title: Colossal Cave Adventure

text: Two phrases from the game have gone on to have a lasting impact in programming and video games. "Xyzzy" is a magic word that teleports the player between two locations ("inside building" and the "debris room"). It was added by Crowther at a request by his sister when play-testing the game to skip the early section of the game. As an in-joke tribute to "Adventure", many later games and computer programs include a hidden "xyzzy" command, the results of which range from the humorous to the straightforward. Crowther stated that for its purpose in the game, "magic words should look queer, and yet somehow be pronounceable", leading him to select "xyzzy". Additionally, in the game there is a maze created by Crowther where each of ten room descriptions was exactly the same: "YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE." The layout of this "all alike" maze was fixed, so the player would have to figure out how to map the maze. The phrase "you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike" has become memorialized and popularized in the hacker culture, where "passages" may be replaced with a different word, as the situation warrants. This phrase came to signify a situation when whatever action is taken does not change the result.


title: Colossal Cave Adventure

text: "Colossal Cave Adventure" has continued to be referenced by media for decades since. The 2003 book on the history of interactive fiction "Twisty Little Passages" was named after the "all alike" maze, and the 2010 documentary on the history of text adventure games "Get Lamp" is named for the command to get one of the first objects the player encounters and must carry to solve the game. The 2013 game "Kentucky Route Zero"s third act draws direct inspiration from the game, showing a computer simulation set up inside of a cave, which is itself depicting a massive cave system. The game is also a key plot point in an episode of the 2014 TV series "Halt and Catch Fire", a period drama taking place in the early days of the personal computing revolution. In it, the chief software designer uses the game as a competency test to determine which programmers will remain on the team. As a tie-in, a fully playable version of the game augmented with player hints and artwork revealed when certain locations are visited was made available on the show's official website.


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: "The Rats in the Walls" is a short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft. Written in August–September 1923, it was first published in "Weird Tales", March 1924.


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: In 1923, an American named Delapore, the last descendant of the De la Poer family, moves to his ancestral estate of Exham Priory in England following the death of his only son during World War I. To the dismay of nearby residents, he restores the estate. After moving in, Delapore and his cat frequently hear the sounds of rats scurrying behind the walls. Upon investigating further with the assistance of his son's war comrade Edward Norrys and several academics, and through recurring dreams, Delapore learns that his family maintained an underground city for centuries, where they raised generations of "human cattle"—some regressed to a quadrupedal state—to supply their taste for human flesh. This was stopped when Delapore's ancestor Walter killed his entire family in their sleep and left the country in order to end the horror, leaving the remaining human livestock and a surviving relative to be devoured by the rats inhabiting the city's cesspits.


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: Maddened by the revelations of his family's past, a hereditary cruelty, and his anger over his son's death, Delapore attacks Norrys in the dark of the cavernous city and begins eating him while rambling in a mixture of Middle English, Latin, and Gaelic, before devolving into a cacophony of animalistic grunts. He is subsequently subdued and placed in a mental institution. At least one other investigator, Thornton, has gone insane as well. Soon after, Exham Priory is destroyed and the investigators decide to cover up the existence of the underground city. Delapore maintains his innocence, proclaiming that it was "the rats, the rats in the walls", who ate the man. He continues to be plagued by the sound of rats in the walls of his cell.


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: Long after writing "The Rats in the Walls", Lovecraft wrote that the story was "suggested by a very commonplace incident—the cracking of wall-paper late at night, and the chain of imaginings resulting from it." Another entry in Lovecraft's commonplace book also seems to provide a plot germ for the story: "Horrible secret in crypt of ancient castle—discovered by dweller."


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: Steven J. Mariconda points to Sabine Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages" (1862–68) as a source for Lovecraft's story. The description of the cavern under the priory has many similarities to Baring-Gould's account of St. Patrick's Purgatory, a legendary Irish holy site, and the story of the priory's rats sweeping across the landscape may have been inspired by the book's retelling of the legend of Bishop Hatto, who was devoured by rats after he set fire to starving peasants during a famine (a story referenced in the legend of the Mouse Tower of Bingen).


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: Leigh Blackmore has posited that one surface feature of the story may be found in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher", in which Roderick Usher comments that so abnormally sensitive is his hearing that he "can hear the rats in the walls".


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: The Gaelic quoted at the end of the story is borrowed from Fiona Macleod's "The Sin-Eater". Macleod included a footnote that translated the passage as: "God against thee and in thy face… and may a death of woe be yours… Evil and sorrow to thee and thine!" Lovecraft wrote to Frank Belknap Long, "[T]he only objection to the phrase is that it's "Gaelic" instead of "Cymric" as the south-of-England locale demands. But as with anthropology—details don't count. Nobody will ever stop to note the difference." Robert E. Howard, however, wrote a letter in 1930 to "Weird Tales" suggesting that the language choice reflected "Lluyd's theory as to the settling of Britain by the Celts"—a note that, passed on to Lovecraft, initiated their voluminous correspondence. The Cymric-speaking area at that time covered not only Wales, but all of the island below Hadrian's Wall, with Gaelic only being spoken north of the Wall.


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: S. T. Joshi points to Irvin S. Cobb's "The Unbroken Chain" as a model for Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls". In his essay, Lovecraft writes, "Later work of Mr. Cobb introduces an element of possible science, as in the tale of hereditary memory where a modern man with a negroid strain utters words in African jungle speech when run down by a train under visual and aural circumstances recalling the maiming of his black ancestor by a rhinoceros a century before."


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: "The Rats in the Walls" is loosely connected to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories; toward the end, the narrator notes that the rats seem "determined to lead me on even unto those grinning caverns of earth's centre where Nyarlathotep, the mad faceless god, howls blindly to the piping of two amorphous idiot flute-players." In this reference to Nyarlathotep, the first after his introduction in the prose poem of the same name, the entity seems to have many of the attributes of the god Azathoth.


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: Before moving to Exham Priory, Delapore lives in Bolton, Massachusetts, a factory town where the title character of "Herbert West–Reanimator" performs some of his experiments. The town is also mentioned in "The Colour Out of Space"; it is not thought to be the same place as the real-world Bolton, Massachusetts.


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: Later Mythos writers have suggested the Magna Mater ("Great Mother") worshipped by the Exham cult was Shub-Niggurath (though in the story itself multiple references are made to Roman goddess Cybele, known as Magna Mater).


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: Lady Margaret Trevor of Cornwall (mentioned in "Characters" above), the Elizabeth Bathory-like noblewoman who wed a scion of the De La Poer family in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, was apparently a direct ancestor of the narrator in another Lovecraft story, "Celephaïs". The narrator of "Celephaïs," who is the last of a noble family that lived in an ancestral manor for thirteen generations at the coast on the other side of the Surrey downs from London, perishes in the story by drowning at the foot of a sea cliff below his ancestral home, which is named Trevor Towers. Thus, the narrator's name was Trevor, and his family would have been nobility at the time of Lady Margaret's marriage. (After the narrator of "Celephaïs" dies in the story, his dream-self lived on in the Dream-World, where he ruled a city and had the name Kuranes, and appears as a character in yet another Lovecraft work, "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", where it is confirmed that his ancestral home was on the coast of Cornwall.)


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: The story was rejected by "Argosy All-Story Weekly" before being accepted by "Weird Tales"; Lovecraft claimed that the former magazine found it "too horrible for the tender sensibilities of a delicately nurtured publick". The publisher of "Weird Tales", JC Henneberger, described the story in a note to Lovecraft as the best his magazine had ever received. It was one of the few Lovecraft stories anthologized during his lifetime, in the 1931 collection "Switch on the Light", edited by Christine Campbell Thompson.


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: It is notable in that Lovecraft uses the technique of referring to a text (in this case real life works by Petronius and Catullus) without giving a full explanation of its contents, so as to give the impression of depth and hidden layers to his work. He later refined this idea with the "Necronomicon", prevalent in his Cthulhu Mythos stories.


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: Equally important to the later development of the Cthulhu Mythos was that it was a reprint of this story in "Weird Tales" that inspired Robert E. Howard to write to the magazine praising the work. This letter was passed on to Lovecraft and the two became friends and correspondents until Howard's death in 1936. This literary connection became reflected in each author adding aspects from the other's works to their own tales and Howard is considered one of the more prolific of the original Cthulhu Mythos authors.


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: Kingsley Amis listed "Rats" (along with "The Dunwich Horror") as one of the Lovecraft stories "that achieve a memorable nastiness". Lin Carter called "Rats" "one of the finest stories of Lovecraft's entire career." S. T. Joshi describes the piece as "a nearly flawless example of the short story in its condensation, its narrative pacing, its thunderous climax, and its mingling of horror and poignancy."


title: The Rats in the Walls

text: The name of the cat seen to be a dark breed of Ragdoll, "Nigger-Man" has often been cited in discussions of Lovecraft's racial attitudes. Lovecraft owned a cat by that name until 1904. The cat had likely been given its name when Lovecraft was about age nine.


title: Trivium

text: The trivium is the lower division of the seven liberal arts and comprises grammar, logic, and rhetoric.


title: Trivium

text: The trivium is implicit in "De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii" ("On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury") by Martianus Capella, but the term was not used until the Carolingian Renaissance, when it was coined in imitation of the earlier quadrivium. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were essential to a classical education, as explained in Plato's dialogues. The three subjects together were denoted by the word "trivium" during the Middle Ages, but the tradition of first learning those three subjects was established in ancient Greece. Contemporary iterations have taken various forms, including those found in certain British and American universities (some being part of the Classical education movement) and at the independent Oundle School in the United Kingdom.


title: Trivium

text: Etymologically, the Latin word trivium means "the place where three roads meet" (tri + via); hence, the subjects of the trivium are the foundation for the quadrivium, the upper division of the medieval education in the liberal arts, which consists of arithmetic (numbers as abstract concepts), geometry (numbers in space), music (numbers in time), and astronomy (numbers in space and time). Educationally, the trivium and the quadrivium imparted to the student the seven liberal arts of classical antiquity.


title: Trivium

text: Grammar teaches the mechanics of language to the student. This is the step where the student "comes to terms," defining the objects and information perceived by the five senses. Hence, the Law of Identity: "a tree is a tree, and not a cat".


title: Trivium

text: Logic (also dialectic) is the "mechanics" of thought and of analysis, the process of composing sound arguments and identifying fallacious arguments and statements and so systematically removing contradictions, thereby producing factual knowledge that can be trusted.


title: Trivium

text: Rhetoric is the application of language in order to instruct and to persuade the listener and the reader. It is the knowledge (grammar) now understood (logic) and being transmitted outwards as wisdom (rhetoric).


title: Trivium

text: Aristotle defined Rhetoric as, "the power of perceiving in every thing that which is capable of producing persuasion."


title: Trivium

text: Sister Miriam Joseph, in "The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric" (2002), described the trivium as follows:


title: Trivium

text: Grammar is the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; logic is the art of thinking; and rhetoric is the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance.


title: Trivium

text: Grammar is concerned with the thing as-it-is-symbolized. Logic is concerned with the thing as-it-is-known. Rhetoric is concerned with the thing as-it-is-communicated.


title: Trivium

text: John Ayto wrote in the "Dictionary of Word Origins" (1990) that study of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) was requisite preparation for study of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). For the medieval student, the trivium was the curricular beginning of the acquisition of the seven liberal arts; as such, it was the principal undergraduate course of study. The word "trivial" arose from the contrast between the simpler trivium and the more difficult quadrivium.


title: Square–cube law

text: The square–cube law (or cube–square law) is a mathematical principle, applied in a variety of scientific fields, which describes the relationship between the volume and the surface area as a shape's size increases or decreases. It was first described in 1638 by Galileo Galilei in his "Two New Sciences" as the "...ratio of two volumes is greater than the ratio of their surfaces".


title: Square–cube law

text: This principle states that, as a shape grows in size, its volume grows faster than its surface area. When applied to the real world, this principle has many implications which are important in fields ranging from mechanical engineering to biomechanics. It helps explain phenomena including why large mammals like elephants have a harder time cooling themselves than small ones like mice, and why building taller and taller skyscrapers is increasingly difficult.


title: Square–cube law

text: where formula_5 is the original volume, formula_6 is the new volume, formula_7 is the original length and formula_8 is the new length.


title: Square–cube law

text: For example, a cube with a side length of 1 meter has a surface area of 6 m and a volume of 1 m. If the dimensions of the cube were multiplied by 2, its surface area would be multiplied by the "square" of 2 and become 24 m. Its volume would be multiplied by the "cube" of 2 and become 8 m.


title: Square–cube law

text: The original cube (1m sides) has a surface area to volume ratio of 6:1. The larger (2m sides) cube has a surface area to volume ratio of (24/8) 3:1. As the dimensions increase, the volume will continue to grow faster than the surface area. Thus the square–cube law. This principle applies to all solids.


title: Square–cube law

text: When a physical object maintains the same density and is scaled up, its volume and mass are increased by the cube of the multiplier while its surface area increases only by the square of the same multiplier. This would mean that when the larger version of the object is accelerated at the same rate as the original, more pressure would be exerted on the surface of the larger object.


title: Square–cube law

text: Consider a simple example of a body of mass, M, having an acceleration, a, and surface area, A, of the surface upon which the accelerating force is acting. The force due to acceleration, formula_9 and the thrust pressure, formula_10.


title: Square–cube law

text: Now, consider the object be exaggerated by a multiplier factor = x so that it has a new mass, formula_11, and the surface upon which the force is acting has a new surface area, formula_12.


title: Square–cube law

text: Thus, just scaling up the size of an object, keeping the same material of construction (density), and same acceleration, would increase the thrust by the same scaling factor. This would indicate that the object would have less ability to resist stress and would be more prone to collapse while accelerating.


title: Square–cube law

text: This is why large vehicles perform poorly in crash tests and why there are theorized limits as to how high buildings can be built. Similarly, the larger an object is, the less other objects would resist its motion, causing its deceleration.


title: Square–cube law

text: If an animal were isometrically scaled up by a considerable amount, its relative muscular strength would be severely reduced, since the cross section of its muscles would increase by the "square" of the scaling factor while its mass would increase by the "cube" of the scaling factor. As a result of this, cardiovascular and respiratory functions would be severely burdened.


title: Square–cube law

text: In the case of flying animals, the wing loading would be increased if they were isometrically scaled up, and they would therefore have to fly faster to gain the same amount of lift. Air resistance per unit mass is also higher for smaller animals (reducing terminal velocity) which is why a small animal like an ant cannot be seriously injured from impact with the ground after being dropped from any height.


title: Square–cube law

text: As stated by J. B. S. Haldane, large animals do not look like small animals: an elephant cannot be mistaken for a mouse scaled up in size. This is due to allometric scaling: the bones of an elephant are necessarily proportionately much larger than the bones of a mouse, because they must carry proportionately higher weight. Haldane illustrates this in his seminal 1928 essay "On Being the Right Size" in referring to allegorical giants: "...consider a man 60 feet high...Giant Pope and Giant Pagan in the illustrated "Pilgrim's Progress:" ...These monsters...weighed 1000 times as much as [a normal human]. Every square inch of a giant bone had to support 10 times the weight borne by a square inch of human bone. As the average human thigh-bone breaks under about 10 times the human weight, Pope and Pagan would have broken their thighs every time they took a step." Consequently, most animals show allometric scaling with increased size, both among species and within a species. The giant creatures seen in monster movies (e.g., Godzilla, King Kong, and Them!) are also unrealistic, given that their sheer size would force them to collapse.


title: Square–cube law

text: However, the buoyancy of water negates to some extent the effects of gravity. Therefore, sea creatures can grow to very large sizes without the same musculoskeletal structures that would be required of similarly sized land creatures, and it is no coincidence that the largest animals to ever exist on earth are aquatic animals.


title: Square–cube law

text: The metabolic rate of animals scales with a mathematical principle named quarter-power scaling according to the metabolic theory of ecology.


title: Square–cube law

text: Mass transfer, such as diffusion to smaller objects such as living cells is faster than diffusion to larger objects such as entire animals. Thus, in chemical processes that take place on a surface – rather than in the bulk – finer-divided material is more active. For example, the activity of a heterogeneous catalyst is higher when it is divided into finer particles. Such catalysts typically occur in warmer conditions.


title: Square–cube law

text: Heat production from a chemical process scales with the cube of the linear dimension (height, width) of the vessel, but the vessel surface area scales with only the square of the linear dimension. Consequently, larger vessels are much more difficult to cool. Also, large-scale piping for transferring hot fluids is difficult to simulate in small scale, because heat is transferred faster out from smaller pipes. Failure to take this into account in process design may lead to catastrophic thermal runaway.


title: Egocentrism

text: Egocentrism is the inability to differentiate between self and other. More specifically, it is the inability to accurately assume or understand any perspective other than one's own.


title: Egocentrism

text: Although egocentric behaviors are less prominent in adulthood, the existence of some forms of egocentrism in adulthood indicates that overcoming egocentrism may be a lifelong development that never achieves completion. Adults appear to be less egocentric than children because they are faster to correct from an initially egocentric perspective than children, not because they are less likely to initially adopt an egocentric perspective.


title: Egocentrism

text: Although egocentrism and narcissism appear similar, they are not the same. A person who is egocentric believes they are the center of attention but does not receive gratification by one's own admiration. Both egotists and narcissists are people whose egos are greatly influenced by the approval of others, while for egocentrists this may or may not be true.


title: Egocentrism

text: When infants and young children begin to show egocentrism they learn that their thoughts, values, and behaviors are different from those of others, also known as the theory of mind. Initially when children begin to have social interactions with others, mainly the caregivers, they misinterpret that they are one entity, because they are together for a long duration of time and the caregivers often provide for the children's needs. For example, a child may misattribute the act of their mother reaching to retrieve an object that they point to as a sign that they are the same entity, when in fact they are actually separate individuals. As early as 15 months old, children show a mix of egocentrism and theory of mind when an agent acts inconsistently with how the children expect him to behave. In this study the children observed the experimenter place a toy inside one of two boxes, but did not see when the experimenter removed the toy from the original box and placed it in the other box, due to obstruction by a screen. When the screen was removed the children watched the experimenter reach to take the toy out of one of the boxes, yet because the children did not see the switching part, they looked at the experimenter's action much longer when she reached for the box opposite to the one she originally put the toy in. Not only does this show the existence of infants' memory capacity, but it also demonstrates how they have expectations based on their knowledge, as they are surprised when those expectations are not met.


title: Egocentrism

text: Piaget explained that egocentrism during infancy does not mean selfishness, self-centeredness, or egotism because it refers to the infant's understanding of the world in terms of their own motor activity as well as an inability to understand it. In children's social development, the infancy is the period where the individual performs very few social functions due to the conscious and subconscious concern with the fulfillment of physical needs.


title: Egocentrism

text: According to George Butterworth and Margaret Harris, during childhood, one is usually unable to distinguish between what is subjective and objective. According to Piaget, "an egocentric child assumes that other people see, hear, and feel exactly the same as the child does."


title: Egocentrism

text: Jean Piaget (1896–1980) developed a theory about the development of human intelligence, describing the stages of cognitive development. He claimed that early childhood is the time of pre-operational thought, characterized by children's inability to process logical thought. According to Piaget, one of the main obstacles to logic that children possess includes centration, "the tendency to focus on one aspect of a situation to the exclusion of others." A particular type of centration is egocentrism – literally, "self-centeredness." Piaget claimed that young children are egocentric, capable of contemplating the world only from their personal perspective. For example, a three-year-old presented his mother a model truck as her birthday present; "he had carefully wrapped the present and gave it to his mother with an expression that clearly showed he expected her to love it." The three-year-old boy had not chosen the present out of selfishness or greediness, but he simply failed to realize that, from his mother's perspective, she might not enjoy the model car as much as he would.


title: Egocentrism

text: Piaget was concerned with two aspects of egocentricity in children: language and morality. He believed that egocentric children use language primarily for communication with oneself. Piaget observed that children would talk to themselves during play, and this egocentric speech was merely the child's thoughts. He believed that this speech had no special function; it was used as a way of accompanying and reinforcing the child's current activity. He theorized that as the child matures cognitively and socially the amount of egocentric speech used would be reduced. However, Vygotsky felt that egocentric speech has more meaning, as it allows the child's growth in social speech and high mental development. In addition to Piaget's theory, he believed that when communicating with others, the child believes that others know everything about the topic of discussion and become frustrated when asked to give further detail.


title: Egocentrism

text: Piaget also believed that egocentrism affects the child's sense of morality. Due to egocentrism, the child is only concerned with the final outcome of an event rather than another's intentions. For example, if someone breaks the child's toy, the child would not forgive the other and the child would not be able to understand that the person who broke the toy did not intend to break it. This phenomenon can also be backed by the evidence from the findings of the case study by Nelson, who studied the use of motives and outcomes by young children as aiding to form their moral judgements.


title: Egocentrism

text: Piaget did a test to investigate egocentrism called the mountains study. He put children in front of a simple plaster mountain range and then asked them to pick from four pictures the view that he, Piaget, would see. The younger children before age seven picked the picture of the view they themselves saw and were therefore found to lack the ability to appreciate a viewpoint different from their own. In other words, their way of reasoning was egocentric. Only when entering the concrete-operational stage of development at age seven to twelve, children became less egocentric and could appreciate viewpoints other than their own. In other words, they were capable of cognitive perspective-taking. However, the mountains test has been criticized for judging only the child's visuo-spatial awareness, rather than egocentrism. A follow up study involving police dolls showed that even young children were able to correctly say what the interviewer would see. It is thought that Piaget overestimated the extent of egocentrism in children. Egocentrism is thus the child's inability to see other people's viewpoints, not to be confused with selfishness. The child at this stage of cognitive development assumes that their view of the world is the same as other people's.


title: Egocentrism

text: In addition, a more well-known experiment by Wimmer and Perner (1983) called the false-belief task demonstrates how children show their acquisition of theory of mind (ToM) as early as 4 years old. In this task, children see a scenario where one character hides a marble in a basket, walks out of the scene, and another character that is present takes out the marble and put it in a box. Knowing that the first character did not see the switching task, children were asked to predict where the first character would look to find the marble. The results show that children younger than 4 answer that the character would look inside the box, because they have the superior knowledge of where the marble actually is. It shows egocentric thinking in early childhood because they thought that even if the character itself did not see the entire scenario, it has the same amount of knowledge as oneself and therefore should look inside the box to find the marble. As children start to acquire ToM, their ability to recognize and process others' beliefs and values overrides the natural tendency to be egocentric.


title: Egocentrism

text: Although most of the research completed on the study of egocentrism is primarily focused on early childhood development, it has been found to also occur during adolescence. David Elkind was one of the first to discover the presence of egocentrism in adolescence and late adolescence. He argues, "the young adolescent, because of the physiological metamorphosis he is undergoing, is primarily concerned with himself. Accordingly, since he fails to differentiate between what others are thinking about and his own mental preoccupations, he assumes that other people are obsessed with his behavior and appearance as he is himself." This shows that the adolescent is exhibiting egocentrism, by struggling to distinguish whether or not, in actuality, others are as fond of them as they might think because their own thoughts are so prevalent. Adolescents consider themselves as "unique, special, and much more socially significant than they actually are."


title: Egocentrism

text: Elkind also created terms to help describe the egocentric behaviors exhibited by the adolescent population such as what he calls an imaginary audience, the personal fable, and the invincibility fable. Usually when an egocentric adolescent is experiencing an imaginary audience, it entails the belief that there is an audience captivated and constantly present to an extent of being overly interested about the egocentric individual. Personal fable refers to the idea that many teenagers believe their thoughts, feelings, and experiences are unique and more extreme than anyone else's. In the invincibility fable, the adolescent believes in the idea that he or she is immune to misfortune and cannot be harmed by things that might defeat a normal person. Egocentrism in adolescence is often viewed as a negative aspect of their thinking ability because adolescents become consumed with themselves and are unable to effectively function in society due to their skewed version of reality and cynicism.


title: Egocentrism

text: Gender differences have been found in the way egocentrism manifests. Transient Self, as defined by Elkind and Bowen in 1979, refers to impermanent image of self that is mainly relative to one-time behaviors and temporary appearance, and, adolescent females have a higher tendency to consider themselves to be different from others, and tend to be more self-conscious in situations that involve momentary embarrassments (e.g. going to a party with a bad haircut), than their male peers. Another study conducted by Goossens and Beyers (1992) using similar measuring instruments found that boys have stronger beliefs that they are unique, invulnerable and sometimes omnipotent, which are typical characteristics of personal fable.


title: Egocentrism

text: Results from other studies have come to the conclusion that egocentrism does not present itself in some of the same patterns as it was found originally. More recent studies have found that egocentrism is prevalent in later years of development unlike Piaget's original findings that suggested that egocentrism is only present in early childhood development. Egocentrism is especially dominant in early adolescence, particularly when adolescents encounter new environments, such as a new school or a new peer group.


title: Egocentrism

text: In addition, throughout adolescence egocentrism contributes to the development of self-identity; in order to achieve self-identity, adolescents go through different pathways of "crisis" and "commitment" stages, and higher self-identity achievement was found to be correlated with heightened egocentrism.


title: Egocentrism

text: The prevalence of egocentrism in the individual has been found to decrease between the ages of 15 and 16. However, adults are also susceptible to be egocentric or to have reactions or behaviors that can be categorized as egocentric.


title: Egocentrism

text: Frankenberger tested adolescents (14–18 years old) and adults (20–89) on their levels of egocentrism and self-consciousness. It was found that egocentric tendencies had extended to early adulthood and these tendencies were also present in the middle adult years.


title: Egocentrism

text: Baron and Hanna looked at 152 participants and tested to see how the presence of depression affected egocentrism. They tested adults between the ages of 18 and 25 and found that the participants who suffered from depression showed higher levels of egocentrism than those who did not.


title: Egocentrism

text: Finally, Surtees and Apperly found that when adults were asked to judge the number of dots they see and the number of dots the avatar in the computer simulation sees, the presence of the avatar interfered with the participants' judgment-making during the trials. Specifically, these were the trials where the number of dots seen by the participant was inconsistent from the number of dots the avatar saw. Such effect on the participants diminished when the avatar was replaced with a simple yellow or blue line, which concluded that somehow the avatar having a personal attribute implicitly caused the participants to include its "vision" into their own decision making. That said, they made more errors when they saw prompts such as "the avatar sees N" when N was the number of dots the participant saw and not the avatar, which shows that egocentric thought is still predominant in making quick judgments, even if the adults are well aware that their thoughts could differ from others.


title: Nambu pistol

text: The pistols were designed by Kijiro Nambu and saw extensive service in the Empire of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War and Pacific War. The most common variant, the Type 14, was used mostly by officers, who had to pay for their pistols themselves.


title: Nambu pistol

text: Towards the end of the war, the production quality began to decline in order to speed up manufacture. Nambu pistols were noted for their lack of reliability and stopping power compared to other handguns being fielded by other nations at the same time, such as the M1911 and Walther P38.


title: Nambu pistol

text: Prior to the design of the Nambu, the only pistol in Japanese service was the Type 26 revolver, which served with distinction during the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). However, in the 1890s, semi-automatic pistol designs began to emerge, among them, the Mauser C96, which was influential in the production of the Nambu, as it uses the same locking mechanism as the C96, and the Nambu was designed shortly after a Japanese commission reported on European military developments.


title: Nambu pistol

text: The first Nambu, the Type A, was completed in 1902. This version was never adopted, but some were sold to China and Siam. The Type B was adopted by the Imperial Japanese Navy and Royal Thai Army during the 1920s, and the later Type 14 was adopted in 1926 (Taishō 14) as the service pistol of the Imperial Japanese Army until its surrender in 1945. Nambu pistols were symbols of prestige, often carried in fanciful holsters, and were used more as a means of ornament and status rather than actual combative purposes. Japan produced about 400,000 Nambu pistols over the course of the war, whereas in this same time period the United States had made over a million M1911 pistols.


title: Nambu pistol

text: Alongside other Japanese weapons, such as "guntōs" and Arisaka rifles, many American servicemen took Nambu pistols home with them as war trophies. Production of Nambu pistols ceased after the end of the war and Nambu pistols were replaced by M1911A1s provided by the US to the Japan Self-Defense Forces and police.


title: Nambu pistol

text: The Nambu pistol is a recoil operated, locked breech, semi-automatic pistol. The Type A and 14 Nambus have magazine capacities of eight rounds, whereas the Type B has seven. A common flaw in the series was that the gun's safety catch and its magazine release did not enable the magazine to slide out of the gun once it was completely empty, forcing the operator to work against the weight of the recoil spring and leaf spring, making reloading difficult. In response to this issue, the magazine catch was removed from the Type 14. Another issue with the safety was that it is located just above the trigger guard, meaning that it can not be activated with the same hand that is holding the pistol.


title: Nambu pistol

text: The grip on the Nambu is slanted, which makes feeding the magazine a delicate procedure. The magazine spring is only about 60% effective, and the bullets moving against the walls of the magazine cause frictional loss, weakening the spring further. Furthermore, the size of the bullets has to be exact; soft point and cast lead bullets fail to chamber properly.


title: Nambu pistol

text: The Nambu pistol uses the 8×22mm Nambu cartridge, which made it substantially weaker than other handguns. The 8 mm round's muzzle energy is less than half that of the 9×19mm Parabellum (used in the Walther P38), and the 7.62×25mm Tokarev (used in the TT-33).


title: Nambu pistol

text: The first type of Nambu that was produced was the Type A. Type A Nambus produced from 1903-1906 have differences from those produced after 1906, and, among collectors, the original Nambus are commonly referred to as "Grandpa" Nambus. The "Grandpa" Type A was produced until around serial number 2,400. Production of the Type A Nambu ceased as of 1923, as the Type 14 was both cheaper, and more effective. The Nambu Type A somewhat resembles the Luger pistol in appearance, but this is superficial.


title: Nambu pistol

text: A later version of the Type A Nambu, the Type A modified, also known as the "Papa" Nambu, was produced until around serial number 7,000. The trigger guard of the "Grandpa" Nambu was enlarged in later models. The Type A originally had a provision that allowed for the installation of a stock, as seen on the Mauser C96. However, there are no known instances of a Nambu pistol being fitted with a stock.


title: Nambu pistol

text: Due to failings with the Type A Nambu, an improvement, the Type B, was devised. Both the pistol itself, and the round it fired, are smaller than the other Nambu pistols, leading to the name "Baby" Nambu. Type B Nambus were produced at the Tokyo Artillery Arsenal. The first 450 models have the bottom part of the magazine made of wood, and only one diameter firing pin, but later Type Bs have the magazine made from aluminium, and incorporate a multiple diameter firing pin. The Type B Nambu was never adopted officially by any Japanese armed forces. As was customary in the Imperial Japanese Army, officers paid for pistols with their own salaries, but the Type B Nambu was unable to achieve market success as it was twice the price of a comparable imported pistol, such as the FN M1900. A Type B Nambu sold for 180 yen, making it cost roughly the same as a captain's entire monthly salary.


title: Nambu pistol

text: After the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, Koishikawa arsenal stopped producing new parts for Type B Nambus, but continued to assemble ones with pre-existing parts until 1929


title: Nambu pistol

text: The Type 14 Nambu gets its name from the year it was produced - the 14th year of the Taishō era, or 1926. It was designed to help lower the manufacturing cost of the Nambus, and like the Type A, fires the 8×22mm Nambu. From 1927, it was a standard issue sidearm for officers and was being sold for 78 yen by 1939. It is believed that around 400,000 Type 14 Nambus were produced, but the exact number is unknown, as Japanese soldiers considered their weapons property of the emperor, and many chose to destroy their pistols or throw them into the ocean to avoid them falling into enemy hands.


title: Nambu pistol

text: Later production models have a larger trigger guard, following complaints by soldiers stationed in Manchukuo that it was difficult to fire the trigger while wearing gloves. Some of these models also have a knurled steel cocking knob instead of the standard "slotted" cocking knob. After 1940, an auxiliary magazine spring was added to assist in reloading. A redesigned cocking knob was implemented in 1944 in order to simplify production. The Type 14 also lacks the grip safety used on the previous models.


title: Nambu pistol

text: Pre-1937 Type 14s are well made, with a noticeable decline in quality after the war's beginning, to meet the production demands of wartime. However, later Type 14s remained mostly functional despite the decreased quality. The holsters for the pistols also had to be changed to accommodate wartime. A lack of available raw materials resulted in a move from holsters made of leather, to rubberized canvas.


title: Nambu pistol

text: In 1949, William B. Ruger took design elements of the Nambu in his own design, which became the Ruger Standard. This was the first weapon designed by Sturm, Ruger & Co. The Ruger Standard would become the most successful .22LR pistol ever produced, and as of 2016, Ruger's company produced more firearms than any other American company, and was worth over $600 million.


title: Nambu pistol

text: Because of their rarity and historical significance, Nambu pistols became sought after by gun collectors, with models selling anywhere from $800 to $1,500.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Hydronephrosis describes hydrostatic dilation of the renal pelvis and calyces as a result of obstruction to urine flow downstream. Alternatively, hydroureter describes the dilation of the ureter, and hydronephroureter describes the dilation of the entire upper urinary tract (both the renal pelvicalyceal system and the ureter).


title: Hydronephrosis

text: The signs and symptoms of hydronephrosis depend upon whether the obstruction is acute or chronic, partial or complete, unilateral or bilateral. Hydronephrosis that occurs acutely with sudden onset (as caused by a kidney stone) can cause intense pain in the flank area (between the hips and ribs) known as a renal colic. Historically, this type of pain has been described as "Dietl's crisis". Conversely, hydronephrosis that develops gradually over time will generally cause either a dull discomfort or no pain. Nausea and vomiting may also occur. An obstruction that occurs at the urethra or bladder outlet can cause pain and pressure resulting from distension of the bladder. Blocking the flow of urine will commonly be prone to urinary tract infections which can lead to further development of stones, fever, and blood or pus in the urine. If complete obstruction occurs, a postrenal kidney failure (obstructive nephropathy) may follow.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Blood tests may show impaired kidney function (elevated urea or creatinine) or electrolyte imbalances such as hyponatremia or hyperchloremic metabolic acidosis. Urinalysis may indicate an elevated pH due to the secondary destruction of nephrons within the affected kidney, which impairs acid excretion. Physical examination in a thin patient may detect a palpable abdominal or flank mass caused by the enlarged kidney.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Hydronephrosis is the result of any of several abnormal pathophysiological occurrences. Structural abnormalities of the junctions between the kidney, ureter and bladder that lead to hydronephrosis can occur during fetal development. Some of these congenital defects have been identified as inherited conditions, however, the benefits of linking genetic testing to early diagnosis have not been determined. Other structural abnormalities could be caused by injury, surgery, or radiation therapy.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: The most common causes of hydronephrosis in children are anatomical abnormalities. These include vesicoureteral reflux, urethral stricture, and stenosis. The most common cause of hydronephrosis in young adults is kidney stones. In older adults, the most common cause of hydronephrosis is benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH), or intrapelvic neoplasms such as prostate cancer.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Compression of one or both ureters can also be caused by other developmental defects not completely occurring during the fetal stage such as an abnormally placed vein, artery, or tumor. Bilateral compression of the ureters can occur during pregnancy due to enlargement of the uterus. Changes in hormone levels during this time may also affect the muscle contractions of the bladder, further complicating this condition.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Sources of obstruction that can arise from other various causes include kidney stones, blood clots or retroperitoneal fibrosis.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: The obstruction may be either partial or complete, and can occur anywhere from the urethral meatus to the renal calyces. Hydronephrosis can also result from the retrograde flow of urine from the bladder back into the kidneys (vesicoureteral reflux), which can be caused by some of the factors listed above as well as compression of the bladder outlet into the urethra by prostate enlargement or fecal impaction in the rectum (which sits immediately behind the prostate), as well as abnormal contractions of bladder detrusor muscles resulting from neurological dysfunction (neurogenic bladder) or other muscular disorders.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Hydronephrosis is caused by obstruction of urine before the renal pelvis. The obstruction causes dilation of the nephron tubules and flattening of the lining of the tubules within the kidneys which in turn causes swelling of the renal calyces.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Hydronephrosis can either be acute or chronic. In acute hydronephrosis full recovery of kidney function is seen. However, with chronic hydronephrosis, permanent loss of kidney function is seen even once obstruction is removed.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Obstruction that occurs anywhere along the upper urinary tract will lead to increased pressure within the structures of the kidney due to the inability to pass urine from the kidney to the bladder. Common causes of upper tract obstruction include obstructing stones and ureteropelvic junction (UPJ) obstruction caused by intrinsic narrowing of the ureters or an overlying vessel.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Obstruction occurring in the lower urinary tract can also cause this increased pressure through the reflux of urine into the kidney. Common causes include bladder dysfunction (such as neurogenic bladder) and urethral obstruction (such as posterior urethral valves in male infants) or compression (such as from prostatic hypertrophy in older male adults).


title: Hydronephrosis

text: In pregnancy, dextrorotation (rotation to the right) of the uterus can cause compression on the right ureter, thus making hydronephrosis more common in right kidney than left kidney. Besides, hormones such as oestrogen, progestrerone, and prostaglandin can cause ureter dilatation, thus causing hydronephrosis despite the absence of visible obstruction along the urinary tract.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Prenatal diagnosis is possible, and in fact, most cases in pediatric patients are incidentally detected by routine screening ultrasounds obtained during pregnancy. However, approximately half of all prenatally identified hydronephrosis is transient, and resolves by the time the infant is born, and in another 15%, the hydronephrosis persists but is not associated with urinary tract obstruction (so-called non-refluxing, non-obstructive hydronephrosis). For these children, regression of the hydronephrosis occurs spontaneously, usually by age 3. However, in the remaining 35% of cases of prenatal hydronephrosis, a pathological condition can be identified postnatally.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Diagnostic workup depends on the age of the patient, as well as whether the hydronephrosis was detected incidentally or prenatally or is associated with other symptoms. Blood tests (such measurement of creatinine) are typically indicated, though they must be interpreted cautiously. Even in cases of severe unilateral hydronephrosis, the overall kidney function may remain normal since the unaffected kidney will compensate for the obstructed kidney.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Urinalysis is usually performed to determine the presence of blood (which is typical for kidney stones) or signs of infection (such as a positive leukocyte esterase or nitrite). Impaired concentrating ability or elevated urine pH (distal renal tubular acidosis) are also commonly found due to tubular stress and injury.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Imaging studies, such as an intravenous urogram (IVU), renal ultrasonography, CT, or MRI, are also important investigations in determining the presence and/ or cause of hydronephrosis. Whilst ultrasound allows for visualisation of the ureters and kidneys (and determine the presence of hydronephrosis and / or hydroureter), an IVU is useful for assessing the anatomical location of the obstruction. Antegrade or retrograde pyelography will show similar findings to an IVU but offer a therapeutic option as well. Real-time ultrasounds and Doppler ultrasound tests in association with vascular resistance testing helps determine how a given obstruction is effecting urinary functionality in hydronephrotic patients.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: In determining the cause of hydronephrosis, the location of obstruction can be determined with a Whittaker (or pressure perfusion) test, wherein the collecting system of the kidney is accessed percutaneously, and the liquid is introduced at high pressure and constant rate of 10ml/min while measuring the pressure within the renal pelvis. A rise in pressure above 22 cm HO suggests that the urinary collection system is obstructed. When arriving at this pressure measurement, bladder pressure is subtracted from the initial reading of internal pressure. (The test was first described by Whittaker in 1973 to test the hypothesis that patients whose hydronephrosis persists after the posterior urethral valves have been ablated usually have ureters that are not obstructed, even though they may be dilated.)


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Kay recommends that a neonate born with untreated in utero hydronephrosis receive a renal ultrasound within two days of birth. A renal pelvis greater than 12mm in a neonate is considered abnormal and suggests significant dilation and possible abnormalities such as obstruction or morphological abnormalities in the urinary tract.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: The choice of imaging depends on the clinical presentation (history, symptoms and examination findings). In the case of renal colic (one sided loin pain usually accompanied by a trace of blood in the urine) the initial investigation is usually a spiral or helical CT scan. This has the advantage of showing whether there is any obstruction of flow of urine causing hydronephrosis as well as demonstrating the function of the other kidney. Many stones are not visible on plain X-ray or IVU but 99% of stones are visible on CT and therefore CT is becoming a common choice of initial investigation. CT is not used, however, when there is a reason to avoid radiation exposure, e.g. in pregnancy.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: For incidentally detected prenatal hydronephrosis, the first study to obtain is a postnatal renal ultrasound, since as noted, many cases of prenatal hydronephrosis resolve spontaneously. This is generally done within the first few days after birth, although there is some risk that obtaining an imaging study this early may miss some cases of mild hydronephrosis due to the relative oliguria of a newborn. Thus, some experts recommend obtaining a follow-up ultrasound at 4–6 weeks to reduce the false-negative rate of the initial ultrasound. A voiding cystourethrogram (VCUG) is also typically obtained to exclude the possibility of vesicoureteral reflux or anatomical abnormalities such as posterior urethral valves. Finally, if hydronephrosis is significant and obstruction is suspected, such as a ureteropelvic junction (UPJ) or ureterovesical junction (UVJ) obstruction, a nuclear imaging study such as a MAG-3 scan is warranted.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: The Society of Fetal Ultrasound (SFU) has developed a grading system for hydronephrosis, initially intended for use in neonatal and infant hydronephrosis, but it is now used for grading hydronephrosis in adults as well:


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Treatment of hydronephrosis focuses upon the removal of the obstruction and drainage of the urine that has accumulated behind the obstruction. Therefore, the specific treatment depends upon where the obstruction lies.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Acute obstruction of the upper urinary tract is usually treated by the insertion of a nephrostomy tube. Chronic upper urinary tract obstruction is treated by the insertion of a ureteric stent or a pyeloplasty.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Lower urinary tract obstruction (such as that caused by bladder outflow obstruction secondary to prostatic hypertrophy) is usually treated by insertion of a urinary catheter or a suprapubic catheter. Surgery is not required in all prenatally detected cases.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: The prognosis of hydronephrosis is extremely variable and depends on the condition leading to hydronephrosis, whether one (unilateral) or both (bilateral) kidneys are affected, the pre-existing kidney function, the duration of hydronephrosis (acute or chronic), and whether hydronephrosis occurred in developing or mature kidneys.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: Permanent kidney damage can occur from prolonged hydronephrosis secondary to compression of kidney tissue and ischemia.


title: Hydronephrosis

text: For example, unilateral hydronephrosis caused by an obstructing stone will likely resolve when the stone passes, and the likelihood of recovery is excellent. Alternately, severe bilateral prenatal hydronephrosis (such as occurs with posterior urethral valves) will likely carry a poor long-term prognosis, because obstruction while the kidneys are developing causes permanent kidney damage even if the obstruction is relieved postnatal.


title: Rules of engagement

text: Rules of engagement (ROE) are the internal rules or directives afforded military forces (including individuals) that define the circumstances, conditions, degree, and manner in which the use of force, or actions which might be construed as provocative, may be applied. They provide authorization for and/or limits on, among other things, the use of force and the employment of certain specific capabilities. In some nations, articulated ROE have the status of guidance to military forces, while in other nations, ROE constitute lawful command. Rules of engagement do not normally dictate how a result is to be achieved, but will indicate what measures may be unacceptable.


title: Rules of engagement

text: While ROE is used in both domestic and international operations by some militaries, ROE is not used for domestic operations in the United States. Instead, the use of force by the U.S. military in such situations is governed by Rules for the Use of Force (RUF).


title: Rules of engagement

text: An abbreviated description of the rules of engagement may be issued to all personnel. Commonly referred to as a "ROE card", this document provides the soldier with a summary of the ROE regulating the use of force for a particular mission.


title: Rules of engagement

text: While many countries have their own rules of engagement documents, many others do not. There are two primary international rules of engagement manuals that are internationally available: NATO "ROE Manual MC 362-1" (restricted to NATO and Partnership for Peace countries); and the "San Remo Rules of Engagement Handbook", which is freely available to all on the International Institute of Humanitarian Law (IIHL) website. Created for the IIHL by Commander Alan Cole, Major Phillip Drew, Captain Rob McLaughlin and Professor Dennis Mandsager, the "San Remo ROE Handbook" has been translated from its English original into French, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Hungarian, Russian, Bosnian, and Thai and several other languages. Several countries have used the San Remo handbook as a model for creating their own ROE systems.


title: Rules of engagement

text: The International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo, Italy conducts rules of engagement training course at least once per year, usually in September. Taught by some of the world's foremost authorities on ROE, the course attracts students from around the globe. Similar training by the San Remo ROE drafting team is conducted for the United Nations, staff colleges and other organizations as requested.


title: Psychological drama

text: Psychological drama or psychodrama is a sub-genre of drama that places emphasis on psychological elements. It often overlaps with other genres such as crime, fantasy, black comedy, and science fiction, and it is closely related with the psychological horror and psychological thriller genres. Psychological dramas use these genres' tropes to focus on the human condition and psychological effects, usually in a mature and serious tone.


title: Psychological drama

text: Psychological dramas explore thematic elements such as abandonment, coming-of-age problems, denialism, disability, distorted sequences, dysfunctional relationships, human sexuality, mental disorders, mood swings, odd behaviors, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychological abuse, psychedelic art, social issues, and other serious discussions that highlight both issues of the characters' lives and reality.


title: Psychological drama

text: Psychological drama is possibly known one of the fewest and oldest of film subgenres in the early-20th century, with the earliest examples are "The Whispering Chorus" (1918) and "Greed" (1924). Other early examples of popular psychological drama films in the early-to-mid 20th century include:


title: Artificial island

text: An artificial island is an island that has been constructed by people rather than formed by natural means. Artificial islands may vary in size from small islets reclaimed solely to support a single pillar of a building or structure to those that support entire communities and cities. Early artificial islands included floating structures in still waters or wooden or megalithic structures erected in shallow waters (e.g. crannógs and Nan Madol discussed below).


title: Artificial island

text: In modern times artificial islands are usually formed by land reclamation, but some are formed by the incidental isolation of an existing piece of land during canal construction (e.g. Donauinsel, Ko Kret, and much of Door County, Wisconsin), or flooding of valleys resulting in the tops of former knolls getting isolated by water (e.g., Barro Colorado Island). One of the world's largest artificial islands, René-Levasseur Island, was formed by the flooding of two adjacent reservoirs.


title: Artificial island

text: Despite a popular image of modernity, artificial islands actually have a long history in many parts of the world, dating back to the reclaimed islands of Ancient Egyptian civilization, the Stilt crannogs of prehistoric Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the ceremonial centers of Nan Madol in Micronesia and the still extant floating islands of Lake Titicaca. The city of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec predecessor of Mexico City that was home to 500,000 people when the Spaniards arrived, stood on a small natural island in Lake Texcoco that was surrounded by countless artificial "chinamitl" islands.


title: Artificial island

text: The people of Langa Langa Lagoon and Lau Lagoon in Malaita, Solomon Islands, built about 60 artificial islands on the reef including Funaafou, Sulufou, and Adaege. The people of Lau Lagoon build islands on the reef as this provided protection against attack from the people who lived in the centre of Malaita. These islands were formed literally one rock at a time. A family would take their canoe out to the reef which protects the lagoon and then dive for rocks, bring them to the surface and then return to the selected site and drop the rocks into the water. Living on the reef was also healthier as the mosquitoes, which infested the coastal swamps, were not found on the reef islands. The Lau people continue to live on the reef islands.


title: Artificial island

text: Many artificial islands have been built in urban harbors to provide either a site deliberately isolated from the city or just spare real estate otherwise unobtainable in a crowded metropolis. An example of the first case is Dejima (or "Deshima"), created in the bay of Nagasaki in Japan's Edo period as a contained center for European merchants. During the isolationist era, Dutch people were generally banned from Nagasaki and Japanese from Dejima. Similarly, Ellis Island, in Upper New York Bay beside New York City, a former tiny islet greatly expanded by land reclamation, served as an isolated immigration center for the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, preventing an escape to the city of those refused entry for disease or other perceived flaws, who might otherwise be tempted toward illegal immigration. One of the most well-known artificial islands is the Île Notre-Dame in Montreal, built for Expo 67.


title: Artificial island

text: The Venetian Islands in Miami Beach, Florida, in Biscayne Bay added valuable new real estate during the Florida land boom of the 1920s. When the bubble that the developers were riding burst, the bay was left scarred with the remnants of their failed project. A boom town development company was building a sea wall for an island that was to be called Isola di Lolando but could not stay in business after the 1926 Miami Hurricane and the Great Depression, dooming the island-building project. The concrete pilings from the project still stand as another development boom roared around them, 80 years later.


title: Artificial island

text: Bahrain has several artificial islands including Northern City, Diyar Al Muharraq, and Durrat Al Bahrain. Named after the ‘most perfect pearl’ in the Persian Gulf, Durrat Al Bahrain is a US$ 6 billion joint development owned by the Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company and Kuwait Finance House Bahrain (KFH). The project is designed by the firm Atkins. It consists of a series of 15 large artificial islands covering an area of about 5 km2 (54,000,000 sq ft) and has six atolls, five fish-shaped islands, two crescent-shaped islands, and two more small islands related to the Marina area.


title: Artificial island

text: In 1969, the Flevopolder in the Netherlands was finished, as part of the Zuiderzee Works. It has a total land surface of 970 km, which makes it by far the largest artificial island by land reclamation in the world. The island consists of two polders, Eastern Flevoland and Southern Flevoland. Together with the Noordoostpolder, which includes some small former islands like Urk, the polders form Flevoland, the 12th province of the Netherlands that almost entirely consists of reclaimed land.


title: Artificial island

text: An entire artificial archipelago, Marker Wadden has been built as a conservation area for birds and other wildlife, the project started in 2016.


title: Artificial island

text: Maldives have been creating various artificial islands to promote economic development and to address the threat of rising sea level. Hulhumalé island was reclaimed to establish a new land mass required to meet the existing and future housing, industrial and commercial development demands of the Malé region. The official settlement was inaugurated on May 12, 2004.


title: Artificial island

text: The Pearl-Qatar is in the north of the Qatari capital Doha, home to a range of residential, commercial and tourism activities. Qanat Quartier is designed to be a 'Virtual Venice in the Middle East'. Lusail & large areas around Ras Laffan, Hamad International Airport & Hamad Port. The New Doha International Airport is the second largest artificial island built in the world, with a size of 22km2. The Pearl-Qatar is the third largest artificial island in the world, with a size of 13.9km2. The island was built in 2006, by main contractor DEME Group.


title: Artificial island

text: The United Arab Emirates is home to several artificial island projects. They include the Yas Island, augmentions to Saadiyat Island, Khalifa Port, Al Reem Island, Al Lulu Island, Al Raha Creek, al Hudairiyat Island, The Universe and the Dubai Waterfront. Palm Islands (Palm Jumeirah, Palm Jebel Ali, and Deira Island) and the World Islands off Dubai are created for leisure and tourism purposes.


title: Artificial island

text: The Burj Al Arab is on its own artificial island. The Universe, Palm Jebel Ali, Dubai Waterfront, and Palm Deira are on hold.


title: Artificial island

text: China has conducted a land reclamation project which had built at least seven artificial islands in the South China Sea totaling 2000 acres in size by mid 2015. One artificial island built on Fiery Cross Reef near the Spratly Islands is now the site of a military barracks, lookout tower and a runway long enough to handle Chinese military aircraft.


title: Artificial island

text: Kansai International Airport is the first airport to be built completely on an artificial island in 1994, followed by Chūbu Centrair International Airport in 2005, and both the New Kitakyushu Airport and Kobe Airport in 2006, and Ordu Giresun Airport in 2016.


title: Artificial island

text: When Hong Kong International Airport opened in 1998, 75% of the property was created using land reclamation upon the existing islands of Chek Lap Kok and Lam Chau. Currently China is building several airports on artificial islands, they include runways of Shanghai international Airport Dalian Jinzhouwan International Airport being built on a 21 square kilometer artificial island, Xiamen Xiang'an International Airport, Sanya Hongtangwan International Airport designed by Bentley Systems which is being built on a 28 square kilometer artificial islands.


title: Artificial island

text: Artificial islands negatively impact the marine environment. The large quantities of sand required to build these islands are acquired through dredging, which is harmful to coral reefs and disrupts marine life. The increased amount of sand, sediment, and fine particles creates turbid conditions, blocking necessary UV rays from reaching coral reefs, creating coral turbidity (where more organic material is taken in by coral) and increasing bacterial activity (more harmful bacteria are introduced into coral).


title: Artificial island

text: The construction of artificial islands also decreases the subaqueous area in surrounding waters, leading to habitat destruction or degradation for many species.


title: Artificial island

text: Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea treaty (UNCLOS), artificial islands are not considered harbor works (Article 11) and are under the jurisdiction of the nearest coastal state if within (Article 56). Artificial islands are not considered islands for purposes of having their own territorial waters or exclusive economic zones, and only the coastal state may authorize their construction (Article 60); however, on the high seas beyond national jurisdiction, any "state" may construct artificial islands (Article 87).


title: Artificial island

text: The unrecognised micronation known as the Principality of Sealand (often shorted to simply "Sealand") is entirely on a single artificial island.


title: CFP franc

text: The CFP franc (French: , called the "franc" in everyday use) is the currency used in the French overseas collectivities (, or COM) of French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Wallis and Futuna. The initials "CFP" originally stood for ('French colonies of the Pacific'). This was later changed to ('Pacific Financial Community') and then to its present term, ('Pacific Franc Exchange'). Its ISO 4217 currency code is "XPF". The CFP franc is subdivided into 100 centimes.


title: CFP franc

text: The CFP franc was created in December 1945, together with the CFA franc, used in Africa. The reason for the creation of these francs was the weakness of the French franc immediately after the Second World War. When France ratified the Bretton Woods Agreement in December 1945, the French franc was devalued in order to set a fixed exchange rate with the US dollar. New currencies were created in the French colonies to spare them the strong devaluation of December 1945. René Pleven, the French minister of finance, was quoted saying: "In a show of her generosity and selflessness, metropolitan France, wishing not to impose on her far-away daughters the consequences of her own poverty, is setting different exchange rates for their currency." The other French colonial currencies were set at a fixed exchange rate with the French franc. However, the CFP franc was set at a fixed exchange rate with the US dollar, which played a major role in the economy of the French Pacific territories on account of World War II. That situation ended in September 1949 when the CFP franc was given a fixed exchange rate with the French franc.


title: CFP franc

text: The CFP franc has been issued by the IEOM (, 'Overseas Issuing Institute') since 1967. The IEOM has its headquarters in Paris.


title: CFP franc

text: The currency was initially issued in three distinct forms for French Polynesia, New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. (See French Polynesian franc, New Caledonian franc and New Hebrides franc.) Wallis and Futuna used the New Caledonian franc. Although the banknotes of the New Hebrides bore the name of the territory, the notes of French Polynesia and New Caledonia could only be distinguished by the name of the capitals (Papeete and Nouméa, respectively) on the reverse of the notes.


title: CFP franc

text: In 1969, the New Hebrides franc was separated from the CFP franc and was replaced by the Vanuatu vatu in 1982.


title: CFP franc

text: The new highest denomination 10,000 CFP franc banknote (€83.80) issued on 1 October 1986, was the first one that was not overprinted with a city name. The 500 franc banknote, issued in 1992, and the 1,000 and 5,000 franc banknotes, issued in 1995, are also without the overprint. The designs of the 500, 1,000, and 5,000 franc banknotes did not change until 2014, when new designs and sizes were introduced.


title: CFP franc

text: Today, all banknotes are strictly identical from New Caledonia to French Polynesia. One side of the banknotes shows landscapes or historical figures of French Polynesia, while the other side of the banknotes shows landscapes or historical figures of New Caledonia.


title: CFP franc

text: The coins are still separated in two sets: one side of the coins is identical from New Caledonia to French Polynesia, while the other side of the coins is inscribed with the name in New Caledonia and in Wallis and Futuna, and with the name in French Polynesia. Both sets of coins can be used in all three French territories. The situation of the CFP coins is thus quite similar to that of the euro coins, which have a national side but can be used in all countries of the eurozone.


title: CFP franc

text: The 1960 and 1999 events are merely changes in the currency in use in France; the relative value of the CFP franc (XPF) vs. the French franc / euro is unchanged since 1949.


title: CFP franc

text: In 1949, New Caledonia and what was then called French Oceania (now French Polynesia) began to issue coins. The coins have been separated in two types: the obverses are identical, whilst the reverses are distinct. Both types of coins can be used in all three French territories. The situation of the CFP coins is thus quite similar to that of the euro coins, which have a national side but can be used in all countries of the euro zone.


title: CFP franc

text: The New Hebrides franc had a different history of coin issuance before being replaced by the Vanuatu vatu in 1982.


title: CFP franc

text: The IEOM circulates in the French Pacific Colonies have two sets of metal coins with a face value of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 francs. The first series runs mainly in New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna, the second in French Polynesia, although both series have distinct legal tender in each of the regions.


title: CFP franc

text: Each piece – consisting of copper, nickel, magnesium or aluminum – is designed by: first an obverse depicting a landscape, a fruit, an animal or a sculptural typical of the area, the name of the territory associated with the series, and the denomination on the other hand a reverse contained an allegorical representation ("Minerva", goddess of wisdom or portrait of "Marianne", symbol of the Republic), the initials of the bank issuing central (IEOM), the vintage (corresponding to the year of manufacture) and the words "French Republic" with a slight of the aspect is smooth or fluted.


title: CFP franc

text: Values 1, 2, and 5 franc coins have aluminium and magnesium in both sets. 10, 20, and 50 francs only have a nickel composition, meaning it was completely made of nickel until 2005, then copper nickel. The 100 Franc was made of nickel bronze until 2005, and from 2006 copper, nickel, and aluminum.


title: CFP franc

text: Starting 1 September 2021, a new set of coins were issued, common to all 3 French Pacific Territories. 1 Franc & 2 Francs coins will disappear and a brand new 200 Francs coin will be available.


title: CFP franc

text: The IEOM began issuing banknotes in New Hebrides in 1965, and in New Caledonia and French Polynesia in 1969. On 1 October 1986, a new banknote, the 10,000 francs, was introduced which did not bear any distinguishing mark and was common to both French Polynesia and New Caledonia. These were followed, between 1992 and 1995, by 500, 1,000, and 5,000 franc notes for all of the French Pacific Territories.


title: CFP franc

text: The overall design has not changed since 1969. One side shows landscapes or historical figures of New Caledonia, while the other side of the banknotes shows landscapes or historical figures of French Polynesia.


title: CFP franc

text: On January 6, 2014, the IEOM unveiled designs for a new series of banknotes. The new notes were issued on January 20. The older issues ceased circulation on September 30 of that year, but can be exchanged indefinitely at the Institut d'émission d'outre-mer offices.


title: CFP franc

text: Before the French regulated the currency on Tahiti, French Polynesia, traders often used dollars. The word "dollar" became (often written without accents as "tara", or "tala"), and this term is still used among native Tahitian and local Chinese traders as an unofficial unit, worth 5 francs. Thus for a price of 200 francs, one would say (40 tārā) in Tahitian. The currency of Samoa is also called the tālā.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: The Kill Team is a 2019 American war drama film written and directed by Dan Krauss. It is a fictionalized adaptation of the Maywand District murders, which were also explored by Krauss's 2013 documentary of the same name. It stars Alexander Skarsgård, Nat Wolff, Rob Morrow, Adam Long, Jonathan Whitesell, Brian Marc, Osy Ikhile, and Anna Francolini. The film follows a young U.S. Army recruit (Wolff) who becomes conflicted with his morals when his platoon, under his superior, Sergeant Deeks (Skarsgård), participate in murdering civilians in Afghanistan.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: It had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 27, 2019, and was released theatrically and streaming on October 25, 2019, by A24.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: In 2009, Andrew Briggman is a young recruit for U.S. Army in Afghanistan. When Sergeant Wallace is killed in an IED explosion during a raid in a village, Staff Sergeant Deeks assumes the position as the leader of the platoon. Deeks tells the platoon that they will find whoever was responsible for the deaths of 24 American soldiers by raiding the villages. Briggman provides a list of IED attacks by date and location to Deeks. Bravo Company captures a wounded man, who is accused of planting an IED on the road, and Deeks orders Briggman to hurt the man but Briggman refuses.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: On the first raid under the leadership of Deeks, Briggman hears a gunshot and arrives at the scene where he finds a young boy lying dead on the ground; the platoon claimed that the boy tried to attack them with a grenade, prompting the soldiers to shoot him. However, Briggman is skeptical, believing that the child was innocent. Inside the barracks, Briggman uses his laptop to send a message to his father about the murder of the young boy, prompting his father to call the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) to investigate Deeks.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: Briggman is summoned to the tent where he finds Deeks assaulting a soldier, Marquez, whom Deeks accuses of calling the CID, with his platoon in attendance. Marquez is subsequently hospitalized. Knowing that Deeks is aware of this, Briggman phones his father to stop calling the CID. On the second raid, Briggman witnesses Rayburn coldly executing an unarmed man and planting an AK-47 next to him to make it look like the man fought back. At this point, Briggman becomes disillusioned.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: Back at the barracks, Briggman sends a message to his father about the incident. Briggman then goes to Deeks' office and finds the bag full of weapons, but Deeks catches him; Briggman tells Deeks that the unarmed man didn't deserve to die. Deeks also believes that the people in the villages are "co-operators" of the Jihadists. Deeks approaches Briggman at his bed and tells him that he is now aware of his actions against him. Briggman phones his father and breaks down in tears while describing the dangerous position that he is in.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: On the third raid, the team is attacked by an unseen figure. Rayburn captures an old man, who does not say a word. Deeks orders Rayburn and the reluctant Briggman to execute the man on his count while setting up a grenade. As Deeks throws a grenade in front of the man (to make it look like the man threw the grenade at them), Briggman, for the first time on his service, pulls the trigger and kills the man.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: Back at the base, most of the platoon happily celebrate while Briggman is traumatized by the incident. Briggman finds Marquez had returned from the hospital and is told that Rayburn is being summoned by the CID for murdering the civilians and Briggman will also be next. Briggman, feeling guilty for his actions, goes to Deeks' office and attempts to commit suicide but cannot bring himself to do it. Briggman and Deeks are then brought to the CID for investigation. Arriving at the CID where his parents are invited to accompany him, the investigator tells Briggman to tell everything about the whole circumstances.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: The closing credits reveal that in 2010, five U.S. Army soldiers were charged for the murder of the civilians; Specialist Adam Winfield (depicted as Briggman in the film) pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to three years after he testified in court against Staff Sergeant Gibbs (called Deeks in the film), who was sentenced to life imprisonment.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: In October 2016, it was announced Nat Wolff and Alexander Skarsgård had joined the cast of the film, with Dan Krauss directing from a screenplay he wrote. Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey will serve as producers on the film under their Temple Hill Entertainment banner. In September 2017, Rob Morrow joined the cast of the film. In November 2017, it was announced Adam Long, Jonathan Whitesell and Brian Marc joined the cast of the film.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: In November 2018, A24 acquired distribution rights to the film. It had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 27, 2019. It was released on October 25, 2019.


title: The Kill Team (2019 film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "Flawed yet viscerally effective, "The Kill Team" interrogates battlefield morality with a hard-hitting intensity further amplified by a talented cast." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 60 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: The Canadian Elite Basketball League (CEBL) is a men's professional minor league basketball organization. The CEBL was founded in 2017 and began play in 2019 with six teams competing all owned and operated by ownership group Canadian Basketball Ventures.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: The league currently consists of ten teams from six different provinces, with four being from Ontario, two from Alberta and one each from the provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, making the CEBL the largest professional sports league based entirely in Canada. CEBL teams play twenty regular-season games from May to August. The season culminates in the six-team playoffs which include a final four Championship Weekend where the league's champion is crowned.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: The CEBL was first announced in October 2017. Niagara River Lions owner Richard Petko had been dissatisfied with the operations of the National Basketball League of Canada, which he deemed to be a "shoestring business" with no vision. He attempted to persuade the league to hire Mike Morreale, a former Canadian Football League player who, Petko felt, could do better at marketing the league and attracting sponsorship. However, after the NBL declined, Petko and Morreale decided to organize their own league, with Morreale as CEO. The six charter teams were officially unveiled in May 2018, with the River Lions joining five newly-created franchises in Abbotsford which moved to Langley in 2021, Edmonton, Guelph, Hamilton, and Saskatoon.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: Morreale stated that the CEBL would emphasize offering a "party wrapped around a basketball game" with "a ton of value for the fans" in order to attract spectators, including outdoor pre-game events, in-arena entertainment, autograph sessions, and other features. The CEBL will, initially, operate as a single entity, with all teams owned by the league under individual general managers. However, the league may spin out its franchises to individual owners, or a single investor, in the future.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: In December 2018, the CEBL reached a five-year deal with New Era to be the official apparel provider of the league. The CEBL also reached an official agreement with Canada Basketball for it to be recognized as its first division professional league (in a league system akin to European competition); this endorsement also allows the CEBL access to resources from the governing body. Canada Basketball CEO Glen Grunwald stated that the league would provide an "exciting new product and a further development opportunity for Canadian players, coaches, referees, administrators and management types." Due to this agreement, the league plays under the standard FIBA rules.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: In January 2019, the CEBL announced a three-year agreement with Spalding to be the official ball of the league.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 CEBL season was postponed, and conducted as a shortened tournament in a bio-secure bubble behind closed doors, branded as the "CEBL Summer Series". Beginning in the 2020 season, the CEBL adopted the Elam Ending—as recently popularized by The Basketball Tournament and the NBA All-Star Game—for all games, under which the game clock is turned off near the end of the fourth quarter, and teams play to a target score to determine the winner.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: In the 2021–22 season, the Edmonton Stingers represented Canada in the Basketball Champions League Americas (BCLA).


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: In November 2019, the Ottawa Blackjacks were announced as the league's first expansion team, and seventh overall, beginning in the 2020 season.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: In February 2021, Morreale announced that an expansion team in Montreal would be added no earlier than the 2022 season; due to COVID-19, no new expansion teams were added for the 2021 season. Later in 2021, the Scarborough Shooting Stars, the Montreal Alliance, and the Newfoundland Growlers were all announced as expansion teams for the 2022 season.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: The CEBL's main focus will be on showcasing and developing Canadian talent in basketball: at least 70% of each team's roster must consist of Canadian players. As it will be played over the spring and summer months, the CEBL also sought to attract players wanting to continue developing their game over the traditional offseason period. Players were expected to be drawn from collegiate alumni (including U Sports and U.S. NCAA basketball), players with experience in other international leagues, as well as members of the Canadian national team.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: During the first season, games were primarily streamed on an in-house platform known as CEBL.tv; the league stated that it would provide the necessary means for each team to produce "a really good official and professional looking live stream that we can share without any kind of limitations to who can see it." The league considered the possibility of selling television rights to its championship to a traditional broadcaster.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: On June 12, 2019, the CEBL announced that CBC Sports would stream all remaining games of the inaugural season on its digital platforms. It subsequently announced in November 2019 that CBC Sports had agreed to a three-year deal, which will also see eight games (seven regular-season games and the championship game) per-season aired on CBC Television.


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: For the 2020 season, the CEBL also began streaming games on Twitch. On August 7, the CEBL and Mediapro announced new rights deals in the Asia-Pacific and Oceania regions, such as Astro (Malaysia), Fox Sports Australia, SingTel, Sportscast (Taiwan), and TapGo (Philippines).


title: Canadian Elite Basketball League

text: A feature length documentary about the 2020 "Summer Series", produced by Ward 1 Studios, was broadcast on May 29, 2021 on CBC national television and CBC Gem.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: It Ain't Half Hot, Mum is a BBC television sitcom about a Royal Artillery concert party based in Deolali in British India and the fictional village of Tin Min in Burma, during the last months of the Second World War. It was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who had both served in similar roles in India during that war. Fifty-six episodes were broadcast across eight series on BBC1 between 1974 and 1981. Each episode ran for thirty minutes. The title comes from the first episode, in which young Gunner Parkin (Christopher Mitchell) writes home to his mother in England. In 1975, a recording of "Whispering Grass" performed by Don Estelle and Windsor Davies in character as Gunner "Lofty" Sugden and Sergeant Major Williams, reached number 1 on the UK Singles Chart and remained there for three weeks.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: The series, which attracted up to seventeen million viewers in its heyday, has been accused of racism, homophobia and a pro-imperialist attitude. One specific criticism has been the casting of a white actor, Michael Bates, as an Indian character, with darkening makeup that some have described as blackface. According to the head of broadcasting regulator Ofcom in 2014, such series "are unimaginable today and if they were shown people would find them offensive and that wouldn’t just be people from black and ethnic minority communities, it would be everybody".


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: "It Ain't Half Hot, Mum" is set in 1945 during the last months of the Second World War, in the period after the German surrender when the Allies were trying to finish the war by defeating Japan in Asia. The scripts make clear that the performers are members of a concert party of the Royal Artillery and are thus enlisted soldiers, rather than being members of ENSA. Initially, the British soldiers are stationed at the Royal Artillery Depot in Deolali, British India, where soldiers were kept before being sent to fight at the front lines. The series was based on the experiences of its creators during the Second World War; Jimmy Perry had been a member of a similar performing troupe in India, while David Croft had been an entertainments officer in Poona (now in the Indian state of Maharashtra).


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: The main characters are performers in the base's concert party, which involved performing comic acts and musical numbers (similar to those seen in a music hall) for the other soldiers prior to their departure for the front lines. The soldiers in the concert party all love this particular job, as it keeps them out of combat duty, but some do daydream of becoming world-famous actors when they leave the army.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: The main characters include Gunner "Lofty" Sugden, a short, fat soldier who wears a pith helmet and possesses a fine singing voice; Gunner "Parky" Parkin, a young recruit who, though eager, is slightly bumbling and has very little aptitude for the theatre; Gunner "La-de-dah"/"Paderewski" Graham, a bald-headed Oxbridge graduate, is the pianist; Gunner "Atlas" Mackintosh, a short-tempered Scotsman who specialises in feats of strength; Gunner "Nobby" Clark, an unintelligent soldier who does bird calls and whistling acts; and Gunner "Nosher" Evans, a soldier who does a paper-tearing act and tends to eat a lot, spraying food whenever he speaks. Rounding out the enlisted crew are Bombardier "Solly" Solomons, a soldier from London, who is Jewish and a former theatrical agent; and Gunner "Gloria" Beaumont, an effeminate, cowardly soldier who specialises in performing female roles in drag (as there are no women assigned to the concert party). Beaumont is later promoted to Bombardier after Solly is demobbed and sent back to Britain.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: The soldiers are under the orders of Battery Sergeant Major Williams, a belligerent Welshman who has spent almost all of his life as a professional soldier. In turn, Williams reports to the two officers in charge of the concert party: Captain Ashwood and Lieutenant-Colonel Reynolds. Both Ashwood and Reynolds are characterised as coming from upper-class backgrounds. Ashwood, the younger officer, is rather stupid and slightly excitable, while Reynolds is older and more worldly-wise and sensible. While often bemoaning the rough conditions of Army life, both Ashwood and Reynolds realise that keeping their concert party administrative duties (and thus remaining behind friendly lines) is infinitely preferable to combat duty at the front line.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: A small contingent of Indian workers assist the Britons: Bearer Rangi Ram, who acts as their butler and porter, displaying an outwardly obsequious nature that hides a very savvy intelligence; he is a friend of the concert party and helps them out when they are in trouble; Muhammad, the idealistic chai wallah who, in the traditional role, carries an urn of hot tea and a box of pastries for everyone to purchase, and Rumzam, the lazy punkah wallah whose job it is to fan the officers, who is often kicked and told off by everyone.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: While both the soldiers and officers are extremely reluctant to give up their relatively cushy assignment behind the lines, Sergeant Major Williams hates being assigned to the concert party. Williams resents not only the lack of an active combat role, but also having to be in charge of men who perform what he considers to be effeminate duties (frequently deriding them as "poofs"), instead of being able to command men he considers to be "real soldiers". As a result, Williams is routinely found shouting orders at the men (both soldiers and native workers) in the manner of a drill sergeant, delighting in putting the enlisted men through endless drills, parades and physical training sessions. His ultimate goal, and the focus of many of his schemes, is to have the concert party disbanded, and the men sent off to join other troops fighting at the front. However, the soldiers usually find a way to get out of these schemes (often with the unwitting help of the two officers), and so are able to continue with their concert party duties. However, the concert party eventually finds themselves transferred to the village of Tin Min, Burma, which is located very near the front line.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: The Sergeant Major is also depicted as being extremely proud of the British Empire (and blind to the fact that it is in its last days), and disgusted by the idea of Home Rule that India and Burma will gain after the war, and by Asian nationalists who dream of India and Burma being independent from British control. As such, the Sergeant Major is often abusive to the Asian workers and people, and tries his best to treat them roughly, which often gets him into trouble. Rangi, the bearer, is also presented comically as being extremely supportive of British imperialism, and considers himself British, despite his very Asian appearance, and frequently refers to his fellow Asians as "damn natives".


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: While Williams heaps scorn and derision upon all the enlisted men, he reserves particular contempt for Gloria (who he considers to be the most effeminate of all), Graham (who he mocks for having a "posh" accent and university education, although he sometimes needs and appreciates his intelligence), and Lofty (because of his height, weight and general lack of military bearing, despite admiring his voice). The sole exception to Williams' usual callous treatment of the troops is Gunner Parkin, who Williams believes is his illegitimate son as he had an affair with Parkin's mother, many years before. When the rest of the concert party discover what the Sgt Major believes, Parkin is welcomed into the party, as the Sgt Major would want to stop it being sent into battle as long as Parkin is a member. They change Parkin's blood group on his medical file to that of Williams, so that the Sergeant Major will have "proof" that Parkin is his son. As a result, Williams routinely compliments Parkin and praises him for even the most minor of successes and often goes to great lengths to defend Parkin to the officers whenever he bungles a task. Williams also routinely excuses Parkin from participating in any event that might be even the least bit dangerous, even when Parkin himself has eagerly volunteered to participate. At times, that means that Williams must intervene to foil a scheme that he himself came up with to disband the concert party when it becomes evident that Parkin will get into the same trouble as the rest of the men. For his part, Parkin does not take advantage of his special relationship with Williams, preferring instead to be treated as just another member of the concert party. For their part, the concert party happily keeps Parkin around because they not only consider him to be a "nice bloke" but also know that Williams will be reluctant to send the concert party into danger if his alleged son is likely to have to go with them.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Many songs of the era were performed by the cast in their re-enactment of wartime variety shows. Two singles were released, featuring songs performed in-character by Don Estelle and Windsor Davies. The first, "Whispering Grass" reached No. 1 in the British singles chart for three weeks from 7 June 1975. The second, "Paper Doll", reached No. 41 later that year. They also recorded a top 10 LP titled "Sing Lofty".


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Lieutenant-Colonel Reynolds is the most senior officer in charge of the concert party and enjoys their shows immensely. He thinks army life in Asia is very hard, while all he does is sit around sipping pink gin and dine with the elite. He is having an affair with Daphne Waddilove-Evans, whose husband, Major Waddilove-Evans, has left for the Punjab. He is a stereotypical British Army officer, with a "stiff upper lip" and prim and proper manner. Captain Ashwood's utter stupidity does occasionally infuriate him, but he is effectively good-natured and tries at all costs to avoid losing the easy life he has. Reynolds is revealed to be a solicitor in civilian life.