title: Grayanotoxin

text: The intoxicating effects of mad honey have been known for thousands of years. There have been many famous episodes of human inebriation caused by its consumption. Xenophon, Aristotle, Strabo, Pliny the Elder and Columella all document the results of eating this "maddening" honey, believed to be from the pollen and nectar of "Rhododendron luteum" and "Rhododendron ponticum". According to Xenophon's "Anabasis", an invading Greek army was accidentally poisoned by harvesting and eating the local Asia Minor honey, but they all made a quick recovery without any fatalities. Having heard of this incident, and realizing that foreign invaders would be ignorant of the dangers of the local honey, King Mithridates later used the honey as a deliberate poison when Pompey's army attacked the Heptakometes in Asia Minor in 69 BC. The Roman soldiers became delirious and nauseated after being tricked into eating the toxic honey, at which point Mithridates's army attacked.


title: Wand

text: A wand is a thin, light-weight rod that is held with one hand, and is traditionally made of wood, but may also be made of other materials, such as metal or plastic.


title: Wand

text: Long versions of wands are often styled in forms of staves or sceptres, which could have large ornamentation on the top.


title: Wand

text: In modern times, wands are usually associated with stage magic or supernatural magic, but there have been other uses, all stemming from the original meaning as a synonym of rod and virge. A stick that is used for reaching, pointing, drawing in the dirt, and directing other people, is one of the earliest and simplest of tools.


title: Wand

text: It is possible that wands were used by pre-historic peoples. It is mentioned that 'rods' (as well as rings) were found with Red Lady of Paviland in Britain. It is mentioned by the author in "Gower - A Guide to Ancient and Historic Monuments on the Gower Peninsula" that these might have been wands and are depicted as such in a reconstruction drawing of the burial of the 'Red Lady'.


title: Wand

text: During the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, apotropaic wands began to be used during birth ceremonies. These wands were made out of hippopotamus tusks which were split down the middle lengthwise, producing two wands, each with one flat side and one curved side. Due to the curved nature of a hippopotamus tusk, these wands were curved, with one pointed end (the point of the tusk) and one blunt end (where the tusk was removed from the hippopotamus). Hippopotamus tusks may have been used to invoke Taweret the hippopotamus goddess of childbirth. The earliest apotropaic wands used in Egypt were undecorated, but "from around 1850 BC, they were usually provided with decorations of apotropaic figures directly related to the sun religion, or particular aspects of it, inscribed on the convex upper side... most of whom carry knives to ward off evil forces". These apotropaic wands were also inscribed with protective text on the flat side, such as "Cut off the head of the enemy when he enters the chamber of the children whom the lady... has borne". The latest apotropaic wand found belongs to the Second Intermediate Period king Senebkay. It seems that the use of these objects in Egypt declines after this point.


title: Wand

text: The Barsom used by Zoroastrian Magi is a bundle of twigs that was used during religious ceremonies. While the Barsom is not a wand itself, it was also used for divination purposes, and may be a form of prototypical wand from which later magical wands descend.


title: Wand

text: The concept of magic wands was used by the ancient Greek writer Homer, in his epic poems "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey". In all cases, Homer used the word "rhabdos" (ῥᾰ́βδος), which means 'rod', and implies something that is thicker than the modern conception of wands. In those books, Homer wrote that magic wands were used by three different gods, namely Hermes, Athena, and Circe. In "The Iliad", Homer wrote that Hermes generally used his magic wand Caduceus to make people sleep and wake up. In "The Odyssey", Homer wrote that Athena used her magic wand to make Odysseus old, and then young again, and that Circe used her magic wand to turn Odysseus's men into pigs.


title: Wand

text: By the 1st century AD, the wand was a common symbol of magic in Roman cults, especially Mithraism. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, there are frequent depictions on sarcophagi of Jesus Christ using a magic wand to perform miracles, such as the raising of Lazarus and feeding the multitude.


title: Wand

text: Wands are used in The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Thelema, and Wicca, and by independent practitioners of magic.


title: Wand

text: Wands were introduced into the occult via the 13th-century Latin grimoire "The Oathbound Book of Honorius". The wand idea from the "Book of Honorius", along with various other ideas from that grimoire, were later incorporated into the 16th-century grimoire "The Key of Solomon". "The Key of Solomon" became popular among occultists for hundreds of years. In 1888, there was the publication of an English translation of the "Key of Solomon" by Samuel Mathers (one of the co-founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn), which made the text of the "Key of Solomon" available to the anglophone world. That 1888 English version inspired Gerald Gardner, the creator of Wicca, to incorporate the wand and various other ritual objects into Wicca.


title: Wand

text: The creators of the Golden Dawn got their idea to use a wand, as well as their other main ritual objects (dagger, sword, hexagrammic pentacle, and cup), from the writings of the mid-19th century occultist author Eliphas Levi. Levi himself mentioned most of those objects (all except for the cup) in his writings because they are in the "Key of Solomon", whereas he got the cup from the tarot suit of cups. In Levi's 1862 book "Philosophie Occulte", he wrote a fake excerpt of a Hebrew version of the "Key of Solomon", and that fake excerpt was part of the inspiration for the Golden Dawn's ritual objects, and especially their lotus wand.


title: Wand

text: The ceremonial magic of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn uses several different types of wands for different purposes, the most prominent of which are the fire wand and the lotus wand. In Wicca, wands are traditionally used to summon and control angels and genies, but have later come to also be used for general spell-casting. Wands serve a similar purpose to athames (ritual daggers), though the two objects have their distinct uses: an athame is used to command, whereas a wand is seen as more gentle, and is used to invite or encourage.


title: Wand

text: Wands are traditionally made of wood— practitioners usually prune a branch from an oak, hazel, or other tree, or may even buy wood from a hardware store, and then carve it and add decorations to personalize it, though one can also purchase ready-made wands. In Wicca, the wand usually represents the element air, or sometimes fire (following the wiccan author Raymond Buckland, who got his element associations from the Golden Dawn), although contemporary wand-makers also create wands for the elements of earth and water.


title: Wand

text: The suit of wands is one of the four suits in the 1909 Rider–Waite–Smith occult tarot deck, and other, later tarot decks that are based upon that deck. The suit of wands replaced the suit of batons from earlier, non-occult tarot decks. The Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck also replaced the suit of coins from earlier, non-occult decks, with the suit of pentacles. The Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck was designed by two members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn- Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith. Waite provided the general guidelines for the deck (including the names of the four suits, and thus the suit of wands), and detailed guidelines for the designs of the Major Arcana, and he hired Smith to do the painting, and to make original artwork for the Minor Arcana. Waite instructed Smith to not paint actual "wands" in the wand cards, but rather to paint large tree trunk staffs with some foliage growing on them, so as to make an association between wands and Eliphas Levi's phrase "the flowering rod of Aaron" from Levi's fake fragment of "The Key of Solomon".


title: Wand

text: In British formal government ceremony, special officials may carry a wand of office that represents their power. Compare in this context the function of the ceremonial mace, the scepter, and the staff of office. Its age may be even greater, as Stone Age cave paintings show figures holding sticks, which may be symbolic representations of their power.


title: Wand

text: In the 18th-century ballads "Allison Gross" and "The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea", the villainesses use silver wands to transform their victims into animals, in emulation of the Odyssey that preceded them. In C. S. Lewis's 1950 novel "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", the White Witch's most feared weapon is her wand, whose magic is capable of turning people into stone. This, again, employs the Odysseyan motif of an evil female witch who uses a magic wand to maliciously transform her victims.


title: Wand

text: In the mid-20th century, the MGM and Disney media companies popularized magic wands via four films in which wands were wielded by benevolent female fairy characters. Those films were "The Wizard of Oz" (1939; MGM; a wand-staff was wielded by Glinda the Good Witch of the North), "Pinocchio" (1940; Disney; a wand was wielded by the Blue Fairy), "Cinderella" (1950; Disney; a wand was wielded by a fairy godmother), and "Sleeping Beauty" (1959; Disney; a wand was wielded by each of three fairies). In "The Wizard of Oz" and "Pinocchio", the fairies' wands are embellished with a star-shaped ornament on the end, whereas in "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty", the fairies have wands with traditional plain tips.


title: Wand

text: Magic wands commonly feature in works of fantasy fiction as spell-casting tools. Few other common denominators exist, so the capabilities of wands vary wildly. In J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, the first book of which was published in 1997, personal wands are common, as necessary tools to channel out each character's magic, and they are used as weapons in magical duels, and it is the wand that chooses its owner. A wand is also present in the "Children of the Red King" series in the possession of Charlie Bone as well as the popular MMORPG "World of Warcraft" where caster classes such as the mage and warlock use wands offensively.


title: Wand

text: Magic wands and staves are often used in the magical girl genre of anime and manga as well. Examples include "Sailor Moon", "Sally the Witch", and "Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel", among others.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: Viral phenomena or viral sensation are objects or patterns that are able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them. Analogous to the way in which viruses propagate, the term viral pertains to a video, image, or written content spreading to numerous online users within a short time period. This concept has become a common way to describe how thoughts, information, and trends move into and through a human population.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: The popularity of viral media has been fueled by the rapid rise of social network sites, wherein audiences—who are metaphorically described as experiencing "infection" and "contamination"—play as passive carriers rather than an active role to 'spread' content, making such content "go viral". The term "viral media" differs from "spreadable media" as the latter refers to the "potential" of content to become viral. Memes are one known example of informational viral patterns.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene" as an attempt to explain memetics; or, how ideas replicate, mutate, and evolve. When asked to assess this comparison, Lauren Ancel Meyers, a biology professor at the University of Texas, stated that "memes spread through online social networks similarly to the way diseases do through offline populations." This dispersion of cultural movements is shown through the spread of memes online, especially when seemingly innocuous or trivial trends spread and die in rapid fashion.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: The term "viral" pertains to a video, image, or written content spreading to numerous online users within a short time period. If something goes viral, many people discuss it. Accordingly, Tony D. Sampson defines "viral phenomena" as spreadable accumulations of events, objects, and affects that are overall content built up by popular discourses surrounding network culture. There is also a relationship to the biological notion of disease spread and epidemiology. In this context, "going viral" is similar to an epidemic spread, which occurs if more than one person is infected by a disease for every person infected. Thus, if a piece of content is shared with more than one person every time it is seen, then this will result in viral growth.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: In "Understanding Media" (1964), philosopher Marshall McLuhan describes photography in particular, and technology in general, as having a potentially "virulent nature." In Jean Baudrillard's 1981 treatise "Simulacra and Simulation", the philosopher describes "An American Family", arguably the first "reality" television series, as a marker of a new age in which the medium of television has a "viral, endemic, chronic, alarming presence."


title: Viral phenomenon

text: Another formulation of the 'viral' concept includes the term "media virus", or "viral media", coined by Douglas Rushkoff, who defines it as a type of Trojan horse: "People are duped into passing a hidden agenda while circulating compelling content." Mosotho South-African media theorist Thomas Mofolo uses Rushkoff's idea to define "viral" as a type of virtual collective consciousness that primarily manifests via digital media networks and evolves into offline actions to produce a new social reality. Mofolo bases this definition on a study about how internet users involved in the Tunisian Arab Spring perceived the value of Facebook towards their revolution. Mofolo's understanding of the viral was first developed in a study on Global Citizen's #TogetherAtHome campaign and used to formulate a new theoretical framework called "Hivemind Impact". Hivemind impact is a specific type of virality that is simulated via digital media networks with the goal of harnessing the virtual collective consciousness to take action on a social issue. For Mofolo, the viral eventually evolves into McLuhan's 'global village' when the virtual collective consciousness reaches a point of noogenesis that then becomes the noosphere.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: Before writing and while most people were illiterate, the dominant means of spreading memes was oral culture like folk tales, folk songs, and oral poetry, which mutated over time as each retelling presented an opportunity for change. The printing press provided an easy way to copy written texts instead of handwritten manuscripts. In particular, pamphlets could be published in only a day or two, unlike books which took longer. For example, Martin Luther's "Ninety-five Theses" took only two months to spread throughout Europe. A study of United States newspapers in the 1800s found human-interest, "news you can use" stories and list-focused articles circulated nationally as local papers mailed copies to each other and selected content for reprinting. Chain letters spread by postal mail throughout the 1900s.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: Urban legends also began as word-of-mouth memes. Like hoaxes, they are examples of falsehoods that people swallow, and, like them, often achieve broad public notoriety.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: Beyond vocal sharing, the 20th century made huge strides in the World Wide Web and the ability to content share. In 1979, dial-up internet service provided by the company CompuServ was a key player in online communications and how information began spreading beyond the print. Those with access to a computer in the earliest of stages could not comprehend the full effect that public access to the internet could or would create. It is hard to remember the times of newspapers being delivered to households across the country in order to receive their news for the day, and it was when "The Columbus Dispatch" out of Columbus, Ohio broke barriers when it was first to publish in online format. The success that was predicted by CompuServe and the Associated Press led to some of the largest newspapers to become part of the movement to publish the news via online format. Content sharing in the journalism world brings new advances to viral aspects of how news is spread in a matter of seconds.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: The creation of the Internet enabled users to select and share content with each other electronically, providing new, faster, and more decentralized controlled channels for spreading memes. Email forwards are essentially text memes, often including jokes, hoaxes, email scams, written versions of urban legends, political messages, and digital chain letters; if widely forwarded they might be called 'viral emails'. User-friendly consumer photo editing tools like Photoshop and image-editing websites have facilitated the creation of the genre of the image macro, where a popular image is overlaid with different humorous text phrases. These memes are typically created with Impact font. The growth of video-sharing websites like YouTube made viral videos possible.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: It is sometimes difficult to predict which images and videos will "go viral"; sometimes the creation of a new Internet celebrity is a sudden surprise. One of the first documented viral videos is "Numa Numa", a webcam video of then-19-year-old Gary Brolsma lip-syncing and dancing to the Romanian pop song "Dragostea Din Tei".


title: Viral phenomenon

text: The sharing of text, images, videos, or links to this content have been greatly facilitated by social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Other mimicry memes carried by Internet media include hashtags, language variations like intentional misspellings, and fads like planking. The popularity and widespread distribution of Internet memes have gotten the attention of advertisers, creating the field of viral marketing. A person, group, or company desiring much fast, cheap publicity might create a hashtag, image, or video designed to go viral; many such attempts are unsuccessful, but the few posts that "go viral" generate much publicity.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: Viral videos are among the most common type of viral phenomena. A viral video is any clip of animation or film that is spread rapidly through online sharing. Viral videos can receive millions of views as they are shared on social media sites, reposted to blogs, sent in emails and so on. When a video goes viral it has become very popular. Its exposure on the Internet grows exponentially as more and more people discover it and share it with others. An article or an image can also become viral.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: The classification is probably assigned more as a result of intensive activity and the rate of growth among users in a relatively short amount of time than of simply how many hits something receives. Most viral videos contain humor and fall into broad categories:


title: Viral phenomenon

text: With the creation of YouTube, a video-sharing website, there has been a huge surge in the number of viral videos on the Internet. This is primarily due to the ease of access to these videos and the ease of sharing them via social media websites. The ability to share videos from one person to another with ease means there are many cases of 'overnight' viral videos. "YouTube, which makes it easy to embed its content elsewhere have the freedom and mobility once ascribed to papyrus, enabling their rapid circulation across a range of social networks." YouTube has overtaken television in terms of the size of audience. As one example, "American Idol" was the most viewable TV show in 2009 in the U.S. while "a video of Scottish woman Susan Boyle auditioning for "Britain's Got Talent" with her singing was viewed more than 77 million times on YouTube". The capacity to attract an enormous audience on a user-friendly platform is one of the leading factors why YouTube generates viral videos. YouTube contributes to viral phenomenon spreadability since the idea of the platform is based on sharing and contribution. "Sites such as YouTube, eBay, Facebook, Flickr, Craigslist, and Wikipedia, only exist and have value because people use and contribute to them, and they are clearly better the more people are using and contributing to them. This is the essence of Web 2.0."


title: Viral phenomenon

text: An example of one of the most prolific viral YouTube videos that fall into the promotional viral videos category is Kony 2012. On March 5, 2012, the charity organization Invisible Children Inc. posted a short film about the atrocities committed in Uganda by Joseph Kony and his rebel army. Artists use YouTube as their one of the main branding and communication platform to spread videos and make them viral. For instance, after her time off, Adele released her most-viewed song "Hello". "Hello" crossed 100 million views in just five days, making it the fastest video to reach it in 2015. YouTube viral videos make stars. As an example, Justin Bieber who was discovered since his video on YouTube Chris Brown's song "With You" went viral. Since its launch in 2005, YouTube has become a hub for aspiring singers and musicians. Talent managers look to it to find budding pop stars.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: According to Visible Measures, the original "Kony 2012" video documentary, and the hundreds of excerpts and responses uploaded by audiences across the Web, collectively garnered 100 million views in a record six days. This example of how quickly the video spread emphasizes how YouTube acts as a catalyst in the spread of viral media. YouTube is considered as "multiple existing forms of participatory culture" and that trend is useful for the sake of business. "The discourse of Web 2.0 its power has been its erasure of this larger history of participatory practices, with companies acting as if they were "bestowing" agency onto audiences, making their creative output meaningful by valuing it within the logics of commodity culture."


title: Viral phenomenon

text: Viral marketing is the phenomenon in which people actively assess media or content and decide to spread to others such as making a word-of-mouth recommendation, passing content through social media, posting a video to YouTube. The term was first popularized in 1995, after Hotmail spreading their service offer "Get your free web-base email at Hotmail." Viral marketing has become important in the business field in building brand recognition, with companies trying to get their customers and other audiences involved in circulating and sharing their content on social media both in voluntary and involuntary ways. Many brands undertake guerrilla marketing or buzz marketing to gain public attention. Some marketing campaigns seek to engage an audience to unwittingly pass along their campaign message.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: The use of viral marketing is shifting from the concept that the content drives its own attention to the intended attempt to draw the attention. The companies are worried about making their content 'go viral' and how their customers' communication has the potential to circulate it widely. There has been much discussion about morality in doing viral marketing. Iain Short (2010) points out that many applications on Twitter and Facebook generates automated marketing message and update it on the audience's personal timelines without users personally pass it along.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: Stacy Wood from North Carolina State University has conducted research and found that the value of recommendations from "everyday people" has a potential impact on the brands. Consumers have been bombarded by thousands of messages every day which makes "authenticity" and "credibility" of marketing message been questioned; word of mouth from 'everyday people' therefore becomes an incredibly important source of credible information. If a company sees that the word-of-mouth from ""the average person"" is crucial for the greater opportunity for influencing others, many questions remain. "What implicit contracts exist between brands and those recommenders? What moral codes and guidelines should brands respect when encouraging, soliciting, or reacting to comments from those audiences they wish to reach? What types of compensation, if any, do audience members deserve for their promotional labor when they provide a testimonial."


title: Viral phenomenon

text: An example of effective viral marketing can be the unprecedented boost in sales of the Popeyes chicken sandwich. After the Twitter account for Chick-fil-A attempted to undercut Popeyes by suggesting that Popeyes' chicken sandwich wasn't the "original chicken sandwich", Popeyes responded with a tweet that would end up going viral. After the response had amassed 85,000 retweets and 300,000 likes, Popeyes chains began to sell many more sandwiches to the point where many locations sold all of their stock of chicken sandwiches. This prompted other chicken chains to tweet about their chicken sandwiches, but none of these efforts became as widespread as it was for Popeyes.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: In macroeconomics, "financial contagion" is a proposed socially-viral phenomenon wherein disturbances quickly spread across global financial markets.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: Some social commentators have a negative view of "viral" content, though others are neutral or celebrate the democratization of content as compared to the gatekeepers of older media. According to the authors of "Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture": "Ideas are transmitted, often without critical assessment, across a broad array of minds and this uncoordinated flow of information is associated with "bad ideas" or "ruinous fads and foolish fashions." Science fiction sometimes discusses 'viral' content "describing (generally bad) ideas that spread like germs." For example, the 1992 novel "Snow Crash" explores the implications of an ancient memetic meta-virus and its modern-day computer virus equivalent:


title: Viral phenomenon

text: The spread of viral phenomena is also regarded as part of the cultural politics of network culture or the virality of the age of networks. Network culture enables the audience to create and spread viral content. "Audiences play an active role in 'spreading' content rather than serving as passive carriers of viral media: their choices, investments, agendas, and actions determine what gets valued." Various authors have pointed to the intensification in connectivity brought about by network technologies as a possible trigger for increased chances of infection from wide-ranging social, cultural, political, and economic contagions. For example, the social scientist Jan van Dijk warns of new vulnerabilities that arise when network society encounters "too much connectivity." The proliferation of global transport networks makes this model of society susceptible to the spreading of biological diseases. Digital networks become volatile under the destructive potential of computer viruses and worms. Enhanced by the rapidity and extensiveness of technological networks, the spread of social conformity, political rumor, fads, fashions, gossip, and hype threatens to destabilize established political order.


title: Viral phenomenon

text: Links between viral phenomena that spread on digital networks and the early sociological theories of Gabriel Tarde have been made in digital media theory by Tony D Sampson (2012; 2016). In this context, Tarde's social imitation thesis is used to argue against the biological deterministic theories of cultural contagion forwarded in memetics. In its place, Sampson proposes a Tarde-inspired somnambulist media theory of the viral.


title: Perturbator

text: James Kent (born 1993), known by his stage name Perturbator, is a French synthwave musician from Paris.


title: Perturbator

text: Kent has a background as a guitarist in several black metal bands. Since 2012, he has produced electronic music inspired by cyberpunk culture and from movies such as "Akira", "Ghost in the Shell", and "The Running Man". He uses a variety of software synths in his productions, such as the emulators of old vintage synths like the OB-X or the CS-80. Since his debut EP "Night Driving Avenger" he has released five full-length albums, the latest of which is "Lustful Sacraments" on the Blood Music label, and has performed several live shows. Several of his tracks were featured in the 2012 game "Hotline Miami" and its 2015 sequel "". Perturbator's EP "Sexualizer" was released in part to officially release the song "Miami Disco" and as a way to thank the developers of "Hotline Miami". The success of the "Hotline Miami" games resulted in a greater amount of exposure to a mainstream audience.


title: Perturbator

text: Perturbator released his fourth full-length album "The Uncanny Valley" on 6 May 2016 through Blood Music on a range of formats including Digibook CD, vinyl, and cassette tape. The album was met with generally positive reviews, with MetalSucks and Bloody Disgusting both writing in praise of it. Some versions of the album also included a bonus EP, with Kent writing that "The first three songs complement the themes covered within "The Uncanny Valley", and the final track—'VERS/US'—is a demo from "The Uncanny Valley" writing sessions that fits the mood and atmosphere of the album but didn't quite make it into the final cut." Bloody Disgusting gave the album 5/5 and wrote that "The Uncanny Valley" "is sure to not only please fans of the genre but also win over newcomers."


title: Perturbator

text: Kent became interested in music in part due to the influence of his parents, who are journalists and rock music critics. His parents were themselves musicians and had a tech trance band when they were young, which influenced Kent to take an interest in synthesizers.


title: Perturbator

text: Kent also has a side project called L'Enfant De La Forêt and his own label called "Music of the Void".


title: Perturbator

text: In 2019 Kent appeared in the documentary film "The Rise of the Synths", appearing alongside various other composers from the Synthwave scene, including filmmaker John Carpenter who also narrated the film which explored the origins and growth of the genre.


title: Normativity

text: Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A norm in this normative sense means a standard for evaluating or making judgments about behavior or outcomes. Normative is sometimes also used, somewhat confusingly, to mean relating to a descriptive standard: doing what is normally done or what most others are expected to do in practice. In this sense a norm is not evaluative, a basis for judging behavior or outcomes; it is simply a fact or observation about behavior or outcomes, without judgment. Many researchers in science, law, and philosophy try to restrict the use of the term normative to the evaluative sense and refer to the description of behavior and outcomes as positive, descriptive, predictive, or empirical.


title: Normativity

text: "Normative" has specialised meanings in different academic disciplines such as philosophy, social sciences, and law. In most contexts, normative means 'relating to an evaluation or value judgment.' Normative propositions tend to evaluate some object or some course of action. Normative content differs from descriptive content.


title: Normativity

text: Though philosophers disagree about how normativity should be understood, it has become increasingly common to understand normative claims as claims about reasons. As Derek Parfit explains:


title: Normativity

text: In philosophy, normative theory aims to make moral judgements on events, focusing on preserving something they deem as morally good, or preventing a change for the worse. The theory has its origins in Greece. Normative statements make claims about how institutions should or ought to be designed, how to value them, which things are good or bad, and which actions are right or wrong. Normative claims are usually contrasted with positive (i.e. descriptive, explanatory, or constative) claims when describing types of theories, beliefs, or propositions. Positive statements are (purportedly) factual, empirical statements that attempt to describe reality.


title: Normativity

text: For example, "children should eat vegetables", and "those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither" are normative claims. On the other hand, "vegetables contain a relatively high proportion of vitamins", and "a common consequence of sacrificing liberty for security is a loss of both" are positive claims. Whether a statement is normative is logically independent of whether it is verified, verifiable, or popularly held.


title: Normativity

text: There are several schools of thought regarding the status of normative statements and whether they can be rationally discussed or defended. Among these schools are the tradition of practical reason extending from Aristotle through Kant to Habermas, which asserts that they can, and the tradition of emotivism, which maintains that they are merely expressions of emotions and have no cognitive content.


title: Normativity

text: There is large debate in philosophy surrounding the normative and whether you can get a normative statement from an empirical one (ie whether you can get an 'ought' from an 'is', or a 'value' from a 'fact'). Aristotle is one scholar who believed that you could in fact get an ought from an is. He believed that the universe was teleological and that everything in it has a purpose. To explain why something is a certain way, Aristotle believed you could simply say that it is trying to be what it ought to be. On the contrary, David Hume believed you cannot get an ought from an is because no matter how much you think something ought to be a certain way it will not change the way it is. Despite this, Hume used empirical experimental methods whilst looking at the normative. Similar to this was Kames, who also used the study of facts and objective to discover a correct system of morals. The assumption that 'is' can lead to 'ought' is an important component of the philosophy of Roy Bhaskar.


title: Normativity

text: Normative statements and norms, as well as their meanings, are an integral part of human life. They are fundamental for prioritizing goals and organizing and planning. Thought, belief, emotion, and action are the basis of much ethical and political discourse; indeed, normativity is arguably the key feature distinguishing ethical and political discourse from other discourses (such as natural science).


title: Normativity

text: Much modern moral/ethical philosophy takes as its starting point the apparent variance between peoples and cultures regarding the ways they define what is considered to be appropriate/desirable/praiseworthy/valuable/good etc. (In other words, variance in how individuals, groups and societies define what is in accordance with their normative standards.) This has led philosophers such as A.J. Ayer and J.L. Mackie (for different reasons and in different ways) to cast doubt on the meaningfulness of normative statements. However, other philosophers, such as Christine Korsgaard, have argued for a source of normative value which is independent of individuals' subjective morality and which consequently attains (a lesser or greater degree of) objectivity.


title: Normativity

text: In the social sciences, the term "normative" has broadly the same meaning as its usage in philosophy, but may also relate, in a sociological context, to the role of cultural 'norms'; the shared values or institutions that structural functionalists regard as constitutive of the social structure and social cohesion. These values and units of socialization thus act to encourage or enforce social activity and outcomes that "ought" to (with respect to the norms implicit in those structures) occur, while discouraging or preventing social activity that "ought not" occur. That is, they promote social activity that is socially "valued" (see philosophy above). While there are always anomalies in social activity (typically described as "crime" or anti-social behaviour, see also normality (behavior)) the normative effects of popularly endorsed beliefs (such as "family values" or "common sense") push most social activity towards a generally homogeneous set. From such reasoning, however, functionalism shares an affinity with ideological conservatism.


title: Normativity

text: Normative economics deals with questions of what sort of economic policies should be pursued, in order to achieve desired (that is, valued) economic outcomes.


title: Normativity

text: In the academic discipline of International relations, Smith, Baylis & Owens in the "Introduction" to their 2008 book make the case that the normative position or normative theory is to make the world a better place and that this theoretical worldview aims to do so by being aware of implicit assumptions and explicit assumptions that constitute a non-normative position, and align or position the normative towards the loci of other key socio-political theories such as political liberalism, Marxism, political constructivism, political realism, political idealism and political globalization.


title: Normativity

text: In law, as an academic discipline, the term "normative" is used to describe the way something ought to be done according to a value position. As such, normative arguments can be conflicting, insofar as different values can be inconsistent with one another. For example, from one normative value position the purpose of the criminal process may be to repress crime. From another value position, the purpose of the criminal justice system could be to protect individuals from the moral harm of wrongful conviction.


title: Normativity

text: Normative elements are defined in International Organization for Standardization Directives Part 2 as "elements that describe the scope of the document, and which set out provisions". Provisions include "requirements", "recommendations" and "statements". "Statements" include permissions, possibilities and capabilities. A "requirement" is an "expression in the content of a document conveying criteria to be fulfilled if compliance with the document is to be claimed and from which no deviation is permitted." It is not necessary to comply with recommendations and statements in order to comply with the standard; it is necessary to comply only with the requirements (that are denoted by the verbal form "shall"). There is much confusion between "normative" and "requirement", however the ISO terminology is supported by national standards bodies worldwide and is the legitimate description of these terms in the context of standards documents.


title: Normativity

text: In standards terminology still used by some organizations, "normative" means "considered to be a prescriptive part of the standard". It characterises that part of the standard which describes what "ought" (see philosophy above) to be done within the application of that standard. It is implicit that application of that standard will result in a "valuable" outcome ("ibid."). For example, many standards have an introduction, preface, or summary that is considered non-normative, as well as a main body that is considered normative. "Compliance" is defined as "complies with the normative sections of the standard"; an object that complies with the normative sections but not the non-normative sections of a standard is still considered to be in compliance.


title: Normativity

text: Typically, "normative" is contrasted with "informative" (referring to the standard's descriptive, explanatory or positive content). Informative data is supplemental information such as additional guidance, supplemental recommendations, tutorials, commentary as well as background, history, development, and relationship with other elements. Informative data is not a requirement and doesn't compel compliance.


title: Lucy DeCoutere

text: Lucy DeCoutere (born 5 September 1970) is a Canadian actress and Royal Canadian Air Force officer, best known for her role as the character Lucy in the television series "Trailer Park Boys".


title: Lucy DeCoutere

text: DeCoutere grew up as the youngest child of four of British and Czech parents. She attended grad school at Concordia University in Montreal and has held various jobs, including a kindergarten teacher in South Korea, and attended teachers college at Griffith University in Australia.


title: Lucy DeCoutere

text: DeCoutere has performed in "The Vagina Monologues". She is a female voice on the computer game "Empress of the Deep - The Darkest Secret".


title: Lucy DeCoutere

text: DeCoutere is a Major in the Royal Canadian Air Force, presently based in Ontario. As of 2013, she was a Training Development Officer.


title: Lucy DeCoutere

text: On April 2, 2016, DeCoutere announced via Twitter that she was resigning from Trailer Park Boys after actor and co-star Mike Smith was arrested for allegedly assaulting a woman.


title: Lucy DeCoutere

text: Also on April 2, 2016, it was revealed by the Trailer Park Boys' publicist, Sheila Roberts, that DeCoutere had informed the show's producers a few weeks before Smith's arrest that she would not be returning for the show's next season. Statements released from the Trailer Park Boys production team indicated that the incident was misreported and that the call to the police was made by persons who had not witnessed the event. The woman was described by Smith as a friend, and she issued a statement that "at no time did [she] feel in danger" and that the incident was "perceived as something other than what it was." The charges against Smith were dropped due to a lack of evidence.


title: Lucy DeCoutere

text: In October 2014, DeCoutere joined seven anonymous women in publicly alleging sexual assault by former CBC Radio personality Jian Ghomeshi; she was the first to publicly identify herself. Ghomeshi was charged with sexual assault and choking, but was acquitted of all charges at the trial involving DeCoutere, with the judge expressing doubt of the witnesses' testimonies.


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: Kavita Kaushik (born 15 February 1981) is an Indian actress who primarily works in Hindi television. She made her debut with Ekta Kapoor's "Kutumb". Kaushik is well known for her portrayal of Chandramukhi Chautala in SAB TV's sitcom "F.I.R.", a role which established her career in the Indian television industry and made her a household name. She participated in reality shows "Nach Baliye" (2007), "Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa" (2015) and "Bigg Boss" (2020).


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: Kaushik was born on 15 February 1981 to a Brahmin family in New Delhi, India. She is the daughter of Dinesh Chandra Kaushik, a former CRPF officer. She graduated in Philosophy from Indraprastha College for Women, Delhi.


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: Kaushik had started modelling, hosting events and anchoring during her college days. In 2001 she went for auditions in New Delhi for "Kutumb" and moved to Mumbai. Kaushik joined Ekta Kapoor's "Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii", portraying the role of Manya Doshi. In 2002, she appeared in two shows "Kohi Apna Sa" and "Kammal".


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: In 2003, Kavita acted in Sony TV's "Kahani Terrii Merrii" and Zee TV's "Piya Ka Ghar" In 2004, she appeared in shows "Dil Kya Chahtha Hai", "Raat Hone Ko Hai" in an episodic appearance, "Ruby Duby Hub Dub" and "Tumhari Disha". From 2004 to 2005, she portrayed Naina Kulkarni, in Star Plus's longest running daily soap "Kumkum – Ek Pyara Sa Bandhan" This followed by appearing in another daily soap "Remix" as Pallavi. Kaushik made brief appearances in "Ye Meri Life Hai" and "C.I.D." as Sub Inspector Anushka.


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: Kaushik made a debut in Bollywood with the 2004 film, "Ek Hasina Thi" playing Saif Ali Khan's girlfriend. In 2005, Kaushik returned to television with the show, "Rooh", followed by playing Deepika in "Saarrthi"


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: In 2006, Kaushik's breakthrough finally came when she was roped in to playing the main lead in SAB TV's longest running sitcom, "F.I.R." as Chandramukhi Chautala. She portrayed the role until the end. In her initial days in the industry, Kaushik was offered mostly glamorous and negative roles owing to her tall frame and appealing personality. Her stint as Chandramukhi Chautala in "F.I.R." proved to be a watershed role in her career and it marked a break from the negative roles that she was being offered at that time. The sitcom proved to be a success, completing 1000 episodes. The role of a gusty female cop who speaks in a "Haryanavi" accent made Kaushik a renowned face of Indian television and won several accolades for her. During her time off "FIR", the show took a 20-year leap with actor Chitrashi Rawat playing the role of "Jawalamukhi Chautala", Chandramukhi's daughter. Kaushik made a comeback in "FIR" donning her previous role of Chandramukhi Chautala in July 2013 while Rawat was asked to quit the show. The show ended in January 2015.


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: In 2009, Kaushik presented Star Plus's reality show "Arre Deewano Mujhe Pehchano." Despite the sitcom's success, Kaushik left the show in January 2013 to star in another SAB TV sitcom "Tota Weds Maina" opposite Gaurav Gera. The story focused on Tota (Gera) and Maina (Kaushik), and the situations that ensued when they mistakenly marry one another. However, the show continually saw a dip in the "TRPs" and went off air in the April of the same year.


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: In addition to her various television roles, Kaushik has played minor roles in films like "Mumbai Cutting" (2009) and "Phillum City" (2011). She has even performed to an item song, Shakila Bano, in Apoorva Lakhia's "Zanjeer" (2013).


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: In 2014, Kaushik presented Sony TV's sports reality show, "Box Cricket League" along with VJ Andy. In July 2015, Kaushik participated Colors TV's celebrity dance show, "Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa 8", however she was eliminated in 2nd week. Kaushik stormed out of the Jhalak stage during its grand finale in October 2015 after the "Comedy Nights Bachao" team insulted her and turned her mike off. Kaushik said: In October, Kaushik hosted a show "Fakebook with Kavita". In June 2016, Kaushik landed the lead role of Bhanumati in SAB TV's "Dr. Bhanumati On Duty". Within a month, she quit the show and got replaced by Debina Bonnerjee. However, after the exit of Kaushik the show failed to do well and ended in September 2016.


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: Kaushik starred in a Bollywood film titled "Lollipop Since 1947". The film, which was directed by Anirudh Chautala, is a political satire set in a lower middle-class household where Kaushik plays wife to actor Deepak Dobriyal. In 2017, Kaushik made a celebrity guest appearance for Sakshi Tanwar's cooking reality show, "Tyohaar Ki Thaali" as a contestant. Kaushik made a debut in the Punjabi film industry with "Vekh Baraatan Challiyan" (2017). She later appeared in two more Punjabi films, "Vadhayiyaan Ji Vadhayiyaan" and "Nankana" along with Anas Rashid.


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: From 2018 until 2019, Kaushik presented Star Bharat's crime show, "Savdhaan India". In 2019, she starred in the Punjabi film, "Mindo Taseeldarni" as Mindo. In 2019, Kaushik participated in Colors TV's "Kitchen Champion 5" along with Aamir Ali and presented by Arjun Bijlani.


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: In October 2020, Kaushik participated in the reality show "Bigg Boss 14", entering as a wild card contestant. She first got evicted but later re-entered. She walked out of the house after a fight with Rubina Dilaik in November.


title: Kavita Kaushik

text: Kaushik was in a relationship with fellow television actor Karan Grover and they participated in celebrity couples dance reality show Nach Baliye 3. The couple parted their ways in 2008. She married her best friend businessman Ronnit Biswas, in January 2017.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: Benjamin Wilson Jr. (March 18, 1967 – November 21, 1984) was an American high school basketball player from Chicago, Illinois. Wilson, a Neal F. Simeon Vocational High School basketball player, was regarded as the top high school player in the U.S. by scouts and coaches attending the 1984 Athletes For Better Education basketball camp. Wilson is noted as the first Chicago athlete to receive this honor. On November 21, 1984, Wilson died due to injuries he sustained in a shooting the day before.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: Born in 1967 to Ben Wilson Sr. and Mary Wilson (née Gunter), Wilson was raised in the Chatham neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Mary Wilson had two sons from a previous marriage, including Curtis Glenn, and would have sons Anthony and Jeffrey with the elder Wilson before the couple divorced. Wilson began playing basketball in elementary school. He started at St. Dorothy School and transferred to Ruggles Elementary School, graduating in 1981. Wilson practiced at Cole Park in Chatham and participated in summer league games in Chicago. As his game developed, friends and family surrounding Wilson began to notice that his talent could make him one of the best players in the sport. They made it a point to protect Wilson from trouble as he got older; as he was entering high school, the nationwide crack epidemic was in full swing and some of the people closest to Wilson, including his older brother Curtis, became addicted. Chicago's violent crime rate was very high during this time as well, especially on the South Side.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: In the fall of 1981, Wilson began his freshman year at Simeon. During the 1982–83 season, he was the only sophomore on the varsity basketball team. For the 1983–84 season, Simeon advanced to the Illinois AA State Championship, which was held at Assembly Hall on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Behind Wilson, Simeon defeated West Aurora High School by nine points in the semifinals and beat top-ranked Evanston Township High School to win their first ever state title. "ESPN HS" regarded Wilson as the best junior in the country for the 1983–84 season. He would play basketball with R. Kelly and Nick Anderson. Wilson was described as "Magic Johnson with a jump shot" by his Simeon coach, Bob Hambric.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: In July 1984, Wilson attended the invitation-only Athletes For Better Education camp in Princeton, New Jersey. The camp allowed scouts and coaches to watch top high school students in a single location. After the week-long event, Wilson was ranked the number-one high school player in America. As his senior season approached, it was believed that Wilson was considering scholarship offers from the University of Illinois, DePaul University and Indiana University.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: On November 20, 1984, Wilson decided against lunching with teammates as he wanted to talk to his girlfriend, Jetun Rush, with whom he had been having significant issues. The couple had conceived a child early in 1984, a son named Brandon, and Rush would neither speak to Wilson nor let him see his child. Meanwhile, Calumet High School student Billy Moore was outside Simeon's campus with a pistol looking to avenge his cousin, who had been allegedly robbed of $10 by a Simeon student. After finding out the conflict had been resolved, Moore and his friend Omar Dixon decided to stay nearby and eventually the two followed Moore's friend Erica Murphy to a nearby luncheonette located on South Vincennes Avenue, just up the street from Simeon.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: Billy Moore, in the ESPN documentary about Ben Wilson, described what happened next. He and Omar Dixon were outside the luncheonette when Wilson and Rush came up the street behind them. Rush was trying to break away from Wilson, who in his desperation to speak to her failed to pay attention to where he was going and bumped into Moore. Moore called to Wilson to watch where he was going, which only served to make the already upset basketball star even more angry as he turned back and approached Moore. The two exchanged words and expletives and Moore revealed the pistol he had been carrying, a .22 caliber revolver.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: Seeing Moore's pistol, Wilson taunted him and dared him to shoot. Moore later said he felt that the much larger Wilson was just "punking" him and drew his weapon. Wilson then lunged at Moore, who responded by firing two shots at him. The first struck Wilson in his groin while the second struck him in his abdomen and caused significant internal bleeding. Moore and Dixon then fled. Within minutes, word of the shooting reached Simeon's campus, and a crowd gathered near Wilson. Emergency services were called at 12:37 PM local time, while Simeon basketball coach Bob Hambric made a call to WMAQ-TV newsman Warner Saunders and informed him of what happened.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: Paramedics were slow in reaching the scene and at approximately 1:20 PM, Hambric decided to take it upon himself to get his star player to the hospital. Just as he was getting into his car, an ambulance arrived to the scene on South Vincennes. According to Chicago's then emergency protocol, Wilson was taken to the nearest available hospital, which was St. Bernard Hospital in Englewood. St. Bernard was a small community hospital that was not equipped to handle emergencies or trauma cases like shootings, so a call was put out for any available trauma surgeon to report immediately to St. Bernard.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: At Simeon, the basketball team remained sequestered in the teachers' lounge for the rest of the day. Wilson's teammate Teri Sampson recalls that throughout the night, the reports progressively worsened, going from Wilson possibly recovering in time for the state playoffs, to perhaps missing a year of play, to possibly never playing again, to fighting for his life.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: Wilson's brother Curtis Glenn recounted in the ESPN documentary seeing his brother being wheeled by him in the hospital and noticing his feet were unnaturally pale. Upon examination it was discovered that Wilson's aorta was damaged by the second shot and there was no blood reaching his lower extremities. Despite doctors repeatedly telling her they could save her son, Mary Wilson's professional experience as a nurse told her that even if they were able to repair the damage, Ben would likely be in a persistent vegetative state afterward due to the massive blood he had already lost. Early the next morning, Mary Wilson asked that her son be taken off of life support, and Ben Wilson died shortly thereafter. He was buried at Oak Woods Cemetery.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: Soon after the shooting, Erica Murphy returned to her home to find Billy Moore sitting in her living room watching television. It was through this that he discovered who he had shot. Moore remained there until the police began pounding on Murphy's door looking for him later that evening. Dixon's arrest followed, with the charges upgraded to murder once word of Wilson's death reached the police. Police presented both suspects with a case theory that after Moore's conflict with Wilson, Dixon tried to pick Wilson's pockets, and then urged Moore to shoot Wilson. Both young men signed confessions to that effect that were later recanted. Despite being underage at the time, the Cook County State’s Attorney's office elected to try both men as adults.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: At their trial, the prosecutors presented the same case theory to the jury when the trial began the following year. Jetun Rush was the prosecution's lead witness and testified to the same effect. Moore and Dixon's attorneys chose to present Wilson's celebrity as the primary reason for the charges against the two teenagers. Both Moore and Dixon were convicted on charges of murder and attempted armed robbery. Per the recommendations of the prosecuting attorneys, they both were given significant prison sentences. Moore received a forty-year sentence while Dixon received a thirty-year sentence. Dixon was given the lesser sentence because even though he was involved in the crime, Moore had been the one to fire the fatal shots.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: The Wilson family's lawsuit against the hospital for inappropriate delay of medical care was settled in 1992 for an undisclosed amount. Dixon was released on parole in 2000, and Moore in 2005. Dixon later began an unrelated sentence for armed robbery, although Moore, interviewed in the 2012 documentary "Benji", claims that his own confession was coerced, and that Dixon was not involved in Wilson's shooting. Wilson died on the same day that Simeon was to open its season. The team chose to play the game, a rematch with Evanston, and won.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: He had one son, Brandon Wilson (b. September 1984), with his high school girlfriend Jetun Rush. Brandon, who was 10 weeks old when his father died, went on to play basketball at the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore, wearing Wilson's number 25.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: Brandon Sherrod Wilson became a star player at Riverside Church and St. Francis Prep, and Long Island Lutheran High School and would be recruited by the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. He played one season for UMES. He played professionally with the Long Island Wizards. Brandon went on to coach basketball. He attended and graduated from the Nassau Police Academy. He served in the Port Washington Police Department for 5 years. On January 13, 2022, Brandon Sherrod Wilson died in a car accident. Brandon died after he swerved into a shoulder on the Northern State Parkway, and hit a pole and two trees.


title: Ben Wilson (basketball)

text: Wilson's friend and Simeon teammate, former NBA and University of Illinois basketball player Nick Anderson, wore jersey number 25 during his career in Wilson's honor. Juwan Howard wore 25 at the University of Michigan as a tribute to Wilson. Former Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose, who graduated from Simeon in 2007, wore number 25, and the team won the state championship in 2006 and 2007. He also wore number 25 with the New York Knicks, after being traded. Simeon basketball player Jabari Parker had the number 25 stitched into the team sneakers during his time at Simeon. Following Nick Anderson's tribute to Wilson in wearing number 25 at Illinois, many others who graduated from Simeon and moved on to play for the Illini have carried on the tradition of wearing the jersey number 25. In the years since his murder in 1984, Deon Thomas, Bryant Notree, Calvin Brock, and Kendrick Nunn have all worn 25 during their basketball career at Illinois to honor Wilson. ESPN premiered a documentary on Wilson titled "Benji" on October 23, 2012.


title: Code of Federal Regulations

text: In the law of the United States, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is the codification of the general and permanent regulations promulgated by the executive departments and agencies of the federal government of the United States. The CFR is divided into 50 titles that represent broad areas subject to federal regulation.


title: Code of Federal Regulations

text: The CFR annual edition is published as a special issue of the "Federal Register" by the Office of the Federal Register (part of the National Archives and Records Administration) and the Government Publishing Office. In addition to this annual edition, the CFR is published online on the Electronic CFR (eCFR) website, which is updated daily.


title: Code of Federal Regulations

text: Congress frequently delegates authority to an executive branch agency to issue regulations to govern some sphere. These statutes are called "enabling legislation." Enabling legislation typically has two parts: a substantive scope (typically using language such as "The Secretary shall promulgate regulations to [accomplish some purpose or within some scope]" and (b) procedural requirements (typically to invoke rulemaking requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA,codified at ), Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA, codified at ), and several executive orders (primarily Executive Order 12866). Generally, each of these laws requires a process that includes publication of the proposed rules in a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), with certain cost-benefit analyses, and to request comments and participation in the decisionmaking, and adoption and publication of the final rule, via the "Federal Register". Rulemaking culminates in the inclusion of a regulation in the Code of Federal Regulations.


title: Code of Federal Regulations

text: The rules and regulations are first promulgated or published in the "Federal Register". The CFR is structured into 50 subject matter titles. Agencies are assigned chapters within these titles. The titles are broken down into chapters, parts, sections and paragraphs. For example, 42 C.F.R. § 260.11(a)(1) would indicate "title 42, part 260, section 11, paragraph (a)(1)." Conversationally, it would be read as "forty-two C F R two-sixty point eleven a one" or similar.


title: Code of Federal Regulations

text: While new regulations are continually becoming effective, the printed volumes of the CFR are issued once each calendar year, on this schedule:


title: Code of Federal Regulations

text: The Office of the Federal Register also keeps an unofficial, online version of the CFR, the e-CFR, which is normally updated within two days after changes that have been published in the "Federal Register" become effective. The Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules lists rulemaking authority for regulations codified in the CFR.


title: Code of Federal Regulations

text: The Federal Register Act originally provided for a complete compilation of all existing regulations promulgated prior to the first publication of the "Federal Register", but was amended in 1937 to provide a codification of all regulations every five years. The first edition of the CFR was published in 1938. Beginning in 1963 for some titles and for all titles in 1967, the Office of the Federal Register began publishing yearly revisions, and beginning in 1972 published revisions in staggered quarters.


title: Code of Federal Regulations

text: On March 11, 2014, Rep. Darrell Issa introduced the Federal Register Modernization Act (H.R. 4195; 113th Congress), a bill that would revise requirements for the filing of documents with the Office of the Federal Register for inclusion in the "Federal Register" and for the publication of the "Code of Federal Regulations" to reflect the changed publication requirement in which they would be available online but would not be required to be printed. The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) strongly opposed the bill, arguing that the bill undermines citizens' right to be informed by making it more difficult for citizens to find their government's regulations. According to AALL, a survey they conducted "revealed that members of the public, librarians, researchers, students, attorneys, and small business owners continue to rely on the print" version of the "Federal Register". AALL also argued that the lack of print versions of the "Federal Register" and "CFR" would mean the 15 percent of Americans who don't use the internet would lose their access to that material. The House voted on July 14, 2014 to pass the bill 386–0. However, the bill failed to come to a vote in the Senate, and died upon the start of the 114th Congress.


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: Return of the Dream Canteen is the thirteenth studio album by the American rock band the Red Hot Chili Peppers, released on October 14, 2022, through Warner Records as a double LP and single CD. Produced by Rick Rubin, it was recorded during the same sessions as the band's previous studio album, "Unlimited Love", released earlier in 2022.


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: The first single, "Tippa My Tongue", was released on August 19, 2022 and was followed by the album's second single, "The Drummer", on October 14, 2022.


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: The Red Hot Chili Peppers wrote and recorded "Return of the Dream Canteen" during the same sessions as their previous studio album, "Unlimited Love" (2022). The sessions marked the return of guitarist John Frusciante after a ten-year absence, and resulted in almost 50 songs being recorded with producer Rick Rubin and recording engineer Ryan Hewitt. The band initially intended for 40 of the tracks to be released as one album, spread over seven physical discs. The band's label, Warner Bros. Records, resisted this release strategy, with a "compromise" being reached where the band split thirty-four songs across two separate studio albums.


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: Reflecting on the wealth of material that the band recorded, drummer Chad Smith noted: "We just wrote a bunch of music and wrote and wrote with no time constraints and ended up recording all these songs. We always record more than what comes out on a record, but often they get left in the vault or unfinished or whatever. But we finished them all. We just felt like we had too many good songs to not put out another record. It’s not like a b-sides record or anything like that. Everything felt good and right."


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: The band sequenced both "Unlimited Love" and "Return of the Dream Canteen" to become distinct listening experiences from one another: "We thought, 'These [songs] go together here and these go together there and, look, we’ve got two things, both great.'"


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: Alongside performing guitar and backing vocals across the album's seventeen tracks, band member John Frusciante recorded multiple keyboard and synthesiser overdubs during the sessions. Regarding his electronic-influenced parts, Frusciante noted: "What I’m doing has its roots in Brian Eno’s work in Roxy Music — where synths and other gadgets are used to alter the sound of a live group, create atmosphere, sonic movement, and generally have unexpected sounds come in every so often." Frusciante embraced several effects and studio techniques to alter and augment his band mates' performances: "A little bit can go a long way towards taking a live band out of the real world and into an alternate reality. Also, a lot of the lead vocal treatments, which I did with delays and reverbs and sometimes synths, are things I do in my electronic music to samples. I do these things to all the instruments. The electronic part of it has as much to do with using the studio in a creative way as it does with synths."


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: During the writing process, Frusciante and drummer Chad Smith discussed Frusciante's love of electronic breakbeats, a form of drum sampling used in hip hop, jungle, drum and bass and UK garage music. As a result of Frusciante playing Smith "a ton of three-10 second breaks in a row", Smith incorporated these influences into his playing during the "Return of the Dream Canteen" and "Unlimited Love" sessions. The drumbeat to the song, "Peace and Love", was inspired by a breakbeat from the Isaac Hayes song, "Breakthrough".


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: The album's title, "Return of the Dream Canteen", represents "a well of creative prosperity" to vocalist Anthony Kiedis, who noted that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the band having a significant amount of time to write and record together: "It was also just a stretch of weird time where everyone stayed home for two years, and time got a little bit elastic. Instead of having to rush, we just said, 'OK let's keep writing music,' and this was the result - and that was the phrase that came to mind."


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: The album's artwork was created by French artists, Thami Nabil and Julien Calemard, who had previously created a music video for the track "Poster Child" from "Unlimited Love". The pair were discovered by the band's visual creative director and Frusciante's wife, Marcia Pinna, while looking for artists to create imagery for her own music, under the name Aura T-09: "I loved their drawings. They just have a really interesting take on illustration and animation. They have an eye. They have subject matter that’s really interesting; it’s always a bit weird and trippy."


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: Upon "Return of the Dream Canteen"'s release, Nabil and Calemard created animated music videos for each track on the album.


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: The band announced the album during their Global Stadium Tour on July 23, 2022 at their show in Denver with pre-sales of the album being made available which included various versions of the album on limited edition vinyl.


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: The album's first single, "Tippa My Tongue", was released alongside a music video on August 19, 2022. A second song from the album, "Eddie", which was inspired by musician Eddie Van Halen, was released as a promotional single on September 23, 2022. "Eddie" was performed for the first time on October 9, 2022 at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. It was the first song from the album to be performed live. "The Drummer" was released as the album's second commercial single alongside its music video on October 14, 2022.


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: "Return of the Dream Canteen" received generally positive reviews from critics. It currently has a score of 69 on Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews". "Rolling Stone" gave particular praise to Frusciante's performance on the album, listing his parts on "Eddie" and "Handful" as highlights. "Consequence" praised much of the material, but also noted that "moments that could have otherwise made a significant impact feel diluted", due to the band's rapid release schedule in 2022.


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: "Spill Magazine's" Gerrod Harris praises the release and states, "Overall, "Return Of The Dream Canteen" feels like a less mainstream "Unlimited Love". Written and recorded during the same sessions, this is only natural; however, there is an element of creativity and reckless abandon to "Return Of The Dream Canteen" that sees the pop influence of the sessions – while still present – take a back seat. These aren’t B-sides, nor are they leftovers, instead, "Return Of The Dream Canteen" is a weirder and far more experimental record."


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: The album made its debut at number-one in six countries. It reached number three in the band's home country of the United States on the Billboard 200 chart and reached number-one on the Top Albums Chart giving the band their second number-one album in 2022 and making them the first rock band with two number-one albums in the same year in 17 years since System of a Down in 2005 accomplished this.


title: Return of the Dream Canteen

text: "Tippa My Tongue" became the band's fourth number-one single on the Rock & Alternative Airplay chart and made them the only band with two number-one singles on that chart in 2022, the other being "Black Summer". On the Alternative Airplay chart, the song reached the 15th number one and became the band's 27th top ten single on that chart, one shy of the record held by the Foo Fighters.


title: Bulge bracket

text: Bulge bracket banks are the world's largest multi-national investment banks, serving mostly large corporations, institutional investors and governments. There is no definitive list of bulge bracket banks.


title: Bulge bracket

text: Bulge bracket banks usually provide both advisory and financing banking services, as well as the sales, market making, and research on a broad array of financial products including equities, credit, rates, commodities and their derivatives. They are also heavily involved in the invention of new financial products, such as mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in the 1980s, credit default swaps in the 1990s and collateralized debt obligations (CDO) in the 2000s and today, carbon emission trading and insurance-linked products.


title: Bulge bracket

text: Bulge bracket firms are usually primary dealers in US treasury securities. Bulge bracket banks are also global in the sense that they have a strong presence in all four of the world's major regions: the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific (APAC).


title: Bulge bracket

text: The name comes from the way investment banks are listed on the "tombstone", or public notification of a financial transaction. There is often debate over which banks are considered to belong to the bulge bracket. Membership implies prestige, but there are no precise criteria for inclusion and financial power is transient. Various rankings are often cited, such as Thomson Reuters league tables, Bloomberg 20, or other league tables.


title: Bulge bracket

text: According to biographer Ron Chernow's 1990 book "The House of Morgan", "in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the top tier—called the bulge bracket—consisted of Morgan Stanley; First Boston; Kuhn, Loeb; and Dillon, Read." Morgan Stanley appeared above the other members of the bulge bracket by demanding and receiving the role of syndicate manager. While order within brackets was otherwise determined alphabetically, Chernow describes this positioning as being of "life-and-death" importance to the firms. Chernow says that Bache Halsey Stuart Shields Incorporated's name was chosen based on a desire to be placed as high as possible within its bracket.


title: Bulge bracket

text: According to Chernow, Morgan Stanley "queasily noted the rise of Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs, which were using their trading skills to chip away at the four dominant firms." In 1975, to more reflect economic reality, Morgan Stanley removed Kuhn, Loeb and Dillon, Read, and replaced them with Merrill Lynch, Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs. Chernow describes' Morgan Stanley's place at the top of the bracket as a "gilded anachronism" by the late 1970s.


title: Bulge bracket

text: In the 1990s, the dominance of the bulge bracket firms was globalizing. In 2001 "The New York Times" reported that "The real battle for the bulge bracket is taking place in Europe."


title: Bulge bracket

text: As of 2020, the Corporate Finance Institute, a Canadian financial analyst certification organization, as well as Wall Street Oasis, an online investment banking and finance forum, listed the following investment banks as bulge bracket banks:


title: Bulge bracket

text: By extension, the international business world refers to service providers as "bulge bracket" such as "bulge bracket law firms" when they are capable of servicing global clients thanks to their global presence. Just like bulge bracket banks, bulge bracket service providers have a strong presence in all three of the world's major regions: The Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.


title: Wafer

text: A wafer is a crisp, often sweet, very thin, flat, light and dry biscuit, often used to decorate ice cream, and also used as a garnish on some sweet dishes. Wafers can also be made into cookies with cream flavoring sandwiched between them. They frequently have a waffle surface pattern but may also be patterned with insignia of the food's manufacturer or may be patternless. Some chocolate bars, such as Kit Kat and Coffee Crisp, are wafers with chocolate in and around them.


title: Wafer

text: A communion wafer is a type of unleavened bread consumed after transubstantiation as part of the Christian ritual of communion.


title: Wafer

text: Special "spa wafers" (Czech: "lázeňské oplatky", Slovak: "kúpeľné oblátky") are produced in the spa towns of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic (e.g. Piešťany). The production of the wafers in Karlsbad and Marienbad was traditional to the towns' German-speaking population, who, after the ethnic cleansing of the area, brought the craft to Germany.


title: Wafer

text: Christmas wafers are made of only wheat flour and water. Their patterns often depict religious scenes, are a Central European Roman Catholic Christmas tradition celebrated in Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and Italian families on Christmas Eve. These do not have sacramental value like the communion wafer. Christmas wafers are symbolic bread to share among guests to emphasize the close relationship by eating bread together. This gesture has a positive meaning, but additional wishes are often made as well. They are called "opłatek" (Latin: oblatum) in Polish, as opposed to "wafel", which denotes a common wafer.


title: Wafer

text: A variation of a wafer, considered a part of the traditional cuisine in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador, Venezuela, and México, is known as an "oblea". It is usually eaten as a dessert with two pieces filled with "arequipe", "dulce de leche" (milk caramel), and/or condensed milk in the middle. In some places, they might contain cheese, fruits, or chantilly cream, among others.


title: Wafer

text: The pink wafer is a wafer-based confectionery originally made by Edinburgh's Crawford's Biscuits in the United Kingdom. It is now made by United Biscuits, the company that took over the firm in 1960, still using the Crawford's name. The snack consists of crème sandwiched between wafers (dyed pink).


title: Wafer

text: "Freska" is an Egyptian wafer sold only on beaches in the summertime. It is made from two thin circular wafers filled with a thin layer of honey syrup.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: In late February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia. It marked the onset of four decades of the party's rule in the country.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: The coup's significance extended well beyond the state's boundaries as it was a clear marker along the already well-advanced road to full-fledged Cold War. The event alarmed Western countries and helped spur quick adoption of the Marshall Plan, the creation of a state in West Germany, paramilitary measures to keep communists out of power in France, Greece and especially Italy, and steps toward mutual security that would, in little over a year, result in the establishment of NATO and the definitive drawing of the Iron Curtain until the Revolutions of 1989.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: In the aftermath of World War II, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) was in a favorable position. Its powerful influence on Czechoslovak politics since the 1920s, its clean wartime record and cooperation with non-Communist parties, its identification with the Soviet Union, one of the country's liberators, and its determination to become the country's leading political force without alarming the West (a strategy also followed by Communist parties in Italy and France) dovetailed with popular opposition to Nazi rule, the longing for real change that followed it, and the new political realities of living within the Soviet orbit to produce a surge in membership from 40,000 in 1945 to 1.35 million in 1948. Moreover, the Soviets viewed the country as a strategic prize: it bordered West Germany and boasted uranium deposits around Jáchymov.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: Nonetheless, party leader Klement Gottwald said in 1945 that "in spite of the favourable situation, the next goal is not soviets and socialism, but rather carrying out a really thorough democratic national revolution", thereby linking his party to the Czechoslovak democratic tradition (he even claimed to be a disciple of Tomáš Masaryk) and to Czech nationalism by capitalizing on popular intense anti-German feelings. During the early postwar period, working with the other parties in a coalition called the National Front, the Communists kept up the appearance of being willing to work within the system.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: Thus, in the 1946 election, the KSČ and KSS won 38% of the vote. This was the best-ever performance by a European Communist party in a free election, and was far more than the 22% won by their Hungarian counterparts the following year in the only other free and fair postwar election in the Soviet area of influence. President Edvard Beneš, not himself a Communist but very amenable to cooperation with the Soviets, and who hoped for restraint by the Allied powers, thus invited Gottwald to be prime minister. Although the government still had a non-Communist majority (nine Communists and seventeen non-Communists), the KSČ had initial control over the police and armed forces, and came to dominate other key ministries such as those dealing with propaganda, education, social welfare and agriculture; they also soon dominated the civil service.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: However, by the summer of 1947 the KSČ had alienated whole blocs of potential voters. The activities of the police—headed by Interior Minister Václav Nosek, a Communist—were acutely offensive to many citizens; farmers objected to talk of collectivization, and some workers were angry at Communist demands that they increase output without being given higher wages. The general expectation was that the Communists would be soundly defeated in the May 1948 elections. That September, at the first Cominform meeting, Andrei Zhdanov observed that Soviet victory had helped achieve "the complete victory of the working class over the bourgeoisie in every East European land except Czechoslovakia, where the power contest still remains undecided." This clearly implied the KSČ should be accelerating its own efforts to take complete power. That notion would be reinforced during the Prague Spring, when party archives were opened and showed that Stalin gave up the whole idea of a parliamentary path for Czechoslovakia when the Communist parties of France and Italy failed to achieve power in 1947 and 1948.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: The KSČ's number-two leader, general secretary Rudolf Slánský, represented the KSČ at the meeting. He returned to Prague with a plan for the final seizure of power. Slánský remarked, "as in the international field, we have gone on the offensive on the domestic front as well." The KSČ pursued a two-pronged strategy. The party knew it had to maintain the façade of working within the electoral political system and was aware that a revolutionary coup would be unacceptable. It desired to gain an absolute majority at elections scheduled for 1948, but the fracturing of the left-wing coalition made this unrealistic. This pushed the party into extra-parliamentary action. The organization of "spontaneous" demonstrations to "express the will of the people" and continuous visits to parliament by workers' delegations were meant to ensure "mobilization of the masses".


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: During the winter of 1947–48, both in the cabinet and in parliament tension between the Communists and their opponents led to increasingly bitter conflict. Matters came to a head in February 1948, when Nosek illegally extended his powers by attempting to purge remaining non-Communist elements in the National Police Force. The security apparatus and police were being transformed into instruments of the KSČ, and consequently, according to John Grenville, endangering basic civic freedoms.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: On 12 February, the non-Communists in the cabinet demanded punishment for the offending Communists in the government and an end to their supposed subversion. Nosek, backed by Gottwald, refused to yield. He and his fellow Communists threatened to use force and, in order to avoid defeat in parliament, mobilised groups of their supporters in the country. On 21 February, twelve non-Communist ministers resigned in protest after Nosek refused to reinstate eight non-Communist senior police officers despite a majority vote of the cabinet in favour of doing so. Most of the ministers remained at their posts, with Social Democratic leader Zdeněk Fierlinger making no secret of his support for the Communists.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: The non-Communists assumed that Beneš would refuse to accept their resignations, keeping them in a caretaker government and in the process embarrassing the Communists enough to make them yield. Beneš initially insisted that no new government could be formed which did not include ministers from the non-Communist parties. However, an atmosphere of mounting tension, coupled with massive Communist-led demonstrations occurring throughout the country, convinced Beneš to remain neutral over the issue, for fear the KSČ foment an insurrection and give the Red Army a pretext to invade the country and restore order.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: In Grenville's opinion, had Beneš held his line, the Communists would not have been able to form a government. The historian believed there could have been only two non-violent means of resolving the crisis—give way to the non-Communists or risk defeat in early elections which the KSČ would not have had time to rig. The non-Communists saw this as a moment of opportunity, needing to act quickly before the Communists had total control over the police and threatened the electoral process.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: At the same time, the non-Communist ministers seemed to behave as if this was just an old-fashioned pre-1939 governmental crisis. They did not know that the Communists were mobilizing from below to take complete power. Soviet deputy foreign minister Valerian Zorin, who had been his country's ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1945 to 1947, returned to Prague to help with the final arrangements for the coup. Armed militia and police took over Prague, Communist demonstrations were mounted and an anti-Communist student demonstration was broken up. The ministries of the non-Communist ministers were occupied, civil servants dismissed and the ministers prevented from entering their own ministries. The army, under the direction of Defence Minister Ludvík Svoboda, who was formally non-partisan but had facilitated Communist infiltration into the officer corps, was confined to barracks and did not interfere.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: Communist "Action Committees" and trade union militias were quickly set up, armed, and sent into the streets, as well as being prepared to carry through a purge of anti-Communists. In a speech before 100,000 of these people, Gottwald threatened a general strike unless Beneš agreed to form a new Communist-dominated government. Zorin at one point offered the services of the Red Army, camped on the country's borders. However, Gottwald declined the offer, believing that the threat of violence combined with heavy political pressure would be enough to force Beneš to surrender. As he said after the coup, Beneš "knows what strength is, and this led him to evaluate this [situation] realistically".


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: On 25 February 1948, Beneš, fearful of civil war and Soviet intervention, capitulated. He accepted the resignations of the non-Communist ministers and appointed a new government in accordance with KSČ demands. Gottwald continued as prime minister of a government dominated by Communists and pro-Moscow Social Democrats. The Social Democrats' leader, Fierlinger, had been a proponent of closer ties with the Communists for some time; as mentioned above, he openly sided with the Communists during the dispute. Members of the People's, Czech National Social Party and Slovak Democratic parties still figured, so the government was still nominally a coalition. However, the other parties had been taken over by Communist sympathizers, and ministers using these labels were fellow travellers handpicked by the Communists. The only senior minister who was neither a Communist nor a fellow traveller was Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, who was however found dead two weeks later outside a third-floor window. Some friends and admirers believed Masaryk committed suicide out of despair. However, there was longstanding Western suspicion was that he had actually been thrown to his death, which remains to this day, with an investigation closed in 2021 ruling murder, accident, or suicide all possible.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: Following the coup, the Communists moved quickly to consolidate their power. Thousands were fired and hundreds were arrested. Thousands fled the country to avoid living under Communism. The National Assembly, freely elected two years earlier, quickly fell into line and gave Gottwald's revamped government a vote of confidence in March. The 230-0 result was unanimous, although nine MPs had resigned following the coup.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: On 9 May, a new constitution was approved by parliament, which declared Czechoslovakia a "people's democratic state." Although it was not a completely Communist document (indeed, the KSČ was not even mentioned), it was close enough to the Soviet model that Beneš refused to sign it. At the 30 May elections, voters were presented with a single list from the National Front, which officially won 89.2% of the vote; within the National Front list, the Communists had an absolute majority of 214 seats (160 for the main party and 54 for the Slovak branch). This majority grew even larger when the Social Democrats merged with the Communists later in the year. Practically all non-Communist parties that had participated in the 1946 election were also represented within the National Front list and thus received parliamentary seats. However, by this time they had all transformed themselves into loyal partners of the Communists, and the few independent-minded members of those parties were either in prison or in exile. The National Front was converted into a broad patriotic organisation dominated by the Communists, and no political group outside it was allowed to exist. Consumed by these events, Beneš resigned on 2 June and was succeeded by Gottwald twelve days later. Beneš died in September, bringing a symbolic close to the sequence of events, and was buried before an enormous and silent throng come to mourn the passing of a popular leader and of the democracy he had come to represent.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: Czechoslovakia was ruled by a Communist regime until the Velvet Revolution of 1989. More immediately, the coup became synonymous with the Cold War. The loss of the last remaining democracy in Eastern Europe came as a profound shock to millions. For the second time in a decade, Western eyes saw Czechoslovak independence and democracy snuffed out by a foreign totalitarian dictatorship intent on dominating the small country (though unlike in 1938–39, the KSČ did most of the "dirty work").


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: The USSR seemed to have completed the formation of a monolithic Soviet bloc and concluded the partition of Europe, which appeared to vindicate and certainly crystallized the pessimistic appraisals of Soviet power in the West by people who felt certain that it was folly to try to do business with Moscow. Because its impact was equally profound in Western Europe as in the United States, it helped unify Western countries against the Communist bloc. It gave an air of prescience to the French and Italian governments for having forced their local Communists out of their governments a year earlier.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: Additionally, it finally discredited Soviet moves to prevent the formation of a West German state and accelerated the construction of a West European alliance, the Treaty of Brussels, the following month; mutual security was the new watchword. Until early 1948, Western and Soviet representatives had communicated in regular meetings at the foreign minister level; the Czech coup constituted a final rupture in relations between the two superpowers, with the West now signaling its determination to commit itself to collective self-defence. By early March, even a previously wavering France was demanding a concrete military alliance with definite promises to help in certain circumstances.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: From Moscow's point of view, the coup could not have come at a worse time. The government crisis in Prague lasted from 20 to 27 February, just when Western foreign ministers were meeting in London. From the West's perspective, the coup was an example of Communism in its most unacceptable form; Moscow seemed to the West bent on ruthless expansion and the suppression of freedom.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: The coup's impact in the United States was immediate. Opposition towards the Marshall Plan had developed in the United States Congress, but a shocked and aroused public opinion overwhelmed this, and Congress promptly approved over US$5 billion for the first year of the European Recovery Program.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: Until the Czech coup, the emphasis in Washington had been on economic containment of Communism, primarily through the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and a heavy reliance on atomic power as a shield to support it. President Harry S. Truman understood that in 1946 and 1947 the American people were not prepared for a massive conventional arms buildup or a confrontation with the Soviet Union. He was reluctant to increase the military budget dramatically and instead chose a gradual and balanced buildup. Expecting to spend large amounts on the Marshall Plan, he sought to keep the annual defence budget below $15 billion.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: However, the coup served to expose the limitations of U.S. conventional forces and its over-reliance on atomic power. At the time of the Prague crisis, roughly ten ill-equipped and poorly trained U.S. and West European divisions faced over thirty Soviet divisions. When taking into account Defense Department complaints that the U.S. atomic arsenal and the air power to use it were starkly inadequate, it became clear that the U.S. lacked a credible military deterrent in Europe.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: The Czech coup changed the whole tone of the debate on the U.S. military budget. It helped spark a new round of Pentagon lobbying for a substantial rise in the military budget, while the NSC called for "a worldwide counter-offensive" against the Soviet bloc, including U.S. military aid to the Western European Union. Truman responded to the crisis with a grim nationwide radio address on 17 March calling for a renewal of selective service, which had been allowed to lapse the previous year. He also sought congressional approval for a programme of Universal Military Training (UMT). He aimed to send a signal of determination to the Soviet Union that U.S. military posture was strong and that the country with this expansion of military preparedness was also prepared in the future to rearm massively if necessary. Congress rejected UMT, but did vote to resume selective service, and voted the money for a seventy-group air force, 25% larger than the official request.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: Nevertheless, the change in American foreign policy in response to the crisis-like atmosphere of early 1948 was more symbolic than real. American willingness to consult on new security arrangements for Europe was the product of neither a changed estimate of Soviet intentions nor a readiness to take on a larger share of the burden of defending Western Europe. Rather, it was a tactical maneuver intended to mitigate the effect of the coup in Czechoslovakia and the brief but intense war scare that followed.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: As a result, a series of quick fixes followed to ensure that American forces would not be caught completely off guard in the event of war. More important was the sensitivity with which American officials now treated the nervousness of their European counterparts; the Americans now became more willing to take steps to boost morale in Europe and ease the now-widespread anxieties there. The coup and the Berlin Blockade that June made clear that constant reassurance was needed to bind the Europeans to the U.S. system; hence, the remobilization of U.S. armed forces began.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: Indeed, the fear of war between the Soviets and the West reached a high point after the coup. On 5 March, General Lucius D. Clay sent an alarming telegram from Berlin that advised of its likelihood: "Within the last few weeks, I have felt a subtle change in Soviet attitude which I cannot define but which now gives me a feeling that it may come with dramatic suddenness". General Omar Bradley later wrote that when he read Clay's "lugubrious assessment" in Washington he was "lifted right out of [his] chair", and George F. Kennan wrote that the coup and the telegram had combined to create "a real war scare" where "the military and the intelligence fraternity" had "overreacted in the most deplorable way". Only a week later, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended rearmament and a restoration of the draft.


title: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

text: In fact, Clay's warning had more to do with a request by Army director of intelligence Lt. Gen. Stephen Chamberlain for material that would persuade Congress to spend more on military readiness than with any hard evidence of Soviet intent to launch a war in Europe. Still, in Europe too in February and March "war was being commonly, even calmly discussed in streets and cafes on the Continent", a fear exacerbated by reports on 27 February that Stalin had invited Finland to sign a treaty of mutual assistance, contributing to expectations it would be the next domino to fall; pressure for a treaty was placed on Norway too.