title: Types of social groups

text: Reference groups provide the benchmarks and contrast needed for comparison and evaluation of group and personal characteristics. Robert K. Merton hypothesized that individuals compare themselves with reference groups of people who occupy the social role to which the individual aspires.[Merton] developed a theory of the reference group (i.e., the group to which individuals compare themselves, which is not necessarily a group to which those individuals belong), and elaborated on the concepts of in-group and out-group. For any group of people there are always other groups whom they look upon to and aspire to be like them.Such groups act as a frame of reference to which people always refer to evaluate their achievements, their role performance, aspirations and ambitions. A reference group can be either from a membership group or non-membership group. An example of a reference group being used would be the determination of affluence. An individual in the U.S. with an annual income of $80,000, may consider themself affluent if they compare themself to those in the middle of the income strata, who earn roughly $32,000 a year. If, however, the same person considers the relevant reference group to be those in the top 0.1% of households in the US, those making $1.6 million or more, then the individual's income of $80,000 would make them consider themself as rather poor.


title: Autobot

text: The Autobots are the main protagonists in the fictional continuities of the Transformers multimedia franchise, and are depicted in a collection of various toys, cartoons, films, graphic novels, and paperback books first introduced in 1984. The Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, are opposed by the Decepticons, the main antagonists in the universe of the Transformers, headed by Megatron. Both Autobots and Decepticons have "sparks", which function as souls and contain their minds and personality. They can transform into machines, vehicles and other familiar mechanical objects, as well as mimic organic lifeforms (Dinobots). Autobots typically transform into cars, trucks and other road vehicles; some exceptions transform into aircraft, military vehicles, communication devices, weapons, or robotic animals. These Autobots are often grouped into special "teams" that have the suffix "-bot" at the end, such as in Dino"bot" (Decepticon groups' names end in "-con").


title: Autobot

text: In Japan, the Autobots are called except in the film series, "Transformers Animated", and "", where they are referred to as . In Italy, they are called "Autorobots". The Autobot insignia is also sometimes referred to as an "Autobrand" in issue #14 of the Marvel Comics series. The descendants of the Autobots, the Maximals from "Transformers: Beast Wars", are also known as Cybertrons in Japan.


title: Autobot

text: In the Michael Bay live action films, as well as in the CGI-animated series "", the title Autobots is explained to be the short version of the title Autonomous Robotic Organisms.


title: Autobot

text: In all Transformers stories, the Autobots and their adversaries, the Decepticons, originated on the planet Cybertron. The planet is almost always depicted as a purely metallic body. The capital of Cybertron is Iacon. In later issues of the Marvel comic line, Cybertron is shown to have weather, such as rain.


title: Autobot

text: A group of Autobots (referred to as Team Prime) appear in the 2010 computer animated series "", led by Optimus Prime. The video game "" give a backstory to the Autobots days on Cybertron.


title: Autobot

text: Set within an alternate timeline that parallels the show's second season, the Autobots (Team Prime) appear in "". , , , , Ratchet, Jack, Miko and Raf embark on a journey to defeat the villainous and the in his plan to use his secret new weapon. The Decepticons intercept a mysterious meteor approaching the Earth, and the Autobots arrive to try and thwart the Decepticons' plans. A massive eruption of power during the battle on the meteor breaks out, and the Autobots become separated from Jack, Miko and Raf, who are monitoring them at base. Unknown to the Autobots and their human friends, the Decepticons have uncovered Thunderwing, an ancient power that they will use to try to take over the Earth.


title: Autobot

text: In "", with Cybertron dead, the Autobots scattered across the universe. A group landed on Earth consisting of Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Bumblebee, and Bulkhead and which Arcee and Cliffjumper join later. This small team of Autobots led by Optimus is rechristened Team Prime. During the final four episodes of the season, the Autobots unwillingly team up with Megatron to battle a legendary threat to Earth's existence, Unicron.


title: Magna Steyr

text: Magna Steyr AG & Co KG is an automobile manufacturer based in Graz, Austria, where its primary manufacturing plant is also located. It is a subsidiary of Canadian-based Magna International and was previously part of the Steyr-Daimler-Puch conglomerate.


title: Magna Steyr

text: Magna Steyr engineers develop and assemble automobiles for other companies on a contractual basis; therefore, "Magna Steyr" is not an automobile marque. In 2002, the company absorbed Daimler AG's Eurostar vehicle assembly facility. With an annual production capacity of approximately 200,000 vehicles as of 2018, it is the largest contract manufacturer for automobiles worldwide. The company has several manufacturing sites, with its main car production in Graz in Austria.


title: Magna Steyr

text: Magna Steyr developed Mercedes-Benz's "4Matic" all-wheel drive (AWD) system, and was the sole manufacturer of all E-Class 4Matic models between 1996 and 2006. The company also undertook substantial development on the BMW X3 and manufactured all original X3s (model code E83), and the Aston Martin Rapide. The company developed several cars on behalf of manufacturers such as the Audi TT, Fiat Bravo and Peugeot RCZ.


title: Magna Steyr

text: Magna Steyr AG & Co KG was founded in 2001 after Magna International Inc. acquired a majority shareholding in Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG three years earlier.


title: Magna Steyr

text: During the second quarter of 2015, the Magna Steyr battery pack business was sold to Samsung SDI for approximately $120 million.


title: Magna Steyr

text: In March 2017 Magna Steyr started to produce the new BMW 5 Series sedan; production is shared with BMW Group's manufacturing plant in Dingolfing, Germany.


title: Magna Steyr

text: In early December 2016 Magna International announced it will build the new Jaguar I-Pace, the company’s first battery electric vehicle. Jaguar later said Magna Steyr will also assemble its E-Pace crossover, starting later in 2017. Magna Steyr confirmed the deal following Jaguar's announcement. Production for the I-Pace started in early 2018.


title: Magna Steyr

text: In January 2020, Sony presented a concept car, the Sony Vision-S, which was developed and built in cooperation with Magna Steyr.


title: Magna Steyr

text: In October 2020 Magna International announced it would build a new electric vehicle, the Fisker Ocean, while taking a 6% ownership interest in Fisker Inc. Also the Ineos Grenadier 4x4 has been developed with expertise from Magna Steyr, with subsidiary Magna Powertrain working on the development of the chassis and suspension and the car being built at the former Smartville plant at Hambach in France.


title: Magna Steyr

text: Porsche had announced in June 2008 that the Boxster and Cayman models would be manufactured by Magna Steyr from 2012, but this contract was cancelled in December 2009 and transferred to Karmann, a German car assembly company which was recently taken over by Porsche's parent company, Volkswagen.


title: Magna Steyr

text: Magna Steyr created the MILA (Magna Innovation Lightweight Auto) brand for its technology and research. Several concept cars have been shown at motor shows.


title: Magna Steyr

text: The showcar was presented at the IAA in Frankfurt in 2005 as a one-seater sportscar. The first prototype of the CNG-powered vehicle was built in 2006. Mila 2, the two-seater version, followed.


title: Magna Steyr

text: Presented at the Geneva Motor Show 2007, the Mila Future is a sculpture with four roof options: coupé, landaulet, coupster (a crossover between a coupé and a roadster) and roadster.


title: Magna Steyr

text: The Alpin was a small, lightweight off-road vehicle for four passengers in a 3+1 seat arrangement announced at the 2008 Geneva Motor Show. It had an unusual mid-engine layout and was based on a low-cost production concept. It was long, wide and high, with a 3-cylinder 1.0 L (999cc) engine in two versions; CNG natural gas or petrol. The petrol version was much lighter, with a weight of .


title: Magna Steyr

text: The Mila EV was a plug-in electric vehicle concept based on a modular lightweight platform, displayed at the 2009 Geneva Motor Show.


title: Magna Steyr

text: At the Geneva Motor Show 2011, the fifth Mila concept car was presented: Mila Aerolight, a compact four-seater, powered by CNG.


title: Magna Steyr

text: The sixth concept car in the Mila family, the Mila Coupic, combines three vehicle concepts in one: a SUV coupé which can be transformed into a pick-up or a convertible. It was presented at the Geneva Motor Show 2012.


title: Magna Steyr

text: MILA Blue is a natural-gas powered lightweight concept vehicle with emissions of of less than . The car achieves a weight saving of compared to typical current A-segment vehicles powered by CNG.


title: Magna Steyr

text: MILA Plus combines a lightweight construction with alternative-drive for performance and eco-friendliness. With an all-electric range of and a vehicle weight of , MILA Plus achieves reduced CO emissions of . It was introduced to the public at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show.


title: Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)

text: "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)" is a song performed and co-written by American singer-songwriter Christopher Cross, which was the main theme for the 1981 film "Arthur" starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli. The song won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1981. In the US, it reached number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100<nowiki> and on the Hot Adult Contemporary charts during October 1981, remaining at the top on the Hot 100 for three consecutive weeks. Overseas, it also went to number one on the </nowiki>VG-lista chart in Norway and was a top-ten hit in several other countries. The song became the second and last American number-one hit by Christopher Cross. It was included as a bonus track only on the CD and cassette versions of his second album, "Another Page", released in 1983.


title: Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)

text: The B-side of the record, "Minstrel Gigolo", was the same song used on the back of Cross's debut single, "Ride Like the Wind".


title: Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)

text: Indie pop band Fitz and the Tantrums recorded a cover of this song for the soundtrack to the 2011 remake of the film.


title: Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)

text: The song was written in collaboration between Cross, pop music composer Burt Bacharach, and Bacharach's frequent writing partner and then-wife Carole Bayer Sager. A fourth writing credit went to Minnelli's ex-husband, Australian songwriter Peter Allen, a frequent collaborator with Bayer Sager. The line in the chorus "When you get caught between the moon and New York City" was taken from an unreleased song written by Allen and Bayer Sager. Allen came up with the line while his plane was in a holding pattern during a night arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport.


title: Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)

text: The song won the 1981 Academy Award for Best Original Song and Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. In 2004 it finished at #79 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of the top tunes in American cinema. In 2008, Barry Manilow released a cover version for his The Greatest Songs of the Eighties album.


title: Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)

text: The music video consists of two acts, which are edited together in fade outs. In one, Christopher Cross performs the song with musicians in a recording studio, and the other is the story the song illustrates.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Early presidential elections were held in South Korea on 9 May 2017 following the impeachment and removal of Park Geun-hye. The elections were conducted in a single round, on a first-past-the-post basis, and had originally been scheduled for 20 December 2017. However, they were brought forward after the decision of the Constitutional Court on 10 March 2017 to uphold the National Assembly's impeachment of Park. Following procedures set out in the Constitution of South Korea, Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn succeeded Park as the acting president. After Park was removed from office by the Constitutional Court's ruling, acting president Hwang announced he would not run for a term in his own right.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Opinion polling before April consistently placed the Democratic Party's candidate, Moon Jae-in, runner-up in the 2012 election, as the front-runner. Second place in the opinion polls was initially held by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who declined to run in February, followed by Ahn Hee-jung, whilst he lost the Democratic primaries to Moon. Support for People Party founder Ahn Cheol-soo then surged, threatening Moon's lead in the polls throughout early April, before descending to approximately equal that of Liberty Korea Party's candidate, Hong Jun-pyo, in final polls.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Moon won the election with 41 percent of the vote, defeating his nearest opponent, Hong, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Under the Constitution of South Korea, if a president dies, resigns, or is removed by impeachment, a new election must take place within 60 days. As a result, unlike previous presidential elections, president-elect Moon took office immediately upon the confirmation of the result by the National Election Commission, with the inauguration at the National Assembly on the same day.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Park Geun-hye of the conservative Saenuri Party (renamed just prior to the election in February 2017 as the Liberty Korea Party) won the previous presidential election in 2012, succeeding Lee Myung-bak of the same party.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: The Saenuri Party lost the parliamentary election in April 2016, with opposition parties including liberal Democratic Party of Korea and People Party winning a majority in the National Assembly. Commentators described the result as leaving Park a lame duck president, as she may not run again under South Korea's one-term presidency rule. and the "Nikkei Asian Review" noted that, in the wake of her "crushing defeat", "rivals sense a prime opportunity to complete the power shift in the December 2017 presidential vote". The "Korea Times" stated: "The drama of deals and power struggles for next year's election has already begun."


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: On 9 December 2016, President Park was impeached by the National Assembly by a vote of 234 for and 56 against (with seven invalid votes and two abstentions) after her implication in the 2016 South Korean political scandal. The Constitutional Court reviewed the motion of impeachment.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: On 10 March 2017, Park was formally removed from office, with a unanimous ruling by all eight of the Constitutional Court's justices supporting her impeachment. A presidential election would have to be held within 60 days. In the interim, Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn succeeded Park and served out the remainder of the 18th term until election day.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: The presidential election had previously been scheduled for 20 December, with Park barred from running due to the constitutional ban on any sort of presidential reelection. However, with Park's removal from office, the elections were brought forward to 9 May in order to ensure that a new president would be able to take office within 60 days of Park's removal, as required by the Constitution.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: The six parties represented in the National Assembly are the social liberal Democratic Party of Korea, the conservative Liberty Korea Party, the centrist People Party, the center-right Bareun Party, the progressive Justice Party, and pro-Park Geun-hye conservative Saenuri Party.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Ballot numbers for party candidates were given according to the candidate's party seat distribution in the National Assembly. Ballot numbers for independent and minor party candidates were determined through a random lottery by the National Election Commission.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Candidates were determined by an open primary of citizens who registered as a voter between February 15 to March 9, and March 12 to March 21. Overall, 2,144,840 people registered as a primary voter, making the 2017 primary the largest in Korean history.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: The primary was conducted from March 22 to April 3, with the voting base divided by four regions: Honam, Yeongnam, Hoseo and Seoul Capital Area, Gangwon Province, and Jeju Province as a single region. 71.6% of the registered voters voted in the primary, putting the vote total at 1,642,640.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Candidate was determined by a combination of opinion polls, conducted between March 30 to March 31 (50%), and the votes cast by the delegates at the party convention held on March 31 (50%).


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Candidate was chosen by an open primary (80%) and an opinion poll conducted between April 4 and 5 (20%). The primary was conducted through March 25 to April 4, with 7 regional primaries being held. Ahn Cheol-soo was declared winner of the primary on April 4.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Candidate was determined by a combination of votes from an evaluation commission based on 4 debates, held in different region of the country (40%), votes from the party members (30%), and public opinion polls (30%).


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Opinion polls throughout 2017 showed Moon Jae-in as the leading candidate. Polls prior to the conclusion of the Democratic primary (which included his rivals to the nomination) had Moon at around 30% support, and polls conducted after he had won the primary showed generally consistent results of around 40% by April.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Polling showed a significant decline in support for Ahn Cheol-soo during April. While at the beginning of the month he was polling close to Moon, and even exceeded him in a few polls, by May his support had dropped to around 20%. This decline coincided with rising support for Hong Jun-pyo. By the time of the polling blackout period began on 3 May, Ahn and Hong were recording similar levels of support.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea won the plurality of the votes (41.09% in contrast to 24.04% won by his closest opponent Hong Jun-pyo), thus winning this election. He assumed the office as the President of South Korea immediately upon the confirmation of the results at 8:09 am on 10 May 2017 (Local time) and was inaugurated in the National Assembly at afternoon on the same day.


title: 2017 South Korean presidential election

text: Moon's 17.1% margin of victory is the largest percentage margin for any liberal candidate since the beginning of free and fair direct elections in 1987.


title: Florante at Laura

text: Florante at Laura (full title: Pinagdaanang Buhay ni Florante at ni Laura sa Kahariang Albanya; English: The History of Florante and Laura in the Kingdom of Albania) is an 1838 awit written by Tagalog poet Francisco Balagtas. It is considered one of the masterpieces of Philippine literature. Balagtas wrote the epic during his imprisonment. He dedicated it to his former sweetheart María Asuncion Rivera, whom he nicknamed "M.A.R." and is referenced to as "Selya" in the dedication ""Kay Selya"" ("For Celia"). The story is loosely based on his own biography.


title: Florante at Laura

text: "Florante at Laura" is written as an "awit"; the word in modern Filipino means "song", but at that time referred to a standard poetic format with the following characteristics:


title: Florante at Laura

text: The son of a princess and a royal adviser, Florante grew up in happiness, showered with love. He liked to play games when he was six years old, and was almost captured by a vulture that entered in their mountain cottage, which was also followed by the attack of a falcon. He was saved by his cousin Menalipo, an archer from Epirus.


title: Florante at Laura

text: When he turned eleven, his parents, Duke Briseo and Princess Floresca, sent him to Athens, Greece to study under Antenor, a renowned teacher. There, he met Adolfo, a fellow countryman, the brightest student in their school. After five months of studying Astrology, Philosophy and Mathematics, Florante surpassed Adolfo's capabilities, talents, and intelligence, gaining popularity.


title: Florante at Laura

text: While performing during a school contest, Adolfo attempted to kill Florante because of his jealousy towards Florante's popularity. Florante's friend, Menandro, was quick enough to intervene. Adolfo headed home to Albania after his failed attempt. One year later, Florante received a letter from his father, announcing the death of his mother. Florante fainted for 2 hours from the grief.


title: Florante at Laura

text: Seven months later, Florante receives a second letter from his father telling him to return to Albania. Menandro, unwilling to be separated from him and allowed by his uncle Antenor, he accompanied him on his journey. Upon his arrival to Albania, an emissary of the kingdom of Crotona requested his assistance in the incoming war against the Persians. Florante had not the will to refuse, for the King of Crotona was his grandfather. During his stay in Albania, Florante was invited to the royal palace and was glamoured of Laura, the daughter of King Linceo. He stared at her for hours forgetting about the war then lost.


title: Florante at Laura

text: Months later coming to the aid of Crotona, Florante fought with the Persian general Osmalik for five hours, finally slaying him in the end. He stayed in Crotona for five months before returning to Albania to see Laura. He was surprised by the sight of a Persian flag waving atop the kingdom. He recaptured the palace and saved his father, the King, and Count Adolfo. He also saved Laura from being beheaded from the hands of the Emir and was declared "Defender of Albania" for his bravery, deepening Adolfo's envy and hatred.


title: Florante at Laura

text: Florante protected the kingdom once more from the Turkish forces under General Miramolin, an acclaimed conqueror. This took place in Aetolia, where he later received a letter from his father summoning him back to Albania. He left his troops in the care of his friend, Menandro, and upon returning, he was ambushed by 30,000 soldiers under Adolfo's orders and was imprisoned for 18 days. There, he learned of the tragic fate of his father and the king who were beheaded under Adolfo. Florante was then exiled into the forest and tied to the tree.


title: Florante at Laura

text: After Florante finishes his story, it was Aladin's turn to recount his life. He first introduces himself as Prince Aladin of the Persian kingdom, son of Sultan Ali-Adab.


title: Florante at Laura

text: While walking through the forest, Aladin tells about his fiancée, Flerida. Unbeknown to him at that time, his father also desired Flerida. After returning home from a battle (revealed to be the battle of Florante and General Osmalik), Ali-Adab imprisoned the Prince, using his abandonment of his troops as the reason, and the eventual loss made the latter order a decapacitation of Aladin.


title: Florante at Laura

text: In a turn of events, Aladin was released by a general on orders from his father, with the constraint that he may never enter the kingdom again. Heartbroken, he unknowingly walks to the forest where Florante was tied up.


title: Florante at Laura

text: Aladin's speech is interrupted when they hear voices. A woman narrates her escape from a kingdom and a marriage. She speaks of her search for her beloved, a search which lasted six years. She shares that while deep in the forest, she heard cries for help, and upon finding a lady about to be tortured, she uses her bow and arrow to kill the assailant. The woman introduces herself as Flerida.


title: Florante at Laura

text: The lady saved by Flerida is revealed to be Laura, who begins to tell her story. While her love was away at war, Count Adolfo used deceit to gain popularity and turned the people of Albania against their king. Count Adolfo then rose to the throne, forcing Laura to be his queen. An army under Menandro, Florante's childhood friend, was able to overthrow Adolfo from power. Seeing all was lost, Adolfo fled into the woods with Laura as his hostage.


title: Florante at Laura

text: After hearing all this, Florante and Aladin reunite with their loved ones. Florante and Laura return to Albania to rule as king and queen. Aladin and Flerida returned to Persia, where Aladin became the new sultan as his father died of depression because Flerida had left him. Aladin and Flerida are then baptized into the Catholic faith, and the two kingdoms lived in harmony and peace.


title: Florante at Laura

text: Being a grand literary classic in the Philippines, adapting this epic for modern theatre requires skill and mastery. The said play is a staple among high school students as a classroom requirement. The Gantimpala Theater Foundation has already mastered the art of portraying the said epic. The modern group is influenced by modern pop culture.


title: Memory card

text: A memory card is an electronic data storage device used for storing digital information, typically using flash memory. These are commonly used in digital portable electronic devices. They allow adding memory to such devices using a card in a socket instead of a protruding USB flash drives.


title: Memory card

text: The basis for memory card technology is flash memory. It was invented by Fujio Masuoka at Toshiba in 1980 and commercialized by Toshiba in 1987.


title: Memory card

text: PC Cards (PCMCIA) were the first commercial memory card formats (type I cards) to come out, but are now mainly used in industrial applications and to connect I/O devices such as modems. In 1992, SanDisk introduced FlashDisk, a PCMCIA card and one of the first memory cards that did not require battery power to retain its contents. Since 1994, a number of memory card formats smaller than the PC Card arrived. The first one was CompactFlash and later SmartMedia and Miniature Card. The desire for smaller cards for cell-phones, PDAs, and compact digital cameras drove a trend that left the previous generation of "compact" cards looking big. In 2001, SM alone captured 50% of the digital camera market and CF had captured the professional digital camera market. By 2005 however, SD/MMC had nearly taken over SmartMedia's spot, though not to the same level and with stiff competition coming from Memory Stick variants, as well as CompactFlash. In industrial and embedded fields, even the venerable PC card (PCMCIA) memory cards still manage to maintain a niche, while in mobile phones and PDAs, the memory card has become smaller.


title: Memory card

text: Initially memory cards were expensive, costing US$3 per megabyte of capacity in 2001; this led to the development of the Microdrive, PocketZip and Dataplay. All three concepts became obsolete once flash memory prices became lower and their capacities became higher by 2006.


title: Memory card

text: Since 2010, new products of Sony (previously only using Memory Stick) and Olympus (previously only using XD-Card) have been offered with an additional SD-Card slot. Effectively the format war has turned in SD-Card's favor.


title: Memory card

text: Many older video game consoles used memory cards to hold saved game data. Cartridge-based systems primarily used battery-backed volatile RAM within each individual cartridge to hold saves for that game. Cartridges without this RAM may have used a password system, or wouldn't save progress at all. The Neo Geo AES, released in 1990 by SNK, was the first video game console able to use a memory card. AES memory cards were also compatible with Neo Geo MVS arcade cabinets, allowing players to migrate saves between home and arcade systems and vice versa. Memory cards became commonplace when home consoles moved to read-only optical discs for storing the game program, beginning with systems such as the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega-CD.


title: Memory card

text: Until the sixth generation of video game consoles, memory cards were based on proprietary formats; later systems have used established industry formats for memory cards, such as FAT32.


title: Memory card

text: Home consoles now commonly use hard disk drive storage for saved games and allow the use of generic USB flash drives or other card formats via a memory card reader to transport game saves and other game information, along with cloud storage saving, though most portable gaming systems still rely on custom memory cartridges to store program data, due to their low power consumption, smaller physical size and reduced mechanical complexity.


title: Alpine A110

text: The Alpine A110 is a sports car produced by French automobile manufacturer Alpine from 1963 to 1977. The car was styled as a "berlinette", which in the post-WWII era refers to a small enclosed two-door berline, better-known as a coupé. The Alpine A110 succeeded the earlier A108. The car was powered by a succession of Renault engines. A car also named Alpine A110 was introduced in 2017.


title: Alpine A110

text: Launched in 1963, the A110, like previous road-going Alpines, used many Renault parts, including engines. While its predecessor the A108 was designed around Dauphine components, the A110 was updated to use R8 parts. Unlike the A108, which was available first as a cabriolet and only later as a coupé, the A110 was available first as a berlinette and then as a cabriolet. The most obvious external departure from the A108 coupé was a restyling of the rear bodywork. Done to accommodate the A110's larger engine, this change gave the car a more aggressive look. Like the A108, the A110 featured a steel backbone chassis and a fiberglass body. The A110 was originally offered with 1.1 L R8 Major or R8 Gordini engines. The Gordini engine has a power output of SAE at 6,500 rpm.


title: Alpine A110

text: The A110 achieved most of its fame in the early 1970s as a successful rally car. After winning several rallies in France in the late 1960s with the cast-iron R8 Gordini Cléon-Fonte engines the car was fitted with the aluminium-block Cléon-Alu from the Renault 16 TS. With two twin-venturi Weber 45 carburetors, the TS engine has a power output of DIN at 6,000 rpm. This allowed the production 1600S to attain a top speed of . The long-wheelbase Alpine A108 2+2 coupé was replaced with a new restyled 2+2 coupé based on the A110 mechanicals called the A110 GT4.


title: Alpine A110

text: The car achieved international fame during the 1970–1972 seasons competing in the newly created International Championship for Manufacturers, winning events throughout Europe, and earning a reputation as one of the strongest rally cars of its time. Notable performances included a victory in the 1971 Monte Carlo Rally with Swedish driver Ove Andersson.


title: Alpine A110

text: After Alpine's acquisition by Renault in 1971, the International Championship was replaced by the World Rally Championship for 1973, at which time Renault elected to compete with the A110. With a team featuring Bernard Darniche, Jean-Pierre Nicolas and Jean-Luc Thérier as permanent drivers and "guest stars" like Jean-Claude Andruet (who won the 1973 Monte Carlo Rally) the A110 won most of the races where the works team was entered, making Alpine the first World Rally Champion. Later competition-spec A110s received engines of up to 1.8 litres.


title: Alpine A110

text: In addition to Alpine's own Dieppe factory, versions of the A110 were built under license by various other vehicle manufacturers around the world. From 1965 to 1974 the car was produced in Mexico under the name "Dinalpin" by Diesel Nacional (DINA), which also produced Renault vehicles. From 1967 to 1969, the A110 was also produced in Bulgaria under the name "Bulgaralpine" by a partnership formed between SPC Metalhim and ETO Bulet, whose collaboration also resulted in the production of the Bulgarrenault.


title: Alpine A110

text: In Spain, the Alpine A110 was produced by FASA in Valladolid from 1967 to 1978. These were the only versions built outside France that were commercialised under the same names and to the same specifications as the French-built ones. FASA manufactured version A110 1100 (from 1967 to 1970) with 1108 cc engines, version A110 1300 (from 1971 to 1976) with 1289 cc engines, and version A110 1400 (from 1977 to 1978) with 1397 cc engines.


title: Alpine A110

text: In 1974, the mid-engine Lancia Stratos which was the first car designed specifically for rally racing, was operational and homologated. At the same time it was obvious that the rear-engine A110 was nearing the limits of its development potential. The adoption of fuel injection brought no performance increase. On some cars, a DOHC 16-valve head was fitted to the engine, but it proved unreliable. Chassis modifications, such as the usage of the A310's double wishbone rear suspension, homologated with the A110 1600SC, also failed to increase performance. On the international stage the Stratos proved to be the "ultimate weapon", soon making the A110, as well as many other rally cars, obsolete. The A110 remains a staple of vintage racing events such as the Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique.


title: Alpine A110

text: In 2012, to mark the 50th anniversary of the A110, Renault produced a concept car called the A110-50. The modern production version of the A110 was introduced by Renault in 2017.


title: Alpine A110

text: The A110 was fitted with a variety of engines between 1963 and 1977. Engines used on production cars included the following:


title: Alpine A110

text: Unique characteristics:<br>Due to the rear-mounted engine there was no air-intake grille on the front of the body. Air was scooped from below the chassis and exhausted through near-horizontal openings on the rear fenders above and aft of the rear wheels for cooling.


title: Bindy Johal

text: Bhupinder "Bindy" Singh Johal (January 14, 1971 – December 20, 1998) was a Canadian gangster from British Columbia, Canada. A self-confessed drug trafficker, he was known for his outspoken nature, blatant disregard for authority and his longtime rivalry with former mentors Ranjit Cheema and rival Punjabi Mafia faction led by the Dosanjh brothers and Robbie Kandola. On December 20, 1998, Johal was fatally shot in the back of the head at a crowded nightclub in Vancouver, British Columbia.


title: Bindy Johal

text: Born in Punjab, India to a Sikh family, Johal immigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia with his parents at the age of four. He was increasingly temperamental, resented discipline, and had a lack of respect and remorse for others. Johal was considered to be a "problem child" by his teachers. One of Johal's teachers, Rob Sandhu, stated: "When he came into Grade 8, it didn't seem like he had any problems. It seems these kids are not being flagged. But teachers are raising these issues, so why aren't we acting on it?"


title: Bindy Johal

text: Although he did well in school and was even on the honor roll, he was expelled from Sir Charles Tupper Secondary School and sentenced to 60 days in jail after he "brutally" assaulted his vice-principal in 1989. Johal tried to justify his behavior at his trial in a defense that the journalist Jerry Langton wrote "smacked of cold-blooded cynicism" by saying that as an Indo-Canadian that he was the victim of a racist society and he was only just lashing out against society by beating up his vice-principle so severely that he had to go to the hospital emergency room to save his life. The judge at Johal's trial rejected this defense. The judge noted there was no evidence that the vice-principle was a racist and that whatever slights and insults Johal may have endured from others was no excuse for the assault. He suffered from severe depression when his parents cut his hair after an armed assault in Canada in the aftermath of the Assassination of Indira Gandhi, which happened miles away in Delhi, his mother said, "That was the only time I saw another expression of his other than anger and silence." He remained a devout Sikh till his death, although he kept his religious life in chains and only showed it when in life threatening matters.


title: Bindy Johal

text: Having moved to Richmond, British Columbia, Johal enrolled in McNair Secondary School. Johal smashed in the window of a car using a baseball bat and was convicted of possession of a dangerous weapon. Johal enrolled in college, but dropped out after his first semester and thus began his criminal career. Johal joined a once Hispanic gang called "Los Diablos" ("The Devils"). As the membership of "Los Diablos" became more Indo-Canadian, the gang was renamed as the Punjabi Mafia. He built a reputation as a hit-man working for Jimmy and Ron Dosanjh, both of whom he would later betray and have kill. Johal also started to sell cocaine.


title: Bindy Johal

text: On 14 October 1991, a Colombian drug trafficker, Teodoro Salcedo, was murdered in Vancouver Jimsher "Jimmy" Dosanjh was arrested and charged with the murder. While Dosanjh was in jail awaiting his trial which ended with his acquittal, Johal took advantage of his absence to make himself leader of the gang. Johal and his gang hijacked trucks carrying electronics and automobiles landed at the port of Vancouver, which he sold on the black market. A television documentary at the time estimated that Johal had an annual income of $4 million.


title: Bindy Johal

text: He was charged with aggravated assault for beating two men in a bar with a broken beer bottle in 1997. When imprisoned, Johal was labeled a "menace to society." Bindy reportedly had antisocial personality disorder which may account for why he was so quick to kill those close to him. He didn't keep close friends and was extremely callous to his associates. He reportedly tortured some of his victims, some of whom were from his own crew. According to Constable Spencer, "All he was concerned about was himself, he was very narcissistic in nature and had a general hatred of people. Bindy actually met Bal Buttar, one of his close associates, in prison when he was in his twenties. They never knew each other growing up and from Bal's statements, Bindy made it very clear that they were not friends, but business partners as he did with everyone else in his group." He attended school with Harjit Sajjan, who later became the Canadian Minister of Defense.


title: Bindy Johal

text: Johal was responsbile in the murders of gangster brothers Ron Dosanjh and Jimmy Dosanjh. Jimmy Dosanjh was killed in February 1994, and Ron was killed in April 1994. Johal knew that Jimmy Dosanjh had taken out a contract to kill him for over C$230,000, according to Crown prosecutors. The hitman whom Jimmy Dosanjh hired to kill Johal instead approached him and made a deal for more money to kill Dosanjh. As a result, after killing Jimmy Dosanjh, Johal went on T.V. and stated, "This Jimmy Dosanjh, they portrayed him as a hit-man this that. Personally from what I've seen of him on the street I don't think he could have hit his way out of a paper bag." This was a direct insult directed to Jimmy and Ron Dosanjh claiming that they had stopped being hitmen themselves and were rarely doing their dirty work themselves after climbing to the top of their criminal organization.


title: Bindy Johal

text: In a television interview, Ranjit "Ron" Dosanjh told a television crew that if he saw Johal at his house, he "shoot him between the eyes". Johal when asked to comment about the remark by another television crew snapped back: "Basically, I just want these guys to know you got another thing coming, bitch! I'm still here!" On 19 April 1994, Ron Dosanjh was killed in his red pick-up truck while waiting for a traffic light when a car pulled alongside his truck and a man opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle. Dosanjh took several bullets to his face, killing him instantly and his truck veered wildly as his foot was no longer on the brake, crashing into a tree. On 24 April 1994, Johal's neighbor, Greg Olson, who was walking his dog, was killed in a case of mistaken identity. On 25 April 1994, Johal was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the Dosanjh murders alongside Sarbjit Gill, Rajinder "Big Raj" Benji, Michael Kim Budai, Sun News Lai, Preet "Peter" Sarbjit Gill, and Ho-Sik "Phil" Kim, whom the Crown alleged to be the actual gunman who killed the Dosanjh brothers.


title: Bindy Johal

text: Because of the required security for the trial, it was one of the most expensive trials in Canadian history. His former brother-in-law, Peter Gill, was also accused. The accused, including Gill and Johal, were acquitted. During and following the trial, Gill had an affair with Gillian Guess, an active juror on the trial. Guess was sentenced to 18 months after being convicted of obstruction of justice. Gill was tried and convicted of the same crime and sentenced to six years in prison.


title: Bindy Johal

text: The Crown appealed the acquittal of Johal and other defendants, but Johal was killed before the new trial began. Gill was not retried.


title: Bindy Johal

text: The Punjabi Mafia is a criminal organization originating in British Columbia with gang members. The gang, initially being liberal in its membership, became more ethnocentric over time with the exception of some groups. The Punjabi Mafia is loosely affiliated and consists of several groups which sometimes work together. These groups are still active and notorious in Vancouver and have been since the early 1990s. They have been linked to the Independent Soldiers (IS), Red Scorpions, Lotus Triads, Hells Angels, and the United Nations gang in Canada although several members of the Independent Soldiers can also be grouped as part of the mafia as well. Bindy Johal was accepted into the Punjabi Mafia in the early 1990s most likely through Ranjit Cheema or Ron Dosanjh. Ranjit Cheema and Ron Dosanjh were among the few who had full control of the criminal organization.


title: Bindy Johal

text: According to Johal's former lieutenant Bal Buttar, Punjabi Mafia hitmen claimed contracts in B.C. They are responsible for dozens of murders in Canada in the 90s alone and the majority of those murders still remain unsolved. Buttar admitted to performing several executions alongside Bindy, as well as the unsuccessful attempt to kill Johal's associate and former brother-in-law, Preet Sarbjit "Peter" Gill. However, Buttar was shocked when Bindy said he wanted his own cousin killed. "I thought this guy was kidding, but he was actually being serious, he wanted to take him out." Buttar was suspected of being behind the hit on Robbie Kandola outside his Coal Harbour penthouse. He believed Kandola was the one responsible for his younger brother's death. He is also suspected to be the one behind Bindy's death. It is still up for debate whether he was killed because Bal feared Bindy would kill him or because Ranj and other major players turned on him.


title: Bindy Johal

text: Johal was earning approximately $500,000–$900,000 a week in his prime through various illegal activities including murder for hire, debt collecting, and drug dealing. He was also affiliated to the Buttar brothers who were well known across the Lower Mainland for their brutal gangland slayings. Johal coldly told Buttar: "You listen to me. If you take care of things at your end, I'll be happy with you, brother. If you fuck me over, I'll kill you. Right?". Johal's chosen instrument was a hit squad which Johal named "The Elite" consisting of five Indo-Canadian hit men. Buttar later stated that "The Elite" hit squad was responsible for 25 murders over a five year period.


title: Bindy Johal

text: A man named Randy Chan was kidnapped on October 25, 1996 and Johal was charged with his kidnapping. Reportedly Chan had been kidnapped by Roman Mann, one of Johal's associates, due to Chan and his Triad associates continuing to pay tax to the rival Cheema/Kandola group and buy bulk drugs from that group as opposed to the faction of Bindy Johal. Mann was angry with the quality of the cocaine that Chan had just sold him, which he state was very diluted. Chan was held captive for 50 or 56 hours, part of which was spent in an automobile trunk. Johal phoned Chan's older brother, Raymond, to tell him that if he wanted to see his brother alive again, to give him 5 kilograms of cocaine in exchange for his brothers' life. Johal negotiated Chan's release with his brother to be in exchange for $500,000 paid by the Lotus triads to the Punjabi Mafia faction of Johal. Chan's brother was Raymond Chan, a gang member of the Chinese criminal organization called the "Lotus". Johal had a "legendary" bad temper, known for his frequent outbursts of violent rage, which led him to be convicted in 1997 of attacking two men in a bar fight with a broken beer bottle. Johal had convictions for obstruction of justice, possession of dangerous weapons, and aggravated assault.


title: Bindy Johal

text: Johal used "The Elite" to commit several murders. The first one killed was Amarjit Singh Dheil who was shot dead while leaving the Marpole-Oakridge Community Centre on 19 January 1997 after watching a hockey game. Dheil was an associate of the Dosanjh brothers, and Johal wanted to see all of the associates of the Dosanjh brothers killed least they try to avenge them. On 21 October 1997, "The Elite" killed Gorinder Singh Khun Khun as he leaving his home. Khun Khun had attended high school alongside Johal, and considered him a friend. Johal in a moment of paranoia was convinced that Khun Khun was involved in the Olson murder, which led him to order Khun Khun's murder. On 1 July 1998, Johal had "The Elite" kill Vinuse News MacKenzie. The reason for MacKenzie's murder was eliminate a romantic rival for the affections of a woman who preferred Mackenzie over Johal.


title: Bindy Johal

text: On 19 September 1998, a member of the gang, Derek Chand Shankar, insulted Johal, calling him an "idiot" and a "baby" after Johal stated he was felt too tired to go a nightclub. Later the same night, Johal showed up at the nightclub and asked Buttar where Shankar was. Buttar stated that he was drunk and sleeping in a truck in the parking lot. Despite knowing that Johal was planning to kill Shankar, Buttar drove the truck to the Queensborough Bridge in New Westminster. As Shankar was waking up from his stupor, Johal shot him. On 29 November 1998, Johal's associate, Roman "Danny" Mann expressed the wish to leave the gang, leading to Johal to punch him out in fury. Later the same night, Mann's body was found in an empty industrial lot in Burnaby with a single bullet through his head. When Buttar asked Johal about the murder, he stated: "Blame it on the H.A. [Hells Angels]". Johal then asked Buttar if he wanted to go to a nightclub with him.


title: Bindy Johal

text: On December 20, 1998, Johal was dancing at the Palladium nightclub in Vancouver when he was shot from behind at 4:30 a.m. No witnesses were able to describe the assailant. Johal was rushed to a nearby hospital and died just four hours later. His resting word was "Waheguru ji" which he shouted after being shot. Four months before Johal's death, "at least three of Johal's associates had also been killed", with each killing alleged to be connected to Bindy, according to the confessions of Bal Buttar. In 2004, before he died, Bal Buttar told a reporter that he ordered the assassination of Johal, fearing that if he didn't do it, Johal would have had him murdered. The kidnapping trial was set to commence within two months of his murder; Buttar would have served up to 10 years if he had been convicted. Buttar was never convicted in the murder of Johal due to his blind and quadriplegic state.


title: Bindy Johal

text: Johal was identified as one of the individuals in the Punjabi Canadian community who sought criminal activity as a means of fast success and money, a glamourized lifestyle and to counter racial discrimination and abuse with counter-violence:


title: Bindy Johal

text: Why do you think Bindy Johal was a hero to many young Punjabi-Canadians? His legend had spread wide in the past few years among Indians not only here but also in Toronto and Montreal, New York and San Francisco. He stood up to his school principals, he beat up those who called him racial names — and he was making a lot of money.


title: Bindy Johal

text: Kash Heed, commanding officer of the 3rd Police District in Vancouver, stated that it was really disappointing that someone as bright and intelligent as Johal would turn to a life of crime. He added that young people who want to emulate gangsters like Bindy see the benefits of being a criminal, but do not see the danger of putting their lives at risk.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: Dimensionality reduction, or dimension reduction, is the transformation of data from a high-dimensional space into a low-dimensional space so that the low-dimensional representation retains some meaningful properties of the original data, ideally close to its intrinsic dimension. Working in high-dimensional spaces can be undesirable for many reasons; raw data are often sparse as a consequence of the curse of dimensionality, and analyzing the data is usually computationally intractable (hard to control or deal with). Dimensionality reduction is common in fields that deal with large numbers of observations and/or large numbers of variables, such as signal processing, speech recognition, neuroinformatics, and bioinformatics.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: Methods are commonly divided into linear and nonlinear approaches. Approaches can also be divided into feature selection and feature extraction. Dimensionality reduction can be used for noise reduction, data visualization, cluster analysis, or as an intermediate step to facilitate other analyses.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: Feature selection approaches try to find a subset of the input variables (also called features or attributes). The three strategies are: the "filter" strategy (e.g. information gain), the "wrapper" strategy (e.g. search guided by accuracy), and the "embedded" strategy (selected features are added or removed while building the model based on prediction errors).


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: Data analysis such as regression or classification can be done in the reduced space more accurately than in the original space.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: Feature projection (also called feature extraction) transforms the data from the high-dimensional space to a space of fewer dimensions. The data transformation may be linear, as in principal component analysis (PCA), but many nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques also exist. For multidimensional data, tensor representation can be used in dimensionality reduction through multilinear subspace learning.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: The main linear technique for dimensionality reduction, principal component analysis, performs a linear mapping of the data to a lower-dimensional space in such a way that the variance of the data in the low-dimensional representation is maximized. In practice, the covariance (and sometimes the correlation) matrix of the data is constructed and the eigenvectors on this matrix are computed. The eigenvectors that correspond to the largest eigenvalues (the principal components) can now be used to reconstruct a large fraction of the variance of the original data. Moreover, the first few eigenvectors can often be interpreted in terms of the large-scale physical behavior of the system, because they often contribute the vast majority of the system's energy, especially in low-dimensional systems. Still, this must be proven on a case-by-case basis as not all systems exhibit this behavior. The original space (with dimension of the number of points) has been reduced (with data loss, but hopefully retaining the most important variance) to the space spanned by a few eigenvectors.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: NMF decomposes a non-negative matrix to the product of two non-negative ones, which has been a promising tool in fields where only non-negative signals exist, such as astronomy. NMF is well known since the multiplicative update rule by Lee & Seung, which has been continuously developed: the inclusion of uncertainties, the consideration of missing data and parallel computation, sequential construction which leads to the stability and linearity of NMF, as well as other updates including handling missing data in digital image processing.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: With a stable component basis during construction, and a linear modeling process, sequential NMF is able to preserve the flux in direct imaging of circumstellar structures in astronomy, as one of the methods of detecting exoplanets, especially for the direct imaging of circumstellar discs. In comparison with PCA, NMF does not remove the mean of the matrices, which leads to unphysical non-negative fluxes; therefore NMF is able to preserve more information than PCA as demonstrated by Ren et al.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: Principal component analysis can be employed in a nonlinear way by means of the kernel trick. The resulting technique is capable of constructing nonlinear mappings that maximize the variance in the data. The resulting technique is called kernel PCA.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: Other prominent nonlinear techniques include manifold learning techniques such as Isomap, locally linear embedding (LLE), Hessian LLE, Laplacian eigenmaps, and methods based on tangent space analysis. These techniques construct a low-dimensional data representation using a cost function that retains local properties of the data, and can be viewed as defining a graph-based kernel for Kernel PCA.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: More recently, techniques have been proposed that, instead of defining a fixed kernel, try to learn the kernel using semidefinite programming. The most prominent example of such a technique is maximum variance unfolding (MVU). The central idea of MVU is to exactly preserve all pairwise distances between nearest neighbors (in the inner product space), while maximizing the distances between points that are not nearest neighbors.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: An alternative approach to neighborhood preservation is through the minimization of a cost function that measures differences between distances in the input and output spaces. Important examples of such techniques include: classical multidimensional scaling, which is identical to PCA; Isomap, which uses geodesic distances in the data space; diffusion maps, which use diffusion distances in the data space; t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE), which minimizes the divergence between distributions over pairs of points; and curvilinear component analysis.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: A different approach to nonlinear dimensionality reduction is through the use of autoencoders, a special kind of feedforward neural networks with a bottle-neck hidden layer. The training of deep encoders is typically performed using a greedy layer-wise pre-training (e.g., using a stack of restricted Boltzmann machines) that is followed by a finetuning stage based on backpropagation.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is a generalization of Fisher's linear discriminant, a method used in statistics, pattern recognition and machine learning to find a linear combination of features that characterizes or separates two or more classes of objects or events.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: GDA deals with nonlinear discriminant analysis using kernel function operator. The underlying theory is close to the support-vector machines (SVM) insofar as the GDA method provides a mapping of the input vectors into high-dimensional feature space. Similar to LDA, the objective of GDA is to find a projection for the features into a lower dimensional space by maximizing the ratio of between-class scatter to within-class scatter.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: Autoencoders can be used to learn nonlinear dimension reduction functions and codings together with an inverse function from the coding to the original representation.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: T-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) is a nonlinear dimensionality reduction technique useful for visualization of high-dimensional datasets. It is not recommended for use in analysis such as clustering or outlier detection since it does not necessarily preserve densities or distances well.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: Uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) is a nonlinear dimensionality reduction technique. Visually, it is similar to t-SNE, but it assumes that the data is uniformly distributed on a locally connected Riemannian manifold and that the Riemannian metric is locally constant or approximately locally constant.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: For high-dimensional datasets (i.e. with number of dimensions more than 10), dimension reduction is usually performed prior to applying a K-nearest neighbors algorithm (k-NN) in order to avoid the effects of the curse of dimensionality.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: Feature extraction and dimension reduction can be combined in one step using principal component analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), canonical correlation analysis (CCA), or non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) techniques as a pre-processing step followed by clustering by K-NN on feature vectors in reduced-dimension space. In machine learning this process is also called low-dimensional embedding.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: For very-high-dimensional datasets (e.g. when performing similarity search on live video streams, DNA data or high-dimensional time series) running a fast approximate K-NN search using locality-sensitive hashing, random projection, "sketches", or other high-dimensional similarity search techniques from the VLDB conference toolbox might be the only feasible option.


title: Dimensionality reduction

text: A dimensionality reduction technique that is sometimes used in neuroscience is maximally informative dimensions, which finds a lower-dimensional representation of a dataset such that as much information as possible about the original data is preserved.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island is a 1995 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). The player controls Yoshi, a friendly dinosaur, on a quest to reunite baby Mario with his brother Luigi, who has been kidnapped by Kamek. As a "Super Mario" series platformer, Yoshi runs and jumps to reach the end of the level while solving puzzles and collecting items with Mario's help. The game has a hand-drawn aesthetic and was the first in the franchise to have Yoshi as its main character, where it introduces his signature flutter jump and egg spawning abilities.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: After four years of development, "Yoshi's Island" was released in Japan in August 1995 and worldwide two months later. Some of its special effects were powered by a new Super FX2 microchip. The game was ported to the Game Boy Advance as "Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi's Island" in 2002. This version was rereleased for the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U's Virtual Console in the early 2010s. The original version was also released for the Super NES Classic Edition and Nintendo Switch Online in the late 2010s.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: "Yoshi's Island" received acclaim and sold over four million copies. Reviewers praised the art, sound, level design, and gameplay, and acclaimed "Yoshi's Island" as a masterpiece and one of the greatest video games of all time. The game brought newfound renown to both Yoshi as a character and Shigeru Miyamoto's artistic and directorial career. The distinct art style and Yoshi's signature characteristics established the "Yoshi" series of spin-offs and sequels. The game would be the last "Super Mario" platformer before the series' transition to 3D gameplay, with no further 2D entries for over a decade.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: A long time ago, Kamek, a Magikoopa, attacks a stork delivering baby brothers Mario and Luigi. He succeeds in kidnapping Baby Luigi, but Baby Mario falls out of the sky and onto the back of Yoshi, the friendly dinosaur, on Yoshi's Island. Yoshi and his friends relay Mario across the island to reach Luigi and rescue him from Kamek, who is in the service of the young Bowser. Bowser wanted to abduct the brothers when Kamek foresaw that they would foil his plans in the future. Yoshi defeats Bowser, saves Luigi, and the stork successfully delivers the brothers to their parents in the Mushroom Kingdom.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: "Yoshi's Island" is a 2D side-scrolling platform game. In the "Super Mario" series platform game tradition, the player controls Yoshi in run-and-jump gameplay. The player navigates between platforms and atop some foes en route to the end of the increasingly difficult levels. The player controls one of many Yoshis, which take turns traveling through 48 levels across six worlds to rescue Baby Luigi and reunite the brothers. Yoshi also collects coins to earn extra lives and retains his long tongue from "Super Mario World". The game centers more on "puzzle-solving and item-collecting" than other platformers, with hidden flowers and red coins to find. Levels include mines, ski jumps, and "the requisite fiery dungeons". Every fourth level (two in each world) is a boss fight against a large version of a previous foe.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: In a style new to the series, the game has a coloring book aesthetic with "scribbled crayon" backgrounds, and Yoshi vocalizes with its every action. Expanding on his "trademark tongue" ability to swallow enemies, Yoshi, as the focus of the game, was given a new move set: the ability to "flutter jump", throw eggs, and transform. The flutter jump gives Yoshi a secondary boost when the player holds the jump button. It became his new "trademark move", similar to that of Luigi in "Super Mario Bros. 2". Yoshi can also pound the ground from mid-air to bury objects or break through soft earth, and use his long tongue to grab enemies at a distance. Swallowed enemies can be spat as projectiles immediately or stored for later use as an egg. The player individually aims and fires the eggs at obstacles via a new targeting system. The eggs also bounce off of surfaces in the environment. Up to six eggs can be stored this way, and will trail behind the character. Yoshi can also eat certain items for power-up abilities. For instance, watermelons let Yoshi shoot seeds from his mouth like a machine gun, and fire enemies turn his mouth into a flamethrower. Other power-ups transform Yoshi into vehicles including cars, drills, helicopters, and submarines. A star power-up makes Baby Mario invulnerable and extra fast.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: While Yoshi is "virtually invincible", if hit by an enemy, Baby Mario will float off his back in a bubble while a timer counts down to zero. When the timer expires, Koopas arrive to take Baby Mario and Yoshi loses a life. The player can replenish the timer by collecting small stars and power-ups. However, Yoshi can also lose a life instantly if he comes into contact with obstacles such as pits, spikes, lava, and thorns. Similar to "Super Mario World", the player can hold a power-up in reserve, such as a "+10 star" (which adds ten seconds to the Baby Mario timer) or a "magnifying glass" (which reveals all hidden red coins in a level). These power-ups are acquired in several minigames. At the end of each level, the Yoshi relays Baby Mario to the successive Yoshi. If the player perfects all eight levels in each world by finishing with all flowers, red coins, and full 30 seconds on the timer, two hidden levels will unlock. There are three save slots on the cartridge.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: The Game Boy Advance version adds an exclusive bonus level for each world with 100% level completion. It also includes four-player support via link cable, but only to play "Mario Bros.", a pack-in feature also included on the other "Super Mario Advance" games.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: After his introduction in "Super Mario World" (1990), the character of Yoshi gained popularity and starred in puzzle game spin-offs such as "Yoshi" and "Yoshi's Cookie". "Mario" creator Shigeru Miyamoto asked Yoshi's designer, Shigefumi Hino, to develop an original project. Hino felt that they had already explored every possible avenue with 2D "Mario" platformers (the 3D "Super Mario 64" being in its preliminary stages at this point). After brainstorming, he landed on the idea of using Yoshi as the main character of a platforming game, with the goal of being more accessible than previous games in the "Mario" series. To give the gameplay a more "gentle and relaxed pacing", the levels lack time limits and feature more exploration elements than previous games; Yoshi's flutter jump also makes him easier to control in the air than Mario. In 2020, a prototype for a platform game with similar graphics to "Yoshi's Island" was discovered, featuring a new protagonist wearing a pilot suit. The name, "Super Donkey", suggests it may have been considered as a new "Donkey Kong" game before being repurposed for Yoshi.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: "Yoshi's Island" was developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as part of the core "Super Mario" series. Development was spearheaded by Hino, Takashi Tezuka, Hideki Konno and Toshihiko Nakago, the latter which was his only directing role after an eleven-year apprenticeship, with Miyamoto serving as producer. Newly hired artist Hisashi Nogami created the game's unique marker-drawn style. The graphics were achieved by drawing them by hand, digitally scanning them, and then approximating them pixel-by-pixel. Yoshiaki Koizumi animated the opening and ending, while series composer Koji Kondo wrote the game's music.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: Partway into the development of "Yoshi's Island", "Donkey Kong Country" was released, which resulted in its computer-generated graphics becoming the norm for contemporary SNES games. It was too late for the graphic designers to incorporate such a style into "Yoshi's Island"; instead, they pushed the hand-drawn style further as a way to "fight back". As a compromise, the introductory and ending cutscenes feature a pre-rendered style, contrasting with the rest of the game. According to Miyamoto, "Yoshi's Island" was in development for four years, which let the team add "lots of magic tricks". The game cartridge used an extra microchip to support the game's rotation, scaling and other sprite-changing special effects. "Yoshi's Island" was designed to use the Super FX chip, but when Nintendo stopped supporting the chip, the game became the first to use Argonaut Games's Super FX2 microchip. Examples of chip-powered effects include 3D drawbridges falling into the foreground, sprites that are able to dynamically rotate and change size, and a psychedelic undulating effect when Yoshi touches floating fungi.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: "Yoshi's Island" was released first in Japan in August 1995, and two months later in North America and Europe. At the time of release, the SNES was in its twilight as a console in anticipation of the Nintendo 64, to be released the following year.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: "Yoshi's Island" was ported to the Game Boy Advance as "Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3" in North America on September 23, 2002. In the game's preview at E3 2002, IGN named "Yoshi's Island" "Best Platformer" on a handheld console. The Game Boy Advance version is a direct port of the original, apart from implementing Kazumi Totaka's voice as Yoshi and adding six additional levels. The visible area was also reduced to fit the handheld's smaller screen. The new cartridge did not need an extra microchip to support the original's special effects.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: The Game Boy Advance version was rereleased for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U via Nintendo's digital Virtual Console platform. The rerelease retains the cropped screen of the handheld version and the pack-in "Mario Bros." game, though the multiplayer is disabled. The 3DS version was released on December 16, 2011, as an exclusive reward for early adopters of the Nintendo 3DS. It did not receive a wider release. The "Yoshi's Island" rerelease for the Wii U was released worldwide on April 24, 2014. At E3 2010, Nintendo demoed "classic" 2D games such as "Yoshi's Island" as remastered 3D games with a "pop-up book feel". The SNES version was included as a part of the Super NES Classic Edition microconsole in 2017, and is also available in the SNES online app for the Nintendo Switch as part of the paid online service.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: Upon release in Japan, "Yoshi's Island" sold over copies by late 1995, and went on to sell units in Japan. Internationally, the game has sold over four million copies worldwide, selling units for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: "Yoshi's Island" received critical acclaim. At the time of its 1995 release, Matt Taylor of "Diehard GameFan" thought "Yoshi's Island" could be "possibly the best platform game of all time". "Nintendo Power" also said that the game was "one of the biggest, most beautiful games ever made". "Next Generation" was also most impressed by the game's "size and playability". "Diehard GameFan" three reviewers gave the game a near-perfect score. To wit, Nicholas Dean Des Barres said it was "one of the handful of truly perfect games ever produced", and lamented that the magazine had given "Donkey Kong Country", which he felt was a lackluster game in comparison, the extra single point for a perfect score. Casey Loe removed that one point for Baby Mario's "annoying screech". "Nintendo Power" and "Nintendo Life" also found Baby Mario's crying sounds annoying. Reviewing the SNES release over a decade later, Kaes Delgrego of "Nintendo Life" said the crying and some easy boss battles, while both minor, were the only shortcomings. Delgrego credited "Yoshi's Island" with perfecting the genre, calling it "perhaps the greatest platformer of all time".


title: Yoshi's Island

text: Both contemporary and retrospective reviewers praised the art, level design, and gameplay, which became legacies of the game. Some called it "charm". Delgrego of "Nintendo Life" would stop mid-game just to watch what enemies would do. Martin Watts of the same publication called it "an absolute pleasure on the eyes and unlike any other SNES game". Others praised the control scheme, technical effects, and sound design. "Nintendo Life" Delgrego felt "goosebumps and tingles" during the ending theme, and marked the soundtrack's range from the lighthearted intro to the "epic grandeur of the final boss battle". "GamePro" writer Major Mike noted, "[Yoshi's Island] doesn't rely on flashy graphics or jazzy effects to cover an empty game. This is one of the last of a dying breed: a 16-bit game that shows real heart and creativity."


title: Yoshi's Island

text: "Edge" praised the game's balance of challenge and accessibility. The magazine thought that the new power-ups of "Yoshi's Island" gave its gameplay and level design great range, and that the powers were significant additions to the series on par with the suits of "Super Mario Bros. 3" or Yoshi's own debut in "Super Mario World". "Diehard GameFan" Taylor wrote that there was enough gameplay innovation to make him cry and listed his favorites as the Baby Mario cape invincibility power-up, the machine gun-style seed spitting, and the snowball hill level. "Nintendo Life" Watts called the egg stockpiling system "clever" for the way it encourages experimentation with the environment. "Edge" thought of "Yoshi's Island" as a "fusion of technology and creativity, each enhancing the other". The magazine considered the game's special effects expertly integrated into the gameplay, and described the developer's handicraft as having an "attention to detail that few games can match".


title: Yoshi's Island

text: The Game Boy Advance version received similar praise. Reviewing the Game Boy Advance release in 2002, Craig Harris of IGN wrote that "Yoshi's Island" was "the best damn platformer ever developed". While acknowledging the game's roots in the "Super Mario" series, he said the game created enough gameplay ideas to constitute its own franchise. IGN's Lucas M. Thomas wrote that the game's story was also interesting as the origin story for the Mario brothers. Harris felt that the FX2 sprite-changing effects gave the game "life" and that the Game Boy Advance cartridge could handle the effects just as well. He added that Yoshi's morphing abilities and sound effects were designed well. Levi Buchanan of IGN said the game struck the right balance of tutorial by trial and error. IGN's Harris also noted a few Game Boy Advance-specific issues: framerate drop in areas where a lot is happening onscreen, camera panning problems due to the screen's lower resolution, and a "poor" implementation of the "dizzy" special effect on the handheld release. Critics wrote that the "coloring book"-style graphics held up well. IGN's Harris felt it was the best of the "Super Mario Advance" games. Of the similar version for the Wii U, Watts of "Nintendo Life" also noticed the framerate issues and problems resulting from the screen's closer crop, which were "not enough to ruin the game, but ... noticeable". "Edge" felt that game's only disappointment was the linearity of its overworld following the exploratory "Super Mario World" and that the sequel would "inevitably ... have less impact". It won for "GameSpot"s annual "Best Graphics on Game Boy Advance" award.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: Multiple retrospective critics declared "Yoshi's Island" a "masterpiece". IGN recalled it as "one of the most loved SNES adventures of all time". "Yoshi's Island" brought newfound renown to both Yoshi as a character and Shigeru Miyamoto's artistic and directorial career. IGN's Lucas M. Thomas wrote that game marked where Yoshi "came into his own" and developed many of his definitive characteristics: the "signature" flutter jump, and ability to throw eggs and transform shape. Baby Mario, who debuted in the game, went on to feature in a number of sports-related games. Series producer Takashi Tezuka said he consciously continued "the handicraft feel" of the original throughout the series, which later included yarn and similar variations. "Official Nintendo Magazine" called the art style "a bold step ... that paid off handsomely". Delgrego of "Nintendo Life" wrote that the game marked a new era of art in video games that prioritized creativity over graphics technology.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: Delgrego continued that the game's countdown-based life was a "revolutionary" mechanic that would later become ubiquitous in games like the "Halo" series. Martin Watts also of "Nintendo Life" considered "Super Mario 64" to be a more momentous event in gaming history, but felt that "Yoshi's Island" was the "most significant" event in the ""Mario Bros." timeline". In a retrospective, "IGN" wrote that SNES owners embraced the game alongside "Donkey Kong Country".


title: Yoshi's Island

text: IGN's Jared Petty wrote that "Yoshi's Island" bested "the test of time far better than many of its contemporaries". Levi Buchanan of IGN thought Nintendo took a risk with "Yoshi's Island" by making Mario passive and giving Yoshi new abilities. Christian Donlan of "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die" wrote that the game was a testament to the Mario team's "staggering confidence" in its development ability. He said the game was "perhaps the most imaginative platformer" of its time. In 1997 "Electronic Gaming Monthly" ranked it the 7th best console game of all time, saying it "is as much a piece of art as a game" and "is the epitome of platform gaming, falling only inches behind "Super Mario Bros. 3" as the best 2-D platformer of all time." "Yoshi's Island" ranked 22nd on "Official Nintendo Magazine" 2009 top 100 Nintendo games as a "bone fide classic", 15th on IGN's 2014 top 125 Nintendo games of all time, and second on USgamer's 2015 best "Mario" platformers list. In 2018, Complex listed the game 14th on it’s "The Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time". In 1996, GamesMaster ranked Yoshi‘s Island #1 on their "The GamesMaster SNES Top 10." In the same issue, GamesMaster rated the game 45th in its "Top 100 Games of All Time."


title: Yoshi's Island

text: In July 2020, a large amount of Nintendo data was leaked, including "Yoshi's Island" source data and several prototypes.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: "Yoshi's Island" led to a strong year for Yoshi as a character. IGN's Thomas added that the hand-drawn style of "Yoshi's Island" made the computer-generated "Donkey Kong Country" appear outdated, though both games sold well, and Rareware included a Yoshi cameo in their sequel, "", released that same year. "Yoshi's Island" graphics and characters were also incorporated into the 1996 SNES puzzle game "Tetris Attack".


title: Yoshi's Island

text: Following "Yoshi's Island" success, Nintendo developed "Yoshi's Story", a 1998 platformer for the Nintendo 64, which "disappointed" audiences and deflated "massive ... anticipation" with fetch quests and the 3D style Miyamoto eschewed in its predecessor. The Nintendo 64 game expanded on Yoshi's character voice as introduced in "Yoshi's Island", but also "dumbed down Yoshi's character". Nintendo created two "Yoshi's Island" spin-off games: the tilt sensor-controlled "Yoshi Topsy Turvy" (2004, Game Boy Advance), which was developed by Artoon and was met with mixed reviews, and the Nintendo-developed minigame "Yoshi Touch & Go" (2005, Nintendo DS). The 1995 original release received a direct sequel in 2006: "Yoshi's Island DS", also developed by Artoon. Titled "Yoshi's Island 2" until just before it shipped, the game retained the core concept of transporting baby Nintendo characters, and added babies Princess Peach, Bowser, and Donkey Kong, each with an individual special ability. Yoshi had a similar moveset to "Yoshi's Island" and added dash and float abilities, but he was more passive a character compared to the babies on his back.


title: Yoshi's Island

text: About seven years later, series producer Takashi Tezuka decided enough time had passed to make another direct sequel, "Yoshi's New Island" (2013, Nintendo 3DS). It was developed by former Artoon employees at their new company, Arzest. As in the original, Yoshi carries Baby Mario and throws eggs. The game adds the ability to swallow big foes, which become big eggs that can destroy big obstacles. "Yoshi's Island DS" developer Arzest assisted in its development. In "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die" (2010), Christian Donlan wrote that despite the "streamlined" "Yoshi's Story" and "brilliant" "Yoshi's Touch and Go", "the original was never bettered and never truly advanced upon". In "Eurogamer" 2015 preview of "Yoshi's Woolly World", Tom Phillips wrote that it had "been 20 years since the last truly great "Yoshi's Island". The next console release of a "Mario" 2D side-scroller, "New Super Mario Bros. Wii", was released 14 years later.


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: Little Fires Everywhere is the second novel by the American author Celeste Ng. It was published in 2017 by Penguin Press. The novel takes place in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where Ng grew up. The novel focuses on two families living in 1990s Shaker Heights who are brought together through their children. Ng described writing about her hometown as "a little bit like writing about a relative. You see all of the great things about them, you love them dearly, and yet, you also know all of their quirks and their foibles."


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: For three weeks in April 2020, "Little Fires Everywhere " was No. 1 on The "New York Times" fiction best-seller list, concurrent with the release of a television adaptation of the book.


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: In 1998, the Richardson home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, catches fire. Arson is suspected, as there were multiple small fires.


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: The previous year, 1997, Elena Richardson rents her rental home on Winslow Road to Mia Warren, an artist, and her teenage daughter, Pearl. Elena's younger son, Moody, who is Pearl's age, develops a crush on Pearl and becomes friends with her. Through Moody, Pearl meets the rest of the Richardson siblings: Lexie, Trip, and Izzy. Pearl, who is used to a transient lifestyle in which her mother scrapes together money, is charmed by the Richardsons and their established home. She spends time at the Richardson home every day and develops a crush on Trip, and


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: Mia works part-time at a Chinese restaurant called the Lucky Palace and sells photographs through a dealer named Anita Rees in New York.


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: Mia becomes concerned about Pearl's idealisation of the Richardsons. When Elena condescendingly offers her a job doing housekeeping for her family, she is hesitant at first but agrees only because she wants to keep an eye on Pearl. Mia meets Izzy, the black sheep of the family, and the two become close. Izzy


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: becomes particularly fascinated with Mia, and asks if she can be Mia's assistant so she can spend more time with her. She spends many afternoons with Mia at the home on Winslow Road. Izzy reveals that the orchestra teacher, Mrs Peters, racially abused a black student, Deja, in class and seeks revenge by jamming toothpicks in the doors at school, blocking access to the toilet. Mrs Peters then becomes desperate to urinate and ends up soiling her skirt and tights in the girls' toilets, much to everyone else's mirth.


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: The Richardsons are invited to the birthday party for Mirabelle Rose McCullough, the adopted daughter of Elena's friends, Linda and Mark. After talking with Bebe Chow, a coworker at Lucky Palace, Mia learns that the child is actually named May Ling Chow and is Bebe's daughter, whom she left at a firehouse in the middle of a postpartum episode and economic hardship. Bebe has been looking for her child for over a year. Bebe is despondent as she has no money for lawyers. Mia advises her to get the local news involved. The scandal results in Bebe getting visitation rights and help from an Asian-American lawyer named Edward Lim pro bono.


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: Elena discovers that Bebe learned of her child's whereabouts through Mia. Angry on behalf of her friend, she investigates Mia's past. She tracks down Mia's parents and learns that Pearl was conceived by Mia for a wealthy New York couple named Joseph and Madeline Ryan who were unable to have children of their own. Mia could not face the idea of giving up her child. She told the couple that she miscarried and ran away with Pearl; Mia's parents hadn't heard from her since.


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: Lexie gets pregnant and asks Pearl to come with her to get an abortion. Afraid of being discovered, Lexie uses Pearl's name at the clinic. Pearl takes Lexie back to her mom's house, and Mia cares for Lexie while keeping the abortion a secret from the rest of the Richardson family. Pearl and Trip begin to have sex, which they keep a secret from everyone. When Moody discovers what's going on, he and Pearl stop speaking. Elena investigates a suspicion that Bebe had an abortion and, to her shock, discovers Pearl is listed as having had one. She confronts Moody about being the father, but he tells her she is accusing the wrong son.


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: Bebe Chow loses her case and Mia comforts her. Elena confronts Mia about finding Pearl's name at the abortion clinic, and asks Mia to move out. Pearl is reluctant to go, but when Mia reveals the truth about her family and Pearl's father, Pearl gains a deeper understanding for her mother, and agrees to leave Shaker Heights. Izzy realizes that Moody, Lexie, and Trip have all used Pearl in their own way and becomes angry at them. She attempts to visit the Warrens, but finds the rental home vacant. Choosing a moment when they are all out of the house, she pours gasoline on each of her siblings' beds, not realizing that her mother is still in the house. She lights the fires and leaves.


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: After the fire, the Richardsons go to the rental home, now vacated by the Warrens, where they find that Mia has left them with photographs that have personal significance to each of them.


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: Bebe Chow, using Mia's words as inspiration, sneaks into the McCulloughs' home and kidnaps her daughter, flying with her to Canton. The McCulloughs unsuccessfully spend thousands of dollars searching for them. Eventually, they are approved to adopt a baby from China. Mia and Pearl hit the road, planning to reconnect with Mia's family and Pearl's father. Izzy runs away to Pittsburgh with the name of Mia's parents, promising herself that if she is caught and returned, she will continue to run away until she is never forced to come back again. Elena realizes that her greatest fear, losing Izzy, has come true, and vows to spend the rest of her life looking for her daughter.


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: Ng is from Shaker Heights, Ohio, where the book is set. She said that after being away from Shaker Heights for ten years, she "appreciated more all the ways Shaker Heights is unusual, and [she] wanted to try and write a story that would explore some of those facets of the community."


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: She chose to include the transracial adoption in the novel because it's an issue that touches on class, race, and motherhood simultaneously. In an interview for BLARB, Ng said, "Many adoptions today are transracial, which raises really complicated questions about how we handle and talk about race—and racial bias—in America."


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: Writing for "The Guardian", Lionel Shriver found the book "extremely well done and yet [she] didn't warm to it".


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: In a review for the "San Francisco Chronicle", Alexis Burling described the novel as "… a finely wrought meditation on the nature of motherhood, the dangers of privilege and a cautionary tale about how even the tiniest of secrets can rip families apart…"


title: Little Fires Everywhere (novel)

text: A television miniseries adaptation of the novel was executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington for Hulu with an 8-episode order. Witherspoon and Washington are also starring in it. Liz Tigelaar served as the showrunner and executive producer. Ng served as a producer.


title: 2021–22 Boston Celtics season

text: The 2021–22 Boston Celtics season was the 76th season of the franchise in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Following the Celtics' first-round exit to the Brooklyn Nets in five games from last season, Danny Ainge left his role as the General Manager. Brad Stevens got promoted as the next President of Basketball Operations soon after. The Celtics hired Ime Udoka as the next head coach on June 28, 2021.


title: 2021–22 Boston Celtics season

text: The Celtics began the season with a 18–21 record, but began a turnaround in January and finished with a 51–31 record and the number two seed in the Eastern Conference. With the Portland Trail Blazers missing the postseason for the first time since 2013, the Celtics now hold the longest active playoff streak, with consecutive appearances since 2015. They won the Atlantic Division for the first time since 2017.


title: 2021–22 Boston Celtics season

text: In the first round of the playoffs, the Celtics swept the Brooklyn Nets in four games which was their third series sweep in 4 seasons. In the second round, they faced the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks for the third time in five seasons, defeating them in seven games. In the final game of the series, the Celtics made 22 3-pointers, a record for most ever in a playoff Game 7. The Celtics advanced to the Conference Finals for the fourth time in six years to play the top-seeded Miami Heat. In the previous two Conference Finals matchups between the two teams, the Celtics lost both times: in 2012 in seven games and in 2020 in six. This time, they beat the Heat in seven games—including three wins on the road—to advance to the 2022 NBA Finals, their first Finals appearance since 2010. They faced the Golden State Warriors in a rematch of the 1964 Finals, which the Celtics won in five games in an attempt to win their 18th championship and first since 2008. However, the Celtics would lose in six games despite taking a 2–1 lead.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: Georg Karl Julius Hackenschmidt ( – 19 February 1968) was an early 20th-century Estonian strongman, professional wrestler, author, and sports philosopher who is recognized as professional wrestling's first world heavyweight champion.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: Hackenschmidt launched his professional career in Reval (Tallinn), Estonia (then part of Russian Empire), at the time when contests were largely legitimate, and lived most of his life in London, England, where he gained the nickname of "The Russian Lion". He is believed to be the creator of the professional wrestling version of the bear hug as well as the person who popularised the hack squat, a deadlift with arms behind the body, Hackenschmidt is also atributed as the creator of the bench press. He was known for his impressive strength, fitness and flexibility and, later in life, wrote many books on physical culture, training and philosophy.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: Georg Hackenschmidt's grandfather, Christian Philipp Hackenschmidt, a Prussian dyer, accepted Russian citizenship with his wife in 1845. He died about 1881–1882.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: Georg Hackenschmidt was born in Dorpat, Governorate of Livonia, on 1 August 1877, where he lived with his parents, Baltic German Georg Friedrich Heinrich Hackenschmidt (born 1847), and Ida Louise Johansson, who was of Estonian and Estonian Swede descent, and a younger brother, Bruno, and sister Alice. He later said that neither of his parents were particularly robust in stature or had any unusual physical characteristics, though his maternal grandfather was said to have been a huge and powerful man.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: From his earliest years, Hackenschmidt devoted himself to physical development, particularly at the Secondary Science School ("Realschule" of Dorpat, as Tartu was then known), where he took advantage of the gymnasium. He excelled in gorodki, cycling, gymnastics, swimming, running, jumping and weightlifting. His feats of strength astounded his teachers, as he could lift a small horse off the ground and lift 276 pounds overhead one handed. In a wrestler's bridge, he could pull a 335-pound barbell from the floor to his chest and press it overhead, bridging on his neck. He set several records in weight lifting and was considered both the strongest and the best-developed man in the world.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: Graduating from school in 1895, he entered the Lausmann factory, a large engineering factory in the city of Tallinn (then known as Reval), as a blacksmith's apprentice. He joined the city's Athletic and Cycling Club, becoming an ardent cyclist and winning prizes, but also developed a keen interest in wrestling and weight lifting. The turning point in his life came in 1896 when Georg Lurich, Hackenschmidt's compatriot Greco-Roman wrestler and strongman, toured through the area with a small company, challenging any and all comers. Hackenschmidt took up the challenge and was beaten. German wrestler Fritz Konietzko came to Tallinn in 1897, and Hackenschmidt fared better.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: In late 1897-early 1898, Hackenschmidt suffers a minor hand injury at the factory and consults a doctor who was acquainted with Dr. Vladislav Krajewski, who was in the service of the Russian Emperor. Krajewski was the founder of the St. Petersburg Athletic and Cycling Club, with Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich as president. While observing Hackenschmidt's arm, Dr. Krajewski noticed the athlete's physique and invited him to St. Petersburg and offered to stay with him, as he saw in him the potential to become a professional wrestler. Krajewski trained Georg Luric for some time and told Hackenschmidt that he had the potential to become the strongest man in the world.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: Despite his parents' objections, Hackenschmidt left for St. Petersburg in the spring of 1898. In 1898 Hackenschmidt trained at Krajewski's and was supported by Count Georgy Ribeaupierre. In April the club organized a competition in lifting weights for the title of Russian champion, which Hackenschmidt won. In late April in St. Petersburg he defeated the famous French wrestler Paul Pons in 45 minutes. In preparation to performing in front of an audience, Krajewski sends Hackenschmidt to Riga, where he performs under an assumed name as a weightlifter and wrestler. During this period Hackenschmidt still notes his lack of wrestling technique, which he makes up for with strength.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: In January 1899 he had to serve in the army: he was assigned to the Preobrazhensky Regiment. Demobilized five months later, on May 16 of that year Hackenschmidt defeated Alexander von Schmelling in a fight for the title of Russian champion of 1889. On 19 May he defeated von Schmelling again and was crowned Russian champion of 1899. In September, despite an arm injury, Hackenschmidt travels to Paris for the World Wrestling Championships. There he receives his moniker, "The Russian Lion". After a few matches, he aggravates the injury and goes home. Doctors treat him electrically for six months, but it does more harm than good.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: In May 1900 Hackenschmidt returns to weight training. In July 1900 Hackenschmidt took part in a forty-day wrestling tournament in Moscow, making his first appearance as a professional wrestler in Russia. He competed for two prizes, and won both, becoming champion of Moscow and St. Petersburg. During the tournament he competes almost daily against 3-5 opponents. At the Chemnitz tournament, Hackenschmidt meets Lurich for the first time in his professional career. According to Hackenschmidt's memories, Lurich bragged widely about his former victories over him. This led Georg to challenge Lurich to a match, which he usually never did. When Hackenschmidt took the stage, Lurich ran backstage. The next morning Lurich left Chemnitz.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: In March 1901, Hackenschmidt suffered the death of his mentor Krajewski, whom he considered his second father. On November 30, 1901, the World Championship of Wrestling opened at the Casino de Paris with 130 wrestlers. Hackenschmidt won first place, received two gold medals (for the lightweight tournament and the heavyweight tournament) and 3000 francs. After that Georg goes to the town of Alsleben to the trainer Siebert, who helps him to gain weight, which dropped due to the heavy schedule. During this time, he jumped 100 times over a table with his feet tied together. He won tournaments everywhere he wrestled, and toured England in 1903 managed by the flamboyant C. B. Cochran to confront the country's best wrestlers in the new catch-as-catch-can style which was becoming popular. They created a music hall boom in professional wrestling, and Hackenschmidt became a major superstar and drawing card. He wrestled in opera halls, music halls and theaters. As the wrestling boom took hold in England and wrestlers came in from all around the world for the grand tournaments that had become the rage, he remained the dominant grappler, rather easily defeating every man he met. Cochran polished his act until Hackenschmidt was a major showstopper. He might take on five wrestlers in the same evening, defeating them all with ease.


title: George Hackenschmidt

text: Handsome as well as beautifully built, Hackenschmidt was adored by women and admired by men, and became the darling of society. Personally a soft-spoken, cultured and intellectual young man, he could speak seven languages fluently and became a noted author, speaker and philosopher. Hackenschmidt moved well in social circles and was a credit to the sport. United States President Theodore Roosevelt, himself a proponent of physical culture and exercise, proclaimed, "If I wasn't president of the United States, I would like to be George Hackenschmidt".