence of atoms hinged on the idea that it is impossible to keep dividing matter infinitely - and that matter must therefore be made up of extremely tiny particles. The atomistic theory aimed to remove the "distinction which the Eleatic school drew between the Absolute, or the only real existence, and the world of change around us."


title: Atomism

text: Democritus believed that atoms are too small for human senses to detect, that they are infinitely many, that they come in infinitely many varieties, and that they have always existed. They float in a vacuum, which Democritus called the "void", and they vary in form, order, and posture. Some atoms, he maintained, are convex, others concave, some shaped like hooks, and others like eyes. They are constantly moving and colliding into each other. Democritus wrote that atoms and void are the only things that exist and that all other things are merely said to exist by social convention. The objects humans see in everyday life are composed of many atoms united by random collisions and their forms and materials are determined by what kinds of atom make them up. Likewise, human perceptions are caused by atoms as well. Bitterness is caused by small, angular, jagged atoms passing across the tongue; whereas sweetness is caused by larger, smoother, more rounded atoms passing across the tongue.


title: Atomism

text: Previously, Parmenides had denied the existence of motion, change and void. He believed all existence to be a single, all-encompassing and unchanging mass (a concept known as monism), and that change and motion were mere illusions. He explicitly rejected sensory experience as the path to an understanding of the universe and instead used purely abstract reasoning. He believed there is no such thing as void, equating it with non-being. This in turn meant that motion is impossible, because there is no void to move into. Parmenides doesn't mention or explicitly deny the existence of the void, stating instead that what is not does not exist. He also wrote all that must be an indivisible unity, for if it were manifold, then there would have to be a void that could divide it. Finally, he stated that the all encompassing Unity is unchanging, for the Unity already encompasses all that is and can be.


title: Atomism

text: Democritus accepted most of Parmenides' arguments, except for the idea that change is an illusion. He believed change was real, and if it was not then at least the illusion had to be explained. He thus supported the concept of void, and stated that the universe is made up of many Parmenidean entities that move around in the void. The void is infinite and provides the space in which the atoms can pack or scatter differently. The different possible packings and scatterings within the void make up the shifting outlines and bulk of the objects that organisms feel, see, eat, hear, smell, and taste. While organisms may feel hot or cold, hot and cold actually have no real existence. They are simply sensations produced in organisms by the different packings and scatterings of the atoms in the void that compose the object that organisms sense as being "hot" or "cold".


title: Atomism

text: The work of Democritus survives only in secondhand reports, some of which are unreliable or conflicting. Much of the best evidence of Democritus' theory of atomism is reported by Aristotle (384–322 BCE) in his discussions of Democritus' and Plato's contrasting views on the types of indivisibles composing the natural world.


title: Atomism

text: Plato ( – BCE), if he had been familiar with the atomism of Democritus, would have objected to its mechanistic materialism. He argued that atoms just crashing into other atoms could never produce the beauty and form of the world. In Plato's "Timaeus" the character of Timeaus insisted that the cosmos was not eternal but was created, although its creator framed it after an eternal, unchanging model.


title: Atomism

text: One part of that creation were the four simple bodies of fire, air, water, and earth. But Plato did not consider these corpuscles to be the most basic level of reality, for in his view they were made up of an unchanging level of reality, which was mathematical. These simple bodies were geometric solids, the faces of which were, in turn, made up of triangles. The square faces of the cube were each made up of four isosceles right-angled triangles and the triangular faces of the tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron were each made up of six right-angled triangles.


title: Atomism

text: Plato postulated the geometric structure of the simple bodies of the four elements as summarized in the adjacent table. The cube, with its flat base and stability, was assigned to earth; the tetrahedron was assigned to fire because its penetrating points and sharp edges made it mobile. The points and edges of the octahedron and icosahedron were blunter and so these less mobile bodies were assigned to air and water. Since the simple bodies could be decomposed into triangles, and the triangles reassembled into atoms of different elements, Plato's model offered a plausible account of changes among the primary substances.


title: Atomism

text: Sometime before 330 BC Aristotle asserted that the elements of fire, air, earth, and water were not made of atoms, but were continuous. Aristotle considered the existence of a void, which was required by atomic theories, to violate physical principles. Change took place not by the rearrangement of atoms to make new structures, but by transformation of matter from what it was in potential to a new actuality. A piece of wet clay, when acted upon by a potter, takes on its potential to be an actual drinking mug. Aristotle has often been criticized for rejecting atomism, but in ancient Greece the atomic theories of Democritus remained "pure speculations, incapable of being put to any experimental test".


title: Atomism

text: Aristotle theorized "minima naturalia" as the smallest parts into which a homogeneous natural substance (e.g., flesh, bone, or wood) could be divided and still retain its essential character. Unlike the atomism of Democritus, these Aristotelian "natural minima" were not conceptualized as physically indivisible.


title: Atomism

text: Instead, Aristotle's concept was rooted in his hylomorphic worldview, which held that every physical thing is a compound of matter (Greek "hyle") and of an immaterial substantial form (Greek "morphe") that imparts its essential nature and structure. For instance, a rubber ball - for a hylomorphist like Aristotle - would be rubber (matter) structured by spherical shape (form).


title: Atomism

text: Aristotle's intuition was that there is some smallest size beyond which matter could no longer be structured as flesh, or bone, or wood, or some other such organic substance that for Aristotle (living before the invention of the microscope) could be considered homogeneous. For instance, if flesh were divided beyond its natural minimum, what would be left might be a large amount of the element water, and smaller amounts of the other elements. But whatever water or other elements were left, they would no longer have the "nature" of flesh: in hylomorphic terms, they would no longer be matter structured by the form of flesh; instead the remaining water, e.g., would be matter structured by the form of water, not by the form of flesh.


title: Atomism

text: Epicurus (341–270 BCE) studied atomism with Nausiphanes who had been a student of Democritus. Although Epicurus was certain of the existence of atoms and the void, he was less sure we could adequately explain specific natural phenomena such as earthquakes, lightning, comets, or the phases of the Moon. Few of Epicurus' writings survive, and those that do reflect his interest in applying Democritus' theories to assist people in taking responsibility for themselves and for their own happiness—since he held there are no gods around that can help them. (Epicurus regarded the role of gods as exemplifying moral ideals.)


title: Atomism

text: Epicurus' ideas re-appear in the works of his Roman follower Lucretius ( 99 BC – 55 BC), who wrote "On the Nature of Things". This Classical Latin scientific work in poetic form illustrates several segments of Epicurean theory on how the universe came into its current stage; it shows that the phenomena we perceive are actually composite forms. The atoms and the void are eternal and in constant motion. Atomic collisions create objects, which are still composed of the same eternal atoms whose motion for a while is incorporated into the created entity. Lucretius also explains human sensations and meteorological phenomena in terms of atomic motion.


title: Atomism

text: Some later philosophers attributed the idea that man created gods and that gods did not create man to Democritus. For example, Sextus Empiricus noted:


title: Atomism

text: Three hundred years after Epicurus, Lucretius in his epic poem "On the Nature of Things" would depict him as the hero who crushed the monster Religion through educating the people in what was possible in atoms and what was "not" possible in atoms. However, Epicurus expressed a non-aggressive attitude characterized by his statement: "The man who best knows how to meet external threats makes into one family all the creatures he can; and those he can not, he at any rate does not treat as aliens; and where he finds even this impossible, he avoids all dealings, and, so far as is advantageous, excludes them from his life."


title: Atomism

text: In ancient Indian philosophy, preliminary instances of atomism are found in the works of Vedic sage Aruni, who lived in the 8th century BCE, especially his proposition that "particles too small to be seen mass together into the substances and objects of experience" known as "kaṇa". Although "kana" refers to "particles" not atoms (paramanu), Some scholars such as Hermann Jacobi and Randall Collins have compared Aruni to Thales of Miletus in their scientific methodology, calling them both as "primitive physicists" or "proto-materialist thinkers". Later, the Charvaka, and Ajivika schools of atomism originated as early as the 7th century BCE. Bhattacharya posits that Charvaka may have been one of several atheistic, materialist schools that existed in ancient India.Kanada founded the Vaisheshika school of Indian philosophy that also represents the earliest Indian natural philosophy. The Nyaya and Vaisheshika schools developed theories on how "kaṇa"s combined into more complex objects.


title: Atomism

text: Several of these doctrines of atomism are, in some respects, "suggestively similar" to that of Democritus. McEvilley (2002) assumes that such similarities are due to extensive cultural contact and diffusion, probably in both directions.


title: Atomism

text: The Nyaya–Vaisesika school developed one of the earliest forms of atomism; scholars date the Nyaya and Vaisesika texts from the 9th to 4th centuries BCE. Vaisesika atomists posited the four elemental atom types, but in Vaisesika physics atoms had 25 different possible qualities, divided between general extensive properties and specific (intensive) properties. The Nyaya–Vaisesika atomists had elaborate theories of how atoms combine. In Vaisesika atomism, atoms first combine in pairs (dyads), and then group into trios of pairs (triads), which are the smallest visible units of matter.


title: Atomism

text: The Buddhist atomists had very qualitative, Aristotelian-style atomic theory. According to ancient Buddhist atomism, which probably began developing before the 4th century BCE, there are four kinds of atoms, corresponding to the standard elements. Each of these elements has a specific property, such as solidity or motion, and performs a specific function in mixtures, such as providing support or causing growth. Like the Hindus, the Buddhists were able to integrate a theory of atomism with their theological presuppositions. Later Indian Buddhist philosophers, such as Dharmakirti and Dignāga, considered atoms to be point-sized, durationless, and made of energy.


title: Atomism

text: Some of the canonical texts make reference to matter and atoms (called "paramāṇu", a term already used in Yajnavalkya, Lalitha Sahasranama and Yoga Sutra), including "Pancastikayasara", "Kalpasutra" and "Tattvarthasutra". The Jains envisioned the world as consisting wholly of atoms, except for souls. Atoms were considered as the basic building blocks of all matter. Each atom had "one kind of taste, one smell, one color, and two kinds of touch", though it is unclear what was meant by "kind of touch". Atoms can exist in one of two states: subtle, in which case they can fit in infinitesimally small spaces, and gross, in which case they have extension and occupy a finite space. The texts also give "detailed theories" of how atoms could combine, react, vibrate, move, and perform other actions, all of which were thoroughly deterministic.


title: Atomism

text: Ajivika is a "Nastika" school of thought whose metaphysics included a theory of atoms or atomism which was later adapted in the Vaiśeṣika school, which postulated that all objects in the physical universe are reducible to "paramāṇu" (atoms), and one's experiences are derived from the interplay of substance (a function of atoms, their number and their spatial arrangements), quality, activity, commonness, particularity and inherence. Everything was composed of atoms, qualities emerged from aggregates of atoms, but the aggregation and nature of these atoms was predetermined by cosmic forces. The school founder's traditional name "Kanada" means 'atom eater', and he is known for developing the foundations of an atomistic approach to physics and philosophy in the Sanskrit text "Vaiśeṣika Sūtra". His text is also known as "Kanada Sutras", or Aphorisms of Kanada.


title: Atomism

text: Medieval Buddhist atomism, flourishing in ca. the 7th century, was very different from the atomist doctrines taught in early Buddhism. Medieval Buddhist philosophers Dharmakirti and Dignāga considered atoms to be point-sized, durationless, and made of energy. In discussing the two systems, Fyodor Shcherbatskoy (1930) stresses their commonality, the postulate of "absolute qualities" ("guna-dharma") underlying all empirical phenomena.


title: Atomism

text: Still later, the Abhidhammattha-sangaha, a text dated to the 11th or 12th century, postulates the existence of "rupa-kalapa", imagined as the smallest units of the physical world, of varying elementary composition. Invisible under normal circumstances, the "rupa-kalapa" are said to become visible as a result of meditative samadhi.


title: Atomism

text: Atomistic philosophies are found very early in Islamic philosophy and was influenced by earlier Greek and to some extent Indian philosophy. Like both the Greek and Indian versions, Islamic atomism was a charged topic that had the potential for conflict with the prevalent religious orthodoxy, but it was instead more often favoured by orthodox Islamic theologians. It was such a fertile and flexible idea that, as in Greece and India, it flourished in some leading schools of Islamic thought.


title: Atomism

text: The most successful form of Islamic atomism was in the Asharite school of Islamic theology, most notably in the work of the theologian al-Ghazali (1058–1111). In Asharite atomism, atoms are the only perpetual, material things in existence, and all else in the world is "accidental" meaning something that lasts for only an instant. Nothing accidental can be the cause of anything else, except perception, as it exists for a moment. Contingent events are not subject to natural physical causes, but are the direct result of God's constant intervention, without which nothing could happen. Thus nature is completely dependent on God, which meshes with other Asharite Islamic ideas on causation, or the lack thereof (Gardet 2001). Al-Ghazali also used the theory to support his theory of occasionalism. In a sense, the Asharite theory of atomism has far more in common with Indian atomism than it does with Greek atomism.


title: Atomism

text: Other traditions in Islam rejected the atomism of the Asharites and expounded on many Greek texts, especially those of Aristotle. An active school of philosophers in Al-Andalus, including the noted commentator Averroes (1126–1198 CE) explicitly rejected the thought of al-Ghazali and turned to an extensive evaluation of the thought of Aristotle. Averroes commented in detail on most of the works of Aristotle and his commentaries became very influential in Jewish and Christian scholastic thought.


title: Atomism

text: While Aristotelian philosophy eclipsed the importance of the atomists in late Roman and medieval Europe, their work was still preserved and exposited through commentaries on the works of Aristotle. In the 2nd century, Galen (AD 129–216) presented extensive discussions of the Greek atomists, especially Epicurus, in his Aristotle commentaries. According to historian of atomism Joshua Gregory, there was no serious work done with atomism from the time of Galen until Isaac Beeckman, Gassendi and Descartes resurrected it in the 17th century; "the gap between these two 'modern naturalists' and the ancient Atomists marked "the exile of the atom" and "it is universally admitted that the Middle Ages had abandoned Atomism, and virtually lost it."


title: Atomism

text: However, although the ancient atomists' works were unavailable, Scholastic thinkers still had Aristotle's critiques of atomism. In medieval universities there were expressions of atomism. For example, in the 14th century Nicholas of Autrecourt considered that matter, space, and time were all made up of indivisible atoms, points, and instants and that all generation and corruption took place by the rearrangement of material atoms. The similarities of his ideas with those of al-Ghazali suggest that Nicholas may have been familiar with Ghazali's work, perhaps through Averroes' refutation of it (Marmara, 1973–74).


title: Atomism

text: Although the atomism of Epicurus had fallen out of favor in the centuries of Scholasticism, the "minima naturalia" of Aristotelianism received extensive consideration. Speculation on "minima naturalia" provided philosophical background for the mechanistic philosophy of early modern thinkers such as Descartes, and for the alchemical works of Geber and Daniel Sennert, who in turn influenced the corpuscularian alchemist Robert Boyle, one of the founders of modern chemistry.


title: Atomism

text: A chief theme in late Roman and Scholastic commentary on this concept is reconciling "minima naturalia" with the general Aristotelian principle of infinite divisibility. Commentators like John Philoponus and Thomas Aquinas reconciled these aspects of Aristotle's thought by distinguishing between mathematical and "natural" divisibility. With few exceptions, much of the curriculum in the universities of Europe was based on such Aristotelianism for most of the Middle Ages.


title: Atomism

text: In the 17th century, a renewed interest arose in Epicurean atomism and corpuscularianism as a hybrid or an alternative to Aristotelian physics. The main figures in the rebirth of atomism were Isaac Beeckman, René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, and Robert Boyle, as well as other notable figures.


title: Atomism

text: One of the first groups of atomists in England was a cadre of amateur scientists known as the Northumberland circle, led by Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland (1564–1632). Although they published little of account, they helped to disseminate atomistic ideas among the burgeoning scientific culture of England, and may have been particularly influential to Francis Bacon, who became an atomist around 1605, though he later rejected some of the claims of atomism. Though they revived the classical form of atomism, this group was among the scientific avant-garde: the Northumberland circle contained nearly half of the confirmed Copernicans prior to 1610 (the year of Galileo's "The Starry Messenger"). Other influential atomists of late 16th and early 17th centuries include Giordano Bruno, Thomas Hobbes (who also changed his stance on atomism late in his career), and Thomas Hariot. A number of different atomistic theories were blossoming in France at this time, as well (Clericuzio 2000).


title: Atomism

text: Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was an advocate of atomism in his 1612, "Discourse on Floating Bodies" (Redondi 1969). In "The Assayer", Galileo offered a more complete physical system based on a corpuscular theory of matter, in which all phenomena—with the exception of sound—are produced by "matter in motion". Galileo identified some basic problems with Aristotelian physics through his experiments. He utilized a theory of atomism as a partial replacement, but he was never unequivocally committed to it. For example, his experiments with falling bodies and inclined planes led him to the concepts of circular inertial motion and accelerating free-fall. The current Aristotelian theories of impetus and terrestrial motion were inadequate to explain these. While atomism did not explain the law of fall either, it was a more promising framework in which to develop an explanation because motion was conserved in ancient atomism (unlike Aristotelian physics).


title: Atomism

text: René Descartes' (1596–1650) "mechanical" philosophy of corpuscularism had much in common with atomism, and is considered, in some senses, to be a different version of it. Descartes thought everything physical in the universe to be made of tiny "vortices" of matter. Like the ancient atomists, Descartes claimed that sensations, such as taste or temperature, are caused by the shape and size of tiny pieces of matter. The main difference between atomism and Descartes' concept was the existence of the void. For him, there could be no vacuum, and all matter was constantly swirling to prevent a void as corpuscles moved through other matter. Another key distinction between Descartes' view and classical atomism is the mind/body duality of Descartes, which allowed for an independent realm of existence for thought, soul, and most importantly, God. Gassendi's concept was closer to classical atomism, but with no atheistic overtone.


title: Atomism

text: Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) was a Catholic priest from France who was also an avid natural philosopher. He was particularly intrigued by the Greek atomists, so he set out to "purify" atomism from its heretical and atheistic philosophical conclusions (Dijksterhius 1969). Gassendi formulated his atomistic conception of mechanical philosophy partly in response to Descartes; he particularly opposed Descartes' reductionist view that only purely mechanical explanations of physics are valid, as well as the application of geometry to the whole of physics (Clericuzio 2000).


title: Atomism

text: Johann Chrysostom Magnenus ( – ) published his "Democritus reviviscens" in 1646. Magnenus was the first to arrive at a scientific estimate of the size of an "atom" (i.e. of what would today be called a molecule).


title: Atomism

text: Measuring how much incense had to be burned before it could be smelled everywhere in a large church, he calculated the number of molecules in a grain of incense to be of the order 10, only about one order of magnitude below the actual figure.


title: Atomism

text: Corpuscularianism is similar to atomism, except that where atoms were supposed to be indivisible, corpuscles could in principle be divided. In this manner, for example, it was theorized that mercury could penetrate into metals and modify their inner structure, a step on the way towards transmutative production of gold. Corpuscularianism was associated by its leading proponents with the idea that some of the properties that objects appear to have are artifacts of the perceiving mind: 'secondary' qualities as distinguished from 'primary' qualities. Not all corpuscularianism made use of the primary-secondary quality distinction, however. An influential tradition in medieval and early modern alchemy argued that chemical analysis revealed the existence of robust corpuscles that retained their identity in chemical compounds (to use the modern term). William R. Newman has dubbed this approach to matter theory "chymical atomism," and has argued for its significance to both the mechanical philosophy and to the chemical atomism that emerged in the early 19th century. Corpuscularianism stayed a dominant theory over the next several hundred years and retained its links with alchemy in the work of scientists such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton in the 17th century. It was used by Newton, for instance, in his development of the corpuscular theory of light.


title: Atomism

text: The form that came to be accepted by most English scientists after Robert Boyle (1627–1692) was an amalgam of the systems of Descartes and Gassendi. In The Sceptical Chymist (1661), Boyle demonstrates problems that arise from chemistry, and offers up atomism as a possible explanation. The unifying principle that would eventually lead to the acceptance of a hybrid corpuscular–atomism was mechanical philosophy, which became widely accepted by physical sciences.


title: Atomism

text: By the late 18th century, the useful practices of engineering and technology began to influence philosophical explanations for the composition of matter. Those who speculated on the ultimate nature of matter began to verify their "thought experiments" with some repeatable demonstrations, when they could.


title: Atomism

text: Roger Boscovich provided the first general mathematical theory of atomism, based on the ideas of Newton and Leibniz but transforming them so as to provide a programme for atomic physics.


title: Atomism

text: In 1808, John Dalton assimilated the known experimental work of many people to summarize the empirical evidence on the composition of matter. He noticed that distilled water everywhere analyzed to the same elements, hydrogen and oxygen. Similarly, other purified substances decomposed to the same elements in the same proportions by weight.


title: Atomism

text: Furthermore, he concluded that there was a unique atom for each element, using Lavoisier's definition of an element as a substance that could not be analyzed into something simpler. Thus, Dalton concluded the following.


title: Atomism

text: And then he proceeded to give a list of relative weights in the compositions of several common compounds, summarizing:


title: Atomism

text: Dalton concluded that the fixed proportions of elements by weight suggested that the atoms of one element combined with only a limited number of atoms of the other elements to form the substances that he listed.


title: Atomism

text: Dalton's atomic theory remained controversial throughout the 19th century. Whilst the Law of definite proportion was accepted, the hypothesis that this was due to atoms was not so widely accepted. For example, in 1826 when Sir Humphry Davy presented Dalton the Royal Medal from the Royal Society, Davy said that the theory only became useful when the atomic conjecture was ignored.


title: Atomism

text: Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie in 1866 published the first part of his Calculus of Chemical Operations as a non-atomic alternative to the Atomic Theory. He described atomic theory as a 'Thoroughly materialistic bit of joiners work'. Alexander Williamson used his Presidential Address to the London Chemical Society in 1869 to defend the Atomic Theory against its critics and doubters. This in turn led to further meetings at which the positivists again attacked the supposition that there were atoms. The matter was finally resolved in Dalton's favour in the early 20th century with the rise of atomic physics.


title: Atomism

text: Atoms and molecules had long been theorized as the constituents of matter, and Albert Einstein published a paper in 1905 that explained in precise detail how the motion that Brown had observed was a result of the pollen being moved by individual water molecules, making one of his first big contributions to science. This explanation of Brownian motion served as convincing evidence that atoms and molecules exist, and was further verified experimentally by Jean Perrin in 1908. Perrin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926 "for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter". The direction of the force of atomic bombardment is constantly changing, and at different times the particle is hit more on one side than another, leading to the seemingly random nature of the motion.


title: Doctor Who (film)

text: Doctor Who, also referred to as Doctor Who: The Television Movie or simply Doctor Who: The Movie to distinguish it from the television series of the same title, is a 1996 television film continuing the British science fiction television series "Doctor Who". It was developed as a co-production between Universal Studios and BBC Worldwide. It premiered on 12 May 1996 on CITV in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (which was owned by WIC at the time before being acquired by Canwest Global in 2000), 15 days before its first showing in the United Kingdom on BBC One and two days before being broadcast in the United States on Fox. It was also shown in some countries for a limited time in cinemas.


title: Doctor Who (film)

text: The film was the first attempt to revive "Doctor Who" following its suspension in 1989. It was intended as a backdoor pilot for a new American-produced "Doctor Who" TV series. It introduced Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor in his only televised appearance as the character until "The Night of the Doctor" in 2013 (though McGann has portrayed the Doctor also in various audio productions). It also marks the final appearance of Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor until his cameo appearance in "The Power of the Doctor" in 2022, the only appearance of Daphne Ashbrook as companion Grace Holloway, and the only onscreen appearance of Eric Roberts's version of The Master, although he has since reprised the role in audio dramas for Big Finish Productions. Although a ratings success in the United Kingdom, the film did not fare well on American television and no series was commissioned. The series was later relaunched on the BBC in 2005. The only "Doctor Who" episodes between the film and the new series were a 1999 spoof, "Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death", and a 2003 animation, "Scream of the Shalka".


title: Doctor Who (film)

text: Although the film was primarily produced by different people than the 1963–1989 series and intended for an American audience, the producers chose not to produce a "re-imagining" or "reboot" of the series but rather a continuation of the original narrative. The production was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia and was the only episode of "Doctor Who" filmed in Canada.


title: Doctor Who (film)

text: Following the Master's trial and execution at the hands of the Daleks, the Doctor, currently in his seventh incarnation, is transporting the Master's remains to Gallifrey via his TARDIS. En route, the box with the remains breaks open and an ooze leaks out, infecting the TARDIS. The Doctor is forced to make an emergency materialisation in San Francisco's Chinatown on 30 December 1999.


title: Doctor Who (film)

text: As he exits and locks the TARDIS, the Doctor is shot by a gang chasing down Chang Lee, a young Chinese-American man. Lee calls for an ambulance and escorts the unconscious Doctor to a hospital, unaware the ooze from the TARDIS has gotten aboard the ambulance. At the hospital, after the bullets are removed, cardiologist Dr Grace Holloway attempts surgery to stabilise his unusual heartbeat, but is confused by his strange double-heart anatomy, and accidentally lodges a cardiac probe in the Doctor's body, apparently killing him. The Doctor's body is taken to the morgue, while Lee steals the Doctor's possessions, including the TARDIS key. Meanwhile, the ooze takes over the body of the ambulance driver, Bruce, transforming him into a new body for the Master.


title: Doctor Who (film)

text: Later, the Doctor's body regenerates, and the new Doctor, suffering amnesia, gathers clothes from an upcoming fancy dress party. He recognises Holloway, who has resigned from the hospital after the failed operation, and follows her to her car, proving to her he is the same man by pulling out the cardiac probe. Grace takes him home to recover. Lee returns to the TARDIS where the Master arrives and puts him under his mind control by claiming the Doctor had stolen his body. The Master convinces Lee to open the TARDIS and then to open the Eye of Harmony within it, which requires a human retinal scan. When the Eye opens, the Doctor is flooded with memories and realises the Master is searching for him, and tries to block the scan. He warns Grace that while the Eye is opened, the fabric of reality will weaken, and potentially destroy the Earth by midnight on New Year's Eve if they cannot close it. However, he needs an atomic clock to do so, and Grace finds one on display at the San Francisco Institute of Technological Advancement and Research.