title: Gift economy

text: According to anthropologist Jonathan Parry, discussion on the nature of gifts, and of a separate sphere of gift exchange that would constitute an economic system, has been plagued by the ethnocentric use of modern, western, market society-based conception of the gift applied as if it were a cross-cultural, pan-historical universal. However, he claims that anthropologists, through analysis of a variety of cultural and historical forms of exchange, have established that no universal practice exists. His classic summation of the gift exchange debate highlighted that ideologies of the "pure gift" "are most likely to arise in highly differentiated societies with an advanced division of labour and a significant commercial sector" and need to be distinguished from non-market "prestations". According to Weiner, to speak of a "gift economy" in a non-market society is to ignore the distinctive features of their exchange relationships, as the early classic debate between Bronislaw Malinowski and Marcel Mauss demonstrated. Gift exchange is frequently "embedded" in political, kin, or religious institutions, and therefore does not constitute an "economic" system per se.


title: Gift economy

text: Gift-giving is a form of transfer of property rights over particular objects. The nature of those property rights varies from society to society, from culture to culture, and are not universal. The nature of gift-giving is thus altered by the type of property regime in place.


title: Gift economy

text: Property is not a thing, but a relationship amongst people about things. According to Chris Hann, property is a social relationship that governs the conduct of people with respect to the use and disposition of things. Anthropologists analyze these relationships in terms of a variety of actors' (individual or corporate) "bundle of rights" over objects. An example is the current debates around intellectual property rights. Hann and Strangelove both give the example of a purchased book (an object that he owns), over which the author retains a "copyright". Although the book is a commodity, bought and sold, it has not been completely "alienated" from its creator who maintains a hold over it; the owner of the book is limited in what he can do with the book by the rights of the creator. Weiner has argued that the ability to give while retaining a right to the gift/commodity is a critical feature of the gifting cultures described by Malinowski and Mauss, and explains, for example, why some gifts such as Kula valuables return to their original owners after an incredible journey around the Trobriand islands. The gifts given in Kula exchange still remain, in some respects, the property of the giver.


title: Gift economy

text: In the example used above, "copyright" is one of those bundled rights that regulate the use and disposition of a book. Gift-giving in many societies is complicated because "private property" owned by an individual may be quite limited in scope (see below). Productive resources, such as land, may be held by members of a corporate group (such as a lineage), but only some members of that group may have "use rights". When many people hold rights over the same objects gifting has very different implications than the gifting of private property; only some of the rights in that object may be transferred, leaving that object still tied to its corporate owners. Anthropologist Annette Weiner refers to these types of objects as "inalienable possessions" and to the process as "keeping while giving".


title: Gift economy

text: Malinowski's study of the Kula ring became the subject of debate with the French anthropologist, Marcel Mauss, author of "The Gift" ("Essai sur le don", 1925). Parry argued that Malinowski emphasized the exchange of goods between "individuals", and their selfish motives for gifting: they expected a return of equal or greater value. Malinowski argued that reciprocity is an implicit part of gifting, and there is no "free gift" without expectation.


title: Gift economy

text: In contrast, Mauss emphasized that the gifts were not between individuals, but between representatives of larger collectives. These gifts were a "total prestation", a service provided out of obligation, like "community service". They were not alienable commodities to be bought and sold, but, like crown jewels, embodied the reputation, history and identity of a "corporate kin group", such as a line of kings. Given the stakes, Mauss asked "why anyone would give them away?" His answer was an enigmatic concept, "the spirit of the gift". Parry believes that much of the confusion (and resulting debate) was due to a bad translation. Mauss appeared to be arguing that a return gift is given to maintain the relationship between givers; a failure to return a gift ends the relationship and the promise of any future gifts.


title: Gift economy

text: Both Malinowski and Mauss agreed that in non-market societies, where there was no clear institutionalized economic exchange system, gift/prestation exchange served economic, kinship, religious and political functions that could not be clearly distinguished from each other, and which mutually influenced the nature of the practice.


title: Gift economy

text: Mauss' concept of "total prestations" was further developed by Annette Weiner, who revisited Malinowski's fieldsite in the Trobriand Islands. Her critique was twofold: first, Trobriand Island society is matrilineal, and women hold much economic and political power, but their exchanges were ignored by Malinowski. Secondly, she developed Mauss' argument about reciprocity and the "spirit of the gift" in terms of "inalienable possessions: the paradox of keeping while giving". Weiner contrasted "moveable goods" which can be exchanged, with "immoveable goods" that serve to draw the gifts back (in the Trobriand case, male Kula gifts with women's landed property). She argues that the goods given, like crown jewels, are so identified with particular groups, that even when given, they are not truly alienated. Such goods depend on the existence of particular kinds of kinship groups in society.


title: Gift economy

text: French anthropologist Maurice Godelier continued this analysis in "The Enigma of the Gift" (1999). Albert Schrauwers argued that the kinds of societies used as examples by Weiner and Godelier (including the Kula ring in the Trobriands, the Potlatch of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, and the Toraja of South Sulawesi, Indonesia) are all characterized by ranked aristocratic kin groups that fit Claude Lévi-Strauss' model of "House Societies" (where "house" refers to both noble lineage and their landed estate). He argues that total prestations are given to preserve landed estates identified with particular kin groups and maintain their place in a ranked society.


title: Gift economy

text: Chris Gregory argued that reciprocity is a dyadic exchange relationship that we characterize, imprecisely, as gift-giving. Gregory argued that one gives gifts to friends and potential enemies in order to establish a relationship, by placing them in debt. He also claimed that in order for such a relationship to persist, there must be a time lag between the gift and counter-gift; one or the other partner must always be in debt. Marshall Sahlins stated that birthday gifts are an example of this: they are separated in time so that one partner feels the obligation to make a return gift; and to forget the return gift may be enough to end the relationship. Gregory stated that without a relationship of debt, there is no reciprocity, and that this is what distinguishes a gift economy from a "true gift" given with no expectation of return (something Sahlins calls "generalized reciprocity": see below).


title: Gift economy

text: Marshall Sahlins, an American cultural anthropologist, identified three main types of reciprocity in his book "Stone Age Economics" (1972). Gift or "generalized reciprocity" is the exchange of goods and services without keeping track of their exact value, but often with the expectation that their value will balance out over time. "Balanced or Symmetrical reciprocity" occurs when someone gives to someone else, expecting a fair and tangible return at a specified amount, time, and place. Market or "negative reciprocity" is the exchange of goods and services where each party intends to profit from the exchange, often at the expense of the other. Gift economies, or generalized reciprocity, occurred within closely knit kin groups, and the more distant the exchange partner, the more balanced or negative the exchange became.


title: Gift economy

text: Jonathan Parry argued that ideologies of the "pure gift" are most likely to arise only in highly differentiated societies with an advanced division of labour and a significant commercial sector" and need to be distinguished from the non-market "prestations" discussed above. Parry also underscored, using the example of charitable giving of alms in India (Dāna), that the "pure gift" of alms given with no expectation of return could be "poisonous". That is, the gift of alms embodying the sins of the giver, when given to ritually pure priests, saddled these priests with impurities of which they could not cleanse themselves. "Pure gifts", given without a return, can place recipients in debt, and hence in dependent status: the poison of the gift. David Graeber points out that no reciprocity is expected between unequals: if you make a gift of a dollar to a beggar, he will not give it back the next time you meet. More than likely, he will ask for more, to the detriment of his status. Many who are forced by circumstances to accept charity feel stigmatized. In the Moka exchange system of Papua New Guinea, where gift givers become political "big men", those who are in their debt and unable to repay with "interest" are referred to as "rubbish men".


title: Gift economy

text: The French writer Georges Bataille, in "La part Maudite", uses Mauss's argument in order to construct a theory of economy: the structure of gift is the presupposition for all possible economy. Bataille is particularly interested in the potlatch as described by Mauss, and claims that its agonistic character obliges the receiver to confirm their own subjection. Thus gifting embodies the Hegelian dipole of master and slave within the act.


title: Gift economy

text: The relationship of new market exchange systems to indigenous non-market exchange remained a perplexing question for anthropologists. Paul Bohannan argued that the Tiv of Nigeria had three spheres of exchange, and that only certain kinds of goods could be exchanged in each sphere; each sphere had its own form of special-purpose money. However, the market and universal money allowed goods to be traded between spheres and thus damaged established social relationships. Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch argued in "Money and the Morality of Exchange" (1989), that the "transactional order" through which long-term social reproduction of the family occurs has to be preserved as separate from short-term market relations. It is the long-term social reproduction of the family that is sacralized by religious rituals such baptisms, weddings and funerals, and characterized by gifting.


title: Gift economy

text: In such situations where gift-giving and market exchange were intersecting for the first time, some anthropologists contrasted them as polar opposites. This opposition was classically expressed by Chris Gregory in his book "Gifts and Commodities" (1982). Gregory argued that


title: Gift economy

text: But other anthropologists refused to see these different "exchange spheres" as such polar opposites. Marilyn Strathern, writing on a similar area in Papua New Guinea, dismissed the utility of the contrasting setup in "The Gender of the Gift" (1988).


title: Gift economy

text: Rather than emphasize how particular kinds of objects are either gifts or commodities to be traded in restricted spheres of exchange, Arjun Appadurai and others began to look at how objects flowed between these spheres of exchange (i.e. how objects can be converted into gifts and then back into commodities). They refocussed attention away from the character of the human relationships formed through exchange, and placed it on "the social life of things" instead. They examined the strategies by which an object could be "singularized" (made unique, special, one-of-a-kind) and so withdrawn from the market. A marriage ceremony that transforms a purchased ring into an irreplaceable family heirloom is one example; the heirloom, in turn, makes a perfect gift. Singularization is the reverse of the seemingly irresistible process of commodification. They thus show how all economies are a constant flow of material objects that enter and leave specific exchange spheres. A similar approach is taken by Nicholas Thomas, who examines the same range of cultures and the anthropologists who write on them, and redirects attention to the "entangled objects" and their roles as both gifts and commodities.


title: Gift economy

text: Many societies have strong prohibitions against turning gifts into trade or capital goods. Anthropologist Wendy James writes that among the Uduk people of northeast Africa there is a strong custom that any gift that crosses subclan boundaries must be consumed rather than invested. For example, an animal given as a gift must be eaten, not bred. However, as in the example of the Trobriand armbands and necklaces, this "perishing" may not consist of consumption as such, but of the gift moving on. In other societies, it is a matter of giving some other gift, either directly in return or to another party. To keep the gift and not give another in exchange is reprehensible. "In folk tales," Lewis Hyde remarks, "the person who tries to hold onto a gift usually dies."


title: Gift economy

text: Daniel Everett, a linguist who studied the small Pirahã tribe of hunter-gatherers in Brazil, reported that, while they are aware of food preservation using drying, salting, and so forth, they reserve their use for items bartered outside the tribe. Within the group, when someone has a successful hunt they immediately share the abundance by inviting others to enjoy a feast. Asked about this practice, one hunter laughed and replied, "I store meat in the belly of my brother."


title: Gift economy

text: Carol Stack's "All Our Kin" describes both the positive and negative sides of a network of obligation and gratitude effectively constituting a gift economy. Her narrative of The Flats, a poor Chicago neighborhood, tells in passing the story of two sisters who each came into a small inheritance. One sister hoarded the inheritance and prospered materially for some time, but was alienated from the community. Her marriage broke up, and she integrated herself back into the community largely by giving gifts. The other sister fulfilled the community's expectations, but within six weeks had nothing material to show for the inheritance but a coat and a pair of shoes.


title: Gift economy

text: Marcel Mauss was careful to distinguish "gift economies" (reciprocity) in market societies from the "total prestations" given in non-market societies. A prestation is a service provided out of obligation, like "community service". These "prestations" bring together domains across political, religious, legal, moral and economic definitions, such that the exchange can be seen to be embedded in non-economic social institutions. These prestations are often competitive, as in the potlatch, Kula exchange, and Moka exchange.


title: Gift economy

text: The "Moka" is a highly ritualized system of exchange in the Mount Hagen area, Papua New Guinea, that has become emblematic of the anthropological concepts of a "gift economy" and of a "big man" political system. Moka are reciprocal gifts that raise the social status of the giver if the gift is larger than one that the giver received. "Moka" refers specifically to the increment in the size of the gift. The gifts are of a limited range of goods, primarily pigs and scarce pearl shells from the coast. To return the same value as one has received in a moka is simply to repay a debt, strict reciprocity. Moka is the extra. To some, this represents interest on an investment. However, one is not bound to provide moka, only to repay the debt. One adds moka to the gift to increase one's prestige, and to place the receiver in debt. It is this constant renewal of the debt relationship which keeps the relationship alive; a debt fully paid off ends further interaction. Giving more than one receives establishes a reputation as a Big man, whereas the simple repayment of debt, or failure to fully repay, pushes one's reputation towards the other end of the scale, "rubbish man". Gift exchange thus has a political effect; granting prestige or status to one, and a sense of debt in the other. A political system can be built out of these kinds of status relationships. Sahlins characterizes the difference between status and rank by highlighting that Big man is not a role; it is a status that is shared by many. The Big man is "not a prince "of" men", but a "prince among men". The "big man" system is based on the ability to persuade, rather than command.


title: Gift economy

text: The Toraja are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, and massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as "tongkonan" which are owned by noble families. Membership in a tongkonan is inherited by all descendants of its founders. Thus any individual may be a member of numerous tongkonan, as long as they contribute to its ritual events. Membership in a tongkonan carries benefits, such as the right to rent some of its rice fields.


title: Gift economy

text: Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting several days. The funerals are like "big men" competitions where all the descendants of a tongkonan compete through gifts of sacrificial cattle. Participants have invested cattle with others over the years, and draw on those extended networks to make the largest gift. The winner of the competition becomes the new owner of the tongkonan and its rice lands. They display all the cattle horns from their winning sacrifice on a pole in front of the tongkonan.


title: Gift economy

text: The Toraja funeral differs from the "big man" system in that the winner of the "gift" exchange gains control of the Tongkonan's property. It creates a clear social hierarchy between the noble owners of the tongkonan and its land, and the commoners who are forced to rent their fields from him. Since the owners of the tongkonan gain rent, they are better able to compete in the funeral gift exchanges, and their social rank is more stable than the "big man" system.


title: Gift economy

text: Anthropologist David Graeber argued that the great world religious traditions of charity and gift giving emerged almost simultaneously during the "Axial age" (800 to 200 BCE), when coinage was invented and market economies were established on a continental basis. Graeber argues that these charity traditions emerged as a reaction against the nexus formed by coinage, slavery, military violence and the market (a "military-coinage" complex). The new world religions, including Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam all sought to preserve "human economies" where money served to cement social relationships rather than purchase things (including people).


title: Gift economy

text: Charity and alms-giving are religiously sanctioned voluntary gifts given without expectation of return. However, case studies show that such gifting is not necessarily altruistic.


title: Gift economy

text: Theravada Buddhism in Thailand emphasizes the importance of giving alms (merit making) without any intention of return (a pure gift), which is best accomplished according to doctrine, through gifts to monks and temples. The emphasis is on the selfless gifting which "earns merit" (and a future better life) for the giver rather than on the relief of the poor or the recipient on whom the gift is bestowed. However, Bowie's research shows that this ideal form of gifting is limited to the rich who have the resources to endow temples and sponsor the ordination of monks. Monks come from these same families, so this gifting doctrine has a class element. Poorer farmers place much less emphasis on merit making through gifts to monks and temples. They equally validate gifting to beggars. Poverty and famine is widespread among these poorer groups, and by validating gift-giving to beggars, they are in fact demanding that the rich see to their needs in hard times. Bowie sees this as an example of a moral economy (see below) in which the poor use gossip and reputation to resist elite exploitation and pressure them to ease their "this world" suffering.


title: Gift economy

text: Dāna is a form of religious charity given in Hindu India. The gift is said to embody the sins of the giver (the "poison of the gift"), whom it frees of evil by transmitting it to the recipient. The merit of the gift depends on finding a worthy recipient such as a Brahmin priest. Priests are supposed to be able to digest the sin through ritual action and transmit the gift with increment to someone of greater worth. It is imperative that this be a true gift, with no reciprocity, or the evil will return. The gift is not intended to create any relationship between donor and recipient, and there should never be a return gift. Dana thus transgresses the so-called universal "norm of reciprocity".


title: Gift economy

text: The Children of Peace (1812–1889) were a utopian Quaker sect. Today, they are primarily remembered for the Sharon Temple, a national historic site and an architectural symbol of their vision of a society based on the values of peace, equality and social justice. They built this ornate temple to raise money for the poor, and built the province of Ontario's first shelter for the homeless. They took a lead role in organizing the province's first co-operative, the Farmers' Storehouse, and opened the province's first credit union. The group soon found that the charity they tried to distribute from their Temple fund endangered the poor. Accepting charity was a sign of indebtedness, and the debtor could be jailed without trial at the time; this was the "poison of the gift". They thus transformed their charity fund into a credit union that loaned small sums like today's micro-credit institutions. This is an example of singularization, as money was transformed into charity in the Temple ceremony, then shifted to an alternative exchange sphere as a loan. Interest on the loan was then singularized, and transformed back into charity.


title: Gift economy

text: Non-commodified spheres of exchange exist in relation to the market economy. They are created through the processes of singularization as specific objects are de-commodified for a variety of reasons and enter an alternative exchange sphere. It may be in opposition to the market and to its perceived greed. It may also be used by corporations as a means of creating a sense of endebtedness and loyalty in customers. Modern marketing techniques often aim at infusing commodity exchange with features of gift exchange, thus blurring the presumably sharp distinction between gifts and commodities.


title: Gift economy

text: Market economies tend to "reduce everything – including human beings, their labor, and their reproductive capacity – to the status of commodities". "The rapid transfer of organ transplant technology to the third world has created a trade in organs, with sick bodies travelling to the Global South for transplants, and healthy organs from the Global South being transported to the richer Global North, "creating a kind of 'Kula ring' of bodies and body parts." However, all commodities can also be singularized, or de-commodified, and transformed into gifts. In North America, it is illegal to sell organs, and citizens are enjoined to give the "gift of life" and donate their organs in an organ gift economy. However, this gift economy is a "medical realm rife with potent forms of mystified commodification". This multimillion-dollar medical industry requires clients to pay steep fees for the gifted organ, which creates clear class divisions between those who donate (often in the global south) and will never benefit from gifted organs, and those who can pay the fees and thereby receive a gifted organ.


title: Gift economy

text: Unlike body organs, blood and semen have been successfully and legally commodified in the United States. Blood and semen can thus be commodified, but once consumed are "the gift of life". Although both can be either donated or sold, are perceived as the "gift of life" yet are stored in "banks", and can be collected only under strict government regulated procedures, recipients very clearly prefer altruistically donated semen and blood. The blood and semen samples with the highest market value are those that have been altruistically donated. The recipients view semen as storing the potential characteristics of their unborn child in its DNA, and value altruism over greed. Similarly, gifted blood is the archetype of a pure gift relationship because the donor is only motivated by a desire to help others.


title: Gift economy

text: Engineers, scientists and software developers have created free software projects such as the Linux kernel and the GNU operating system. They are prototypical examples for the gift economy's prominence in the technology sector, and its active role in instating the use of permissive free software and copyleft licenses, which allow free reuse of software and knowledge. Other examples include file-sharing, open access, unlicensed software and so on.


title: Gift economy

text: Many retail organizations have "gift" programs meant to encourage customer loyalty to their establishments. Bird-David and Darr refer to these as hybrid "mass-gifts" which are neither gift nor commodity. They are called mass-gifts because they are given away in large numbers "free with purchase" in a mass-consumption environment. They give as an example two bars of soap in which one is given free with purchase: which is the commodity and which the gift? The mass-gift both affirms the distinct difference between gift and commodity while confusing it at the same time. As with gifting, mass-gifts are used to create a social relationship. Some customers embrace the relationship and gift whereas others reject the gift relationship and interpret the "gift" as a 50% off sale.


title: Gift economy

text: "Give-away shops", "freeshops" or "free stores" are stores where all goods are free. They are similar to charity shops, with mostly second-hand itemsonly everything is available at no cost. Whether it is a book, a piece of furniture, a garment or a household item, it is all freely given away, although some operate a one-in, one-out–type policy (swap shops). The free store is a form of constructive direct action that provides a shopping alternative to a monetary framework, allowing people to exchange goods and services outside a money-based economy. The anarchist 1960s countercultural group The Diggers opened free stores which gave away their stock, provided free food, distributed free drugs, gave away money, organized free music concerts, and performed works of political art. The Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers led by Gerrard Winstanley and sought to create a mini-society free of money and capitalism.


title: Gift economy

text: Burning Man is a week-long annual art and community event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event is described as an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance. The event forbids commerce (except for ice, coffee, and tickets to the event itself) and encourages gifting. Gifting is one of the 10 guiding principles, as participants to Burning Man (both the desert festival and the year-round global community) are encouraged to rely on a gift economy. The practice of gifting at Burning Man is also documented by the 2002 documentary film "Gifting It: A Burning Embrace of Gift Economy", as well as by Making Contact's radio show "How We Survive: The Currency of Giving [encore]".


title: Gift economy

text: According to the Associated Press, "Gift-giving has long been a part of marijuana culture" and has accompanied legalization in U.S. states in the 2010s. Voters in the District of Columbia legalized the growing of cannabis for personal recreational use by approving Initiative 71 in November 2014, but the 2015 "Cromnibus" Federal appropriations bills prevented the District from creating a system to allow for its commercial sale. Possession, growth, and use of the drug by adults is legal in the District, as is giving it away, but sale and barter of it is not, in effect attempting to create a gift economy. However it ended up creating a commercial market linked to selling other objects. Preceding the January, 2018 legalization of cannabis possession in Vermont without a corresponding legal framework for sales, it was expected that a similar market would emerge there. For a time, people in Portland, Oregon, could only legally obtain cannabis as a gift, which was celebrated in the Burnside Burn rally. For a time, a similar situation ensued after possession was legalized in California, Maine and Massachusetts.


title: Gift economy

text: Many anarchists, particularly anarcho-primitivists and anarcho-communists, believe that variations on a gift economy may be the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. Therefore, they often desire to refashion all of society into a gift economy. Anarcho-communists advocate a gift economy as an ideal, with neither money, nor markets, nor planning. This view traces back at least to Peter Kropotkin, who saw in the hunter-gatherer tribes he had visited the paradigm of "mutual aid". In place of a market, anarcho-communists, such as those who lived in some Spanish villages in the 1930s, support a gift economy without currency, where goods and services are produced by workers and distributed in community stores where everyone (including the workers who produced them) is essentially entitled to consume whatever they want or need as payment for their production of goods and services.


title: Gift economy

text: As an intellectual abstraction, mutual aid was developed and advanced by mutualism or labor insurance systems and thus trade unions, and has been also used in cooperatives and other civil society movements. Typically, mutual-aid groups are free to join and participate in, and all activities are voluntary. Often they are structured as non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic non-profit organizations, with members controlling all resources and no external financial or professional support. They are member-led and member-organized. They are egalitarian in nature, and designed to support participatory democracy, equality of member status and power, and shared leadership and cooperative decision-making. Members' external societal status is considered irrelevant inside the group: status in the group is conferred by participation.


title: Gift economy

text: English historian E.P. Thompson wrote about the moral economy of the poor in the context of widespread English food riots in the English countryside in the late 18th century. Thompson claimed that these riots were generally peaceable acts that demonstrated a common political culture rooted in feudal rights to "set the price" of essential goods in the market. These peasants believed that a traditional "fair price" was more important to the community than a "free" market price and they punished large farmers who sold their surpluses at higher prices outside the village while some village members still needed produce. Thus a moral economy is an attempt to preserve an alternative exchange sphere from market penetration. The notion of peasants with a non-capitalist cultural mentality using the market for their own ends has been linked to subsistence agriculture and the need for subsistence insurance in hard times. However, James C. Scott points out that those who provide this subsistence insurance to the poor in bad years are wealthy patrons who exact a political cost for their aid; this aid is given to recruit followers. The concept of moral economy has been used to explain why peasants in a number of colonial contexts, such as the Vietnam War, have rebelled.


title: Gift economy

text: Some may confuse common property regimes with gift exchange systems. The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately. The resources held in common can include everything from natural resources and common land to software. The commons contains public property and private property, over which people have certain traditional rights. When commonly held property is transformed into private property this process is called "enclosure" or "privatization". A person who has a right in, or over, common land jointly with another or others is called a commoner.


title: Gift economy

text: There are a number of important aspects that can be used to describe true commons. The first is that the commons cannot be commodified – if they are, they cease to be commons. The second aspect is that unlike private property, the commons are inclusive rather than exclusive – their nature is to share ownership as widely, rather than as narrowly, as possible. The third aspect is that the assets in commons are meant to be preserved regardless of their return of capital. Just as we receive them as a shared right, so we have a duty to pass them on to future generations in at least the same condition as we received them. If we can add to their value, so much the better, but at a minimum we must not degrade them, and we certainly have no right to destroy them.


title: Gift economy

text: Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work. A free cultural work is one which has no significant legal restriction on people's freedom:


title: Gift economy

text: Although different definitions are used, free content is legally similar if not identical to open content. An analogy is the use of the rival terms free software and open source which describe ideological differences rather than legal ones. Free content encompasses all works in the public domain and also those copyrighted works whose licenses honor and uphold the freedoms mentioned above. Because copyright law in most countries by default grants copyright holders monopolistic control over their creations, copyright content must be explicitly declared free, usually by the referencing or inclusion of licensing statements from within the work.


title: Gift economy

text: Although a work which is in the public domain because its copyright has expired is considered free, it can become non-free again if the copyright law changes.


title: Gift economy

text: Information is particularly suited to gift economies, as information is a nonrival good and can be gifted at practically no cost (zero marginal cost). In fact, there is often an advantage to using the same software or data formats as others, so even from a selfish perspective, it can be advantageous to give away one's information.


title: Gift economy

text: Markus Giesler, in his ethnography "Consumer Gift System", described music downloading as a system of social solidarity based on gift transactions. As Internet access spread, file sharing became extremely popular among users who could contribute and receive files on line. This form of gift economy was a model for online services such as Napster, which focused on music sharing and was later sued for copyright infringement. Nonetheless, online file sharing persists in various forms such as BitTorrent and direct download link. A number of communications and intellectual property experts such as Henry Jenkins and Lawrence Lessig have described file-sharing as a form of gift exchange which provides many benefits to artists and consumers alike. They have argued that file sharing fosters community among distributors and allows for a more equitable distribution of media.


title: Gift economy

text: In his essay "Homesteading the Noosphere", noted computer programmer Eric S. Raymond said that free and open-source software developers have created "a 'gift culture' in which participants compete for prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away". Prestige gained as a result of contributions to source code fosters a social network for the developer; the open source community will recognize the developer's accomplishments and intelligence. Consequently, the developer may find more opportunities to work with other developers. However, prestige is not the only motivator for the giving of lines of code. An anthropological study of the Fedora community, as part of a master's study at the University of North Texas in 2010–11, found that common reasons given by contributors were "learning for the joy of learning and collaborating with interesting and smart people". Motivation for personal gain, such as career benefits, was more rarely reported. Many of those surveyed said things like, "Mainly I contribute just to make it work for me", and "programmers develop software to 'scratch an itch. The International Institute of Infonomics at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands reported in 2002 that in addition to the above, large corporations, and they specifically mentioned IBM, also spend large annual sums employing developers specifically for them to contribute to open source projects. The firms' and the employees' motivations in such cases are less clear.


title: Gift economy

text: Members of the Linux community often speak of their community as a gift economy. The IT research firm IDC valued the Linux kernel at US$18 billion in 2007 and projected its value at US$40 billion in 2010. The Debian distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system offers over 37,000 free open-source software packages via their AMD64 repositories alone.


title: Gift economy

text: Collaborative works are works created by an open community. For example, Wikipediaa free online encyclopediafeatures millions of articles developed collaboratively, and almost none of its many authors and editors receive any direct material reward.


title: Gift economy

text: The concept of a gift economy has played a large role in works of fiction about alternative societies, especially in works of science fiction. Examples include:


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: The Santa Monica Pier is a large double-jointed pier at the foot of Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, California, United States. It contains a small amusement park, concession stands, and areas for views and fishing.


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: The pier contains Pacific Park, a family amusement park with its solar panelled Ferris wheel. The brightly lit wheel can be seen from a distance and has been turned off during the Earth Hour observance.


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: It also has an original carousel hippodrome from the 1920s, the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium operated by Heal the Bay, shops, entertainers, a video arcade, a trapeze school, pubs, and restaurants. The pier's west end is a popular location for anglers.


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: Santa Monica has had several piers; however, the current Santa Monica Pier is made up of two adjoining piers that long had separate owners. The long, narrow Municipal Pier opened September 9, 1909, primarily to carry sewer pipes beyond the breakers, and had no amenities. The short, wide adjoining Pleasure Pier to the south, also known as Newcomb Pier, was built in 1916 by Charles I. D. Looff and his son Arthur, amusement park pioneers. Attractions on the Pleasure Pier eventually included the Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome building (which now houses the current carousel and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places), the Blue Streak Racer wooden roller coaster (which was purchased from the defunct Wonderland amusement park in San Diego), the Whip, merry-go-rounds, Wurlitzer organs, and a funhouse.


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: The Philadelphia Toboggan Company built the Carousel, PTC #62, in 1922. It features 44 hand-carved horses. It was rebuilt in 1990 inside the Hippodrome. A calliope provides musical accompaniment.


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: The La Monica Ballroom opened on July 23, 1924. Designed by T. S. Eslick with a Spanish façade and French Renaissance interior, it was the largest dance hall on the west coast, accommodating 5,000 dancers on its hard maple floor. Country music star Spade Cooley began broadcasting his weekly television show from the ballroom in 1948, where the program remained until 1954. In the summer of 1955, the Hollywood Autocade opened at the La Monica with one-hundred famous and unusual cars, including Jack Benny's Maxwell and a Rumpler Drop Car. From 1958 until 1962, the ballroom served as a roller skating rink; first as Skater's Ballroom, and later as the Santa Monica Roller Rink, where the speed skating club won many state and regional championships. The La Monica Ballroom was demolished in 1963.


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: The Pleasure Pier thrived during the 1920s but faded during the Great Depression. During the 1930s, most of the amusement park facilities were closed down and its attractions sold off. A breakwater was built in 1934 that provided docking for up to 100 fishing and pleasure boats near the pier.


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: The bridge and entry gate to Santa Monica Pier were built in 1938 by the federal Works Project Administration, and replaced the former grade connection.


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: The Newcomb Pier was privately owned until it was acquired by the city in 1974. During the 1960s and 1970s various plans were proposed that would entail removal of the pier. The most extensive included the construction of an artificial island with a 1500-room hotel. It was approved by the City Council, but citizens formed "Save Santa Monica Bay" to preserve the pier. The order to raze the pier was revoked by the city council in 1973. Within that same year, the Carousel and Hippodrome were locations for the film "The Sting".


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: Storms swept away the protective breakwater in 1982. During storms in early 1983, the pier experienced a significant loss. On January 27, there were reported swells of 10-feet during this winter storm. When the storm was over, the lower deck of the pier was destroyed. The City of Santa Monica began repairs on March 1, 1983, when another storm rolled in. A crane which was being used to repair the west end was dragged into the water and acted as a battering ram against the pilings. Over one-third of the Pier was destroyed.


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: On June 18, 2009, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment issued a safe eating advisory for any fish caught from Santa Monica Pier to Ventura Harbor due to elevated levels of mercury and PCBs.


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: The City of Santa Monica created a non-profit in response to the damage and called it Santa Monica Pier Restoration Corporation (SMPRC). SMPRC conducted the daily operations of the Santa Monica Pier, such as managing events, filming, promotions, tenants, and street performers. SMPRC has produced the Santa Monica Pier Paddle Board Race and the Twilight Summer Concert Series. Also, in 2011, SMPRC changed the company name to the Santa Monica Pier Corporation (SMPC).


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: In the popular book series "The Dark Artifices" by Cassandra Clare, the fictional Los Angeles Institute overlooks the Santa Monica pier. Most of the major plot is set in this vicinity.


title: Santa Monica Pier

text: The Santa Monica Pier has been used as a filming location for many decades. The amusement park attractions as they existed in 1930s are seen prominently in the "Our Gang" short "Fish Hooky" (1933). It also appears prominently in "Tillie's Punctured Romance" (1914), "Quicksand" (1950), "Elmer Gantry" (1960), "1941" (1979 film), "The Opposite of Sex" (1998), "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" (1969), "Night Tide" (1961), "Bean" (1997), "The Sting" (1973), "Farewell, My Lovely" (1975) with Robert Mitchum, "Her" (2013), "A Night at the Roxbury" (1998), "Mighty Joe Young" (1998), "Miracle Beach", "Forrest Gump" (there is a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company Restaurant on the pier), "Not Another Teen Movie", "Iron Man", "Desperate Teenage Lovedolls", "Dark Ride", "Cellular", "The Hottie and the Nottie", "Falling Down", "Ruthless People" (the pier is the site of the movie's climactic final scene), "Love Stinks", "Hancock", "The Happytime Murders", "Sharknado", the indie romantic comedy "She Wants Me", and "" (the scene with Lilly's birthday party). During the earthquake in the movie "2012", the pier can be seen sinking beneath the waves. The Natalie Wood film "Inside Daisy Clover" (1965) features the pier in the beginning of the picture. The pier was also featured in the 2012 film version of "Rock of Ages". "The Glenn Miller Story" with Jimmy Stewart has a sequence toward the beginning where he goes to the "La Monica Ballroom" for an audition. The pier is also featured in the 2018 film "Pacific Rim Uprising", starring John Boyega, where a kaiju attack destroys the pier, as well as the entire city. Jack Dawson in "Titanic" referenced the pier, which would have been just three years old in 1912, when Titanic sank.


title: For Blood

text: "For Blood" is the eighth episode and first-part finale of the eleventh season of the post-apocalyptic horror television series "The Walking Dead". The 161st episode of the series overall, the episode was directed by Sharat Raju and written by Erik Mountain. "For Blood" was released on the streaming platform AMC+ on October 3, 2021, before airing on AMC on October 10, 2021.


title: For Blood

text: In the episode, Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), and Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) lead a herd to Meridian and sneak in among the confusion, while the Reapers, led by Pope (Ritchie Coster) and joined by Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Leah (Lynn Collins), try to fend them off. At Alexandria, the survivors attempt to wait out a violent storm when part of the wall falls down, letting walkers into the community. The episode has received positive reviews from critics.


title: For Blood

text: Maggie, Negan, and Gabriel lead a herd of walkers to Meridian while disguised among them in masks. When the herd arrives, the lookouts at Meridian are confused by the herd's behavior. Daryl, recognizing the behavior, volunteers to lead them away. Pope instead tasks Paul with luring the walkers away. Paul starts to lead the herd away from Meridian but is ambushed on several sides and stabbed by Maggie. Paul is consumed by walkers, and Negan steals his radio. When the Reapers stop hearing from Paul they assume he is dead, which Pope reveals he assumed would happen. Leah confronts Pope, but he insists that sometimes sacrifices are necessary.


title: For Blood

text: At Alexandria, the survivors shelter in one of the houses while a violent storm hits. While boarding up the windows to keep walkers and rain out, part of Alexandria's outer wall falls down, and Aaron asks for volunteers to go fix it. Connie and Kelly opt to help Aaron rebuild the wall, while Rosita stays behind to watch over the children in the house. While practicing with her weapon by the window, Gracie makes too much noise and attracts walkers to the house. Rosita runs outside and slays several walkers to buy them time, but the walkers’ numbers begin breaking down the door.


title: For Blood

text: Negan and Elijah lead the herd back to Meridian's walls, which trigger landmines and explosives around the perimeter. Maggie and Gabriel break off to head inside. When they approach, Daryl kills one of the lookouts, and directs them to where they can sneak in. Maggie and Gabriel split up inside, with Gabriel climbing to the top floor of a building to defend Maggie with his rifle. She hot-wires a truck, and rams it into Meridian's front gate, allowing the herd inside the walls. Daryl meets Leah on a rooftop, and sensing her discomfort at Pope's recent decisions, invites her to run away with him. When she refuses, Daryl confesses that he is with Maggie's group, and that they were hiding among the dead horde. Despite feeling betrayed, Leah keeps his secret from Pope when he arrives on the rooftop, unveiling a hwacha.


title: For Blood

text: Back at Alexandria, Rosita leads a retreat to the second floor of the house where they can pick off the walkers, however, Judith discovers Gracie hiding in the basement which is now flooding. They try to join the others only to be forced back to the flooding basement by the walkers that have now entered the house.


title: For Blood

text: As the Reapers on the ground struggle to fend the walkers off, Pope orders the hwacha to be fired. Leah points out that this will also kill the Reapers on the ground, and stabs him to death when he won't back down. However, she refuses Daryl’s invitation to join her because of his killing of a reaper running to defend Pope, and radios her comrades that he killed Pope. Daryl flees and joins Maggie and Negan in fighting the Reapers and walkers in the battle at the gates, only for the Reapers to pull back. Leah, having taken command of the Reapers, then orders the hwacha to be fired upon the group and their horde.


title: For Blood

text: The episode received positive reviews. On review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, "For Blood" has a score of 82%, with an average score of 7.4 across 11 reviews. The critical consensus reads: "An early climax for "The Walking Dead"s final season, 'For Blood' stages a rousing confrontation against the Reaper threat – with a couple of gruesome surprises thrown into the mix."


title: For Blood

text: Ron Hogan for "Den of Geek" gave the episode 3.5 out of 5 stars, writing that: "Both stories work well, and there’s no real break in the tension between the two. Both only turn the tension up leading to the season-pausing cliffhanger." Erik Kain for "Forbes" praised the episode's action, but criticized the lack of story progression in the season so far, writing that: "In the end, very little has actually happened this season so far despite eight of the 24 episodes being over and done".


title: For Blood

text: The episode was seen by 1.91 million viewers in the United States on its original air date. It marked an increase in ratings from the previous episode, which had 1.89 million viewers.


title: Odetta

text: Odetta Holmes (December 31, 1930 – December 2, 2008), known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, lyricist, and a civil rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. In 2011 "Time" magazine included her recording of "Take This Hammer" on its list of the 100 Greatest Popular Songs, stating that "Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music."


title: Odetta

text: Odetta was born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. Her father, Reuben Holmes, had died when she was young, and in 1937 she and her mother, Flora Sanders, moved to Los Angeles. When Flora remarried a man called Zadock Felious, Odetta took her stepfather's last name. In 1940 Odetta's teacher noticed her vocal talents, “A teacher told my mother that I had a voice, that maybe I should study,” she recalled. “But I myself didn’t have anything to measure it by.” She began operatic training at the age of thirteen. After attending Belmont High School, she studied music at Los Angeles City College supporting herself as a domestic worker. Flora had hoped to see her daughter follow in the footsteps of Marian Anderson, but Odetta doubted a large black girl like herself would ever perform at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1944 she made her professional debut in musical theater as an ensemble member for four years with the Hollywood Turnabout Puppet Theatre, working alongside Elsa Lanchester. In 1949, she joined the national touring company of the musical "Finian's Rainbow".


title: Odetta

text: While on tour with "Finian's Rainbow", Odetta "fell in with an enthusiastic group of young balladeers in San Francisco", and after 1950 she concentrated on folk singing.


title: Odetta

text: She made her name playing at the Blue Angel nightclub in New York City, and the hungry i in San Francisco. At the Tin Angel in 1954, also in San Francisco, Odetta recorded "Odetta and Larry" with Larry Mohr for Fantasy Records.


title: Odetta

text: A solo career followed, with "Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues" (1956) and "At the Gate of Horn" (1957). "Odetta Sings Folk Songs" was one of the best-selling folk albums of 1963.


title: Odetta

text: In 1959 she appeared on "Tonight with Belafonte", a nationally televised special. She sang "Water Boy" and a duet with Belafonte, "There's a Hole in My Bucket".


title: Odetta

text: In 1961, Martin Luther King Jr. called her "The Queen of American Folk Music". Also in 1961, the duo Harry Belafonte and Odetta made number 32 in the UK Singles Chart with the song "There's a Hole in the Bucket". She is remembered for her performance at March on Washington, the 1963 civil rights demonstration, at which she sang "O Freedom". She described her role in the civil rights movement as "one of the privates in a very big army".


title: Odetta

text: Broadening her musical scope, Odetta used band arrangements on several albums rather than playing alone. She released music of a more "jazz" style on albums like "Odetta and the Blues" (1962) and "Odetta" (1967). She gave a remarkable performance in 1968 at the Woody Guthrie memorial concert.


title: Odetta

text: Odetta acted in several films during this period, including "Cinerama Holiday" (1955); a cinematic production of William Faulkner's "Sanctuary" (1961); and "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" (1974). In 1961 she appeared in an episode of the TV series "Have Gun, Will Travel", playing the wife of a man sentenced to hang ("The Hanging of Aaron Gibbs").


title: Odetta

text: She was married twice, first to Dan Gordon and then, after their divorce, to Gary Shead. Her second marriage also ended in divorce. The blues singer-guitarist Louisiana Red was a former companion of hers.


title: Odetta

text: In May 1975 she appeared on public television's "Say Brother" program, performing "Give Me Your Hand" in the studio. She spoke about her spirituality, the music tradition from which she drew, and her involvement in civil rights struggles.


title: Odetta

text: In 1976, Odetta performed in the U.S. Bicentennial opera "Be Glad Then, America" by John La Montaine, as the Muse for America; with Donald Gramm, Richard Lewis and the Penn State University Choir and the Pittsburgh Symphony. The production was directed by Sarah Caldwell who was the director of the Opera Company of Boston at the time.


title: Odetta

text: Odetta released two albums in the 20-year period from 1977 to 1997: "Movin' It On", in 1987 and a new version of "Christmas Spirituals", produced by Rachel Faro, in 1988.


title: Odetta

text: Beginning in 1998, she returned to recording and touring. The new CD "To Ella" (recorded live and dedicated to her friend Ella Fitzgerald upon hearing of her death before walking on stage), was released in 1998 on Silverwolf Records, followed by three releases on M.C. Records in partnership with pianist/arranger/producer Seth Farber and record producer Mark Carpentieri. These included "Blues Everywhere I Go", a 2000 Grammy-nominated blues/jazz band tribute album to the great lady blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s; "Looking for a Home", a 2002 W.C. Handy Award-nominated band tribute to Lead Belly; and the 2007 Grammy-nominated "Gonna Let It Shine", a live album of gospel and spiritual songs supported by Seth Farber and The Holmes Brothers. These recordings and active touring led to guest appearance on fourteen new albums by other artists between 1999 and 2006 and the re-release of 45 old Odetta albums and compilation appearances.


title: Odetta

text: On September 29, 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Odetta with the National Endowment for the Arts' National Medal of Arts. In 2004, Odetta was honored at the Kennedy Center with the "Visionary Award" along with a tribute performance by Tracy Chapman. In 2005, the Library of Congress honored her with its "Living Legend Award".


title: Odetta

text: In mid-September 2001, Odetta performed with the Boys' Choir of Harlem on the "Late Show with David Letterman," appearing on the first show after Letterman resumed broadcasting, having been off the air for several nights following the events of September 11; they performed "This Little Light of Mine".


title: Odetta

text: The 2005 documentary film "No Direction Home", directed by Martin Scorsese, highlights her musical influence on Bob Dylan, the subject of the documentary. The film contains an archive clip of Odetta performing "Waterboy" on TV in 1959, as well as her "Mule Skinner Blues" and "No More Auction Block for Me".


title: Odetta

text: In 2006, Odetta opened shows for jazz vocalist Madeleine Peyroux, and in 2006 she toured the U.S., Canada, and Europe accompanied by her pianist, which included being presented by the U.S. Embassy in Latvia as the keynote speaker at a human rights conference, and also in a concert in Riga's historic 1,000-year-old Maza Guild Hall. In December 2006, the Winnipeg Folk Festival honored Odetta with their "Lifetime Achievement Award". In February 2007, the International Folk Alliance awarded Odetta as "Traditional Folk Artist of the Year".


title: Odetta

text: On March 24, 2007, a tribute concert to Odetta was presented at the Rachel Schlesinger Theatre by the World Folk Music Association with live performance and video tributes by Pete Seeger, Madeleine Peyroux, Harry Belafonte, Janis Ian, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Josh White Jr., Peter, Paul and Mary, Oscar Brand, Tom Rush, Jesse Winchester, Eric Andersen, Wavy Gravy, David Amram, Roger McGuinn, Robert Sims, Carolyn Hester, Donal Leace, Marie Knight, Side by Side, and Laura McGhee.


title: Odetta

text: In 2007, Odetta's album "Gonna Let It Shine" was nominated for a Grammy, and she completed a major Fall Concert Tour in the "Songs of Spirit" show, which included artists from all over the world. She toured around North America in late 2006 and early 2007 to support this CD.


title: Odetta

text: On January 21, 2008, Odetta was the keynote speaker at San Diego's Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration, followed by concert performances in San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, and Mill Valley, in addition to being the sole guest for the evening on PBS-TV's "The Tavis Smiley Show".


title: Odetta

text: Odetta was honored on May 8, 2008, at a historic tribute night, hosted by Wavy Gravy, held at Banjo Jim's in the East Village. Included in the billing that night were David Amram, Vincent Cross, Guy Davis, Timothy Hill, Jack Landron, Christine Lavin, Madeleine Peyroux and Chaney Sims.


title: Odetta

text: In summer 2008, at the age of 77, she launched a North American tour, where she sang from a wheelchair. Her set in later years included "This Little Light of Mine (I'm Gonna Let It Shine)", Lead Belly's "The Bourgeois Blues", "(Something Inside) So Strong", "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" and "House of the Rising Sun".


title: Odetta

text: She made an appearance on June 30, 2008, at The Bitter End on Bleecker Street, in New York City for a concert in tribute to Liam Clancy. Her last big concert, before thousands of people, was in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on October 4, 2008, for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Her last performance was at Hugh's Room in Toronto on October 25.


title: Odetta

text: In November 2008, Odetta's health began to decline and she began receiving treatment at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. She had hoped to perform at Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009, but she died of heart disease on December 2, 2008, in New York City, at the age of 77.


title: Odetta

text: At a memorial service for her in February 2009 at Riverside Church in New York City, participants included Maya Angelou, Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte, Geoffrey Holder, Steve Earle, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Peter Yarrow, Maria Muldaur, Tom Chapin, Josh White Jr. (son of Josh White), Emory Joseph, Rattlesnake Annie, the Brooklyn Technical High School Chamber Chorus, and videotaped tributes from Tavis Smiley and Joan Baez.


title: Odetta

text: Odetta influenced Harry Belafonte, who "cited her as a key influence" on his musical career; Bob Dylan, who said, "The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta. I heard a record of hers "Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues" in a record store, back when you could listen to records right there in the store. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson. . . . [That album was] just something vital and personal. I learned all the songs on that record"; Joan Baez, who said, "Odetta was a goddess. Her passion moved me. I learned everything she sang"; Janis Joplin, who "spent much of her adolescence listening to Odetta, who was also the first person Janis imitated when she started singing"; the poet Maya Angelou, who once said, "If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta's would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time"; John Waters, whose original screenplay for "Hairspray" mentions her as an influence on beatniks; and Carly Simon, who cited Odetta as a major influence and told of "going weak in the knees" when she had the opportunity to meet her in Greenwich Village.


title: Starbuck Island

text: Starbuck Island (or Volunteer Island) is an uninhabited coral island in the central Pacific, and is part of the Central Line Islands of Kiribati. Former names include "Barren Island", "Coral Queen Island", "Hero Island", "Low Island", and "Starve Island".


title: Starbuck Island

text: Located at , just east from the geographic center of the Pacific Ocean (), and measuring east-to-west and north-to-south, Starbuck Island has a land area of . It is a low, dry, coral limestone island with a steep beach backed by a bank composed of large coral fragments. Several hypersaline lagoons form on the island's eastern side. These occasionally dry up, and are said to be dangerous to approach: one worker during the island's guano-mining days sank up to his neck in salty mud before being rescued.


title: Starbuck Island

text: There is no freshwater on the island, which is one of the drier atolls in the Line Island group. Annual yearly rainfall averages approximately .


title: Starbuck Island

text: Little vegetation exists on Starbuck; stunted "Sida fallax" scrub and low herbs and grasses predominate, with a few "Cordia subcordata" bushes and bunch grass rounding out the flora. Recent photos showed a few palm trees growing near the center of the island.


title: Starbuck Island

text: The island boasts a large colony of sooty terns, estimated at 1.5 million pairs, together with Polynesian rats, feral cats, green turtles, and around fifteen other species of seabirds. Other accounts estimate the sooty tern population to be as high as three to six million birds.


title: Starbuck Island

text: James Henderson, merchant captain of the East India Company ship "Hercules", sighted the island in 1819 while sailing from South America to Calcutta, India. Soon after his arrival a local newspaper, "The Calcutta Journal (or Political, Commercial, and Literary Gazette"), published Henderson's report of three islands which he had encountered during his voyage, but it, or he himself, had failed to state the exact date for his sighting of modern Starbuck Island. Henry Evans Maude's educated guess was that this may have been in early February 1819. The next captain known to have seen it was Obed Starbuck, captain of the whaler "Hero" out of Nantucket, on September 5, 1823.


title: Starbuck Island

text: The island was sighted again on December 12, 1823 by Obed's first cousin, Valentine Starbuck, the American-born master of the British whaling ship . "L'Aigle" was carrying King Kamehameha II of Hawaii and Queen Kamāmalu and their retinue to England. Valentine Starbuck is the first non-Pacific Islander known to have set foot on the island.


title: Starbuck Island

text: The island was finally charted in 1825 by Captain The 7th Lord Byron (a cousin of the famous poet). Lord Byron, commanding the British warship , was returning to London from a special mission to Honolulu to repatriate the remains of the Hawaiian royal couple, King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu, who had died of measles while trying to visit King George IV. Lord Byron also sighted and charted Mauke and Malden Island, which he named after his surveying officer.


title: Starbuck Island

text: Starbuck Island was claimed by the United States under the 1856 Guano Act, but controlled by Britain after 1866, when possession was taken by Commodore Swinburn of . Starbuck Island was mined for phosphate between 1870 and 1893. The island formed a part of the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony prior to the independence of Kiribati in 1979. American claims to the atoll were formally vacated in the Treaty of Tarawa, signed that same year.


title: Starbuck Island

text: At its highest point, the island rises to only about 5 meters. Due to its low profile and dangerous surrounding reefs, a number of ships were wrecked at Starbuck Island in the late 19th century. The French transport "Euryale" wrecked there in March 1870 and the crew was marooned on the atoll for 35 days. The experience allowed the captain of "Euryale", future contre-admiral Albert Des Portes, to finally chart the correct geographical location of the island. All members of the crew were eventually rescued and returned to France.


title: Starbuck Island

text: On August 7, 1896 the Norwegian ship "Seladon" was wrecked against the barrier. The crew went into the lifeboats and drifted for 30 days until they landed on the island of Niulakita, Tuvalu. They lived together with a few natives for 10 months until they were rescued by a passing ship.


title: Starbuck Island

text: Starbuck Island has been designated as the "Starbuck Island Wildlife Sanctuary". In 2014 the Kiribati government established a 12-nautical-mile fishing exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Islands: Caroline (commonly called Millennium), Flint, Vostok, Malden, and Starbuck.


title: Michael Bentt

text: Michael Bentt (born September 4, 1965) is a British-born American film and television actor, and retired professional boxer who competed from 1989 to 1994. Of Jamaican heritage, he was born in East Dulwich, London, but raised in the Cambria Heights section of Queens in New York City. Bentt won the WBO heavyweight title from Tommy Morrison in 1993, losing the title in his first defense in 1994 to Herbie Hide. As an amateur he won bronze medals at the 1986 World Championships and 1987 Pan American Games.


title: Michael Bentt

text: As an actor, Bentt is best known for co-starring as Sonny Liston in the 2001 film "Ali", and as Biggis/El Plaga in the 2005 film "State Property 2". He is featured in the first episode of the 2019 American web television documentary series "Losers".


title: Michael Bentt

text: One of the most decorated amateur boxers in US history, Bentt won four New York City Golden Gloves titles, five United States Amateur Boxing Championships and three (New York State) Empire State Games gold medals. After having won the bronze medal at the 1986 World Amateur Boxing Championships and the 1987 Pan American Games he placed a controversial second-place finish at the 1988 United States Olympic Trials and Box-off's to the Seoul Olympics eventual Gold Medalist, Ray Mercer. Sport writers frequently misspelled his second name, writing "Bent" or "Bennet" instead of "Bentt," and after he defeated Tommy Morrison, HBO's host Larry Merchant ironized in a way that he's finally have to add the third "T" to his name.


title: Michael Bentt

text: As both his mother and father are Jamaican citizens, he won the right to fight on the Jamaican Olympic Boxing Team after stopping the island nation's top amateur heavyweights in the 1988 Jamaican Olympic Trials. However, when confronted with the provision that he would have to relinquish his United States citizenship in order to accompany the Jamaican team to Seoul, he refused. Bentt is regarded as the most decorated boxer in the history of American amateur boxing never to have competed on a United States Olympic boxing team.


title: Michael Bentt

text: His other amateur titles included the 1981 New York City Police Athletic League Champion, 1980 NYC Kids Gloves Champion, Empire State Games Heavyweight Champion (1982, 1983, 1984). He was a three-time selected member of the United States All-American National Boxing Team (1985, 1986, 1987), captain of the 1986 United States Goodwill Games Boxing Team and the 1987 United States Pan American Games Boxing Team. He was a bronze medalist in each of those competitions. At the Pan American semifinals and North American finals he faced Félix Savón, to whom he lost by unanimous decision twice in nine days, cutting his way to the 1987 World Cup in Belgrade. He also received the bronze medal at the 1985 World Amateur Championships in Seoul, South Korea and the gold medal at the 1985 North American Championship in Beaumont, Texas.


title: Michael Bentt

text: Though he didn't compete at the 1985 AAU National Championships, deciding to take some time off after losing a decision to Alexandr Yagubkin of the Soviet Union in the semifinals of the World Cup, he was the recipient of the 1985 Sugar Ray Robinson Award as the most outstanding boxer in the New York Golden Gloves tournament that year (among the 85' class of Golden Gloves champions were future professional champions Riddick Bowe, Kevin Kelly and Junior Jones). Bentt was also a three time member of the United States All-American Amateur Boxing Team. After winning the Pan American Box-offs he was ranked #1 U.S. amateur heavyweight by the United States Amateur Boxing Federation.


title: Michael Bentt

text: Bentt counts avenging an earlier defeat, suffered at the hands of, then, three-time USSR World Amateur Heavyweight Champion, Alexandr Yagubkin, at the 1986 World Championships in Reno, Nevada as one of his most precious moments. Before the loss to Bentt, Yagubkin had been victorious over every American heavyweight he encountered during a three-year period. This included a Moscow decision-win over Bentt's older brother Winston, himself a member of the United States National Team.


title: Michael Bentt

text: Domestically Bentt went undefeated for a four-year period before being denied an Olympic team berth at the 1988 United States Olympic Trials.


title: Michael Bentt

text: In an homage to Stephan Johnson, a former amateur teammate at the Bed-Stuy famed (Bedford-Stuyvesant) Boxing Association and fellow Golden Glover who succumbed to injuries suffered in a professional boxing match in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Michael privately presented Stephan's mother with a pair of his own New York Golden Gloves champion medallions.


title: Michael Bentt

text: Although he was the officially selected team alternate at 201 lbs Bentt declined to serve as an alternate on the 1988 Olympic Boxing Team.


title: Michael Bentt

text: Pan Am Box-offs (heavyweight), International Center of the Broadmoor, Colorado Springs, Colorado, July 1987:


title: Michael Bentt

text: Bentt turned professional under Emanuel Steward; and was knocked-out in the first round by Jerry Jones in his pro debut. Bentt maintained that neither he nor Steward knew Jones was a southpaw but counts both the devastation and humiliation suffered that night as "hugely valuable and key" to his massive upset of Tommy Morrison some four years later. After a 20-month hiatus following the loss to Jones, Bentt returned to boxing. After a few wins he signed with manager Stan Hoffman, and was trained by former light heavyweight champion Eddie Mustafa Muhammad. Bentt then put together a modest winning streak, lost to Herbie Hide and retired with an 11-2 record.


title: Michael Bentt

text: For a two-year period in the early 1990s served as chief sparring partner for then world heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield.


title: Michael Bentt

text: In October 1993, Bentt caused a huge upset with a ninety seven second first round knockout of Tommy Morrison to capture the WBO heavyweight championship. The American-based boxer lost his WBO belt to Herbie Hide at The Den, Bermondsey, United Kingdom, in 1994. The fight would be his last after being rushed to the hospital and told he could never fight again. Bentt had suffered brain injuries in the loss, and although the injuries did not negatively affect the quality of his thoughts or mental sharpness, it was feared that future impacts to the head could result in permanent long-term injury or even death.


title: Michael Bentt

text: At various times after relocating to numerous U.S. states, Bentt passed written exams and awaited entrance into police academies in New York City, Miami, Florida, and Las Vegas, Nevada


title: Michael Bentt

text: Bentt attended Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he studied radio/TV. Turning to acting, he was the second actor cast after Will Smith in Michael Mann's "Ali". Michael landed the coveted role of Sonny Liston, while also serving as both Smith's chief sparring partner and assistant trainer during the six months of boxing training before principal photography began on the film.


title: Michael Bentt

text: Bentt has contributed essays as a writer for "Bert Sugar's Fight Game" and the HBO boxing website. He has commentated on boxing matches for "Bob Arum's Top Rank Boxing" on ESPN in the United States, Filmnet in The Netherlands, and BBC Radio in the United Kingdom.


title: Michael Bentt

text: In 2006, he had an on camera audition in Puerto Rico as part of "HBO World Championship Boxing's" search for an expert boxing commentator for the network‘s newest boxing segment. Eventually the candidates were narrowed down to Bentt and the then recently retired former Heavyweight Champion, Lennox Lewis.


title: Michael Bentt

text: In 2003, he was the first actor-in-residence at Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania, where he played the title role in 'Othello'.


title: Michael Bentt

text: He has worked with directors Michael Mann (five times), Ron Shelton (twice), Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, and Bill L. Norton (five times). He also starred as Biggis (El Plaga) opposite Beanie Sigel, Noriega, and Damon Dash in the Dash-directed hip hop cult classic "State Property 2".


title: Michael Bentt

text: Appeared in "Public Enemies" starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger. Director Michael Mann handpicked Bentt to play Herbert Youngblood, who along with Dillinger staged the infamous Crown Point Jail break.


title: Michael Bentt

text: Among his guest starring roles in television dramas are 'Calvin Trainier', a Suge Knight-esque record label honcho in Michael Mann's "Robbery Homicide Division", as 'Charles Lambert', an NFL linebacker who years earlier suffered sexual abuse at the hands of his adoptive father, and as 'Dion'- an imprisoned homosexual snitch in "Sons Of Anarchy".


title: Michael Bentt

text: In the winter of 2011 and summer of 2012 Bentt directed the critically received off-Broadway production of 'Kid Shamrock', a play about the struggles, triumphs, demons and redemption of 1970s Long Island New York middleweight contender 'Irish' Bobby Cassidy Sr.


title: Michael Bentt

text: Bentt is cited by jazz and film composer, Terence Blanchard, as having provided the inspiration for his Opera Theatre Of St.Louis' 2013 production of 'Champion'. This play is based on the real life ring fights and subsequent death of Benny 'Kid' Paret at the hands of Emile Griffith, a bisexual boxer in 1962. Over the years while training Blanchard in boxing, Bentt, would share with him the transcendent and tragic elements that befell the two fighters.


title: Michael Bentt

text: Bentt served as a faculty member and Co-Teacher for the 'Anna Deavere Smith Project: Empathy and Acting' at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco during 2013.


title: Princess Anne of Denmark

text: Princess Anne of Denmark ("formerly" Anne Anson, Viscountess Anson, "née" Anne Ferelith Fenella Bowes-Lyon; 4 December 1917 – 26 September 1980) was a first cousin of Elizabeth II and the mother of royal photographer Patrick Anson, 5th Earl of Lichfield and Lady Elizabeth Shakerley. She became a Princess of Denmark through her second marriage.


title: Princess Anne of Denmark

text: Anne Bowes-Lyon was born in Washington, D.C., in 1917. Her father was the Hon. John Herbert Bowes-Lyon and her mother was the Hon. Fenella Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, daughter of Charles Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, 21st Baron Clinton. Anne had three younger sisters, two of whom were Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, who were institutionalized from 1941 for severe intellectual disability.


title: Princess Anne of Denmark

text: Anne's paternal grandfather was Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, father of her aunt Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who was born Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.


title: Princess Anne of Denmark

text: Anne married Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas William Arnold Anson (1913–1958) on 28 April 1938. As her husband held the courtesy title of Viscount Anson, Anne was styled Viscountess Anson upon their marriage. They were divorced in 1948. They had two children, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren:


title: Princess Anne of Denmark

text: On 16 September 1950, at Glamis Castle she subsequently married Prince George Valdemar of Denmark, upon which she became Her Highness Princess Anne of Denmark.


title: Avemetatarsalia

text: Avemetatarsalia (meaning "bird metatarsals") is a clade of diapsid reptiles containing all archosaurs more closely related to birds than to crocodilians. The two most successful groups of avemetatarsalians were the dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Dinosaurs were the largest terrestrial animals for much of the Mesozoic Era, and one group of small feathered dinosaurs (Aves, i.e. birds) has survived up to the present day. Pterosaurs were the first flying vertebrates and persisted through the Mesozoic before dying out at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event. Both dinosaurs and pterosaurs appeared in the Triassic Period, shortly after avemetatarsalians as a whole. The name Avemetatarsalia was first established by British palaeontologist Michael Benton in 1999. An alternate name is Panaves, or "all birds", in reference to its definition containing all animals, living or extinct, which are more closely related to birds than to crocodilians.


title: Avemetatarsalia

text: Although dinosaurs and pterosaurs were the only avemetatarsalians to survive past the end of the Triassic, other groups flourished during the Triassic. The most basal (earliest-branching) and plesiomorphic ("primitive") known avemetatarsalians were the aphanosaurs. Aphanosaurs were rare, four-legged carnivores which were only properly distinguished as a group in 2017. The split between dinosaurs and pterosaurs occurred just after aphanosaurs branched off the archosaur family tree. This split corresponds to the subgroup Ornithodira, defined as the last common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs, and all of its descendants. Until the discovery of aphanosaurs, Ornithodira and Avemetatarsalia were considered roughly equivalent concepts.


title: Avemetatarsalia

text: Pterosauromorpha includes all avemetatarsalians closer to pterosaurs than to dinosaurs. True non-pterosaur pterosauromorphs have been historically difficult to determine. Small, insectivorous archosaurs of the family Lagerpetidae may potentially be examples, alongside the similar genus "Scleromochlus". Dinosauromorpha, on the other hand, includes all avemetatarsalians closer to dinosaurs than to pterosaurs. Probable non-dinosaur dinosauromorphs include the diverse and widespread silesaurids, as well as more controversial and fragmentary taxa such as "Marasuchus", "Lagosuchus", "Nyasasaurus", and "Saltopus". Lagerpetids were also traditionally considered dinosauromorphs, though this has been more recently debated.


title: Avemetatarsalia

text: The foundational characteristic is the "advanced mesotarsal" ankles, which are characterized by a large astragalus and a small calcaneum. This ankle orientation operated on a single hinge, allowing for better mobility. Probably as a result of this change, the common ancestor of the avemetatarsalians had an upright, bipedal posture, with their legs extending vertically, similar to that of mammals.


title: Avemetatarsalia

text: Feathers and other filamentary structures are known across the avemetatarsalians, from the downy pycnofibers of pterosaurs, to quill-like structures present in ornithischian dinosaurs, such as "Psittacosaurus" and "Tianyulong", to feathers in theropod dinosaurs and their descendants, birds.


title: Avemetatarsalia

text: Two clades of avemetatarsalians, pterosaurs and birds, independently evolved flight. Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight. Their wings are formed by a membrane of skin, muscle, and other tissues stretching from the ankles to a dramatically lengthened fourth finger. Birds evolved flight much later. Their wings formed from elongated fingers and their arms, all covered with flight feathers.


title: Avemetatarsalia

text: Avemetatarsalians were generally more lightly built than crocodile-line archosaurs. They had smaller heads and usually a complete lack of osteoderms.


title: Avemetatarsalia

text: Bird-line archosaurs appear in the fossil record by the Anisian stage of the Middle Triassic about 245 million years ago, represented by the dinosauriform "Asilisaurus". However, Early Triassic fossil footprints reported in 2010 from the Świętokrzyskie (Holy Cross) Mountains of Poland may belong to a more primitive dinosauromorph. If so, the origin of avemetatarsalians would be pushed back into the early Olenekian age, around 249 Ma. The oldest Polish footprints are classified in the ichnogenus "Prorotodactylus" and were made by an unknown small quadrupedal animal, but footprints called "Sphingopus", found from Early Anisian strata, show that moderately large bipedal dinosauromorphs had appeared by 246 Ma. The tracks show that the dinosaur lineage appeared soon after the Permian–Triassic extinction event. Their age suggests that the rise of dinosaurs was slow and drawn out across much of the Triassic. The primitive traits found in the quadrupedal aphanosaur "Teleocrater" shows that the earliest avemetatarsalians had many pseudosuchian-like features, and that the traits typical for the group evolved later.


title: Avemetatarsalia

text: In 1986, Jacques Gauthier defined the name Ornithosuchia (previously coined by Huene) for a branch-based clade including all archosaurs more closely related to birds than to crocodiles. In the same year, Gauthier also coined and defined a slightly more restrictive node-based clade, Ornithodira, containing the last common ancestor of the dinosaurs and the pterosaurs and all of its descendants. Paul Sereno in 1991 gave a different definition of Ornithodira, one in which "Scleromochlus" was explicitly added. It was thus a potentially larger group than the Ornithodira of Gauthier. In 1999 Michael Benton concluded that "Scleromochlus" was indeed outside Gauthier's original conception of Ornithodira, so he named a new branch-based clade for this purpose: Avemetatarsalia, named after the birds (Aves), the last surviving members of the clade, and the metatarsal ankle joint that was a typical character of the group. Avemetatarsalia was defined as all Avesuchia closer to Dinosauria than to Crocodylia. In 2005, Sereno stated the opinion that Ornithodira was not a useful concept, whereas Avemetatarsalia was. In 2001, the same clade was given the name "Panaves" (, from Greek + Latin ), coined by Jacques Gauthier. He defined it as the largest and most inclusive clade of archosaurs containing Aves (birds, anchored on "Vultur gryphus") but not Crocodylia (anchored on "Crocodylus niloticus"). Gauthier referred Aves, all other Dinosauria, all Pterosauria, and a variety of Triassic archosaurs, including "Lagosuchus" and "Scleromochlus", to this group.


title: Avemetatarsalia

text: In a 2005 review of archosaur classification, Phil Senter attempted to resolve this conflicting set of terminology by applying strict priority to names based on when and how they were first defined. Senter noted that Ornithosuchia, the earliest name used for the total group of archosaurs closer to birds than to crocodiles, should be the valid name for that group, and have precedence over later names with identical definitions, such as Avemetatarsalia and Pan-Aves. While this has been followed by some researchers, others have either continued to use Avemetatarsalia or Ornithodira, or have followed Senter only reluctantly. Mike Taylor (2007) for example noted that, while Senter is correct in stating that Ornithosuchia has priority, this is "undesirable" because it probably excludes the eponymous family Ornithosuchidae, and questioned the utility of using priority before the PhyloCode is implemented to govern it. In fact, the name Ornithosuchia may be "illegal" under the PhyloCode because it does not include its eponymous taxon as part of its definition.


title: Avemetatarsalia

text: Kammerer "et al". (2020) and Ezcurra "et al". (2020) supported an alternative hypothesis regarding the relationships of lagerpetids. They were interpreted as non-pterosaur pterosauromorphs. This phylogeny would shorten the morphological and chronological gap perceived between pterosaurs and other stem-birds, and explain the origin of this group. Bennett (2020) argued that "Scleromochlus", a genus historically considered a relative of ornithodirans or even a basal pterosauromorph, was instead a non-archosaur archosauriform (possibly a doswelliid).


title: Jack Blades

text: Jack Martin Blades (born April 24, 1954) is an American rock musician. He has worked in the bands Rubicon, Night Ranger (as bassist and one of the lead vocalists), and Damn Yankees (as one of the founding members). He has also recorded with Tommy Shaw under the name Shaw Blades, and has done work alongside the Tak Matsumoto Group. Blades' most recent efforts include a second solo CD. He is also a member of the band Revolution Saints.


title: Jack Blades

text: Born in Palm Desert, California, Blades started playing guitar at eight years old when his parents gave him a plastic ukulele. He attended Arcadia High School (1968/69) in Scottsdale, Arizona, then graduated from Indio High School in 1972 where he was the senior class president. While attending College of the Desert in Palm Desert he met and jammed with Pat Rizzo (who was then the sax player for Sly and the Family Stone) who introduced him to Jerry Martini (the original Sax player for Sly). Blades went off to college at San Diego State University as a pre-med student, but took a leave of absence in 1975 to move to San Francisco. Martini and Blades (joined by Brad Gillis) started the band Rubicon.


title: Jack Blades

text: One of Blades' sons, Colin, has co-written and performed songs with his father and has also released his own solo material. Blades also has another son, James.


title: Jack Blades

text: Blades has released two solo albums and has written or co-written songs for Aerosmith, Cher, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Roger Daltrey, and other artists. Blades has also produced or co-produced CDs for Night Ranger, Shaw Blades and for several other artists including Great White, Ted Nugent, and Samantha 7, among others.


title: Jack Blades

text: In the 1990s, Blades co-wrote four Aerosmith songs with Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and Tommy Shaw: "Shut Up and Dance" (1993), "Can't Stop Messin'" (1993), "Walk on Water" (1994), "What Kind of Love Are You On" (1998).


title: Jack Blades

text: In 1998, Blades was asked by Ringo Starr to play bass in Starr's VH1 Storytellers with Joe Walsh and Simon Kirke.


title: Jack Blades

text: Former Sly and the Family Stone saxophonist Jerry Martini formed the funk band Rubicon with Blades as bass player and fellow future Night Ranger member Brad Gillis on guitar. Rubicon recorded two albums on 20th Century Fox Records – "Rubicon", and "American Dreams". They had one hit single titled "I'm Gonna Take Care of Everything". Rubicon played Cal Jam 2, held at the Ontario Motor Speedway in California before 250,000 people. Rubicon broke up in 1979 and Blades formed the short-lived club band Stereo with Brad Gillis and drummer Kelly Keagy, the latter of whom had joined as touring drummer for Rubicon.


title: Jack Blades

text: Blades' roommate at the beginning of the '80s was Alan "Fitz" Fitzgerald, bass player for Montrose and Gamma and keyboard player for Sammy Hagar. He suggested they form a band. Fitz knew another guitar player in Sacramento (Jeff Watson) along with guitarist Brad Gillis and drummer / vocalist Kelly Keagy and Ranger was formed in 1980. The band recorded demos and played shows around the Bay area for two years. They were signed to Boardwalk Records and released their first album, "Dawn Patrol" in 1982. Prior to the release it was discovered that there was a country band by the name of The Rangers. Blades had written the song "Night Ranger" for the album so the band changed their name to Night Ranger to avoid any potential problems. Night Ranger went on through the '80s releasing albums which sold by the millions, as well as several hit singles. The band toured constantly both in the US and in Japan where they continue to be popular today.


title: Jack Blades

text: Blades re-formed Night Ranger with the original members in 1996. They recorded three CDs – "Neverland" in 1997, "Seven" in 1998, and "Hole in the Sun" in 2008. Night Ranger continues to tour today.


title: Jack Blades

text: Damn Yankees was formed by Blades at the start of the 1990s along with Ted Nugent and Styx guitarist Tommy Shaw. Damn Yankees had multi platinum success with two albums "Damn Yankees", "Don't Tread", and a gold-selling single "High Enough". Damn Yankees recorded and toured non-stop for four years. In 1996, bandmate Ted Nugent left the band to revive his solo career. Blades and bandmate Tommy Shaw continued to produce music as Shaw Blades. Although Damn Yankees has not released any new music since 1992 and has made sporadic appearances through the 2000s onstage, the band is considered to be on hiatus but "has met multiple times to meet and write over the years."


title: Jack Blades

text: After the Damn Yankees decided to take a break in 1994, Blades and Tommy Shaw decided to record together under the name Shaw/Blades. They wrote and recorded the first Shaw/Blades CD together; "Hallucination" was released in 1995. In 2007, Shaw/Blades released "Influence" (VH1 Classic Records) which is a collection of cover songs that influenced them. Shaw/Blades have toured acoustically across the US.


title: Jack Blades

text: In 2004, Blades recorded a CD and toured Japan with TMG (Tak Matsumoto Group) formed by guitarist Tak Matsumoto of the Japanese mega group B'z. TMG scored a No. 1 single ("Oh Japan, our time is now") and a No. 1 CD ("TMG I") on Billboard Japan's domestic chart. With TMG, Blades performed "Never Good-bye" the ending credits theme for the 2004 film "Ultraman" (a.k.a. "Ultraman: The Next"). The song appears on the 2005 soundtrack album for the movie and on "TMG I", the 2004 album by Tak Matsumoto Group.


title: Jack Blades

text: Blades released his first solo album in 2004 – "Jack Blades". His second solo effort, "Rock n' Roll Ride", followed early in 2012.


title: Jack Blades

text: Blades continues record new material with Night Ranger as they also still tour around the world. He also played at the Republican National Convention on August 29, 2012. Member of the band Revolution Saints.


title: RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under (season 2)

text: The second season of "RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under" premiered on 30 July 2022 and concluded on 17 September 2022. The cast was announced via TVNZ's Instagram account and a live interview with Kween Kong on TVNZ's "Breakfast" show on 7 July 2022.


text: Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September 2022, BBC Three delayed the final two episodes in the United Kingdom until after the period of national mourning. The winner of the second season of "RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under" was Spankie Jackzon, with Hannah Conda and Kween Kong as runners-up.


text: The second season was confirmed and casting was opened on 9 September 2021. Casting closed on 5 October. The season filmed in January and February 2022. Season 1 judges Michelle Visage and Rhys Nicholson were spotted in south Auckland, leading to speculation that both would be returning to judge season 2.


text: Spankie Jackzon previously appeared on season 2 of "House of Drag", a series hosted and judged by "Drag Race Down Under" Season 1 contestants Anita Wigl'it and Kita Mean, winning the season over runner-up Elektra Shock.


title: No Guns Life

text: An anime television series adaptation has been produced by Madhouse. The first part was broadcast from October to December 2019. The second part was broadcast from July to September 2020.


title: No Guns Life

text: In North America, the manga has been licensed for English language release by Viz Media. The anime television series is licensed by Funimation.


title: No Guns Life

text: In the near future, many humans have become cyborgs called . However, with a great war having recently ended, many Extended, who are former soldiers, begin to resort to crime to survive. Juzo Inui is a "Resolver," an Extended mercenary who specializes in solving problems caused by other Extended. However, Juzo's life is turned upside down when a renegade Extended breaks into his office, pleading for him to protect a young boy named Tetsurō Arahabaki.


title: No Guns Life

text: "No Guns Life", written and illustrated by Tasuku Karasuma, was serialized in Shueisha's "seinen" manga magazine "Ultra Jump" from September 19, 2014, to September 18, 2021. Shueisha collected its chapters in thirteen "tankōbon" volumes, released from February 19, 2015, to December 17, 2021.


title: No Guns Life

text: The manga is licensed in North America by Viz Media. The first volume was released on September 17, 2019.


title: No Guns Life

text: An anime television series adaptation was announced in the April issue of Shueisha's "Ultra Jump" magazine on March 18, 2019. The series is animated by Madhouse, produced by Egg Firm and directed by Naoyuki Itō, with Yukie Sugawara handling series composition, and Masanori Shino designing the characters. Kenji Kawai is composing the series' music. Its 3DCG backgrounds were created by Cyclone Graphics, the studio that also produced the series' ending animation, using Unreal Engine 4. The series ran for 24 episodes, with the first half of the series (containing Episodes 1 to 12) aired from October 10 to December 26, 2019, on TBS, AT-X, SUN, KBS, and BS11, and the second half of the series (containing Episodes 13 to 24) were slated to premiere on April 9, 2020, but was delayed and aired from July 9 to September 24, 2020, due to COVID-19. Kenichi Asai performed the series' opening theme "Motor City," while DATS!! performed the series' ending theme "Game Over." The second opening theme is "Chaos Drifters" by SawanoHiroyuki[nZk]:Jean-Ken Johnny, and the second ending theme is "new world" by THIS IS JAPAN. Funimation has licensed the series for simulcast and dub.


title: The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time

text: The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time is a list published in book form in 1990 by the British-based Crime Writers' Association. Five years later, the Mystery Writers of America published a similar list titled The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time. Many titles can be found in both lists.


title: Resident Evil: Damnation

text: Resident Evil: Damnation, known as in Japan, is a 2012 Japanese adult computer-animated biopunk action film by Capcom and Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, and is directed by Makoto Kamiya and produced by Hiroyuki Kobayashi. It features the voices of Matthew Mercer, Dave Wittenberg, Wendee Lee, and Courtenay Taylor.


title: Resident Evil: Damnation

text: The story revolves around CIA agent Leon S. Kennedy as he investigates biological weapons used in a European civil war. Kamiya aimed to tell a more original story by moving away from the narrative of the series, and asked for Capcom's aid in regards to the handling of the characters to make them consistent with their video game counterparts.


title: Resident Evil: Damnation

text: "Damnation" premiered on October 27, 2012, in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It was commercially successful, grossing more than $2 million in Japan and more than $3 million in home media format in the US. The film has an approval rating of 100% on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.


title: Resident Evil: Damnation

text: In 2011, CIA agent Leon S. Kennedy enters a Eastern Slav Republic to confirm rumors that Bio-Organic Weapons (BOWs) are being used in the country's civil war, and ignores the government's order to retreat. He comes across his contact, who has been attacked and is then killed by a strong Licker. After a brief fight, second Licker appears but spares Leon, Leon is knocked out, strong lead Lickers are released in the wild, and finds himself tied to a chair by rebel fighters JD; the former teacher Alexander Kozachenko, better known as Buddy; and the elderly Ivan Judanovich, the group's Ataman.