title: Mound Builders

text: A continuation of the Coles Creek culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana. Examples include the Medora site in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana; and the Anna and Emerald Mound sites in Mississippi. Sites inhabited by Plaquemine peoples continued to be used as vacant ceremonial centers without large village areas much as their Coles Creek ancestors had done, although their layout began to show influences from Middle Mississippian peoples to the north. The Winterville and Holly Bluff (Lake George) sites in western Mississippi are good examples that exemplify this change of layout, but continuation of site usage. During the Terminal Coles Creek period (1150 to 1250 CE), contact increased with Mississippian cultures centered upriver near St. Louis, Missouri. This resulted in the adaption of new pottery techniques, as well as new ceremonial objects and possibly new social patterns during the Plaquemine period. As more Mississippian culture influences were absorbed, the Plaquemine area as a distinct culture began to shrink after CE 1350. Eventually, the last enclave of purely Plaquemine culture was the Natchez Bluffs area, while the Yazoo Basin and adjacent areas of Louisiana became a hybrid Plaquemine-Mississippian culture. This division was recorded by Europeans when they first arrived in the area. In the Natchez Bluffs area, the Taensa and Natchez people had held out against Mississippian influence and continued to use the same sites as their ancestors, and the Plaquemine culture is considered directly ancestral to these historic period groups encountered by Europeans. Groups who appear to have absorbed more Mississippian influence were identified as those tribes speaking the Tunican, Chitimachan, and Muskogean languages.


title: Mound Builders

text: Following the description by Jacques le Moyne in 1560, the mound building cultures seem to have disappeared within the next century. However, there were also other European accounts, earlier than 1560, that gives a first-hand description of the enormous earth-built mounds being constructed by the Native Americans. One of them was Garcilaso de la Vega (c.1539–1616), a Spanish chronicler also known as ""El Inca"" because of his Incan mother, who was also the record-keeper of the infamous "De Soto" expedition that landed in present-day Florida on May 31, 1538. Garcilaso gave a first-hand description through his "Historia de la Florida" (published in 1605, Lisbon, as "La Florida del Inca") describing how the Indians had built mounds and how the Native American Mound Cultures practiced their traditional way of life. De la Vega's accounts also include vital details about the Native American tribes' systems of government present in the South-East, tribal territories, and construction of mounds and temples. A few French expeditions in 1560s reported staying with Indian societies who had built mounds also.


title: Mound Builders

text: Later explorers to the same regions, only a few decades after mound-building settlements had been reported, found the regions largely depopulated with its residents vanished and the mounds untended. Conflicts with Europeans were dismissed by historians as the major cause of population reduction, since only few clashes had occurred between the natives and the Europeans in the area during the same period. The most-widely accepted explanation behind the disappearances were the infectious diseases from the Old World, such as smallpox and influenza, which had decimated most of the Native Americans from the last mound-builder civilization.


title: Mound Builders

text: The Fort Ancient culture of the Ohio River valley is considered a "sister culture" of the Mississippian horizon, or one of the "Mississippianised" cultures adjacent to the main areal of the mound building cultures. This culture was also mostly extinct in the 17th century, but remnants may have survived into the first half of the 18th century.


title: Mound Builders

text: While this culture shows strong Mississippian influences, its bearers were most likely ethno-linguistically distinct from the Mississippians, possibly belonging to the Siouan phylum. The only tribal name associated with the Fort Ancient culture in the historical record are the Mosopelea, recorded by Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin in 1684 as inhabiting eight villages north of the Ohio River.


title: Mound Builders

text: The Mosopelea are most likely identical to the Ofo ("Oufé", "Offogoula") recorded in the same area in the 18th century.


title: Mound Builders

text: The Ofo language was formerly classified as Muskogean but is now recognized as an eccentric member of the Western Siouan phylum. The late survival of the Fort Ancient culture is suggested by the remarkable amount of European made goods in the archaeological record which would have been acquired by trade even before direct European contact. These artifacts include brass and steel items, glassware, and melted down or broken goods reforged into new items.


title: Mound Builders

text: The Fort Ancient peoples are known to have been severely affected by disease in the 17th century (Beaver Wars period), and


title: Mound Builders

text: Because of the disappearance of the cultures by the end of the 17th century, the identification of the bearers of these cultures was an open question in 19th-century ethnography. Modern stratigraphic dating has established that the "Mound builders" have spanned the extended period of more than five millennia, so that any ethno-linguistic continuity is unlikely. The spread of the Mississippian culture from the late 1st millennium CE most likely involved cultural assimilation, in archaeological terminology called "Mississippianised" cultures.


title: Mound Builders

text: 19th-century ethnography assumed that the Mound-builders were an ancient prehistoric race with no direct connection to the Southeastern Woodland peoples of the historical period.


title: Mound Builders

text: The cultural stage of the Southeastern Woodland natives encountered in the 18th and 19th centuries by British colonists was deemed incompatible with the comparatively advanced stone, metal, and clay artifacts of the archaeological record.


title: Mound Builders

text: Caleb Atwater's misunderstanding of stratigraphy caused him to significantly overestimate the age of the earthworks.


title: Mound Builders

text: In his book, "Antiquities Discovered in the Western States" (1820), Atwater claimed that "Indian remains" were always found right beneath the surface of the earth, while artifacts associated with the Mound Builders were found fairly deep in the ground.


title: Mound Builders

text: Atwater argued that they must be from a different group of people. The discovery of metal artifacts further convinced people that the Mound Builders were not identical to the Southeast Woodland Native Americans of the 18th century.


title: Mound Builders

text: It is now thought that the most likely bearers of the Plaquemine culture, a late variant of the Mississippian culture,


title: Mound Builders

text: The Natchez language is a language isolate, supporting the scenario that after the collapse of the Mound builder cultures in the 17th century, there was an influx of unrelated peoples into the area.


title: Mound Builders

text: They are first mentioned in French sources of around 1700, when they were centuered around the Grand Village close to present day Natchez, Mississippi. In 1729 the Natchez revolted, and massacred the French colony of Fort Rosalie, and the French retaliated by destroying all the Natchez villages. The remaining Natchez fled in scattered bands to live among the Chickasaw, Creek and Cherokee, whom they followed on the trail of tears when Indian removal policies of the mid 19th century forced them to relocate to Oklahoma. The Natchez language was extinct in the 20th century, with the death of the last known native speaker, Nancy Raven, in 1957.


title: Mound Builders

text: Based on the idea that the origins of the mound builders lay with a mysterious ancient people, there were various other suggestions


title: Mound Builders

text: belonging to the more general genre of Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories, specifically involving Vikings, Atlantis, and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, summarised by Feder (2006) under the heading of "The Myth of a Vanished Race".


title: Mound Builders

text: Benjamin Smith Barton in his "Observations on Some Parts of Natural History" (1787) proposed the theory that the Mound Builders were associated with "Danes", i.e. with the Norse colonization of North America. In 1797, Barton reconsidered his position and correctly identified the mounds as part of indigenous prehistory.


title: Mound Builders

text: In this narrative, the Jaredites (3000–2000 BCE) and an Israelite group in 590 BCE (termed Nephites, Lamanites, and Mulekites). While the Nephites, Lamanites, and Mulekites were all of Jewish origin coming from Israel around 590 BCE, the Jaradites were a non-Abrahamic people separate in all aspects, except in a belief in Jehovah, from the Nephites. "The Book of Mormon" depicts these settlers building magnificent cities, which were destroyed by warfare about CE 385.


title: Mound Builders

text: The Book of Mormon can be placed in the tradition of the "Mound-Builder literature" of the period. Dahl (1961) states that it is "the most famous and certainly the most influential of all Mound-Builder literature".


title: Mound Builders

text: Some nineteenth-century archaeological finds (e.g., earth and timber fortifications and towns, the use of a plaster-like cement, ancient roads, metal points and implements, copper breastplates, head-plates, textiles, pearls, native North American inscriptions, North American elephant remains etc.) were well-publicized at the time of the publication of the Book of Mormon and there is incorporation of some of these ideas into the narrative. References are made in the Book of Mormon to then-current understanding of pre-Columbian civilizations, including the formative Mesoamerican civilizations such as the (Pre-Classic) Olmec, Maya, and Zapotec.


title: Mound Builders

text: Lafcadio Hearn in 1876 wrote about a theory that the mounds were built by people from the lost continent of Atlantis.


title: Mound Builders

text: The Reverend Landon West in 1901 claimed that Serpent Mound in Ohio was built by God, or by man inspired by him. He believed that God built the mound and placed it as a symbol of the story of the Garden of Eden.


title: Mound Builders

text: More recently, Black nationalist websites claiming association with the Moorish Science Temple of America,


title: Mound Builders

text: Similarly, the "Washitaw Nation", a group associated with the Moorish Science Temple of America established in the 1990s, has been associated with mound-building in Black nationalist online articles of the early 2000s.


title: Mound Builders

text: On April 23, 1843, nine men unearthed human bones and six small, bell-shaped plates in Kinderhook, Illinois. Both sides of the plates apparently contained some sort of ancient writings. The plates, later known as the Kinderhook plates, were presented to Joseph Smith, who was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism. He was reported to have said, "I have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the Ruler of heaven and earth."


title: Mound Builders

text: In later letters, two eyewitnesses among the nine people who were present at the excavation of the plates, W. P. Harris and Wilbur Fugate, confessed that the whole thing was a hoax. With a group of other conspirators, they had manufactured the plates to give them the appearance of antiquity, buried them in a mound, and later pretended to excavate them, all for the purpose of trapping Joseph Smith into pretending to translate. However, it was not until 1980, when the only remaining plate was forensically examined, that the plates were conclusively determined to be, in fact, a nineteenth-century production.Up to 1980 most Latter-day Saints rejected the confessions and believed the plates were authentic. Not only did skeptics accept the confessors’ statements, but some continue to this day to argue that Joseph Smith pretended to translate a portion of the faked plates, claiming that he could not have been a true prophet.


title: Mound Builders

text: The purpose for faking the Kinderhook plates is mainly to prove that the book of Mormon is true according to the witness Fulgate, "We learn there was a Mormon present when the plates were found, who it is said, leaped for joy at the discovery, and remarked that it would go to prove the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. The Mormons wanted to take the plates to Joe Smith, but we refused to let them go. Some time afterward a man assuming the name of Savage, of Quincy, borrowed the plates of Wiley to show to his literary friends there, and took them to Joe Smith."


title: Mound Builders

text: On June 29, 1860, David Wyrick, the surveyor of Licking County near Newark, discovered the so called Keystone in a shallow excavation at the monumental Newark Earthworks, which is an extraordinary set of ancient geometric enclosures created by Indigenous people. There he dug up a four-sided, plumb-bob-shaped stone with Hebrew letters engraved on each of its faces. The local Episcopal minister John W. McCarty translated the four inscriptions as "Law of the Lord," “Word of the Lord," “Holy of Holies," and "King of the Earth." Charles Whittlesey, who was one of the foremost archaeologists at that time, pronounced the stone to be authentic. The Newark Holy Stones, if genuine, would provide support for monogenesis, since they would establish that American Indians could be encompassed within Biblical history.


title: Mound Builders

text: After his first expedition, Wyrick uncovered a small stone box that was found to contain an intricately carved slab of black limestone covered with archaic-looking Hebrew letters along with a representation of a man in flowing robes. When translated, once again by McCarty, the inscription was found to include the entire Ten Commandments, and the robed figure was identified as Moses. Naturally enough, it became known as the Decalogue Stone.


title: Mound Builders

text: Rather than being found beneath only a foot or two of soil, the Decalogue Stone was claimed to have been buried beneath a forty-foot-tall stone mound. Instead of modern Hebrew typography, the characters on the stone were blocky and appeared to be an ancient form of the Hebrew alphabet. Finally, the stone bore no resemblance to any modern Masonic artifact. In 1870, Whittlesey declared finally that the Holy Stones and other similar artifacts were "Archaeological Frauds."


title: Mound Builders

text: In 19th-century America, a number of popular mythologies surrounding the origin of the mounds were in circulation, typically involving the mounds being built by a race of giants.


title: Mound Builders

text: A "New York Times "article from 1897 described a mound in Wisconsin in which a giant human skeleton measuring over in length was found.


title: Mound Builders

text: From 1886, another "New York Times" article described water receding from a mound in Cartersville, Georgia, which uncovered acres of skulls and bones, some of which were said to be gigantic. Two thigh bones were measured with the height of their owners estimated at .


title: Mound Builders

text: The antiquarian author William Pidgeon in 1858 created fraudulent surveys of mound groups that did not exist.


title: Mound Builders

text: Beginning in the 1880s, the supposed origin of the earthworks with a race of giants was increasingly recognized as spurious.


title: Mound Builders

text: Pidgeon's fraudulent claims about the archaeological record was shown to be a hoax by Theodore Lewis in 1886.


title: Mound Builders

text: A major factor contributing to public acceptance of the earthworks as a regular part of North American prehistory was the 1894 report by Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology.


title: Mound Builders

text: Earlier authors making a similar case include Thomas Jefferson, who excavated a mound and from the artifacts and burial practices, noted similarities between mound-builder funeral practices and those of Native Americans in his time.


title: Mound Builders

text: The Walam Olum hoax had considerable influence on perceptions of the Mound Builders. In 1836, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque published his translation of a text he claimed had been written in pictographs on wooden tablets. This text explained that the Lenape Indians originated in Asia, told of their passage over the Bering Strait, and narrated their subsequent migration across the North American continent. This "Walam Olum" tells of battles with native peoples already in America before the Lenape arrived. People hearing of the account believed that the "original people" were the Mound Builders, and that the Lenape overthrew them and destroyed their culture. David Oestreicher later asserted that Rafinesque's account was a hoax. He argued that the Walam Olum glyphs derived from Chinese, Egyptian, and Mayan alphabets. Meanwhile, the belief that the Native Americans destroyed the mound-builder culture had gained widespread acceptance.


title: Major League Cricket

text: Major League Cricket (MLC) is an upcoming professional Twenty20 cricket league in the United States. Operated by American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) and sanctioned by USA Cricket, it plans to begin play on July 13, 2023, with six teams in major U.S. cities under a single-entity model. The first season is set to take place over three weeks at Grand Prairie Stadium in Grand Prairie, Texas, near Dallas, concluding on July 30, 2023. In 2021, the development league for MLC, Minor League Cricket (MiLC), completed its inaugural season, which was contested by 27 franchise-based teams.


title: Major League Cricket

text: There have been various attempts to hold a Twenty20 (T20) cricket league in the United States, such as the short-lived Pro Cricket (which played a single season in 2004), and the American Premier League, a proposed league in partnership between the United States of America Cricket Association (USACA) and New Zealand Cricket, modeled after domestic T20 competitions.


title: Major League Cricket

text: In January 2019, USA Cricket was approved as the new governing board for cricket in USA, replacing the USACA, which had been expelled from the International Cricket Council in September 2017 due to governance issues.


title: Major League Cricket

text: The new body set a goal for cricket to reach wider, mainstream popularity in the country, where it has typically been considered a niche international sport.


title: Major League Cricket

text: In November 2018, USA Cricket announced that it was seeking partners to establish a domestic T20 league in the country by 2021, with goals to "engage existing fans and grow new ones", and spur "sustainable development of cricketing infrastructure across the United States". In May 2019, USA Cricket accepted a bid by American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) for a $1 billion investment, covering the league and other investments benefitting the U.S. national teams. Its partners include Satyan Gajwani and Vineet Jain of The Times Group, and Willow TV founders Sameer Mehta and Vijay Srinivasan. As part of the agreement, ACE also handles commercial activities for T20I and ODI matches hosted by the United States.


title: Major League Cricket

text: In an annual general meeting on February 21, 2020, it was stated that USA Cricket planned to launch Major League Cricket in 2021, and a 22-team development league known as Minor League Cricket that summer as a prelude. Minor League Cricket was officially announced the following week, with plans to host a nine-week, 170-game season beginning July 4. However, it was postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.


title: Major League Cricket

text: In October 2020, USA Cricket reaffirmed plans to launch Major League Cricket in 2022 as part of its "foundational plan" for 2020–23. On December 1, 2020, it was announced that the IPL's Kolkata Knight Riders (co-owned by Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan) would invest in ACE. In May 2021, the launch of Major League Cricket was delayed to 2023 due to COVID-19 and to provide additional time to develop facilities.


title: Major League Cricket

text: In February 2021, MLC announced plans for a youth version of Minor and Major League Cricket, as part of a pathway to give young cricketers the opportunity to play for official domestic teams and the national team. In June 2022, MLC announced the inaugural season of the Minor League Cricket Youth Tournament (shortened to MiLC Youth), with UST tapped as title sponsor for the tournament. The inaugural season of MiLC Youth was announced to be contested between 11 teams at the Prairie View Cricket Complex in Houston starting July 25, 2022. The finals for the inaugural season took place on July 29 at between the Dallas Mustangs and the New Jersey Stallions, in which the Stallions beat the Mustangs by 2 wickets.


title: Major League Cricket

text: In May 2022, Major League Cricket announced that they had acquired funds of $120 million as part of its Series A and A1 fundraising rounds. Investors committing to MLC featured the likes of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Ross Perot Jr., Anand Rajaraman, Shantanu Narayen and more. MLC plans to use these funds to mainly build stadiums and first-class facilities in the hopes of accelerating cricket's development across the United States.


title: Major League Cricket

text: In November 2022, it was announced the first season of MLC will be staged from July 13-30 at Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas, Texas. The tournament will be played in a single round-robin format with 15 league matches played among six franchises before a four-match play-off phase. MLC also hopes to play matches in a to be constructed stadium in Los Angeles, and Church Street Park, North Carolina.


title: Major League Cricket

text: MLC is expected to begin with six teams; the league will use a single-entity structure under which all teams are owned by ACE, with investor-operators (who have invested in the company) assigned to each team. It hopes to expand to eight teams in the future, similar to other T20 leagues around the world.


title: Major League Cricket

text: USA Cricket's CEO Iain Higgins identified Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Jersey, New York, and San Francisco as markets where the sport was most popular. On November 18, 2020, it was announced that ACE would lease AirHogs Stadium in Grand Prairie, Texas—home of the former Texas AirHogs independent baseball team—and convert it to a cricket-specific facility that will host a Dallas-based team in Major League Cricket.


title: Major League Cricket

text: In March 2022, ACE discussed plans to invest $110 million in eight newly-constructed or renovated venues for the league and possible hosting of matches during the 2024 ICC Men's T20 World Cup (which the United States is co-hosting with the West Indies), including the aforementioned Grand Prairie Stadium, Church Street Park in Morrisville, Moosa Stadium in Pearland, Prairie View Cricket Complex in Prairie View, and new sites in Orange County, the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, and Marymoor Park in Redmond. The renovated venues have a budget of approximately $3 million each, while the three new west coast venues have a budget of $30 million each; ACE stated that the west coast venues would be completed by 2024, and will have a projected capacity of 10,000–20,000.


title: Major League Cricket

text: In July 2022, it was announced that MLC plans to launch its inaugural season in six markets across the United States including Dallas, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.


title: Major League Cricket

text: In late September 2022, it was announced that the player draft for the league's inaugural season would be held in February or March 2023.


title: Major League Cricket

text: Minor League Cricket is a developmental league for Major League Cricket that completed its inaugural season in 2021 (delayed from 2020 due to COVID-19). It consists of 27 franchise-based teams in four regional divisions. Unlike Major League Cricket, Minor League Cricket uses privately owned franchises.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals make decisions, and under these limitations, rational individuals will select a decision that is satisfactory rather than optimal.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Limitations include the difficulty of the problem requiring a decision, the cognitive capability of the mind, and the time available to make the decision. Decision-makers, in this view, act as satisficers, seeking a satisfactory solution, with everything that they have at the moment rather than an optimal solution. Therefore, humans do not undertake a full cost-benefit analysis to determine the optimal decision, but rather, choose an option that fulfils their adequacy criteria. An example of this being within organisations when they must adhere to the operating conditions of their company, this has the opportunity to result in bounded rationality as the organisation is not able to choose the optimal option.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Some models of human behavior in the social sciences assume that humans can be reasonably approximated or described as "rational" entities, as in rational choice theory or Downs' political agency model. The concept of bounded rationality complements "rationality as optimization", which views decision-making as a fully rational process of finding an optimal choice given the information available. Therefore, bounded rationality can be said to address the discrepancy between the assumed perfect rationality of human behaviour (which is utilised by other economics theories such as the Neoclassical approach), and the reality of human cognition. In short, bounded rationality revises notions of "perfect" rationality to account for the fact that perfectly rational decisions are often not feasible in practice because of the intractability of natural decision problems and the finite computational resources available for making them. The concept of bounded rationality continues to influence (and be debated in) different disciplines, including political science, economics, psychology, law and cognitive science.


title: Bounded rationality

text: was coined by Herbert A. Simon, where it was proposed as an alternative basis for the mathematical and neoclassical economic modelling of decision-making, as used in economics, political science, and related disciplines. Many economics models assume that agents are on average rational, and can in large quantities be approximated to act according to their preferences in order to maximise utility. With bounded rationality, Simon's goal was "to replace the global rationality of economic man with a kind of rational behavior that is compatible with the access to information and the computational capacities that are actually possessed by organisms, including man, in the kinds of environments in which such organisms exist." Prior to coining the term bounded rationality, studies in this area were starting to take place. A study completed by Allais in 1953 began to generate ideas of the irrationality of decision making as he found that given preferences, individuals will not always choose the most rational decision and therefore the concept of rationality was not always reliable in economic predictions.


title: Bounded rationality

text: In "Models of Man", Simon argues that most people are only partly rational, and are irrational in the remaining part of their actions. In another work, he states "boundedly rational agents experience limits in formulating and solving complex problems and in processing (receiving, storing, retrieving, transmitting) information". Simon used the analogy of a pair of scissors, where one blade represents "cognitive limitations" of actual humans and the other the "structures of the environment", illustrating how minds compensate for limited resources by exploiting known structural regularity in the environment.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Simon describes a number of dimensions along which "classical" models of rationality can be made somewhat more realistic, while remaining within the vein of fairly rigorous formalization. These include:


title: Bounded rationality

text: Simon suggests that economic agents use heuristics to make decisions rather than a strict rigid rule of optimization. They do this because of the complexity of the situation. An example of behaviour inhibited by heuristics can be seen when comparing the cognitive strategies utilised in simple situations (e.g Tic-tac-toe), in comparison to strategies utilised in difficult situations (e.g Chess). Both games, as defined by game theory economics, are finite games with perfect information, and therefore equivalent. However, within Chess, mental capacities and abilities are a binding constraint, therefore optimal choices are not a possibility. Thus, in order to test the mental limits of agents, complex problems, such as those within Chess, should be studied to test how individuals work around their cognitive limits, and what behaviours or heuristics are used to form solutions


title: Bounded rationality

text: Anchoring and adjustment are types of heuristics that give some explanation to bounded rationality and why decision makers do not make rational decisions. A study undertaken by Zenko et al. showed that the amount of physical activity completed by decision makers was able to be influenced by anchoring and adjustment as most decision makers would typically be considered irrational and would unlikely do the amount of physical activity instructed and it was shown that these decision makers use anchoring and adjustment to decide how much exercise they will complete


title: Bounded rationality

text: A good example of Bounded Rationality in individuals would be a customer who made a suboptimal decision to order some food at the restaurant because they felt rushed by the waiter who was waiting beside the table. Another example is a trader who would make a moderate and risky decision to trade their stock due to time pressure and imperfect information of the market at that time.


title: Bounded rationality

text: In organisational context, a CEO cannot make fully rational decisions in an ad-hoc situation because their cognition was overwhelmed by a lot of information in that tense situation. The CEO also needs to take time to process all the information given to them, but due to the limited time and fast decision making needed, they will disregard some information in determining the decision.


title: Bounded rationality

text: As decision-makers have to make decisions about how and when to decide, Ariel Rubinstein proposed to model bounded rationality by explicitly specifying decision-making procedures as decision-makers with the same information are also not able to analyse the situation equally thus reach the same “rational” decision. Rubinstein argues that consistency in reaching final decision for the same level of information must factor in the decision making procedure itself. This puts the study of decision procedures on the research agenda.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Gerd Gigerenzer opines that decision theorists, to some extent, have not adhered to Simon's original ideas. Rather, they have considered how decisions may be crippled by limitations to rationality, or have modeled how people might cope with their inability to optimize. Gigerenzer proposes and shows that simple heuristics often lead to better decisions than theoretically optimal procedures. Moreover, Gigerenzer states, agents react relative to their environment and use their cognitive processes to adapt accordingly.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Huw Dixon later argues that it may not be necessary to analyze in detail the process of reasoning underlying bounded rationality. If we believe that agents will choose an action that gets them "close" to the optimum, then we can use the notion of "epsilon-optimization", which means we choose our actions so that the payoff is within epsilon of the optimum. If we define the optimum (best possible) payoff as formula_1, then the set of epsilon-optimizing options S(ε) can be defined as all those options s such that:


title: Bounded rationality

text: The notion of strict rationality is then a special case ("ε"=0). The advantage of this approach is that it avoids having to specify in detail the process of reasoning, but rather simply assumes that whatever the process is, it is good enough to get near to the optimum.


title: Bounded rationality

text: From a computational point of view, decision procedures can be encoded in algorithms and heuristics. Edward Tsang argues that the effective rationality of an agent is determined by its computational intelligence. Everything else being equal, an agent that has better algorithms and heuristics could make "more rational" (closer to optimal) decisions than one that has poorer heuristics and algorithms.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Tshilidzi Marwala and Evan Hurwitz in their study on bounded rationality observed that advances in technology (e.g. computer processing power because of Moore's law, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics) expand the bounds that define the feasible rationality space. Because of this expansion of the bounds of rationality, machine automated decision making makes markets more efficient.


title: Bounded rationality

text: The model of bounded rationality also extends to bounded self-interest, in which humans are sometimes willing to forsake their own self-interests for the benefits of others due to incomplete information that the individuals have at the time being. This is something that has not been considered in earlier economic models.


title: Bounded rationality

text: The theory of rational inattention, an extension of bounded rationality, studied by Christopher Sims, found that decisions may be chosen with incomplete information as opposed to affording the cost to receive complete information. This shows that decision makers choose to endure bounded rationality.


title: Bounded rationality

text: On the other hand, another extension that came from the notion of bounded rationality was explained by Ulrich Hoffrage and Torsten Reimer in their studies in which the fast and frugal heuristic approach. The studies explained that complete information sometimes is not needed as there are easier and simpler way to reach the same “optimal” outcome. However, this approach which is usually known as Gaze Heuristic was explained to be the theory for non-complex decision making only.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Bounded rationality implies the idea that humans take reasoning shortcuts that may lead to sub-optimal decision-making. Behavioural economists engage in mapping the decision shortcuts that agents use in order to help increase the effectiveness of human decision-making. One treatment of this idea comes from Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's "Nudge". Sunstein and Thaler recommend that choice architectures are modified in light of human agents' bounded rationality. A widely cited proposal from Sunstein and Thaler urges that healthier food be placed at sight level in order to increase the likelihood that a person will opt for that choice instead of a less healthy option. Some critics of "Nudge" have argued that modifying choice architectures will lead to people becoming worse decision-makers.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Furthermore, bounded rationality attempts to address assumption points discussed within "Neoclassical Economics" theory during the 1950s. This theory assumes that the complex problem, the way in which the problem is presented, all alternative choices, and a utility function, are all provided to decision-makers in advance, where this may not be realistic. This was widely used and accepted for a number of decades, however economists realised some disadvantages exist in utilising this theory. This theory did not consider how problems are initially discovered by decision-makers, which could have an impact on the overall decision. Additionally, personal values, the way in which alternatives are discovered and created, and the environment surrounding the decision-making process are also not considered when using this theory. Alternatively, bounded rationality focuses on the cognitive ability of the decision-maker and the factors which may inhibit optimal decision-making Additionally, placing a focus on organisations rather than focusing on markets as Neoclassical Economics theory does, bounded rationality is also the basis for many other economics theories (e.g. Organisational theory) as it emphasises that the "...performance and success of an organisation is governed primarily by the psychological limitations of its members..." as stated by John D.W. Morecroft (1981).


title: Bounded rationality

text: The collaborative works of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky expand upon Herbert A. Simon's ideas in the attempt to create a map of bounded rationality. The research attempted to explore the choices made by what was assumed as rational agents compared to the choices made by individuals optimal beliefs and their satisficing behaviour. Kahneman cites that the research contributes mainly to the school of psychology due to imprecision of psychological research to fit the formal economic models, however, the theories are useful to economic theory as a way to expand simple and precise models and cover diverse psychological phenomena. Three major topics covered by the works of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky include Heuristics of judgement, risky choice, and framing effect, which were a culmination of research that fit under what was defined by Herbert A. Simon as the Psychology of Bounded Rationality. In contrast to the work of Simon; Kahneman and Tversky aimed to focus on the effects bounded rationality had on simple tasks which therefore placed more emphasis on errors in cognitive mechanisms irrespective of the situation. The study undertaken by Kahneman found that emotions and the psychology of economic decisions play a larger role in the economics field than originally thought. The study focused on the emotions behind decision making such as fear and personal likes and dislikes and found these to be significant factors in economic decision making.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Bounded rationality is also shown to be useful in negotiation techniques as shown in research undertaken by Dehai et al. that negotiations done using bounded rationality techniques by labourers and companies when negotiating a higher wage for workers were able to find an equal solution for both parties.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Recent research has shown that bounded rationality of individuals may influence the topology of the social networks that evolve among them. In particular, Kasthurirathna and Piraveenan have shown that in socio-ecological systems, the drive towards improved rationality on average might be an evolutionary reason for the emergence of scale-free properties. They did this by simulating a number of strategic games on an initially random network with distributed bounded rationality, then re-wiring the network so that the network on average converged towards Nash equilibria, despite the bounded rationality of nodes. They observed that this re-wiring process results in scale-free networks. Since scale-free networks are ubiquitous in social systems, the link between bounded rationality distributions and social structure is an important one in explaining social phenomena.


title: Bounded rationality

text: Bounded rationality challenges the rationality assumptions widely accepted between the 1950s and 1970s which were initially used when considering maximisation, Bayesian probability judgements, and other market-focused economic calculations. Not only does the concept focus on the ways in which humans subconsciously use satisficing in order to make decisions, but also emphasises that humans infer to a great extent, given the limited information they access prior to decision-making for complex problems. Although this concept realistically delves into decision-making and human cognition, challenging earlier theories which assumed perfect rational cognition and behaviour, bounded rationality can mean something different to everyone, and the way each person satisfices can vary dependant on their environment and the information they have access to.


title: Adem Jashari

text: Adem Jashari (born Fazli Jashari; 28 November 1955 – 7 March 1998) was one of the founders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a Kosovo Albanian separatist militia which fought for the secession of Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the 1990s.


title: Adem Jashari

text: Beginning in 1991, Jashari participated in attacks against the Serbian police before travelling to Albania to receive military training. Arrested in 1993, he was released at the behest of the Albanian Army and later returned to Kosovo, where he continued launching attacks against the Yugoslav establishment. In July 1997, he was convicted of terrorism "in absentia" by a Yugoslav court. After several unsuccessful attempts to capture or kill him, Serbian police launched an attack against Jashari's home in Prekaz in March 1998. The battle that followed resulted in the deaths of 57 members of Jashari's family, including that of Jashari, his wife, brother and son.


title: Adem Jashari

text: Seen as the "father of the KLA", Jashari is considered a symbol of Kosovar independence by ethnic Albanians. He was posthumously awarded with the title "Hero of Kosovo" following its declaration of independence in 2008. The National Theatre in Pristina, Pristina International Airport Adem Jashari and the Adem Jashari Olympic Stadium have been named after him.


title: Adem Jashari

text: Adem Shaban Jashari was born in the village of Prekaz, SAP Kosovo, SFR Yugoslavia on 28 November 1955 as Fazli Jashari. Descended from Kosovo Albanian guerrillas who had fought Yugoslav forces decades prior, he was raised on Albanian war stories and was rarely seen without a gun. According to the journalist Tim Judah, Jashari "hated the Serbs, and although he was one of the KLA’s early recruits, he was no ideological guerrilla."


title: Adem Jashari

text: Drenica is a hilly region in central Kosovo inhabited almost exclusively by Kosovo Albanians. Prior to the Kosovo War, the government of Yugoslavia considered it "the hotbed of Albanian terrorism." Jashari was a farmer. In 1991, he participated in an armed uprising against the Yugoslav authorities in Kosovo. During this period, a Kosovo Albanian irredentist organization that came to be known as the Kosovo Liberation Army first emerged.


title: Adem Jashari

text: From 1991 to 1992, Jashari and about 100 other ethnic Albanians wishing to fight for the independence of Kosovo underwent military training in the municipality of Labinot-Mal in Albania. Afterwards, Jashari and other ethnic Albanians committed several acts of sabotage aimed at the Serbian administrative apparatus in Kosovo. Attempting to capture or kill him, Serbian police surrounded Jashari and his older brother, Hamëz, at their home in Prekaz on 30 December 1991. In the ensuing siege, large numbers of Kosovo Albanians flocked to Prekaz, pressuring the police to withdraw from the village.


title: Adem Jashari

text: While in Albania, he was arrested in 1993 by the government of Sali Berisha and sent to jail in Tirana before being released alongside other Kosovo Albanian militants at the demand of the Albanian Army. With the Yugoslav forces now considering Prekaz a "no-go" area, Jashari launched several attacks over the next several years. These targeted the Yugoslav Army (VJ) and Serbian police in Kosovo. Jashari was convicted of terrorism "in absentia" by a Yugoslav court on 11 July 1997. Human Rights Watch subsequently described the trial, in which fourteen other Kosovo Albanians were also convicted, as "[failing] to conform to international standards." Pursuing Jashari for the murder of a Serb policeman, Yugoslav forces again attempted to assault the Jashari compound in Prekaz on 22 January 1998. With Jashari not present, thousands of Kosovo Albanians descended on Prekaz and again succeeded in pushing the Serbs out of the village and its surroundings. The next month, a small unit of the KLA ambushed Serbian policemen. Four Serbs were killed and two were injured in the ensuing clashes. At dawn on 5 March 1998, the KLA launched an attack against a police patrol in Prekaz.


title: Adem Jashari

text: In response to this attack, the Yugoslavs organized a "full-scale revenge mission" involving tanks, APCs and helicopters. They were backed up by artillery from a nearby ammunition factory. With the intention of "eliminating the suspects and their families," the police attacked villages that had been identified as KLA strongholds, including Likošane and Ćirez. Human Rights Watch noted that "special police forces attacked without warning, firing indiscriminately at women, children and other noncombatants." KLA members and their families subsequently fled to Jashari's compound. Here, the police invited Jashari to surrender, giving him a deadline of two hours in which to respond. During this period, a number of families left the compound. Jashari remained, ordering his family members to stay inside and telling his militants to resist to the last man.


title: Adem Jashari

text: Once the two-hour deadline had expired, the two sides began exchanging gunfire. In one of the houses, where most of Jashari's extended family had gathered, a mortar shell fell in through the roof, causing many deaths. After a two or three-day siege, the police captured the Jashari compound. Once inside, they discovered that Jashari and his brother Hamëz had been killed. Also killed were Jashari's wife, Adilje, and his thirteen-year-old son, Kushtrim. Overall, approximately fifty-eight Kosovo Albanians were killed in the attack, including eighteen women and ten children under the age of sixteen. Goran Radosavljević, a major in the Serbian Interior Ministry, said that "[Jashari] used women, children and the elderly as hostages." Speaking of the attack, Yugoslav General Nebojša Pavković stated that it was "a normal policing action against a well-known criminal. It was successful. The other details I don't remember." The only survivor was Besarta Jashari, Hamëz Jashari's daughter. She claimed that the policemen had "threatened her with a knife and ordered her to say that her uncle (Adem Jashari) had killed everyone who wanted to surrender."


title: Adem Jashari

text: Soon after the attack against Prekaz, 46 bodies were taken to a hospital morgue in Pristina on 7 March before being returned to Skenderaj the next day. There, they were placed inside a warehouse located on the outskirts of town. Photographs taken during this time revealed that Jashari had received a bullet wound to the neck. On 9 March, the police publicly stated that they would themselves bury the bodies of those killed if they were not quickly claimed and buried by family members. The next day, the police dug a large grave near Donji Prekaz and buried the bodies of fifty-six people, ten of whom could not be identified. On 11 March, the bodies were disinterred by relatives and reburied in accordance with Islamic tradition on a field known as the "field of peace".


title: Adem Jashari

text: The shootout at the Jashari family compound involving Adem Jashari, a KLA commander and surrounding Yugoslav troops in 1998 resulted in the massacre of most Jashari family members. The deaths of Jashari and his family generated an international backlash against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. As news of the killings spread, armed Kosovo Albanian militias emerged throughout Kosovo, seeking to avenge Jashari's death as Albanians flocked to join the KLA. The event became a rallying myth for KLA recruitment regarding armed resistance to Yugoslav forces.


title: Adem Jashari

text: The exploits of Adem Jashari have been celebrated and turned into legend by former KLA members, some in government, and by Kosovar Albanian society resulting in songs, literature, monuments, memorials with streets and buildings bearing his name across Kosovo. Dubbed the "Legendary Commander" () by Albanians, Jashari is regarded by many in Kosovo as being the "father of the KLA". Portraits of him carrying an automatic weapon often adorn the walls of homes inhabited by ethnic Albanians. Considered a symbol of independence by Kosovo Albanians, the anniversary of Jashari's death is annually commemorated in Kosovo and his home has since been transformed into a shrine. The field where he and his family were buried has since become a place of pilgrimage for Kosovo Albanians, and several authors have equated Jashari with Albanian national hero Skanderbeg as well as Albanian "kaçak" rebels from the past. Following Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008, Jashari was posthumously awarded the title "Hero of Kosovo" for his role in the Kosovo War. The football stadium in Mitrovica, the National Theatre in Pristina and Pristina International Airport Adem Jashari have also been named after him.


title: Vinodhini Vaidyanathan

text: Vinodhini Vaidyanathan is an Indian actress and writer who has mainly worked in Tamil cinema and theatre. She made her debut in A. R. Murugadoss's "Engaeyum Eppothum" portraying Ananya's sister. She is best known for her performances in OK Kanmani (2015), "Appa" (2016), "Aandavan Kattalai" (2016), Ratsasan (2018), Comali (2019), "Game Over" (2019), "Ponmagal Vandhal" (2020) and "Soorarai Pottru" (2020).


title: Vinodhini Vaidyanathan

text: Vinodhini made her first film appearance in Priyadarshan's "Kanchivaram" (2009), after being selected by the director to be a part of the film after he watched her during a performance with the Tamil theatre troupe, Koothu-P-Pattarai. The film won critical acclaim and recognition at the National Film Awards. In early 2010, director Saravanan had watched Vinodhini's solo performance titled "Saami Aattam", in which Vinodhini played multiple characters in a 45-minute monologue, and was impressed enough to cast her in his first Tamil film, "Engeyum Eppodhum" (2011), produced by AR Murugadoss. Her performance in the film as the character of Ananya's sister, was well received.


title: Vinodhini Vaidyanathan

text: Since 2011, Vinodhini has appeared in several other films including the comedy "Varuthapadatha Valibar Sangam" (2013), the horror film "Pisaasu" (2014) and two collaborations with Mani Ratnam in "Kadal" (2013) and "O Kadhal Kanmani" (2015). She also played a significant supporting role as the wife of a gangster in Karthik Subbaraj's "Jigarthanda" (2014) and in a leading role in Balu Mahendra's "Thalaimuraigal" (2013), where she played his daughter.


title: Vinodhini Vaidyanathan

text: By 2016, Vinodhini started to be recognized for her performances, going on to win Best Performance in a Comedy Role (Female) 2016 at the Ananda Vikatan Cinema Awards for her role in Aandavan Kattalai, as a junior lawyer.


title: Vinodhini Vaidyanathan

text: Vinodhini is also a playwright and theatre director. Her theatre group, Theatre Zero has been actively staging plays since 2012, some of which are Petti Kathaigal, the musical extravaganza "Aayirathoru Iravugal", which she wrote and directed for the prestigious Hindu Theatre Fest in 2016, and Nagercoil Expressum Nadaga Companyum. which toured extensively in 2016–17. Her play, titled Grand Rehearsal, was the first ever Tamil play to be staged at The Hindu Theatre Fest, which is primarily a festival for English plays from India and abroad. It was declared a laugh riot amid standing ovation from the audience. Similarly, her play Aayirathoru Iravugal, "had the audience roaring with laughter", when it opened in 2016. As of January 2020, Theatre Zero has partnered with stand-up comic Alexander Babu to bring back Vinodhini's play Nagercoil Expressum Nadaga Companyum in its new version and tour with it worldwide.


title: Vinodhini Vaidyanathan

text: Vinodhini also writes professionally. Her short stories and articles have been published in Silverscreen.in, The Madras Mag, The News Minute, The Hindu (Tamil) among others.


title: Vinodhini Vaidyanathan

text: Vinodhini completed her B.Sc. from Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai and went on to do her master's degree in Human Resources Management from XIME, Bangalore. She also holds a second master's degree in Psychology from University of Madras and a PG Diploma in Yoga Therapy from Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram.


title: Tiera Skovbye

text: Tiera Skovbye (; born May 6, 1995) is a Canadian actress. She began her career as a child actress. She is known for starring in television films such as her role playing Elizabeth Berkley in Lifetime's "The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story", and for her recurring roles as Polly Cooper on The CW series "Riverdale" and as Robin on the ABC television series "Once Upon a Time".


title: Tiera Skovbye

text: Skovbye's first substantial role was as the 10-year old Jane on the drama series "Painkiller Jane" in 2007. Skovbye has also appeared in a number of television films, most notably Lifetime's "The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story" in which she played Elizabeth Berkley.


title: Tiera Skovbye

text: In early 2017, she began playing the recurring role of Polly Cooper on The CW teen drama series "Riverdale". Skovbye played the recurring role of Robin, the daughter of Zelena and Robin Hood, during the seventh season of "Once Upon a Time".


title: Tiera Skovbye

text: In 2018, Skovbye appeared in the horror mystery film "Summer of 84", opposite Graham Verchere, Judah Lewis, and Rich Sommer.


title: Tiera Skovbye

text: Skovbye was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. She has a younger sister, Ali, who is also an actress, and who co-stars on the Netflix series "Firefly Lane".


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Wacken Open Air (, abbreviated as W:O:A) is a rock music festival, held annually since 1990 on the first weekend of August in the village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Almost all styles and subgenres of hard rock and metal are represented and hosted. It is now one of the largest heavy metal festivals in the world and one of the largest open-air festivals in Germany. Between 2011–2018, the number of attendees was around 85,000, 75,000 of whom were paying visitors. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were no 2020 and 2021 editions of Wacken Open Air.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The idea for Wacken Open Air was conceived in 1989 when Thomas Jensen and Holger Hübner visited a restaurant together. Both lived in Wacken and were friends, Jensen played the electric bass with Rock cover band Skyline. From its beginnings until 1992, the band was composed of Ines Jeske from Vaale (vocals), Thomas Jensen from Wacken (bass), Peter Huhn from Wacken (electric guitar), Dennis Harman from Itzehoe (keyboard), and Andreas Göser from Wacken (drums). Skyline was one of the first regional Metal and Rock cover bands at that time. The band was regionally known, working its way from appearances in village pubs and gigs at biker meetings up to an appearance as supporting band of "Extrabreit". Hübner was a disc jockey with a focus on Rock music and Heavy Metal. Jensen and Hübner developed the idea to organise an open-air concert in a gravel pit in Wacken and persuaded Skyline drummer Andreas Göser and Jörg Jensen, Thomas Jensen's brother, to help make it happen. Until then, the pit had already served as a meeting venue for up to 3,000 members of biker club 'No Mercys', it was therefore perfectly suited for their plans and also presented an opportunity to attract motorcycle fans. From the beginning, it was clear that the focus of the event would be on Rock and Metal and that, in contrast to other single-day festivals such as Monsters of Rock or Super Rock in Mannheim, there would also be camping grounds.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The first two-day festival took place in the gravel pit on 24 and 25 August 1990 and barely had 800 visitors. The performing bands all hailed from Germany, and apart from Skyline, bands like 5th Avenue, Motoslug, Sacred Season, Axe 'n Sex, and Wizzard played. The first festivals were organised privately, with the technology being built on a trailer borrowed from a local trucking company and the stage being a DIY construction.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: In subsequent years, too, most of the tasks were carried out by the small team. Until August 1994, for example, ticket orders were organised privately by Andy Göser's mother Regina Göser and security duties were performed by friendly motorcycle clubs up until 1996. In 1991, the number of visitors increased to 1,300, and with Skyline returning, Bon Scott, an AC/DC cover band from Hamburg, Gypsy Kyss, Kilgore, Life Artist, Ruby Red, and Shanghai'd Guts joined them on stage for an all-regional roster. That same year, the iconic skull logo was designed by Mark Ramsauer after the basic shape had been determined by Thomas Jensen and Holger Hübner. The cow skull refers to the venue, a meadow for cows, and to Jensen and Hübner as "boys from the village".


title: Wacken Open Air

text: In 1992, the programme changed to include internationally renowned bands such as Blind Guardian and Saxon for the first time, and the number of bands rose to 26, listing bands from Sweden, the USA, Ireland, and Belgium. The organisers used a professional stage with lighting and PA for the first time and were able to win cigarette brand Prince Denmark as a sponsor. That year, the Party Stage was set up in the DJ tent next to the main stage, where cover bands and fun projects were to perform exclusively. The additional post-concert costs for garbage disposal on the campground, where 2,500 paying guests and many more were present and celebrated, as well as the significantly oversized security, among other things, meant that the organisers recorded a loss of around 25,000 D-Mark that year.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: With the reunion of the band Fates Warning at the festival in 1993, Wacken Open Air had a special feature and also made a name for itself in the following years with unusual band constellations and reunions. At the same time, Doro Pesch and other well-known bands made for interesting appearances, which resulted in a new record attendance of 3,500 paying customers. Simultaneously, the team tried their hand at concert organisation and, under the moniker Stone Castle Promotion, held a Motörhead concert for 2,000 people in Flensburg which, unfortunately, could not cover its promotional costs. A show with Dio/Freak of Nature became a disaster with only 167 tickets sold, and together with the Open Air, which again recorded a minus, the organisers incurred debts of around 350,000 D-Mark. As a result, Jörg Jensen and Andreas Göser left the team; Holger Hübner and Thomas Jensen remained, as did Jörn-Ulf Goesmann for another two years, continuing to run the Wacken Open Air despite the debts for which their parents had provided guarantees. During the same year, Thomas Jensen's mother died and Holger Hübner had a serious accident – the year went down in Wacken history as the "year of the plague".


title: Wacken Open Air

text: On its fifth anniversary in 1994, the financial situation stabilised and the festival finally broke even. The line-up remained professional and featured many internationally known bands from the Metal scene. A total of 4,500 tickets were sold; on top of that, due to the rising costs of garbage disposal, tickets for the camping grounds had to be purchased separately, and pre-orders were rewarded with a free T-shirt. Also in 1995, income and expenses evened out thanks to the commitment of bands such as Tiamat, D-A-D, the Pretty Maids, and Angra. But even with roughly 5,000 attendees, the festival didn't turn a profit. However, for the first time, national media became aware of Wacken Open Air, especially Rock Hard magazine, as well as the newly founded TV station VIVA with its Heavy Metal programme "Metalla".


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Ticket sales for the 1996 festival again started sluggishly, despite a headliner like Kreator and numerous internationally renowned bands such as The Exploited, Gorefest, and Crematory. Management tried to prevent another loss by securing more acts and finally managed to get Böhse Onkelz to perform. The engagement of the controversial band also led to criticism, and some bands cancelled their gig in Wacken that year. Cologne band Brings called off their gig on short notice and offered to refund their fans’ ticket prices.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: As a result of many visitors flooding the village in 1996, the inhabitants of Wacken voiced their concern over an event of this size being held in the local gravel pit. Uwe Trede offered to relocate the festival site to his own property and the areas previously used as campgrounds and took care of the acquisition of additional land. The organisational team grew to include Thomas Hess as production manager, who had previously been active as tour manager for Die Böhsen Onkelz, as well as Sheree Hesse for catering to the artists and VIPs. With the W.E.T.-Stage, a third stage was set up in 1997. The "Wacken Evolution Tent" was to be made available primarily to newcomers and bands without record deals. That year, the number of visitors reached 10,000 for the first time, with Rockbitch's erotic stage show causing a scene.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Over the years, the size of Wacken Open Air has grown continuously, and now dozens of bands and tens of thousands of visitors flock to the festival. Even though the organisers said in 2006 that 62,500 visitors were "the limit of what is possible", changes were made to the structure of the festival grounds the following year by allocating a larger area to the "Party Stage". In addition, tickets could no longer be purchased directly on the festival grounds to reduce the number of spontaneous or ticketless visitors. In 2007 and 2008, the festival had already sold out as a result of advance ticket sales; for W:O:A 2009, tickets had even sold out by the end of 2008. The tickets for 2010, too, sold out months in advance.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: While the festival originally only lasted two days, the performances have been lasting from Thursday to Saturday, i.e. three days, for some years. Thursday became a "Night to Remember", with mainly "classical" Heavy Metal bands appearing, such as the Scorpions in 2006. On the actual Party Stage, younger and more modern bands play as a contrast to the "Night to Remember". In addition, the event is accompanied by a rich complementary programme; in addition to a merchant area – obligatory for music festivals – a beer garden has been operating since 2000, in which the Wacken Firefighters' marching band opens the festival before its official start. On Thursday in 2007, the "Hellfest Stage" was initiated. Since 2009, there has been a "Medieval Stage", where mainly Medieval and Folk Metal bands play.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The fact that many well-known bands, including the Scorpions, Saxon, Twisted Sister, Dimmu Borgir, Slayer, and Helloween, have recorded live DVDs at Wacken, shows how esteemed the Open Air has since become. Ahead of their farewell tour in 2004, Die Böhsen Onkelz also performed an extended set at W:O:A.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Since 2002, the so-called "Metal Train" has been travelling from Zurich to Wacken and back before and after the festival to bring fans to the Northern German village and provide a matching entertainment programme. Bus tours from Scandinavian countries, especially Sweden, but also from Austria, are organised each year and used by several hundred fans.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The "W:O:A Soccercup" has been taking place annually since 2002. This football tournament, which started with nine teams and takes place on Wednesdays, has grown over the years and has been held in World Cup mode with 32 teams since 2007 (a one-off event in 2011 featured 36 teams). The international teams register in advance and are composed of festival visitors. For the tournament's 15th anniversary in 2016, a band was featured and took part for the first time: Serum 114 formed a team with several fans and were able to win the tournament. Although it is meant to be a fun tournament, in which creative outfits and names take precedence over athletic performance, the award ceremony after the tournament has been held on one of the stages since 2013 and prizes can be won.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: In 2013, the "Full Metal Church" took place in Wacken for the first time. Marking the local church's 150th anniversary, the team, together with the parish, organised a concert by the band Faun, which was framed by two readings and sermons by "Volxbibel" author Martin Dreyer. Both the concert and the services were completely overcrowded by festival visitors.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The festival is one of the Metal scene's highlights of the year. Nowadays, about a third of the visitors, some of whom arrive quite some time before the official start of the festival, and the majority of the bands come from abroad. According to the organisers, 2018 saw visitors from more than 80 nations attending the festival.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The number of participants increased to 75,000 in 2008 and included 65,000 paying guests. In 2008, the festival sold out twice ( W:O:A 2008 in spring and W:O:A 2009 on 31 December 2008).


title: Wacken Open Air

text: As is common with festivals of this size, Wacken Open Air received criticism for its hygienic conditions, prices, security personnel, as well as for the overcrowding and commercial orientation of the event. These points of criticism were addressed by making further substantial investments in the festival's fixed and mobile infrastructure. In 2008, the organisers also contributed 1,000,000 Euros to the expansion of Wacken's local outdoor swimming pool in order to make the festival even more attractive to the residents and visitors of the town.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Since 2006, the festival has been running an online radio station called Wacken Radio, which broadcasts Metal music around the clock. It is being produced in cooperation with RauteMusik as of February 2014.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: For the 23rd edition of Wacken Open Air, the sale of an "X-Mas Package" started on Monday, 8 August 2011, shortly after the end of that year's festival, and was sold out within 45 minutes. The event sold out ten times in a row between 2006 and 2015. Tickets for Wacken Open Air 2015 sold out after just 12 hours on 4 August 2014 – just a few hours after the end of W:O:A 2014. The X-Mas Tickets for W:O:A 2016, which cost 10 Euros less and whose buyers were entitled to a free T-shirt, were completely sold out only 20 minutes after the start of pre-sales. Booking office Metaltix’ servers were highly busy. In the minutes before the start of the pre-sale, the pages were no longer accessible; after that, data traffic had to be limited by wait lists.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Prices for the festival have risen and are currently at a level similar to other major Rock festivals, such as Rock am Ring and Hurricane Festival. After several years of success in which the festival sold out within hours, the first 60,000 tickets for the 2017 festival were sold in mid-2016. 55,000 tickets were sold within the first hour. By the end of April 2017, the festival was almost sold out except for a few remaining tickets. The price for the festival ticket was 220 Euros, but there was no fee for early arrival campers, who often set up their elaborately designed accommodations before the festival begins – partly to get the best spots near the festival grounds. In addition, all toilets and showers were free in 2017.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The festival sold out within a few days each in 2014–2016. However, the last tickets for the 2017 festival were sold after 309 days, a mere 2 months before the start of the festival, even though only 10,000 tickets remained after the first day of sales. This was a matter of speculation at first, and reasons such as the changed security situation or the price development were taken into account. Regardless of that, the festival sold out for the 13th time in a row in 2018.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: On 5 April 2018 Thomas Hess, the festival's longtime production (and former security) director, passed away. He had joined festival management in 1996 as a former tour manager of Böhse Onkelz and was considered one of the most important leading figures for the festival, along with the remaining founders and the Trede family, who organise the camping areas and the camping supervisors as subcontractors. He made a significant contribution to the W:O:A being so well organised, peaceful and successful.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Wacken Open Air 2018 was named the best major festival at the European Festival Awards 2018 and best festival at the Helga! Awards. For W:O:A 2019, all 75,000 tickets were sold within the first four days of sales, making this the 14th time in a row that the festival completely sold out.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: On 16 April 2020, it was announced to that the 2020 edition of the festival would be cancelled because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The first set of bands were announced on 1 August 2020 for the rescheduled festival for 2021.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: On 1 June 2021, the promoters of Wacken Open Air announced that the festival would not take place this year, again due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and is scheduled to return in the summer of 2022, with more information and details to be announced in September 2021.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The organisers of Wacken Open Air founded "Stone Castle Rockpromotions" in 1990 in order to organise the first festival. The name is derived from the direct translation of "Steinburg" from the district of Steinburg, to which Wacken belongs. Stone Castle remained the company's name until 1996. Up until 2014, the headquarters were located in Dörpstedt (Schleswig-Flensburg district) and then moved to Wacken. The company's name has been "ICS" (International Concert Service) GmbH since 1999. The company owns the label "Wacken Records" and the mailorder Metaltix, among others.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: A daily festival newspaper has been available since 2007, reporting on what's happening on the festival grounds. The Thursday edition is also included free of charge with all newspapers published by Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: In 2014, the online radio station RauteMusik took over production of the official Wacken radio. Wacken Radio has its own container on the festival grounds every year, where it reports live.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Up until a few years ago, Wacken's official town signs were either replaced by plastic signs spelling Heavy Metal Town during W:O:A or bolted more tightly because they were often stolen as souvenirs. Some shops are now selling black cotton bags with the Wacken town sign on one side and the words "This town sign I may keep" on the other.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: An action for exceeding the maximum noise limit, brought before the Administrative Court of Schleswig by residents of Wacken, ended in January 2013 with an out-of-court settlement. Now, if the average noise level of the festival exceeds 70 dB, the organisers pay 1,000 Euros to the community, which donates the money to charitable causes.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: In July 2022, it was announced that starting with W:O:A 2023 and onwards, the festival will be officially extended from three to four full days and that the Wednesday will be the new first full day. Up until 2022, while there was plenty of programme on Wednesdays, it was more of an unofficial afternoon introduction to the festival and Thursdays remained the official opening day.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The site covers more than 240 hectares, which are divided by more than 45 kilometres of fence. The inner area, including the main stage, has a size of 43,000 square metres. More than 1,300 toilets and almost 500 showers are available for the 75,000 paying attendees. 2,200 trucks with equipment are needed for the entire festival. Stage construction and dismantling usually take 7 days and 5 days respectively. For this, 75 trucks of stage equipment (1,000 tons), 10 trucks of sound equipment and 27 trucks of lighting equipment are used.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Since 2014, the electric output has amounted to 12 megawatts, roughly matching the needs of a small town counting 70,000 inhabitants. In addition, 40 diesel-fuelled emergency power generators are required. 25 electricians are responsible for the power supply.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: 600,000 Euros were spent on the construction of sewage systems and the improvement of power supply on the festival grounds. At the same time, 700,000 Euros worth of drains were installed in front of the stages in order to improve the drainage of water masses during heavy rains. The main paths were also paved with 10 km of mobile roads to facilitate access for rescue vehicles.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: A total of approximately 5,000 employees work for the festival, including 1,800 security staff members, 150 cleaners, 70 construction and dismantling assistants, as well as 400 police officers, 250 firefighters, 900 paramedics, and six emergency doctors.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: In 2017, a beer pipeline measuring one kilometer to supply ten dispensing systems was used for the first time. At full capacity, this construction allowed for 10,000 litres of beer to be tapped within the hour.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Wacken Open Air now boasts eight stages for musicians and accompanying entertainment. The most important ones are the Faster and the Harder Stage, which are designed as connected twin stages and have a shared sound and lighting system. Together with the slightly smaller Louder Stage, these two stages make up the Infield, or The Holy Ground. All three stages are also equipped with video walls to allow visibility of the performers even from remote positions.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Up until 2016, these three stages were called Black Stage, True Metal Stage, and Party Stage. After Wacken 2016, visitors were encouraged to suggest new names. From these suggestions, the best ideas were to be put up to a vote in a survey. Instead, however,  the slogan "Faster - Harder - Louder" became the inspiration for the names and the three stages were renamed accordingly.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Two more twin stages, the W.E.T. Stage (Wacken Evolution Tent) and the Headbanger Stage, are located inside a big tent called Bullhead City Circus. The Metal Battle takes place on these stages on Wednesday and Thursday, followed by regular band appearances on the days after.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: While the large stages and tent stages are open to all genres, the remaining stages are dedicated to specific themes. The Wackinger Stage is located in the medieval area of the festival and is played primarily by bands from Folk, Pagan and Medieval genres, while the Wasteland Stage, which was established in 2014, is geared towards music with an apocalyptic touch. The Beergarden Stage is modelled after typical folk festival stages, but also accommodates permanent Wacken guests such as the Wacken Firefighters and Mambo Kurt.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Wacken Open Air's event area is divided into several structurally separated sections. Since 2014, only one major security check is performed upon entering the grounds, after that, only the festival wristbands are checked.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Special features of the W:O:A include the Wackinger area, which resembles a medieval market and contains specialty food and beverage stalls as well as the Wackinger Stage, where matching music is played. Various walking acts also entertain the audience. This area borders on the Wasteland designed by the Wasteland Warriors, where a post-apocalyptic world and stage (Wastelandstage) styled in homage to the Mad Max-franchise is set up.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The area in front of the main stages comprises both the Bavarian beer garden and a large shopping mile called Metal Markt. There are also various food stalls, the Wacken Foundation Camp, ATMs, and the Movie Field, where Heavy Metal documentaries and feature films are screened.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The most important stages, the focal point of the festival, are located in the so-called Infield, which can be reached only via the Center. In addition to these stages, it also hosts food and beverage stalls.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: As Wacken Open Air only sells 3-day tickets, the majority of visitors spend the entire festival on-site. As a result, most of the more than 240 hectares of the festival site are designated camping areas. Camping opens on Monday and has been included in the ticket price since 2017. However, in the years before, an extra fee was charged for arrival before Wednesday.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The campsite is equipped with showers, flushing toilets, portable toilets, drinking fountains, small supermarkets, food stalls and information boards, and is continuously patrolled by the police, fire brigade and security services. A refuse collection service collects refuse bags on the premises.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Since the large crowds lead to a bottleneck situation in terms of mobile service, some providers now set up portable base stations for GSM, UMTS, and LTE+ during the festival.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: A festival of this size needs capable medical services, which here are called the Wacken Rescue Squad. Every year, hundreds of helpers from various relief organisations from all over Germany arrive before the festival to prepare the medical camp and care for people in need during the event. The medical service is managed by the local DRK association in Kaltenkirchen.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The visiting and local relief organisations provide vehicles and material during the course of the festival. These include ambulances and radios for communication in particular. Due to the road conditions, quads and foot patrols are often used in Wacken, especially in the vicinity of the medical centre. In addition to the medical service, which counts approx. 270 people at peak times, the rescue service cooperation Schleswig-Holstein has more than ten emergency vehicles (ambulances and mobile intensive care units) on site while coordinating the overall emergency management.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Despite the size of the festival, no serious security problems have been encountered so far. Disputes among visitors are rare, and in 2011, a total of 20 reports of bodily injury was filed. The main problem consists of several hundred reported thefts each year. In 2011, police were able to arrest three gangs of thieves. In comparison to other events of this scale, the festival is classified by police as secure.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: W:O:A Metal Battle is an international band contest first held in 2004. During Metal Battle, newcomer bands compete against each other in national qualifiers and finals; the winner of each country then competes against the other finalists in the grand final at Wacken Open Air.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: An international jury selects the competition's best bands. In earlier years, winners of the competition were offered a record deal, whereas nowadays, the five best bands receive cash or material prizes.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The Wacken Foundation was founded in 2009 by the festival's organisers and serves as a charitable foundation. Its objective is to support young bands from the Heavy Metal genre.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Sponsorship is granted to specific projects such as the production of a CD or the realisation of a tour. In addition, the Wacken Foundation provides information about its projects at many European festivals each summer. Since the 2017/2018 season, the Wacken Foundation's lettering can be found on the jerseys of German 3rd league club FC Carl Zeiss Jena. This was facilitated by jersey sponsors Heaven Shall Burn, whose logo has been moved to the jersey's sleeve for this cause. Part of the proceeds from the jersey's sale is donated to the foundation.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: 2014 saw Wacken Music Camp take place for the first time. One week after the festival ended, young people from all over Germany were invited to write and play their own songs under the guidance of professional musicians. They were accommodated in the so-called Kuhle, the site of the first Wacken Open Air.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The organisers regularly call for blood donations with the whole festival team. Blood is donated at the Itzehoe Clinic and the entire wing is decorated in W:O:A style, while Heavy Metal is blasted through the speakers.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Since W:O:A 2014, visitors and musicians have been encouraged to have their bone marrow typed for donation by the German Bone Marrow Donor Database. In 2014, 2,700 visitors took this opportunity.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The festival works with the organisers of the so-called Wattolümpiade ("mudflat Olympics") in Brunsbüttel to promote the slogan Stark gegen Krebs ("Strong against cancer"). The festival's team helps out with logistics for the event.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: In addition to the festival itself, there are numerous other events planned and carried out by the organisers. A wide range of merchandising has also been developed over the years. In addition to T-shirts and a comprehensive range of CDs and DVDs, the festival also has accompanying print media. The "W:O:A History Book" contains the open-air's history up until 2005. The book Die Wahrheit über Wacken ("The truth about Wacken", Oidium Verlag 2005, new edition published at Verlag Andreas Reiffer 2011) provides a more humorous account of the festival. It was written by satirist Till Burgwächter in collaboration with comic artist Jan Oidium and is also available as an audio book comprising three CDs. The publication of a Metal cookbook shows how far merchandising has come. However, the mounting range of merchandising has led to growing criticism, as some consider it to be purely profit-oriented. The increasing coverage of the festival, especially in the wake of the documentary Full Metal Village, is perceived by the traditional Metal scene as "selling out".


title: Wacken Open Air

text: In 2005, Wacken Premium Pilsner was offered as the festival's "own" beer for the first time. It was produced in the Bavarian brewery Maximiliansbrauerei in Chieming. At W:O:A 2006 and 2007, the beer was available as well, this time produced in 0.5-litre bottles by the Flensburger brewery. The large number of glass shards later forced the organisers to switch to 0.5-litre cans.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: As a motto, the phrase "See you in Wacken - Rain or Shine" has established itself alongside "Faster, Harder, Louder". Additionally, the festival features the sentence "Louder Than Hell" in its advertising.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Cruises with Heavy Metal bands on board under the name Full Metal Cruise have been organised within Europe since 2013.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The indoor festival Hamburg Metal Dayz takes place at the same time as the Reeperbahn-Festival and is considered a get-together for the scene. In addition to concerts, there are panels with musicians, managers, and other Metal experts, as well as workshops and a question and answer session with the W:O:A organisers.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: For the Wacken Roadshow, several bands tour Europe under the banner of Wacken Open Air. These concerts are meant to complement the warm-up parties organised in many places.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: In the summer of 1990, Metal Monday took place for the first time at Knust in Hamburg. For five years, regional, national and international Metal bands like De la Cruz, 5th Avenue, and King Køng played at Knust every Monday. After a break of almost 20 years, Metal Monday was revived by the Wacken Open Air organisers in 2014 in cooperation with the Knust, Seaside Touring, All Access, and Hamburg Konzerte. Metal, Rock, and Folkrock bands now perform once a month, following the motto "three bands - small entrance fee". In addition to regional bands, international newcomers are always invited.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The former country-style restaurant "Zur Post" in Wacken, built in 1919, has been the hub of the village and the surrounding communities for decades. It was here that bartenders Thomas Jensen and Holger Hübner conceived the idea for today's Wacken Open Air. Today, it is used to accommodate staff and to serve other business purposes. A series of events called "Zum Wackinger" sees artists from music, comedy, and entertainment perform regularly. Since 2016, a two-day medieval feast with jugglers and bards takes place here.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The Evangelical Lutheran Village Church in Wacken belongs to the Lutheran congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany. For Wacken Open Air and Wacken Winter Nights, it is turned into the "Metal Church". During said festivals, the "Metal Service" is held here and bands from the Folk and Medieval scene perform in the church.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Wacken Winter Nights (WWN), a three-day Folk and Medieval open-air festival, took place for the first time in February 2017 at temperatures of -2 to -6 degrees Celsius in Wacken. With over 3,500 attendees, the festival's first edition sold out several weeks in advance. Most of them spent the nights on the camping site. A second edition took place from 23 to 25 February 2018. Due to the construction on the previous year's campground, the overnight accommodations were relocated to the area that is also used for the regular Open Air. The walking distance, therefore, increased to about 15 minutes. With 4,000 visitors, the 2018 event also sold out. For the third event in 2019, the festival grounds were expanded considerably and 5,000 visitors attended. The fourth WWNs are planned for the 14th to 16 February 2020.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The Fisherman's Friend StrongmanRun visited the Metal festival grounds of Wacken for the first time in April 2016. With their Wacken debut, the StrongmanRun season formally kicked off. About 3,000 participants, some in colourful costumes, took part in the run on the 20 km track with 40 obstacles. In 2017, the StrongmanRun took place on the festival grounds.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Several open-air festivals called Wacken Rocks were held in the past to transport the Wacken atmosphere to other places.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: During the winters of 2016, 2017 and 2018, an annual ski trip to Nassfeld, Austria was organised for Metal fans under the name "Full Metal Mountain". Numerous bands and artists were present. For 2019, the festival was cancelled entirely.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Planning and preparation are underway for a holiday trip to Mallorca with the title "Full Metal Holiday - Destination Mallorca", which will offer Metal concerts on the beach from 12 to 19 October 2020. The event was originally planned for 2017 and said to head to Ibiza, then rescheduled for 2018 and changed to Mallorca.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The following chart shows the development of prices and visitor numbers of past festivals as published by the organisers. Prices refer to a 3-day ticket (incl. parking and camping) in pre-sale (without additional fees). The price for the 4-day 2023 edition (299.00 EUR) has been adjusted accordingly.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Since 1999, various documentaries about W:O:A have been made. The first documentary, Metalheads - The Official Documentary, was produced in 1999 on the occasion of the festival's 10th anniversary and was released on VHS by Rock Hard in 2000. The film team lived on the festival grounds for ten days prior to the actual start of the festival and documented the work of construction workers, farmers such as Uwe Trede, villagers, fans and organisers. Although the film shows excerpts from performances by some of the bands and interviews with the artists, it is more of a behind-the-scenes documentary. The film was produced with the simplest means, including a professional Hi8 and a Mini-DV camera and a team of three, and was regarded by the organisers as a trial run on the subject of film. According to the organisers, a total of 10,000 copies were made and sold. The film "Nordland" was shot for the 15th edition of W:O:A, but was only used for internal promotion. Both films were made by Thomas Greiner.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The documentary by Sam Dunn (2005) features Wacken Open Air. The festival is described as a Mecca of Heavy Metal. The film Full Metal Village by director Cho Sung-Hyung, made in 2005 and 2006, portrays the people of Wacken dealing with the festival. In 2006, she was awarded the main award of the Hessischer Filmpreis and the Schleswig-Holstein Filmpreis for best documentary. Full Metal Village was the first documentary ever to win the Max Ophüls Award for young filmmakers in 2007. WDR-Rockpalast profiled the festival in 2006, 2007, and 2009 with two-hour documentaries. Broadcaster DMAX also sent a camera team and produced a one-hour documentary on the construction of W:O:A in 2007.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: ZDF television filmed the 30-minute feature "Ein Dorf und 100.000 Rockfans" about Wacken Open Air 2008.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: The aforementioned projects are almost identical in content; they invite visitors, organisers, and the citizens of Wacken to comment on the festival and generally present it in a positive way. However, there has been criticism of the fact that the Wacken Firefighters have been featured too prominently. The three Rockpalast documentaries focus on interviews with the musicians and the performances of the bands.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Another perspective is offered by the low-budget production "Metaller die auf Brüste starren" ("The Metalheads Who Stare At Breasts", title based on The Men Who Stare At Goats), which five festival attendees shot during their stay at Wacken. "Offener Kanal Bad Offenbach" is listed as its official producer. The film shows the festival from the filmmakers’ (subjective) point of view and comments on the events in the style of New Journalism. In contrast to other documentaries, this one focuses on the fans. Whether it's a documentary in the true sense of the word or whether the film is just entertainment remains controversial. The filmmakers themselves avoid this question and classify their work as a "trash documentary". The film premiered on 5 May 2011.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Schleswig-Holstein's Prime Minister Peter Harry Carstensen (CDU) commented on the opening of W:O:A 2009: "I don't come here to listen to the music, but I do identify with the festival".


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Selected concerts of Wacken Open Air 2014 were broadcast live in an online stream. Furthermore, the cooperation between Spiegel Online and Arte made some performances available as video on demand.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: To mark its 30th anniversary, the Norddeutsche Rundschau published a special edition that offered insights into the organisation of the Wacken Open Air. In addition, there will be a special exhibition at the Prinzesshof Kreismuseum in Itzehoe to mark the anniversary.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: At an awards ceremony on 11 March 2008, W:O:A received the Live Entertainment Award (LEA) for best festival of 2007.


title: Wacken Open Air

text: German television has produced numerous Wacken Open-Air documentaries in recent years. The following list is therefore not complete:


title: Wacken Open Air

text: Numerous bands have recorded their performances at Wacken Open Air and released them as audio CDs or DVDs. The following list contains only full live albums and no albums containing only individual live tracks from the festival:


title: Wacken Open Air

text: In her crime novels Tod in Wacken and Der Teufel von Wacken, author Heike Denzau places her storylines at Wacken Open Air, describing the location as well as the festival and its visitors.


title: General surgery

text: General surgery is a surgical specialty that focuses on alimentary canal and abdominal contents including the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, liver, pancreas, gallbladder, appendix and bile ducts, and often the thyroid gland. They also deal with diseases involving the skin, breast, soft tissue, trauma, peripheral artery disease and hernias and perform endoscopic procedures such as gastroscopy and colonoscopy.


title: General surgery

text: In many parts of the world including North America, Australia and the United Kingdom, the overall responsibility for trauma care falls under the auspices of general surgery. Some general surgeons obtain advanced training in this field (most commonly surgical critical care) and specialty certification surgical critical care. General surgeons must be able to deal initially with almost any surgical emergency. Often, they are the first port of call to critically ill or gravely injured patients, and must perform a variety of procedures to stabilize such patients, such as thoracostomy, cricothyroidotomy, compartment fasciotomies and emergency laparotomy or thoracotomy to stanch bleeding. They are also called upon to staff surgical intensive care units or trauma intensive care units.


title: General surgery

text: All general surgeons are trained in emergency surgery. Bleeding, infections, bowel obstructions and organ perforations are the main problems they deal with. Cholecystectomy, the surgical removal of the gallbladder, is one of the most common surgical procedures done worldwide. This is most often done electively, but the gallbladder can become acutely inflamed and require an emergency operation. Infections and rupture of the appendix and small bowel obstructions are other common emergencies.


title: General surgery

text: This is a relatively new specialty dealing with minimal access techniques using cameras and small instruments inserted through 3- to 15-mm incisions. Robotic surgery is now evolving from this concept (see below). Gallbladders, appendices, and colons can all be removed with this technique. Hernias are also able to be repaired laparoscopically. Bariatric surgery can be performed laparoscopically and there a benefits of doing so to reduce wound complications in obese patients. General surgeons that are trained today are expected to be proficient in laparoscopic procedures.


title: General surgery

text: General surgeons treat a wide variety of major and minor colon and rectal diseases including inflammatory bowel diseases (such as ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease), diverticulitis, colon and rectal cancer, gastrointestinal bleeding and hemorrhoids.


title: General surgery

text: General surgeons perform a majority of all non-cosmetic breast surgery from lumpectomy to mastectomy, especially pertaining to the evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer.


title: General surgery

text: General surgeons can perform vascular surgery if they receive special training and certification in vascular surgery. Otherwise, these procedures are typically performed by vascular surgery specialists. However, general surgeons are capable of treating minor vascular disorders.


title: General surgery

text: General surgeons are trained to remove all or part of the thyroid and parathyroid glands in the neck and the adrenal glands just above each kidney in the abdomen. In many communities, they are the only surgeon trained to do this. In communities that have a number of subspecialists, other subspecialty surgeons may assume responsibility for these procedures.


title: General surgery

text: Responsible for all aspects of pre-operative, operative, and post-operative care of abdominal organ transplant patients. Transplanted organs include liver, kidney, pancreas, and more rarely small bowel.


title: General surgery

text: Surgical oncologist refers to a general surgical oncologist (a specialty of a general surgeon), but thoracic surgical oncologists, gynecologist and so forth can all be considered surgeons who specialize in treating cancer patients. The importance of training surgeons who sub-specialize in cancer surgery lies in evidence, supported by a number of clinical trials, that outcomes in surgical cancer care are positively associated to surgeon volume (i.e., the more cancer cases a surgeon treats, the more proficient he or she becomes, and his or her patients experience improved survival rates as a result). This is another controversial point, but it is generally accepted, even as common sense, that a surgeon who performs a given operation more often, will achieve superior results when compared with a surgeon who rarely performs the same procedure. This is particularly true of complex cancer resections such as pancreaticoduodenectomy for pancreatic cancer, and gastrectomy with extended (D2) lymphadenectomy for gastric cancer. Surgical oncology is generally a 2-year fellowship following completion of a general surgery residency (5–7 years).


title: General surgery

text: Most cardiothoracic surgeons in the U.S. (D.O. or M.D.) first complete a general surgery residency (typically 5–7 years), followed by a cardiothoracic surgery fellowship (typically 2–3 years). However, new programmes are currently offering cardiothoracic surgery as a residency (6–8 years).


title: General surgery

text: Pediatric surgery is a subspecialty of general surgery. Pediatric surgeons do surgery on patients under age 18. Pediatric surgery is 5–7 years of residency and a 2-3 year fellowship.


title: General surgery

text: In the 2000s, minimally invasive surgery became more prevalent. Considerable enthusiasm has been built around robot-assisted surgery (also known as "robotic surgery"), despite a lack of data suggesting it has significant benefits that justify its cost.