title: Daimon

text: The word is derived from Proto-Indo-European "daimon" "provider, divider (of fortunes or destinies)," from the root "*da-" "to divide". Daimons were possibly seen as the souls of men of the golden age acting as tutelary deities, according to entry at Liddell & Scott. See also daimonic: a religious, philosophical, literary and psychological concept.


title: Daimon

text: Daimons are lesser divinities or spirits, often personifications of abstract concepts, beings of the same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts, chthonic heroes, spirit guides, forces of nature, or the deities themselves (see Plato's "Symposium"). According to Hesiod's myth, "great and powerful figures were to be honoured after death as a daimon…" A daimon is not so much a type of quasi-divine being, according to Burkert, but rather a non-personified "peculiar mode" of their activity.


title: Daimon

text: In Hesiod's "Theogony", Phaëton becomes an incorporeal "daimon" or a divine spirit, but, for example, the ills released by Pandora are deadly deities, "keres", not "daimones". From Hesiod also, the people of the Golden Age were transformed into "daimones" by the will of Zeus, to serve mortals benevolently as their guardian spirits; "good beings who dispense riches…[nevertheless], they remain invisible, known only by their acts". The "daimones" of venerated heroes were localized by the construction of shrines, so as not to wander restlessly, and were believed to confer protection and good fortune on those offering their respects.


title: Daimon

text: One tradition of Greek thought, which found agreement in the mind of Plato, was of a daimon which existed within a person from their birth, and that each individual was obtained by a singular daimon prior to their birth by way of lot.


title: Daimon

text: In the Old Testament, evil spirits appear in the book of Judges and in Kings. In the Septuagint, made for the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, the Greek "ángelos" (, "messenger") translates the Hebrew word "mal'ak", while "daimónion" (; pl. "daimónia" ()), which carries the meaning of a natural spirit that is less than divine (see supernatural), translates the Hebrew word "shedim" as well as the word "se'irim" in some verses and words for idols (foreign deities), and describes the being Asmodeus in the Book of Tobit. The use of "daimōn" in the New Testament's original Greek text caused the Greek word to be applied to the Judeo-Christian concept of an evil spirit by the early second century AD.


title: Daimon

text: Homer's use of the words "theoí" (, "gods") and "daímones" () suggests that, while distinct, they are similar in kind. Later writers developed the distinction between the two. Plato in "Cratylus" speculates that the word "daimōn" (, "deity") is synonymous to "daēmōn" (, "knowing or wise"), however, it is more probably "daiō" (, "to divide, to distribute destinies, to allot").


title: Daimon

text: In Plato's "Symposium", the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a deity, but rather a "great daemon" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything daemonic is between divine and mortal" (202d–e), and she describes daemons as "interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above..." (202e). In Plato's "Apology of Socrates", Socrates claimed to have a "daimonion" (literally, a "divine something") that frequently warned him—in the form of a "voice"—against mistakes but never told him what to do. The Platonic Socrates, however, never refers to the "daimonion" as a "daimōn"; it was always referred to as an impersonal "something" or "sign". By this term he seems to indicate the true nature of the human soul, his newfound self-consciousness. Paul Shorey sees the "daimonion" not as an inspiration but as "a kind of "spiritual tact" checking Socrates from any act opposed to his true moral and intellectual interests."


title: Daimon

text: Regarding the charge brought against Socrates in 399, Plato surmised "Socrates does wrong because he does not believe in the gods in whom the city believes, but introduces other daemonic beings..." Burkert notes that "a special being watches over each individual, a "daimon" who has obtained the person at his birth by lot, is an idea which we find in Plato, undoubtedly from earlier tradition. The famous, paradoxical saying of Heraclitus is already directed against such a view: 'character is for man his daimon'".


title: Daimon

text: In the ancient Greek religion, daimon designates not a specific class of divine beings, but a peculiar mode of activity: it is an occult power that drives humans forward or acts against them. Since daimon is the veiled countenance of divine activity, every deity can act as daimon.


title: Daimon

text: A special knowledge of daimones is claimed by Pythagoreans, whereas for Plato, daimon is a spiritual being who watches over each individual, and is tantamount to a higher self, or an angel. While Plato is called ‘divine’ by Neoplatonists, Aristotle is regarded as daimonios, meaning ‘an intermediary to deities' – therefore Aristotle stands to Plato as an angel to a deity.


title: Daimon

text: For Proclus, daimones are the intermediary beings located between the celestial objects and the terrestrial inhabitants.


title: Daimon

text: The Hellenistic Greeks divided daemons into good and evil categories: "agathodaímōn" (, "noble spirit"), from "agathós" (, "good, brave, noble, moral, lucky, useful"), and "kakodaímōn" (, "malevolent spirit"), from "kakós" (, "bad, evil"). They resemble the Arabic jinni (or "genie"), and in their humble efforts to help mediate the good and ill fortunes of human life, they resemble the Christian guardian angel and adversarial demon, respectively. "Eudaimonia" () came to mean "well-being" or "happiness". The comparable Roman concept is the "genius" who accompanies and protects a person or presides over a place (see "genius loci").


title: Daimon

text: A distorted view of Homer's daemon results from an anachronistic reading in light of later characterizations by Plato and Xenocrates, his successor as head of the Academy, of the daemon as a potentially dangerous lesser spirit: Burkert states that in the "Symposium", Plato has "laid the foundation" that would make it all but impossible to imagine the "daimon" in any other way with Eros, who is neither god nor mortal but a mediator in between, and his metaphysical doctrine of an <poem>incorporeal, pure actuality, "energeia" ... identical to its performance: ‘thinking of thinking’, "noesis noeseos" is the most blessed existence, the highest origin of everything. ‘This is the god. On such a principle heaven depends, and the cosmos.’ The highest, the best is one; but for the movement of the planets a plurality of unmoved movers must further be assumed.


title: Daimon

text: In the monotheism of the mind, philosophical speculation has reached an end-point. That even this is a self-projection of a human, of the thinking philosopher, was not reflected on in ancient philosophy. In Plato there is an incipient tendency toward the apotheosis of "nous". ... He needs a closeness and availability of the divine that is offered neither by the stars nor by metaphysical principles. Here a name emerged to fill the gap, a name which had always designated the incomprehensible yet present activity of a higher power, "daimon".</poem> Daemons scarcely figure in Greek mythology or Greek art: they are felt, but their unseen presence can only be presumed, with the exception of the "agathodaemon", honored first with a libation in ceremonial wine-drinking, especially at the sanctuary of Dionysus, and represented in iconography by the chthonic serpent.


title: Daimon

text: Burkert suggests that, for Plato, theology rests on two Forms: the Good and the Simple; which "Xenocrates unequivocally called the unity god" in sharp contrast to the poet's gods of epic and tragedy. Although much like the deities, these figures were not always depicted without considerable moral ambiguity: <poem>On this account, the other traditional notion of the daemon as related to the souls of the dead is elided in favour of a spatial scenario which evidently also graduated in moral terms; though [Plato] says nothing of that here, it is a necessary inference from her account, just as Eros is midway between deficiency and plenitude. ... Indeed, Xenocrates ... explicitly understood "daemones" as ranged along a scale from good to bad. ... [Plutarch] speaks of ‘great and strong beings in the atmosphere, malevolent and morose, who rejoice in [unlucky days, religious festivals involving violence against the self, etc.], and after gaining them as their lot, they turn to nothing worse.’ ... The use of such malign daemones by human beings seems not to be even remotely imagined here: Xenocrates' intention was to provide an explanation for the sheer variety of polytheistic religious worship; but it is the potential for moral discrimination offered by the notion of "daemones" which later ... became one further means of conceptualizing what distinguishes dominated practice from civic religion, and furthering the transformation of that practice into intentional profanation ... Quite when the point was first made remains unanswerable. Much the same thought as [Plato's] is to be found in an explicitly Pythagorean context of probably late Hellenistic composition, the "Pythagorean Commentaries", which evidently draws on older popular representations: ‘The whole air is full of souls. We call them "daemones" and heroes, and it is they who send dreams, signs and illnesses to men; and not only men, but also to sheep and other domestic animals. It is towards these "daemones" that we direct purifications and apotropaic rites, all kinds of divination, the art of reading chance utterances, and so on.’ ... This account differs from that of the early Academy in reaching back to the other, Archaic, view of "daemones" as souls, and thus anticipates the views of Plutarch and Apuleius in the Principate ... It clearly implies that "daemones" can cause illness to livestock: this traditional dominated view has now reached the intellectuals.</poem>


title: Daimon

text: In the Hellenistic ruler cult that began with Alexander the Great, it was not the ruler, but his guiding "daemon" that was venerated. In the Archaic or early Classical period, the "daimon" had been democratized and internalized for each person, whom it served to guide, motivate, and inspire, as one possessed of such good spirits. Similarly, the first-century Roman imperial cult began by venerating the "genius" or "numen" of Augustus, a distinction that blurred in time.


title: Sodium cyanide

text: Sodium cyanide is a poisonous compound with the formula NaCN. It is a white, water-soluble solid. Cyanide has a high affinity for metals, which leads to the high toxicity of this salt. Its main application, in gold mining, also exploits its high reactivity toward metals. It is a moderately strong base.


title: Sodium cyanide

text: Worldwide production was estimated at 500,000 tons in the year 2006. Formerly it was prepared by the Castner process involving the reaction of sodium amide with carbon at elevated temperatures.


title: Sodium cyanide

text: The structure of solid NaCN is related to that of sodium chloride. The anions and cations are each six-coordinate. Potassium cyanide (KCN) adopts a similar structure.


title: Sodium cyanide

text: Because the salt is derived from a weak acid, sodium cyanide readily reverts to HCN by hydrolysis; the moist solid emits small amounts of hydrogen cyanide, which is thought to smell like bitter almonds (not everyone can smell it—the ability thereof is due to a genetic trait). Sodium cyanide reacts rapidly with strong acids to release hydrogen cyanide. This dangerous process represents a significant risk associated with cyanide salts. It is detoxified most efficiently with hydrogen peroxide (HO) to produce sodium cyanate (NaOCN) and water:


title: Sodium cyanide

text: Gold cyanidation (also known as the cyanide process) is the dominant technique for extracting gold, much of which is obtained from low-grade ore. More than 70% of cyanide consumption globally is used for this purpose. The application exploits the high affinity of gold(I) for cyanide, which induces gold metal to oxidize and dissolve in the presence of air (oxygen) and water, producing the salt sodium dicyanoaurate:


title: Sodium cyanide

text: A similar process uses potassium cyanide (KCN, a close relative of sodium cyanide) to produce potassium dicyanoaurate (KAu(CN)).


title: Sodium cyanide

text: Several commercially significant chemical compounds are derived from cyanide, including cyanuric chloride, cyanogen chloride, and many nitriles. In organic synthesis, cyanide, which is classified as a strong nucleophile, is used to prepare nitriles, which occur widely in many chemicals, including pharmaceuticals. Illustrative is the synthesis of benzyl cyanide by the reaction of benzyl chloride and sodium cyanide.


title: Sodium cyanide

text: Being highly toxic, sodium cyanide is used to kill or stun rapidly such as in collecting jars used by entomologists and in widely illegal cyanide fishing.


title: Sodium cyanide

text: Sodium cyanide, like other soluble cyanide salts, is among the most rapidly acting of all known poisons. NaCN is a potent inhibitor of respiration, acting on mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase and hence blocking electron transport. This results in decreased oxidative metabolism and oxygen utilization. Lactic acidosis then occurs as a consequence of anaerobic metabolism. An oral dosage as small as 200–300 mg can be fatal.


title: Steve Golin

text: Steven Aaron Golin (March 6, 1955 – April 21, 2019) was an American film and television producer and the founder and CEO of Anonymous Content LLP, a multimedia development, production and talent management company and co-founder and CEO of Propaganda Films. Golin graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 1976 and attended the AFI Conservatory. He won Best Picture at the 2016 Academy Awards for "Spotlight".


title: Steve Golin

text: Golin and partner Joni Sighvatsson launched Propaganda Films, a talent management, advertising, and video production company, in 1986. They built Propaganda into the largest music video and commercial production company in the world, winning more MTV Video Awards and Cannes Palme d'Or Awards than any other company and quickly became a home for the most sought-after young music video and commercial directors. One of its first discoveries was David Fincher, then an unknown video director. Not long afterward, a young filmmaker showed up with a reel containing a Donny Osmond video and a spec Coke commercial. Golin watched the clips and told Michael Bay, "Nice to meet you. You're hired." After seeing a couple of skateboard videos he liked, Golin brought Spike Jonze into the fold. Other discoveries included Antoine Fuqua, Gore Verbinski, and Alex Proyas. Golin and Sighvatsson sold the company to PolyGram, but when PolyGram was sold to Seagram in 1998, Golin lost control of the company and exited in 1999.


title: Steve Golin

text: Golin's next company, Anonymous Content, located in Culver City, California, was launched in early 2000. Golin has guided the company's commercial division to become one of the top commercial production entities in the industry, producing spots and campaigns for Audi, Citibank, Coca-Cola, Ford, Intel, Nike, Pepsi, United Airlines, and others. Its music video division, which earned Best New Artist Clip (Hard Rock category) at the 2000 Billboard Music Video Awards for A Perfect Circle's "Judith" (2000), directed by David Fincher, has also produced projects for Cypress Hill, Filter, Smashmouth, Third Eye Blind, and The Wallflowers, among other artists. Under Golin's leadership, the company's management division has grown to represent more than 50 writers, directors, and actors. Fincher also worked with the company to produce "The Hire", a series of adverts for BMW, which were only available online.


title: Steve Golin

text: Golin has also produced a number of feature films and television shows, some of which were produced with Anonymous Content and others through Propaganda Films. These include David Fincher's "The Game" (1997), Spike Jonze's "Being John Malkovich" (1999), Michel Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004), Alejandro González Iñárritu's "Babel" (2006), and Gavin Hood's "Rendition" (2007), Nic Pizzolatto's "True Detective" (2014), Sam Esmail's "Mr. Robot" (2015) and Tom McCarthy's "Spotlight" (2015).


title: Steve Golin

text: Golin received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture for producing "Babel", "The Revenant", and "Spotlight", the latter of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.


title: Steve Golin

text: Golin had two children, Ari and Anna. He initially was a cancer survivor. He was Jewish. Golin died of Ewing's sarcoma on April 21, 2019 at the age of 64.


title: Hot Pockets

text: Hot Pockets is an American brand of microwaveable turnovers generally containing one or more types of cheese, meat, or vegetables. Hot Pockets was founded by the Chef America Inc. Since April 20, 2002, they have been produced by Nestlé.


title: Hot Pockets

text: Hot Pockets were developed by Paul Merage and his brother David through their company Chef America Inc. Chef America invented a packaging sleeve and dough formula to keep its calzone-like sandwiches crispy when cooked in a microwave. In 1980, Chef America introduced its first stuffed sandwich, the Tastywich, the predecessor of the Hot Pocket. Hot Pockets supplanted Tastywiches in 1983, first sold to restaurants because they were easier to break into than retail stores. On May 22, 2002, Chef America was sold to Nestlé. Hot Pocket products were "a $2 billion category of frozen sandwiches and snacks". Breakfast-style Hot Pockets were introduced in 2001.


title: Hot Pockets

text: There are 50 varieties of the traditional Hot Pocket, including breakfast, lunch and dinner varieties. Nestlé also offers Lean Pockets, Pretzel Bread Hot Pockets, Hot Pockets Croissant Crust (formerly called Croissant Pockets), Hot Pockets Breakfast items, Hot Pockets Breakfast/Snack Bites and Hot Pockets Side shots. Nestlé formerly produced Hot Pie Express, Hot Pocket Pizza Minis (originally called Hot Pockets Pizza Snacks), Hot Pockets Subs, Hot Pockets Calzones, Hot Pockets Panini and Hot Pockets Breakfast fruit pastries. Hot Pockets are viewed as "an after school staple". Individual Hot Pockets contain about 350 calories.


title: Hot Pockets

text: Citing reduced sales, in 2011 Nestlé announced that it would cut employee numbers at its California factory. U.S. sales were about $610 million in 2010—down $44 million from the previous year—according to Euromonitor International data.


title: Hot Pockets

text: Paul Grimwood took over Nestlé SA's struggling U.S operations in 2011. In an attempt to bolster the failing brand by improving supply chain, Grimwood made the decision to drop the calzone version of Hot Pockets and the quesadillas Lean Pockets, reducing the number of doughs needed. Nestlé executive Chris Johnson points to an end of extended SNAP benefits in 2013 as the cause of the fallen sales, stating SNAP benefit recipients are "a big part of the consumption of this particular product."


title: Hot Pockets

text: In 2014, Nestle USA recalled 238,000 cases of its Hot Pockets because they may have contained meat from a massive recall of about of meat from "diseased and unsound" animals. Nestle stated that "a small quantity of meat" from the Rancho Feeding Corp was used to make Hot Pockets. The USDA described the food as "unfit for humans". This Rancho Feeding Corp meat recall was based out of a production facility in California, but the recalled Hot Pockets were distributed nationwide. The two types of Hot Pockets involved in the recall were the Philly Steak and Cheese and the Croissant Crust Philly Steak and Cheese. A full federal inspection was not performed, and there were no illnesses reported in connection to this recall. Customers who bought the recalled products were refunded by contacting Nestle Consumer Service.


title: Hot Pockets

text: In January 2021, some batches of Hot Pockets produced during November 13–16, 2020, were found to contain pieces of glass or hard plastic, posing a choking and laceration risk. The USDA issued a Class I recall, because "use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death." Affected products include "Premium Pepperoni Made With Pork", and "Chicken & Beef Pizza with a Garlic Buttery Crust".


title: LabVIEW

text: Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW) is a system-design platform and development environment for a visual programming language from National Instruments.


title: LabVIEW

text: The graphical language is named "G"; not to be confused with G-code. The G dataflow language was originally developed by LabVIEW. LabVIEW is commonly used for data acquisition, instrument control, and industrial automation on a variety of operating systems (OSs), including Microsoft Windows as well as various versions of Unix, Linux, and macOS.


title: LabVIEW

text: The latest versions of LabVIEW are LabVIEW 2022 Q3 (released in July 2022) and LabVIEW NXG 5.1 (released in January 2021). NI released the free for non-commercial use LabVIEW and LabVIEW NXG Community editions on April 28th, 2020.


title: LabVIEW

text: The programming paradigm used in LabVIEW, sometimes called G, is based on data availability. If there is enough data available to a subVI or function, that subVI or function will execute. Execution flow is determined by the structure of a graphical block diagram (the LabVIEW-source code) on which the programmer connects different function-nodes by drawing wires. These wires propagate variables and any node can execute as soon as all its input data become available. Since this might be the case for multiple nodes simultaneously, LabVIEW can execute inherently in parallel. Multi-processing and multi-threading hardware is exploited automatically by the built-in scheduler, which multiplexes multiple OS threads over the nodes ready for execution.


title: LabVIEW

text: LabVIEW integrates the creation of user interfaces (termed front panels) into the development cycle. LabVIEW programs-subroutines are termed virtual instruments (VIs). Each VI has three components: a block diagram, a front panel, and a connector pane. The last is used to represent the VI in the block diagrams of others, calling VIs. The front panel is built using controls and indicators. Controls are inputs: they allow a user to supply information to the VI. Indicators are outputs: they indicate, or display, the results based on the inputs given to the VI. The back panel, which is a block diagram, contains the graphical source code. All of the objects placed on the front panel will appear on the back panel as terminals. The back panel also contains structures and functions which perform operations on controls and supply data to indicators. The structures and functions are found on the Functions palette and can be placed on the back panel. Collectively controls, indicators, structures, and functions are referred to as nodes. Nodes are connected using wires, e.g., two controls and an indicator can be wired to the addition function so that the indicator displays the sum of the two controls. Thus a virtual instrument can be run as either a program, with the front panel serving as a user interface, or, when dropped as a node onto the block diagram, the front panel defines the inputs and outputs for the node through the connector pane. This implies each VI can be easily tested before being embedded as a subroutine into a larger program.


title: LabVIEW

text: The graphical approach also allows nonprogrammers to build programs by dragging and dropping virtual representations of lab equipment with which they are already familiar. The LabVIEW programming environment, with the included examples and documentation, makes it simple to create small applications. This is a benefit on one side, but there is also a certain danger of underestimating the expertise needed for high-quality G programming. For complex algorithms or large-scale code, a programmer must possess extensive knowledge of the special LabVIEW syntax and the topology of its memory management. The most advanced LabVIEW development systems offer the ability to build stand-alone applications. Furthermore, it is possible to create distributed applications, which communicate by a client–server model, and are thus easier to implement due to the inherently parallel nature of G.


title: LabVIEW

text: Applications in LabVIEW are usually designed using well-known architectures, known as design patterns. The most common design patterns for graphical LabVIEW applications are listed in the table below.


title: LabVIEW

text: LabVIEW includes extensive support for interfacing to devices such as instruments, cameras, and other devices. Users interface to hardware by either writing direct bus commands (USB, GPIB, Serial) or using high-level, device-specific drivers that provide native LabVIEW function nodes for controlling the device.


title: LabVIEW

text: LabVIEW includes built-in support for NI hardware platforms such as CompactDAQ and CompactRIO, with a large number of device-specific blocks for such hardware, the "Measurement and Automation eXplorer" (MAX) and "Virtual Instrument Software Architecture" (VISA) toolsets.


title: LabVIEW

text: National Instruments makes thousands of device drivers available for download on the NI Instrument Driver Network (IDNet).


title: LabVIEW

text: LabVIEW includes a compiler that produces native code for the CPU platform. The graphical code is converted into Dataflow Intermediate Representation, and then translated into chunks of executable machine code by a compiler based on LLVM. Run-time engine calls these chunks, allowing better performance. The LabVIEW syntax is strictly enforced during the editing process and compiled into the executable machine code when requested to run or upon saving. In the latter case, the executable and the source code are merged into a single binary file. The execution is controlled by LabVIEW run-time engine, which contains some pre-compiled code to perform common tasks that are defined by the G language. The run-time engine governs execution flow, and provides a consistent interface to various operating systems, graphic systems and hardware components. The use of run-time environment makes the source code files portable across supported platforms. LabVIEW programs are slower than equivalent compiled C code, though like in other languages, program optimization often allows to mitigate issues with execution speed.


title: LabVIEW

text: Many libraries with a large number of functions for data acquisition, signal generation, mathematics, statistics, signal conditioning, analysis, etc., along with numerous for functions such as integration, filters, and other specialized abilities usually associated with data capture from hardware sensors is enormous. In addition, LabVIEW includes a text-based programming component named MathScript with added functions for signal processing, analysis, and mathematics. MathScript can be integrated with graphical programming using "script nodes" and uses a syntax that is compatible generally with MATLAB.


title: LabVIEW

text: LabVIEW is an inherently concurrent language, so it is very easy to program multiple tasks that are performed in parallel via multithreading. For example, this is done easily by drawing two or more parallel while loops and connecting them to two separate nodes. This is a great benefit for test system automation, where it is common practice to run processes like test sequencing, data recording, and hardware interfacing in parallel.


title: LabVIEW

text: Due to the longevity and popularity of the LabVIEW language, and the ability for users to extend its functions, a large ecosystem of third party add-ons has developed via contributions from the community. This ecosystem is available on the LabVIEW Tools Network, which is a marketplace for both free and paid LabVIEW add-ons.


title: LabVIEW

text: There is a low-cost LabVIEW Student Edition aimed at educational institutions for learning purposes. There is also an active community of LabVIEW users who communicate through several electronic mailing lists (email groups) and Internet forums.


title: LabVIEW

text: National Instruments provides a free-for-non-commercial use version called LabVIEW Community Edition. This version includes everything in the Professional Editions of LabVIEW, has no watermarks, and includes the LabVIEW NXG Web Module for non-commercial use. These editions may also be used by K-12 schools.


title: LabVIEW

text: LabVIEW is a proprietary product of National Instruments. Unlike common programming languages such as C or Fortran, LabVIEW is not managed or specified by any third party standards committee such as American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), International Organization for Standardization (ISO).


title: LabVIEW

text: Since G language is non-textual, software tools such as versioning, side-by-side (or diff) comparison, and version code change tracking cannot be applied in the same manner as for textual programming languages. There are some additional tools to make comparison and merging of code with source code control (versioning) tools such as subversion, CVS and Perforce.


title: LabVIEW

text: There is no ability to zoom in to (or enlarge) a virtual instrument (VI) which will be hard to see on a large high-resolution monitor. However, the ability to zoom has been added into LabVIEW NXG.


title: LabVIEW

text: In 2005, starting with LabVIEW 8.0, major versions are released around the first week of August, to coincide with the annual National Instruments conference NI Week, and followed by a bug-fix release the following February.


title: LabVIEW

text: In 2009, National Instruments began naming releases after the year in which they are released. A bug-fix is termed a Service Pack, for example, the 2009 service pack 1 was released in February 2010.


title: LabVIEW

text: In 2017, National Instruments moved the annual conference to May and released LabVIEW 2017 alongside a completely redesigned LabVIEW NXG 1.0 built on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).


title: LabVIEW

text: OpenG, as well as LAVA Code Repository (LAVAcr), serve as repositories for a wide range of Open Source LabVIEW applications and libraries. SourceForge has LabVIEW listed as one of the possible languages in which code can be written.


title: LabVIEW

text: VI Package Manager has become the standard package manager for LabVIEW libraries. It is very similar in purpose to Ruby's RubyGems and Perl's CPAN, although it provides a graphical user interface similar to the Synaptic Package Manager. VI Package Manager provides access to a repository of the OpenG (and other) libraries for LabVIEW.


title: LabVIEW

text: National Instruments also offers a product named Measurement Studio, which offers many of the test, measurement, and control abilities of LabVIEW, as a set of classes for use with Microsoft Visual Studio. This allows developers to harness some of LabVIEW's strengths within the text-based .NET Framework. National Instruments also offers LabWindows/CVI as an alternative for ANSI C programmers.


title: LabVIEW

text: When applications need sequencing, users often use LabVIEW with the TestStand test management software, also from National Instruments.


title: LabVIEW

text: DSP Robotics' FlowStone DSP also uses a form of graphical programming similar to LabVIEW, but is limited to the robotics industry respectively.


title: LabVIEW

text: LabVIEW has a direct node with modeFRONTIER, a multidisciplinary and multi-objective optimization and design environment, written to allow coupling to almost any computer-aided engineering tool. Both can be part of the same process workflow description, and can be virtually driven by the optimization technologies available in modeFRONTIER.


title: Text file

text: A text file (sometimes spelled textfile; an old alternative name is flatfile) is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In operating systems such as CP/M and MS-DOS, where the operating system does not keep track of the file size in bytes, the end of a text file is denoted by placing one or more special characters, known as an end-of-file marker, as padding after the last line in a text file. On modern operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Unix-like systems, text files do not contain any special EOF character, because file systems on those operating systems keep track of the file size in bytes. Most text files need to have end-of-line delimiters, which are done in a few different ways depending on operating system. Some operating systems with record-orientated file systems may not use new line delimiters and will primarily store text files with lines separated as fixed or variable length records.


title: Text file

text: At a generic level of description, there are two kinds of computer files: text files and binary files.


title: Text file

text: Because of their simplicity, text files are commonly used for storage of information. They avoid some of the problems encountered with other file formats, such as endianness, padding bytes, or differences in the number of bytes in a machine word. Further, when data corruption occurs in a text file, it is often easier to recover and continue processing the remaining contents. A disadvantage of text files is that they usually have a low entropy, meaning that the information occupies more storage than is strictly necessary.


title: Text file

text: A simple text file may need no additional metadata (other than knowledge of its character set) to assist the reader in interpretation. A text file may contain no data at all, which is a case of zero-byte file.


title: Text file

text: The ASCII character set is the most common compatible subset of character sets for English-language text files, and is generally assumed to be the default file format in many situations. It covers American English, but for the British Pound sign, the Euro sign, or characters used outside English, a richer character set must be used. In many systems, this is chosen based on the default locale setting on the computer it is read on. Prior to UTF-8, this was traditionally single-byte encodings (such as ISO-8859-1 through ISO-8859-16) for European languages and wide character encodings for Asian languages.


title: Text file

text: Because encodings necessarily have only a limited repertoire of characters, often very small, many are only usable to represent text in a limited subset of human languages. Unicode is an attempt to create a common standard for representing all known languages, and most known character sets are subsets of the very large Unicode character set. Although there are multiple character encodings available for Unicode, the most common is UTF-8, which has the advantage of being backwards-compatible with ASCII; that is, every ASCII text file is also a UTF-8 text file with identical meaning. UTF-8 also has the advantage that it is easily auto-detectable. Thus, a common operating mode of UTF-8 capable software, when opening files of unknown encoding, is to try UTF-8 first and fall back to a locale dependent legacy encoding when it definitely isn't UTF-8.


title: Text file

text: On most operating systems the name "text file" refers to file format that allows only plain text content with very little formatting (e.g., no bold or "italic" types). Such files can be viewed and edited on text terminals or in simple text editors. Text files usually have the MIME type codice_1, usually with additional information indicating an encoding.


title: Text file

text: MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows use a common text file format, with each line of text separated by a two-character combination: carriage return (CR) and line feed (LF). It is common for the last line of text "not" to be terminated with a CR-LF marker, and many text editors (including Notepad) do not automatically insert one on the last line.


title: Text file

text: On Microsoft Windows operating systems, a file is regarded as a text file if the suffix of the name of the file (the "filename extension") is codice_2. However, many other suffixes are used for text files with specific purposes. For example, source code for computer programs is usually kept in text files that have file name suffixes indicating the programming language in which the source is written.


title: Text file

text: Most Microsoft Windows text files use "ANSI", "OEM", "Unicode" or "UTF-8" encoding. What Microsoft Windows terminology calls "ANSI encodings" are usually single-byte ISO/IEC 8859 encodings (i.e. ANSI in the Microsoft Notepad menus is really "System Code Page", non-Unicode, legacy encoding), except for in locales such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean that require double-byte character sets. ANSI encodings were traditionally used as default system locales within Microsoft Windows, before the transition to Unicode. By contrast, OEM encodings, also known as DOS code pages, were defined by IBM for use in the original IBM PC text mode display system. They typically include graphical and line-drawing characters common in DOS applications. "Unicode"-encoded Microsoft Windows text files contain text in UTF-16 Unicode Transformation Format. Such files normally begin with Byte Order Mark ("BOM"), which communicates the endianness of the file content. Although UTF-8 does not suffer from endianness problems, many Microsoft Windows programs (i.e. Notepad) prepend the contents of UTF-8-encoded files with BOM, to differentiate UTF-8 encoding from other 8-bit encodings.


title: Text file

text: On Unix-like operating systems text files format is precisely described: POSIX defines a text file as a file that contains characters organized into zero or more lines, where lines are sequences of zero or more non-newline characters plus a terminating newline character, normally LF.


title: Text file

text: Additionally, POSIX defines a as a text file whose characters are printable or space or backspace according to regional rules. This excludes most control characters, which are not printable.


title: Text file

text: Prior to the advent of macOS, the classic Mac OS system regarded the content of a file (the data fork) to be a text file when its resource fork indicated that the type of the file was "TEXT". Lines of classic Mac OS text files are terminated with CR characters.


title: Text file

text: Being a Unix-like system, macOS uses Unix format for text files. Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) used for text files in macOS is "public.plain-text"; additional, more specific UTIs are: "public.utf8-plain-text" for utf-8-encoded text, "public.utf16-external-plain-text" and "public.utf16-plain-text" for utf-16-encoded text and "com.apple.traditional-mac-plain-text" for classic Mac OS text files.


title: Text file

text: When opened by a text editor, human-readable content is presented to the user. This often consists of the file's plain text visible to the user. Depending on the application, control codes may be rendered either as literal instructions acted upon by the editor, or as visible escape characters that can be edited as plain text. Though there may be plain text in a text file, control characters within the file (especially the end-of-file character) can render the plain text unseen by a particular method.


title: Santa Inc.

text: Santa Inc. is an American stop-motion adult animated Christmas comedy created by Alexandra Rushfield that premiered on December 2, 2021 on HBO Max.


title: Santa Inc.

text: The story follows Candy Smalls, a female elf who's currently working as a second-in-command of North Pole, goes for her ultimate goal to become a successor as the first female Santa.


title: Santa Inc.

text: Daniel D'Addario of "Variety" wrote that the series' reliance on raunchy humor led to it "feeling dour and heavy, a televised lump of coal". He felt that telling jokes about reindeer being methamphetamine addicts and Mrs Claus being a stripper "doesn’t say anything, really; it just suggests a readiness to provoke". He was more approving of plot elements about a female character seeking to rise in a hostile workplace.


title: Santa Inc.

text: Writing for "The Hollywood Reporter", Daniel Fienberg praised the parody of corporate culture, but called the sexual jokes "repetitive and self-satisfied". He also did not find the humor to have good shock value, unlike a recent Christmas special of "Big Mouth".


title: Santa Inc.

text: Mira Fox of "The Forward" gave a negative review, criticizing the massive amount of raunchy humor and Holocaust jokes, poor plot, lazy stereotypes of Jews, and ultimately poor message of the show, saying "You might think that this Christmas series made by two famous Jews would have some greater message about antisemitism or Christianity's hegemony in the U.S. But instead Silverman, too, has reduced Jewishness to a handful of hackneyed stereotypes in "Santa, Inc.""


title: Santa Inc.

text: Joel Keller in an article for "Decider" wrote that the series is "more raunchy than it is merry", and came close to being "gratuitously dirty", but praised the story and the series' take on gender politics.


title: Santa Inc.

text: Barbara Ellen of "The Guardian" in a mixed review wrote that the show used "such a relentless bombardment of pointless crudity...the humor is all but flattened", and that ultimately the comedy was "funniest when it's not dirty".


title: Santa Inc.

text: Seth Rogen was subject to criticism when he claimed that the generally negative reception the series received was review bombing by "tens of thousands of white supremacists".


title: Santa Inc.

text: Some viewers also have said that it is similar to Syfy's series "The Pole", another adult animation show about the political power struggle of becoming Santa Claus, the only difference is the rivalry between Santa and his oldest son Jack (calls himself "Black Jack") who only wants to become the new Santa so he could have total control of the North Pole.


title: Santa Inc.

text: According to "The Daily Dot", the trailer for the series received backlash in the comments section and over 200,000 dislikes on YouTube, with various antisemitic and Holocaust denial jokes. However, HBO Max defended the trailer and disabled the comments due to its controversies.


title: Bajan Creole

text: Bajan , or Bajan Dialect, is an English-based creole language with African and British influences spoken on the Caribbean island of Barbados. Bajan is primarily a spoken language, meaning that in general, standard English is used in print, in the media, in the judicial system, in government, and in day-to-day business, while Bajan is reserved for less formal situations, in music, or in social commentary. Ethnologue reports that, as of 2018, 30,000 Barbadians were native English speakers, while 260,000 natively spoke Bajan.


title: Bajan Creole

text: Bajan is the Caribbean creole with grammar that most resembles Standard English. There is academic debate on whether its creole features are due to an earlier pidgin state or to some other reason, such as contact with neighbouring English-based creole languages.


title: Bajan Creole

text: Due to emigration to the Province of Carolina, Bajan has influenced American English and the Gullah language spoken in the Carolinas. Regionally, Bajan has ties to Belizean and Guyanese Creoles.


title: Bajan Creole

text: Unlike Jamaica, Guyana or Trinidad, Barbados was the destination of few enslaved African-born captives after 1800. Thus, African Barbadians became "Bajanised" relatively soon after British colonization. This tended to make them less resistant to local culture, with its Anglicised language, religion and customs.


title: Bajan Creole

text: Bajan is a primarily spoken language with no standardised written form. Due to the lack of standardisation, spelling may vary widely from person to person. There is much dialectal variation throughout the island. Barbadians practising Rastafari on the island also tend to speak more with a Jamaican accent than full Bajan. Bajan words and sentences presented below are largely spelled as they are pronounced. New terminology, expressions, jargon, and idioms are regularly added to the dialect by social commentary sung during the annual Crop Over festival.


title: Bajan Creole

text: As in most English-based Caribbean creoles, the interdentals and (as in "thing", and "the" respectively) have merged with other consonants (in this case, and , respectively, resulting in "ting" and "de"). Unlike most other Caribbean creoles, Bajan is fully rhotic, and if anything more rhotic than North American Standard English. Bajan also has a strong tendency to realize syllable-final as a glottal stop . Thus the Bajan pronunciation of "start", , contrasts sharply with the pronunciation of other Caribbean speakers, or or .


title: Bajan Creole

text: Pronouns in Bajan Dialect do not diverge too far from Standard English, but there are differences. As with other similar creoles, Bajan does not differentiate subject and object pronouns, nor possessive pronouns, except in the case of the first person singular. Another difference is the word for the plural you, which is "wunna", similar to the Jamaican word "unnu" / "unna" or Bahamian "yinna". Here is a list of pronouns in Bajan Dialect:


title: Bajan Creole

text: The structure of questions in Bajan Dialect varies from that of Standard English, as it is generally the same format as regular statements. Questions seeking yes or no answers are usually pronounced as a statement with only a raised intonation to differentiate, usually on the last word. For example, "Wunna win de cricket? " means "Did you (pl.) win the cricket match?"; "das yours?" means "Is that yours?"


title: Bajan Creole

text: On the other hand, questions asking for information, i.e. who, what, when, where, why or how, usually begin with a 'question word/phrase', saying what is being asked for, followed by a partial, or incomplete statement. For example, ""Wha he wan?"" means "What does he want?" or "He wants what?" Some question words, however, do not exist, or are seldom used in Bajan dialect, including "when, where and why", and are achieved by making questions beginning with "wha" (what). For example, ""Wha time you see he?"" means "When did you see him?", and ""Wha part de Chefette?"" means "Where is the Chefette?" In addition, "why" questions can be achieved by asking "how come". For example, ""How come you get hay so late?”"


title: Bajan Creole

text: The tense/aspect system of Bajan is fundamentally unlike that of English. In Bajan, verbs are seldom conjugated, and only have a few forms, lacking forms to express tense or distinguish between singular and plural. In particular, there are no morphological marked past tense forms corresponding to English "-ed", "-t" or other past tense forms.


title: Bajan Creole

text: Although most words in Bajan dialect are English in origin, many words are borrowed from West African languages. The largest portion contributed to Bajan is from the Igbo language.


title: Foreign language

text: A foreign language is a language that is not an official language of, nor typically spoken in, a given country, and that native speakers from that country must usually acquire through conscious learning - be this through language lessons at school, self-teaching or attendance of language courses, for example. A foreign language may be learnt as a second language, but there is a distinction between the terms, as a second language may be used to describe a language that plays a significant role in the region where the speaker lives, whether for communication, education, business or governance, and therefore a second language is not necessarily a foreign language.


title: Foreign language

text: Children who learn more than one language from birth or from a very young age are considered bilingual or multilingual. These children can be said to have two, three or more mother tongues, and so again these languages would not be considered foreign to these children, even if one language is a foreign language for the vast majority of people in the child's birth country. For example, a child learning English from his English father and Irish at school in Ireland can speak both English and Irish, but neither is a foreign language to them. This is common in countries such as India, South Africa, or Canada due to these countries having multiple official languages.


title: Foreign language

text: In general, it is believed that children have advantage to learning a foreign language over adults. However, studies have shown that pre-existing knowledge of language and grammar rules, and a superior ability to memorise vocabulary may benefit adults when learning foreign languages.


title: Foreign language

text: Most schools around the world teach at least one foreign language and most colleges and high schools require foreign language before graduation. By 1998, nearly all pupils in Europe studied at least one foreign language as part of their compulsory education, the only exception being Ireland, where primary and secondary schoolchildren learn both Irish and English, but neither is considered a foreign language (although Irish pupils do study a third European language). On average in Europe, at the start of foreign-language teaching, learners have lessons for three to four hours a week. Compulsory lessons in a foreign language normally start at the end of primary school or the start of secondary school. In Luxembourg, Norway and Malta, however, the first foreign language is studied at age six, and in Flanders at age 10. In Wales, all children are taught Welsh from the first year of primary school. The Welsh language is also compulsory up to the age of 16, although a formal GCSE qualification is optional.


title: Foreign language

text: In some countries, learners have lessons taken entirely in a foreign language: for example, more than half of European countries with a minority/regional language community use partial immersion to teach both the minority and the state language. This method is also highly used in Canada, wherein anglophone students spend all of most of their lessons learning the materials in French.


title: Foreign language

text: In 1995, the European Commission's White Paper on Education and Training emphasised the importance of schoolchildren learning at least two foreign languages before upper secondary education. The Lisbon Summit of 2000 defined languages as one of the five key skills.


title: Foreign language

text: Despite the high rate of foreign-language teaching in schools, the number of adults claiming to speak a foreign language is generally lower than might be expected. This is particularly true of native English speakers: in 2004 a British survey by recruitment firm Office Angels showed that fewer than one in 10 UK workers could speak a foreign language and that less than 5% could count to 20 in a second language. In 2012, a European Commission survey found that 61% of respondents in the UK were unlikely to speak any language other than their mother tongue (page 5).


title: Foreign language

text: Since the 1990s, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages has tried to standardise the learning of languages across Europe.


title: Foreign language

text: An article from "The Atlantic" claims that only 1 percent of the adults within the US population consider themselves proficient in speaking a foreign language. This is in stark contrast to many other countries, where the percentage is much higher. Even though there are many benefits that come with learning a foreign language, schools across the United States continue to cut foreign language from their budgets.


title: Foreign language

text: In recent years, computer-assisted language learning has been integrated into foreign-language education and computer programs with varying levels of interactional relationship between computer and the language learner have been developed. Language learning aids such as foreign-language writing aid and foreign-language reading aid, targeted at the specific language skills of foreign-language learners, are also alternative instruments available for foreign-language learners.


title: Foreign language

text: In 2004, a report by the Michel Thomas Language Centre in the United Kingdom suggested that speaking a second language could increase an average worker's salary by £3000 (€3 300) a year, or £145 000 (€159 000) in a lifetime. Further results showed that nine out of 10 British companies thought their businesses could benefit from better language skills. Studies show that a bilingual or multilingual person can earn much more than a computer programmer or engineer because they can use their abilities in foreign language to obtain success in a wide range of career paths. In addition, due to the increase in the number of people from different parts of the world, a multilingual person can more easily communicate with prospective customers.


title: Foreign language

text: Also in 2004, a study by University College London (UCL) examined the brains of 105 people who could speak more than one language. The study found that people who learned a second language when younger had denser grey matter than those who learned one later. Grey matter is an area of the brain where information is most efficiently processed, due to the function of specific nerve cells.


title: Foreign language

text: A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the U.S. and Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated, misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived.


title: Foreign language

text: Other research has shown that early exposure to a second language increases divergent thinking strategies, helping not only in language-related tasks, but also in areas such as math. Children early on have different ways of expressing themselves, such that they better understand there is more than one way to look at a problem and that there is more than one solution.


title: Foreign language

text: Although significant differences between the definitions of second language and foreign language may be hard to find as the two terms are often taken as synonyms, research has been carried out to shed light on the differentiating traits of the two. The distinction between acronyms TESL (Teaching of English as a Second Language) and TEFL (Teaching of English as a Foreign Language) shows the attention different researchers have paid to the concepts of foreign language and second language.


title: Foreign language

text: "In a broad sense, any language learned after one has learnt one's native language [is called second language]. However, when contrasted with foreign language, the term refers more narrowly to a language that plays a major role in a particular country or region though it may not be the first language of many people who use it. For example, the learning of English by immigrants in the US or the learning of Catalan by speakers of Spanish in Catalonia (an autonomous region of Spain) are cases of second (not foreign) language learning, because those languages are necessary for survival in those societies. English is also a second language for many people in countries like Nigeria, India, Singapore and the Philippines (plus Spanish), because English fulfills many important functions in those countries (including the business of education and government) and Learning English is necessary to be successful within that context. (Some people in these countries however may acquire English as a first language, if it is the main language used at home)."


title: Foreign language

text: They also define a "foreign language" as a language which is not the native language of large numbers of people in a particular country of region, is not used as a medium of instruction in schools and is not widely used as a medium of communication in government, media, etc. They note that foreign languages are typically taught as school subjects for the purpose of communicating with foreigners or for reading printed materials in the language (Richards and Schmidt, 2002: 206).


title: Foreign language

text: Crystal (2003) notes that "first language" is distinguishable from "second language" (a language other than one's mother-tongue used for a special purpose, e.g. for education, government) distinguishable in turn from "foreign language" (where no such special status is implied). He also notes that the distinction between the latter two is not universally recognised (especially not in the USA).


title: Foreign language

text: Stern (1983) believes that there is today consensus that a necessary distinction is to be made between a non-native language learnt and used within one country to which the term "second language" has been applied and a non-native language learnt and used with reference to a speech community outside national or territorial boundaries to which the term "foreign language" is commonly given. He argues that while the distinction between 'second' and 'foreign' has a certain justification, it is perhaps less important than it has sometimes been made out to be and it may be misleading. He notes that the distinction became popular after World War II in international organisations, such as UNESCO, in order to meet nationalist susceptibilities in discussions on language questions.


title: Foreign language

text: Fasold and Connor-Linton (2006), Falk (1978) and Hudson (2000) provide similar definitions for the two terms. O'Grady "et al." (1384) don't mention the exact terms 'second' and 'foreign' language, but they emphasise on the role of learning environment in teaching non-native languages.


title: Foreign language

text: So, the distinction between 'second language' and 'foreign language' is a geographical and environmental distinction. We can mention 'second-language situation' and 'foreign-language situation' as two situations of learning, not two kinds of languages. So a foreign language is not always a foreign language and a second language is not always a second language. Since the distinction is geographical, the two situations (learning second language and learning foreign language) can be considered as a continuum. At one extreme, we may find learners learning without external help and direction purely from exposure to the non-native language through living in the target language environment (second-language learning) and at the other we find learners learning the non-native language exclusively in language teaching setting and classrooms (foreign-language learning).


title: Foreign language

text: A 'second language' usually has official status or a recognised function within a country which a foreign language has not and furthermore these two different situations frequently have important consequences to which attention has been drawn in some books. For example, Persian is a second language for Kurdish people, but not vice versa, because there is no Kurdish environment for Persian speakers who are learning Kurdish. On the other hand, English is a foreign language for both groups, because there is no contact between Kurdish and Persian people with English people. However, if an Iranian person goes to United States, then English becomes a second language for them. Thus, British immigrants to Iran learn Persian as a second language, and Persian speakers study English in Britain as a second language. Meanwhile, people in Kurdistan can speak of learning Kurdish by Persian speakers as a second rather than foreign language.


title: Foreign language

text: The purposes of second-language learning are often different from foreign-language learning. Second language is needed for full participation in the political and economic life of the nation, because it is frequently the official language or one of two or more recognised languages. It may be the language needed for education. Among the purposes of foreign-language learning are traveling abroad, communication with native speakers, reading foreign literature or scientific and technical works.


title: Foreign language

text: There are some major differences between foreign and second language teaching and learning. In second-language learning, one can receive input for learning both inside and outside the classroom. They can readily put to use what is learned, as can the child learning its first language, so much naturalistic practice is possible.


title: Foreign language

text: Second-language learners are usually more successful in developing non-native language skills and what is learned may be essential for getting along in the community, so motivation is stronger.


title: Foreign language

text: Acculturation that is a main aspect of learning a language is easier in the case of second-language learning and the emotional role of language (as opposed to communicational role) is easier to use for learners.


title: Foreign language

text: The major characteristics of the planned condition of the classroom in the case of foreign-language learning as opposed to natural conditions of second-language learning are:


title: Foreign language

text: There are some other issues in teaching and learning foreign language and second language including the type of motivation and the distinction between 'learning' and 'acquisition' that I will discuss them in separate parts.


title: Foreign language

text: There is often a distinction between acquisition and learning in linguistic and pedagogic literature. Children are described as 'acquiring' their native language, where there is no previous information and knowledge in their mind. On the other hand, adults are said to 'learn' a non-native language. Acquisition is viewed as a natural, unconscious, untaught, and probably unteachable process, while learning is somewhat artificial, usually conscious and possibly dependent on instruction and study.


title: Foreign language

text: The distinction between acquisition and learning can be used in this discussion, because the general conditions in the case of second language offer opportunities for acquisition, because it is informal, free, undirected or naturalistic. On the other hand, educational treatment in the case of foreign language may offer opportunities mainly for learning.


title: Foreign language

text: Nevertheless, acquisition can take place in the case of foreign-language learning and learning can take place in the case of second-language learning. For example, immigrants to the US can attend language teaching classes in the target language environment. On the other hand, foreign-language learners that are far from target language environment can sometimes acquire some points for example by listening to foreign radio, reading literature etc.


title: Dina Mousawi

text: Born to an Iraqi father and Ukrainian mother, Dina grew up in Baghdad. In 1986, her family moved to Bradford in England to escape the perils of the Iran-Iraq war.


title: Dina Mousawi

text: She attended Salt Grammar School and trained at Stage 84 in Shipley, Bradford. Her professional acting career began at ten when she took the lead in the television show The Prime Minister’s Brain on ITV.


title: Dina Mousawi

text: Mousawi has appeared on the television in a host of household shows including Coronation Street, Dalziel and Pascoe, Cold Feet, King of Bollywood and T4.


title: Loyd Jowers

text: Loyd Jowers (November 20, 1926May 20, 2000) was an American restaurateur and the owner of Jim's Grill, a restaurant near the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. For the first 25 years after the assassination of King, Jowers testified that he was in the restaurant at the time of the assassination, a fact supported by the other witnesses in the restaurant.


title: Loyd Jowers

text: In 1993, Jowers appeared on the ABC News program "Prime Time Live" and claimed to be part of an alleged conspiracy involving the Mafia and the U.S. government to kill King. According to Jowers, the alleged assassin, James Earl Ray, was a scapegoat, and was not the only person responsible for assassinating King. Jowers named a number of different people as the alleged assassins, including a black man who was in the area, a man named Raoul named by Ray to have been involved, and someone he could not identify before finally settling on the story that he hired Memphis police Lieutenant Earl Clark to fire the fatal shot. A Memphis civil trial in 1999 supported this claim not having been shown evidence of Jowers' contradictions. In 2000, the United States Department of Justice released a 150-page report denying allegations that there was a conspiracy to assassinate King.


title: Loyd Jowers

text: In a 1993 episode of ABC's "Primetime Live", Jowers told reporter Sam Donaldson that he hired someone to kill King as a favor to a friend in the mafia, produce merchant Frank Liberto. Jowers said Liberto, who had died prior to the ABC interview, had paid him $100,000 to arrange the assassination. He did not name the person he claimed to have hired, but said it was not Ray.


title: Loyd Jowers

text: In 1998, the King family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Jowers and "other unknown co-conspirators" for the murder of King. The King family was represented by attorney William Pepper, who had previously served as the attorney of James Earl Ray, King's formerly accused assassin, in a televised, mock trial. According to The "Washington Post", Pepper had "for years claimed the assassination was the result of a vast conspiracy involving the FBI, CIA and the Army, organized crime and various state and local officials." After four weeks of testimony which involved over 70 witnesses and thousands of pages of new evidence, a Memphis jury unanimously found, on December 8, 1999, that Jowers was part of a conspiracy to kill King, and that the assassination plot also involved "others, including governmental agencies."


title: Loyd Jowers

text: At a press conference following the verdict, Coretta Scott King stated that "there is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr... the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame."


title: Loyd Jowers

text: Following statements by Dexter King and other family members, Dexter was subsequently asked by a reporter, "there are many people out there who feel that as long as these conspirators remain nameless and faceless there is no true closure, and no justice." He replied:


title: Loyd Jowers

text: No, he [Mr. Lloyd Jowers] named the shooter. The shooter was the Memphis Police Department Officer, Lt. Earl Clark who he named as the killer. Once again, beyond that you had credible witnesses that named members of a Special Forces team who didn't have to act because the contract killer succeeded, with plausible denial, a Mafia contracted killer.


title: Loyd Jowers

text: The Memphis county prosecutor said on several occasions that Mr. Jowers' claims were without merit and that he was motivated to sell his story for a book or a movie. Ray's lawyer claimed two sisters who worked at Jowers' restaurant would corroborate Jowers' claim, but both recanted their stories. One sister said that Jowers had fabricated the story so he could make $300,000 from selling the story; she in turn corroborated his story in order to get money to pay taxes. In a telephone conversation taped by authorities, Jowers' main witness stated that his story was false.


title: Loyd Jowers

text: According to the "Los Angeles Times", "The trial relied heavily on second- and third-hand accounts, and the judge and jurors were often seen dozing off during testimony." John Campbell, an assistant district attorney in Memphis who was part of the criminal trial against James Earl Ray, said: "I'm not surprised by the verdict. This case overlooked so much contradictory evidence that never was presented, what other option did the jury have but to accept Mr. Pepper's version?"


title: Loyd Jowers

text: Gerald Posner, an investigative journalist who wrote the book "Killing the Dream" in which he makes the case that Ray was the killer, said after the verdict: "It distresses me greatly that the legal system was used in such a callous and farcical manner in Memphis. If the King family wanted a rubber stamp of their own view of the facts, they got it."


title: Loyd Jowers

text: Prompted by the King family's acceptance of some of the conspiracy theories, United States Attorney General Janet Reno ordered a new investigation on August 26, 1998. On June 9, 2000, the United States Department of Justice released a 150-page report rejecting allegations that there was a conspiracy to assassinate King, including the findings of the Memphis civil court jury. The DOJ considered suggestions by the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 and the district attorney of Shelby County, Tennessee in 1998 that Ray's brothers may have been co-conspirators and stated that they "found insufficient evidentiary leads remaining after 30 years to justify further investigation."


title: Loyd Jowers

text: On May 20, 2000, Jowers died of a heart attack at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Union City, Tennessee. He was reported to have suffered from lung cancer at the time of his death.


Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is the first season of the "Crime Scene" docuseries. Released in 2021 and directed by Joe Berlinger, it chronicles the death of Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel. It features Viveca Chow, Judy Ho and Artemis Snow and premiered on February 10, 2021 on Netflix.


title: Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 54% based on 26 critic reviews, with an average rating of 5.30/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "A sad story poorly told, "Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel" buries the heart of its tragic case under unsavory conspiracy theories and tasteless reenactments." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100, based on nine critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


text: Writing for "Insider", Libby Torres pointed out seven questions that the documentary left after claiming that the mystery was solved. Among them, the fact that it was not identified who edited the video of Elisa in the elevator (which has signs of tampering); the police went with sniffer dogs to the place where Elisa's body was, but they didn't find it; the hotel did nothing after receiving the information that Elisa was exhibiting strange behavior: "In the show, the hotel's former manager, Amy Price, explains that bizarre behavior was par for the course at the hotel, which has housed drug addicts, mentally ill people, and sex workers throughout the years. Price essentially tells producers that while Lam's behavior was odd, it didn't merit any special attention. As a viewer, though, it's hard not to wonder why the hotel didn't do more to help and whether or not assisting Lam could have prevented her death."


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti (17 February 1951 – 15 January 2007) (), also known as Barazan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Barasan Ibrahem Alhassen and Barzan Hassan, was one of three half-brothers of Saddam Hussein, and a leader of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service. Despite falling out of favour with Saddam at one time, he was believed to have been a close presidential adviser at the time of his capture by U.S. forces. On 15 January 2007, Barzan was hanged for crimes against humanity. He was decapitated by the hangman's rope after errors were made calculating his body weight and length of drop from the platform.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: Barzan was a leading figure in the Mukhabarat, the intelligence service that performed the role of secret police from the 1970s, and later took over as director. During his time in the secret police, Barzan played a key role in the Iraqi regime's execution of opponents at home and assassinations abroad. He was also known for his ruthlessness and brutality in purging the Iraqi military of anyone seen as disloyal.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: Barzan became Iraq's representative to the United Nations in Geneva—including the UN Human Rights Committee—in 1989. He was in Geneva for almost a decade, during which he is believed to have managed clandestine accounts for Saddam's overseas fortune. This task was then taken over by a network of foreign brokers, since the Iraqi President had decided that no one in Iraq could be trusted with the task.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: U.S. officials characterized Barzan as a member of what they called "Saddam's Dirty Dozen", responsible for torture and mass murder in Iraq. Barzan was the five of clubs (queen of hearts according to CNN) in the U.S military's most-wanted Iraqi playing cards.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: Barzan was among the leadership figures U.S. forces targeted during the Iraq War. In April 2003, warplanes dropped six satellite-guided bombs on a building in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, where he was thought to be. U.S. Army Special Forces captured Barzan alive on 17 April 2003; the news was publicly confirmed late summer 2003, with Barzan surrounded by a large entourage of bodyguards in Baghdad. He was turned over to Iraq's Interim Government on 30 June 2004, and arraigned on 1 July 2004.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: Barzan's trial started on 19 October 2005. He was a defendant in the Iraq Special Tribunal's Al-Dujail trial, and Abd al-Semd al-Husseini was his defense counsel. In the first stage of the trial, Barzan stood before a five-judge panel for the Dujail Massacre. He was charged for crimes against humanity, simultaneously with seven other former high officials (Taha Yassin Ramadan, Saddam Hussein, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, Abdullah Kadhem Roweed Al-Musheikhi, Ali Daeem Ali, Mohammed Azawi Ali and Mizher Abdullah Roweed Al-Musheikhi). They were said to have ordered and overseen the killings, in July 1982, of more than 140 Shiite men from Dujail, a village 35 miles north of Baghdad. The men were allegedly killed in retribution after an 8 July 1982 attack on the presidential motorcade as it passed through the village. It was alleged that, in addition to the killings, hundreds of women and children from the town were jailed for years in desert internment camps, and that date palm groves, which sustained the local economy and were the families' livelihood, were destroyed.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: During the first court session on 19 October 2005, Barzan pleaded not guilty. During his trial, he became known for his angry outbursts in court and was ejected on several occasions.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: In the weeks following the first audience, serious security concerns for the defense team of Saddam and the other accused became apparent. On 21 October 2005, 36 hours after the first hearing, a group of unidentified armed men dragged one of the defense attorneys from his office in east Baghdad and shot him dead. A few days later, a second lawyer was killed in a drive-by shooting, and a third, injured in that attack, subsequently fled Iraq for sanctuary in Qatar.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: As a result, calls for the trial to be held abroad were heard. The defense lawyers, supported by the Iraqi Bar Association, imposed a boycott on the trial until their security concerns were met with specific measures. A few days before the trial was to resume, the defense team announced that it had accepted offers of protection from Iraqi and U.S. officials and would appear in court on 28 November 2005. The agreement is said to have included the same level of protection offered to the Iraqi judges and prosecutors, with measures such as armored cars and teams of bodyguards.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: After a short court session on 28 November 2005, during which some testimony regarding the killings in Dujail was presented, Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin ordered a one-week adjournment until 5 December, to grant the defense teams time to find new counsel.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: On 12 March 2006, the prosecutor announced that if Saddam Hussein and his seven co-defendants were sentenced to death in the Dujail case, the sentence would be carried out as soon as possible. Thus, the other cases for which they were indicted would not be heard in court. On 19 June 2006, the prosecutor asked the court, in his closing arguments, that the death penalty be imposed upon Barzan, Saddam, and Ramadan.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: A sentence of death or life imprisonment generates an automatic appeal. On 3 December 2006, the defense team lodged an appeal against the verdicts for Barzan, Saddam, and al-Bander, who had been sentenced to death. On 26 December 2006, the appeals chamber confirmed the verdict and the death sentence against Barzan.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: In November 2006, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani appealed for Barzan to be moved to medical facilities to receive treatment for his spinal cancer. Barzan originally made an appeal from his cell to U.S. President George W. Bush and to Talabani for treatment, referring to the latter as an "old friend".


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: On 15 January 2007, the death sentence was carried out. Barzan, along with co-defendants Saddam Hussein and the former Chief Justice of the Iraqi Revolutionary Court al-Bandar, were sentenced to death by hanging. Barzan was originally scheduled to hang on 30 December with Saddam (as he and al-Bandar wished) but due to the Eid, lack of time, and lack of a helicopter to deliver them, as well as international pressure, the hangings were postponed to 15 January. Barzan's sentence was carried out at 03:00 local time (00:00 UTC) on 15 January 2007. His death was confirmed at 3:05/00:05 UTC. Barzan was decapitated by the long drop, the accidental result of the hangman using a rope that was too long. As with Saddam's hanging, Barzan's and al-Bandar's counsel was not allowed to attend.


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: On 15 January, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a news conference with the Egyptian foreign minister: "We were disappointed there was not greater dignity given to the accused under these circumstances."


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: In a press briefing by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman, in response to a question as to Blair's reaction to the "botched hanging" in Iraq, the spokesman said: "In terms of the death penalty in Iraq, our position on the death penalty is well known, and we had made that position known to the Iraqi Government again since the death of Saddam Hussein. However, Iraq is a sovereign Government, and therefore has a right under international law to decide its own policy on the death penalty."


title: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

text: Barzan's son-in-law, Azzam Saleh Abdullah, said: "We heard the news from the media. We were supposed to have the information a day earlier, but it seems that the government does not know the rules." He said the execution reflected the hatred felt by the Shiite-led government: "They still want more Iraqi bloodshed. To hell with democracy."


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home is a 1995 American family adventure drama film and the sequel to the 1993 film "Free Willy" as well as the second installment in the "Free Willy" film series distributed by Warner Bros. under their Warner Bros. Family Entertainment label. It is directed by Dwight Little from a screenplay by Karen Janszen, Corey Blechman and John Mattson. Jason James Richter, Jayne Atkinson, August Schellenberg, Mykelti Williamson and Michael Madsen reprise their roles from the first film. New cast members include Jon Tenney and Elizabeth Peña. Unlike the previous film where Keiko played Willy, a robotic double created by Edge Innovations was used to play the eponymous whale while the Free Willy Keiko Foundation devised a plan to bring Keiko to the Oregon Coast Aquarium where he would be rehabilitated from poor health.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: Filming commenced in Astoria, Oregon and the San Juan Islands between April and August 1994 with additional filming taking place in California.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: The film opened to mixed reviews from critics. Despite underperforming at the box office, a third film "" was subsequently released in 1997.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: It's been two years since Jesse saved and freed his orca friend, Willy. The Greenwoods were preparing to go to the San Juan Islands to camp, and visit Randolph until Dwight informs Glen and Annie that Jesse's mother was found dead in New York City and left behind another son. Jesse is devastated after many attempts to find her, but comes to terms after talking his feelings out with Glen. When Jesse's half-brother Elvis arrives, he is morose, overly talkative and mischievous, and he is also prone to telling lies and easily gets on Jesse's nerves. He is invited so that the boys get to know each other.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: At the environmental institute, Jesse reunites with Randolph, quickly becomes smitten with his attractive and kindly goddaughter, Nadine, and is introduced to members of Willy's family. Jesse tracks and reunites with Willy later that night.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: As the Greenwoods continue to enjoy their camping trip, the Dakar runs aground on lawson reef and spills oil due to an engine malfunction, trapping the whales at Camp Nor'wester. When word gets out and Luna is dying from the oil in her lungs having swum through it, Benbrook Oil CEO John Milner arrives and announces a plan to move the whales into captivity until further notice. Jesse challenges this, making Milner promise to do whatever he can to get them safely back to their mom or else he'll be blamed for Luna's death, to which Milner seemingly agrees.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: The next day, Luna's condition worsens despite receiving treatment from Kate Haley. But Randolph and Jesse eventually use an old Indian remedy that helped her recover. Elvis, who ran away after Annie breaks her promise to allow him to help, overhears Milner and whaler Bill Wilcox discussing their real plan to sell the whales to a marine mammal park and rushes back to camp. With the oil spill reaching dangerous proximity to the cove, Benbrook Oil and the whalers boom it off despite Jesse, Randolph and Nadine's objections and begin extracting the whales. Elvis returns in time to warn Jesse and they expose Milner's plot which lead to them knocking him and his assistant into the water for breaking their promise. Willy manages to rescue Littlespot by tipping Wilcox's boat.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: With time running out before the oil reaches the cove, the kids hijack the Little Dipper to lead the whales to safety. On Jesse's signal, Willy is able to break the boom and leads his siblings out of the cove. Unfortunately, the Dakar explodes due to fuel vapors igniting after engineers tried to start the generator, resulting in crude oil to catch fire. Despite the danger, the killer whales are able to swim under the flaming oil to safety. Having followed them to ensure they got safely past the oil, the kids fall into danger when they head into another cove, but the fogginess from the smoke causes Jesse to hit a rock and Little Dipper begins to sink while the flames seal off the cove.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: Glen and Annie, who just found Elvis on the Little Dipper, hop aboard the Natselane to follow the kids' path as Randolph sends a distress signal. A search and rescue helicopter locates them, and Elvis and Nadine are retracted to safety. However, the Little Dipper then submerges completely, leaving Jesse struggling in the oily water, and unable to secure himself sufficiently in the harness. He ultimately slips out and falls back into the ocean, just inches away from the helicopter and, due to smoke choking the engine, it is forced to leave him behind. Jesse nearly drowns, but is rescued by Willy who returns for his friend and is able to carry him safely under the fire. Though Jesse was curious as to why Willy won't leave, Randolph reveals the signal must be performed. Jesse does it, and he, Glen and Annie say goodbye to Willy before he departs.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: Shortly after the Coastal Marine Patrol delivered Elvis and Nadine, Elvis gives Jesse an old picture of him and their mother that was taped back together. He also tells Jesse that she talked about him and felt bad about everything. Glen and Annie decide to keep the brothers together. When asked by Elvis about the whales' whereabouts, Jesse tells him that they are back with their mom. He then says the same Haida prayer to himself after knowing that they are all free.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: "Free Willy 2" grossed $30 million in the United States and Canada and $68 million worldwide on a $31 million budget. It received mixed reviews from critics, though many were impressed with the film's subtle approach to pollution and other environmental issues, while focusing on family values.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: The movie was nominated for Worst Sequel and The Sequel Nobody Was Clamoring For at the 1995 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, but lost to "" and "", respectively. Willy won Favorite Animal Star at the 1996 Kids' Choice Awards.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: Released through MJJ Music in association with 550 Music and Epic Soundtrax in 1995, the soundtrack contained most of the songs from the film plus two additional tracks from Brownstone, whose song "Sometimes Dancin'" first appeared on their debut album "From the Bottom Up", and 3T. The only song not included is "My Spirit Calls Out" that Randolph performed when he treated Luna.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: Basil Poledouris returned to compose new music and also incorporated several scoring elements from the previous film.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: Michael Jackson continued his affiliation with the "Free Willy" franchise when "Childhood", a double A-side single for "Scream" from "", served as the main theme around Elvis while the instrumental version is played when he looks at a photo of the Greenwoods with Jesse.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: An instrumental version of Nathan Cavaleri's song "Lou's Blues" was used to dub Jesse's offscreen guitar playing.


title: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home

text: Two renditions of Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" are featured in the movie. While a version from Michael Jackson's sister Rebbie was heard inside the donut Elvis and Wilcox attended, the end credits used The Pretenders' version the band previously recorded for the film "With Honors" and was also included on their album "Last of the Independents".


title: The Reckoners

text: The Reckoners is a series of young adult superhero novels written by American author Brandon Sanderson. The series consists of "Steelheart" (2013), "Firefight" (2015), "Calamity" (2016) and "Lux" (2021). The series depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which the appearance of an orbiting cosmic phenomenon known as Calamity has given random people superhuman powers in apparent defiance of known physical laws, turning them into "Epics". These Epics prey upon or enslave the rest of humanity, causing the collapse of traditional governments. One young man orphaned by a High Epic joins a group that is killing Epics.


title: The Reckoners

text: Twelve years ago, an object dubbed "Calamity" appeared near Earth and burst in the sky, emitting a strange radiation which gave a small group of humans super powers and near invincibility in apparent defiance of the known laws of physics. They all have different types of powers and weaknesses, with no apparent rhyme or reason. Dubbed Epics, these super-humans took to crime. Existing government proved absolutely incapable of controlling the Epics, the most powerful of which replaced government authority and enslaved the rest of humanity.


title: The Reckoners

text: Two years ago, an eight-year-old Chicago native boy named David Charleston was orphaned when the High Epic Steelheart murdered his father while fighting a rival Epic, Deathpoint, in a bank. The sole survivor of the bank carnage, David has now come of age in what is known as Newcago, ruled by Steelheart. David witnessed Steelheart's one weakness as his father inflicted a minor wound at Steelheart's eye while trying to shoot the other Epic, and David has grown up devoting his life to learning all he can about the Epics to find their weaknesses, with the goal of avenging his father. He finds "the Reckoners", an elite group led by "Professor" Jonathan Phaedrus with the common goal of killing as many Epics as possible. They decide to admit him into their group when they discover he has witnessed Steelheart's weakness, and his collected research.


title: The Reckoners

text: Steelheart has turned most all of Newcago into steel with his power and his lieutenant Nightwielder keeps it in eternal darkness by hiding the Sun. The mortal citizenry live mostly underground and work at menial factory jobs. Yet Steelheart has proved one of the more effective Epic rulers, by providing Newcago with infrastructure, food, water, and electricity, in contrast with most other cities in what are now known as the "Fractured States".


title: The Reckoners

text: The United States, and other parts of the world, were changed forever when a glowing red light in the sky known as Calamity gave normal people superhuman powers and abilities. These people came to be known to humanity as Epics. The story is told through the perspective of David, an orphaned teenager living in Newcago (formerly known as Chicago). Newcago is ruled by the extremely powerful Epic named Steelheart, who has created a society run by other powerful Epics, with normal people living with normal jobs. Steelheart is apparently invulnerable, is able to fly, can hurl blasts of energy, and can turn inanimate matter to steel; he has turned all of Chicago to steel for kilometers around and into the ground. Newcago is also shrouded in darkness by Steelheart's lieutenant, Nightwielder. Compared to other places in what was the United States, war torn, lawless and ravaged by warring Epics, Newcago is well run, with normal people generally having access to food, water, electricity, jobs, etc.


title: The Reckoners

text: David's father was murdered by Steelheart around the time of the collapse. When David was eight, he and his father were at a bank which was attacked by an Epic named Deathpoint who had the power to skeletonize people by pointing at them. Half the bank was killed when Steelheart came in and Deathpoint started to argue with him. During this time, David's father grabbed one of the dead guards' guns and prepared himself to kill Deathpoint, believing that Steelheart was a hero. When his father shot Deathpoint, the bullet grazed Steelheart's cheek and caused him to bleed. Enraged, Steelheart killed David's father and then proceeded to destroy the bank. David crawled into one of the vaults, which ultimately saved him from falling debris and isolated him from Steelheart's energy blasts. Later, David was recovered by rescue workers, but ran away scared. This also saved him because Steelheart came back with another Epic named Faultline and sank the entire building into the ground, killing all other survivors. David later guessed that Steelheart did this because everyone in the bank had watched him bleed and had learned that his invincibility had a weakness. David dedicates his life to learning about the Epics' power, Steelheart's weakness, and about a group of normal humans dedicated to killing Epics, called the Reckoners, so that he can get revenge on Steelheart.


title: The Reckoners

text: Near the start of the book, David makes contact with the Reckoners when he interferes with one of their missions. Among this group are the leader and founder of the Reckoners, Jonathan Phaedrus, who is called Prof throughout the book, Tia, Abraham, Cody, and the newest recruit, Megan. They first take David along with them because they fear that he could be an Epic who was sent to spy on them. The Reckoners plan to leave him behind after learning that he was a normal person who only studied them long enough to learn their habits. David convinces them to bring him along and work with him when he tells them that he has seen Steelheart bleed. After going on a mission to retrieve his notes, David convinces the Reckoners to try to kill Steelheart.


title: The Reckoners

text: In addition to hunting Epics, the Reckoners are in possession of advanced technology, which they say has scientifically been derived from Epic powers, most prominently the power to tunnel through inanimate matter, namely steel, using a glove-like item called "Tensors". They used these Tensors to tunnel escape routes during missions, create tunnels used as traps, and to create hiding places. They also have a machine called the Harmsway, which is used to quickly heal wounds, and clothing that projects protective shields.


title: The Reckoners

text: The Reckoners create a plan to lure out Steelheart; the plan is to announce that there is a powerful new Epic named Limelight, who challenges Steelheart to a fight. To make Steelheart take the challenge seriously, they stage two attacks which they accredit to Limelight. First, they blow up the power plant that supplies Newcago with a portion of its electricity. Secondly, they tried to attack one of the powerful Epics in Steelheart's employ known as Conflux; he is known as a "gifter", or "transference Epic" which gives him the ability to gift his powers to non-Epics and in his case, anything that runs on electricity. The attack doesn't go according to plan because they were somehow found out. During the escape, Megan is killed, but they do succeed in kidnapping Conflux. It is revealed that Conflux was actually a captive of Steelheart, kept prisoner and used like a battery to power the city and the weapons of Steelheart's forces. With the capture of Conflux, Steelheart accepts the Reckoners', or as he thinks, Limelight's, challenge.


title: The Reckoners

text: They set the final battle to happen at the all-steel ruins of Soldier Field. Before signaling Steelheart, they rig the stadium with multiple exits and various traps. They plan to test each of their theories about Steelheart's true weakness, including that some of the contents of the vault can weaken him, that he can only be hurt by someone who believes in the possibility of good Epics, that he can only be hurt by crossfire, and that he can only be hurt by the gun that David's father used. When they meet Steelheart, they try out all but one theory of breaking his invincibility, but none work. Prof stalls Steelheart by using the Tensors to fight him. The powerful Epics named Nightwielder and Firefight go after David, preventing him from using his father's gun on Steelheart. David is able to kill Nightwielder, but Firefight turns out to be Megan, who is an Epic illusionist with reincarnation abilities who had infiltrated the Reckoners. Because of David's love for Megan, and because Megan had become less evil from not using her powers regularly, she lets David go. David joins the Prof in the fight against Steelheart, but Prof is killed. David soon finds out that their last theory about David's father's gun does not work. Steelheart takes David's gun, and is intent on shooting him with it, but shortly before allowing Steelheart to take the gun, David figured out that Steelheart's weakness is that he can only be killed by someone who does not fear him, and has rigged the gun to trigger an explosive. When the explosives go off, Steelheart is killed, due to the fact that it was he who pulled the trigger and thus was the one who attacked himself.


title: The Reckoners

text: When the dust settles, it is revealed that Prof is an Epic who had avoided turning evil by gifting his powers in the form of technology. One of these powers is the ability to heal rapidly, and he used this power on himself just in time to revive himself and prevent the explosive blast from killing David by using a shielding power. David then tells Prof about how Megan is actually Firefight, which shocks him. David then runs off to find her and talk to her. When he encounters her, he finds that the reincarnation process messed with her memory and that she does not remember everything she has been through with David, only that she is supposed to be one of the bad guys. David tries to convince her to come with him and the rest of the Reckoners, but she refuses and David is forced to leave her.


title: The Reckoners

text: At the end of the novel, David reflects on what he has done. He and the other Reckoners realize that they will have to continue to fight for the safety of Newcago because other Epics will come, looking to fill in Steelheart's place. He then thinks about how he did not kill Steelheart only because he wanted revenge for his father or redemption for running away when he was little, but because he was fighting for his father's dreams of good Epics.


title: The Reckoners

text: This short story takes place between the "Steelheart" and "Firefight" books. In it, the Epic Mitosis does not believe that David was the one to bring down Steelheart. Mitosis's ability is to split into multiple clones of himself each clone having their own consciousness. Mitosis weakness is his own music from when he was in a band before he was an Epic. He is defeated by the citizens of Newcago, who were previously too afraid to confront any Epics, coming together to collectively sing one of his songs.