title: Effects unit

text: A musician bringing many pedals to a live show or recording session often mounts the pedals on a guitar pedalboard, to reduce set-up and tear-down time and, for pedalboards with lids, protect the pedals during transportation. When a musician has multiple effects in a rack mounted road case, this case may be called an "effects rack" or "rig". When rackmounted effects are mounted in a roadcase, this also speeds up a musician's set-up and tear-down time, because all of the effects can be connected together inside the rack case.


title: Effects unit

text: Effects units are available in a variety of form factors. Stompboxes are used in both live performance and studio recording. Rackmount devices saw a heavy usage during the later 20th century, due to their superior processing power and desirable tones as compared to pedal-style units. However, by the 21st century, with the advent of digital plugins and more powerful stompboxes for live usage, the use of rack-mounted effect units has declined. An effects unit can consist of analog or digital electronics or a combination of the two. During a live performance, the effect is plugged into the electrical "signal" path of the instrument. In the studio, an instrument or another sound source — possibly an auxiliary output of a mixer or a DAW — is patched into the effect. Whatever the form factor, effects units are part of a studio or musician's outboard gear.


title: Effects unit

text: Stompboxes are small plastic or metal chassis which usually lie on the floor or in a pedalboard to be operated by the user's feet. Pedals are often rectangle-shaped, but there are a range of other shapes (e.g., the circular Fuzz Face). Typical simple stompboxes have a single footswitch, one to three potentiometers for controlling the effect, and a single LED that indicates if the effect is on. A typical distortion or overdrive pedal's three potentiometers, for example, control the level or intensity of the distortion effect, the tone of the effected signal and the output level of the effected signal. Depending on the type of pedal, the potentiometers may control different parameters of the effect. For a chorus effect, for example, the knobs may control the depth and speed of the effect. Complex stompboxes may have multiple footswitches, many knobs, additional switches or buttons that are operated with the fingers, and an alphanumeric LED display that indicates the status of the effect with short acronyms (e.g., DIST for "distortion").


title: Effects unit

text: An "effects chain" or "signal chain" is formed by connecting two or more stompboxes. Effect chains are typically created between the guitar and the amp or between the preamplifier and the power amp. When a pedal is off or inactive, the electric audio signal coming into the pedal diverts onto a "bypass", an unaltered "dry" signal that continues on to other effects down the chain. In this way, a musician can combine effects within a chain in a variety of ways without having to reconnect boxes during a performance.


title: Effects unit

text: A "controller" or "effects management system" lets the musician create multiple effect chains, so they can select one or several chains by tapping a single switch. The switches are usually organized in a row or a simple grid.


title: Effects unit

text: It is common to put compression, wah and overdrive pedals at the start of the chain; modulation (chorus, flanger, phase shifter) in the middle; and time-based units (delay/echo, reverb at the end. When using many effects, unwanted noise and hum can be introduced into the sound. Some performers use a noise gate pedal at the end of a chain to reduce unwanted noise and hum introduced by overdrive units or vintage gear.


title: Effects unit

text: Rackmount effects units are typically built in a thin metal chassis with "rack ears" designed to be screw-mounted into the rack rails of a 19-inch rack that is standard to the music technology industry. Rackmount effects have a standardized 19-inch width, and height of 1 or more rack unit(s). Devices that are less than 19 inches wide can sometimes be made rackmount-compatible via special rackmount adapters.


title: Effects unit

text: A rackmount effects unit may contain electronic circuitry identical to a stompbox's, although its circuits are typically more complex. Unlike stompboxes, rackmounts usually have several different types of effects. Rackmount effects units are controlled by knobs, switches or buttons on their front panel, and often remote-controllable by a MIDI digital control interface or pedal-style "foot controller".


title: Effects unit

text: Rackmount effects units are most commonly used in recording studios and front of house live sound mixing situations. Musicians may use them in place of stompboxes, as use of a rack can offer space for conveniently mounting additional rackmount equipment or accessories. Rackmounted effects units are typically mounted in a rack, which may be housed within a road case, a durable case with removable access panels that protect the equipment within during transportation. Because of this, rackmount effect units are not always designed with durable protective features such as corner protectors which are used on stompboxes and amps that are designed to be transported as standalone units.


title: Effects unit

text: A multi-effects (MFX) device is a single electronics effects pedal or rackmount device that contains many different electronic effects. multi-effects devices allow users to "preset" combinations of different effects, allowing musicians quick on-stage access to different effects combinations. Multi-effects units typically have a range of distortion, chorus, flanger, phaser, delay, looper and reverb effects. Pedal-style multi-effects range from fairly inexpensive stompboxes that contain two pedals and a few knobs to control the effects to large, expensive floor units with many pedals and knobs. Rack-mounted multi-effects units may be mounted in the same rack as preamplifiers and power amplifiers.


title: Effects unit

text: A tabletop unit is a type of multi-effects device that sits on a desk and is controlled manually. One such example is the Pod guitar amplifier modeler. Digital effects designed for DJs are often sold in tabletop models, so that the units can be placed alongside a DJ mixer, turntables and scratching gear.


title: Effects unit

text: Effects are often incorporated into instrument amplifiers and even some types of instruments. Electric guitar amplifiers typically have built-in reverb, chorus and distortion, while acoustic guitar and keyboard amplifiers tend to only have built-in reverb. Some acoustic instrument amplifiers have reverb, chorus, compression and equalization (bass and treble) effects. Vintage guitar amps typically have tremolo and vibrato effects, and sometimes reverb. The Fender Bandmaster Reverb amp, for example, had built-in reverb and vibrato. Built-in effects may offer the user less control than standalone pedals or rackmounted units. For example, on some lower- to mid-priced bass amplifiers, the only control on the audio compression effect is a button or switch to turn it on or off, or a single knob. In contrast, a pedal or rackmounted unit would typically provide ratio, threshold and attack controls or other options to allow the user additional control over the compression.


title: Effects unit

text: Some guitar amplifiers have built-in multi-effects units or digital amplifier modeling effects. Bass amplifiers are less likely to have built-in effects, although some may have a compressor/limiter or fuzz bass effect.


title: Effects unit

text: Instruments with built-in effects include Hammond organs, electronic organs, electronic pianos and digital synthesizers. Built-in effects for keyboards typically include reverb, chorus and, for Hammond organ, vibrato. Many clonewheel organs include an overdrive effect. Occasionally, acoustic-electric and electric guitars will have built-in effects, such as a preamp or equalizer.


title: Effects unit

text: The earliest sound effects were strictly used in studio productions. Microphones placed in echo chambers with specially designed acoustic properties simulated the sound of live performances in different environments. In the mid to late 1940s, recording engineers and experimental musicians such as Les Paul began manipulating reel-to-reel recording tape to create echo effects and unusual, futuristic sounds. In 1948, DeArmond released the Trem-Trol, the first commercially available stand-alone effects unit. This device produced a tremolo by passing an instrument's electrical signal through a water-based electrolytic fluid. Most stand-alone effects of the 1950s and early 1960s such as the Gibson GA-VI vibrato unit and the Fender reverb box, were expensive and impractical, requiring bulky transformers and high voltages. The original stand-alone units were not especially in-demand as many effects came built into amplifiers. The first popular stand-alone was the 1958 Watkins Copicat, a relatively portable tape echo effect made famous by the British band, The Shadows.


title: Effects unit

text: Effects built into tube-powered guitar amplifiers were the first effects that musicians used regularly outside the studio. From the late 1940s onward, the Gibson began including vibrato circuits in combo amplifiers that incorporated one or more speakers with the amp. The 1950 Ray Butts EchoSonic amp was the first to feature a tape echo, which quickly became popular with guitarists such as Chet Atkins, Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore, Luther Perkins, and Roy Orbison. Both Premier and Gibson built amplifiers with spring reverb. Fender began manufacturing the tremolo amps Tremolux in 1955 and Vibrolux in 1956.


title: Effects unit

text: Distortion was not an effect originally intended by amplifier manufacturers, but could often easily be achieved by "overdriving" the power supply in early tube amplifiers. In the 1950s, guitarists began deliberately increasing gain beyond its intended levels to achieve "warm" distorted sounds. Among the first musicians to experiment with distortion were Willie Johnson of Howlin' Wolf, Goree Carter, Joe Hill Louis, Ike Turner, Guitar Slim, and Chuck Berry.


title: Effects unit

text: In 1954, Pat Hare produced heavily distorted power chords for several recordings (including James Cotton's "), creating "a grittier, nastier, more ferocious electric guitar sound," accomplished by turning the volume knob on his amplifier "all the way to the right until the speaker was screaming." Link Wray's 1958 recording "Rumble" inspired young musicians such as Pete Townshend of The Who, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck, Dave Davies of The Kinks, and Neil Young to explore distortion by various means. In 1966, the British company Marshall Amplification began producing the Marshall 1963, a guitar amplifier capable of producing the distorted "crunch" that rock musicians were starting to seek.


title: Effects unit

text: The electronic transistor finally made it possible to cram the aural creativity of the recording studio into small, highly portable stompbox units. Transistors replaced vacuum tubes, allowing for much more compact formats and greater stability. The first transistorized guitar effect was the 1962 Maestro Fuzz Tone pedal, which became a sensation after its use in the 1965 Rolling Stones hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction".


title: Effects unit

text: Warwick Electronics manufactured the first wah-wah pedal, The Clyde McCoy, in 1967 and that same year Roger Mayer developed the first octave effect, which Jimi Hendrix named "Octavio". Upon first hearing the Octavia, Hendrix allegedly rushed back to the studio and immediately used it to record the guitar solos on "Purple Haze" and "Fire". In 1968, Univox began marketing Shin-ei's Uni-Vibe pedal, an effect designed by noted audio engineer Fumio Mieda that mimicked the odd phase shift and chorus effects of the Leslie rotating speakers used in Hammond organs. The pedals soon became favorite effects of guitarists Jimi Hendrix and Robin Trower. In 1976, Roland subsidiary Boss Corporation released the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, the first chorus pedal, created by taking a chorus circuit from an amplifier and putting it into a stompbox. By the mid-1970s a variety of solid-state effects pedals including flangers, chorus pedals, ring modulators and phase shifters were available.


title: Effects unit

text: In the 1980s, digital rackmount units began replacing stompboxes as the effects format of choice. Often musicians would record "dry", unaltered tracks in the studio and effects would be added in post-production. The success of Nirvana's 1991 album "Nevermind" helped to re-ignite interest in stompboxes. Some grunge guitarists would chain several fuzz pedals together and plug them into a tube amplifier. Throughout the 1990s, musicians committed to a "lo-fi" aesthetic such as J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., Stephen Malkmus of Pavement and Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices continued to use analog effects pedals.


title: Effects unit

text: Effects and effects units—stompboxes in particular—have been celebrated by pop and rock musicians in album titles, songs and band names. The Big Muff, a fuzzbox manufactured by Electro-Harmonix, is commemorated by the Depeche Mode song "Big Muff" and the Mudhoney EP "Superfuzz Bigmuff". Nine Inch Nails, Pink Floyd, George Harrison, They Might Be Giants and Joy Division are among the many musicians who have referenced effects units in their music.


title: Effects unit

text: Distortion, overdrive, and fuzz effects units add a "warm", "gritty", or "fuzzy" character to an audio signal by re-shaping or "clipping" it, which distorts the shape of its wave form by flattening its peaks, creating "warm" sounds by adding harmonics or "gritty" sounds by adding inharmonic overtones. Distortion effects are sometimes called "gain" effects, as distorted guitar sounds were first achieved by increasing the electric power supply, e.g. gain, to tube amplifiers.


title: Effects unit

text: While distortion effects units produce perfectly flattened peaks or "hard" clipping, overdrive effects units produce "soft" tube-like distortion by compressing the sine wave without completely flattening it. Much like guitar tube amplifiers, overdrive effects units are capable of producing "clean" sounds at quieter volumes and distorted "warm" sounds at louder volumes.


title: Effects unit

text: Notable examples of distortion and overdrive effects units include the Boss DS-1 Distortion, Ibanez Tube Screamer, Marshall ShredMaster, MXR Distortion +, and Pro Co RAT.


title: Effects unit

text: A fuzz pedal, or fuzzbox, is a type of overdrive effects unit that clips a sound-wave until it is nearly a squarewave, resulting in a heavily distorted or "fuzzy" sound. Fuzzboxes may contain frequency multiplier circuitry to achieve a harsh timbre by adding complex harmonics. The Rolling Stones' song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", with a fuzz effect featured prominently on the main electric guitar riff played by Keith Richards, greatly popularized the use of fuzz effects. Fuzz bass (also called "bass overdrive") is a style of playing the electric bass that produces a buzzy, overdriven sound via a tube or transistor amp or by using a fuzz or overdrive pedal.


title: Effects unit

text: Notable examples of fuzz effect units include the: Arbiter Fuzz Face, Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, Shin-ei Companion FY-2, Univox Super-Fuzz, Vox Tone Bender, Z.Vex Fuzz Factory.


title: Effects unit

text: While distortion effect units are most associated with electric and bass guitar, they are also commonly used on keyboard instruments (i.e. synthesizers, combo and tonewheel organs, electric piano), as well as drums and vocals. Distortion and overdrive effects units may either be transistor-based or digital.


title: Effects unit

text: Also called volume and amplitude effects, dynamics effects modify the volume of an instrument. Dynamics effects were among the first effects introduced to guitarists.


title: Effects unit

text: "Boost/volume pedal": A boost or "clean boost" pedal amplifies the volume of an instrument by increasing the amplitude of its audio signal. These units are generally used for "boosting" volume during solos and preventing signal loss in long "effects chains". A guitarist switching from rhythm guitar to lead guitar for a guitar solo may use a boost to increase the volume of their solo.


title: Effects unit

text: Treadle-based volume pedals are used by electric instrument players (guitar, bass, keyboards) to adjust the volume of their instrument with one foot while their hands are being used to play their instrument. Treadle-style volume pedals are often also used to create swelling effects by removing the attack of a note or chord, as popularised by pedal steel guitar players. This enables electric guitar and pedal steel players to imitate the soft swelling sound that an orchestra string section can produce, in which a note or chord starts very softly and then grows in volume. Treadle-based volume pedals do not usually have batteries or require external power.


title: Effects unit

text: "Compressor": Compressors make loud sounds quieter and quiet sounds louder by decreasing or "compressing" the dynamic range of an audio signal. A compressor is often used to stabilize volume and smooth a note's "attack" by dampening its onset and amplifying its sustain. A compressor can also function as a limiter with extreme settings of its controls.


title: Effects unit

text: "Noise gate": Noise gates attenuate hum, hiss, and static in the signal by greatly diminishing the volume when the signal falls below a set threshold. Noise gates are often used by electric guitarist who play with vintage amps, which can have unwanted hum in the tone, and by guitarists from heavy metal who use high distortion levels, which add noise to the signal even when no notes are being played. Noise gates mute the signal when it falls below a certain threshold. This means that during bars of rest for the guitarist in a song, the hum or noise from the amp or distortion pedal will not be heard by the audience. Noise gates are expanders—meaning that, unlike compressors, they increase the dynamic range of an audio signal to make quiet sounds even quieter. If used with extreme settings and combined with reverb, they can create unusual sounds, such as the gated drum effect used in 1980s pop songs, a style popularized by the Phil Collins song "In the Air Tonight".


title: Effects unit

text: Filter effects alter the frequency content of an audio signal that passes through them by either boosting or weakening specific frequencies or frequency regions.


title: Effects unit

text: "Equalizer": An equalizer is a set of linear filters that strengthen ("boost") or weaken ("cut") specific frequency regions. While basic home stereos often have equalizers for two bands, to adjust bass and treble, professional graphic equalizers offer much more targeted control over the audio frequency spectrum. Audio engineers use highly sophisticated equalizers to eliminate unwanted sounds, make an instrument or voice more prominent, and enhance particular aspects of an instrument's tone.


title: Effects unit

text: "Talk box": A talk box directs the sound from an electric guitar or synthesizer into the mouth of a performer using a tube, allowing the sound to be shaped into vowels and consonants with movements of the mouth. The modified sound is then picked up by a microphone. In this way the guitarist is able create the effect that the guitar "licks" are "talking". Some famous uses of the talkbox include Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer", Stevie Wonder's "Black Man", Mötley Crüe's "Kickstart My Heart", Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way", Alice in Chains's "Man in the box" and Peter Frampton's "Show Me the Way".


title: Effects unit

text: "Wah-wah": A wah-wah pedal creates vowel-like sounds by altering the frequency spectrum produced by an instrument—i.e., how loud it is at each separate frequency—in what is known as a "spectral glide" or "sweep".


title: Effects unit

text: The device is operated by a foot treadle that opens and closes a potentiometer. Wah-wah pedals are often used by funk and rock guitarists.


title: Effects unit

text: "Auto-wah": A filter effect that is controlled by the volume of the input signal. The most common filter type used for this effect pedal is the low-pass filter, although many pedal designs include a toggle for band-pass or high-pass filters as well. Additionally, most envelope filters pedal boxes can switch between a down filter mode and an up filter. This effect is commonly used in funk, reggae and jam band music.


title: Effects unit

text: Envelope filter effects: Musitronics Mu-Tron III, Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron Plus, DOD Envelope Filter 440


title: Effects unit

text: "Modulation", in general electronics, means the altering of signal strength. In audio devices, modulation is a control feature that varies the strength of some effect over time to alter tonal properties. Some modulation effects mix ("modulate") an instrument's audio signal with a signal generated by the effect called a carrier wave. Other modulation effects split an instrument's audio signal in two, altering one portion of the signal and mixing it with the unaltered portion.


title: Effects unit

text: "Chorus": Chorus pedals mimic the effect choirs and string orchestras produce naturally, by having slight variations in timbre and pitch, by mixing sounds with slight differences in timbre and pitch. A chorus effect splits the instrument-to-amplifier audio signal, and adds a slight delay and frequency variations or "vibrato" to part of the signal while leaving the rest unaltered. A well-known usage of chorus is the lead guitar in "Come As You Are" by Nirvana.


title: Effects unit

text: Chorus effects: Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, Electro-Harmonix Small Clone, TC Electronic Stereo Chorus.


title: Effects unit

text: "Flanger": A flanger creates a "whooshing" "jet plane" or "spaceship" sound, simulating a studio effect that was first produced by recording a track on two synchronized tapes and periodically slowing one tape by pressing the edge of its reel (the "flange"). When the two tapes' audio signals are later mixed, a comb filter effect can be heard. Flanger units add a variably delayed version of the audio signal to the original or signal, creating a comb filter or Doppler effect. Some famous uses of flanger effects include "Walking on the Moon" by The Police, the intro to "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" by Van Halen, and "Barracuda" by Heart.


title: Effects unit

text: "Phaser": A phaser or "phase shifter" creates a slight rippling effect—amplifying some aspects of the tone while diminishing others—by splitting an audio signal in two and altering the phase of one portion. Three well-known examples of phaser are the two handed tapping part on the Van Halen instrumental "Eruption" and the keyboard parts on Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" and Paul Simon's "Slip Slidin' Away".


title: Effects unit

text: "Ring modulator": A ring modulator produces a resonant, metallic sound by mixing an instrument's audio signal with a carrier wave generated by the device's internal oscillator. The original sound wave is suppressed and replaced by a "ring" of inharmonic higher and lower pitches or "sidebands". A notable use of ring modulation is the guitar in the Black Sabbath song "Paranoid".


title: Effects unit

text: "Tremolo": A tremolo effect produces a slight, rapid variation in the volume of a note or chord. The "tremolo effect" should not be confused with the misleadingly-named "tremolo bar", a device on a guitar bridge that creates a vibrato or pitch-bending effect. In transistorized effects, a tremolo is produced by modulating an instrument's audio signal with a sub-audible carrier wave in such a way that generates amplitude variations in the sound wave. Tremolo effects are built-in effects in some vintage guitar amplifiers. The guitar intro in the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" features a tremolo effect.


title: Effects unit

text: "Slicer": Combines a modulation sequence with a noise gate or envelope filter to create a percussive and rhythmic effect like a helicopter.


title: Effects unit

text: "Vibrato": Vibrato effects produce slight, rapid variations in pitch, mimicking the fractional semitone variations produced naturally by opera singers and violinists when they are prolonging a single note. Vibrato effects often allow the performer to control the rate of the variation as well as the difference in pitch (e.g. "depth"). A vibrato with an extreme "depth" setting (e.g., half a semitone or more) will produce a dramatic, ululating sound. In transistorized effects, vibrato is produced by mixing an instrument's audio signal with a carrier wave in such a way that generates frequency variations in the sound wave. Guitarists often use the terms "vibrato" and "tremolo" misleadingly. A so-called "vibrato unit" in a guitar amplifier actually produces tremolo, while a "tremolo arm" or "whammy bar" on a guitar produces vibrato.


title: Effects unit

text: Pitch/frequency effects modify pitch by altering the frequency of a sound wave or sound signal or adding new harmonies.


title: Effects unit

text: "Pitch shifter and harmonizer"" A pitch shifter (also called an "octaver" for effects that shift pitch by an octave) raises or lowers (e.g. "transposes") each note a performer plays by a pre-set interval. For example, a pitch shifter set to increase the pitch by a fourth will raise each note four diatonic intervals above the notes actually played. Simple, less expensive pitch shifters raise or lower the pitch by one or two octaves, while more sophisticated and expensive devices offer a range of interval alterations. A pitch shifter can be used by an electric guitarist to play notes that would normally only be available on an electric bass. As well, a bass player with a four string electric bass can use an octave pedal to obtain low notes that would normally only be obtainable with a five-string bass with a low "B" string.


title: Effects unit

text: A harmonizer is a type of sophisticated pitch shifter that combines the altered pitch with the original pitch to create a two note harmony based on the original pitch, or even with some pedals, three note harmony. Some hamonizers are able to create chorus-like effects by adding very tiny shifts in pitch.


title: Effects unit

text: Time-based effects delay the sound signal, add reverb or echos, or, if a long delay is possible, enable musicians to record "loops".


title: Effects unit

text: "Delay/echo": Delay/echo units produce an echo effect by adding a duplicate instrument-to-amplifier electrical signal to the original signal at a slight time-delay. The effect can either be a single echo called a "slap" or "slapback", or multiple echos. A well-known use of delay is the lead guitar in the U2 song "Where the Streets Have No Name", and also the opening riff of "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses.


title: Effects unit

text: Delay effects: Boss DD-3 Digital Delay, MXR Carbon Copy, Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man, Line 6 DL4, Roland RE-201.


title: Effects unit

text: "Looper pedal": A looper pedal or "phrase looper" allows a performer to record and later replay a phrase, riff or passage from a song. Loops can be created on the spot during a performance (live looping) or they can be pre-recorded. By using a looper pedal, a singer-guitarist in a one person band can play the backing chords (or riffs) to a song, loop them with the pedal, and then sing and do a guitar solo over the chords. Some units allow a performer to layer multiple loops, enabling the performer to create the effect of a full band. The first loop effects were created with reel-to-reel tape using a tape loop. High-end boutique tape loop effects are still used by some studio producers who want a vintage sound. Digital loop effects recreate this effect using an electronic memory.


title: Effects unit

text: "Reverb": Reverb units simulate the spacious sounds produced naturally in a huge stone cathedral (or other acoustic space such as a hall or room). This is done by creating a large number of echoes that gradually fade away in volume or "decay". One early technique for creating a reverb effect was to send an amplified signal of the music via a speaker to another room with reflective surfaces, such as a tile bathroom, and then record the natural reverberations that were produced. A plate reverb system uses an electromechanical transducer to create vibrations in a plate of metal. Spring reverb systems, which are often used in guitar amplifiers, use a transducer to create vibrations in a spring. Digital reverb effects use various signal processing algorithms to create the reverb effect, often by using multiple feedback delay circuits. Rockabilly and surf guitar are two genres that make heavy use of reverb.


title: Effects unit

text: "Audio feedback": Audio feedback is an effect produced when amplified sound is picked up by a microphone or guitar pickup and played back through a guitar amplifier, initiating a "feedback loop", which usually consists of high-pitched sound. Feedback that occurs from a vocal mic into a PA system is almost always avoided. However, in some styles of rock music, electric guitar players intentionally create feedback by playing their instrument directly in front of a heavily amplified, distorted guitar amplifier's speaker enclosure. The creative use of feedback effects was pioneered by guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s. This technique creates sustained, high-pitched overtones and unusual sounds not possible through regular playing techniques. Guitar feedback effects can be difficult to perform, because it is difficult to determine the sound volume and guitar position relative to a guitar amp's loudspeaker necessary for achieving the desired feedback sound. Guitar feedback effects are used in a number of rock genres, including psychedelic rock, heavy metal music and punk rock.


title: Effects unit

text: EBow is a brand name of Heet Sound Products, of Los Angeles, California, for a small, handheld, battery-powered resonator. The Ebow was invented by Greg Heet, as a way to make a note on an electric guitar string resonate continuously, creating an effect that sounds similar to a bowed violin note or a sustained pipe organ note. The resonator uses a pickup – inductive string driver – feedback circuit, including a sensor coil, driver coil, and amplifier, to induce forced string resonance. The Ebow brand resonator is monophonic, and drives only one string at a time.


title: Effects unit

text: Other handheld and mounted guitar and bass resonators have been on the market since the early 1990s, produced in Germany under the SRG brand, which ceased production in 2016, and were available in both monophonic (one string at a time) and polyphonic (multiple strings at a time) models, which included multiple onboard trigger switch effects, such as HPF (high pass filter) for enhancing harmonics and producing feedback effects, and LPF (low pass filter), producing a bass boost with a cello sound on heavy gauge strings.


title: Effects unit

text: Later EBow models, such as the plus Ebow, contain a mode slide switch on the back, which allows the player to either produce just sustain or overtone feedback in addition to sustain.


title: Effects unit

text: Pedals such as the Boss DF-2 and FB-2 use an internally generated signal matched to the pitch of the guitar that can be sustained indefinitely by depressing the pedal.


title: Effects unit

text: Many compressor pedals are often also marketed as "sustainer pedals". As a note is sustained, it loses energy and volume due to diminishing vibration in the string. The compressor pedal boosts its electrical signal to the specified dynamic range, slightly prolonging the duration of the note. This, combined with heavy distortion and the close proximity of the guitar and the speaker cabinet, can lead to infinite sustain at higher volumes.


title: Effects unit

text: "Envelope follower": An envelope follower activates an effect once a designated volume is reached. One effect that uses an envelope follower is the "auto-wah", which produces a "wah" effect depending on how loud or soft the notes are being played.


title: Effects unit

text: "Guitar amplifier modeling": Amplifier modeling is a digital effect that replicates the sound of various amplifiers, most often vintage tube amplifiers and famous brands of speaker cabinets (e.g., the Ampeg SVT 8x10" bass cabinet). Sophisticated modeling effects can simulate different types of speaker cabinets (e.g., the sound of an 8x10" cabinet) and miking techniques. A rotary speaker simulator mimics the doppler and chorus effect sound of a vintage Leslie speaker system by replicating its volume and pitch modulations, overdrive capacity and phase shifts.


title: Effects unit

text: "Pitch correction/vocal effects": Pitch correction effects use signal-processing algorithms to re-tune faulty intonation in a vocalist's performance or create unusual vocoder-type vocal effects. One of the best known examples of this is Autotune, a software program and effect unit which can be used to both correct pitch (it moves a pitch to the nearest semitone), and add vocal effects. Some stompbox-style vocal pedals contain multiple effects, such as reverb and pitch correction.


title: Effects unit

text: "Simulators": Simulators enable electric guitars to mimic the sound of other instruments such as acoustic guitar, electric bass and sitar. Pick up simulators used on guitars with single-coil pick ups replicate the sound of guitars with humbucker pick ups, or vice versa. A de-fretter is a bass guitar effect that simulates the sound of a fretless bass. The effect uses an envelope-controlled filter and voltage-controlled amplifier to "soften" a note's attack both in volume and timbre.


title: Effects unit

text: "Bitcrusher filters": Bitcrushers rely on conversion of the audio signal into a digital format (ADC) and the reduction of sound fidelity by utilising bit (and sometimes sample) rates low enough to cause significant colouration and filtering within the audible frequency range.


title: Effects unit

text: "Rotating speakers" are specially constructed amplifier or loudspeakers used to create special audio effects using the Doppler effect by rotating the speakers or a sound-directing duct. The rotating speaker creates a chorus-type effect. Named after its inventor, Donald Leslie, it is particularly associated with the Hammond organ but is used with a variety of instruments as well as vocals. The Hammond/Leslie combination has become an element in many genres of music. The Leslie Speaker and the Hammond Organ brands are currently owned by Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation. The stompbox that simulates this effect is the Uni-Vibe pedal.


title: Effects unit

text: The "Korg Kaoss Pad" is a small touchpad MIDI controller, sampler, and effects processor for audio and musical instruments, made by Korg. The Kaoss Pad's touchpad can be used to control its internal effects engine, which can be applied to a line-in signal or to samples recorded from the line-in. Effects types include pitch shifting, distortion, filtering, wah-wah, tremolo, flanging, delay, reverberation, auto-panning, gating, phasing, and ring modulation.


title: Effects unit

text: Bass effects are electronic effects units that are designed for use with the low pitches created by an electric bass or for an upright bass used with a bass amp or PA system. Two examples of bass effects are fuzz bass and bass chorus. Some bass amplifiers have built-in effects, such as overdrive or chorus. Upright bassists in jazz, folk, blues and similar genres may use a bass preamplifier, a small electronic device that matches the impedance between the piezoelectric pickup and the amp or PA system. Bass preamps also allow for the gain of the signal to be boosted or cut. Some models also offer equalization controls, a compressor, and a DI box connection.


title: Effects unit

text: Boutique pedals are designed by smaller, independent companies and are typically produced in limited quantities. Some may even be hand-made, with hand-soldered connections. These pedals are mainly distributed online or through mail-order, or sold in a few music stores. They are often more expensive than mass-produced pedals and offer higher-quality components, innovative designs, in-house-made knobs, and hand-painted artwork or etching. Some boutique companies focus on re-creating classic or vintage effects.


title: Effects unit

text: Some boutique pedal manufacturers include: BJFE, Pete Cornish, Emlyn Crowther, Death By Audio, Robert Keeley, Roger Linn, Roger Mayer, Strymon, T-Rex Engineering, ToadWorks and Z.Vex Effects.


title: Effects unit

text: There is also a niche market for modifying or "modding" effects. Typically, vendors provide either custom modification services or sell new effects pedals they have already modified. The Ibanez Tube Screamer, Boss DS-1, Pro Co RAT and DigiTech Whammy are some of the most often-modified effects. Common modifications include value changes in capacitors or resistors, adding true-bypass so that the effect's circuitry is no longer in the signal path, substituting higher-quality components, replacing the unit's original operational amplifiers (op-amps), or adding functions to the device, such as allowing additional control of some factor or adding another output jack.


title: Effects unit

text: Not all stompboxes and rackmounted electronic devices designed for musicians are effects. Strobe tuner and regular electronic tuner pedals indicate whether a guitar string is too sharp or flat. Stompbox-format tuner pedals route the electric signal for the instrument through the unit via a 1/4" patch cable. These pedal-style tuners usually have an output so that the signal can be plugged into a guitar amp to produce sound. Rackmount power conditioner devices deliver a voltage of the proper level and characteristics to enable equipment to function properly (e.g., by providing transient impulse protection). A rackmounted wireless receiver unit is used to enable a guitarist or bassist to move around on stage without being connected to a cable. A footswitch pedal such as the "A/B" pedal routes a guitar signal to an amplifier or enables a performer to switch between two guitars, or between two amplifiers.


title: Effects unit

text: Guitar amplifiers and electronic keyboards may have switch pedals for turning built-in reverb and distortion effects on and off; the pedals contain only a switch, with the circuitry for the effect being housed in the amplifier chassis. Some musicians who use rackmounted effects or laptops employ a MIDI controller pedalboard or armband remote controls to trigger sound samples, switch between different effects or control effect settings. A pedal keyboard uses pedals, but it is not an effect unit; it is a foot-operated keyboard in which the pedals are typically used to play basslines.


title: Ukrainization

text: Ukrainization (also spelled Ukrainisation), sometimes referred to as Ukrainianization (or Ukrainianisation) is a policy or practice of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of Ukrainian culture in various spheres of public life such as education, publishing, government, and religion. The term is also used to describe a process by which non-Ukrainians or Russian-speaking Ukrainians come to accept Ukrainian culture and language as their own.


title: Ukrainization

text: A major early case of Ukrainization relates to the Soviet indigenization policy of the 1920s ("korenizatsiya", literally "putting down roots"), which aimed at strengthening Soviet power in the territory of Soviet Ukraine and in southern regions of the Russian SFSR. In various forms, Ukrainization policies also played out in several different periods of the 20th-century history of Ukraine, although with somewhat different goals and in different historical contexts.


title: Ukrainization

text: Ukrainization is often cited as a response to and as a means of addressing the consequences of previous assimilationist policies, such as Polonization and Russification of Ukraine, aimed at suppressing or even eradicating the Ukrainian language and culture from most spheres of public life, the policy of Russification in the times of the Russian Empire, such as the Ems Ukaz, and in the Soviet Union.


title: Ukrainization

text: After the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in 1991, the government of Ukraine began following a policy of Ukrainization, to increase the use of Ukrainian while discouraging Russian, which has been gradually phased out from the country's education system, government, and national TV, radio programmes, and films. Until 2017, the law "On Education" granted Ukrainian families (parents and their children) a right to choose their native language for schools and studies. This law was revised to make the Ukrainian language the primary language of education in all schools, except for children of ethnic minorities, who are to be taught in their own language and later on bilingual.


title: Ukrainization

text: In Western historiography, the term "Ukrainization" refers also to a policy and resulting process of forcing ethnic minorities living on Ukrainian territories to abandon their ethnic identity by means of the enforced assimilation of Ukrainian culture and identity. During the aftermath of World War II, in the Ukrainian SSR this process had been preceded by the expulsion of some ethnic minorities and appropriation of their cultural heritage. "Ukrainization" is also used in the context of these acts.


title: Ukrainization

text: Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Empire had dissolved, and the Ukrainians intensified their struggle for an independent Ukrainian state. In the chaos of World War I and revolutionary changes, a nascent Ukrainian state emerged but, initially, the state's very survival was not ensured. As the Central Rada, the governing body, was trying to assert the control over Ukraine amid the foreign powers and internal struggle, only a limited cultural development could take place. However, for the first time in the modern history, Ukraine had a government of its own and the Ukrainian language gained usage in state affairs.


title: Ukrainization

text: As the Rada was eventually overthrown in a German-backed coup (April 29, 1918), the rule of a Hetmanate led by Pavlo Skoropadskyi was established. While the stability of the government was only relative and Skoropadsky himself, as a former officer of the tsarist army, spoke Russian rather than Ukrainian, the Hetmanate managed to start an impressive Ukrainian cultural and education program, printed millions of Ukrainian-language textbooks, and established many Ukrainian schools, two universities, and a Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The latter established a Committee on Orthography and Terminology, which initiated a scholarly and methodological research program into Ukrainian terminology.


title: Ukrainization

text: The Hetmanate's rule ended with the German evacuation and was replaced by the Directorate government of Symon Petlura. However, Ukraine descended into a new wave of chaos facing two invasions at the same time, from the East by the Bolshevik forces and from the West by the Polish troops, as well as being ravaged by armed bands that often were not backed by any political ideology.


title: Ukrainization

text: As Bolshevik rule took hold in Ukraine, the early Soviet government had its own reasons to encourage the national movements of the former Russian Empire. While trying to ascertain and consolidate its power, the Bolshevik government was by far more concerned about political oppositions connected to the pre-revolutionary order than about the national movements inside the former empire. The reversal of the assimilationist policies of the Russian Empire was potentially done to help to improve the image of the Soviet government and boost its popularity among the common people.


title: Ukrainization

text: Until the early-1930s, Ukrainian culture enjoyed a widespread revival due to Bolshevik policies known as the policy of Korenization ("indigenization"). In these years a Ukrainization program was implemented throughout the republic. In such conditions, the Ukrainian national idea initially continued to develop and even spread to a large territory with traditionally mixed population in the east and south that became part of the Ukrainian Soviet republic.


title: Ukrainization

text: The All-Ukrainian Sovnarkom's decree "On implementation of the Ukrainization of the educational and cultural institutions" (July 27, 1923) is considered to be the onset of the Ukrainization program. The (August 1) decree that followed shortly "On implementation of the equal rights of the languages and facilitation of the Ukrainian language" mandated the implementation of Ukrainian language to all levels of state institutions. Initially, the program was met with resistance by some Ukrainian Communists, largely because non-Ukrainians prevailed numerically in the party at the time. The resistance was finally overcome in 1925 through changes in the party leadership under the pressure of Ukrainian representatives in the party. In April 1925 the party Central Committee adopted the resolution on Ukrainization proclaiming its aim as "solidifying the union of the peasantry with the working class" and boosting the overall support of the Soviet system among Ukrainians. A joint resolution aimed at "complete Ukrainization of the Soviet apparatus" as well as the party and trade unions was adopted on April 30, 1925. The Ukrainian Commissariat of Education (Narkomos) was charged with overseeing the implementation of the Ukrainization policies. The two figures, therefore, most identified with the policy are Oleksander Shumskyi, the Commissar for Education between 1923 and 1927, and Mykola Skrypnyk, who replaced Shumskyi in 1927.


title: Ukrainization

text: The Soviet-backed education system dramatically raised the literacy of the Ukrainophone rural population. By 1929 over 97% of high school students in the republic were obtaining their education in Ukrainian and illiteracy dropped from 47% (1926) to 8% in 1934.


title: Ukrainization

text: Simultaneously, the newly literate ethnic Ukrainians migrated to the cities, which became rapidly largely Ukrainianized — in both population and education. Between 1923 and 1933 the Ukrainian proportion of the population of Kharkiv, at the time the capital of Soviet Ukraine, increased from 38% to 50%. Similar increases occurred in other cities, from 27.1% to 42.1% in Kiev, from 16% to 48% in Dnipropetrovsk, from 16% to 48% in Odessa, and from 7% to 31% in Luhansk.


title: Ukrainization

text: Similarly expansive was an increase in Ukrainian language publishing and the overall flourishing of Ukrainian cultural life. As of 1931 out of 88 theatres in Ukraine, 66 were Ukrainian, 12 were Jewish (Yiddish) and 9 were Russian. The number of Ukrainian newspapers, which almost did not exist in 1922, had reached 373 out of 426, while only 3 all-republican large newspapers remained Russian. Of 118 magazines, 89 were Ukrainian. Ukrainization of book-publishing reached 83%.


title: Ukrainization

text: Ukrainization was thoroughly implemented through the government apparatus, Communist Party of Ukraine membership and, gradually, the party leadership as well, as the recruitment of indigenous cadre was implemented as part of the korenization policies. At the same time, the usage of Ukrainian was continuously encouraged in the workplace and in government affairs. While initially, the party and government apparatus was mostly Russian-speaking, by the end of the 1920s ethnic Ukrainians composed over one half of the membership in the Ukrainian communist party, the number strengthened by accession of Borotbists, a formerly indigenously Ukrainian "independentist" and non-Bolshevik communist party.


title: Ukrainization

text: In the all-Ukrainian Ispolkom, central executive committee, as well as in the oblast level governments, the proportion of Ukrainians reached 50.3% by 1934 while in raion ispolkoms the number reached 68.8%. On the city and village levels, the representation of Ukrainians in the local government bodies reached 56.1% and 86.1%, respectively. As for other governmental agencies, the Ukrainization policies increased the Ukrainian representation as follows: officers of all-republican People's Commissariat (ministries) - 70-90%, oblast executive brunches - 50%, raion - 64%, Judiciary - 62%, Militsiya (law enforcement) - 58%.


title: Ukrainization

text: The attempted Ukrainization of the armed forces, Red Army formations serving in Ukraine and abroad, was less successful although moderate progress was attained. The Schools of Red Commanders ("Shkola Chervonyh Starshyn") was organized in Kharkiv to promote the careers of the Ukrainian national cadre in the army (see picture). The Ukrainian newspaper of the Ukrainian Military District "Chervona Armiya" was published until the mid-1930s. The efforts were made to introduce and expand Ukrainian terminology and communication in the Ukrainian Red Army units. The policies even reached the army units in which Ukrainians served in other Soviet regions. For instance the Soviet Pacific Fleet included a Ukrainian department overseen by Semyon Rudniev.


title: Ukrainization

text: At the same time, despite the ongoing Soviet-wide anti-religious campaign, the Ukrainian national Orthodox Church was created, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (See History of Christianity in Ukraine). The Bolshevik government initially saw the national churches as a tool in their goal to suppress the Russian Orthodox Church, always viewed with great suspicion by the regime for its being the cornerstone of the defunct Russian Empire and the initially strong opposition it took towards the regime change. Therefore, the government tolerated the new Ukrainian national church for some time and the UAOC gained a wide following among the Ukrainian peasantry.


title: Ukrainization

text: Ukrainization even reached those regions of southern Russian SFSR, particularly the areas by the Don and Kuban rivers, where mixed population showed strong Ukrainian influences in the local dialect. Ukrainian language teachers, just graduated from expanded institutions of higher education in Soviet Ukraine, were dispatched to these regions to staff newly opened Ukrainian schools or to teach Ukrainian as a second language in Russian schools. A string of local Ukrainian-language publications was started and departments of Ukrainian studies were opened in colleges. Overall, these policies were implemented in thirty-five administrative districts in southern Russia.


title: Ukrainization

text: Starting from the early 1930s, the Ukrainization policies were abruptly and bloodily reversed. "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism" was declared to be the primary problem in Ukraine. Many Ukrainian newspapers, publications, and schools were switched to Russian. The vast majority of leading scholars and cultural leaders of Ukraine were purged, as were the "Ukrainianized" and "Ukrainianizing" portions of the Communist party. Major repression started in 1929–30, when a large group of Ukrainian intelligentsia was arrested and most were executed. In Ukrainian history, this group is often referred to as "Executed Renaissance" (Ukrainian: розстріляне відродження). The terror peaked in 1933 during the Holodomor, four to five years before the Soviet-wide "Great Purge", which, for Ukraine, was a second blow. The vast majority of leading scholars and cultural leaders of Ukraine were liquidated, as were the "Ukrainianized" and "Ukrainianizing" portions of the Communist party.


title: Ukrainization

text: At the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Moscow-appointed leader Pavel Postyshev declared that "1933 was the year of the defeat of Ukrainian nationalist counter-revolution." This "defeat" encompassed not just the physical extermination of a significant portion of the Ukrainian peasantry, but also the virtual elimination of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church clergy and the mass imprisonment or execution of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers and artists. Ukrainian music ensembles had their repertoires severely restricted and censored. Foreign tours by Ukrainian artists were canceled without explanation. Many artists were arrested and detained often for months at a time without cause. After not receiving any pay for many months, many choirs and artistic ensembles such as the Kiev and Poltava Bandurist Capellas ceased to exist. Blind traditional folk musicians known as kobzars were summoned from all of Ukraine to an ethnographic conference and disappeared (See Persecuted bandurists).


title: Ukrainization

text: In the regions of southern Russian SFSR (North Caucasus and eastern part of Sloboda Ukraine included into RSFSR) Ukrainization was effectively outlawed in 1932. Specifically, the December 14, 1932 decree "On Grain Collection in Ukraine, North Caucasus and the Western Oblasts" by the VKP(b) Central Committee and USSR Sovnarkom stated that Ukrainization in certain areas was carried out formally, in a "non-Bolshevik" way, which provided the "bourgeois-nationalist elements" with a legal cover for organizing their anti-Soviet resistance. In order to stop this, the decree ordered in these areas, among other things, to switch to Russian all newspapers and magazines, and all Soviet and cooperative paperwork. By the autumn of 1932 (beginning of a school year), all schools were ordered to switch to Russian. In addition the decree ordered a massive population swap: all "disloyal" population from a major Cossack settlement, "stanitsa" Poltavskaya was banished to Northern Russia, with their property given to loyal kolkhozniks moved from poorer areas of Russia. This forced end to Ukrainization in southern RSFSR had led to a massive decline of reported Ukrainians in these regions in the 1937 Soviet Census compared to the 1926 First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union.


title: Ukrainization

text: The Communist Party of Ukraine, under the guidance of state officials like Lazar Kaganovich, Stanislav Kosior, and Pavel Postyshev, boasted in early 1934 of the elimination of "counter-revolutionaries, nationalists, spies and class enemies". Whole academic organizations, such as the Bahaliy Institute of History and Culture, were shut down following the arrests.


title: Ukrainization

text: In 1935–36, 83% of all school children in the Ukrainian SSR were taught in Ukrainian even though Ukrainians made up about 80% of the population. In 1936 from 1830 newspapers 1402 were in Ukrainian, as were 177 magazines, in 1936 69,104 thousand Ukrainian books were printed.


title: Ukrainization

text: In the following fifty years the Soviet policies towards the Ukrainian language mostly varied between quiet discouragement and suppression to persecution and cultural purges, with the notable exception for the decade of Petro Shelest's Communist Party leadership in the Soviet Ukraine (1963–1972). The mid-1960s were characterized by moderate Ukrainization efforts in governmental affairs as well as the resurgence of the usage of Ukrainian in education, publishing and culture.


title: Ukrainization

text: Eventually, all effects of Ukrainization were undone yet again and Ukraine gradually became russified to a significant degree. These policies softened somewhat only in the mid-to-late 1980s and were completely reversed again in newly independent Ukraine in the 1990s.


title: Ukrainization

text: On 28 October 1989, the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine changed the Constitution and adopted the "Law of Languages". The Ukrainian language was declared the only official language, while the other languages spoken in Ukraine were guaranteed constitutional protection. The government was obliged to create the conditions required for the development and use of Ukrainian language as well as languages of other ethnic groups, including Russian. Usage of other languages, along with Ukrainian, was allowed in local institutions located in places of residence of the majority of citizens of the corresponding ethnicities. Citizens were guaranteed the right to use their native or any other languages and were entitled to address various institutions and organisations in Ukrainian, in Russian, or in another language of their work, or in a language acceptable to the parties. After the Ukrainian accession of independence following the dissolution of the Soviet Union the law, with some minor amendments, remained in force in the independent Ukrainian state.


title: Ukrainization

text: Adopted in 1996, the new Constitution of Ukraine confirmed the official state status of the Ukrainian language, and guaranteed the free development, use, and protection of Russian and other languages of national minorities of Ukraine.


title: Ukrainization

text: Language issues are still used by politicians to generate controversy. On May 20, 2008, Donetsk city council passed a resolution limiting the expansion of Ukrainian-language education in the city. The following day the city prosecutor declared the decision illegal and the mayor suspended it, and the council reversed itself two days later.


title: Ukrainization

text: According to a March 2010 survey, forced Ukrainization and Russian language suppression are among the least troubling problems for Ukrainian citizens, concerning only 4.8% of population.


title: Ukrainization

text: The government of independent Ukraine implemented policies to broaden the use of Ukrainian and mandated a progressively increased role for Ukrainian in the media and commerce. The most significant was the government's concerted effort to implement Ukrainian, as the only official state language in the country, into the state educational system. Despite the Constitution, the "Law on Education" (grants Ukrainian families (parents and their children) a right to choose their native language for schools and studies) as well as the Law of Languages (a guarantee for the protection of all languages in Ukraine) the education system gradually reshaped from a system that was only partly Ukrainian to the one that is overwhelmingly so. The Russian language is still studied as a required course in all secondary schools, including those with Ukrainian as the primary language of instructions. The number of secondary school students who received their primary education in Ukrainian grew from 47.9% in 1990–1991 (the last school year before Ukrainian independence) to 67.4% in 1999 and to 75.1% by 2003–2004 (see table). Ukrainization has achieved even greater gains in higher education institutions where as of 1990-1991 only 7% of students were being taught primarily in Ukrainian. By 2003–2004 the percentage of college and technicum students studying in Ukrainian reached 87.7% and for the students of the University-level institutions this number reached 80.1% (see table).


title: Ukrainization

text: The extent of educational institutions' Ukrainization varies in the different regions of Ukraine. In the 16 western oblasts (provinces) of Ukraine there are 26 Russian language schools out of 12,907 and in Kyiv six out of 452 schools use Russian as their primary language of instruction, (according to a 2006 survey, Ukrainian is used at home by 23% of Kyivans, as 52% use Russian and 24% switch between both). In the Donets Basin region the percentage of students receiving education in Russian roughly corresponds to the percentage of population who considers Russian as their native language and in Crimea the overwhelming majority of secondary schools students are taught in Russian. The distribution is similar in the institutes of the higher education while the latter are somewhat more Ukrainianized.


title: Ukrainization

text: The increase of the share of secondary school students obtaining education in Ukrainian (from 47.9% to 67%) over the first decade of the Ukrainian independence roughly corresponded to the share of native Ukrainian speakers - 67.5%. Schools continue to be transferred to the Ukrainian language up to this day. At the end of the 1990s, about 50% of professional school students, 62% of college students and 67% of university students (cf. 7% in 1991) studied in Ukrainian and in the following five years the number increased even further (see table).


title: Ukrainization

text: In some cases, the changing of the language of instruction in institutions, led to the charges of assimilation, raised mostly by the Russian-speaking population. Despite this, the transition was gradual and lacked many controversies that surrounded the de-Russification in several of the other former Soviet Republics, its perception within Ukraine remained mixed, especially in the regions where Ukrainian was not traditionally spoken.


title: Ukrainization

text: On September 25, 2017, a new law on education was signed by the President (draft approved by Rada on September 5, 2017) which said that the Ukrainian language is the language of education at all levels except for subjects that are allowed to be taught in two or more languages, namely English or one of the other official languages of the European Union. The law stipulates a 3-year transitional period to come in full effect. In February 2018, this period was extended until 2023.


title: Ukrainization

text: The law was condemned by PACE that called it "a major impediment to the teaching of national minorities". The law also faced criticism from officials in Hungary, Romania and Russia. (Hungarian and Romanian are official languages of the European Union, Russian is not.) Ukrainian officials stressed that the new law complies fully with European norms on minority rights. The law does state that "Persons belonging to indigenous peoples of Ukraine are guaranteed the right to study in public facilities of preschool and primary education in the language of instruction of the respective indigenous people, along with the state language of instruction" in separate classes or groups. PACE describes this as a significant curtailing of the rights of indigenous peoples carried out without consultations with their representatives. On 27 June 2018 Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin stated that following the recommendation of the Venice Commission the language provision of the (September 2017) law on education will not apply to private schools and that every public school for national minorities "will have broad powers to independently determine which classes will be taught in Ukrainian or their native language."


title: Ukrainization

text: Since 2004 the Ukrainian government has enacted restrictions on Russian-language television and radio programmes. Russian-language programmes are required to include a Ukrainian translation or subtitles, and local radio and television stations have the right to broadcast in Russian only if they can prove they have a Russian audience. There was some opposition against this ban. Today the ban is in full effect, but Russian movies are mostly subtitled in cinemas and on Ukrainian television. Non-Russian and non-Ukrainian movies which used to be dubbed in Russian may now only be dubbed, post-synchronized or subtitled in Ukrainian. Ukrainian authorities defended the ban, stating that it aimed to develop a home-grown Ukrainian distribution industry and to give Ukrainian distributors "muscle" in negotiating their own deals to buy foreign films. Russian distributors control around 90% of foreign films screened in Ukraine and tend to supply Russian-language dubbed or subtitled copies that are part of wider packages distributed throughout Russia and the former Soviet territories. Andriy Khalpakhchi, director the Ukrainian Cinema Foundation, claims "Some European sellers at Berlin's film market are reporting that Russian buyers are already threatening not to buy films if they sell directly to Ukraine without using Russian distribution channels." Despite earlier fears that there would be problems due to the introduction of compulsory Ukrainian dubbing of films, the number of visitors to Ukrainian cinemas soared by 40% in Q1 of the year 2009 compared to the same period of the previous year.


title: Ukrainization

text: Several Russian TV channels have not been allowed to broadcast in Ukraine since November 1, 2008, according to Ukraine's National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting mainly because of the advertising aired by the channels. The Ukrainian distributors of television channels were ordered to bring the broadcasts in line with Ukrainian laws. Channel One and Ren TV have since been granted temporary permission to broadcast, while a separate version of RTR Planeta was started specially for Ukrainian TV viewers in October 2009.


title: Ukrainization

text: On 13 May 2010, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed that in Ukraine "the discriminatory, motivated, ideology-tinged and anti-Russian decisions that were being made when Yuschenko was President have been lifted".


title: Ukrainization

text: On 23 May 2017, Ukrainian parliament approved the law proposed in November 2016 that demands national, regional, satellite, and multi-channel TV and radio networks to broadcast at least 75% of their content (summarized on weekly basis separately in time intervals 7am6pm and 6pm10pm) in Ukrainian starting from 13 October 2017. 50% is required from local networks, and 75% of news programs is required in Ukrainian for all networks. Films and broadcasts which are not products of these networks and produced after 1991 must be broadcast exclusively in Ukrainian. Reasonable exceptions are provided for inclusion of non-Ukrainian language into otherwise Ukrainian-language broadcasts. The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine may permit exceptions to this law for broadcasts which serve elimination of threats to national security. At the time the only two national Ukrainian TV channels who did not already broadcast 75% of their content in Ukrainian were "Inter" and "Ukraine". Also because of this May 2017 approved law, since 8 November 2018 Ukrainian radio stations must broadcast no less than 35% of songs in Ukrainian or if it plays 60% of its songs in the official languages of the European Union then 25%.


title: Ukrainization

text: In two presidential elections, in 1994 and 2004, the role of languages in Ukraine was an important election issue. In 1994 the main opposition candidate, Leonid Kuchma, in an attempt to widen his political appeal, expressed his support for the idea of Russian becoming the second state language, as well as promising to improve his knowledge of the Ukrainian language. In addition to the stagnating economy, the language issue likely contributed to Kuchma's victory in the election; but while his knowledge of Ukrainian noticeably improved, Kuchma did not follow through on his pledge to make Russian a state language during the 10 years of his presidency.


title: Ukrainization

text: In 2004 an election promise by Viktor Yanukovych (leader of the Party of Regions) to adopt Russian as the second official language might also have increased the turnout of his base, but it was rebutted during the campaign by his opponent (Viktor Yushchenko), who pointed out that Yanukovych could have already taken steps towards this change while he was a Prime Minister of Ukraine if this had really been his priority. During his campaign Yushchenko emphasized that his being painted as a proponent of the closure of Russian schools frequently made by his opponents is entirely baseless and stated his view that the issue of school language, as well as the churches, should be left to local communities. Nevertheless, during Yuchshenko's presidency the transfer of educational institutions from Russian to Ukrainian continued.


title: Ukrainization

text: In the 2006 parliamentary election the status of the Russian language in Ukraine was brought up again by the opposition parties. The leading opposition party, Party of Regions, promised to introduce two official languages, Russian and Ukrainian, on the national and regional levels. On the national level such changes require modifying Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which the party hopes to achieve. Before the election in Kharkiv, and following the election in the other south-eastern regions such as Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, and the Crimea, the newly elected local councils, won by the Party of Regions (and minor supporting parties), declared Russian as a regional language, citing the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, ratified by Ukraine in 2003. The central government has questioned such actions of local councils, claiming they overstepped their authority. In Dnipropetrovsk, the court has found the order of the city council on introducing Russian as a regional language unlawful, but the legal battle on the local status of the Russian language remains to be resolved.


title: Ukrainization

text: In the wake of the 2006 Parliamentary crisis in Ukraine that fractured the governing coalition and returned Yanukovych to the Prime Ministership, the "Universal of National Unity" signed by President Yushchenko as well as the leaders of several of the most influential political parties declared that Ukrainian would remain the official state language in Ukraine. However, within a week after signing the Universal, Yanukovych, then approved as Prime Minister of Ukraine, stated at a press conference in Sochi (Russia) that the implementation of Russian as a second state language remains the goal of his party even though he does not see it achieved in the immediate future because such a change, which would require amending the Constitution, would not collect the required majority (⅔) in the Parliament of Ukraine given the current political situation.


title: Ukrainization

text: During the electoral campaign for the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election Yanukovych at first stated that if he would be elected President he then will do everything in order to make Russian the second state language in Ukraine, but in an interview with "Kommersant" later during the campaign he stated that the status of Russian in Ukraine "is too politicized" and said that if elected president in 2010 he would "have a real opportunity to adopt a law on languages, which implements the requirements of the European Charter of regional languages". He implied this law would need 226 votes in the Ukrainian parliament (50% of the votes instead of the 75% of the votes needed to change the constitution of Ukraine). After his early 2010 election as President Yanukovych stated (on March 9, 2010) "Ukraine will continue to promote the Ukrainian language as its only state language".


title: Ukrainization

text: According to the laws on civil and administrative procedure enacted in Ukraine in 2005, all legal and court proceedings in Ukraine are to be conducted in Ukrainian. This does not restrict, however, the usage of other languages, as the law guarantees interpretation services for any language desired by a citizen, defendant or witness.


title: Ukrainization

text: President Petro Poroshenko claimed to be carrying out the "Ukrainianization of the historical and political calendar - the replacement of the Soviet-Russian imposed upon us." This has led to the moving of military holidays to new dates and the creation of the Defenders of Ukraine Day.


title: Ukrainization

text: The 2017 abolition of May 2 as public holiday (as it was in the Soviet era) and instead (since 2017) making Western Christianity's Christmas, celebrated 25 December, a new Ukrainian public holiday was also described as moving away from "Moscow's calendar and Russian imperial standards" (by Oleksandr Turchynov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine in 2017). (May 1's International Workers' Day remained a Ukrainian public holiday, although it was renamed (also in 2017) from "Day of International Solidarity of Workers" to "Labor Day".)


title: Bug bounty program

text: A bug bounty program is a deal offered by many websites, organizations and software developers by which individuals can receive recognition and compensation for reporting bugs, especially those pertaining to security exploits and vulnerabilities.


title: Bug bounty program

text: These programs allow the developers to discover and resolve bugs before the general public is aware of them, preventing incidents of widespread abuse and data breaches. Bug bounty programs have been implemented by a large number of organizations, including Mozilla, Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, Reddit, Square, Microsoft, and the Internet bug bounty.


title: Bug bounty program

text: Companies outside the technology industry, including traditionally conservative organizations like the United States Department of Defense, have started using bug bounty programs. The Pentagon's use of bug bounty programs is part of a posture shift that has seen several US Government Agencies reverse course from threatening white hat hackers with legal recourse to inviting them to participate as part of a comprehensive vulnerability disclosure framework or policy.


title: Bug bounty program

text: Hunter and Ready initiated the first known bug bounty program in 1983 for their Versatile Real-Time Executive operating system. Anyone who found and reported a bug would receive a Volkswagen Beetle ( Bug) in return.


title: Bug bounty program

text: A little over a decade later in 1995, Jarrett Ridlinghafer, a technical support engineer at Netscape Communications Corporation coined the phrase 'Bug Bounty'.


title: Bug bounty program

text: Netscape encouraged its employees to push themselves and do whatever it takes to get the job done. Ridlinghafer recognized that Netscape had many product enthusiasts and evangelists, some of which could even be considered fanatical about Netscape's browsers. He started to investigate the phenomenon in more detail and discovered that many of Netscape's enthusiasts were actually software engineers who were fixing the product's bugs on their own and publishing the fixes or workarounds, either in online news forums that had been set up by Netscape's technical support department, or on the unofficial "Netscape U-FAQ" website, which listed all known bugs and features of the browser, as well as instructions regarding workarounds and fixes.


title: Bug bounty program

text: Ridlinghafer thought the company should leverage these resources and proposed the 'Netscape Bugs Bounty Program', which he presented to his manager, who in turn suggested that Ridlinghafer present it at the next company executive team meeting. At the next executive team meeting, which was attended by James Barksdale, Marc Andreessen and the VPs of every department including product engineering, each member was given a copy of the 'Netscape Bugs Bounty Program' proposal and Ridlinghafer was invited to present his idea to the Netscape Executive Team. Everyone at the meeting embraced the idea except the VP of Engineering, who did not want it to go forward believing it to be a waste of time and resources. However, the VP of Engineering was overruled and Ridlinghafer was given an initial $50k budget to run with the proposal.


title: Bug bounty program

text: On October 10 1995, Netscape launched the first technology bug bounty program for the Netscape Navigator 2.0 Beta browser.


title: Bug bounty program

text: In August 2013, a Palestinian computer science student reported a vulnerability that allowed anyone to post a video on an arbitrary Facebook account. According to the email communication between the student and Facebook, he attempted to report the vulnerability using Facebook's bug bounty program but the student was misunderstood by Facebook's engineers. Later he exploited the vulnerability using the Facebook profile of Mark Zuckerberg, resulting into Facebook refusing to pay him a bounty.


title: Bug bounty program

text: Facebook started paying researchers who find and report security bugs by issuing them custom branded "White Hat" debit cards that can be reloaded with funds each time the researchers discover new flaws. "Researchers who find bugs and security improvements are rare, and we value them and have to find ways to reward them," Ryan McGeehan, former manager of Facebook's security response team, told CNET in an interview. "Having this exclusive black card is another way to recognize them. They can show up at a conference and show this card and say 'I did special work for Facebook.'" In 2014, Facebook stopped issuing debit cards to researchers.


title: Bug bounty program

text: In 2016, Uber experienced a security incident when an individual accessed the personal information of 57 million Uber users worldwide. The individual supposedly demanded a ransom of $100,000 in order to destroy rather than publish the data. In Congressional testimony, Uber CISO indicated that the company verified that the data had been destroyed before paying the $100,000. Mr. Flynn expressed regret that Uber did not disclose the incident in 2016. As part of their response to this incident, Uber worked with partner HackerOne to update their bug bounty program policies to, among other things, more thoroughly explain good faith vulnerability research and disclosure.


title: Bug bounty program

text: Yahoo! was severely criticized for sending out Yahoo! T-shirts as reward to the Security Researchers for finding and reporting security vulnerabilities in Yahoo!, sparking what came to be called "T-shirt-gate". High-Tech Bridge, a Geneva, Switzerland-based security testing company issued a press release saying Yahoo! offered $12.50 in credit per vulnerability, which could be used toward Yahoo-branded items such as T-shirts, cups and pens from its store. Ramses Martinez, director of Yahoo's security team claimed later in a blog post that he was behind the voucher reward program, and that he basically had been paying for them out of his own pocket. Eventually, Yahoo! launched its new bug bounty program on October 31 of the same year, that allows security researchers to submit bugs and receive rewards between $250 and $15,000, depending on the severity of the bug discovered.


title: Bug bounty program

text: Similarly, when Ecava released the first known bug bounty program for ICS in 2013, they were criticized for offering store credits instead of cash which does not incentivize security researchers. Ecava explained that the program was intended to be initially restrictive and focused on the human safety perspective for the users of IntegraXor SCADA, their ICS software.


title: Bug bounty program

text: Though submissions for bug bounties come from many countries, a handful of countries tend to submit more bugs and receive more bounties. The United States and India are the top countries from which researchers submit bugs. India, which has either the first or second largest number of bug hunters in the world, depending on which report one cites, topped the Facebook Bug Bounty Program with the largest number of valid bugs. "India came out on top with the number of valid submissions in 2017, with the United States and Trinidad and Tobago in second and third place, respectively", Facebook quoted in a post.


title: Bug bounty program

text: In October 2013, Google announced a major change to its Vulnerability Reward Program. Previously, it had been a bug bounty program covering many Google products. With the shift, however, the program was broadened to include a selection of high-risk free software applications and libraries, primarily those designed for networking or for low-level operating system functionality. Submissions that Google found adherent to the guidelines would be eligible for rewards ranging from $500 to $3,133.70. In 2017, Google expanded their program to cover vulnerabilities found in applications developed by third parties and made available through the Google Play Store. Google's Vulnerability Rewards Program now includes vulnerabilities found in Google, Google Cloud, Android, and Chrome products, and rewards up to $31,337.


title: Bug bounty program

text: Microsoft and Facebook partnered in November 2013 to sponsor The Internet Bug Bounty, a program to offer rewards for reporting hacks and exploits for a broad range of Internet-related software. In 2017, GitHub and The Ford Foundation sponsored the initiative, which is managed by volunteers including from Uber, Microsoft, Adobe, HackerOne, GitHub, NCC Group, and Signal Sciences. The software covered by the IBB includes Adobe Flash, Python, Ruby, PHP, Django, Ruby on Rails, Perl, OpenSSL, Nginx, Apache HTTP Server, and Phabricator. In addition, the program offered rewards for broader exploits affecting widely used operating systems and web browsers, as well as the Internet as a whole.


title: Bug bounty program

text: In March 2016, Peter Cook announced the US federal government's first bug bounty program, the "Hack the Pentagon" program. The program ran from April 18 to May 12 and over 1,400 people submitted 138 unique valid reports through HackerOne. In total, the US Department of Defense paid out $71,200.


title: Bug bounty program

text: In 2019, The European Commission announced the EU-FOSSA 2 bug bounty initiative for popular open source projects, including Drupal, Apache Tomcat, VLC, 7-zip and KeePass. The project was co-facilitated by European bug bounty platform Intigriti and HackerOne and resulted in a total of 195 unique and valid vulnerabilities.


title: Bug bounty program

text: "Open Bug Bounty" is a crowd security bug bounty program established in 2014 that allows individuals to post website and web application security vulnerabilities in the hope of a reward from affected website operators.


title: Bug bounty program

text: Center for Analysis and Investigation of Cyber Attacks (TSARKA), a cybersecurity company of Kazakhstan, on December 8th, 2021, launched a National vulnerability reward program called BugBounty.kz. Among the private companies, governmental information systems and information resources have joined the program. Since the launch and up until October 28th, 2021, 1039 vulnerability reports were submitted. During the operation of the program several critical vulnerabilities were reported that could have led to the personal data leak from the critical infrastructure and possible manipulation of SCADA systems responsible for the city life support.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: On April 22, 2018, a mass shooting occurred at a Waffle House restaurant in the Antioch neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee, United States, when 29-year-old Travis Jeffrey Reinking fatally shot four people and injured two others with an AR-15 style rifle. Another two people were injured by broken glass. Reinking was rushed by an unarmed customer, James Shaw Jr., who wrestled the rifle away and stopped the shooting spree. Reinking was captured on April 23, ending a 34-hour manhunt.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: Due to severe schizophrenia, Reinking was initially found incompetent to stand trial and committed to a mental hospital for treatment. Later that decision was changed and Reinking was put on trial for four counts of first degree premeditated murder on January 31, 2022. He was convicted of the charges on February 4, 2022.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: Reinking was partially naked when the shooting occurred, wearing only a green jacket. After sitting in a pickup truck in the parking lot for approximately four minutes, he came out holding an AR-15-style rifle and fatally shot two people outside the Waffle House. He went inside the restaurant and continued to fire, killing a third person and fatally injuring a fourth, who died at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, with four others treated for related injuries. One customer, 29-year-old James Shaw Jr., who suffered a bullet graze wound, hid near the restaurant's bathrooms, rushed the shooter, and wrestled the rifle away. Reinking then fled on foot.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: Travis Reinking was from Morton, Illinois. He had a history of erratic conduct and delusions. In May 2016, sheriff's deputies in Tazewell County responded to a call from Reinking's parents in the parking lot of a drugstore, where a paramedic said Reinking had delusions that Taylor Swift was personally stalking him and hacking his phone. The report noted: "Travis is hostile toward police and does not recognize police authority. Travis also possesses several firearms." In 2017, he lived in an apartment above his father's crane rental business in Tremont, Illinois. In June 2017, an employee of the business called police, saying Reinking had come downstairs carrying a rifle, wearing a pink dress, and using an expletive before tossing the rifle in his trunk and leaving the building. On another occasion around the same time, a public pool director called police to report Reinking had come to the pool in a "pink women's housecoat" and then exposed himself to lifeguards.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: In July 2017, the U.S. Secret Service arrested Reinking near the White House after he crossed a barrier and refused to leave. The Secret Service said Reinking had said he "wanted to set up a meeting with the president". The report notes he made reference to being a "sovereign citizen". Reinking was charged with unlawful entry (a misdemeanor) and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement in July 2017, in which Reinking performed 32 hours of community service and was ordered to stay away from the White House. In November 2017, the court dismissed the case after Reinking successfully completed the program.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: Following Reinking's arrest, Illinois authorities revoked his state firearms authorization and seized four of his weapons (including the AR-15 used in the Nashville shooting, two other rifles (a .30-06 Remington Model 710 & a .22-caliber CZ 452-2EZKM), and a handgun). According to the sheriff of Tazewell County, Illinois, Reinking's father, Jeffrey Reinking, who held a valid state authorization card, asked sheriff's deputies if he could keep the guns, and they allowed him to do so after he assured them "he would keep them secure and away from" his son. Reinking's father admitted later that he had returned the guns to his son sometime before the shooting.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: According to a spokesman for the Nashville police, Reinking moved to the Nashville area in the autumn of 2017 and was employed as a crane and construction worker from January 2018 until April 2018. He was fired on April 3, 2018 for claiming that people, including other employees, were "after him". According to police, four days before the Waffle House shooting, Reinking stole a BMW X6 from a Brentwood, Tennessee, dealership; police used GPS to track the car to Reinking's apartment complex and located the keyfob in his apartment.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: Reinking left no notes behind. A manhunt for him ensued, with police warning the public that he was potentially armed with two other weapons. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation added him to its "most wanted" list and offered a reward for information leading to his arrest. Reinking was captured the next day, about 34 hours after the shooting, after a construction worker reported him entering a wooded area close to the Waffle House. Police said Reinking was carrying a backpack with a .45-caliber Kimber 1911 handgun and ammunition.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: Reinking was charged with four counts of criminal homicide, four counts of attempted homicide, and one count of having a firearm while committing a dangerous felony. Forensic psychologists who examined Reinking determined that he suffered from severe schizophrenia, and in August 2018 a judge found Reinking incompetent to stand trial and ordered him committed to a mental hospital for treatment. However, in October 2018 he was found competent to stand trial again. In a January 2020 court appearance, prosecutors announced that they would not seek the death penalty against Reinking. He then faced up to life without parole.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: The trial was scheduled for early 2022. The shooter pled not guilty to 16 counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon. On the day of the trial, the shooter changed his plea from not guilty to not guilty by reason of insanity.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: The trial started with jury selection on January 25, 2022. The opening arguments were heard on January 31. Reinking was found guilty on all counts on February 4, 2022, including four counts of premeditated first degree murder. The defense was unsuccessful on their plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury deliberated for nearly five hours before delivering the verdicts. The following day, Reinking was sentenced to life in prison without parole.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: Shortly after the shooting, Nashville Mayor David Briley said, "It's a tragic day for our city anytime people lose their lives at the hands of a gunman." Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam said he was "deeply saddened by the tragic incident in Antioch early this morning, and we mourn the lives taken in this senseless act of violence". Congressman Jim Cooper called for restricting "widespread civilian access to military-grade assault weapons".


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: By May 7, Shaw had raised $227,000 via GoFundMe for a fund to help the shooting victims. That day, Tennessee State University, Shaw's Alma Mater, set up a scholarship in his name.


title: Nashville Waffle House shooting

text: The families of two victims filed civil actions against Travis Reinking and his family. Jeffrey Reinking was later charged with "unlawful delivery of a firearm" for returning the weapons to his son. He was found guilty in May 2022.


title: Christian existentialism

text: Christian existentialism is a theo-philosophical movement which takes an existentialist approach to Christian theology. The school of thought is often traced back to the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) who is widely regarded as the father of existentialism.


title: Christian existentialism

text: Christian existentialism relies on Kierkegaard's understanding of Christianity. Kierkegaard argued that the universe is fundamentally paradoxical, and that its greatest paradox is the transcendent union of God and humans in the person of Jesus Christ. He also posited having a personal relationship with God that supersedes all prescribed moralities, social structures and communal norms, since he asserted that following social conventions is essentially a personal aesthetic choice made by individuals.


title: Christian existentialism

text: Kierkegaard proposed that each person must make independent choices, which then constitute their existence. Each person suffers from the anguish of indecision (whether knowingly or unknowingly) until they commit to a particular choice about the way to live. Kierkegaard also proposed three rubrics with which to understand the conditions that issue from distinct life choices: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.


title: Christian existentialism

text: One of the major premises of Kierkegaardian Christian existentialism entails calling the masses back to a more genuine form of Christianity. This form is often identified with some notion of Early Christianity, which mostly existed during the first three centuries after Christ's crucifixion. Beginning with the Edict of Milan, which was issued by Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 313, Christianity enjoyed a level of popularity among Romans and later among other Europeans. And yet Kierkegaard asserted that by the 19th century, the ultimate meaning of New Testament Christianity (love, cf. agape, mercy and loving-kindness) had become perverted, and Christianity had deviated considerably from its original threefold message of grace, humility, and love.


title: Christian existentialism

text: Another major premise of Kierkegaardian Christian existentialism involves Kierkegaard's conception of God and Love. For the most part, Kierkegaard equates God with Love. Thus, when a person engages in the act of loving, he is in effect achieving an aspect of the divine. Kierkegaard also viewed the individual as a necessary synthesis of both and infinite elements. Therefore, when an individual does not come to a full realization of his infinite side, he is said to be in despair. For many contemporary Christian theologians, the notion of despair can be viewed as sin. However, to Kierkegaard, a man sinned when he was exposed to this idea of despair and chose a path other than one in accordance with God's will.


title: Christian existentialism

text: A final major premise of Kierkegaardian Christian existentialism entails the systematic undoing of evil acts. Kierkegaard asserted that once an action had been completed, it should be evaluated in the face of God, for holding oneself up to divine scrutiny was the only way to judge one's actions. Because actions constitute the manner in which something is deemed good or bad, one must be constantly conscious of the potential consequences of his actions. Kierkegaard believed that the choice for goodness ultimately came down to each individual. Yet Kierkegaard also foresaw the potential limiting of choices for individuals who fell into despair.


title: Christian existentialism

text: Christian Existentialism often refers to what it calls the indirect style of Christ's teachings, which it considers to be a distinctive and important aspect of his ministry. Christ's point, it says, is often left unsaid in any particular parable or saying, to permit each individual to confront the truth on his own. This is particularly evident in (but is certainly not limited to) his parables; for example in the Gospel of Matthew ().


title: Christian existentialism

text: An existential reading of the Bible demands that the reader recognize that he is an existing subject, studying the words that God communicates to him personally. This is in contrast to looking at a collection of truths which are outside and unrelated to the reader. Such a reader is not obligated to follow the commandments as if an external agent is forcing them upon him, but as though they are inside him and guiding him internally. This is the task Kierkegaard takes up when he asks: "Who has the more difficult task: the teacher who lectures on earnest things a meteor's distance from everyday life, or the learner who should put it to use?" Existentially speaking, the Bible doesn't become an authority in a person's life until they "permit" the Bible to be their personal authority.


title: Christian existentialism

text: Christian existentialists include German Protestant theologians Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann, American existential psychologist Rollo May (who introduced much of Tillich's thought to a general American readership), British Anglican theologian John Macquarrie, American philosopher Clifford Williams, French Catholic philosophers Gabriel Marcel, Louis Lavelle, Emmanuel Mounier and Pierre Boutang and French Protestant Paul Ricœur, German philosopher Karl Jaspers, Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, and Russian philosophers Nikolai Berdyaev and Lev Shestov. Karl Barth added to Kierkegaard's ideas the notion that existential despair leads an individual to an awareness of God's infinite nature. Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky could be placed within the tradition of Christian existentialism.


title: Christian existentialism

text: The roots of existentialism have been traced back as far as St Augustine. Some of the most striking passages in Pascal's "Pensées", including the famous section on the Wager, deal with existentialist themes. Jacques Maritain, in "Existence and the Existent: An Essay on Christian Existentialism", finds the core of true existentialism in the thought of Thomas Aquinas.


title: Christian existentialism

text: In the monograph, "Existential Theology: An Introduction" (2020), Hue Woodson provides a constructive primer to the field and, he argues, thinkers that can be considered more broadly as engaging with existential theology, defining a French school including Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Maritain, and Jean-Luc Marion, a German school including Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and a Russian school including Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Nikolai Berdyaev.


title: Christian existentialism

text: It has been claimed that Radical Existential Christians’ faith is based in their sensible and immediate and direct experience of God indwelling in human terms. It is suggested that individuals do not make or create their Christian existence; it does not come as a result of a decision one personally makes. The radical Protestants of the 17th century, for example Quakers may have been in some ways theo-philosophically aligned with radical existential Christianity.


title: Runner Runner

text: Runner Runner is a 2013 American crime thriller film directed by Brad Furman, written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien and starring Justin Timberlake, Ben Affleck, Gemma Arterton and Anthony Mackie.


title: Runner Runner

text: The film was released in the United States on October 4, 2013, received generally negative reviews from critics, and grossed $62 million.


title: Runner Runner

text: Richie Furst used to have a lucrative career on Wall Street; this history prevents him from receiving tuition assistance at Princeton, so he funds his master's degree by referring students to online gambling, for which he receives a cut. After the dean threatens to expel him for these activities, Richie tries to win his tuition using his excellent poker skills in online gambling, but he loses all his money to a cheater, something he can prove by statistics.


title: Runner Runner

text: Richie travels to Costa Rica to confront Ivan Block, who runs the biggest empire of online gambling websites in the world, including the one Richie lost his money on. After Ivan sees the statistics, he finds that coders have modified the software to allow them to cheat. After firing those involved, Ivan tells Richie he'll pay him millions per year to stay in Costa Rica and assist with the site.