title: Bottom (TV series)

text: The show's original working title was "Your Bottom", for the humour of people having to say "I saw 'Your Bottom' on television last night", before it was shortened because Mayall said they "liked the shape of the word." It started as a joke until they learned that Alan Yentob, then head of BBC2, disliked the title which convinced the pair to stick with it. Mayall added that the title was deliberate to make viewers think of "bottom jokes", but that it also reflects on the show's premise of "two guys at the bottom of the heap". Mayall and Edmondson were aware of the failures of other sitcoms, and purposely wrote tight scripts. Edmondson said writing "Bottom" was liberating "because it's obvious what the idea is – to be as funny as possible." The pair based Eddie and Richie on characters that they had improvised with as part of 20th Century Coyote, and on their own friendship. They made a conscious effort to avoid any pop culture or contemporary references when writing, as "The Young Ones" had been popular with young people and instead wanted to portray characters who had left student life behind and reached their "thirties and forties". Instead, the two were interested in more everyday scenarios "that have always been there", such as a gas meter reading. "Eddie and Richie have been compared to their characters on "The Young Ones", but ten years older. After the first series had been filmed, Mayall ranked "Bottom" as their best work and marked "a new chapter" in his relationship with Edmondson.


title: Bottom (TV series)

text: In June 1990, a pilot episode was filmed which was later titled "Contest" and broadcast as part of the first series. Further problems over content came to light when filming began. Mayall recalled they were allowed three "bloodies" or "bloody hell"'s per episode, and arguments were often had with as many as twenty BBC executives who went on the set. Some executives criticised the series for being sexist, but Mayall pointed out that they would have had more women on the show if they had not cut around twenty "shagging scenes" that were written, and argued that lesbian scenes were also removed. After the first series was filmed in June and July 1991, "Bottom" was first announced in August, when the BBC reported that it had commissioned over 400 hours of new television programming for the upcoming autumn series. This included new productions from comics known at the Comic Strip in an attempt to attract viewers, with including Mayall and Edmondson for "Bottom" and Dawn French for "Murder Most Horrid".


title: Bottom (TV series)

text: "Bottom" ended after three series in February 1995. Edmondson said that one of the reasons for stopping the show was the struggle to come up with new ideas as "we'd already hit each other with everything in the flat". Mayall supported this view, saying they took the show as far as it could on television while continuing the franchise with stage tours and home video releases, preferring to retain full creative control over the characters. In 2000, he said that Richie and Eddie had become "bigger than we are".


title: Bottom (TV series)

text: Each episode was filmed in front of a live audience. The original scripts can be found in the published script books, and several completely removed scenes were included in the VHS release "Fluff" that consisted mostly of bloopers. Several (but not all) of these scenes, as well as some smaller sections of dialogue also removed for timing reasons, are included in DVD releases.


title: Bottom (TV series)

text: The final episode of the second series, 's Out", was set on Wimbledon Common involving the antics of a flasher. It was not broadcast as part of the original series after Rachel Nickell was murdered on Wimbledon Common, to which the BBC delayed its broadcast until a rerun of the second series on 10 April 1995.


title: Bottom (TV series)

text: Mayall and Edmondson held five nationwide theatre tours of "Bottom" between 1993 and 2003, adapting the original series into a stage show. The first tour, "Bottom Live", lasted 43 dates across 10 weeks in 1993. The 2001 tour consisted of 76 dates, which included a show at the National Arena in Birmingham to over 4,500 people. The Weapons Grade Y-Fronts Tour included 40 dates. The stage shows were often cruder than the sitcom with stronger language, and developed over time to include settings outside the flat, including a prison cell and a remote island. There were several instances of the pair getting carried away with the planned stunts, resulting in one of them getting cuts on their head. Edmondson said: "Rik would tell them 'Don't be scared, it happens all the time.' We'd just carry on, then go off to hospital afterwards to be sewn up." A show from each tour was filmed and released for home video.


title: Bottom (TV series)

text: During the "Hooligan's Island" tour in 1997, Mayall and Edmondson sought ways of spending time before the night's performance and began to develop ideas for a script that involved Richie being a hotel manager. After some time the pair realised that they had produced a substantial work that would suit a feature film. The result was "Guest House Paradiso", a spin-off to "Bottom" featuring Mayall and Edmondson as Richard Twat (pronounced "Twaite") and Eddie Elizabeth Ndingobamba, respectively, with Edmondson as director. The story involves the pair operating a grotty remote guesthouse next to a nuclear power plant and feeding their guests radioactive fish, causing massive amounts of vomiting. Despite the characters and humour being in the same vein as "Bottom", Mayall said "Guest House Paradiso" was never meant to be a film version of "Bottom" because other sitcoms that had film adaptations "didn't work". Produced on a £3 million budget, the film premiered in December 1999.


title: Bottom (TV series)

text: In late 2004, surrounding the release of their "Mindless Violence" DVD, Edmondson said that it was "definitely time to stop. We're both getting too old. We both realised that the show wasn't as engaging as it used to be. We were starting to look a bit ridiculous. ... We're both nearly fifty and we're starting to feel slightly undignified talking about wanking and knobs constantly." In 2010, Edmondson confirmed that he had quit comedy, stating that his interest in it has declined for many years, and wanted to focus more on his band. He dismissed the idea of reuniting with Mayall, saying it is "very unlikely".


title: Bottom (TV series)

text: In March 2011, the duo made a surprise reunion when Edmondson took part in "Let's Dance for Comic Relief". A pre-recorded segment ended with Mayall hurling a custard pie in Edmondson's face. Mayall appeared again, this time live on stage, to abruptly end Edmondson's performance by hitting him several times with a frying pan. In the final, Mayall returned once again to drop a ton weight upon Edmondson. In the following month, Edmondson revealed that he and Mayall had conceived an idea for a sitcom. "Rik and I have an idea for a sitcom for when we are very, very old. We want to set it in an old people's home 30 years hence. It will be like 'Bottom', but we will be hitting each other with colostomy bags!" In August 2012, the BBC announced that it had commissioned a series based on the "Hooligan's Island" stage show, where Eddie and Richie cause havoc on a deserted tropical island, set to air in 2013. However, the show was scrapped just two months later. Edmondson said "it wasn't working" and wanted to pursue other projects. Mayall tried to have Edmondson reconsider, but he "put his foot down and said, 'It's not going to work mate.'", and wanted to wait ten years until they were older. Mayall died on 9 June 2014, putting an end to any future "Bottom" projects.


title: Bottom (TV series)

text: In 2004, a DVD featuring a compilation of violent scenes from Mayall and Edmondson throughout their career, including scenes from "Bottom", was released as "Mindless Violence: The Very Best of the Violent Bits".


title: Shoma Uno

text: Earlier in his career, he became the 2015 World Junior champion, 2014–15 Junior Grand Prix Final champion, and 2012 Youth Olympic silver medalist.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno is the first skater to successfully land a quadruple flip in an international competition. He is also the historic record-holder for the highest score by a junior in the short program.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Shoma Uno was born 17 December 1997, in Nagoya, Japan. He was born prematurely, weighing only 900 grams and fitting in the palm of his father's hand. He has a younger brother, Itsuki. Since 2019 he has been sponsored by Mizuno.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno started skating when he was five because of Mao Asada, who talked to him at a skating rink. His figure skating idol is Daisuke Takahashi. Uno won bronze at the Japan Junior Championships of the 2009–2010 season, but did not finish on the podium in either of the next two years.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno made his Junior Grand Prix (JGP) debut in the 2011–2012 season, winning a bronze medal at the JGP Tallinn Cup in Estonia after placing 4th at the event in Poland. At the 2012 Winter Youth Olympics, he won silver in the individual event and gold in the team event. He finished 10th at the 2012 World Junior Championships.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno was invited to skate in the gala at the 2012 World Team Trophy as the silver medalist in Winter Youth Olympics.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno finished 6th at his Junior Grand Prix in Slovenia. At his next JGP event in Germany, he won the silver medal with personal bests in both programs and a total score of 188.48 points. He finished 7th at the 2013 World Junior Championships.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno competed in his third JGP season, winning the bronze medal in Riga, Latvia, and placing 4th in Tallinn, Estonia. He placed 5th at the 2014 World Junior Championships and won his first international senior competition at the 2014 Gardena Spring Trophy.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno began his season by winning his second senior international competition at the 2014 Asian Trophy. He was assigned to the JGP events in Japan and Croatia. He placed second in Japan and first in Croatia with new personal best scores and qualified for his first JGP Final. He won his first junior national title at the 2014–15 Japan Junior Championships. The following month, he won gold at the JGP Final, placing third in the short program, and winning the free skate while setting junior world records for the free skate and combined total. At the 2014–15 Japan Championships, he placed 3rd in both segments of the competition, winning the silver medal.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno made his senior ISU Championship debut at the 2015 Four Continents; he placed second in the short program, fifth in the free skate, and fifth overall, setting personal best scores in all segments. He ended his season by winning the 2015 World Junior Championships, winning the short program with a junior world record score of 84.87 and placing second in the free skate. He became the fifth Japanese man to win the junior world title.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno started his season with a 5th-place finish at the 2015 U.S. Classic, placing 9th in the short program but winning the free skate. He then went on to win the individual event of the 2015 Japan Open, defeating World champions Javier Fernandez, Brian Joubert and Patrick Chan.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Making his senior Grand Prix debut, Uno won the silver medal at 2015 Skate America after placing fourth in the short program and first in the free program, finishing only 1.52 points behind gold medalist Max Aaron. Uno then made some training changes, saying "During Skate America, I felt that I lacked a bit of stamina so I increased the number of run-throughs in training every day and started to do off-ice stamina training." He placed first in the short program at the 2015 Trophée Éric Bompard. Due to the November 2015 Paris attacks, the free skate was cancelled and the short program standings were deemed the final results. Uno thus became the winner of the event and qualified for the 2015–16 Grand Prix Final in Barcelona. In Spain, he was awarded the bronze medal behind Yuzuru Hanyu and Fernández.


title: Shoma Uno

text: After repeating as the national silver medalist, Uno finished fourth behind Patrick Chan, Jin Boyang and Yan Han at the 2016 Four Continents Championships, having ranked second to Jin in the short program and fifth in the free skate. At the 2016 World Championships in Boston, he placed 4th in the short program, 6th in the long, and 7th overall. At the 2016 Team Challenge Cup, Uno became the first skater to ever land a quadruple flip at an international competition. He landed two quads in his short program, 4F and 4T-3T combination, and scored a personal best of 105.74 points.


title: Shoma Uno

text: In December 2016, Uno was fourth in the short program with 86.82 points after falling on his quadruple toe loop and failing the combination in the Grand Prix Final. He rallied back in the free skate with a personal best of 195.69 points and placing second in that segment. He placed third overall and won the bronze medal for the second consecutive year, just 0.34 points behind silver medalist Nathan Chen and 11.39 points behind gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu. Later that month, he won his first national title in Osaka, Japan.


title: Shoma Uno

text: In February, he broke the hundred-point barrier with a score of 100.28 in the short program for the first time in his career at the Four Continents Championships, being the fourth person to do so. In the free skate he landed four quad jumps, including his first ever quad loop in international competition and a quad flip, but fell on both his triple axel combinations. He placed 2nd in the short program, 3rd in the free skate and won the bronze medal with a score of 288.05 behind Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu.


title: Shoma Uno

text: At the 2017 World Figure Skating Championships in Helsinki, he set new personal best scores for both the short program with a score of 104.86 and free skate with a score of 214.45, earning the silver medal with the fourth ever highest combined score of 319.31, just 2.28 points behind World Champion Yuzuru Hanyu and 15.73 points ahead of bronze medalist Jin Boyang.


title: Shoma Uno

text: At the final competition of this season, the World Team Trophy in Tokyo, he was able to win a gold medal for Japan with his teammates. He won the short program with 103.53 points and placed second behind teammate Yuzuru Hanyu in the free skate with 198.49 points. He scored a total of 302.02 points, highest in the men's event.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno began his season by winning the gold medal at his challenger series event at the 2017 Lombardia Trophy in Bergamo, Italy while setting new personal bests in all segments. At the 2017 Japan Open, he won the silver medal with his teammates. Uno won the gold medal at 2017 Skate Canada, placing first in both segments to begin his Grand Prix Series for the season. After returning from the competition on 31 October, Uno suffered from a 39 degree high fever and was diagnosed with influenza. In his following competition at 2017 Internationaux de France, he placed second in the short program and first in the free skate to place second overall behind Javier Fernandez. His results qualified him for his third consecutive senior Grand Prix Final, where he won the silver medal only 0.5 points behind Nathan Chen.


title: Shoma Uno

text: At the 2017 Japan Figure Skating Championships, Uno successfully defended his national title. On 24 December 2017 it was announced that Uno would represent Japan at the 2018 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships in Taipei City, Chinese Taipei, 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and 2018 World Figure Skating Championships in Milan, Italy. Placing third in the short program and third in the free skate, Uno took silver at the 2018 Winter Olympics, 1.66 points ahead of bronze medallist Javier Fernández of Spain.


title: Shoma Uno

text: At the 2018 World Figure Skating Championships in Milan, Uno had to leave practice only after a few minutes on ice and was carried to a bus on a staff member's back. Upon examination, no serious injury was found, it was his skates that caused his pain. However, it was decided that Uno would still compete in the competition. Uno scored 94.26 in the short program, and 179.51 in the free skate, with a total score of 273.77, earning him the silver medal. His result, together with that of Kazuki Tomono secured three spots for Japanese men at the 2019 World Figure Skating Championships to be held in Saitama, Japan.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno started the season at the 2018 CS Lombardia Trophy, where he won the event. At 2018 Japan Open, he won the men's free program and won the gold medal as a member of Team Japan. He won his first GP event of the season, 2018 Skate Canada International, in October. He won his second GP event of the season, the 2018 NHK Trophy, in November. He qualified to the 2018–19 Grand Prix Final and placed second, 5.99 points behind Nathan Chen.


title: Shoma Uno

text: At the 2018 Japan Figure Skating Championships, Uno successfully defended his national title, winning by a margin of almost 50 points. This was his third successive national title, despite spraining his right ankle during the competition. He was named to the team to represent Japan at the 2019 Four Continents Championships and the 2019 World Championships.


title: Shoma Uno

text: At the 2019 Four Continents Championships, Uno came fourth in the short program, first in the free skate, and first overall. This marked the first time he won a major international competition, after having placed silver at all of them at least once. He set a world record for the free skate with a score of 197.36.


title: Shoma Uno

text: At the 2019 World Championships in Saitama, Uno was sixth in the short program, fourth in the free skate, and fourth overall. After the competition, he expressed disappointment with his performances. He concluded the season at the 2019 World Team Trophy, placing third in the short program, third in the free skate, and third overall. In the free skate, he attempted a triple Axel-quadruple toe loop combination, becoming the first skater to attempt this combination in competition, although he was unable to land it successfully. Team Japan won the silver medal.


title: Shoma Uno

text: On 6 June 2019, Uno announced on his website that he would no longer be coached by Machiko Yamada and Mihoko Higuchi, who had coached him since he was five years old, and that he did not yet know who his new coaches would be. On 7 June, Russian coach Eteri Tutberidze announced that Uno would be attending her summer camp. Following Tutberidze's camp, which he described as "tough" but a "good experience", Uno announced that he would not have a main coach in the near term, but Takeshi Honda would serve as a jump coach. He also announced plans to visit Stéphane Lambiel's Swiss training facility in September 2019.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno began the season at the 2019 CS Finlandia Trophy. He narrowly placed second in the short program behind countryman Sōta Yamamoto, but came first in the free skate to take the gold medal.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Beginning the Grand Prix at the 2019 Internationaux de France, Uno placed fourth in the short program after falling on both his triple Axel and a quad toe loop attempt that was meant to be in combination. In the free skate, he fell three times and had errors on two other quad jump attempts, causing him to place ninth in the free skate and fall to eighth overall. This was his worst-ever result at a senior international competition. Despite this, Uno stated that he had positive feelings about his situation, and expressed gratitude to the audience for their cheers and support. Uno spent the weeks between the Internationaux and his next assignment, the 2019 Rostelecom Cup, training with Stéphane Lambiel. He placed fourth in the short program, falling on an under rotated quad flip, and described himself as "relieved" with the result. Fourth in the free skate as well, he remained in fourth overall, 0.63 points behind bronze medalist Makar Ignatov. Uno said it was "not a good result, but I feel that towards the end of the season, I’ll be able to jump a quad flip." He announced he would train more in Switzerland prior to the Japanese championships.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Shortly prior to the 2019–20 Japan Figure Skating Championships, Uno confirmed that he would be training full-time under Lambiel henceforth. He placed second in the short program, behind Yuzuru Hanyu, who was competing at his first Japanese championships since the 2016–17 season. Uno then won the free skate and the gold medal overall, his first individual victory over Hanyu in his career.


title: Shoma Uno

text: He then decided not to participate in the Four Continents Championships of 2020. Instead, he started in February at the Challenge Cup in the Netherlands, where he won the gold medal and scored 290.41 points overall. He was assigned to end the season at the World Championships in Montreal, but these were cancelled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno was assigned to compete at the 2020 Internationaux de France, but this event was also cancelled as a result of the pandemic.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Returning to Japan for the 2020–21 Japan Championships, Uno placed third in the short program behind Yuzuru Hanyu and Yuma Kagiyama after failing to execute his planned jump combination. He was second in the free skate, his only error being tripling a planned quad toe loop, and rose to the silver medal position overall, behind Hanyu.


title: Shoma Uno

text: At the 2021 World Championships, Uno placed sixth in the short program after a fall on his triple Axel. In the free skate, he two-footed his quadruple Salchow and put a hand down for his quadruple toe loop but still managed to place third in the free skate and fourth overall, behind Nathan Chen and compatriots Hanyu and Kagiyama. Uno was subsequently announced as part of the Japanese team for the 2021 World Team Trophy. He placed ninth in the short program and sixth in the free program, with Team Japan placing third overall at the competition.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno made his season international competitive debut at the 2021 Skate America, his first Grand Prix. He placed second in the short program behind Vincent Zhou despite doubling a planned quad flip, in the process landing a quad-triple combination in competition for the first time in years. He was third in the free skate, but remain in the silver medal position overall, less than a point ahead of bronze medalist Nathan Chen, who struggled in both programs. Zhou and Uno became the first skaters to defeat Chen in competition since the prior Olympics. His second assignment was the 2021 NHK Trophy, which, due to the withdrawal of Yuzuru Hanyu due to injury, was widely seen as a rematch between Uno and Zhou. Uno won both segments of the competition to defeat Zhou by almost thirty points. He landed four of his five planned quad jumps in the free skate, albeit with an imperfect landing on one, and doubled a planned quad flip. Uno's results qualified him to the Grand Prix Final, but it was subsequently cancelled due to restrictions prompted by the Omicron variant.


title: Shoma Uno

text: At the 2021–22 Japan Championships, Uno placed second in the short program and third in the free skate to take the silver medal behind Yuzuru Hanyu. He was named to his second Japanese Olympic team. Uno began the Games as the Japanese entry in the men's short program of the Olympic team event, as he had done four years earlier. Skating cleanly, he placed second behind the United States' Chen with a new personal best of 105.46, securing nine points for the Japanese team. Longtime coach Stéphane Lambiel was unable to accompany him as he had tested positive for COVID-19 and remained in Switzerland. Team Japan would go on to take the bronze medal, its first in the team competition and Uno's second Olympic medal. Two days later, Uno placed third in the short program of the men's event, managing another new personal best of 105.90 despite making an error on his jump combination. A somewhat rougher free skate saw him place fifth in that segment, but remain in third overall, taking the bronze, his third Olympic medal.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno concluded his season at the 2022 World Championships in Montpellier. With both Chen and Hanyu absent due to injury, Olympic medalists Uno and Yuma Kagiyama were rated as top contenders for the gold medal. Uno skated a clean short program and was rewarded with a personal best score of 109.63 and first place in the segment, 3.94 points ahead of Kagiyama. Uno made two jump errors in the free skate, but easily won that segment and the World title, becoming the third Japanese man to do so. Speaking afterward, he said "I wanted to have a performance that made my coach Stephane Lambiel proud. I was able to achieve that and I haven't won too often, so I'm very happy about that."


title: Shoma Uno

text: Eschewing the Challenger series, Uno made his season debut as part of Team Japan at the Japan Open. Uno finished first in the men's free skate competition, 0.38 points ahead of American Ilia Malinin, while Japan won the gold medal. Uno praised the younger Malinin, who had recently attracted considerable media attention for being the first to ever land a quad Axel, saying that he "will be devastating in a year or two" and that he hoped to be able to keep up with him.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Uno once again began the Grand Prix at Skate Canada International, winning his third gold medal by a margin of almost eight points over Kao Miura. At the 2022 NHK Trophy on home ice in Sapporo, Uno fell on his attempted jump combination and placed second in the short program, behind Sōta Yamamoto. He rallied in the free skate, overtaking Yamamoto to win his third NHK title. Despite this, he expressed dissatisfaction with his performance, due to both jump errors and some omitted choreographic details. Qualifying to the Grand Prix Final once again, he finished first in the short program in Turin despite performing only a quad-double jump combination. He won the free skate with a new personal best score, landing five quadruple jumps successfully, and winning the Grand Prix Final title for the first time. He claimed that he "didn't particularly feel pressure just because I won the World Championship, but at this competition, especially during the free program, all the other skaters did so amazing that instead it motivated me to enjoy and do my best for my competition." He vowed to continue improvements, in particular to resume performing quad-triple combinations.


title: Shoma Uno

text: Small medals for short and free programs are awarded only at ISU Championships. At team events, medals are awarded for team results only. T – team result. P – personal/individual result. Current ISU world bests highlighted in bold and italic. Personal bests are highlighted in bold.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: The Sum of All Fears is a political thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on August 14, 1991. Serving as the sequel to "Clear and Present Danger" (1989), main character Jack Ryan, who is now the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, tries to stop a crisis concerning the Middle East peace process where Palestinian and former East German terrorists conspire to bring the United States and Soviet Union into nuclear war. It debuted at number one on the "New York Times" bestseller list. A film adaptation, which is a reboot of the Jack Ryan film series and starring Ben Affleck as the younger iteration of the CIA analyst, was released on May 31, 2002.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: During the first day of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the Israeli Defense Force (I.D.F.) prepares to conduct a tactical nuclear strike to stave off defeat. The necessity for the strike is averted, but an Israeli Mark 12 nuclear bomb is accidentally left on an A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft flown by Captain Mutti Zadin; which is subsequently shot down over Syria, near Kafr Shams. The nuclear weapon is lost, buried in the field of a Druze farmer. Eighteen years later, an Israeli police captain (coincidentally the brother of the downed pilot) converts to a fundamentalist sect of Hasidic Judaism after discovering his wife had an extramarital affair and attempts to instigate a violent demonstration of Palestinians at the Temple Mount. When the demonstrators unexpectedly conduct a peaceful protest, Zadin orders the police to fire tear gas and Rubber bullets at the protesters anyway. Captain Zadin then kills the leader of the demonstration by shooting him point-blank. The United States finds it hard to diplomatically defend Israel, yet knows it cannot withdraw its support without risk of destabilizing the Middle East.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: Following the advice of Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) Jack Ryan, National Security Advisor Dr. Charles Alden enacts a plan to accelerate the peace process by converting Jerusalem into a Vatican-like independent city-state to be administered by a tribunal of Jewish, Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox religious leaders, and secured by an independent contingent of the Swiss Guards. As a nod to Israel, the U.S. Army supplies the I.D.F. with more sophisticated equipment and agrees to construct a training base in the Negev Desert run by the U.S. Army's tank warfare specialists and the revived 10th Cavalry Regiment. To everyone's surprise, Ryan's plan seems to work, in large part due to Ryan's meetings with officials in Israel and Saudi Arabia and the acquiescence of the reformist President Andrey Narmonov in the democratized Soviet Union. With their religious contentions appeased, the factions in the Middle East find it much easier to negotiate their disputes.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: White House Foreign Affairs Advisor Elizabeth Elliot holds a grudge against Ryan and Alden and maneuvers against them. She first takes Alden's job as National Security Advisor by taking advantage of a sex scandal involving a child fathered by Alden out of wedlock, with the stress contributing to Alden's death in a severe stroke that causes a blowout fracture. She concurrently begins a sexual relationship with widowed President J. Robert Fowler and manipulates him to publicly omit Ryan's role in the peace settlement, taking credit for himself. After Ryan accuses her of wishing to silence an American opponent of the deal, Elliot engineers a smear campaign accusing Ryan of engaging in an extramarital affair and fathering a child with a young widow. Jack's friends, CIA operatives John Clark and Domingo Chavez, convince Ryan's wife Cathy that the allegations are false. Jack's alleged mistress is Carol Zimmer, widow of Buck Zimmer, who was killed during Ryan and Clark's earlier mission to rescue Chavez and his Army teammates from Colombia. Ryan later decides to retire from the CIA, but not before he puts together a covert operation to uncover corrupt dealings between Japanese and Mexican government officials.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: Meanwhile, a small group of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorists, enraged at the looming failure of their jihad against Israel, come across the lost Israeli bomb and use it to construct their own weapon by using the bomb's plutonium pit as fissile material for a new bomb. The terrorists enlist the help of disaffected East German nuclear physicist Manfred Fromm who agrees to the plot, wishing to exact his own revenge against his former communist country's reunification as a capitalist democratic state. With Fromm's expertise, the terrorists enhance the weapon by turning it into a modern style boosted fission weapon. The terrorists' plan is to detonate the weapon at the Super Bowl in Denver while simultaneously staging a false flag attack on U.S. military forces in stationed in Berlin by East Germans disguised as Soviet soldiers. The terrorists are trying to begin a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The East Germans hope that the war will eliminate both superpowers and punish the Soviets for betraying World Socialism, while the Palestinians hope the attack will destroy the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and end U.S. aid to Israel.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: Thinking that his work on the bomb is complete, the Palestinians kill Fromm. However, Fromm had not yet told them that the tritium for the booster still needed to be filtered before use, to eliminate accumulated helium-3. The Palestinians assemble the bomb for use, but when detonated, the impure booster material causes only a low yield fizzle to occur. Even with low yield, the bomb still destroys the Super Bowl venue, killing nearly everyone there including the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the commander of NORAD. With the corresponding attacks in Berlin, the United States briefly assumes DEFCON-1 status as Fowler and Elliott prepare for a nuclear war. The crisis is averted by Ryan, who learns the domestic origin of the bomb's plutonium, gains access to the hotline, and convinces the Soviet President to stand down his country's military.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: When the terrorists are captured and interrogated by Clark in Mexico City, they implicate the Iranian ayatollah in the attack. President Fowler orders the Ayatollah's residence in the holy city of Qom to be destroyed by a nuclear strike. Ryan averts the attack by enforcing the two-man rule. The terrorists are delivered to the FBI field office in Buzzard Point, where Ryan questions them. During questioning, Ryan falsely asserts that Qom was destroyed, tricking Qati into revealing that Iran was not involved, and that their deceit was meant to discredit the United States; thus destroying the peace process and allowing the campaign against Israel to continue. Elliot is hospitalized after suffering a nervous breakdown, while Fowler leaves office and is succeeded by his Vice President, Roger Durling (it is implied that Fowler was removed from office through the , but a later novel clarifies that Fowler resigned in disgrace, while Elliott was forcibly removed).


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: The terrorists are executed by beheading in Riyadh by the commander of the Saudi Arabian special forces using an ancient sword owned by the Saudi royal family. Later, the sword is presented to Ryan as a gift. In the sequels, the gift (combined with his origins as a Marine) inspires Ryan's Secret Service codename of "Swordsman."


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: Written under the working title "The Field of Camlan", which was based on King Arthur's final battle, "The Sum of All Fears" explores nuclear fears that humans endured during the Cold War, with Clancy warning that complacency regarding such threats is dangerous. Published months after the first Gulf War, Clancy also envisioned a fictional “next great step” toward lasting peace in the Middle East. The book was said to be inspired by the 1977 thriller film "Black Sunday", which depicts a blimp being used as a weapon to blow up a football stadium during the Super Bowl; the movie was referenced three times.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: The novel also explores the danger of "electing someone who covets power for all the wrong reasons and who is totally inept at managing it", according to Marc Cerasini's essay on the book. President Fowler and Elliot were compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: The title is a reference to nuclear war and to the plot by the novel's antagonists to reconstruct a lost nuclear weapon. It comes from a Winston Churchill quote serving as the first of the novel's two epigraphs:


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: The Vatican-like solution for Jerusalem, which was implemented in the book, is ultimately derived from the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which indeed provided for making Jerusalem such a "Corpus separatum" (Latin for "separated body"). The course which the 1948 Palestine war took prevented implementation of this plan. In later years, various peace plans and diplomatic initiatives sought to revive the idea, but in reality it has never come close to implementation. The plan is known for being popular outside the Middle East, but unpopular among the actual residents of Jerusalem, who would prefer that "their" "side" should rule entirely rather than submit to a neutral administration.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: A database file with certain limited details about John Clark is included as background information within the first "Rainbow Six" game, and moreover, the same database entry is also found in many of the sequels. That entry mentions in passing that "the Denver, Colorado atomic detonation [occurred] in 1989". That information might not be canonical, since the book is set "after" both the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989) and possibly the First Persian Gulf War (January–February 1991). If it is canonical, though, this means that the book is not set in the same year it was published. A second inference is that 1989 was likely the year in which President Fowler's administration ended.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: Clancy started working on the novel in 1979, setting the first chapter during the Yom Kippur War. Then he abandoned his idea for other novels until he wrote "The Cardinal of the Kremlin" (1988), where Ryan first meets Russian premier Narmonov. After figuring out the resolution to "The Sum of All Fears", Clancy then used his next novel "Clear and Present Danger" (1989) as a way to introduce future President Fowler. Speaking of the consistency, Clancy said: "The whole series really is a logical and connected network of plot lines which would continue to diverge and converge throughout the body of the work." The novel was notable for detailing the process in making a bomb; however, certain technical details were altered, and Clancy made clear in the novel's afterword that a lot of information in his book can be found in the public domain.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: Whilst the Israelis used both the A-4 single-seat single-engine subsonic light attack jet and F-4 two-seat twin-engined all-weather supersonic fighter-bomber during the Yom Kippur War, use of the A-4's nuclear capability was never envisaged. Nuclear warheads were assembled at the Tel Nof Airbase, but for deployment on F-4 rather than A-4 as told in the novel. This was done on October 8 in such a way that the U.S. got to know of it by the next morning, prompting President Nixon to initiate the same day an immediate air-lifted re-supply to Israel of conventional arms, including tanks and planes to replace losses, in Operation Nickel Grass. Whether any of these nuclear bombs were actually carried during a sortie has never been documented.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: At least one real-world buried nuclear warhead has actually been documented however, but American and in the U.S., rather than Israeli in Syria. The plutonium pit of a Mark 39 nuclear bomb warhead remains buried 33m deep in a North Carolina field, now fenced-off, following the fatal 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash. Many B-52 Stratofortresses crashed while carrying live nuclear warheads on training flights, mostly inside the U.S., between 1961 and 1968, but many have been recovered.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: The book received positive reviews. "Publishers Weekly" praised the novel as "a nonstop roller-coaster ride to a nail-biting finish", adding: "Fundamentally, Clancy is writing about a vital and elusive quality: grace under pressure. Whether terrorists or statesmen, Clancy's characters face a common challenge—situations that break down pretensions of rank, power and ideology. Their responses, carefully and empathetically constructed, make this book compelling instead of merely ingenious." Kirkus Reviews hailed it as "hair-raising" and "quite a rouser".


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: The book was adapted as a feature film, which was released on May 31, 2002. Jack Ryan was played by Ben Affleck while John Clark was played by Liev Schreiber; additionally, CIA director Marcus Cabot, whose first name was changed into William, was played by Morgan Freeman. The film is a reboot that departs from all previous Ryan films, and as a result, there were significant changes from the book, such as the antagonists being neo-Nazis instead of Palestinian terrorists, Ryan becoming a low-level CIA analyst, and the time period changed to 2002. Clancy served as executive producer on the film, and regarding the changes from his book, jokingly introduced himself in the commentary track on the DVD release as "the author of the book that he [director Phil Alden Robinson, who is present with Clancy] ignored". Nevertheless, he complained about technical inaccuracies throughout the film in the commentary.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: "The Sum of All Fears" was a major financial success, grossing a total of $193 million in box office. However, it received mixed reviews from critics; Rotten Tomatoes reported that 59% of critics gave the film positive reviews and that the average rating was 6/10 based on a total of 171 reviews counted.


title: The Sum of All Fears

text: In turn, the film had its video game adaptation, which is a tactical first-person shooter game that is similar to the "Rainbow Six" series of games. It was developed by Red Storm Entertainment and released by Ubisoft in 2002.


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: "Somethin' Stupid", or "Something Stupid", is a song written by C. Carson Parks. It was originally recorded in 1966 by Parks and his wife Gaile Foote, as Carson and Gaile. A 1967 version by Frank Sinatra and his daughter Nancy Sinatra became a major international hit, reaching number one on both the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart and the UK Singles Chart. In 2001, a cover version by British vocalist Robbie Williams and Australian actress Nicole Kidman reached number one in the UK Singles Chart.


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: In the early 1960s, Carson Parks was a folk singer in Los Angeles. He was an occasional member of The Easy Riders, and also performed with The Steeltown Three, which included his younger brother Van Dyke Parks. In 1963, he formed the Greenwood County Singers, later known as The Greenwoods, who had two minor hits and included singer Gaile Foote. Before the Greenwoods disbanded, Parks and Foote married and, as Carson and Gaile, recorded an album in 1966 for Kapp Records, "San Antonio Rose", which included the song "Something Stupid". The recording was then brought to the attention of Frank Sinatra.


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: The most successful and best-known version of "Somethin' Stupid" was issued in 1967 as a single by Nancy Sinatra and Frank Sinatra and subsequently appeared on Frank's album "The World We Knew". Frank had played Parks' recording to his daughter's producer, Lee Hazlewood, who recalled, "He asked me, 'Do you like it?' and I said, 'I love it, and if you don't sing it with Nancy, I will.' He said, 'We're gonna do it, book a studio. Their rendition was recorded on February 1, 1967, after Frank had finished his collaboration with Antonio Carlos Jobim earlier in the day. Al Casey played guitar on the recording and Hal Blaine was the drummer. Hazlewood and Jimmy Bowen were listed as the producers of the single, with arrangement by Billy Strange.


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: The single spent four weeks at number 1 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 chart and nine weeks atop the easy listening (now adult contemporary) chart, becoming Frank's second gold single as certified by the RIAA and Nancy's third. In Norway the single qualified for silver disc. It was the first and only instance of a father-daughter number-one song in America. Nancy Sinatra was quoted as sarcastically saying, "Some people call (Something Stupid) the Incest Song, which I think is, well, very sweet!" . The single also reached number 1 on the UK Singles Chart the same year. It was also nominated for the Record Of The Year at the 10th Grammy Awards, losing to the 5th Dimension's upbeat hit song "Up, Up And Away".


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: In episode 21 of the third season of "The Simpsons", Sideshow Bob and Selma Bouvier (voiced by Kelsey Grammer and Julie Kavner, respectively) perform the Frank and Nancy Sinatra version as a karaoke.


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: In the "Breaking Bad" spin-off series "Better Call Saul", episode seven of season four is titled after the song, with the opening montage containing an original rendition performed by Lola Marsh. The song is again used in a montage in episode nine of season five.


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: In the Channel 4 series "Peep Show" series 1, episode 2, the Peters and Lee version of the song is quoted in dialogue and plays during the closing credits.


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: In the movie Joy (2015 film), in a flashback scene, Jennifer Lawrence's title character sings the duet with her soon-to-be husband played by Édgar Ramírez.


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: In 1995, Ali Campbell and his daughter Kibibi Campbell covered the hit as a duet. As a suggestion to the version of Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra was used, based on this part of the Musikrichting was adapted in the cover. After its release on the studio album "Big Love", it can also be found on the compilation "Silhouette".


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: The music video was shot in New York City. Ali Campbell and his daughter spend an afternoon in the city. They relax on the bench in the park, also walk through the city center, look through a sightseeing telescope, watch jugglers and fire breathers in a circus, figure skaters and stroll.


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: British singer Robbie Williams recorded a cover version of "Somethin' Stupid" as a duet with Australian actress Nicole Kidman. The song appeared on Williams' 2001 album, "Swing When You're Winning", and was released as the album's lead single on December 10, 2001, topping the UK Singles Chart at the end of the year. The song was Christmas number one in the United Kingdom, and Williams' fifth number one overall. The single sold 400,000 copies to earn a gold certification from the British Phonographic Industry. The accompanying music video was directed by Vaughan Arnell.


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: The song was the 30th-best-selling single of 2001 in the UK. It also gave Williams another number-one hit in New Zealand, earning a gold certification, and charted inside the top 10 in several European countries. In Australia, it became Williams' fourth top-10 single, earning a gold certification for over 35,000 copies sold.


title: Somethin' Stupid

text: In 2018, Calum Scott and Barbara Pravi did a rendition of this song on the french television show Taratata.


title: Obscurantism

text: In philosophy, the terms obscurantism and obscurationism describe the anti-intellectual practices of deliberately presenting information in an abstruse and imprecise manner that limits further inquiry and understanding of a subject. There are two historical and intellectual denotations of "obscurantism": (1) the deliberate restriction of knowledge—opposition to the dissemination of knowledge; and (2) deliberate obscurity—a recondite style of writing characterized by deliberate vagueness.


title: Obscurantism

text: The term "obscurantism" derives from the title of the 16th-century satire ("Letters of Obscure Men", 1515–1519), which was based upon the intellectual dispute between the German Catholic humanist Johann Reuchlin and the monk Johannes Pfefferkorn of the Dominican Order, about whether or not all Jewish books should be burned as un-Christian heresy. Earlier, in 1509, the monk Pfefferkorn had obtained permission from Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1486–1519), to burn all copies of the Talmud (Jewish law and Jewish ethics) known to be in the Holy Roman Empire (AD 926–1806); the "Letters of Obscure Men" satirized the Dominican arguments for burning un-Christian works.


title: Obscurantism

text: In the 18th century, Enlightenment philosophers applied the term "obscurantist" to any enemy of intellectual enlightenment and the liberal diffusion of knowledge. In the 19th century, in distinguishing the varieties of obscurantism found in metaphysics and theology from the "more subtle" obscurantism of the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and of modern philosophical skepticism, Friedrich Nietzsche said: "The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding, but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence."


title: Obscurantism

text: In restricting knowledge to an élite ruling class of "the few", obscurantism is fundamentally anti-democratic, because its component anti-intellectualism and elitism exclude the people as intellectually unworthy of knowing the facts and truth about the government of their city-state.


title: Obscurantism

text: In 18th century monarchic France, the Marquis de Condorcet, as a political scientist, documented the aristocracy's obscurantism about the social problems that provoked the French Revolution (1789–1799) that deposed them and their king, Louis XVI of France.


title: Obscurantism

text: In the 19th century, the mathematician William Kingdon Clifford, an early proponent of Darwinism, devoted some writings to uprooting obscurantism in England, after hearing clerics—who privately agreed with him about evolution—publicly denounce evolution as un-Christian. Moreover, in the realm of organized religion, obscurantism is a distinct strain of thought independent of theologic allegiance. The distinction is that fundamentalism presupposes sincere religious belief, whereas obscurantism is based upon minority manipulation of the popular faith as political praxis; cf. Censorship.


title: Obscurantism

text: In the 20th century, the American conservative political philosopher Leo Strauss, for whom philosophy and politics intertwined, and his neo-conservative adherents adopted the notion of government by the enlightened few as political strategy. He noted that intellectuals, dating from Plato, confronted the dilemma of either an informed populace "interfering" with government, or whether it were possible for good politicians to be truthful and still govern to maintain a stable society—hence the noble lie necessary in securing public acquiescence. In "The City and Man" (1964), he discusses the myths in "The Republic" that Plato proposes effective governing requires, among them, the belief that the country (land) ruled by the state belongs to it (despite some having been conquered from others), and that citizenship derives from more than the accident of birth in the city-state. Thus, in the "New Yorker" magazine article "Selective Intelligence", Seymour Hersh observes that Strauss endorsed the "noble lie" concept: the myths politicians use in maintaining a cohesive society.


title: Obscurantism

text: Shadia Drury criticized Strauss's acceptance of dissembling and deception of the populace as "the peculiar justice of the wise", whereas Plato proposed the noble lie as based upon moral good. In criticizing "Natural Right and History" (1953), she said that "Strauss thinks that the superiority of the ruling philosophers is an intellectual superiority and not a moral one ... [he] is the only interpreter who gives a sinister reading to Plato, and then celebrates him."


title: Obscurantism

text: Leo Strauss also was criticized for proposing the notion of "esoteric" meanings to ancient texts, obscure knowledge inaccessible to the "ordinary" intellect. In "Persecution and the Art of Writing" (1952), he proposes that some philosophers write esoterically to avert persecution by the political or religious authorities, and, per his knowledge of Maimonides, Al Farabi, and Plato, proposed that an esoteric writing style is proper for the philosophic text. Rather than explicitly presenting his thoughts, the philosopher's esoteric writing compels the reader to think independently of the text, and so learn. In the , Socrates notes that writing does not reply to questions, but invites dialogue with the reader, thereby minimizing the problems of grasping the written word. Strauss noted that one of writing's political dangers is students' too-readily accepting dangerous ideas—as in the trial of Socrates, wherein the relationship with Alcibiades was used to prosecute him.


title: Obscurantism

text: For Leo Strauss, philosophers' texts offered the reader lucid "exoteric" (salutary) and obscure "esoteric" (true) teachings, which are concealed to the reader of ordinary intellect; emphasizing that writers often left contradictions and other errors to encourage the reader's more scrupulous (re-)reading of the text. In observing and maintaining the "exoteric—esoteric" dichotomy, Strauss was accused of obscurantism, and for writing esoterically.


title: Obscurantism

text: In the "Wired" magazine article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" (April 2000), the computer scientist Bill Joy, then a Sun Microsystems chief scientist, in the sub-title proposed that: "Our most powerful twenty-first-century technologies—robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech[nology]—are threatening to make humans an endangered species"; in the body, he posits that:


title: Obscurantism

text: Joy's proposal for limiting the dissemination of "certain" knowledge, in behalf of preserving society, was quickly likened to obscurantism. A year later, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in the "Science and Technology Policy Yearbook 2001", published the article "A Response to Bill Joy and the Doom-and-Gloom Technofuturists", wherein the computer scientists John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid countered his proposal as technological tunnel vision, and the predicted technologically derived problems as infeasible, for disregarding the influence of non-scientists upon such societal problems.


title: Obscurantism

text: In the essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative" (1960), the economist Friedrich von Hayek said that political conservatism is ideologically unrealistic, because of the conservative person's inability to adapt to changing human realities and refusal to offer a positive political program that benefits everyone in a society. In that context, Hayek used the term "obscurantism" differently, to denote and describe the denial of the empirical truth of scientific theory, because of the disagreeable moral consequences that might arise from acceptance of fact.


title: Obscurantism

text: The second sense of "obscurantism" denotes making knowledge abstruse, that is, difficult to grasp. In the 19th and 20th centuries obscurantism became a polemical term for accusing an author of deliberately writing obscurely, in order to hide his or her intellectual vacuousness. Philosophers who are neither empiricists nor positivists often are considered obscurantists when describing the abstract concepts of their disciplines. For philosophic reasons, such authors might modify or reject verifiability, falsifiability, and logical non-contradiction. From that perspective, obscure (clouded, vague, abstruse) writing does not necessarily indicate that the writer has a poor grasp of the subject, because unintelligible writing sometimes is purposeful and philosophically considered.


title: Obscurantism

text: Aristotle divided his own works into two classifications: "exoteric" and "esoteric". Most scholars have understood this as a distinction of intended audience, where exoteric works were written for the public, and the esoteric works were more technical works intended for use within the Lyceum. Modern scholars commonly assume these latter to be Aristotle's own (unpolished) lecture notes or, in some cases, possible notes by his students. However, the 5th-century neoplatonist Ammonius Hermiae writes that Aristotle's writing style is deliberately obscurantist so that "good people may for that reason stretch their mind even more, whereas empty minds that are lost through carelessness will be put to flight by the obscurity when they encounter sentences like these".


title: Obscurantism

text: In contemporary discussions of virtue ethics, Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" ("The Ethics") stands accused of ethical obscurantism, because of the technical, philosophic language and writing style, and their purpose being the education of a cultured governing elite.


title: Obscurantism

text: Immanuel Kant employed technical terms that were not commonly understood by the layman. Arthur Schopenhauer contended that post-Kantian philosophers such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel deliberately imitated the abstruse style of writing practiced by Kant.


title: Obscurantism

text: G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy, and the philosophies of those he influenced, especially Karl Marx, have been accused of obscurantism. Analytic and positivistic philosophers, such as A. J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell, and the critical-rationalist Karl Popper, accused Hegel and Hegelianism of being obscure. About Hegel's philosophy, Schopenhauer wrote that it is "a colossal piece of mystification, which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage".


title: Obscurantism

text: Nevertheless, biographer Terry Pinkard notes: "Hegel has refused to go away, even in analytic philosophy, itself." Hegel was aware of his obscurantism and perceived it as part of philosophical thinking: to accept and transcend the limitations of quotidian (everyday) thought and its concepts. In the essay "Who Thinks Abstractly?", he said that it is not the philosopher who thinks abstractly, but the layman, who uses concepts as givens that are immutable, without context. It is the philosopher who thinks concretely, because he transcends the limits of quotidian concepts, in order to understand their broader context. This makes philosophical thought and language appear obscure, esoteric, and mysterious to the layman.


title: Obscurantism

text: In his early works, Karl Marx criticized German and French philosophy, especially German Idealism, for its traditions of German irrationalism and ideologically motivated obscurantism. Later thinkers whom he influenced, such as the philosopher György Lukács and social theorist Jürgen Habermas, followed with similar arguments of their own. However, philosophers such as Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek in turn criticized Marx and Marxist philosophy as obscurantist (however, see above for Hayek's particular interpretation of the term).


title: Obscurantism

text: Martin Heidegger, and those influenced by him, such as Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, have been labeled obscurantists by critics from analytic philosophy and the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Of Heidegger, Bertrand Russell wrote: "his philosophy is extremely obscure. One cannot help suspecting that language is here running riot. An interesting point in his speculations is the insistence that nothingness is something positive. As with much else in Existentialism, this is a psychological observation made to pass for logic." That is Russell's complete entry on Heidegger, and it expresses the sentiments of many 20th-century analytic philosophers concerning Heidegger.


title: Obscurantism

text: In their obituaries "Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74" (10 October 2004) and "Obituary of Jacques Derrida, French intellectual" (21 October 2004), "The New York Times" newspaper and "The Economist" magazine described Derrida as a deliberately obscure philosopher.


title: Obscurantism

text: In "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity" (1989), Richard Rorty proposed that in "The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond" (1978), Jacques Derrida purposefully used undefinable words (e.g. différance) and used defined words in contexts so diverse that they render the words unintelligible, hence, the reader is unable to establish a context for his literary self. In that way, the philosopher Derrida escapes metaphysical accounts of his work. Since the work ostensibly contains no metaphysics, Derrida has, consequently, escaped metaphysics.


title: Obscurantism

text: Derrida's philosophic work is especially controversial among American and British academics, as when the University of Cambridge awarded him an honorary doctorate, despite opposition from among the Cambridge philosophy faculty and analytical philosophers worldwide. In opposing the decision, philosophers including Barry Smith, W. V. O. Quine, David Armstrong, Ruth Barcan Marcus, René Thom, and twelve others, published a letter of protestation in "The Times" of London, arguing that "his works employ a written style that defies comprehension ... [thus] Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university."


title: Obscurantism

text: In the "New York Review of Books" article "An Exchange on Deconstruction" (February 1984), John Searle comments on Deconstruction: "anyone who reads deconstructive texts with an open mind is likely to be struck by the same phenomena that initially surprised me: the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity, by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial".


title: Obscurantism

text: Jacques Lacan was an intellectual who defended obscurantism to a degree. To his students' complaint about the deliberate obscurity of his lectures, he replied: "The less you understand, the better you listen." In the 1973 seminar "Encore", he said that his ("Writings") were not to be understood, but would effect a meaning in the reader, like that induced by mystical texts. The obscurity is not in his writing style, but in the repeated allusions to Hegel, derived from Alexandre Kojève's lectures on Hegel, and similar theoretic divergences.


title: Obscurantism

text: The Sokal affair (1996) was a publishing hoax that the professor of physics Alan Sokal perpetrated on the editors and readers of "Social Text", an academic journal of post-modern cultural studies that was not then a peer-reviewed publication. In 1996, as an experiment testing editorial integrity (fact-checking, verification, peer review, etc.), Sokal submitted "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", a pseudoscientific article proposing that physical reality is a social construct, in order to learn whether "Social Text" would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if: (a) it sounded good, and, (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions". Sokal's fake article was published in the spring/summer 1996 issue of "Social Text", which was dedicated to the science wars about the conceptual validity of scientific objectivity and the nature of scientific theory, among scientific realists and postmodern critics in American universities.


title: Obscurantism

text: Sokal's reason for publication of a false article was that postmodernist critics questioned the objectivity of science, by criticising the scientific method and the nature of knowledge, usually in the disciplines of cultural studies, cultural anthropology, feminist studies, comparative literature, media studies, and science and technology studies. Whereas the scientific realists countered that objective scientific knowledge exists, riposting that postmodernist critics almost knew nothing of the science they criticized. In the event, editorial deference to "academic authority" (the author-professor) prompted the editors of "Social Text" not to fact-check Sokal's manuscript by submitting it to peer review by a scientist.


title: Obscurantism

text: Concerning the lack of editorial integrity shown by the publication of his fake article in "Social Text" magazine, Sokal addressed the matter in the May 1996 edition of the "Lingua Franca" journal, in the article "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies", in which he revealed that his transformative hermeneutics article was a parody, submitted "to test the prevailing intellectual standards", and concluded that, as an academic publication, "Social Text" ignored the requisite intellectual rigor of verification and "felt comfortable publishing an article on quantum physics without bothering to consult anyone knowledgeable in the subject".


title: Obscurantism

text: Moreover, as a public intellectual, Sokal said that his hoax was an action protesting against the contemporary tendency towards obscurantism—abstruse, esoteric, and vague writing in the social sciences:


title: Obscurantism

text: In short, my concern over the spread of subjectivist thinking is both intellectual and political. Intellectually, the problem with such doctrines is that they are false (when not simply meaningless). There is a real world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend otherwise? And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths—the utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious language.


title: Obscurantism

text: Moreover, independent of the hoax, as a pseudoscientific opus, the article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" is described as an exemplar "pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense, centered on the claim that physical reality is merely a social construct". Similarly to whataboutism, obscurantism is used by elevating the readers prejudices to a grandiose value-laden assumption, belief, principle(s) or pseudoscience that does not deconstruct opposing claims and is stalling a priori and/or asserting confusing jargon or technical speak to describe events, which may deny the real world existence of physical properties.


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: The Ultimate Gift is a 2006 American drama film directed by Michael O. Sajbel from a screenplay written by Cheryl McKay, which is based on the best selling novel by Jim Stovall, who cameos in the film. It stars Drew Fuller, Ali Hillis, Bill Cobbs, Abigail Breslin, Brian Dennehy, and James Garner in his final live action film appearance. It was released on March 9, 2007 in the United States and Canada.


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: The film's DVD sales were quite high in relation to its theatrical receipts and it continues to be a success in DVD sales and on television. Two sequels, "The Ultimate Life" and "The Ultimate Legacy", were released in 2013 and 2015 respectively.


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: When his rich grandfather, Howard "Red" Stevens, dies, Jason does not expect to inherit anything from his multi-billion-dollar estate. He strongly resents his grandfather because his father had died while working for him. There is an inheritance, in fact, but it comes with a condition: Jason must complete 12 separate assignments within a year in order to get it. Each assignment is centered around a "gift". Gifts of work, money, friends and learning are among the dozen that Jason must perform before he is eligible for the mysterious "Ultimate Gift" his grandfather's will has for him. Red's attorney and friend, Mr. Hamilton, and his secretary, Miss Hastings, attempt to guide Jason along the path his grandfather wishes him to travel.


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: He first goes to Texas where he works on his grandfather's friend Gus Caldwell's ranch for a month, learning what hard work is. On his return after completing the first task, everything he values is suddenly taken away from him – his luxury apartment, his restored muscle car, and all his money – and he is left homeless. His trendy girlfriend, Caitlin, ditches him when his credit card is rejected at a fancy restaurant, and none of his friends are willing to give him a place to stay despite him having done so many favors for them in the past. After his mother tells him she cannot help him, as part of the agreement, he miserably wanders the city alone. While sleeping in a park, he encounters a woman, Alexia, and her outspoken daughter, Emily. Jason befriends the two, and then asks them to go to the attorney's office and confirm themselves as his "true friends" in order to pass his assignment, but afterwards Jason walks away and ignores Emily's request to see him again. However, Jason accidentally discovers that Emily is suffering from leukemia, and sees a chance to develop a strong bond with someone.


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: From that point, he tries his best to help Emily have a great life while it lasts, and Emily encourages a romance between Jason and her mother. Another of his tasks requires him to travel to Ecuador and study in a library his father and grandfather built to help the people there. This brings him to address his resentment over the death of his father there, and he makes a trip into the mountains with a local guide to see where it happened. Jason learns from his guide that the story he had always believed about his father's death was a lie, fabricated by his grandfather out of guilt and shame for trying to push Jason's father into the oil business. Jason and the guide are captured there and taken hostage by militants for several weeks, until Jason manages to ensure their escape. He returns to America and discovers that Emily's condition has deteriorated, so he arranges for Gus to host a belated Christmas celebration at his home for them.


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: Upon completing his twelve tasks, Jason is given a sum of $100-million to do with whatever he pleases, and all of his property is returned to him. Caitlin, knowing that he has regained his wealth, makes an attempt to win him back, but Jason declines her offer. With his inheritance, Jason chooses to build a hospital, called Emily's Home, for children with terminal illnesses, but before the building begins, Emily dies. After the groundbreaking for Emily's Home, Jason is recalled to the law firm for one more meeting and told he has exceeded the expectations of his dead grandfather, and he is given the final gift of $2-billion dollars, rewarding Jason not only for his completing the tasks, but for using the $100-million to help others. That night, Jason is seen sitting on a bench in the park, when Alexia joins him. He thanks her for the help that she and her daughter gave him. Then they kiss, as a butterfly, representing Emily, flies around them.


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: In addition, then Mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina Pat McCrory has a cameo appearance as himself, while Jim Stovall, the author of the book the film is based on, has a cameo as the limo driver near the end of the film.


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: The film was financed with $14 million from the Stanford Financial Group, a Houston based firm the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shut down two years later for being a "massive Ponzi scheme".


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, "The Ultimate Gift" holds an approval rating of 33% based on 60 reviews, with an average rating of 5.20/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Though "The Ultimate Gift" avoids religious speechifying like other Fox Faith films, it's dramatically inert with flat direction." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 49 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: "The New York Times" reviewer said, "Reeking of self-righteousness and moral reprimand, [the movie] is a hairball of good-for-you filmmaking... [T]he movie's messages are methodically hammered home." "Christianity Today" felt the film warranted 3.5 out of 4 stars and called it "lovingly crafted ... but never manages to build up much mystery, suspense, tension, or narrative steam." Joe Leydon of "Variety" magazine was favorably impressed and noted that "discussions of faith and God are fleeting, almost subliminal — without stinting on the celebration of wholesome family values." William Arnold of the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" wrote: "Its sincerity, optimism and air of open-minded tolerance go down well, and it makes a nice change-of-pace." He lauded its "tight and often compelling" screenplay, sparkling dialogue and "first-rate" production values.


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: "The Ultimate Gift" opened with receipts of $1.2 million on its first weekend, with final box office of $3.4 million.


title: The Ultimate Gift

text: Mark McKenzie wrote the film's incidental music. At the film's climax, "Something Changed" is highlighted, a song composed by Contemporary Christian Music-singer Sara Groves. Other songs include "Gotta Serve Somebody" by Bob Dylan, "The Thrill is Gone" by B.B. King, and "Crazy" by Patsy Cline.


title: Uxbridge and South Ruislip (UK Parliament constituency)

text: Uxbridge and South Ruislip is a constituency in Greater London represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. The seat has been held by the Conservative Party since its 2010 creation. Since 2015 it has been represented by Boris Johnson, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2022.


text: Johnson's 2017 majority in Uxbridge and South Ruislip was 5,034 votes which was less than half his 2015 majority. After his election as Prime Minister, in the subsequent 2019 election Johnson retained the seat with an increased vote share of 52.6% and a majority of 7,210.


text: An estimate by the House of Commons Library puts the Leave vote by the constituency in the 2016 referendum at 57.2% and "The Observer" reported in August 2018 that 51.4% of voters supported Remain.


text: The Conservative party won in 2010 and 2015 by a margin of about 25%, and since 1970 the fourteen parliamentary elections in this constituency and its predecessor (the constituency of Uxbridge) were won by the Conservatives. The 2015 result gave the seat the 149th smallest majority of the Conservative Party's 331 seats by percentage of majority.


text: In 2010, for the Uxbridge-born Conservative candidate John Randall, the one-party swing in the seat was 0.1% greater than that seen nationally – enough on the newly drawn constituency boundaries to provide 48.3% of the vote, and a majority of more than 11,000 votes. In the 2010 and 2015 elections three (of 8 and 13 candidates respectively) attained 5% of the vote or more, to retain their deposits.


text: In 2014, Boris Johnson was selected to run in the seat; he was elected in 2015 with a swing of less than 1% to Labour and 50.2% of the vote. However, the 2017 election saw a 13.6% increase in Labour's vote share, although Johnson also increased his votes, which reduced Johnson's majority to only 5,034, less than half his 2015 margin and by far the lowest for a Conservative candidate in the area since 2001.


text: Boris Johnson became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 24 July 2019 following the resignation of Theresa May. His 2017 majority in Uxbridge and South Ruislip of 5,034 votes was the smallest of any sitting prime minister since 1924. The main challenger to the seat was the Labour Party, whose 2019 candidate was Ali Milani. In April 2019, think-tank Onward classified the seat as "vulnerable" for the Conservatives, while YouGov classified the seat on 27 November 2019 as "likely Conservative". An article in "The Independent" on the same date inferred a 22.2% chance of Milani winning the seat from odds by bookmaker Paddy Power. Johnson retained the seat with an increased vote share of 52.6% and an increased majority of 15%.


text: In 2019 two satirical candidates, Count Binface and Lord Buckethead, stood for election. Lord Buckethead appears in the 1984 movie "Gremloids", and several previous UK election candidates have used the name, but Jon Harvey was prevented from standing again as Lord Buckethead after "Gremloids" creator Todd Durham asserted his rights over the character. Instead, Harvey stood as Count Binface and an Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidate used the name Lord Buckethead. On 6 December, Lord Buckethead encouraged constituents to vote for Labour candidate Ali Milani. Also standing was William Tobin, who aimed to receive no votes. As an expatriate who has lived abroad for 15 years, he was not able to vote in UK elections, but could stand as a candidate. Tobin stood to raise awareness of disenfranchisement of voting rights for expatriates, as well as 16- and 17-year-olds and foreign nationals who live in the UK. Tobin received five votes.


text: Most of the constituency came from that of Uxbridge, which was first established under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885; however parts of the seat came from Ruislip-Northwood and Hayes and Harlington, both of which had been carved out of the Uxbridge seat in 1950. The 1950 changes reflected the area's growth in population since 1918, the previous national reorganisation of seats.


text: The boundaries of the constituency changed prior to the general election in 2010 as Parliament approved the Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies. Ickenham and parts of West Ruislip were allocated to the new seat of Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. Treating the constituency as the direct successor to the Uxbridge seat, it gained the electoral wards:


text: The Boundary Commission for England 2018 review (see also Sixth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies) provisionally recommended that the successor of the current constituency should be named Hillingdon and Uxbridge and include the following wards:


text: The seat is in the Outer London commuter belt, is served by seven tube stations, and includes green spaces such as the Colne Valley regional park. In contrast to neighbouring Hayes and inner western suburbs, the area is without brutalist tower blocks. The highest density of buildings is found close to historic Uxbridge town centre, a hub in a seat that is ethnically diverse and prosperous, including on its outskirts Brunel University. Most of the borough electoral wards in the area vote Conservative, except for Uxbridge South, which returns Labour councillors. Workless claimants, registered jobseekers, were in November 2012 significantly lower than the national average of 3.8%, at 2.6% of the population based on a statistical compilation by "The Guardian".


text: The constituency voted to leave the European Union in 2016 with an estimated 57.2% of votes, according to a House of Commons Library report. In August 2018, an analysis of YouGov polling by Focaldata suggested support for Remain had risen from 43.6% to 51.4%. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister and Member of Parliament for the constituency, is a prominent Eurosceptic politician and was a key figure of the Vote Leave campaign in the run-up to the EU referendum on 23 June 2016; which resulted in a victory for the Leave campaign when the UK electorate voted in favour of British withdrawal from the European Union.


title: Jonathan Harker

text: Jonathan Harker is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel "Dracula". His journey to Transylvania and encounter with the vampire Count Dracula and his Brides at Castle Dracula constitutes the dramatic opening scenes in the novel and most of the film adaptations. Stoker appropriated the surname from his friend Joseph Cunningham Harker (1855–1920), a set designer at the Lyceum Theatre and father of actor William Gordon Harker (1885–1967) as well as great-grandfather of actress Polly Adams, whose actress-daughters Susannah Harker and Caroline Harker adopted the Harker surname for their stage names.


title: Jonathan Harker

text: Harker is a recently qualified solicitor from Exeter, who is deputed by his employer, Mr. Hawkins, to act as an estate agent for a foreign client named Count Dracula who wishes to move to London. Harker discovers in Carfax, near Purfleet, Essex, a dwelling which suits the client's requirements and travels to Transylvania by train in order to consult with him about it.


title: Jonathan Harker

text: At Bistritz, Harker takes a coach to the Borgo Pass, where at midnight another coach drawn by four black horses, waits to take him to Castle Dracula high in the Carpathian Mountains. At the castle Harker is greeted by the mysterious and ominous Count Dracula and finalises the property transaction. Soon, however Harker realises he has been made a prisoner by his host, who is revealed as a vampire. Harker also has a dangerous encounter with the three seductive Brides of Dracula, whose designs on him are only thwarted by the intervention of the Count. He promises to give Harker to them after his business deal is concluded and gives them a "wiggling bag" (presumed by Harker to be a human child) to appease them. Dracula leaves for England and abandons Harker in the castle as a meal for his vampire brides, as he promised them.


title: Jonathan Harker

text: Harker manages to escape, finding refuge at a convent. He suffers a nervous breakdown after his experiences with the vampires; his fiancée, Mina Murray, comes to nurse him back to health with the nuns' help, and marries him there. He returns home to England and later sees Dracula in London. After learning that Dracula has killed Mina's best friend Lucy Westenra, Harker joins Abraham Van Helsing, John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey Morris in a quest to kill the vampire, who has bitten Mina. His clerical skills prove very useful for collecting information and for tracking down Dracula's London lairs by means of paperwork.


title: Jonathan Harker

text: He vows to destroy Dracula and, if he can, to send "his soul forever and ever to burning to hell[..]!" even if it be at the cost of his own soul. As Mina falls deeper under Dracula's thrall, however, Harker is unsure of what to do. While he promises her he will put her out of her misery if she falls completely under Dracula's control, in the privacy of his journal he writes that, if she did become a vampire, he would become one himself just so he could continue to be with her. He ultimately saves her by destroying Dracula, however; at the book's climax, he pries open Dracula's coffin and slashes open Dracula's throat with a kukri knife, while Morris stabs him in the heart with a Bowie knife.


title: Jonathan Harker

text: In a postscript note set seven years later, it is revealed that Harker and Mina have a son whom they have named after all four members of the party, but whom they call Quincey, after Morris, who sacrificed his life to help them destroy Dracula. Harker eventually visits Dracula's castle along with his wife and son and their surviving friends to reminisce. As Harker returns home with his family, Van Helsing says that one day Harker's son will learn the whole story.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The Dornier Do 17 is a twin-engined light bomber produced by Dornier Flugzeugwerke for the German Luftwaffe during World War II. Designed in the early 1930s as a "Schnellbomber" ("fast bomber") intended to be fast enough to outrun opposing aircraft, the lightly built craft had a twin tail and "shoulder wing". Sometimes referred to as the "Fliegender Bleistift" ("flying pencil"), it was popular among its crews due to its handling, especially at low altitude, which made the Do 17 harder to hit than other German bombers.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The Do 17 made its combat debut in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, operating in the Condor Legion in various roles. Along with the Heinkel He 111 it was the main bomber type of the German air arm in 1939–1940. The Dornier was used throughout the early war, and saw action in significant numbers in every major campaign theatre as a front line aircraft until the end of 1941, when its effectiveness and usage was curtailed as its bomb load and range were limited.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: Production of the Dornier ended in mid-1940, in favour of the newer and more powerful Junkers Ju 88. The successor of the Do 17 was the much more powerful Dornier Do 217, which started to appear in strength in 1942. Some remaining Do 17s continued in various Luftwaffe roles until the end of the war, as a glider tug, research, and trainer aircraft. A considerable number were sent to other Axis nations, with few surviving the war. The last was scrapped in Finland.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: In 1932, the Ordnance Department ("Heereswaffenamt") issued a specification for the construction of a "freight aircraft for German State Railways", and a "high speed mail plane for Lufthansa". The factory at Friedrichshafen began work on the design on 1 August 1932.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: When the Nazis took power in 1933, Hermann Göring became National Commissar for aviation with former Deutsche Luft Hansa employee Erhard Milch as his deputy, soon forming the Ministry of Aviation. The Ministry of Aviation designated the new aircraft Do 17, and on 17 March 1933, just three months after taking office, Milch gave the go ahead for the building of prototypes. At the end of 1933, the Ministry of Aviation issued an order for a "high speed aircraft with double tail," and for a "freight aircraft with special equipment," in other words, a bomber. The original design (the Do 17 V1) configuration in 1932 had sported a single vertical stabilizer, and Dornier continued developing that model. The Do 17 was first demonstrated in mock-up form in April 1933. The "special equipment" was to be fitted later, to disguise its offensive role.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: In April 1934, the Dornier works at Manzell began project "definition." During this month, the defensive armament was designed and the bomb release mechanism details ironed out. Production of these prototypes began on 20 May 1934 and, on 23 November 1934, the Do 17 V1, with a single fin and powered by two BMW VI 7.3 motors, took off on its first flight. Testing was delayed by a series of accidents, with V1 being damaged in landing accidents in February and April 1935. The twin-tailed V2 (powered by low-compression BMW VI 6.3 engines) first flew on 18 May 1935 and was evaluated together with the V1 by the Ministry of Aviation at Rechlin in June. During the tests, the single fin proved to be only marginally stable, resulting in the V1 being modified with a twin tail. The aircraft was destroyed in a crash after an engine failure on 21 December 1935. The V3, also fitted with a twin tail, was originally planned to be powered by Hispano-Suiza 12Ybrs engines, but as these were unavailable, it was fitted with BMW VI 7.3 engines like the V1 and flew on 19 September 1935. The V1 prototype remained the only built machine with the single stabilizer.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: It is claimed that, unlike the Heinkel He 111 series, whose military use was planned from the start, the Do 17 V1 was contracted as a fast six-passenger mail plane to compete with the smaller Heinkel He 70 monoplane It has been suggested that it was rejected by Luft Hansa, as the cramped cabin was too uncomfortable for passenger use and the operating costs were too high for a mail plane. According to the story, the three prototypes remained unused in the Dornier factory in Lowental for almost six months, until Flight Captain Untucht of Luft Hansa came across them. After receiving permission to fly one of the machines, he proceeded to put it through an almost stunt flying routine. After landing, he said that "the machine is as nimble as a fighter, give it more lateral stability and we'll have a high speed bomber!" Untucht's comments prompted Dornier to redesign the tail unit and revived interest in the type.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: Dornier was then ordered to produce the V4 prototype. Some sources state this differed from the V3 in that the passenger portholes were removed and the single fin was replaced with two smaller ones. Photographic evidence demonstrates the V3 had twin stabilizers from the start of its construction. The tests of the "twin-tailed" V4, V6 and V7 prototypes were positive and more prototypes like the V8 emerged as the forerunner of the long-range reconnaissance version, while the V9 was tested as a high-speed airliner. The V9 machine was still flying in 1944.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The forward fuselage had a conventional stepped cockpit, with a fully glazed nose. Early variants were labelled the "flying pencil" owing to its sleek and continuous "stick-like" lines. As a result of the lessons learned in the Spanish Civil War, the cockpit roof was raised and the lower, or bottom half, of the crew compartment was a typical under-nose gondola or "Bodenlafette" (abbreviated "Bola"): this inverted-casemate design ventral defensive armament position was a common feature of most German medium bombers. The "Bola" was extended back to the leading edge of the wings where the lower-rear gunners position and upper-rear gunner position were level with each other. As with contemporary German bombers, the crew were concentrated in a single compartment.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The cockpit layout consisted of the pilot seat and front gunner in the forward part of the cockpit. The pilot sat on the left side, close up to the Plexiglas windshield. One of the gunners sat on the right seat, which was set further back to provide room for the MG 15 machine gun to be traversed in use. The Do 17 usually carried a crew of four: the pilot, a bombardier and two gunners. The bomb-aimer also manned the MG 15 in the nose glazing and "Bola"-housed rear lower position. The two gunners operated the forward-firing MG 15 installed in the front windshield, the two MGs located in the side windows (one each side) and the rearward firing weapon. The cockpit offered a bright and panoramic view at high altitude. The standard ammunition load was 3,300 rounds of 7.92 mm ammunition in 44 double-drum magazines.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The wings were of a broad area and had a span of with a straight leading edge which curved in a near-perfect semicircle into the trailing edge. The positions of the wing roots were offset. The leading edge wing root merged with the top of the fuselage and cockpit. As the wing extended backwards, by roughly two thirds, it declined downwards at a sharp angle so that the trailing edge wing root ended nearly halfway down the side of the fuselage increasing the angle of incidence. This design feature was used on all future Dornier bomber designs, namely the Dornier Do 217. The trailing edge was faired into the round fuselage shape. The engine nacelle was also faired into the flaps. The extreme rear of the nacelle was hollow and allowed the flap with an attached vertical slot to fit into the cavity when deployed.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The fuselage was long. It was thin and narrow, which presented an enemy with a difficult target to hit. The fuselage had twin vertical stabilizers to increase lateral stability. The power plant of the Z-1 was to have been the Daimler-Benz DB 601 but, owing to shortages from priority allocation for Bf 109E and Bf 110 fighter production, it was allocated Bramo 323 A-1 power plants. The Bramos could only reach at . The limited performance of the Bramo 323s ensured the Do 17 could not reach at in level flight when fully loaded. The range of the Do 17Z-1 at ground level was ; this increased to 1,370 km (850 nm) at . This gave an average attack range of . The introduction of the Bramo 323P increased the Z-2 performance slightly in all areas.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The Dornier had self-sealing fuel tanks to protect fuel stored in the wings and fuselage. This reduced the loss of fuel and risk of fire when hit in action, and often enabled the aircraft to return. Twenty oxygen bottles were provided for crew use during long flights above .


title: Dornier Do 17

text: Communications usually consisted of FuG X, the later FuG 10, navigational direction finder "PeilG V" direction finder (PeilG - "Peilgerät") and the FuG 25 IFF and FuBI 1 blind-landing devices. The crew communicated by EiV intercom. A primitive autopilot device, the Siemens K4Ü, was installed and could maintain bearing using the rudder's control surfaces.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The bomb bay accommodated four bomb racks, the No. 5 for SC50 bombs and two ETC 500 racks to carry heavier loads of up to each. A "Lotfe" A, or B bombsight was issued together with the BZA-2 aperture (a modernised optical lens system). The aircraft's bomb bay allowed two options. The first was to carry four bombs for a load of , which reduced aircraft range. With half the maximum load, ten bombs, additional fuel tanks could be placed into the forward part of the bomb bay to increase range. The bomb aimer aimed the bombs via the Lotfe (A, B or C 7/A, depending on the variant) bomb sight which was in the left side of the nose compartment directly under and forward of the pilot. When fully loaded, the Z-1 weighed .


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The initial production variants were the Do 17E-1 bomber, which was tested with two Daimler-Benz DB 600, and Do 17F-1 reconnaissance aircraft, powered like the early prototypes with BMW VI engines, which entered production in late 1936. The first Luftwaffe units converted to the Do 17 in early 1937.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The Do 17E-1 was equipped with two BMW VI 7.3D inline engines of 750 PS each. The crew numbered three. The radio operator manned the two 7.92 mm MG 15 machine guns within a B-Stand pod in the rear cockpit. They had 750 rounds of ammunition. The bomb bay was divided into two compartments. Each had five bomb racks with individual capacity of . A single ETC 500/IX bomb rack could be mounted externally underneath the aircraft to carry a 500 kg bomb. A Do 17 E-1 with the designation D-AJUN was tested with an unusual configuration, two SC 500 bombs mounted side by side under the fuselage. It showed a notable performance reduction due to the increase in weight and drag, this configuration was not used operationally. The E-1 continued to carry low bomb loads into the Second World War. The performance of the E-1 enabled it to reach a speed of at . Conducting a shallow dive the light frame of the Do 17 could reach . Its maximum ceiling was . Several E-1s were rebuilt as E-2 or E-3, at least three E-2 and one E-3 were used by DVL and Hansa-Luftbild GmbH (Hansa Aerial Photography Ltd) in a secret military reconnaissance role prior to the war.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The Do 17F-1 was a long-range reconnaissance aircraft based on field modified Do 17Es. The Do 17 prototype V8 was used to test the configuration of the F-1 and V11 for the F-2. The defensive armament consisted of a MG 15 in the B- and C-Stand (B-Stand - an upper rear firing position, C-Stand — lower gun emplacement). The fuselage had two cameras along with six ejector tubes for flashlight cartridges. The F-1 saw service until replaced by the Do 17 P in 1938. Only one F-2 was ever built, it was designated D-ACZJ and was used by Zeiss-Jena Company as a factory aircraft.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: Conversion of two E-2 series aircraft with two BMW 132F radial engines led to the Do 17 J-1 and J-2. These aircraft served as flight testing machines to evaluate the BMW 132 for usage in the Do 17. The aircraft were the V18 ("Wrk Nr", or "Werknummer" meaning works/factory number, 2021) and V19 (Wrk Nr 2022) prototypes. Trials began in late 1937. A similar conversion, but with Bramo 323 radial engines, led to the designation Do 17 L-1 and L-2. Two Do 17 (Wrk Nr 2031 and 2032) were renamed as V20 and V21 prototypes and used to evaluate the Bramo 323 for usage in the Do 17. The test was satisfactory and all future production models were equipped with this engine.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: After seeing the Do 17M V1 at the Zürich air races in 1937, the Yugoslav Royal Air Force bought license rights for production at the "Drzavna Fabrika Aviona" factory in 1938. They equipped it with the more powerful Gnome-Rhône 14 NO radial engine. Dornier designs were delivered to the "Pomorsko Vazduhoplovstvo" (Naval Aviation - PV) in 1926, namely the Dornier Komet and Dornier Do Y heavy bombers. The Yugoslavs were familiar with Dornier designs, and on 19 November 1935 Yugoslav pilots test-flew the Do 17 V-3 prototype, D-ABIH, W.Nr. 258. They decided to select the Do 17 for service, despite it being more expensive than any other aircraft, because of the German willingness to deliver them quickly without limitations on numbers.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The Do 17L-0 and Do 17M-0 were developed in parallel as replacements for the earlier E and Fs, the L being the reconnaissance version. Both were designed around the more powerful DB 600A engines, delivering about . Two L and one M versions were built as prototypes, both with another MG 15 in the nose. The first prototype of the revised version, the Do 17M V1 (D-ABVD) was powered by two DB 600s, and demonstrated impressive performance, including a maximum speed of .


title: Dornier Do 17

text: At the International Military Aircraft Competition at Zürich, Switzerland in 1937, the Dornier Do 17M V1 proved a leader in its class and was faster than the fastest foreign fighter, the French Dewoitine D.510. The Do 17, along with the Messerschmitt Bf 109, won many prizes, demonstrating the prowess of German aviation design.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: Despite its success, owing to shortages in the supply of the Daimler-Benz engine, the production Do 17M was fitted with the Bramo 323 engine, with the corresponding reconnaissance aircraft, the Do 17P, being powered by BMW 132Ns to give better range.


title: Dornier Do 17

text: The supply of the DB 600 remained extremely limited as production was soon switched over to the fuel-injected DB 601, which was reserved for the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Messerschmitt Bf 110 fighters. Therefore, production versions of the basic Do 17M model airframe were fitted with the new Bramo 323A-1 Fafnir engines of , which gave reasonable performance and raised the bomb load to . The resulting Do 17 M-1 was produced in small numbers and operated until 1941.