prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What is the abbreviated name of the exclusive platform of the video game named for the league with a halftime event just before the publishers clearing house sweepstakes drawing.

The following are given passages.
Context 1: Passage 1:
List of Super Bowl halftime shows
Halftime shows are a tradition during American football games at all levels of competition  Entertainment during the Super Bowl, the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), represents a fundamental link to pop culture, which helps broaden the television audience and nationwide interest 
Prior to the early 1990s, the halftime show featured university marching bands (the Grambling State University Marching Band has performed at the most Super Bowl halftime shows, featuring in six shows including at least one per decade from the 1960s to 1990), drill teams, and other performance ensembles such as Up with People  In the 90s, the halftime show began to feature major hit musicians, beginning with Super Bowl XXV (1991) with New Kids on the Block  In an effort to boost the prominence of the halftime show to increase viewer interest, Super Bowl XXVII (1993) featured a headlining performance by Michael Jackson 

Background
During most of the Super Bowl's first decade, the halftime show featured a college marching band  The show's second decade featured a more varied show, often featuring drill teams and other performance ensembles; the group Up with People produced and starred in four of the performances  The middle of the third decade, in an effort to counter other networks' efforts to counterprogram the game, saw the introduction of popular music acts such as New Kids on the Block, Gloria Estefan, Michael Jackson, Clint Black, Patti LaBelle, and Tony Bennett  Starting with Super Bowl XXXII, commercial sponsors presented the halftime show; within five years, the tradition of having a theme—begun with Super Bowl III—ended, replaced by major music productions by arena rock bands and other high-profile acts  In the six years immediately following an incident at Super Bowl XXXVIII where Justin Timberlake exposed one of Janet Jackson's breasts in an alleged "wardrobe malfunction", all of the halftime shows consisted of a performance by one artist or group, with the musicians in that era primarily being rock artists from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s   These shows were considered "family friendly" and the time in which they took place has been described as "the age of reactionary halftime shows"  Since Super Bowl XLV, the halftime show has returned to featuring popular contemporary musicians, with the typical format featuring a single headline artist collaborating with a small number of guest acts 
The NFL does not pay the halftime show performers an appearance fee, though it covers all expenses for the performers and their entourage of band members management, technical crew, security personnel, family, and friends  Super Bowl XXVII halftime show with Michael Jackson provided an exception, as the NFL and Frito-Lay agreed to make a donation and provide commercial time for Jackson's Heal the World Foundation  According to Nielsen SoundScan data, the halftime performers regularly experience significant spikes in weekly album sales and paid digital downloads due to the exposure  For Super Bowl XLIX, it was reported by the Wall Street Journal that league officials asked representatives of potential acts if they would be willing to provide financial compensation to the NFL in exchange for their appearance, in the form of either an up-front fee, or a cut of revenue from concert performances made after the Super Bowl  While these reports were denied by an NFL spokeswoman, the request had, according to the Journal, received a "chilly" response from those involved 

History
The following is a list of the performers, producers, themes, and sponsors for each Super Bowl game's show  This list does not include national anthem performers, which are listed in the article List of national anthem performers at the Super Bowl  Names in bold are headline performers 

1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
Details on specific shows
Super Bowl XL
For the Rolling Stones, the stage was in the form of the group's iconic tongue logo (John Pasche's design first used in 1971 on their Sticky Fingers album)  It was the largest stage ever assembled for a Super Bowl halftime show, with 28 separate pieces assembled in five minutes by a 600-member volunteer stage crew  The group performed three songs: "Start Me Up", "Rough Justice", and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"  The show was viewed by 89 9 million people, more than the audiences for the Oscars, Grammys and Emmy Awards combined  In the wake of the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, ABC and the NFL imposed a five-second delay and censored lyrics considered too sexually explicit in the first two songs by briefly turning off Mick Jagger's microphone—censoring to which the group had previously agreed 
However, the choice of the Rolling Stones sparked controversy in the Detroit community because the band did not represent the traditional Detroit "Motown Sound", and no artists from the area were included 

Achievements
The Super Bowl XXVII halftime show starring Michael Jackson is the most watched Super Bowl halftime show, with a TV audience of 133 4 million viewers 
The Super Bowl LIV halftime show starring Shakira and Jennifer Lopez is the most viewed Super Bowl halftime show on YouTube, with 270 million Views 
Based on online metrics, TicketSource revealed that the Super Bowl LIV halftime show starring Shakira and Jennifer Lopez is the "World's most popular" halftime show 
The Super Bowl LVI halftime show starring Dr  Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J  Blige and Kendrick Lamar is the first Super Bowl halftime show to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) 

See also
List of AFL Grand Final pre-match performances
List of Grey Cup halftime shows
List of national anthem performers at the Super Bowl

Notes
Passage 2:
6,000 Enemies
6,000 Enemies is a 1939 American drama film directed by George B  Seitz and starring Walter Pidgeon as a successful District Attorney who is framed on charge of bribery   Although innocent, he is sent to prison where he fights to clear his name  The film also stars Rita Johnson 

Plot summary
Steve Donegan is an elected district attorney and launches an anti-organized crime campaign  Joe Silenus, a crime boss, plots to frame Donegan for accepting a bribe  Donegan is sentenced to prison, where he re-encounters all the men he convicted during his anti-crime crusade  Martin receives orders to eliminate Donegan  Anne Barry, the embezzlement convict, saves his life by alerting the guards to her screams 
Steve’s brother pursues Silenus, disguised as a chauffeur in order to prove his innocence  ‘Socks’ Martin knocks Steve Donegan down six times, but he keeps getting up and fighting  Two revolvers are smuggled into the prison inside a fruit basket meant for the warden  ‘Socks suggests that Steve join him in the prison break  When Phil arrives at the prison to see Steve, he is shot in the drive by just outside the gates  The prisoners riot as a result of the shots, and the rumored prison break begins 

Cast
Walter Pidgeon as Steve Donegan
Rita Johnson as Anne Barry
Paul Kelly as Dr  Malcolm Scott
Nat Pendleton as 'Socks' Martin
Harold Huber as Joe Silenus
Grant Mitchell as Warden Alvin Parkhurst
John Arledge as Phil Donegan
J M  Kerrigan as Dan Barrett
Adrian Morris as 'Bull' Snyder
Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams as Maxie (as Guinn Williams)
Arthur Aylesworth as 'Bluebeard' Dawson
Raymond Hatton as Prisoner 'Wibbie' Yern
Lionel Royce as Prisoner 'Dutch' Myers
Tom Neal as Prisoner Ransom
Willie Fung as Wang

Box office
According to MGM records, the film earned $233,000 in the US and Canada and $125,000 elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $22,000  It also featured the short "The Bear That Couldn't Sleep", which was the first Barney Bear short 
Passage 3:
NFL (video game)
NFL is a 1989 football video game, developed by Atlus and published by LJN exclusively for the Nintendo Entertainment System 

Gameplay modes
This game was the first since NFL Football - released in 1979 for the Intellivision - to get an official National Football League license  Intending to loosely represent the 1988-89 season of the National Football League, the game uses the teams and play formations of that particular era while avoiding usage of the players' names, due to a lack of an NFLPA license, which was given to Tecmo's Tecmo Bowl The player could play one of four options, either Interconference, AFC and NFC game or the Super Bowl (specifically Super Bowl XXIII)  Along with the option to choose a package to play during the game, players can directly control the entire team at once  This game was one of the first NFL video games on a gaming system  The game employs a Top-Down system for the actual gameplay and allows players to assign handicaps to a human opponent that is not as skilled as they are 

Reception
Allgame gave the game a 2 5 out of 5 rating in their overview 
Passage 4:
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly known as the NES, is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo  It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the Family Computer, commonly referred to as the Famicom or FC  The NES, a redesigned version, was released in American test markets on October 18, 1985, before becoming widely available in North America and other countries 
After developing a series of successful arcade games in the early 1980s, Nintendo planned to create a home video game console  Rejecting more complex proposals, the Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi called for a simple, cheap console that ran games stored on cartridges  The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch games  Nintendo released several add-ons, such as a light gun for shooting games like Duck Hunt 
The NES was one of the best-selling consoles of its time and helped revitalize the US gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983  It introduced a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games  The NES featured a number of groundbreaking games, such as the 1985 platform game Super Mario Bros  and the 1986 action-adventure games The Legend of Zelda and Metroid, which became long-running franchises  It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System  In 2011, IGN named the NES the greatest video game console of all time 

History
Development
Following a series of arcade game successes in the early 1980s, Nintendo made plans to create a cartridge-based console called the Family Computer, or Famicom  Masayuki Uemura designed the system  The console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's Galaxian (1979) and Nintendo's Radar Scope (1980) and Donkey Kong (1981), with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system  Original plans called for an advanced 16-bit system which would function as a full-fledged computer with a keyboard and floppy disk drive, but Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi rejected this and instead decided to go for a cheaper, more conventional cartridge-based game console as he believed that features such as keyboards and disks were intimidating to non-technophiles  A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, after which work began on programming tools  Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan up to that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be produced from scratch  Early Famicom games were written on a system that ran on an NEC PC-8001 computer and LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no software design tools for this purpose existed at that time The code name for the project was "GameCom", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name "Famicom", arguing that "In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer  Perhaps we could say it is a family computer " Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors The Famicom was also influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's Donkey Kong  The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games  Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom  They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful Donkey Kong arcade hardware; they took a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES Original plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big  Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines  As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors The controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons  The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked  There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor  Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort  Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used Gunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever to the cartridge slot which is not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it  Uemura adopted his idea  Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players voices sound through the TV speaker 

Japanese release
The console was released on July 15, 1983, as the Home Cassette-type Video Game: Family Computer, for ¥14,800 (equivalent to ¥18,400 in 2019) with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr , and Popeye  The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash  Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 : 279, 285 Nintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs  This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefronts through the 21st Century 

North American release
Nintendo also had its sights set on the North American market, entering into negotiations with Atari, Inc  to release the Famicom under Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System  The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983  However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's Donkey Kong game  This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari  Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own : 283–285 

Subsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized: a North American repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller and a special BASIC cartridge : 287  By the beginning of 1985, more than 2 5 million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year  The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983  The March 1985 issue of Electronic Games magazine stated that "the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared" and that "this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part" The Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS  System in 1984; the system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console  With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he decided to introduce the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry  The VS  System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States  By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS  Systems had been sold to American arcades  The success of the VS  System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades  It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS  Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch At June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a "zero insertion force" cartridge slot  The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles  Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly This was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)  Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986  Nintendo released 17 launch games: 10-Yard Fight, Baseball, Clu Clu Land, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Golf, Gyromite, Hogan's Alley, Ice Climber, Kung Fu, Pinball, Soccer, Stack-Up, Super Mario Bros , Tennis, Wild Gunman, and Wrecking Crew 
For expedient production, some varieties of these launch games contain Famicom chips with an adapter inside the cartridge so they play on North American consoles, which is why the title screens of Gyromite and Stack-Up show the titles of the Famicom games Robot Gyro and Robot Block, respectively 
The system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America  The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing  Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics  Furthermore, a single game such as Pac-Man appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality  In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined To differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy  The overall platform is referred to as "Entertainment System" instead of a "video game system", is centered upon a machine called a "Control Deck" instead of a "console", and features software cartridges called "Game Paks" instead of "video games"  This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores  To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system act as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck  The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics  To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game  A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging  The initial seal states, "This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product"  This text was later changed to "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality" Unlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content  The most famous example is Lucasfilm's attempts to port the comedy-horror game Maniac Mansion to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down 
The optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R O B , was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market  Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R O B  attracted extensive attention 

Other markets
In Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions  The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by a number of different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing  The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987  The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala  In the Netherlands, it was distributed by Bandai BV  In France it was released in October 1987, while in Spain between late 1987 and 1988 through distributor Spaco  Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand  Mattel handled distribution for Nintendo in Canada as well; however, it was unrelated to the aforementioned European / Australian releases In Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES  But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones – both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan  One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade  The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products Outside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an "Asian Version" of the front-loader NES despite the prevalence of imported Famicom systems  Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees  The Indian version is called the Samurai Electronic TV Game System and the Korean version is called the Hyundai Comboy  The console sold very poorly in India 

Later redesigns and bundles
For its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set and the Power Set  The Deluxe Set, retailing at US$179 99 (equivalent to $529 in 2022), included R O B , a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and two Game Paks: Gyromite and Duck Hunt  The Control Deck, first released in 1987, retailed at US$89 99 with no game, and US$99 99 bundled with the Super Mario Bros  cartridge  The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for US$109 99, came with the Control Deck, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both Super Mario Bros  and Duck Hunt 
In 1989, the Power Set included the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet  In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing Super Spike V'Ball and Nintendo World Cup  Two more bundle packages were later released using the original model NES console  The Challenge Set of 1992 included the console, two controllers, and a Super Mario Bros  3 Game Pak for a retail price of US$89 99  The Basic Set retailed at US$89 99; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game  Instead, it contained a book called the Official Nintendo Player's Guide, which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point 
Finally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American and Japanese markets  As part of the final Nintendo-released bundle package, the product included the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned "dogbone" game controller  In Australia, this version of the system was also available with a cartridge compiling Super Mario Bros, Tetris and Nintendo World Cup  Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for US$49 99 and A$69 99 (A$79 99 with the pack-in game) respectively, and remained in production until the discontinuation of the NES in 1995 

Discontinuation
On August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe  In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $25 in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program  The Game Boy and Super NES were also covered in this program, for $25 and $35 respectively On May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System  The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary  Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts 

Hardware
Configurations
Although all versions of the Famicom/NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics  The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories  In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit  The cartridge connector pinout was changed between the Famicom and NES In late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom/NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the U S ) to complement the Super Famicom/NES and prolong interest in the console while implementing cost reduction measures  For the redesigned NES, Nintendo opted to use a top-loading cartridge slot in to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omitted AV output  Conversely, the redesigned Famicom offered such output while introducing detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality was omitted as a result  The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge "bump" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges as well as the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System Sharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently displayed the shortened moniker rather than the official "Family Computer" name  One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in 14-inch (36 cm) and 19-inch (48 cm) models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television  Another variant was the Twin Famicom, a console released in 1986 that combined a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System  Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989; intended for video capture and production, it featured internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video while including inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs 

Hardware clones
A thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity  Initially, such clones were popular in markets where Nintendo issued a legitimate version of the console long time after unlicensed hardware  In particular, the Dendy (Russian: Де́нди), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan  A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Argentina during the late 1980s and early 1990s under the name of "Family Game", resembling the original hardware design  Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: 小天才) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; and in Central Europe, especially Poland, the Pegasus was available  Since 1989, there were many Brazilian clones of NES, and the very popular Phantom System (with hardware superior to the original console) caught the attention of Nintendo itself 

The unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES  Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami)  Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software  These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip As was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware  Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries 

Design flaws
Nintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles  Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983  One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR  The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new  However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force  When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge  Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector The design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials  The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation  Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom  Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture  One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and swabs, as well as non-conductive metal polish such as Brasso or Sheila Shine Users have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol  Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system  In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles 
In response to these hardware flaws, "Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers" sprang up across the U S  According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired  Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program 
With the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip  All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64 

Lockout
The Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia  Nintendo tried to promote its "Seal of Quality" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom The original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo  The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles  Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system  This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo "Seal of Quality", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game Initially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console  However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from "lock" to "key", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, as well as bootlegs and converted imports 
Original NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility)  Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A) Problems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second  The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work : 247  Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect  In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen 

Technical specifications
The console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles use a 2A03 clocked at 1 79 MHz, while PAL consoles use a 2A07 clocked at 1 66 MHz  Both CPUs are second source variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International  The CPU has access to 2 KB of onboard work RAM The console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5 37 MHz  A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918—a video display controller used in the ColecoVision—the PPU features 2 KB of video RAM, 256 bytes of on-die "object attribute memory" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28 bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors The console's standard display resolution is 256 × 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models  The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, while the NES additionally includes support for composite video via RCA connectors  The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary "multi-out" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/NES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the "multi-out" connector was produced in rare quantities The console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor  It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCM channel for sample playback  Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator 

Accessories
Controllers
The game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled "A" and "B", a "START" button, and a "SELECT" button  Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles : 279 The original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console  The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature  The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall Instead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals  The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller  The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts A number of special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used  Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R O B  (a toy robot),: 297  and the Power Pad (a dance pad) : 226  The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them Two official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles that featured a "cycloid" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one  Both controllers have a "Turbo" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, while the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button  The latter also includes a "Slow" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen The standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console  Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller—nicknamed the "dog bone" controller—resembles that of the Super Famicom/NES  In addition, the redesigned Famicom adopted NES-style detachable controller ports The original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console  Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance 

Japanese accessories
Few of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan 
The Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games  It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable  Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as Rad Racer and The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner Family BASIC is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard  Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 BASIC cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder  Nintendo of America rejected releasing Famicom BASIC in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children : 162 The Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services  A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments 

Famicom Disk System
By 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them  With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium  Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of ¥15,000 The advantages of the format (called "Disk Card") were apparent on launch: it offered more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for Super Mario Bros ) and introduced game save capability while offering lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers  The add-on also offered upgraded sound capability by adding a wavetable synthesis channel while including more space that developers could use for the Famicom's audio sample channel  Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up "Disk Writer" interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could rewrite their disks with new games; new blank disks to write onto were also offered inside it : 75  Nintendo also set up "Disk Fax" kiosks for players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years Although Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability  Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of Makaimura (known as Ghosts 'n Goblins in the U S ) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching  Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former  Developers additionally loathed the Disk Writer kiosks due to their lower profit margin, while retailers complained of their presence taking up valuable space as interest in the format waned : 78 Usage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure  Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters  The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping  Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated Despite selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4 4 million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections : 76  By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAM for game saving, and declining overall production costs  While Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U S  patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan  Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, albeit without the enhanced audio  Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued to offer repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003 

NES Test Station
The NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988  It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games  It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program  Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee 
The NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test  The unit itself weighs approximately 11 7 pounds without a TV  It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable  By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection  The television it is connected to (typically 11" to 14") is meant to be placed atop it In 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the "Super NES Counter Tester" that tests Super NES components and games  The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front  These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested 

Games
Game Pak
The NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom  To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware  Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws  Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws The back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions  Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer  All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts  Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges  Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these "test carts" were never made available for purchase  All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim  For promotion of DuckTales: Remastered, Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the Remastered art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies  The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, "Life is like a hurricane" Famicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently  Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic  Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES  In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom : 61  This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics 

Third-party licensing
Nintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry  Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms  Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft 
To this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge  If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load : 247  Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system 
Nintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers  However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms  Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987  Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after 
Nintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988  Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself  Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced  Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk  As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games  Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year : 214–215  The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none  GameSpy noted that Nintendo's "iron-clad terms" made the company many enemies during the 1980s  Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip 

Nintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements  The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)  The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers  During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms  Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990  GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak giving the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States With the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively  Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games 

Unlicensed games
Companies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system  Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip : 286  A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication  To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working 
Atari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen  The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own "Rabbit" chip  Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims  Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement  Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided Color Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree  Historian Steven Kent wrote, "Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation  The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story ": 400

Game rentals
As the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days  Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day  Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service  Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games  Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement  Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games  In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions—usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box—that explained the game's basic premise and controls  Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games 

Reception
By 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software : 347  Compute! reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years  "Computer game makers [are] scared stiff", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some 

In June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households  By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers  By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide  The slogan for this brand was "It can't be beaten" : 345  The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union 
In the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance  Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin  The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted  The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV), in North America is Wario's Woods, and in Europe is The Lion King in 1995  In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995  Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts The NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom  By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom  During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain 

Legacy
The NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad,: 280  so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade  Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry  With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval  This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems : 306–307 The NES hardware design is also very influential  Nintendo chose the name "Nintendo Entertainment System" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy  The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder The system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games  Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own Super Mario Bros ,|: 57  The Legend of Zelda: 353  and Metroid,: 357  Capcom's Mega Man franchise, Konami's Castlevania: 358  franchise, Square's Final Fantasy,|: 95  and Enix's Dragon Quest|: 222  franchises 
NES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance  Clothing, accessories, and food items adorned with NES-themed imagery are still produced and sold in stores 

Emulation
The NES can be emulated on many other systems  The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami  It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996  It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert  The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997  Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service 

Re-release
On July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia  The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the Super Mario Bros  series and The Legend of Zelda series  The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games  It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017  However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year 

See also
History of Nintendo
Nintendo hard
Nintendo World Championships

Notes
Transliterations
Passage 5:
The Journal of Men's Studies
The Journal of Men's Studies (abbreviated JMS) is a peer-reviewed journal established in 1992 as the first  published by Men's Studies Press  As of 2015 the journal is published by SAGE Publications 

See also
Gender studies
Men's studies
Women's studies

External links
Official website
Passage 6:
Publishers Clearing House
Publishers Clearing House (PCH) is a direct marketing company that markets merchandise and magazine subscriptions with sweepstakes and prize-based games 
It was founded in 1953 by Harold Mertz to replace door-to-door magazine subscription sales by a single vendor offering multiple subscriptions by mail  It introduced its sweepstakes in 1967  In the early 1990s, the company was the subject of concerns and legal actions regarding whether consumers were misled about their odds of winning the sweepstakes and whether purchases increased their chances  By 2010, the company had reached settlements with all 50 states 
The company acquired search company Blingo in 2006, online gaming company Funtank in 2010, mobile marketing company Liquid Wireless in 2012, and internet news aggregator Topix in 2019 

History
Early history
Publishers Clearing House was founded in 1953 in Port Washington, New York by Harold Mertz, a former manager of a door-to-door sales team for magazine subscriptions  The company started in Mertz's basement with help from his first wife LuEsther and daughter Joyce  Its first mailings were of 10,000 envelopes from Mertz's home in Long Island, New York, and offered 20 magazine subscriptions  A hundred orders were received  Within a few years the company moved out of Mertz's basement into an office building and started hiring staff  When PCH moved its headquarters in 1969, its prior location was donated to the city and renamed the Harold E  Mertz Community Center  The company revenue had grown to US$50 million by 1981, and $100 million by 1988 In 1967 PCH ran its first sweepstakes as a way to increase subscription sales, based on the sweepstakes held by Reader's Digest  The first prizes ranged from $1 to $10 and entrants had a 1 in 10 chance of winning  After the sweepstakes increased response rates to mailings, prizes of $5,000 and eventually $250,000 were offered  PCH began advertising the sweepstakes on TV in 1974  It was the only major multi-magazine subscription business until 1977  Former client Time Inc  and several other publishers formed American Family Publishers (AFP) to compete with PCH after the company refused repeated requests by Time for a larger share of sales revenue from magazine subscriptions AFP and PCH competed for exclusive rights to magazines and for the better promotion and prize ideas  When AFP increased their jackpot to $1 million, and then to $10 million in 1985, PCH raised its prizes to match  $7 million in prizes were distributed by 1979, $40 million by 1991, and $137 million by 2000  In 1989, two members of its advertising team, Dave Sayer and Todd Sloane, started the Prize Patrol, a publicized event where winners are surprised with a check at their home  The idea was inspired by the 1950s television series The Millionaire  The two companies were often mistaken for each other, with Star Search host Ed McMahon and The $25,000 Pyramid host Dick Clark, the spokespeople for AFP, mistaken for representatives of the better-known PCH In 1992 thousands of discarded sweepstakes entries from contestants who had not bought magazine subscriptions were found in the company's trash, reinforcing beliefs that the company favored those who made purchases in selecting a sweepstakes winner  PCH said this was done by a disgruntled employee at their mail processing vendor  A class action lawsuit ensued, which PCH settled by giving discarded entrants a second chance to win 

Government regulation
In the 1990s PCH and its primary competitor, AFP, experienced a series of legal troubles due to concerns that their mailings misled consumers about their odds of winning and implied that magazine purchases increased their chances  This led to the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act of 2000, which regulates direct mail businesses  At the senate hearings regarding this Act, PCH said most consumers were not confused about their chances of winning or that purchases did not increase their chances  The company said that fewer than five percent of participants spend more than $300  Government officials from California said 5,000 local consumers paid more than $2,500 each in magazine purchases under the false belief that they were increasing their odds of winning the sweepstakes Industry sources estimated PCH's response rates decreased by 7 to 12 percent a its sales volume by 22 to 30 percent in response to the bad publicity from the lawsuits  In 2000, PCH laid off a quarter of its 800-person work force 

Lawsuits and settlements
In 1994 PCH sent mailings telling recipients they were all "finalists", which led to a lawsuit involving the attorneys general of 14 US states  Later that year, PCH denied wrongdoing, but agreed to pay a settlement of $490,000 and to change their practices  Under the agreement, PCH said it would define terms like "finalist" and disclose the chances of winning In 1997, a contestant of competitor AFP flew to Tampa, Florida thinking he had won, though he had not  The resulting publicity caused more lawsuits for both companies  PCH reached a $30 million national settlement in 1999  In 2000, another $18 million settlement was reached with 24 states, after the company sent mass mailings which said "You are a winner!" and used mock personalized checks  PCH agreed to avoid similar mailings in the future, and add a "sweepstakes fact box" to mailings State attorneys spoke out against the national settlement from 2000 and additional lawsuits were filed by individual states  Another $34 million settlement was reached in 2001 in a lawsuit involving 25 states, bringing the total settlements since 1999 to $82 million  As part of the settlement, PCH was required to avoid terms including "Guaranteed Winner," add disclaimers to mailings saying that the recipient had not yet won and that purchasing merchandise would not increase their chances of being a winner  PCH reached settlements with all fifty states and agreed to work with a "compliance counsel " PCH apologized in the settlement and said it would contact customers who had spent more than $1,000 on merchandise the prior year PCH also reached an agreement with Iowa in 2007  In 2010 the company paid $3 5 million to the attorneys general of 32 states and the District of Columbia to settle possible contempt charges that it had violated the terms of the 2001 agreement  The company denied wrongdoing, but agreed to work with both an ombudsman and a compliance counsel who would review its mailings quarterly In April 2014, an investigation by the Senate Special Committee on Aging concluded that PCH had "pushed the limits" of prior agreements and that additional legislation may be needed In late 2021 PCH was hit with another lawsuit  "Publishers Clearing House sells and rents mailing lists containing subscribers’ personal information to a variety of third parties, including data miners and list brokers, multiple new class action lawsuits allege  Five plaintiffs have filed separate class action lawsuits against Publishers Clearing House (PCH), with each claiming the publishing company monetizes its subscribers’ private information—including their names and addresses—without consent 

Online development
PCH began selling merchandise in 1985 with two products  After a Hershey's Chocolate Cookbook and a diet cookbook sold more than other products, the company began expanding into jewelry, media, collectibles, household products, and others  The company also shifted its focus online  It began selling magazine subscriptions and merchandise on PCH com in 1996  In 2006, it acquired Blingo Inc , an ad-supported metasearch engine that was later re-branded as PCH Search and Win  PCH ran contests on Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace  iPhone apps for slot games and trivia were developed  The company created online play-and-win sites like PCH Games (formerly Candystand) and PCHQuiz4Cash, with air-hockey and video poker games In December 2010, PCH acquired Funtank and its online gaming site Candystand com  In 2011, PCH promoted a "$5,000 every week for life" sweepstakes in TV ads and the front page of AOL com  The following year the company acquired a mobile marketing company, Liquid Wireless  The company utilized, then stopped then started again utilizing coregistration (through other websites) to expand its customer base In 2008, a PCH spokesperson said the digital properties were intended to attract younger consumers  By 2013, the internet had become PCH's primary channel of interaction with consumers  The New York Times described the digital transition as "part of an overall effort to collect information on Web users, show them advertisements and use the registration information for PCH’s mailing lists "In 2020, PCH acquired digital publisher Wide Open Media Group, publisher of websites Wide Open Spaces, Wide Open Country, and FanBuzz 

Products
PCH is a direct-marketing company that sells merchandise and magazine subscriptions and operates several prize-based websites  While best known for the sweepstakes and Prize Patrol it uses to promote its magazine subscriptions, the majority of the company's revenue is from merchandise  The company has been selling books, media, jewelry, and other consumer items since the 1980s  PCH operates eight websites, including PCH Search and Win, PCH Lotto, PCH Games, PCH Save and Win, and Candystand The company also sells magazine subscriptions at a discount and advertises subscriptions along with its sweepstakes  It's estimated that companies like PCH keep 75 to 90 percent of the fees from the original subscription, while publishers use the increased distribution to improve circulation numbers and revenue from renewals  PCH popularized the idea of using sweepstakes to sell magazine subscriptions in the direct-marketing market and became known by detractors as a producer of junk mail for advertising through mass-mailings  Documents filed with the New York State Department in 1993 said that year the company mailed 220 million envelopes  Frequent buyers can receive 30 to 40 mailings a year 

Sweepstakes
Although PCH advertises its sweepstakes along with magazine subscriptions, no purchase is necessary to enter or win  In 1995, PCH began the tradition of announcing winners of its $10 million prize just after the Super Bowl  As of 2012, $225 million in prizes have been distributed  Some of its larger prizes are for $5,000 a week for life, or $10 million  Prizes can also range from $1 Amazon gift cards to $2,500, $1 million or $3 million  The larger cash prizes are paid in installments, typically with a balloon payment at 30 years, reducing the present value of prizes to much less than their nominal values 

Odds of winning
According to the official rules, as of June 2020, the odds of winning "$5,000 a Week for Life" in Giveaway 16000 are 1 in 6 2 billion 

Prize Patrol
The Prize Patrol surprises sweepstakes winners at their homes, work, or other locations with cash prizes capturing the event on video  Since their introduction in 1989, these reality TV-style videos of prize-winners surprised at their doorstep with checks for $1,000 to $10 million have been used in widely broadcast television commercials, and, more recently, in the company's online acquisition efforts, websites and social media communications  In 2013, a $5 million television campaign modified the traditional prize patrol commercial by digitally altering video from classic sitcoms like The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island to show the prize patrol visiting characters in the show  Major winners are never contacted in advance; any letters, telephone calls, and social media messages claiming that a person may have already won a major prize, or claiming that they need to pay a fee to collect the prize, are always scams The Prize Patrol has made in-person appearances or delivered prizes on TV programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Price Is Right, and Let's Make a Deal  Their surprise winning moments have been spoofed by Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, and the cast of Saturday Night Live; woven into the plots of movies such as Let's Go to Prison, The Sentinel, and Knight and Day; and Early Edition  They have been the subject of cartoons 

Spokesperson
In the summer of 2020 Marie Osmond became a spokesperson for Publishers Clearing House with television and online advertisements as well as direct-to-home mailings 
In January 2021, Steve Harvey made his debut in television commercials as a spokesperson for PCH 

Charitable Giving
Over 40% of net profits are donated to charity 

See also
List of New York companies
Passage 7:
Legal Help Desk
Legal Help Desk (abbreviated as Legal HD) is a legal-consulting public affairs show that aired on CNN Philippines since November 26, 2012  It is hosted by Atty  Karen Jimeno 

See also
Nine Media Corporation
Solar Entertainment Corporation
Solar News Channel
Solar News and Current Affairs
Solar Daybreak
Solar Newsday
Solar Network News
Solar Nightly News
Solar Headlines
Passage 8:
Groove Games
Groove Games was a Canadian developer and publisher of video game  Established in 2001, Groove Games had published more than 20 retail game titles on the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 platforms 
In December 2006, Groove Media Inc  launched an online software platform, SkillGround  It allowed visitors to download retail-quality games for free and play against competitors of similar skill levels for fun, or for cash  SkillGround hosted multiple genres including: first-person shooter, racing, sports and fighting 

Released games
Context 2: Passage 1:
Khrystyne Haje
Khrystyne Kamil Haje ( krist-EEN HOZH; born December 21, 1968) is an American actress  She is known for her role as Simone Foster in the sitcom series Head of the Class  After the series ended in 1991, she continued acting in both television and films  Haje was named as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People" in People magazine's first edition of that list in 1990 

Career
Haje began her career at age 14 as a fashion model while attending North Hollywood High School  Her acting career started at 17 in the television movie Crime of Innocence 
After appearing in several other television roles, including an appearance in the movie Bates Motel, Haje landed the role of sensitive poet Simone Foster on Head of the Class  After the series ended in 1991, she continued acting in both television and films  She was named as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People" in People Magazine's first edition of that list in 1990 That same year, Haje won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Program for hosting the special Spaceship Earth: Our Global Environment  In 1995, Haje voiced the character of Rebecca Fallbrook in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series 
In the late 1990s, she began working in theatre productions and appearing less in television productions In 2001, People Magazine reported that Haje was "quarter owner of a Silicon Valley company" worth $500 million  Haje explained, "I was really lucky and made a smart move "

Personal life
Haje was born in Santa Clara, California and has four brothers  Her parents are of Lebanese and Czech origin  Haje is a founding board member of the Earth Communication Office (ECO), which helps to protect ecosystems She appeared on the March 23, 2012 episode of the Rachael Ray Show to have her hair cut as part of National Donate Your Hair Day (April 27) for women with cancer In 2015, Haje was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer, three years after being successfully treated for invasive lobular breast cancer  Although doctors estimated she had only two years to live, a medical trial called the SM-88 treatment (consisting of daily pills and injections) was successful, leaving her with no evidence of cancer within two years  She said, "I'm so lucky    I found this treatment, and I responded to it  And I don't suffer "

Filmography
Film

Television

Awards and nominations
1992: Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Program; Spaceship Earth: Our Global Environment (shared with Kirk Bergstrom and Kit Thomas)
Young Artist Awards nominations:

1987: Exceptional Performance By a Young Actress in a New Television, Comedy or Drama Series, Head of the Class
1988: Exceptional Performance by a Young Actress in a Television Comedy Series, Head of the Class
1989: Best Young Actress – Starring in a Television Comedy Series, Head of the Class
Passage 2:
The Dinner Party (play)
The Dinner Party is a one-act comedy written by Neil Simon, about marriage and divorce  This is Simon's 31st play 

Production
The Dinner Party had its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, in December 1999 and then ran at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC  in June and July 2000 The play opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre on October 19, 2000 and closed on September 1, 2001 after 364 performances and 20 previews  Directed by John Rando, the cast featured Len Cariou (Andre Bouville), Veanne Cox (Yvonne Fouchet), Penny Fuller (Gabrielle Buonocelli), Jan Maxwell (Mariette Levieux), John Ritter (Claude) and Henry Winkler (Albert)   The sets were by John Lee Beatty, costumes by Jane Greenwood and lighting by Brian MacDevitt Near the end of the run, Ritter and Winkler were replaced by Jon Lovitz and Larry Miller Fuller received a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play 

Background
In an interview in The New York Times (as reported by talkinbroadway com), Simon said that "he was trying to write a play very different from anything he had done before, and that he 'had the concept of creating a farce up to a certain point, and then instead of continuing the farce, to make a turn to where it becomes quite serious  [He] wanted to break the concept that farces can never get real, even for a minute ' "

Plot overview
Playwright Neil Simon, himself married five times, mines his own experience to create the thematic material for this unique farce-turned-dramedy 
Six unknowing guests have RSVP'd to a dinner at a private dining room in a first-rate restaurant in Paris  Arriving in a staggered manner, they eventually realize they are three divorced couples—providing the makings of the farce Simon intends the first half of the play to be  Five of them were mistaken into thinking a man they hold in high regard (who happens to be the divorce lawyer) is hosting the party, but he never shows up, and appearances prove to be deceiving 
Claude Pichon and Albert Donay are the first to arrive, and Claude asks what the party is for, but Albert does not know either  As the three male guests arrive first and the female guests later, it only gradually unfolds that they are three divorced couples and that somebody has designs for them to be together 
After the shock wears off, the characters inevitably begin to analyze and emotionally process their past marriages, and the play ends on a hopeful note 
The play treats similar themes to Stephen Sondheim's Follies, but has a generally more upbeat ending and a more positive spin on breakups and the meaning of relationships 

Reception
Ben Brantley in his New York Times review wrote: "The Dinner Party obviously hopes to invert a traditional comic form to reveal the truly absurd messes that so many people make of their marriages  Mr  Simon, who has been married five times, has reason to consider this subject  But no matter how profound his intentions, the play keeps shifting into automatic pilot, reflexively delivering barbs that glide over the surface instead of piercing it  The Dinner Party concludes on a tender, truly stirring note of pathos, bewilderment and affection for the foolish mortals who create such havoc for themselves  This sentimental moment is so palpably sincere, you wish you had been able to believe for a single instant in the events leading up to it "
Passage 3:
Love, Simon
Love, Simon is a 2018 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Greg Berlanti, written by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, and based on the novel Simon vs  the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli  The film stars Nick Robinson, Josh Duhamel, and Jennifer Garner  It centers on Simon Spier, a closeted gay high school boy who struggles to balance his friends, his family, and the blackmailer threatening to out him to the entire school, while simultaneously attempting to discover the identity of the anonymous classmate with whom he has fallen in love online 
Love, Simon premiered at the Mardi Gras Film Festival on February 27, 2018, and was released in the United States on March 16, 2018, by 20th Century Fox  Critics praised the film for its "big heart, diverse and talented cast, and revolutionary normalcy", describing it as "tender, sweet, and affecting" and a "hugely charming crowd-pleaser" that is "funny, warm-hearted and life-affirming", with reviews comparing it to the romantic comedy-drama films of John Hughes  Notable as the first film by a major Hollywood studio to focus on a gay teenage romance, it grossed $66 million worldwide  A television series titled Love, Victor, set in the same universe as the film, premiered on June 17, 2020, on Hulu, with Robinson serving as the series' narrator for the first season 

Plot
Simon Spier is a closeted gay teenager living in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia  He has a close and loving family—parents Emily and Jack, and sister Nora—as well as three best friends: Nick and Leah, whom he has known most of his life, and newcomer Abby 
Leah informs Simon about an online confession of a closeted gay student at their high school, known only by the pseudonym "Blue"  Simon begins communicating with Blue via email using the pseudonym "Jacques"  The two confide personal details and form a connection  Their emails are accidentally discovered by another student, Martin, who is infatuated with Abby  After learning his secret, Martin threatens to make Simon's emails public unless he helps Martin win over Abby  Simon begins trying to figure out which of his classmates is actually Blue 
At a Halloween party, Simon suspects his classmate Bram might be Blue and attempts to connect with him, but later walks in on Bram making out with a female student  Nick confides in Simon that he has feelings for Abby  Simon lies to Nick, telling him that Abby has a boyfriend in college  Leah walks an inebriated Simon home, where she speaks vaguely about how she feels that she is fated to love one person very intensely; Simon believes she is referring to Nick 
Simon meets up with Abby and Martin at a Waffle House after he convinces them to practice lines together for an upcoming school musical  Simon bonds with their server, a classmate named Lyle, and now suspects that Lyle may be Blue  That night, Simon comes out to Abby and is relieved when she reacts positively 
At a school football game, Simon crosses paths with Lyle; before he can summon the courage to ask if Lyle is Blue, he finds out Lyle is actually interested in Abby  An upset Simon tells a pestering Martin to either "go big or go home" when courting Abby  Martin interrupts the national anthem and publicly declares his feelings for Abby  When Abby admits she does not share those feelings, Martin is humiliated and becomes the subject of ridicule 
On Christmas Eve, to distract people from his own humiliation, Martin outs Simon by posting his emails on the school's gossip site  Simon's sister, Nora, tries to comfort Simon but he shuts her out and does not return his friends' texts and calls  Simon comes out to his parents on Christmas morning, to their surprise and acceptance 
After the holidays, Nick and Abby, now a couple, confront Simon about the lies he told and learn that he tried to keep them apart due to Martin's blackmail  Leah confesses to Simon that she was in love with him, not Nick, and is upset he came out to Abby first  After his friends break off from him, Simon receives a final email from Blue, who is upset that their emails have been leaked  Blue tells Simon that they should stop speaking and deletes his email account 
In the cafeteria, Simon and an openly gay student, Ethan, are mocked by classmates  Ethan and Simon bond over the difficulties they have faced coming out  After his mother reaches out and comforts him, Simon apologizes to Leah and tells her he is in love with Blue  Simon posts a confession on the gossip site apologizing to his friends, seeking out Blue and asking him to meet at the school carnival 
After the school musical, Leah, Nick and Abby make amends with Simon and invite him to go to the carnival with them  Waiting for Blue at the carnival, Simon rides the Ferris wheel, drawing a large crowd of peers  When Simon runs out of tickets, Martin buys him one more ride  Just before the ride begins, Bram sits next to Simon, revealing himself as Blue after all; the kiss Simon saw with the female student was a drunken misunderstanding  They ride the Ferris wheel together and kiss as their friends cheer them on 
Simon's life gradually returns to normal and he begins a relationship with Bram  While picking up his friends and boyfriend for school, Simon suggests that they forgo their usual morning routine and instead go "on a little adventure" 

Cast
Nick Robinson as Simon Spier
Bryson Pitts as 10-year-old Simon Spier
Nye Reynolds as 5-year-old Simon Spier
Josh Duhamel as Jack Spier, Simon's father
Jennifer Garner as Emily Spier, Simon's mother
Katherine Langford as Leah Burke, one of Simon's best friends
Alexandra Shipp as Abby Susso, one of Simon's best friends
Jorge Lendeborg Jr  as Nick Eisner, one of Simon's best friends
Keiynan Lonsdale as Abraham "Bram" Greenfeld, Simon's love interest
Miles Heizer as Cal Price, one of Simon's classmates
Logan Miller as Martin Addison, one of Simon's classmates who blackmails him
Tony Hale as Mr  Worth, the awkward vice principal of the school Simon attends
Talitha Bateman as Nora Spier, Simon's sister
Skye Mowbray as 6-year-old Nora Spier
Natasha Rothwell as Ms  Albright, Simon's drama teacher
Drew Starkey as Garrett Laughlin, one of Simon's classmates
Clark Moore as Ethan, one of Simon's classmates who is openly gay
Joey Pollari as Lyle, a flirty server at a local diner
Mackenzie Lintz as Taylor Metternich, one of Simon's classmates

Production
Principal photography began on March 6, 2017, in Atlanta, Georgia  Filming officially ended on April 23, 2017, two days earlier than scheduled, an effort that Berlanti made to offset the cost of paying royalties for the most expensive songs on the film's soundtrack Becky Albertalli, the author of the novel the film is based on, and YouTuber Doug Armstrong make cameo appearances as students in the film 

Music
Love, Simon (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) was released by RCA Records and Sony Music Entertainment, on March 16, 2018  It featured music by several artists including Bleachers, Troye Sivan, Amy Shark, Brenton Wood, The 1975, Normani and Khalid, among others  It featured at #37 on Billboard 200's chart, #3 on Billboard Top Soundtracks chart, and at #24 in Billboard Canadian Albums chart for the week beginning with March 31, 2018, while also featured at #161 on Billboard 200 year-ender chart Rob Simonsen's score was distributed by Lakeshore Records as Love, Simon (Original Motion Picture Score) and released along with the soundtrack album 

Release
Love, Simon premiered at the Mardi Gras Film Festival on February 27, 2018, and also screened at the Glasgow Film Festival and the Melbourne Queer Film Festival  The film was released by 20th Century Fox in the United States and Canada on March 16, 2018, and was scheduled to be released in other countries on various dates throughout 2018 Following the film's release, several celebrities – including Jennifer Garner, Kristen Bell, Neil Patrick Harris, Joey Graceffa, Matt Bomer, Robbie Rogers, Benj Pasek, Tyler Oakley, Martin Gero, Andrew Rannells, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson – bought out theaters and offered free screenings of the film because they believed it conveyed an important message  Love, Simon is notable as the first film by a major Hollywood studio to focus on a gay teenage romance The film became available to pre-order on home video on January 17, 2018, was released digitally on May 29, 2018, and was released on 4K Blu-Ray, Blu-ray and DVD on June 12, 2018 

Reception
Box office
Love, Simon grossed $40 8 million in the United States and Canada, and $25 4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $66 3 million, against a production budget of $10–17 million  It is the 15th highest-grossing teen romance film since 1980, and the third-highest by 20th Century Fox after The Fault in Our Stars and Romeo + Juliet Love, Simon held early preview screenings on March 10 before its official release on March 16, where it grossed $800,000 from 927 theaters, which Deadline Hollywood considered "strong"  In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside Tomb Raider and I Can Only Imagine, and was projected to gross $10–12 million from 2,401 theaters in its opening weekend  The film made $4 6 million on its first day (including $850,000 from Thursday previews at 2,125 theaters)  The film went on to debut at $11 8 million, finishing fifth at the box office; 58% of its opening weekend audience was female and 59% was under 25  In its second weekend the film dropped 33% to $7 8 million, finishing 7th, and in its third weekend made $4 8 million, finishing ninth In the United Kingdom, the film debuted fourth at the box office, earning $1 6 million  In Australia, the film debuted fourth at the box office, earning $916,697  In Brazil, the film debuted fourth at the box office, earning $804,567  In Mexico, the film debuted third at the box office, earning $982,391 

Critical response
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 92% based on 239 reviews, with an average rating of 7 5/10  The website's critical consensus reads, "Love, Simon hits its coming-of-age beats more deftly than many entries in this well-traveled genre – and represents an overdue, if not entirely successful, milestone of inclusion " On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews"  Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A+" on an A+ to F scale, one of fewer than 90 films in the history of the service to earn such a score Benjamin Lee of The Guardian gave the film four out of five stars, calling it a "hugely charming crowd-pleaser"  Pete Hammond of Deadline Hollywood gave the film four out of five stars, stating that audiences "are guaranteed to fall in love with this sweet, funny coming-of-age film" Molly Freeman of Screen Rant gave the film four out of five stars or an Excellent rating, stating that "Love, Simon is a funny, heartfelt, and truly touching teen romantic comedy that instantly becomes a modern classic for today's generation " Josh Winning of GamesRadar+ gave the film four out five stars, describing it as a "warm, sensitive and engaging coming-out-of-ager" and "one of the freshest teen-coms in ages" Meredith Goldstein of The Boston Globe gave the film three and a half out of four stars and stated, "Love, Simon is a sweet, modern romantic comedy that manages to channel the teen movie classics of the late John Hughes, but only the good stuff " Colin Covert of the Star Tribune gave the film 3/4 stars and wrote, "If John Hughes had gone on to make a smart LGBT coming-of-age charmer, most likely it would resemble this "Bruce Demara of the Toronto Star also gave it three out of four stars, stating "The casting is high quality, the script – with a tantalizing mystery at its heart – is particularly well-crafted and the story hits all the right emotional notes in delivering a funny, warm-hearted and life-affirming tale " Brian Truitt of USA Today gave the film three and a half out of four stars and wrote, "Young and old, jocks and nerds, geeks and freaks, and everyone in between should be able to find something to adore in Love, Simon "Joyce Slaton of Common Sense Media gave the film four out of five stars, describing it as "tender, sweet, and affecting", with the film also receiving The Common Sense Seal, which recognizes movies that offer families an exceptional media experience  MJ Franklin of Mashable wrote that "Love, Simon feels like an instant classic that you're going to want to watch again and again "Max Weiss of Baltimore gave Love, Simon three out of four stars, calling it a "sweet, funny, warm-hearted film" Peter Debruge of Variety, while stating that the film is average in execution, praised the content as "groundbreaking on so many levels, not least of which is just how otherwise familiar it all seems"  Jesse Hassenger of The A V  Club gave the film a C+ and wrote that the film "is touching as a gesture", but as entertainment "it's nothing Degrassi hasn't done better" Becky Albertalli, the author of the novel on which the film is based, watched an early cut and praised the film, stating: "It's funny and relevant and timeless and charming and honest and painful and so romantic  It says exactly what I wanted the book to say "

Accolades
Sequel television series
Although Berlanti indicated that, after witnessing the film's success, he would not necessarily be opposed to directing a sequel film based on the book's spin-off sequel, Leah on the Offbeat, stating "God willing that the movie is successful enough that people actually ask for something like that  I loved working with these people on this film so much  I would just like to spend more time with them, that would be good!" When asked about a sequel, Katherine Langford said "I mean, it's always a discussion of who would make it, but if the script was good and the filmmaker had a great vision, then I would be totally down  I'm always down to tell a good story "On April 11, 2019, it was announced that a spin-off television series would premiere on Disney+  The series is not an adaptation of Leah on the Offbeat but rather a new story set at the same high school and follows closeted basketball player Victor and his already out-of-the-closet hipster crush, Benji On June 13, 2019, actress Ana Ortiz was cast to star as Isabel, Victor's mother  On August 15, 2019, the rest of the cast was revealed, with Michael Cimino leading the series as Victor, James Martinez as Victor's father Armando, Isabella Ferreira as Victor's sister Pilar, Mateo Fernandez as Victor's brother Adrian, Rachel Naomi Hilson as Victor's friend Mia, Bebe Wood as Mia's friend Lake, George Sear as Victor's love interest Benji, Anthony Turpel as Victor's best friend Felix, and Mason Gooding as cocky jock Andrew  Additionally, Nick Robinson would return as narrator and a producer of the series In February 2020, the series – now titled Love, Victor – was announced to be premiering on Hulu instead in June 2020  It was released on Disney+ in February 2021 in territories where the Star content hub is available 
Passage 4:
Bruce Davis (video game industry)
Bruce L  Davis (born 1952) is an American businessman, most recently CEO and chairman of Digimarc  Formerly the head of both Imagic and Activision 

Early life and education
A native of New York, Davis earned a B S  in accounting and psychology and an M A  in criminal justice from University at Albany, SUNY, and a J D  degree from Columbia University 

Career
Davis began his professional career by establishing the intellectual property practice at the firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in San Francisco, California  He assumed leadership of Imagic as it was going out of business in the video game crash of 1983 From 1987 to 1991, Davis was first chief operating officer, then chairman and CEO of Activision  The board of directors promoted him from senior vice president to replace Jim Levy shortly after the acquisition of Infocom, in the hopes of stemming the continuing financial damage from the crash  He had opposed the merger, and many Infocom employees believed he was deliberately working against them, changing processes that had made the game business successful  Activision co-founder and programmer David Crane was also critical of Davis: "Bruce Davis’ biggest mistake was treating video games as commodities, rather than creative products " Nevertheless, Davis's leadership of Activision began well  He led the company to a profit in his first year at the helm on strong sales growth, following 16 consecutive quarters of multimillion-dollar losses  The turnaround effort was stymied after a huge damages award for infringement of Magnavox's original home video game patents was upheld on appeal in 1988  That year Activision changed its name to Mediagenic, as Davis sought to expand the company's product lines to non-gaming software  In February 1991, Robert Kotick, backed by Steve Wynn of Mirage Resorts, staged a successful hostile takeover  Kotick and his team then filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in cooperation with Magnavox parent company Philips in a leveraged recapitalization of Activision, as it was renamed in 1992  Kotick replaced Davis in this restructuring Starting in 1992, Davis founded and served as president of TV Guide on Screen, a joint venture of News Corporation and TCI that supplied electronic guides and navigational software for the cable television market  The company later merged with Prevue Networks, then with TV Guide  TV Guide later merged with Gemstar International  The resulting Gemstar-TV Guide International was acquired in 2008 by Macrovision  
Davis was the chairman and CEO of Digimarc until 2021  He led Digimarc from start up in 1997 to a more than US$100 million public company supplying digital watermarking technologies to national and state governments and to the media industry  In April 2021, Davis retired from his role as chairman and CEO of Digimarc Davis has been awarded more than 50 patents on television user interface and media management and security  In 2003, Davis was named Ernst & Young's Pacific Northwest Entrepreneur Of The Year for the technology category 
Passage 5:
Empire Interactive
Empire Interactive was a British video game developer and publisher based in London  Founded in 1987 by Ian Higgins and Simon Jeffrey, it was acquired by Silverstar Holdings in 2006 and went out of business in 2009 

History
Empire Interactive was established by Ian Higgins (chief executive officer) and Simon Jeffrey (managing director) in 1987  In November 2000, the company acquired development studio Razorworks As well as full priced titles, Empire also had a budget range of titles, Xplosiv, for PC and PS2  Initially launched for PC in January 2000, Xplosiv published titles in Europe from third parties such as Sega and Microsoft  Later, in 2003 Empire launched titles for PS2 In March 2002 Empire acquired music creation software eJay Silverstar Holdings, a U S  public company listed on NASDAQ, offered to acquired Empire Interactive in late October 2006  The deal was accepted by 90% of Empire Interactive's shareholders by late November, and so Silverstar Holdings acquired 85% of Empire Interactive's shares  The deal was valued at approximately £4 5 million  Admissions of further Empire Interactive shares on the Alternative Investments Market of the London Stock Exchange, were expected to be cancelled, effective on 20 December  Higgins stepped down from his position in May 2008  In July, Empire Interactive reduced its staff count by 30%, with the intent to sell Razorworks  Razorworks was sold to and absorbed by Rebellion Developments a few days later  After Silverstar Holdings was delisted from NASDAQ in March 2009, Empire Interactive was placed into administration on 1 May 2009, with KPMG Restructuring appointed as administrator  Subsequently, 49 out of 55 employees were laid off, with the remaining six staying to aiding KPMG Restructuring in the winding-down of the company  Empire Interactive's intellectual property was sold to U S -based company New World IP  Shortly thereafter, U S  publisher Zoo Publishing acquired an exclusive licence for the publishing and distribution of Empire Interactive from New World IP 

Games
Passage 6:
René Simon
René Simon (1898 in Troyes – 1971) was a French actor and founder in 1925 of the Cours Simon drama school in Paris  Notable alumni of Cours Simon include Benoît Petitjean and Jean Reno 
Passage 7:
Director of the National Security Agency
The director of the National Security Agency (DIRNSA) is the highest-ranking official of the National Security Agency, which is a defense agency within the U S  Department of Defense  The director of the NSA also concurrently serves as the Chief of the Central Security Service (CHCSS) and as the commander of U S  Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM)  As the director of the NSA and the chief of the CSC, the officeholder reports to the under secretary of defense for intelligence, and as the commander of U S  Cyber Command, the officeholder reports directly to the secretary of defense 
According to 10 U S C  § 201 of the United States Code, the director of the NSA is recommended by the secretary of defense and nominated for appointment by the president  The nominee must be confirmed via majority vote by the Senate  In accordance with Department of Defense Directive 5100 20, dated 23 December 1971, the director of the NSA must always be a commissioned officer of the military services  As the assignment is currently part of a tri-hatted position, the director of the NSA is appointed to the grade of a four-star general or admiral during the period of his incumbency  The director's deputy is always a technically experienced civilian 

AFSA directors
The Armed Forces Security Agency was the predecessor to the National Security Agency and existed from 1949 to 1952 

NSA directors
Passage 8:
Wishful Drinking
Wishful Drinking is an autobiographical humor book by American actress and author Carrie Fisher, published by Simon & Schuster in 2008  Fisher's book was based on her one-woman stage show, which she developed with writer/director Joshua Ravetch 
The show debuted at The Geffen Playhouse  Fisher performed with Ravetch co-creating and directing  It enjoyed a successful Broadway run and then toured in other cities  In 2010, HBO filmed a feature-length documentary of the stage play 

Book reception
Wishful Drinking received generally positive reviews from critics  The January 2009 New York Times review described it as a "funny, sardonic little memoir", but "pretty slight, padded out with big type, extra space between the lines and some family photographs, and it displays at times an almost antic need to entertain  The paragraphs are short, and the jokes – the puns, the wisecracks, the deadpan one-liners – come rattling along at the rate of one every other sentence or so "  Salon reviewer Rebecca Traister found the book quite funny in large part, but was disappointed that "instead of pushing aside the twinkling craziness of her outside life to meaningfully reveal the crazy on the inside, as she has always done so well, Fisher is now gathering all the starry stuff around her for comfort and reassurance about who she is and what she means "The author, who died on December 27, 2016, had written the following comment in the book, and it was widely published by the news media after her death:

Now I think that this would make for a fantastic obit—so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra 

Stage adaptation
The book followed Fisher's one-woman play in which Fisher had been performing  Developed originally at The Geffen Playhouse with Josh Ravetch co-creating and directing the world premiere, it moved to Berkeley Repertory Theatre near San Francisco at the beginning of 2008, the production opened in a limited run on Broadway at Studio 54 on September 22, 2009 (previews) and October 4, 2009, and closed on January 17, 2010  After its successful San Francisco Bay Area run and before moving to Broadway, Wishful Drinking played at, among other venues, the Arena Stage in Washington, D C  in September 2008, and Seattle Repertory Theatre April – May 2009 

Production rights dispute
While the show met with critical and popular success on Broadway in New York, Fisher was soon embroiled in a battle with producer Jonathan Reinis over its production rights  Each claimed lost revenue at the hands of the other 

Film documentary
HBO cable television released a filmed documentary of the stage show, directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, and first broadcast in December 2010  The 76-minute film was released on DVD on September 13, 2011   The film production and DVD received a mixture of reviews   In the Los Angeles Times, Robert Lloyd described the performance captured: "Fisher can be broad, but that is also the person she plays everywhere now: a little larger than life, worn but not worn out  She's funny as an actress, and as a writer makes memorable phrases"   Boston Globe reviewer Matthew Gilbert wrote, "Fisher’s obsession with her parents and stepparents can be a little tiresome, to be honest, even while her tales of Hollywood absurdity remain outrageous   



ground_truth: NES

Family Computer

Famicom

Nintendo Entertainment System

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: Who is the head of the developer of Simon?

The following are given passages.
Context 2:  Fisher even starts to seem boastful about her dysfunction    "  Continuing, "Fortunately Fisher does have some self-awareness about the potential for her show to seem like a narcissistic screed  That helps " DVDTalk reviewer Jason Bailey wrote of the released DVD, "To put across the brilliance of Wishful Drinking, all Bailey and Barbato really needed to do was put Fisher on stage, and turn on the cameras  They do that skillfully and unobtrusively"  The DVD's content received 4/5 stars, video quality 3/5, audio quality 3 5/5, extras 2 5/5, replay 4/5, with final advice of "Highly Recommended" 
Passage 9:
Striking Out
Striking Out is an Irish television legal drama series, broadcast on RTÉ, that first aired on 1 January 2017  Produced by Bl!nder F!lms for RTÉ Television, Striking Out stars Amy Huberman as Dublin-based solicitor Tara Rafferty, who is currently working for a fledgling legal firm  Filmed in Dublin and Wicklow, the first series, comprising four episodes, was broadcast during January 2017, to critical acclaim  Subsequently, the series was sold to the United States, where it made its North American debut on Acorn TV on 17 March 2017  Internationally, the series has been distributed by DCD Rights and Acorn Media Enterprises The series drew the highest Sunday night ratings for RTÉ in over a year  Prior to the broadcast of the first episode, RTÉ's Head of Drama Jane Gogan confirmed to the Irish Examiner that a second series was already in development  Subsequently, a second series was officially confirmed by RTÉ, with filming taking place throughout the summer of 2017  The second series, extended to six episodes, commenced broadcasting in 2018, with Maria Doyle Kennedy, Moe Dunford and Jane Brennan amongst the new cast members  Simon Massey will also act as the director  In 2018, Channel 5 Broadcasting Ltd acquired the rights to air the series in the United Kingdom, with the first series airing on the newly launched 5Select from 13 February 2018 
There are currently no plans to develop a third season of the drama, despite the 'cliff hanger' ending of season 2 

Synopsis
Striking Out follows the professional and personal life of Dublin-based solicitor, Tara Rafferty 

Cast
Main cast
Amy Huberman as Tara Rafferty; a Dublin-based solicitor
Neil Morrissey as Vincent Pike; SC and close friend of Tara's
Rory Keenan as Eric Dunbar; Tara's cheating ex-fiancé and former colleague
Fiona O'Shaughnessy as Meg Reilly; a private investigator and tech guru
Emmet Byrne as Ray Lamont; a petty criminal represented by Tara whom she later employs
Maria Doyle Kennedy as George Cusack; Tara's new office partner (Series 2—)
Moe Dunford as Sam Dunbar; Eric's younger brother (Series 2—)
Paul Antony-Barber as Richard Dunbar; senior partner in the law firm and Eric's father
Nick Dunning as Conrad Rafferty; Tara's father, who works as a barrister
Ingrid Craigie as Irene Rafferty; Tara's mother and former legal secretary
Brahm Gallagher as Pete; a local cafe owner who allows Tara to set up her fledgling firm in his back office (Series 1 — Series 2, Episode 1)

Recurring cast
Conall Keating as Steve; Ray's partner
Kate Gilmore as Lucy Whelan; receptionist at Dunbar's
Sam McGovern as "Bookworm" Joe; a junior counsel
Natalie Radmall-Quirke as Caroline Walsh; an employee at Dunbar's
Elva Trill as Gillian; an employee at Dunbar's
Susannah De Wrixon as Joan Dunbar; Eric's mother
Enda Oates as Phillip McGrath (Series 2—)
Michael James Ford as Nigel Fitzjames (Series 2—)
Jane Brennan as Deidre York (Series 2—)

Episodes
Series 1 (2017)
Series 2 (2018)
Passage 10:
The Odd Couple (1970 TV series)
The Odd Couple (titled onscreen Neil Simon's The Odd Couple) is an American sitcom television series broadcast from September 24, 1970 to March 7, 1975 on ABC  The show, which stars Tony Randall as Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison, was the first of several sitcoms developed by Garry Marshall for Paramount Television  The series is based on the 1965 play The Odd Couple written by Neil Simon, which was also adapted into the 1968 film The Odd Couple  The story examines two divorced men, Oscar and Felix, who share a Manhattan apartment and whose opposite personalities inevitably lead to conflict and laughter 
In 1997, the episodes "Password" and "The Fat Farm" were ranked No  5 and No  58, respectively, on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time  The show received three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series 

History
The success of the 1968 film version of the stage play of The Odd Couple, which starred Jack Lemmon as Felix and Walter Matthau as Oscar, catalyzed production of the television show  Mickey Rooney and Martin Balsam were also considered for the part of Oscar and Dean Martin and Art Carney for Felix (Carney had originated the role on Broadway) 
Eventually Tony Randall (as Felix) and Jack Klugman (as Oscar) were hired; Klugman had replaced Walter Matthau as Oscar in the original Broadway production, and Randall had also appeared as Felix in other productions of the play  Randall, who was hired first, had still wanted Mickey Rooney to play Oscar  Co-executive producer Garry Marshall had to lobby hard to get Klugman successfully hired  Once the casting was in place, the show's writers (Marshall, Jerry Belson, Jerry Paris, Bob Brunner, Mark Rothman and Lowell Ganz, among others) came up with a multitude of situations for Felix and Oscar to be in, while staying true to the soul of the play, which always reverted to the human tensions between the two that created the comic situations 
The show premiered on ABC on September 24, 1970  The first season was filmed at Paramount studios using the single-camera method and a laugh track, utilizing the same apartment set seen in Paramount's 1968 film version  Klugman and Randall both expressed displeasure with using a laugh track without a live audience  Marshall also disliked the practice; theatre veteran Randall particularly resented the process of having to wait several seconds between punchlines in order to allot enough space for the laughter to be inserted  The production team eventually experimented with omitting the laugh track altogether for Season One's 21st episode, "Oscar's New Life" (laughter was subsequently added for syndication in order to maintain continuity)  By the second season, ABC relented, and the show was then filmed with three cameras and performed like a stage play in front of a live studio audience, with laugh sweetening completed during post-production 
The change also required construction of a new, larger apartment set with a new layout, within a theatre at Paramount Randall and Klugman both enjoyed the spontaneity that came with performing in front of a live audience; any missed or blown lines usually went by without stopping (they would be reshot during post-production)  In addition, it gave the show a certain edge that had been lost during the first season, although the actors had to deliver lines more loudly, since they were on a larger sound stage, as opposed to a quiet studio with only minimal crew present Klugman later recalled, "We spent three days rehearsing the show  We sat around a table the first day  We tore the script apart  We took out all the jokes and put in character  The only reason we leave in any jokes is for the rotten canned laughter  I hated it  I watch the shows at home, I see Oscar come in and he says, 'Hi,' and there is the laughter  'Hey,' I think, 'what the hell did I do?' I hate it; it insults the audience "Throughout its five years on ABC, The Odd Couple was juggled several times around the network's programming schedule, never reaching the Top 30 in the Nielsen ratings  However, ABC continually renewed the show because the ratings for the summer reruns were consistently high 
In the final first-run episode, "Felix Remarries", Felix finally wins his ex-wife Gloria back and they remarry, as Oscar regains the freedom of living alone again  The final scene unfolds in this way, as the two say their goodbyes:

Felix: Your dinner's in the oven; turn it off in 20 minutes  [pause] Oscar … what can I say? Five years ago you took me in: a broken man on the verge of … mental collapse  I leave here a cured human being  I owe it all to you  [gesturing toward apartment] It's all yours buddy  I salute you  [empties waste basket onto floor]
Oscar: Felix, you know how I'm gonna salute you? I'm gonna clean that up 
Felix: It has not been in vain 
[They shake hands and Felix exits stage left through front door  After door closes …]
Oscar: [swings his hand through the air] I'm not gonna clean that up  [exits stage right to bedroom to audience laughter]
[Felix sneaks back in stage left and looks at floor]
Felix: [disgustedly] I knew he wouldn't clean it up! [proceeds to pick up trash to audience applause] (fade out)The 114 episodes went on to syndication and home video 

Differences between the series and the play/film
In the TV series, Felix's last name was spelled Unger but in the play and film it is spelled Ungar 
In the stage play, Felix is a news writer for CBS (in the film he writes the news for "television"), while in the TV series he is a commercial photographer  (His slogan, which he is quick to vocalize, is "Portraits a specialty" )
Felix's wife is named Frances in the play and in the film, but is Gloria in the TV series 
In the play and the film, Oscar has at least two children (including a son "Brucey"), who are referred to but not seen  In the series, Oscar is childless  In the play and the film, Felix has a son and a younger daughter  In the series, the children's birth order is reversed, and they are named Leonard and Edna, after Tony Randall's middle name and the name of his sister 
In the series, Felix is portrayed as being rather highbrow with refined tastes in food, music and the arts in general; he is baffled by much of popular culture  In the play/film, Felix is much more of a “regular guy”: He ogles go-go dancers,   plays poker, goes bowling and shoots pool  Though the pre-TV Felix enjoys cooking and prepares well-crafted sandwiches for his friends, he mentions on different occasions preparing rather simple dinners like meatloaf, franks and beans and cole slaw  When the dinner he has prepared for the Pigeon Sisters  burns (meatloaf in the film, London Broil in the play), he suggests substituting corned beef sandwiches from the local delicatessen 

Supporting characters
The Pigeon Sisters (Monica Evans as Cecily and Carole Shelley as Gwendolyn, reprising their roles from the Broadway stage play and film) made four appearances during the first season  The sisters were never seen after that, but were occasionally mentioned later on  Oscar gained a steady girlfriend during that latter part of the first season and half of the second, Dr  Nancy Cunningham (portrayed by Joan Hotchkis), an attractive physician, whose colleague, Dr  Melnitz (played by Bill Quinn in several episodes), is a curmudgeonly and sardonic older doctor who treats both Felix and Oscar  Felix also gained a girlfriend in the third season, Miriam Welby (portrayed by Elinor Donahue), and they lasted into the fifth season, presumably breaking up before Felix and Gloria remarry in the series finale  Christopher Shea appeared in three episodes of the first season as Philip, Felix and Oscar's precocious 11-year-old neighbor  Oscar makes frequent references to "Crazy Rhoda Zimmerman", his occasional good-time girlfriend, but she never appears onscreen 
The TV show also featured their ex-wives  Janis Hansen appeared as Felix's former wife Gloria (named Frances in the play and film), and Jack Klugman's real-life wife Brett Somers portrayed Blanche, Oscar's acerbic ex-wife (The couple separated in real life during the final season of the series)  There were several episodes in which Felix felt he had not tried hard enough to reconcile with Gloria, and took comically drastic measures to try to win her back  In contrast, Oscar seemed quite happy to be divorced from Blanche, and she from him, as the two constantly traded sarcastic barbs  The only major drawback from Oscar's point of view was the alimony he was ordered to pay  Willie Aames and later Leif Garrett made a few appearances as Felix's son, Leonard  Pamelyn Ferdin and later Doney Oatman appeared as Felix's teenaged daughter, Edna 
The two other major supporting characters, Officer Murray Greshler and Myrna Turner, Oscar's secretary, were portrayed by Al Molinaro and Penny Marshall (Garry's sister) respectively  Alice Ghostley played Murray's wife Mimi in one episode of the first season when Felix quickly outstays his welcome after he moves out of Oscar's apartment after a falling-out  Jane Dulo made one appearance as Mimi in the second season  The regular cast was rounded out by Garry Walberg, Larry Gelman and Ryan McDonald who portrayed Oscar's poker cronies Homer "Speed" Deegan, the bald, bespectacled Vincent "Vinnie" Barella and Roy, Oscar's accountant, respectively  Ryan McDonald left the show after the seventh of the first season's eight episodes in which there was a poker game, and the character of Roy was mentioned occasionally after that, but never seen again 
Garry Walberg (who later appeared with his friend Klugman on the 1976-83 series Quincy M E ) as "Speed", and Larry Gelman as Vinnie, both made several scattered guest appearances after the first season  Character actor Richard Stahl was seen in nine episodes as, among other things, a florist, a pet-shop owner, a psychiatrist, a volunteer fireman and a non-denominational monk, never playing the same role twice  Veteran character actors Herbie Faye and Phil Leeds appeared on the series in different roles, five and three times respectively    Oscar's mother appeared in two different episodes, played once by Elvia Allman, and once by Jane Dulo, both veteran actresses   Character actor John Fiedler who portrayed Vinnie in the 1968 film version, made two guest appearances in different roles  Victor Buono guest-starred in two episodes, playing a different role in each  Veteran stand-up comedian Leonard Barr made appearances in five episodes 

Celebrity guest stars
As themselves
The show often had celebrity guest stars, who reflected the cultural leanings either of Oscar or Felix, either playing themselves or fictional characters 
Sportscaster Howard Cosell (2 episodes) and then ABC television producer Roone Arledge (1 episode) played themselves 
Pop singer Jaye P  Morgan played herself as one of Oscar's many girlfriends  Opera singers Martina Arroyo and Richard Fredricks appeared as themselves  Other celebrities appearing as themselves included Edward Villella, Monty Hall, Richard Dawson, Wolfman Jack, David Steinberg, Hugh Hefner, Rodney Allen Rippy, John Simon, Bubba Smith, Deacon Jones, John Barbour and Allen Ludden and Betty White (married in real life)  In one episode, noted tennis frenemies and real-life competitors Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King appeared as themselves 
Singer-songwriter Paul Williams appeared in an episode where Felix's daughter Edna runs away to follow Williams on tour  (Williams dissuades her ) Dick Clark made an appearance as himself, a radio disc jockey who calls Oscar in a contest, where he wins a new car (The New Car, episode 76)  Neil Simon (the author of the play which the series is based upon) makes an uncredited cameo appearance during the fifth season in Two on the Aisle, as does Bob Hope in The Hollywood Story 

Fictional depictions
Marilyn Horne played Jackie Hartman, a shy but musically talented co-worker of Oscar's 
Roy Clark played "Wild" Willie Boggs, an old practical joke-playing friend of Oscar's, who nonetheless has enormous musical talent, impressing even Felix 
Jean Simmons played the visiting Princess Lydia from the fictional European country of Liechtenberg (Peggy Rea played her lady-in-waiting), who meets Felix in a photography session but goes out on a date with Oscar, and he comes home bragging of a wonderful time  He proudly relates that the Princess had a wonderful time also, and that "she knighted a wino" 
Pernell Roberts played country music impresario Billy Joe Babcock, to whom Oscar owes a lot of money in gambling debts, and who does NOT take IOUs 
Jack Soo played Chinese wrestler Chuk Mai Chin 
Reta Shaw played a tough retired Army Colonel, Claire Frost, who works as housekeeper when Oscar is sick and Felix is too busy  She hails from Bayonne, New Jersey, and her domineering ways cause Oscar to derisively refer to her as "The Beast of Bayonne" 
Penny Marshall, who played Oscar's secretary, Myrna Turner, made her last appearance in an episode in which she married "Sheldn" (his legal name since the "o" was omitted from his birth certificate), played by Rob Reiner, Marshall's husband at the time  Marshall's real-life brother and sister, Garry and Ronnie played Myrna's siblings, Werner Turner and Verna Turner, in the same episode 
Victor Buono appeared twice, as Mr  Lovelace, the eccentric new manager of the building in which Felix and Oscar live, who loves plants but hates people, and as Dr  Clove, an "exorcist" in an episode inspired by the film The Exorcist in which the boys think their apartment is haunted 
Albert Brooks, as Rudy Mandel, a pretentious advertising colleague of Felix (in two episodes in the show's first season)
William Redfield as Felix's brother Floyd Unger, owner of Unger Gum in Buffalo, New York 

Awards and nominations
During its original run, the show had mediocre ratings at best (the show was never among the Top 30 programs on the Nielsen ratings list during its entire run)  Nonetheless, both actors were nominated for Emmy Awards in each year of the show's run  Jack Klugman won two Emmy Awards for his work (in 1971 and 1973), and Tony Randall won an Emmy as well (in 1975, upon accepting the award, he commented on the fact that he wished he "had a job,” as the show had recently been cancelled) 
Klugman was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1972 and won one in 1974  The show itself was also nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in the years 1971, 1972, and 1974  To date, these are the last Emmy nominations to a sitcom airing on a Friday night 

Opening narration and credit sequence
For the first three seasons, the program's opening credit sequence consisted of Felix and Oscar in various humorous situations around New York City  These scenes included Felix trying, to no avail, to help an old lady cross the street, Oscar walking into wet cement while ogling a girl with a revealing dress, Oscar eating a hot dog and getting chili on his shirt, and both men cavorting around a Maypole  The end of the introduction title sequence (for the series entire run) showed the duo sitting on a park bench in front of the William Tecumseh Sherman Monument in Grand Army Plaza at West 58th Street and Fifth Avenue, where Oscar throws his lunch wrapper on the ground, while Felix beckons him to pick it up 
Halfway through the show's debut season, a "prologue" was added to the introduction and featured a narration (the voice of actor Bill Woodson) retelling how Felix and Oscar came to live together:

"On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence " (Unger's unseen wife slams door, only to reopen it and hand Felix his pan ) "That request came from his wife  Deep down, he knew she was right  But he also knew that, someday, he would return to her  With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his childhood friend, Oscar Madison  Sometime earlier, Madison's wife had thrown him out, requesting that he never return  Can two divorced men share an apartment, without driving each other crazy?"
ABC apparently added the narration because it did not want the audience to speculate about a homosexual subtext, given the changing perceptions of masculinity at the time  ABC insisted that every episode mention that the characters were both divorced  It was noted that Oscar had been thrown out of his home like Felix, when several episodes had shown that Oscar had lived in the same apartment before and during his marriage (as in the original play and film)  Later, the opening narrative stated that when Felix moved into Oscar's apartment, Oscar was already divorced 
In another case, the fourth episode showed Felix and Oscar meeting during jury duty  Later, the opening narration included a retcon that they were childhood friends  During the second season, the narration changed it to them being “simply friends,” and the "sometime earlier" narrative was also changed to "several years earlier ”  Later, in an episode aired in 1973, the two were in the Army together, with Felix being Oscar's superior at the time Oscar and wife Blanche (Brett Somers) married  An episode aired in 1974, the epilogue showed Oscar's recollection of meeting Felix when they were children In later seasons, the opening sequence featured highlights from past episodes, mixed with the previous footage as well as another clip (recreated from a scene on the show), in which Felix reprimands Oscar for drying his hands on the curtains, only to have Oscar use Felix's shirt as a towel as well 
For the first three seasons of the show, the closing credits of the show consisted of more of the duo's zany antics, such as Felix talking to a man repairing a street clock and Oscar indiscreetly looking at a peep show  During the fourth season, the credits included a scene where Oscar throws his cigar into a fountain in Columbus Circle, Felix barks at him to pick it up, and Oscar scoops it up with his shoe and then places the wet, soiled cigar butt in Felix's pocket  For the final season, the credits were shown against a blue background 

Related appearances by Klugman and Randall
Over the years, Klugman and Randall  appeared in many television commercials and public service announcements for several different products as Felix and Oscar, including 1972 ads for Yoplait yogurt (Klugman later appeared in commercials without Randall for the product in the early 1980s); in 1974, for the game Challenge Yahtzee; for a while, their likenesses also appeared on the game's packaging, with the slogan "You play your way—I'll play mine!"; in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Klugman and Randall reprised their Odd Couple characters in a series of commercials for Eagle Snacks, although in some of these spots they called each other by their real names 
Klugman and Randall also reprised their roles as Felix and Oscar in several regional productions of the original Neil Simon play  They toured in the play during the TV version's summertime off-season in the early to mid-1970s; they later appeared in several performances of the play during the late 1980s and early 1990s  In 1997, they appeared in a Broadway revival of the Simon play, The Sunshine Boys In the early 1980s, while starring in the NBC drama Quincy, M E , Klugman appeared in TV commercials for Canon copiers  Minolta countered by hiring Randall, then on the NBC sitcom Love, Sidney, to do a commercial for that company's copiers where he channeled his Felix role, mentioning that he "can change copy colors without getting that disgusting black powder all over my hands!" He closed by saying "But that doesn't mean I'm a neat freak  Of course, I'm not a slob, either, like, uh    " and waved his hand, to suggest Klugman as Oscar Randall and Klugman reunited for the 1993 television movie, The Odd Couple Together Again to a mixed reception  Klugman had lost a vocal cord to throat cancer and this real-life struggle was written into the script  In the film, Felix tries to help Oscar recover following surgery; he also becomes overly involved in his daughter Edna's upcoming wedding, much to her and Gloria's (Barbara Barrie) dismay 

Other versions
An ABC cartoon version of The Odd Couple premiered on September 6, 1975 titled The Oddball Couple during the network's  Saturday morning kids' programming block, Funshine Saturday  Although authorized by Neil Simon (who received a "based on" credit) completely different characters were created: "Spiffy" (a fussy cat voiced by Frank Nelson) and "Fleabag" (a sloppy dog voiced by Paul Winchell) who live together in a house that is half rundown and messy and half pristine and tidy along with a matching car  It was directed and produced by  David DePatie and Friz Freleng, along with Gerry Chiniquy, and Robert McKimson among others, who directed several episodes  The characters' professions in this version were reversed from the original series, with the fastidious Spiffy working as a reporter and the rumpled Fleabag a photographer, often working together  The cartoon was canceled in 1977 In 1982, as a hedge against the 1981 Writers Guild of America strike, ABC aired an African-American version of The Odd Couple, starring  Ron Glass as Felix and Demond Wilson as Oscar  It was called The New Odd Couple, and initially used eight previously-filmed scripts from the original series; when the strike ended during the series' production, union writers returned, and original episodes were written from then on  It was canceled after only half a season A Chilean version titled Una Pareja Dispareja began airing in January 2009 on TVN (which had aired the series during the 1970s)  This version takes several of its cues from Two and a Half Men, a Chuck Lorre-created sitcom with a similar premise to The Odd Couple (even alluded to the similarities between the two in the episode "Whipped Unto The Third Generation")  Some of the details taken from Two and a Half Men include Felix and Oscar being siblings instead of friends, as well as Felix being a doctor and Oscar a musician Another American remake, also called The Odd Couple, aired on CBS for three seasons from 2015 to 2017  This version, a multi-camera sitcom, was co-created and co-produced by Matthew Perry, who played Oscar, while Thomas Lennon played Felix 

Episodes
Home media
The Complete First Season of The Odd Couple was released on DVD in Region 1 on August 18, 2006 by Time Life Video under license from Paramount Home Entertainment (Paramount Television was the program's original distributor)  Some episodes, mainly from the first season, were available on a VHS videotape set during the 1990s, and distributed by Columbia House 
Each episode on the First Season DVDs contain an introduction from the show's producer Garry Marshall  Also included as extras are Emmy Awards speeches, bloopers, TV interviews with the show's stars and a clip of The Odd Couple on Broadway Paramount/CBS DVD have since released the remaining seasons (two through five) of The Odd Couple on DVD in Region 1  Season 1 was released in Region 2 on April 28, 2008  While the Time/Life Season 1 DVD release contained only unedited episodes as originally broadcast, CBS Home Entertainment opted to edit their DVDs of seasons two through five, removing short segments or occasionally entire scenes which included music sung by Felix or some other character  A notable example of this can be seen in the Season 5 episode "Strike Up the Band or Else" where, in the epilogue, guest star Pernell Roberts' character is going to sing, and the episode abruptly ends and closing credits roll  Fans and critics alike lambasted CBS/Paramount for the shoddy treatment The Odd Couple DVD releases received, concluding that the studio has misled consumers by labeling their DVD sets as "complete" when they have been intentionally edited to avoid paying royalties required by the music publishers On June 16, 2015, CBS DVD released The Odd Couple- The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1, albeit with the same edits and removal of scenes with music In Australia (Region 4), Paramount released The First Season in 2008, and no further releases were made  In 2016, Via Vision Entertainment obtained the rights to release the entire series from July 2016 through until September 2016  Followed by a Complete Series boxset in November 2016 
Passage 11:
Simon (cipher)
Simon is a family of lightweight block ciphers publicly released by the National Security Agency (NSA) in June 2013  Simon has been optimized for performance in hardware implementations, while its sister algorithm, Speck, has been optimized for software implementations The NSA began working on the Simon and Speck ciphers in 2011  The agency anticipated some agencies in the US federal government would need a cipher that would operate well on a diverse collection of Internet of Things devices while maintaining an acceptable level of security 

Description of the cipher
The Simon block cipher is a balanced Feistel cipher with an n-bit word, and therefore the block length is 2n   The key length is a multiple of n by 2, 3, or 4, which is the value m   Therefore, a Simon cipher implementation is denoted as Simon2n/nm   For example, Simon64/128 refers to the cipher operating on a 64-bit plaintext block (n = 32) that uses a 128-bit key  The block component of the cipher is uniform between the Simon implementations; however, the key generation logic is dependent on the implementation of 2, 3 or 4 keys 
Simon supports the following combinations of block sizes, key sizes and number of rounds:

Description of the key schedule
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Description of the constant sequence
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   sequence; however, the initial condition is the same for encryption   The initial condition of the LFSR for decryption varies on the round 

Cryptanalysis
The designers claim that Simon, though a "lightweight" cipher, is designed to have the full security possible for each block and key size, against standard chosen-plaintext (CPA) and chosen-ciphertext (CCA) attacks   Resistance against related-key attacks was also stated as a goal, though a less crucial one as attacks in that model are not relevant for typical use cases : 2   No effort was made to resist attacks in the known-key distinguishing attack model, nor did the designers evaluate Simon for use as a hash function As of 2018, no successful attack on full-round Simon of any variant is known   Due to interest in Simon and Speck, about 70 cryptanalysis papers have been published on them : 10   As is typical for iterated ciphers, reduced-round variants have been successfully attacked   The best published attacks on Simon in the standard attack model (CPA/CCA with unknown key) are differential cryptanalysis attacks; these make it through about 70–75% of the rounds of most variants, though these best attacks are only marginally faster than brute-force : 12   The design team states that while designing Simon, they found differential attacks to be the limiting attacks, i e  the type of attack that makes it through the most rounds; they then set the number of rounds to leave a security margin similar to AES-128's at approximately 30% : 12–13 
Simon has been criticized for having too small a security margin, i e  too few rounds between the best attacks and the full cipher, in comparison to more conservative ciphers such as ChaCha20 
Ciphers with small security margins are more likely to be broken by future advances in cryptanalysis   Simon's design team counters that there is a real-world cost to unnecessarily large security margins, especially on lightweight devices, that cryptanalysis during the design phase allowed the number of rounds to be set appropriately, and that they targeted AES's security margin : 17 Simon includes a round counter in the key schedule   The designers state this was included to block slide and rotational cryptanalysis attacks : 16   Still, rotational-XOR cryptanalysis has been used to find distinguishers against reduced-round versions of related ciphers like Speck  Though the authors don't describe standard key-recovery attacks based on their distinguishers, their best distinguishers on Simon32 and Simon48 in the known-key distinguishing attack model for certain weak key classes make it through slightly more rounds than the best differential distinguishers   One of the authors has said that his research was resource-constrained and that rotational-XOR distinguishers on more rounds are probably possible  The designers also state that Simon was not designed to resist known-key distinguishing attacks (which do not directly compromise the confidentiality of ciphers) : 8 The designers state that NSA cryptanalysis found the algorithms to have no weaknesses, and security commensurate with their key lengths : 2   The design team says that their cryptanalysis included linear and differential cryptanalysis using standard techniques such as Matsui's algorithm and SAT/SMT solvers, though a full list of techniques used is not given : 10   Simon's designers have been criticized for not providing more details on NSA cryptanalysis of the ciphers The NSA has approved Simon128/256 and Speck128/256 for use in U S  National Security Systems, though AES-256 is still recommended for non-constrained applications 

Standardization efforts and controversies
Initial attempts to standardise Simon and Speck failed to meet International Organization for Standardization super-majority required by the process and the ciphers were not adopted  Expert delegates to the ISO from several countries including Germany, Japan and Israel opposed the efforts by the NSA to standardise the Simon and Speck ciphers, citing concerns that the NSA is pushing for their standardisation with knowledge of exploitable weaknesses in the ciphers  The position was based on partial evidence of weaknesses in the ciphers, lack of clear need for standardisation of the new ciphers, and the NSA's previous involvement in the creation and promotion of the backdoored Dual_EC_DRBG cryptographic algorithm In response to concerns, the NSA stated that more than 70 security analysis papers from some of the world's leading cryptographers support NSA's conclusion that the algorithms are secure and NSA affirmed that it is not aware of any cryptanalytic techniques that would allow them or anyone else to exploit Simon or Speck 
After initial attempts to standardise the ciphers failed, the ISO standardised Simon and Speck in other working groups  As of October 2018, the Simon and Speck ciphers have been standardized by ISO as a part of the RFID air interface standard, International Standard ISO/29167-21 (for Simon) and International Standard ISO/29167-22 (for Speck), making them available for use by commercial entities 

See also
Balanced boolean function
Bent function
Passage 12:
Sam's Game
Sam's Game was a celebrity poker program on Playboy TV  It featured a lineup of comedians, Playmates, and professional Texas Hold 'Em players and was hosted by Simpsons' co-developer, Sam Simon 

Format
Shot at Hugh Hefner's private sky villa at the Palms Resort, the show featured celebrities playing traditional Texas Hold 'Em with their own actual money, as opposed to charity contributions 
Women in Playboy bunny costumes served as the card dealers and cocktail waitresses  A variety of comedians, actresses, professional card players, and ex-Playmates made up the rotating table of players, with Sam Simon being the only constant 

Featured players
Norm Macdonald
Artie Lange
Brande Roderick
Dave Attell
Jennifer Tilly
Jeff Ross
Deanna Brooks
Andrea Lowell
Phil Laak
Jay Kogen
Passage 13:
The Essential Simon and Garfunkel
The Essential Simon & Garfunkel is the second 2-CD compilation album of greatest hits by Simon & Garfunkel, released by Columbia Records on October 14, 2003 
This two-disc anthology was released to coincide with Simon & Garfunkel's 2003 reunion tour  It contains all of the duo's 16 singles originally released between 1964 and 1975 to reach the Hot 100 (including the 1975 reunion hit, "My Little Town")  The remaining 17 songs include non-hits like “Richard Cory”, and eight live performances from 1967 to 1969 

Track listing
All songs composed by Paul Simon, except where noted 

US version
Disc one

Disc two

Disc three (3 0 edition)

1 He Was My Brother
2	April Come She Will
3 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night
4	Punky's Dilemma
5	Why Don't You Write Me
6	Citizen of the Planet

European version
Disc one

Disc two

Charts
Certifications
Context 3: Passage 1:
Guy Gaunt
Admiral Sir Guy Reginald Archer Gaunt,  (25 May 1869 – 18 May 1953) was an Australian-born officer of the Royal Navy, counter-intelligence officer and a British Conservative Party politician 
Gaunt was born in Ballarat, Australia, to William Henry Gaunt and his wife Elizabeth Mary Palmer  Gaunt's brother-in-law was Alexander Stenson Palmer (banker and M P  for Victoria)  Gaunt's brother Ernest Gaunt was also an admiral  Their sister, Mary Gaunt, was a well-known author in Australia and wrote several travel books  Guy was educated at Melbourne Grammar School from 1881 to 1883 

Naval career
Gaunt's parents wanted him to become a lawyer, but he chose to go to sea  He began training for the merchant navy, but transferred to the Royal Navy in 1885, one of the "hungry hundred" merchant navy officers who were commissioned via the supplementary list 
Gaunt served as a lieutenant on several vessels in the Pacific Ocean, and was promoted to the rank of Commander in 1901  He became a captain in 1907, commanding a series of cruisers and the battleships HMS Majestic and HMS Thunderer  He saw action in the Philippines in 1897 and Samoa in 1901 In 1914 Gaunt was appointed naval attaché to the United States, and was instrumental in infiltrating the Hindu–German Conspiracy during the First World War  Gaunt headed the intelligence network operated by Courtenay Bennett's intelligence and liaised with the Czech intelligence network operated by E  V  Voska  On learning of the plot from the Czech European network at the outbreak of the war, Voska passed on the information to Gaunt and to Tomáš Masaryk who further passed on the information the American authorities  Voska's American network was a counter-espionage network of nearly 80 members who, as Habsburg subjects, were presumed to be German supporters but were involved in spying on German and Austrian diplomats 
When the U S  entered the war in 1917, Gaunt was appointed as liaison officer  In 1918 he served on convoys across the Atlantic and in June was appointed to the naval intelligence staff at the Admiralty 
Gaunt was promoted on the retired list to rear admiral in October 1918, vice admiral in July 1924 and admiral in February 1928  He was knighted as  in 1918 

Political career
Gaunt first stood as a candidate for parliament at the 1918 general election  He was the Liberal candidate for Leek and despite receiving the Coalition Coupon, he was unable to hold the seat  Gaunt was elected as Unionist Member of Parliament (MP) for the Buckrose constituency in the East Riding of Yorkshire at the 1922 general election, replacing the Liberal Algernon Moreing 
Gaunt resigned from the House of Commons in 1926, when he was cited as co-respondent in the divorce case between Sir Richard Cruise and his wife 

Family
Gaunt married a widow, Mrs Margaret Elizabeth Worthington (daughter of Sir Thomas Wardle) at Hong Kong in 1904  
She divorced him in 1927 following the scandal with Lady Cruise, and he retired to Tangier  He later remarried on 1 December 1932 a 35-year-old widow, Sybil Victoria Joseph, née Grant White and had two daughters  He returned to live in Cobham, Surrey and died at Woking Hospital on 18 May 1953 and was cremated Gaunt's autobiography, The Yield of the Years, was published in 1940  His brother Ernest Gaunt was also an admiral in the Royal Navy; his sister, Mary Gaunt, was a novelist 
Passage 2:
Comprehensive school
A comprehensive school is a secondary school for pupils aged 11–16 or 11–18, that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude, in contrast to a selective school system where admission is restricted on the basis of selection criteria, usually academic performance  The term is commonly used in relation to England and Wales, where comprehensive schools were introduced as state schools on an experimental basis in the 1940s and became more widespread from 1965  They may be part of a local education authority or be a self governing academy or part of a multi-academy trust 

About 90% of English secondary school pupils attend a comprehensive school (academy schools, community schools, faith schools, foundation schools, free schools, studio schools, university technical colleges, state boarding schools, City Technology Colleges, etc )  Specialist schools may however select up to 10% of their intake for aptitude in their specialism  A school may have a few specialisms, like arts (media, performing arts, visual arts), business and enterprise, engineering, humanities, languages, mathematics, computing, music, science, sports, and technology  They are not permitted to select on academic ability generally  Comprehensive schools correspond broadly to the public school in the United States, Canada and Australia 

England
Comprehensive schools provide an entitlement curriculum to all children, without selection whether due to financial considerations or attainment  A consequence of that is a wider ranging curriculum, including practical subjects such as design and technology and vocational learning, which were less common or non-existent in grammar schools  Providing post-16 education cost-effectively becomes more challenging for smaller comprehensive schools, because of the number of courses needed to cover a broader curriculum with comparatively fewer students  This is why schools have tended to get larger and also why many local authorities have organised secondary education into 11–16 schools, with the post-16 provision provided by sixth form colleges and further education colleges  Comprehensive schools do not select their intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude  In addition, government initiatives such as the City Technology Colleges and specialist schools programmes have expanded the comprehensive model  City Technology Colleges are independent schools in urban areas that are free to go to  They're funded by central government with company contributions and emphasise teaching science and technology 

English secondary schools are mostly comprehensive (i e  no entry exam), although the intake of comprehensive schools can vary widely, especially in urban areas with several local schools  Nearly 90% of state-funded secondary schools are specialist schools, receiving extra funding to develop one or more subjects (performing arts, business, humanities, art and design, languages, science, mathematics, technology, engineering, sports, etc ) in which the school specialises, which can select up to 10% of their intake for aptitude in the specialism  In these schools children could be selected on the basis of curriculum aptitude related to the school's specialism even though the schools do take quotas from each quartile of the attainment range to ensure they were not selective by attainment  In the selective school system, which survives in several parts of the United Kingdom, admission is dependent on selection criteria, most commonly a cognitive test or tests  Most comprehensives are secondary schools for children between the ages of 11 and 16, but in a few areas there are comprehensive middle schools, and in some places the secondary level is divided into two, for students aged 11 to 14 and those aged 14 to 18, roughly corresponding to the US middle school (or junior high school) and high school, respectively  With the advent of Key Stages in the National Curriculum some local authorities reverted from the Middle School system to 11–16 and 11–18 schools so that the transition between schools corresponds to the end of one key stage and the start of another  In principle, comprehensive schools were conceived as "neighbourhood" schools for all students in a specified catchment area 
Maths free schools like Exeter Mathematics School are for 16 to 19 year pupils who have a great aptitude for maths  As set out in the government's Industrial Strategy, maths schools help to encourage highly skilled graduates in sectors that depend on science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills  The aim of maths schools is to prepare the most mathematically able pupils to succeed in mathematics-related disciplines at highly selective maths universities and pursue mathematically intensive careers  Maths schools can also be centres of excellence in raising attainment, supporting and influencing the teaching of mathematics in their surrounding area, and are central to their associated universities' widening participation commitments 

Technical and vocational education in comprehensive schools are introduced during the secondary school years and goes on until further and higher education  Secondary vocational education is also known as further education  Further education incorporates vocational oriented education as well as a combination of general secondary education  Students can also go on to a further education college to prepare themselves for the Business and Technology Education Council, T-levels, and National Vocational Qualifications  Major provider of vocational qualifications in England include the City and Guilds of London Institute and Edexcel  Higher National Certificates and Higher National Diplomas typically require 1 and 2 years of full-time study and credit from either HNE or Diplomas can be transferred toward an undergraduate degree  Along with the HNC and HND, students who are interested in other vocational qualifications may pursue a foundation degree, which is a qualification that trains people to be highly skilled technicians  The National Apprenticeship Service also offers vocational education where people at ages of 16 and older enter apprenticeships in order to learn a skilled trade  There are over 60 different certifications can be obtained through an apprenticeship, which typically lasts from up to 3 years  Trades apprentices receive paid wages during training and spend one day at school and the rest in the workplace to hone their skills 
The first comprehensives were set up after the Second World War  At that time the terms "multi-lateral" or "multi-bias" were also used to describe non-selective secondary schools  In 1946 Walworth School was one of five 'experimental' comprehensive schools set up by the London County Council although London's first purpose built comprehensive was Kidbrooke School built in 1954  An early comprehensive school was Holyhead County School in Anglesey in 1949  Coventry opened two comprehensive schools in 1954 by combining grammar schools and secondary modern schools  These were Caludon Castle School and Woodlands School  Another early example was the 1956 Tividale Comprehensive School in Tipton  The first, purpose-built comprehensive in the North of England was Colne Valley High School near Huddersfield in 1956 
The largest expansion of comprehensive schools resulted from a policy decision taken in 1965 by Anthony Crosland, Secretary of State for Education in the 1964–1970 Labour government  The policy decision was implemented by Circular 10/65, a request to local education authorities to plan for conversion  Students sat the 11+ examination in their last year of primary education and were sent to one of a secondary modern, secondary technical or grammar school depending on their perceived ability  Secondary technical schools were never widely implemented and for 20 years there was a virtual bipartite system which saw fierce competition for the available grammar school places, which varied between 15% and 25% of total secondary places 
In 1970 Margaret Thatcher, the Secretary of State for Education in the new Conservative government, ended the compulsion on local authorities to convert, however, many local authorities were so far down the path that it would have been prohibitively expensive to attempt to reverse the process, and more comprehensive schools were established under Thatcher than any other education secretary  By 1975 the majority of local authorities in England and Wales had abandoned the 11-Plus examination and moved to a comprehensive system  Over that 10-year period many secondary modern schools and grammar schools were amalgamated to form large neighbourhood comprehensives, whilst a number of new schools were built to accommodate a growing school population  By the mid-1970s the system had been almost fully implemented, with virtually no secondary modern schools remaining  Many grammar schools were either closed or changed to comprehensive status  Some local authorities, including Sandwell and Dudley in the West Midlands, changed all of its state secondary schools to comprehensive schools during the 1970s 

In 1976 the future Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan launched what became known as the 'great debate' on the education system  He went on to list the areas he felt needed closest scrutiny: the case for a core curriculum, the validity and use of informal teaching methods, the role of school inspection and the future of the examination system  Comprehensive school remains the most common type of state secondary school in England, and the only type in Wales  They account for around 90% of pupils, or 64% if one does not count schools with low-level selection  This figure varies by region 
Since the 1988 Education Reform Act, parents have a right to choose which school their child should go to or whether to not send them to school at all and to home educate them instead  The concept of "school choice" introduces the idea of competition between state schools, a fundamental change to the original "neighbourhood comprehensive" model, and is partly intended as a means by which schools that are perceived to be inferior are forced either to improve or, if hardly anyone wants to go there, to close down  Government policy is currently promoting 'specialisation' whereby parents choose a secondary school appropriate for their child's interests and skills  Most initiatives focus on parental choice and information, implementing a pseudo-market incentive to encourage better schools  Both Conservative Party and Labour governments experimented with alternatives to the original neighbourhood comprehensive Experiments have included:

partnerships where successful schools share knowledge and best practice with nearby schools
federations of schools, where a partnership is formalised through joint governance arrangements
City Technology Colleges, 15 new schools where one fifth of the capital cost is privately funded
Academy schools, state schools not controlled by the local authority, which are allowed to select up to 10% of admissions by ability
Free schools, state schools not controlled by the local authority, which are allowed to select up to 10% of admissions by abilityFollowing the advice of Sir Cyril Taylor—former businessman and Conservative politician, and chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT)—in the mid-1990s, all parties have backed the creation of specialist schools, which focus on excellence in a particular subject and are theoretically allowed to select up to 10% of their intake  This policy consensus had brought to an end the notion that all children will go to their local school, and assumes parents will choose a school they feel most meets their child's needs 

Curriculum
All maintained schools in England are required to follow the National Curriculum, which is made up of twelve subjects  Every state school must offer a curriculum which is balanced and broadly based and which promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life  For each of the statutory curriculum subjects, the Secretary of State for Education is required to set out a Programme of Study which outlines the content and matters which must be taught in those subjects at the relevant Key Stages  Teachers should set high expectations for every pupil  They should plan stretching work for pupils whose attainment is significantly above the expected standard  Teachers should use appropriate assessment to set targets which are deliberately ambitious Under the National Curriculum, all pupils undergo National Curriculum assessments at the end of Key Stage 2 in Year 6 in the core subjects of English, Mathematics and Science  Individual teacher assessment is used for foundation subjects, such as art and design, geography, history, design and technology, and computing  Pupils take GCSE exams at Key Stage 4 in Year 11, but may also choose to work towards the attainment of alternative qualifications, such as the National Vocational Qualifications and Business and Technology Education Council  Pupils take GCSEs examinations in the core English literature, English language, mathematics, science, and entitlement subjects from the arts, humanities, design and technology, and languages  The core subjects English, Mathematics and Science are compulsory for all pupils aged 5 to 16  A range of other subjects, known as foundation subjects, are compulsory in each Key Stage:

Art and design
Citizenship
Design and technology
Geography
History
Computing
Foreign languages
Music
Physical educationIn addition to the compulsory subjects, pupils at Key Stage 4 have a statutory entitlement to be able to study at least one subject from the arts (comprising art and design, music, photography, dance, drama and media arts), design and technology (comprising design and technology, electronics, engineering, food preparation and nutrition), the humanities (comprising geography and history), and modern foreign languages  Optional subjects include computer science, business studies, economics, astronomy, classical civilisation, film studies, geology, psychology, sociology, ancient languages, and ancient history The Department for Education has drawn up a list of preferred subjects known as the English Baccalaureate on the results in eight GCSEs including English, mathematics, the sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, computer science), history, geography, and an ancient or modern foreign language All schools are required to make provision for a daily act of collective worship and must teach religious education to pupils at every key stage and sex and relationships education to pupils in secondary education  Parents can withdraw their children for all or part of the lessons  Local councils are responsible for deciding the RE syllabus, but faith schools and academies can set their own  All schools should make provision for personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE)  Schools are also free to include other subjects or topics of their choice in planning and designing their own programme of education 

School years
Children are normally placed in year groups determined by the age they will attain at their birthday during the school year  In most cases progression from one year group to another is based purely on chronological age, although it is possible in some circumstances for a student to repeat or skip a year  Repetition may be due to a lack of attendance, for example from a long illness, and especially in Years requiring standard tests  A child significantly more advanced than their classmates may be forwarded one or more years 
State-funded nursery education is available from the age of 3, and may be full-time or part-time, though this is not compulsory  If registered with a state school, attendance is compulsory beginning with the term following the child's fifth birthday  Children can be enrolled in the reception year in September of that school year, thus beginning school at age 4 or 4 5  Unless the student chooses to stay within the education system, compulsory school attendance ends on the last Friday in June during the academic year in which a student attains the age of 16 In the vast majority of cases, pupils progress from primary to secondary levels at age 11; in some areas either or both of the primary and secondary levels are further subdivided  A few areas have three-tier education systems with an intermediate middle level from age 9 to 13  Years 12 and 13 are often referred to as "lower sixth form" and "upper sixth form" respectively, reflecting their distinct, voluntary nature as the A-level years  While most secondary schools enter their pupils for A-levels, some schools offer the International Baccalaureate or Cambridge Pre-U qualifications instead 

Scotland
Scotland has a very different educational system from England and Wales, though also based on comprehensive education  It has different ages of transfer, different examinations and a different philosophy of choice and provision  All publicly funded primary and secondary schools are comprehensive  The Scottish Government has rejected plans for specialist schools as of 2005 

Australia
When the first comprehensive schools appeared in the 1950s, the Australian Government started to transition to comprehensive schooling which has been expanding and improving ever since  Prior to the transition into comprehensive schooling systems, primary and secondary state schools regularly measured students' academic merit based on their performance in public examinations  The state of Western Australia was the first to replace selective school systems, then Queensland, and finally South Australia and Victoria The Australian education system is organised through three compulsory school types  Students commence their education in Primary school, which runs for seven or eight years, starting at kindergarten through to Year 6 or 7  The next is Secondary school which runs for three or four years, from Year 7 or 8 to Year 10  Finally, Senior Secondary school which runs for two years, completing Years 11 and 12  Each school tier follows a comprehensive curriculum that is categorised into sequences for each Year-level  The Year-level follows specific sequence content and achievement for each subject, which can be interrelated through cross-curricula  In order for students to complete and graduate each tier-level of schooling, they need to complete the subject sequences of content and achievement  Once students have completed Year 12, they may choose to enter into Tertiary education  The two-tier Tertiary education system in Australia includes both higher education (i e : university, college, other institutions) and vocational education and training (VET)  Higher education works off of the Australian Qualifications Framework and prepares Australians for an academic route that may take them into the theoretical and philosophical lenses of their career options 
Passage 3:
Elizabeth and After
Elizabeth and After is a novel by Matt Cohen, first published in 1999 by Knopf Canada  His final novel, it won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction just a few weeks before Cohen's death 

Plot summary
The story is about the lives of a few people living in a small town north of Kingston, Ontario   Carl McKelvey, a "white trash male" as he describes himself, returns to the town after a three-year absence in the hope that he can live with his daughter again, and maybe even renew his relationship with his ex-wife, Chrissy   He carries deep in his heart his guilt of having driven his car into a tree, killing his mother, Elizabeth, many years earlier 
Elizabeth's sudden death ended not only an unhappy marriage she had with William McKelvey, a failed farmer, but also a secret relationship she had with Adam Goldsmith, Carl's real father   Elizabeth might have felt that the uncultured McKelvey ruined her life, or she might be too frightened to ruin her life herself by leaving him   In either case, her life has affected McKelvey, Adam and Carl so deeply that her influence is still felt eleven years later 
When Carl is attacked by Fred (Chrissy's boyfriend), Adam, even though reserved and gentle-natured, decides to do something for his son   Adam takes Fred in his car and drives him into the same tree that Elizabeth's car crashed into eleven years earlier   Both Adam and Fred are killed instantly   Carl learns about his relationship with Adam in a letter Adam left for him 

External links
Elizabeth and After weaves a twisted tale
Passage 4:
Matt Cohen (writer)
Matthew Cohen (30 December 1942 – 2 December 1999) was a Canadian writer who published both mainstream literature under his own name and children's literature under the pseudonym Teddy Jam 

History
Matt Cohen was born in Montreal, son of Morris Cohen and Beatrice Sohn, and was raised in Kingston and Ottawa  He studied political economy at the University of Toronto and taught political philosophy and religion at McMaster University in the late 1960s before publishing his first novel Korsoniloff in 1969 His fiction was translated into German, Dutch, French, Greek, Spanish and Portuguese   The Spanish Doctor, his biggest international success, continues to sell well in the French and Spanish markets 
His greatest critical success as a writer was his final novel Elizabeth and After which won the 1999 Governor General's Award for English-language Fiction only a few weeks before his death  He had been nominated twice previously, but had not won, in 1979 for The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone and in 1997 for Last Seen 
A founding member of the Writers' Union of Canada, he served on the executive board for many years and as president in 1986  During his presidency, the Writer's Union was finally able to persuade the government of Canada to form a commission and establish a Public Lending Right program   He also served on the Toronto Arts Council as chair of the Literary Division and was able to obtain increased funding for writers  In recognition of this work, he was awarded a Toronto Arts Award and the Harbourfront Prize 
He also published a number of children's books under the pseudonym Teddy Jam  Cohen's authorship of the Teddy Jam books was not revealed until after his death  Dr  Kiss, illustrated by Joanne Fitzgerald won the Governor General's Award in 1991 and Fishing Summer was also nominated for a Governor General's Award for children's literature in 1997, making Cohen one of the few writers ever to be nominated for Governor General's Awards in two different categories in the same year 
He was married three times; first to Arden Ford, next to Susan Bricker and then to Patsy Aldana Cohen died at home in Toronto after a battle with lung cancer  His final book of short stories, Getting Lucky, and his final Teddy Jam title, The Kid's Line, were posthumously published in 2001  A Canadian literary award, the Matt Cohen Award, is presented in Cohen's memory by the Writers' Trust of Canada A film adaptation of his 1990 novel Emotional Arithmetic has been produced by Triptych films starring Max von Sydow, Christopher Plummer, Gabriel Byrne and Susan Sarandon  It was the closing gala at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival 

Bibliography
Years link to corresponding year in literature or, for poetry, to year in poetry 

Novels
Korsoniloff (1969)
Johnny Crackle Sings (1971)
The Disinherited (1974)
Wooden Hunters (1975)
The Colours of War (1977)
The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone (1979)
Flowers of Darkness (1981)
The Spanish Doctor (1984)
Nadine (1987)
Emotional Arithmetic (1990)
Freud: The Paris Notebooks (1991)
The Bookseller (1993)
Last Seen (1997)
Elizabeth and After (1999)

Short stories
Columbus and the Fat Lady (1972)
Too Bad Galahad (1972)
Night Flights (1978)
The Leaves of Louise (1978)
The Expatriate (1982)
Café le Dog (1983)
Life on This Planet (1985)
Living on Water (1988)
Racial Memories (1990)
Lives of the Mind Slaves (1994)
Getting Lucky (2001)

Poetry
Peach Melba (1974)
In Search of Leonardo (1985)

Non-fiction
Typing: A Life in 26 Keys (2000)

Children's literature (as "Teddy Jam")
Night Cars (1987) illustrated by Eric Beddows
Doctor Kiss Says Yes (1991) illustrated by Joanne Fitzgerald
The Year of Fire (1993) illustrated by Ian Wallace
The Charlotte Stories (1994)
Jacob's Best Sisters (1996) illustrated by Joanne Fitzgerald
The Fishing Summer (1997) illustrated by Ange Zhang
This New Baby (1998)
The Stoneboat (1999) illustrated by Ange Zhang
ttuM (1999)
The Kid Line (2001) illustrated by Ange Zhang

See also
Canadian literature
Canadian poetry
List of Canadian poets
List of Canadian writers
Passage 5:
Algernon Methuen
Sir Algernon Marshall Stedman Methuen, Baronet (; 23 February 1856 – 20 September 1924) was an English publisher and a teacher of Classics and French   He is best known for founding the publishing company Methuen & Co 

Background and education
Methuen was born as Algernon Methuen Marshall Stedman in London, the third son of John Buck Stedman, FRCS, and Jane Elizabeth née Marshall  He was educated at Berkhamsted School and then Wadham College, Oxford, from which he graduated with an MA 

Career
After graduating from Oxford, Methuen entered teaching, and rose to become head of High Croft Preparatory School at Milford in Surrey from 1890 to 1895  While teaching he began, as a sideline, writing a number of school textbooks under the nom-de-plume A  W  S  Methuen, of which his series on French, Greek and Latin were best known  Among his works were books on gardening and current affairs  In June 1889, Methuen began to publish and market his own textbooks under the label Methuen & Co  (later Methuen Publishing Ltd )  Two months later he formally adopted Methuen as his surname  His first success at publishing came in 1892 with the publication of Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads  He later published works by Hilaire Belloc, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde 
Methuen was an outspoken critic of the Boer War  He stood for Parliament as the Liberal party candidate for the seat of Guildford in the General Election of January 1910  The seat was a safe Conservative seat and he was unsuccessful  In 1916, he was created a baronet, of Haslemere in Surrey, and he later published his own memoir 

Personal life
Methuen married Emily Caroline Bedford in 1884  He died in September 1924, aged 68, when the baronetcy became extinct 
Passage 6:
Journal of Applied Philosophy
The Journal of Applied Philosophy is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Society for Applied Philosophy and edited by Elizabeth Brake (Rice University)  It covers a broad spectrum of issues in all areas of applied philosophy, including work on the environment, medicine, science, engineering, policy, law, politics, economics, and education 
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2017 impact factor of 1 018, ranking it 24th out of 51 journals in the category "Ethics" 

Journal for Applied Philosophy Annual Essay Prize
The Journal of Applied Philosophy awards an annual prize of £1,000 to the best article published in the year's volume 
2017: Natasha McKeever "Is the Requirement of Sexual Exclusivity Consistent with Romantic Love?"
2016: Federico Picinali "Base Rates of Negative Traits: Instructions for Use in Criminal Trials"
2015: Cheshire Calhoun "Geographies of Meaningful Living"
2014: Christopher Morgan-Knapp "Economic Envy"
2013: Daniel Friedrich "A Duty to Adopt"
2012: Avery Kolers "Floating Provisos and Sinking Islands"
2011: Jakob Elster "How Outlandish Can Imaginary Cases Be?"

Society for Applied Philosophy Annual Lectures
Each year since 2010, the Journal of Applied Philosophy has published the Annual Lecture hosted by the Society of Applied Philosophy [1]

2017: Philip Pettit presented the lecture, 'Three Mistakes about Doing Good (and Bad)'  Read the article here 
2016: Arthur Ripstein presented the lecture, 'Reclaiming Proportionality'  Read the article here 
2015: Shelley Kagan presented the lecture, 'What's Wrong with Speciesism?' 
2014: Julia Annas presented the lecture, 'Applying Virtue to Ethics'  Read the paper based on this talk here 
2013: Larry Temkin presented the lecture, 'Universal Healthcare in the Developing World: Solution or Siren? Some Preliminary Thoughts'  Read the paper based on this lecture here 
2012: Joseph Raz presented the lecture 'Death in Our Life'  The paper based on this lecture can be read here 
2011: Amartya Sen presented the lecture 'The Global Reach of Human Rights'  The paper based on this talk can be read here 
2010: Philip Kitcher presented the lecture 'Militant Modern Atheism'  The paper based on this talk can be found here 

See also
List of ethics journals
Passage 7:
The Landlord's Game
The Landlord's Game is a board game patented in 1904 by Elizabeth Magie as U S  Patent 748,626  It is a realty and taxation game intended to educate users about Georgism  It is the inspiration for the 1935 board game Monopoly 

History
In 1902 to 1903, Magie designed the game and play tested it in Arden, Delaware  The game was created to be a "practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences"  She based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants  She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate  Magie also hoped that when played by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into adulthood The Landlord's Game has some similarities to the basic rules of the board game Zohn Ahl, played by the Kiowa Indians of North America  There are hints that suggest Elizabeth Magie might have known Zohn Ahl and incorporated some of the game's ideas 
In 1903, Magie filed for a patent on the game which was granted in 1904   Magie and fellow Georgists formed a company, Economic Game Company, in 1906 New York to publish the game  Besides Magie, the incorporators were E  H  Monroe of Chicago and E  G  Lenbusher of New York  Magie approached Parker Brothers to publish this and one other game in 1909  The other game was accepted while Landlord's was rejected as too complicated In the United Kingdom The Landlord's Game was first published in 1913 by the Newbie Game Company, formed by a Liberal Committee from the village of Newbie in Dumfries, under the title Brer Fox an' Brer Rabbit; although, despite the title change, it was recognizably the same game  Landlord sold well in the Northeast amongst its left-wing intellectuals, while Brer was unsuccessful Scott Nearing, socialist professor of economics at Wharton School of Finance from 1906 to 1915, lived in Arden in 1910, where Magie invented the game, learned about the game and taught it to his students  College students made up their own boards to use with her rules  Various versions of the game popped up over the following years under a variety of names, Monopoly, Finance, and Auction being among them  Among the Atlantic City and Philadelphia communities of Quakers, the game was particularly popular with college students and economics professors  Jesse and Eugene Raiford, Quakers in Atlantic City, used household items instead of pawns and changed the properties to those of Atlantic City With Magie's first patent having expired, in 1923, Magie decided to attempt to regain control by applying for another patent  On September 23, 1924, a second patent was issued to Magie for The Landlord's Game  Adgame Company (Inc ) published Landlord's Game and Prosperity under this patent in 1932 Robert Baron had Parker Brothers design its own version, Fortune, before negotiation to purchase her patents in case the discussion fell apart or she sold to another potential buyer, Dave Knapp, publisher of Finance  Magie held the patent until 1935, when she sold it to Parker Brothers for $500, equivalent to $10,672 in 2022  The company had recently started distributing Monopoly, which it purchased from Charles Darrow who claimed to have invented it   The company only printed a very small run of the game to secure the copyright  Surviving copies of The Landlord's Game by Parker Brothers are considered by many the rarest of all 20th century board games  Parker Brothers pushed her game aside for Darrow's by 1936  Magie then did two interviews showcasing copies of the original board with The Washington Post and The Evening Star to show that Darrow was not the inventor of the game In 1937, Carnival was published based on the 1904 version  Parker Brothers published their edition of the game in 1939 In a 2004 episode of PBS' History Detectives (title: "Monopoly; Japanese Internment Camp Artwork; The Lewis and Clark Cane"), the show investigated a game board belonging to a Delaware man, having an intermediate version of a game combining elements of The Landlord's Game and Monopoly  The investigators concluded that this game board was the missing link that proves that Monopoly was derived from The Landlord's Game 

Description
The set had rules for two different games, anti-monopolist and  Monopolist  The anti-monopolist rules reward all players during wealth creation, whereas the monopolist rules incentivize forming monopolies and forcing opponents out of the game  In the anti-monopolist or Single Tax version (later called "Prosperity"), the game is won when the player with the least money doubles their original stake The board featured a track around the outside edge of the board split into blocks representing properties and had their purchase price, and their rental value listed in the block  New York City's Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and Wall Street were the top properties in price and rent  The published game included Chance cards with quotes attributed to Thomas Jefferson, John Ruskin and Andrew Carnegie From the 1904 patented version to the published 1906 version, the property names were changed and the rule for increased rent for multiple railroads owned was added 

Patents
The game's first patent was the first issued for a game while claiming four features in the application, the most important feature was a continuous path game  At the time, most games had a start and end spot  With the first patent having expired in 1921, Magie applied for another patent with five new claims 
The claims of Magie's second patent could not include those of the first (now in the public domain) and leaned more towards the single tax theory of play  One common misconception is that Parker Brothers acquired the rights to Magie's original invention of Monopoly play and the unique design by purchasing the later 1924 patent  Parker Brothers acquired Magie's patent to The Landlord's Game but although both patents had the same name they covered different claims  The substitution or confusion of the early patent for the latter is still commonplace 

See also
Ralph Anspach's Anti-Monopoly
Bertell Ollman's Class Struggle
Passage 8:
Nicholas Eftimiades
Nicholas Eftimiades is an American government official, author, and educator best known for his work Chinese Intelligence Operations (1994)  He currently resides in the Tokyo area  He is a current professor at Penn State Harrisburg 

Education
Eftimiades graduated from George Washington University with a B A  in East Asian Studies and the National Defense Intelligence College with a M S  in Strategic Intelligence   He also did undergraduate and graduate work in Asia   He is a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College, War Studies Department, London, United Kingdom 

Government career
Nicholas Eftimiades' 30 year government career includes seven years at the National Security Space Office leading engineering teams designing "generation after next" national security space capabilities  He was also Senior Technical Officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency, Future's Division, and Chief of DIA's Space Division  He served as DIA's lead for national space policy and strategy development Mr  Eftimiades has provided numerous briefings and testimony on national security, technology, and space exploration issues to senior policy officials and the U S  Congress  He testified before the President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy   He has sponsored and chaired international conferences on U S  and foreign defense policy issues   He is a frequent lecturer and public speaker on future technology and societal changes and national security issues 

Chinese Intelligence Operations
Eftimiades first came into public view in 1994 with the publication of his book Chinese Intelligence Operations (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland , March 1994)  The book is an examination of the structure, operations, and methodology of the intelligence services of the People's Republic of China  The book received worldwide recognition with the Chinese government declaring Eftimiades "an enemy of the people" in the People's Daily newspaper  To date, the book remains the only scholarly analysis of China's intelligence services and operational methodology Chinese Intelligence Operations gained worldwide attention when one of the Chinese companies identified as having a relationship with China's intelligence services was identified as a donor to the Bill Clinton presidential campaign through the Democratic National Committee  This revelation resulted in Eftimiades appearing on TV, radio, and being quoted in newspapers   He appeared on CBS Evening News with Connie Chung, Dateline NBC, ABC's Day One, BBC America, National Public Radio and many other television and radio broadcasts    Some organizations protested the CBS news broadcast as being racist  Eftimiades testified before the U S  Congress on several occasions 

Science Fiction
Eftimiades' most recent work is a political and philosophical satire entitled Edward of Planet Earth   The book is influenced by authors such as Alexander Zinoviev and Ignazio Silone—names not normally associated with science fiction   The story takes place 200 years in the future and centers on a man, his computer friends, a female companion and their quest to communicate with God 

Non-Profit Activity
In 2001, Eftimiades founded a non-profit educational organization entitled the Federation of Galaxy Explorers to inspire youth interest in science and engineering   Students in the Galaxy Explorers program attend after school "Mission Team" meetings where they participate in hands-on lessons that support National Science Education Standards  Mission Team members are rewarded for participation and achievements with ribbons, patches, medals, and certificates   In addition to Mission Teams, Galaxy Explorers also have Summer Camps, Star Parities, and the Battle of the Rockets Competition 
Passage 9:
Stephen Henry Parker
Sir Stephen Henry Parker  (7 November 1846 – 13 December 1927) was a lawyer and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia from 1906 to 1914 

Biography
Early life
Stephen Henry Parker was the second son of Stephen Stanley Parker (1817–1904) and his wife Elizabeth, née Sewell  He was the grandson of Stephen Parker (c  1795 – 1879), a pioneer settler in York, Western Australia  Parker was educated at the Bishop's School, Perth, and was called to the bar in 1868 

Career
He became a member of the Western Australian Legislative Council and advocated responsible government for the colony  In 1878 he moved for the introduction of a bill to amend the constitution, but this motion was defeated  A constitution bill for responsible government was passed by the Legislative Council on 26 April 1889, but was met with some opposition in the British House of Commons  It was suggested and agreed that a delegation consisting of the retiring governor, Sir Frederick Broome, Sir Thomas Cockburn-Campbell and Parker should go to London to see the bill through the British parliament  The delegation was able to give a good answer to all objections raised, and subsequently the bill was passed and became law 
He served as colonial secretary in the John Forrest ministry from October 1892 to December 1894 when he retired  He was also chairman of the Perth City Council from November 1877 to 1879, for a few months in 1880-81 and Mayor from February to October 1892  In 1881, he joined with his brother George to form the well known law firm Parker and Parker (which in 1997 merged with the Perth office of Freehill Hollingdale & Page) 

Personal life and death
He married Amey Katharine Leake, daughter of George Walpole Leake on 27 July 1872   She died in 1914   They had four sons and seven daughters who reached adulthood  Their second son Hubert Stanley Wyborn Parker (1883-1966) was the member of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly for North-East Fremantle in 1930-33, and of the Western Australian Legislative Council for Metropolitan-Suburban province in 1934-54  He was attorney-general for two months in 1933 and chief secretary in 1948-50 
Parker, and his brother George, were heavily involved with the East Perth (now known as Perth) Cricket Club in the W A C A  Competition  He was club President from 1899 to 1903 
He died on 13 December 1927 

See also
Judiciary of Australia
Passage 10:
Elizabeth Blanchard (educator)
Elizabeth Blanchard (1834–1891) was an American educator who was the seventh president of Mount Holyoke College (as Principal and Acting President) 
Blanchard graduated from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1858, and taught there for twelve years before becoming the Associate Principal from 1872-1883   She served as Principal from 1883-1888   When Mount Holyoke Female Seminary received its collegiate charter and became Mount Holyoke College, she served as Acting President from 1888-1889 

See also
Presidents of Mount Holyoke College
Passage 11:
Elizabeth Gertrude Britton
Elizabeth Gertrude Britton (née Knight) (January 9, 1858 – February 25, 1934) was an American botanist, bryologist, and educator  She and her husband, Nathaniel Lord Britton played a significant role in the fundraising and creation of the New York Botanical Garden  She was a co-founder of the predecessor of the American Bryological and Lichenological Society  She was an activist for the protection of wildflowers, inspiring local chapter activities and the passage of legislation  Elizabeth Britton made major contributions to the literature of mosses, publishing 170 papers in that field 

Early life and family
Elizabeth Gertrude Knight was born on January 9, 1858, in New York City, one of five daughters, to James and Sophie Anne (née Compton) Knight  Her family operated a furniture factory and sugar plantation in the vicinity of Matanzas, Cuba, and she spent much of her childhood there  In later childhood, she attended a private school in New York before attending Normal College (later, Hunter College)  She graduated from Normal College in 1875, at the early age of seventeen  On August 27, 1885, she married Nathaniel Lord Britton, an assistant in geology at Columbia College who shared her growing interest in botany  The couple had no children 

Career
After graduation in 1875, Elizabeth Knight joined the staff of Normal College as a critic teacher  She joined the Torrey Botanical Club in 1879, and in 1881 she published her first scientific paper in that organization's Bulletin, reporting observations of unexpected white flowers in two species of plants  She also observed the presence of a curlygrass fern, Schizaea pusilla, in Nova Scotia  In 1883, she became a tutor in natural science  It was at this time that she began to specialize in bryology and her first paper concerning mosses appeared  Britton collected fertile specimens of Eustichium norvegicum in Wisconsin and wrote the first description of its fruits  Although known since 1827, the plant had hitherto been known only in a sterile condition  Her Observer articles were models of popular scientific writings on plants which had “fanciful” titles like “The Humpbacked Elves” and “The Brownies ”After her marriage in 1885, Britton resigned her teaching position at Normal College, and took charge of the moss collections at Columbia in an unofficial, unpaid capacity  She served as editor of the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club from 1886 to 1888; in 1889, she published the first of an eleven-part series of papers titled Contributions to American Bryology in that journal  Her catalogue of the mosses of West Virginia appeared in 1892, and the first of eight articles titled How to Study the Mosses for a popular magazine was published in 1894  These papers "sufficed to place Mrs  Britton in command of the bryological field in America " She worked with her husband to acquire for Columbia the moss herbarium of August Jaeger of Switzerland; Britton persuaded wealthy friends to contribute the necessary $6,000 
Britton, along with her husband, was one of the Torrey Botanical Club members who spurred the establishment of the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG)  The couple also travelled to England in 1888 where Nathaniel was performing research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew  At Kew Nathaniel worked on the Bolivian botanical collections of Henry Hurd Rusby, a gift to Columbia; meanwhile, Elizabeth worked on mosses at the Linnean Society of London  Inspired by the quality and quantity of Kew's herbarium, library, and gardens, the couple set about organizing an institution of comparable stature for New York  A Club meeting was held in October, 1888 where rich and prominent citizens were recruited as incorporators  The Botanical Garden was established by act of the state legislature in 1891  Britton was important in the efforts to raise funds for the organization in the 1890s  Her husband became the first director of the Botanical Garden in 1896, whilst she volunteered there  It was largely through her interest that the collection of liverworts and mosses of William Mitten was acquired for the NYBG in 1906  In recognition of her service, Britton was named Honorary Curator of the Mosses in 1912, a post which she held until her death Britton enumerated the ferns in the Rusby collection in 1888 and she published her examination of the Rusby mosses in 1896 

Britton travelled to various locations in the United States to collect botanical specimens, including the Great Dismal Swamp, the Adirondack Mountains, and the mountains of North Carolina  She accompanied Nathaniel on 23 of the 25 trips he made to the islands of the Caribbean and West Indies  Under her own name, she published her findings in the Bulletin in 1913–1915  Britton wrote the chapters concerning mosses for Nathaniel's Flora of Bermuda and The Bahama Flora Britton worked with organizations to promote the study of mosses, especially by women scientists and she chaired the division of Bryophyta for the (Women's) National Science Club (NWSC) in 1897 As part of her unofficial position at Columbia, Britton acted as advisor to doctoral students, including James Franklin Collins and Abel Joel Grout  Together, in 1898 Grout and Britton founded the Sullivant Moss Chapter of the Agassiz Association  By 1908, it was known as the Sullivant Moss Society (and after 1949, as the American Bryological and Lichenological Society)  Although relations between the two researchers later became chilly, Britton continued to participate in the Society, contributing articles to The Bryologist, its journal, and serving as its president from 1916 to 1919 Britton continued to study plants other than mosses  She published A Revision of the North American Species of Ophioglossum, the adder's-tongue ferns, in 1897  With Delia West Marble, she collected the type specimen of Thelypteris brittonae, a species of maiden fern, in 1906  Britton collected the type specimen for the orchid now named Britton's shadow witch (Ponthieva brittoniae) 

In the first decade of the 20th century, Britton began to devote her time to the conservation of wildflowers  A gift of $3,000 by Olivia and Caroline Phelps Stokes to the NYBG spurred the creation of the Wild Flower Preservation Society of America  The first meeting was held on April 23, 1902 where Frederick Vernon Coville was elected president, Charles Louis Pollard was elected secretary, and Britton was elected to the Board of Managers  Other members of the board included Charles Edwin Bessey, Liberty Hyde Bailey, William Trelease, Charles Frederick Millspaugh and Alice Eastwood  Britton went on to serve as secretary and treasurer of the organization  The Society established numerous local chapters  It was incorporated in the state of New York in 1915, then reorganized as the Wild Flower Preservation Society in 1925, with Percy L  Ricker as its head  Britton promoted the cause for nearly 35 years, by publishing, lecturing, and conducting correspondence; her efforts led to adoption of legislation in various states, as well as local conservation activities in garden clubs and public schools  She published fourteen articles in the NYBG's Journal under the series title of Wild Plants Needing Protection 
In 1925, as chair of the conservation committee of the Federated Garden Clubs of New York State, Britton successfully led a boycott campaign against the common practice of harvesting wild American holly for use as a Christmas decoration  As a substitute, she promoted the propagation of the plant by cuttings for commercial use 
All told, during the period 1881 to 1930, Britton published 346 papers, of which 170 dealt with mosses  She wrote descriptions of six families of mosses for the New York Botanical Garden's Flora of America  Marshall Avery Howe described Britton as "a woman of extraordinary physical and mental energy—the possessor of a remarkably quick and brilliant intellect  She has left an enduring record in the literature of science, and her well-directed activities have had an outstanding influence in the conservation of the native flora of the United States "

Wild Plants Needing Protection
Wild Plants Needing Protection, written by Britton, is a New York Botanical Garden journal comprising fourteen articles  In the journal, she gives an in depth description of different wild plants and their importance to their environment  Each plant section included an illustration of the plant described, while also giving descriptions of both the scientific and historical background of the plants  This is shown in Britton’s journal of “Spring Beauty”: 

“The Spring Beauty was named by Linnaeus in 1753 in honor of John Clayton, an American botanist, and correspondent, who wrote, in 1743, a flora of Virginia " Britton then goes over how there are about twenty-five species of Claytonia plants  Her Journal entry of “Wild Pink” is an example of her descriptions which is conveyed within the writing when she states:“before the trees cast much shade, while their greens are still so exquisitely fresh and varied, a bright flash of color will attract the eye to the Wild Pink, growing in hilly places on rocks or often in their cracks and crevices with the Saxifrage "

Recognition and legacy
In 1893, Britton was the only woman among the 25 scientists nominated for charter membership in the Botanical Society of America  In 1905, she was one of three bryologists appointed to the nomenclature committee that would report to the 1910 meeting of the International Botanical Congress in Brussels  In 1906, Britton was one of only nineteen women listed in the first edition of American Men of Science  Her entry was marked with an asterisk: this "starred" listing was limited to the top 1,000 scientists in the book, as determined by the editors  Britton was starred in the five editions of the book that appeared through 1933 The moss genus Bryobrittonia is named for Elizabeth Britton, as well as fifteen species of plants and one of animals Mount Britton, a double peak in El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico, honors both of the Brittons In 1940, a memorial plaque in honor of Britton was installed in the new Wild Flower Garden of the New York Botanical Garden  A gift of the New York Bird and Tree Club, it is mounted on a ten-ton boulder of Bronx schist, and its text reads, "Let those who find pleasure in this garden remember Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton, lover of wildflowers and ardent advocate of their protection"  The garden is now known as the Native Plant Garden, and the boulder as Britton Rock Today, the Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton archive is held by the NYBG Mertz Library  It includes personal papers, manuscripts and published research, artwork and photographs, and printing plates  The archive documents Britton's teaching career at Normal College, as well as her participation in the Torrey Botanical Club and the NYBG  Her field notebooks can be found in the New York Botanical Garden Collectors' Field Notebook collection The character of Alma Whittaker in the 2013 novel The Signature of All Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert, is modeled in part on Britton 

Later life and death
Elizabeth Britton died at her home at 2965 Decatur Avenue in The Bronx on February 25, 1934, following an apoplectic stroke; her husband Nathaniel survived her by four months  Although she was nominally a member of the Episcopalian faith, she was buried in the Moravian Cemetery on Staten Island, where her husband's ancestors had been early settlers and he held property 

Selected publications
See also
The Britton Cottage
Timeline of women in science
Passage 12:
Mary Gaunt
Mary Eliza Bakewell Gaunt (20 February 1861 – 19 January 1942) was an Australian novelist and writer  born in Chiltern, Victoria  She also wrote collections of short stories, novellas, autobiographies, and non-fiction  She published her first novel Dave's Sweetheart in 1894  Gaunt visited many countries in her life and she wrote about her experiences in five travel books 

Early life and education
Mary was the elder daughter of William Henry Gaunt, a Victorian county court judge and Elizabeth Gaunt, née Palmer (c  1835–1922), and was born in Chiltern, Victoria  She was educated at Grenville College, Ballarat and the University of Melbourne, being one of the first two women students to be admitted there 

Career
She began writing for the press and in 1894 published her first novel Dave's Sweetheart  In the same year she married Dr Hubert Lindsay Miller (a widower) of Warrnambool, Victoria  He died in 1900, and, with only a small income, Gaunt (now also known as Mrs Mary Miller) went to London intending to earn a living by her writing  Gaunt left Melbourne on 15 March 1901 and never returned 
Gaunt had difficulties at first but eventually established herself, and was able to travel in the West Indies, in West Africa, and in China and other parts of the East  Her experiences were recorded in five pleasantly written travel books: Alone in West Africa (1912), A Woman in China (1914), A Broken Journey (1919), Where the Twain Meet (1922), Reflection - in Jamaica (1932)  In 1929 she also published George Washington and the Men Who Made the American Revolution  Between 1895 and 1934, 16 novels or collections of short stories were published, mostly with love and adventure interests  Three other novels were written in collaboration with John Ridgwell Essex  A collection of interviews with Mary were published in the 1925 Girls' Own Annual under the headings "Pioneering for Women" parts I, II, and III, and "Strange Journeys I Have Made" 
From the early 1920s, Gaunt lived mostly at Bordighera, Italy  In 1940 she fled Italy and died at Cannes in 1942  She had no children 
She had a sister Lucy, and brothers Cecil, Clive, Guy and Ernest; Guy and Ernest were both admirals of the Royal Navy, and Guy later became a Conservative Member of Parliament 

Bibliography
Novels
Dave's Sweetheart (1894)
Kirkham's Find (1897)
Deadman's: An Australian Story (1898)
Mistress Betty Carew (1903)
The Arm of the Leopard: A West African Story (1904) [with John Ridgwell Essex]
Fools Rush In (1906) [with John Ridgwell Essex]
The Silent Ones (1909) [with John Ridgwell Essex]
The Mummy Moves (1910)
The Uncounted Cost (1910)
Every Man's Desire (1913)
A Wind from the Wilderness (1919)
As the Whirlwind Passeth (1923)
The Forbidden Town (1926)
Saul's Daughter (1927)
The Lawless Frontier (1929)
Joan of the Pilchard (1930)
Harmony: A Tale of the Old Slave Days of Jamaica (1933)
Worlds Away (1934)

Novellas
Bingley's Gap (1888)
Down in the World (1893)
The Other Man (1894)

Short story collections
The Moving Finger (1895)
The Ends of the Earth : Stories (1915)
The Surrender and Other Happenings (1920)
Life at Deadman's : Stories of Colonial Victoria (2001)

Autobiography
Alone in West Africa (1912)
A Woman in China (1914)
A Broken Journey: Wanderings from the Hoang-Ho to Saghalien (1919)

Non-fiction
Where the Twain Meet (1922) - travel
Peeps at Great Men : George Washington and the Men Who Made the American Revolution (1929) - children's
Reflection in Jamaica (1932) - travel

Notes and references
Sources
E  Archer, 'Gaunt, Mary Eliza Bakewell (1861 - 1942)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 8, MUP, 1981, pp 632–633  Retrieved 30 October 2008
Serle, Percival (1949)  "Gaunt, Mary"  Dictionary of Australian Biography  Sydney: Angus & Robertson  Retrieved 30 October 2008 
Auslit Gaunt, Mary  (birth name: Gaunt, Mary Eliza Bakewell ) (a k a  Miller, Mary )

External links

Works by Mary Gaunt at Project Gutenberg
Works by Mary Gaunt at Project Gutenberg Australia
Works by or about Mary Gaunt at Internet Archive
Passage 13:
Pangasinan School of Arts and Trades
Pangasinan School of Arts and Trades, also referred to as PSAT, is a government institution of technical vocational education and training higher learning located in Alvear Street, Lingayen, Pangasinan, Philippines  PSAT is duly registered by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority  All PSAT programs are accredited by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) 
History: 
Pangasinan School of Arts and Trades (PSAT) is an outgrowth of the intermediate school organized by American Roy E  Blackman in 1904   It served as a normal training department for teachers who intended to teach shopwork in the different municipalities of Pangasinan   Through the late Provincial Governor, Hon  Isabelo Artacho, the Pangasinan Trade School building was constructed in its present site in 1907 
Mr  Jorge Garcia was the first Filipino principal and was succeeded by Martin Mendoza   It was during the incumbency of Mr  Mendoza in 1923 that the first year high school level of the trade school was introduced 
In 1920 the first batch of students of the four-year trade curriculum graduated   The shop courses offered then were Woodworking, Building Construction and Automotive 
In 1929 – 1930, the Pangasinan Vocational High School emerged as an offshoot of the merger of Home Economics Education, Normal Training Department and Trade Courses Program 
In 1935 – 1936, the Pangasinan High School and the Pangasinan Vocational High School were fused into one high school known as the Pangasinan Secondary School 
In 1939 – 1940, the Pangasinan Vocational High School became known as Pangasinan Trade School, an entirely separate entity from the Pangasinan High School of which it has earlier been a part 
On August 15, 1945, the Pangasinan Trade School was temporarily opened at Dagupan City due to the construction of the buildings in Lingayen 
On March 14, 1953, by virtue of Republic Act 704, the Pangasinan Trade School was converted into a National School of Arts and Trades and named as Pangasinan School of Arts and Trades (PSAT) whose curricular offerings were expanded to include Master of Arts in Vocational Technical Education, major in Practical Arts   This gave PSAT the distinction of being the only vocational school offering graduate studies, in Region I 
In 1987, the offering of post-secondary technical-vocational education was retrieved from the Pangasinan State University which brought with it all post-secondary courses upon its conversion as a state university in 1978 and only the secondary courses were left with PSAT 
In 1990, PSAT  was elevated as a Higher Technical Education institution by virtue of Republic Act 7078 
In 1995, PSAT was transferred t the administrative supervision of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) by virtue o Republic Act 7845  It was, however, only in 1997 that PSAT became a full-fledged CSI (CHED-Supervised Institution) 
On April 25, 2000, by virtue of CHED-TESDA Memorandum of Agreement, PSAT was transferred to the administrative supervision of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) 
On May 10, 2000 the Joint CHED-TESDA Memorandum Circular  No  1, s  2000, the Implementing Guidelines on the Transfer of CHED-Supervised Institutions (CSIs) to Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) was issued  Dr  Geronimo S  dela Cruz, Sr  was the first Vocational School Superintendent of PSAT under TESDA supervision 
On April 1, 2001, Dr  Lina C  Alcantara took over as the Officer-In-Charge   It was during her term when eleven (11) of the school offerings were registered under UTPRAS   Three courses (Garments, Computer Technician and Hotel and Restaurant Technology) were registered WTR and seven (7) courses were registered NTR 
On August 3, 2005, Manuel A  Jaramilla, Ph  D  assumed the position of Officer-In-Charge   It was during his term when Short-term courses were first offered which eventually boomed    It was also during his term when 16 courses were registered under WTR status in June, 2007   Technology Trainers were also granted Trainers’ Qualification I (TQ I) in support of the Competency Based Training Delivery 
On June 1, 2008, Clemencia T  Ibarra, CSEE and Civil Service Commission Local Scholarship Program – Masteral Degree Program and University of the Philippines Scholarship recipient assumed her post as Vocational School Superintendent I 
Her leadership and administration shall anchor in the full implementation of Competency Based Training Delivery, registration of short-term courses under WTR Status, institutional application and accreditation by Asia Pacific Accreditation and Certification Commission (APACC), improvement of school facilities, Instructional and Administrative Staff Development and Welfare Benefit Program, efficiency and transparency on school’s communication, financial, administrative, and supplies management, systems and processes, and institutionalization of income generating project 

Program Offerings
Junior & Senior High School
Automotive Servicing NC II
Bread and Pastry Production NC II
Commercial Cooking NC II
Computer Hardware Servicing NC II
Consumer Electronics Servicing NC II
Dressmaking NC II
Electrical Installation and Maintenance NC II
Food and Beverage Services NC II
Front Office Services NC II
Hairdressing NC II
Housekeeping NC II
Shielded Metal Arc Welding NC II
Trainer's Methodology Level I

External links
TESDA Accredited Assessment Centers – Pangasinan School of Arts and Trades
Passage 14:
Arthur Kroker
Arthur Kroker (born 1945) is a Canadian author, editor, educator and researcher of political science, technology and culture 

Life and career
He earned a PhD in political science from McMaster University in 1975  In addition to being a professor of political science at the University of Victoria, Kroker serves as director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture (PACTAC), located at the university  Kroker was appointed to the Canada Research Chair in technology, culture and theory in 2003  He is the editor for the online academic journal CTheory, an international journal of theory, technology and culture 
Kroker has been an outspoken critic of the transformation of the early internet into a consumer-driven system ("virtual class")  Austrian magazine Monochrom interviewed him about his political motivations in 1996 He was married to Marilouise Kroker from 1971 until her death in 2018 

Bibliography
Books
Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis, McLuhan, Grant (1984)
The Postmodern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper-Aesthetics (1987) (with David Cook)
Panic Encyclopedia: The Definitive Guide to the Postmodern Scene (1989) (with David Cook and Marilouise Kroker)
The Possessed Individual: Technology and the French Postmodern (1992)
SPASM: Virtual Reality, Android Music, and Electric Flesh (1993)
Data Trash: Theory of the Virtual Class (1994) (with Michael A  Weinstein)
Hacking the Future (1996) (with Marilouise Kroker)
The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism: Heidegger, Nietzsche and Marx (2004)
Body Drift: Butler, Hayles, Haraway (2012)
Exits to the Posthuman Future (2014)
Technologies of the New Real: Viral Contagion and Death of the Social (2021) (with Marilouise Kroker)

As editor
Body Invaders: Panic Sex in America (1987) (with Marilouise Kroker)
The Hysterical Male: New Feminist Theory (1991) (with Marilouise Kroker)
The Last Sex: Feminism and Outlaw Bodies (1993) (with Marilouise Kroker)
Digital Delirium (1997) (with Marilouise Kroker)
Life in the Wires: The CTheory Reader (2004) (with Marilouise Kroker)
Critical Digital Studies: A Reader (2008) (with Marilouise Kroker)
Passage 15:
Poptropica
Poptropica is an online role-playing game, developed in 2007 by Pearson Education's Family Education Network, and targeted towards children aged 6 to 15  Poptropica was primarily the creation of Jeff Kinney, the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series  As of 2015, he remains at the company as the Creative Director  The game primarily focuses on problem-solving through game quest scenarios, called "islands"  Islands all center on a problem that the player must resolve by going through multiple obstacles, collecting and using items, talking to various characters, and completing goals  All islands, upon completion, award "credits," which are non-negotiable currency that may be used to buy costumes and special effects in the Poptropica store 
In 2011, Poptropica was listed on Time magazine's list of "50 Websites that Make the Web Great", where it was described as "an inventive megasite for kids with a wholesome and slightly educational bent"  By 2012, the game had grown to have over 75 million registered users, with 35 million in the 15-25 age group  Versions of the game have been released on Nintendo DS and 3DS, iOS, and Android mobile devices  In May 2015, it was announced that Family Education Network was sold by Pearson to the interactive-education venture capitalist Sandbox Networks, and that Poptropica had "over 3 2 million monthly unique users in 200 countries and territories" In 2015, Poptropica was sold to educational-technology investment group, Sandbox Partners In 2020, because of the discontinuation of Adobe Flash, Poptropica began porting their old islands that were built on Adobe Flash over to an HTML5 format  As a result of Poptropica's utilization of varying Flash engines, a number of islands were unable to be ported immediately, and were effectively removed from the game  Fan archivists later made 35 islands available once again via the Basilisk browser within the Flashpoint program In April 2022, Poptropica announced that some of the old islands would return as part of a bundle on Steam  Though delayed by a day, the game was eventually released on May 26, 2022, and includes seventeen islands and Poptropica Realms 

Gameplay
When it first launched in 2007, Poptropica only had one island, titled Early Poptropica Island  By 2017, it had 58 islands to be explored, all with a different theme: examples include Back Lot Island, where the player helps produce a movie, and Super Power Island, where their goal is to defeat six super villains  Each island had its own quest, for which a player could receive an island medallion as well as 150 credits to spend in the in-game Poptropica Store  Starting July 6, 2011, Poptropica allowed players to replay islands without creating a new account, while still keeping track of all the Medallions the player had earned 

Advertisements
In addition to the available island quests, advertisers contract for temporary mini-games that appear on the site, sometimes targeted to players of a certain age group or gender  Regular advertisers have included Disney, Kellogg's Froot Loops, Lego toys, and various animated movies and DVD releases  Advertisement mini-games normally appear only during a two-week period  If the player completes an advertisement mini-game, they receive a temporary prize, usually related to the media being advertised 
A few Poptropica islands are themed after certain book series: these include Big Nate, Timmy Failure, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Magic Tree House  These islands are permanent, and can be played at any time  In 2015, a total of seven of these islands became members-only 

Mini-games
Poptropica features different mini-games that users can play with other people  These include Switch, Sudoku, Hoops, Sky Dive, Paint War, Star Link, Balloons, Soupwords and Pathwise  The game keeps track of how many times the player wins or loses a certain mini-game 

Spin-offs
Poptropica Adventures
In 2012, in partnership with Ubisoft, Poptropica released a video game for the Nintendo DS, titled Poptropica Adventures 

Poptropica: Forgotten Islands
On September 5, 2013, Poptropica launched Poptropica: Forgotten Islands, an iOS game, which allows players to meet new characters and discover story elements about Poptropica by finding artifacts littered throughout the game  It was also released on the Nintendo 3DS system through Ubisoft in 2014  It has been replaced on iOS and Android with a mobile version of the desktop Poptropica game 

Poptropica Worlds
On January 11, 2017, Poptropica announced via their blog that they were introducing another game called Poptropica Worlds, developed in Unity  It was released in spring 2017  Poptropica Worlds has new features, such as redesigned characters, customizable homes, and new islands  Returning players are able to port over their avatar's look and name to Poptropica Worlds  Poptropica Worlds can be played on both the web and mobile  If membership was bought for Poptropica, it carries over to Poptropica Worlds, and vice versa 



ground_truth: ADM Michael S. Rogers

Michael S. Rogers

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: The author of Elizabeth and After attended which university?

The following are given passages.
Context 4:  The military and the Nigerian state, 1966–1993: a study of the strategies of political power control  Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press  ISBN 978-1-59221-568-3 
Solomon Akhere Benjamin (1999)  The 1996 state and local government reorganizations in Nigeria  Ibadan: Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research  ISBN 978-181-238-9 
Rotimi T  Suberu (1994)  1991 state and local government reorganizations in Nigeria  Ibadan: Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan  ISBN 978-2015-28-8 

External links
"New States of Nigeria"  Statoids 
Headline News in Nigeria Archived 2018-08-20 at the Wayback Machine StatesStates And Capital In Nigeria, Their Slogans & Current Governors A comprehensive list of all states in Nigeria and their current governors 
Passage 7:
Tumaraa
Tumaraa is a commune of French Polynesia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean  The commune of Tumaraa is located on the island of Raiatea, in the administrative subdivision of the Leeward Islands, themselves part of the Society Islands  At the 2017 census it had a population of 3,721, making it the least populous commune on Raiatea Tumaraa consists of the following associated communes:

Fetuna
Tehurui
Tevaitoa
VaiaauThe administrative centre of the commune is the settlement of Tevaitoa  The tallest mountain on Raiatea - Mont Temehani - is located within Tumaraa 
Passage 8:
Motru Coal Mine
Motru Coal Mine is an open-pit mining exploitation, one of the largest in Romania located in Motru, Gorj County  The legal entity managing the Motru mine is the National Company of Lignite Oltenia which was set up in 1997 The exploitation has two open pits Lupoaia, Roșiuța that produced 6 6 million tonnes of lignite in 2008  The mine has around 2,300 workers and is endowed with 13 bucket-wheel excavators, seven spreaders, two mixed machines and two deposits spreader  The total proven recoverable reserves of the mine amount to 108 million tonnes of lignite 
Passage 9:
Gmina Łowicz
Gmina Łowicz is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Łowicz County, Łódź Voivodeship, in central Poland  Its seat is the town of Łowicz, although the town is not part of the territory of the gmina 
The gmina covers an area of 133 38 square kilometres (51 5 sq mi), and as of 2006 its total population is 7,444 

Villages
Gmina Łowicz contains the villages and settlements of Bocheń, Dąbkowice Dolne, Dąbkowice Górne, Guźnia, Jamno, Jastrzębia, Klewków, Małszyce, Mystkowice, Niedźwiada, Ostrów, Otolice, Parma, Pilaszków, Placencja, Popów, Strzelcew, Świące, Świeryż Drugi, Świeryż Pierwszy, Szczudłów, Urbańszczyzna, Wygoda, Zabostów Duży, Zabostów Mały, Zawady and Zielkowice 

Neighbouring gminas
Gmina Łowicz is bordered by the town of Łowicz and by the gminas of Bielawy, Chąśno, Domaniewice, Kocierzew Południowy, Łyszkowice, Nieborów and Zduny 
Passage 10:
Krasnovishersky District
Krasnovishersky District (Russian: Краснови́шерский райо́н) is an administrative district (raion) of Perm Krai, Russia; one of the thirty-three in the krai  Municipally, it is incorporated as Krasnovishersky Municipal District  It is located in the northeast of the krai, in the valley of the Vishera River, and borders with the Komi Republic in the north, Sverdlovsk Oblast in the east, Cherdynsky District in the west, Solikamsky District in the south, and with the territory of the town of krai significance of Alexandrovsk in the southeast  The area of the district is 15,375 square kilometers (5,936 sq mi)  Its administrative center is the town of Krasnovishersk  Population:  22,554 (2010 Census); 27,871 (2002 Census); 30,827 (1989 Census)  The population of Krasnovishersk accounts for 71 4% of the district's total population 

Geography
The eastern part of the district is mostly mountainous, while the western part is mostly flat, with some hills with the height of about 190–220 meters (620–720 ft)  The highest point of Perm Krai, Mount Tulymsky Kamen, is located in the district  There are many rivers in the district, including the Vishera River with its tributaries the Yazva, the Vels, the Uls, and many others  The town of Krasnovishersk is located 320 kilometers (200 mi) from the city of Perm  Natural resources of the district include diamonds, gold, oil, natural gas, and others 
The climate is temperate continental  The average annual temperature is +0 1 °C (32 2 °F); annual precipitation is 550–700 millimeters (22–28 in)  Up to 87% of the district's territory is covered by forests  In the extreme northeast of the district the Vishera Nature Reserve is located 

History
The district was established on January 13, 1941  Until then, its territory was a part of Cherdynsky District  Krasnovishersk, the administrative center of the district, was granted town status on July 2, 1942 

Demographics
As of the 2002 Census, about 89 7% of district's population were Russians and 2 5% were the Komi people 

Economy
The industry of the district includes timber industry, pulp and paper mill, mining and food industry 

See also
Visherogorsk
Zagovorukha
Passage 11:
Cyprus Popular Bank
Cyprus Popular Bank (from 2006 to 2011 known as Marfin Popular Bank) was the second-largest banking group in Cyprus behind the Bank of Cyprus until it was 'shuttered' in March 2013 and split into two parts  The 'good' Cypriot part was merged into the Bank of Cyprus (including insured deposits under 100,000 Euro) and the 'bad' part or legacy entity holds all the overseas operations as well as uninsured deposits above 100,000 Euro, old shares and bonds  The uninsured depositors were subject to a bail-in and became the new shareholders of the legacy entity   As at May 2017, the legacy entity is one of the largest shareholders of Bank of Cyprus with 4 8% but does not hold a board seat  All the overseas operations, of the now defunct Cyprus Popular Bank, are also held by the legacy entity, until they are sold by the Special Administrator, at first Ms Andri Antoniadou, who ran the legacy entity for two years, from March 2013 until 3 March 2015  She tendered her resignation due to disagreements, with the Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus and the Central Bank Board members, who amended the lawyers of the legacy entity, without consulting her  Veteran banker Chris Pavlou who is an expert in Treasury and risk management took over as Special Administrator of the legacy entity in April 2015 until December 2016  The legacy entity is pursuing legal action against former major shareholder Marfin Investment Group 
Its shares were listed on the Cyprus Stock Exchange and the Athens Stock Exchange  CPB had a network of more than 295 branches in Cyprus, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, the UK and Malta  The bank had applied to open a representative office in Beijing, People's Republic of China Trading on the island as Laiki Bank (Laiki being the Greek word for Popular), as of September 2012 it held a 16% share of the market in loans and a 14 4% share of deposits   The Bank made a series of large loans, many to Greek companies prior to and during their financial crisis  What followed has been described as "billions handed out in bad loans created a financial time-bomb"  After the bank collapsed, it was rescued by the Cypriot government, which took 84% ownership on 30 June 2012 and as of March 2013 it is being dismantled as part of the 2012–2013 Cypriot financial crisis 

History
In 1901, four leading citizens of Limassol—Agathoclis Francoudis, Ioannis Kyriakides, Christodoulos Sozos and Neoklis Ioannides—established the Popular Savings Bank of Limassol to encourage saving among the workforce  More than two decades later, in 1924, the bank changed its name from the Popular Savings Bank of Limassol to the Popular Bank of Limassol  The bank also became the first company in Cyprus to register as a public-traded company 
Then in 1967, the Popular Bank of Limassol changed its name to Cyprus Popular Bank (CPB) to reflect the bank’s expansion beyond Limassol  Expansion beyond Limassol followed quickly, with the establishment of its first branches in Nicosia,  Famagusta (1969), and Paphos and Larnaca (1970)  Also in 1970, Midland Bank acquired 22% of the company's shares, making Midland a major shareholder in CPB  The next year CPB relocated its headquarters from Limassol to Nicosia 

1974 CPB established its first London branch 
1983 CPB acquired all the Cyprus operations of Grindlays Bank located in the area under government control 
1992 CPB opened the first branch of European Popular Bank in Athens  CPB owned 58% of the shares of the bank; other shareholders included HSBC (formerly Midland Bank) and Greek and Cypriot investors  CPB retained branches in Heraklion and Thessaloniki
1995 CPB opened its first representative offices in South Africa and in Toronto, Ontario, Canada 
1996 CPB opened its first representative offices in Australia 
1997 CPB opened its first representative offices in Serbia and in Russia ("Rosprombank")
1998 CPB establishes a representative office in New York  (NY State Banking Dept says State chartered) 
2000 The Cyprus Popular Bank Group changed its name to Laiki Group 
2001 The Laiki Group established a subsidiary in Australia with five branches 
2005 The Group established Laiki Bank (Guernsey), and purchased Bank Centrobank in Serbia 
2006 The Greek Marfin Investment Group acquired HSBC's shares in Laiki Bank, establishing a strong minority share position   Subsequently, the Marfin Investment Group through more acquisitions managed to take control of Laiki Bank, which it re-branded as Marfin Popular Bank   In Greece, the Marfin Group consolidated Egnatia, Laiki and Marfin to form Marfin Egnatia Bank, which is the 95%-owned Greek subsidiary of Marfin Popular Bank 
2007 The bank announced the planned takeover of 50 12% of the share capital of AS SBM Pank, a bank in Estonia MPB also acquired 99 2% of the shares of Marine Transport Bank Ukraine for US$156 million  This bank was founded in 1993 as Marine Trade Bank and changed its name to Marine Transport Bank in 1996  It has its headquarters in the Odesa region and has 86 branches 
Lastly, MPB acquired 43% of the share capital of Lombard Bank Malta for €48 million from Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI) of Lugano  CPB now holds c  49% of Lombard Bank Malta In 2007, the bank announced a multi-million financial deal to sponsor the football First Division in Cyprus until 2010 
2008 Marfin Popular Bank completed its acquisition of 50 4% of the shares of CJSC RPB Holding, parent company of the Rossisysky Promishlenny Bank (Rosprombank), for €83 million  The acquisition makes Marfin the first Greek or Cypriot bank to acquire control of a bank in Russia 
In 2010, they launched a new mobile banking and mobile trading service  In the same year, the company was selected as the bank of the year in Cyprus by the Banker 
2010 MPB sold 85% of Laiki Bank Australia to Bank of Beirut  The Australian bank received a new name, Beirut Hellenic Bank  At the time, the bank had a branch in Adelaide, four branches in Melbourne and five branches in Sydney 
2011 MPB sold the majority of its shareholding in its Estonian subsidiary and returned to its historic name of Cyprus Popular Bank (CPB) 
In 2012 CPB converted its Greek subsidiary into a branch of the parent bank 
The 2012–2013 Cypriot financial crisis resulted in financial difficulties at CPB  The Cypriot state recapitalized CPB on 30 June 2012 with the result that the government acquired 84% of the bank's equity  This increased the bank's core tier 1 capital ratio towards 9%, the level mandated by the European Banking Authority 
In early 2013 CPB renamed its Greek branches to CPB Bank and on 26 March the bank sold them to Piraeus Bank  Laiki was split into a good and bad bank, the good bank (Cyprus operations) merged with Bank of Cyprus and the bad bank is in the process of being sold and finally shuttered  The board and CEO were replaced on 27 March  The bad bank was being run by a Special Administrator Ms Andri Antoniadou who was acting CEO until 3 March 2015  Veteran banker Chris Pavlou took over as Special Administrator in April 2015 until December 2016 In 2018 European Court dismisses compensation claim in Cyprus 2013 deposit-grab 
Passage 12:
Oblasts of the Soviet Union
The oblasts of the Soviet Union were second-level administrative units of the Soviet Union, and first-level entities of the republics of the Soviet Union 

Terminology
Oblast is a Slavic term that exists in the Russian language  Russian was official in all republics 

By location
Baltic region
In the 1950s there were 10 oblasts in the three Baltic republics 

1953-04-28 Law on abolition of Pärnu, Tallinn and Tartu oblasts (Estonia) 
1953-04-25 Law on abolition of Riga, Daugavpils and Liepāja oblasts (Latvia) 
1953-05-28 Law on abolition of Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda and Šiauliai oblasts (Lithuania)

Transcaucasian region
In the 1950s there were 4 oblasts in the two Transcaucasian republics (only in Azerbaijan and Georgia) 

1953-04-23 Law on abolition of Baku and Ganja oblasts (Azerbaijan) 
1953-04-23 Law on abolition of Kutaisi and Tbilisi oblasts (Georgia)

List
See also
Oblasts of Russia
Oblasts of the Russian Empire
Oblast
Passage 13:
Moorea-Maiao
Moʻorea-Maiʻao is a commune of French Polynesia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean  The commune is in the administrative subdivision of the Windward Islands  At the 2017 census it had a population of 17,816 The commune of Moʻorea-Maiʻao is made up of the island of Moʻorea (133 km2/51 sq  miles; 17,463 inhabitants at the 2017 census) and the much smaller atoll of Maiʻao (8 8 km2/3 4 sq  miles; 353 inhabitants at the 2017 census), located 78 km (48 mi) southwest of Moʻorea 
Moʻorea-Maiʻao consists of the following associated communes:

The administrative centre of the commune is the settlement of Afareaitu, on the island of Moʻorea 
Passage 14:
Taputapuatea
Taputapuatea is a commune of French Polynesia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean  The commune of Taputapuatea is located on the island of Raiatea, in the administrative subdivision of the Leeward Islands, themselves part of the Society Islands  At the 2017 census it had a population of 4,792  The commune was named after a large marae complex which was the religious center of eastern Polynesia for roughly 1000 years  The archaeological site of Taputapuatea marae is still today the most famous landmark of Raiatea, and it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2017 Taputapuatea consists of the following associated communes:

Avera
Opoa
PuohineThe administrative centre of the commune is the settlement of Avera 
Passage 15:
Pak Tam Chung
Pak Tam Chung (Chinese: 北潭涌) is an area in the southern part of the Sai Kung Peninsula in the New Territories of Hong Kong  It is administratively under the Sai Kung District 

Features
Pak Tam Chung was described as consisting of six villages in 1911 with fewer than 405 inhabitants: Wong Yi Chau (黃宜洲), Pak Tam (北潭), Sheung Yiu (上窰), Tsak Yue Wu (鯽魚湖), Wong Keng Tei (黃麖地) and Tsam Chuk Wan  The six villages were all inhabited by Hakka people, with the exception of two hamlets in Pak Tam There is a visitor centre for nature education set up by the Hong Kong Government  Near the centre is a vehicle barrier leading to the restricted portion of Sai Kung East Country Park in Pak Tam Chung  For vehicles, only those with authorisation can enter the area and reach places like Hoi Ha, Pak Tam Au and High Island Reservoir 
There are a number of picnic and barbecue facilities within Pak Tam Chung, including a site designed for physically disabled visitors 
Po Leung Kuk owns a holiday camp site in Pak Tam Chung, the Po Leung Kuk Pak Tam Chung Camp (保良局北潭涌渡假營) 

See also
Sheung Yiu Folk Museum
Historic churches of Sai Kung Peninsula
Sai Kung Town
Tai Po District
Passage 16:
Minsk Region
Minsk Region, also known as Minsk Oblast or Minsk Voblasts (Belarusian: Мі́нская во́бласць, romanized: Minskaja voblasć, IPA: [ˈmʲinskaja ˈvobɫasʲtsʲ]; Russian: Минская о́бласть, romanized: Minskaya oblast), is one of the regions of Belarus  Its administrative center is Minsk, although it is a separate administrative territorial entity of Belarus  As of 2011, the region's population is 1,411,500 

Geography
Minsk Region covers a total of 39,900 km2, about 19 44% of the national total area  Lake Narach, the largest lake in the country, is located in the northern part of the region  There are four other large lakes in this region: Svir (8th largest), Myadel (11th largest), Syalyava (14th largest) and Myastro (15th largest)  It is the only region of Belarus whose border is not part of the international border of Belarus 

History
Beginning the 10th century, the territory of the current Minsk Region was part of Kievan Rus', the Principality of Polotsk, and later it was included in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania  With the unification of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, the territory became part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 
In 1793, as a result of the second partition of Polish territory, the area was annexed by Russia as the Minsk Region  During the collapse of the Russian Empire due to the Civil War, the western part was annexed to Poland in 1921, while the east became Soviet Belarus 
The Minsk region was established on 15 January 1938, based on the amendment of the Constitutional Law of the USSR  As of 20 February 1938, the area included 20 districts   Following the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, the former Eastern lands of the Second Polish Republic were annexed in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact partitioning Poland and added to the Minsk Region 
On 20 September 1944, by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Gressky, Kopyl, Krasnoslobodski, Luban, Slutsky, Starobin, Starodorozhski districts and the city of Sluck were removed from the Minsk region and transferred to the newly formed Bobruisk Region 
On 8 January 1954, by the decree of the USSR Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the Nesvizhski and Stolbtsovsky districts from the abolished Baranovichi Region, as well as the Glusk, Gressky, Kopyl, Krasnoslobodski, Luban, Slutsky, Starobin, Starodorozhski districts and the city of Sluck from the abolished Bobruisk Region, were added to the Minsk Region 
In 1960, following the abolition of Molodechno Region, its southern part became the northern part of the Minsk Region 

Tourism
The number of travel agencies in Minsk Region grew from twelve in 2000 to seventy in 2010  The most popular tourist destinations of the region are Zaslavskoye Lake, the Zhdanovichi area which has health resorts, Nesvizh Palace and its surroundings, as well as the alpine ski resorts of Logoysk and Silichi 

Administrative subdivisions
The Minsk Region comprises 22 districts (raions), 307 selsovets, 22 cities, 8 city municipalities, and 20 urban-type settlements 

Districts of Minsk Region
Cities and towns
Population of cities and towns in Minsk Region

Demographics
See also
Administrative divisions of Belarus
Villages in Minsk Region
Passage 17:
Federalism
Federalism is a combined and compound mode of government that combines a general government (the central or "federal" government) with regional governments (provincial, state, cantonal, territorial, or other sub-unit governments) in a single political system, dividing the powers between the two  Federalism in the modern era was first adopted in the unions of states during the Old Swiss Confederacy Federalism differs from confederalism, in which the general level of government is subordinate to the regional level, and from devolution within a unitary state, in which the regional level of government is subordinate to the general level  It represents the central form in the pathway of regional integration or separation, bounded on the less integrated side by confederalism and on the more integrated side by devolution within a unitary state Examples of a federation or federal province or state include Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Iraq, Malaysia, Mexico, Micronesia, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States  Some characterize the European Union as the pioneering example of federalism in a multi-state setting, in a concept termed the "federal union of states" 

Overview
Etymology
The terms "federalism" and "confederalism" share a root in the Latin word foedus, meaning "treaty, pact or covenant"  Their common early meaning until the late eighteenth century was a simple league or inter-governmental relationship among sovereign states based on a treaty  They were therefore initially synonyms  It was in this sense that James Madison in Federalist No 39 had referred to the new US Constitution as "neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both" (i e  as constituting neither a single large unitary state nor a league/confederation among several small states, but a hybrid of the two)  In the course of the nineteenth century United States, the meaning of federalism would come to shift, strengthening to refer uniquely to the novel compound political form established at the Philadelphia Convention, while the meaning of confederalism would remain at a league of states 

Origin
In the narrow sense, federalism refers to the mode in which the body politic of a state is organized internally, and this is the meaning most often used in modern times  Political scientists, however, use it in a much broader sense, referring instead to a "multi-layer or pluralistic concept of social and political life "The first forms of federalism took place in ancient times, in the form of alliances between states  Some examples from the seventh to second century B C  were the Archaic League, the Aetolic League, the Peloponnesian League, and the Delian League  An early ancestor of federalism was the Achaean League in Hellenistic Greece  Unlike the Greek city states of Classical Greece, each of which insisted on keeping its complete independence, changing conditions in the Hellenistic period drove many city states to band together even at the cost of losing part of their sovereignty  Subsequent unions of states included the first and second Swiss Confederations (1291–1798 and 1815–48), the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1579–1795), the German Bund (1815–66), the first American union known as the Confederation of the United States of America (1781–89), and second American union formed as the United States of America (1789–1865) 

Political theory
Modern federalism is a political system based upon democratic rules and institutions in which the power to govern is shared between national and provincial/state governments  The term federalist describes several political beliefs around the world depending on context  Since the term federalization also describes distinctive political processes, its use as well depends on the context In political theory, two main types of federalization are recognized:

integrative, or aggregative federalization, designating various processes like: integration of non-federated political subjects by creating a new federation, accession of non-federated subjects into an existing federation, or transformation of a confederation into a federation
devolutive, or dis-aggregative federalization: transformation of a unitary state into a federation

Reasons for adoption
According to Daniel Ziblatt, there are four competing theoretical explanations in the academic literature for the adoption of federal systems:

Ideational theories, which hold that a greater ideological commitment to decentralist ideas in society makes federalism more likely to be adopted 
Cultural-historical theories, which hold that federal institutions are more likely to be adopted in societies with culturally or ethnically fragmented populations 
"Social contract" theories, which hold that federalism emerges as a bargain between a center and a periphery where the center is not powerful enough to dominate the periphery and the periphery is not powerful enough to secede from the center 
"Infrastructural power" theories, which hold that federalism is likely to emerge when the subunits of a potential federation already have highly developed infrastructures (e g  they are already constitutional, parliamentary, and administratively modernized states) Immanuel Kant noted that "the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils" so long as they possess an appropriate constitution which pits opposing factions against each other with a system of checks and balances  In particular individual states required a federation as a safeguard against the possibility of war Proponents for federal systems have historically argued that the power-sharing inherent in federal systems reduces both domestic security threats and foreign threats  Federalism allows states to be large and diverse, mitigating the risk of a tyrannical government through centralization of powers 

Examples
Many countries have implemented federal systems of government with varying degree of central and regional sovereignty  The federal government of these countries can be divided into minimalistic federations, consisting of only two sub-federal units or multi-regional, those that consist of three to dozens of regional governments  They can also be grouped based on their body polity type, such as emirate, provincial, republican or state federal systems  Another way to study federated countries is by categorizing them into those whose entire territory is federated as opposed to only part of its territory comprising the federal portion of the country  Some federal systems are national systems while others, like the European Union are supra national 
In general, two extremes of federalism can be distinguished: at one extreme, the strong federal state is almost completely unitary, with few powers reserved for local governments; while at the other extreme, the national government may be a federal state in name only, being a confederation in actuality  Federalism may encompass as few as two or three internal divisions, as is the case in Belgium or Bosnia and Herzegovina 
The governments of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, and Mexico, among others, are also organized along federalist principles 
In Canada, federalism typically implies opposition to sovereigntist movements (most commonly Quebec separatism)  In 1999, the Government of Canada established the Forum of Federations as an international network for exchange of best practices among federal and federalizing countries  Headquartered in Ottawa, the Forum of Federations partner governments include Australia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan and Switzerland 

Europe vs  the United States
In Europe, "federalist" is sometimes used to describe those who favor a common federal government, with distributed power at regional, national and supranational levels  The Union of European Federalists advocates for this development within the European Union, ultimately leading to the United States of Europe  Although there are medieval and early modern examples of European states which used confederal and federal systems, contemporary European federalism originated in post-war Europe; one of the more important initiatives was Winston Churchill's speech in Zürich in 1946 In the United States, federalism originally referred to belief in a stronger central government  When the U S  Constitution was being drafted, the Federalist Party supported a stronger central government, while "Anti-Federalists" wanted a weaker central government  This is very different from the modern usage of "federalism" in Europe and the United States  The distinction stems from the fact that "federalism" is situated in the middle of the political spectrum between a confederacy and a unitary state  The U S  Constitution was written as a replacement for the Articles of Confederation, under which the United States was a loose confederation with a weak central government 
In contrast, Europe has a greater history of unitary states than North America, thus European "federalism" argues for a weaker central government, relative to a unitary state  The modern American usage of the word is much closer to the European sense  As the power of the U S  federal government has increased, some people have perceived a much more unitary state than they believe the Founding Fathers intended  Most people politically advocating "federalism" in the United States argue in favor of limiting the powers of the federal government, especially the judiciary (see Federalist Society, New Federalism) 
The contemporary concept of federalism came about with the creation of an entirely new system of government that provided for democratic representation at two governing levels simultaneously, which was implemented in the US Constitution  In the United States implementation of federalism, a bicameral general government, consisting of a chamber of popular representation proportional to population (the House of Representatives), and a chamber of equal State-based representation consisting of two delegates per State (the Senate), was overlaid upon the pre-existing regional governments of the thirteen independent States  With each level of government allocated a defined sphere of powers, under a written constitution and the rule of law (that is, subject to the independent third-party arbitration of a supreme court in competence disputes), the two levels were thus brought into a coordinate relationship for the first time 
In 1946, Kenneth Wheare observed that the two levels of government in the US were "co-equally supreme"  In this, he echoed the perspective of American founding father James Madison who saw the several States as forming "distinct and independent portions of the supremacy" in relation to the general government 

Constitutional structure
Division of powers
In a federation, the division of power between federal and regional governments is usually outlined in the constitution  Almost every country allows some degree of regional self-government, but in federations the right to self-government of the component states is constitutionally entrenched  Component states often also possess their own constitutions which they may amend as they see fit, although in the event of conflict the federal constitution usually takes precedence 
In almost all federations the central government enjoys the powers of foreign policy and national defense as exclusive federal powers  Were this not the case a federation would not be a single sovereign state, per the UN definition  Notably, the states of Germany retain the right to act on their own behalf at an international level, a condition originally granted in exchange for the Kingdom of Bavaria's agreement to join the German Empire in 1871  The constitutions of Germany and the United States provide that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government are retained by the states  The Constitution of some countries, like Canada and India, state that powers not explicitly granted to the provincial/state governments are retained by the federal government  Much like the US system, the Australian Constitution allocates to the Federal government (the Commonwealth of Australia) the power to make laws about certain specified matters which were considered too difficult for the States to manage, so that the States retain all other areas of responsibility  Under the division of powers of the European Union in the Lisbon Treaty, powers which are not either exclusively of Union competence or shared between the Union and the Member States as concurrent powers are retained by the constituent States 

Where every component state of a federation possesses the same powers, we are said to find 'symmetric federalism'  Asymmetric federalism exists where states are granted different powers, or some possess greater autonomy than others do  This is often done in recognition of the existence of a distinct culture in a particular region or regions  In Spain, the Basques and Catalans, as well as the Galicians, spearheaded a historic movement to have their national specificity recognized, crystallizing in the "historical communities" such as Navarre, Galicia, Catalonia, and the Basque Country  They have more powers than the later expanded arrangement for other Spanish regions, or the Spain of the autonomous communities (called also the "coffee for everyone" arrangement), partly to deal with their separate identity and to appease peripheral nationalist leanings, partly out of respect to specific rights they had held earlier in history  However, strictly speaking Spain is not a federation, but a system of asymmetric devolved government within a unitary state 
It is common that during the historical evolution of a federation there is a gradual movement of power from the component states to the centre, as the federal government acquires additional powers, sometimes to deal with unforeseen circumstances  The acquisition of new powers by a federal government may occur through formal constitutional amendment or simply through a broadening of the interpretation of a government's existing constitutional powers given by the courts 
Usually, a federation is formed at two levels: the central government and the regions (states, provinces, territories), and little to nothing is said about second or third level administrative political entities  Brazil is an exception, because the 1988 Constitution included the municipalities as autonomous political entities making the federation tripartite, encompassing the Union, the States, and the municipalities  Each state is divided into municipalities (municípios) with their own legislative council (câmara de vereadores) and a mayor (prefeito), which are partly autonomous from both Federal and State Government  Each municipality has a "little constitution", called "organic law" (lei orgânica)  Mexico is an intermediate case, in that municipalities are granted full-autonomy by the federal constitution and their existence as autonomous entities (municipio libre, "free municipality") is established by the federal government and cannot be revoked by the states' constitutions  Moreover, the federal constitution determines which powers and competencies belong exclusively to the municipalities and not to the constituent states  However, municipalities do not have an elected legislative assembly 
Federations often employ the paradox of being a union of states, while still being states (or having aspects of statehood) in themselves  For example, James Madison (author of the US Constitution) wrote in Federalist Paper No  39 that the US Constitution "is in strictness neither a national nor a federal constitution; but a composition of both  In its foundation, it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the Government are drawn, it is partly federal, and partly national   " This stems from the fact that states in the US maintain all sovereignty that they do not yield to the federation by their own consent  This was reaffirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reserves all powers and rights that are not delegated to the Federal Government as left to the States and to the people 

Bicameralism
The structures of most federal governments incorporate mechanisms to protect the rights of component states  One method, known as 'intrastate federalism', is to directly represent the governments of component states in federal political institutions  Where a federation has a bicameral legislature the upper house is often used to represent the component states while the lower house represents the people of the nation as a whole  A federal upper house may be based on a special scheme of apportionment, as is the case in the senates of the United States and Australia, where each state is represented by an equal number of senators irrespective of the size of its population 
Alternatively, or in addition to this practice, the members of an upper house may be indirectly elected by the government or legislature of the component states, as occurred in the United States prior to 1913, or be actual members or delegates of the state governments, as, for example, is the case in the German Bundesrat and in the Council of the European Union  The lower house of a federal legislature is usually directly elected, with apportionment in proportion to population, although states may sometimes still be guaranteed a certain minimum number of seats 

Intergovernmental relations
In Canada, the provincial governments represent regional interests and negotiate directly with the central government  A First Ministers conference of the prime minister and the provincial premiers is the de facto highest political forum in the land, although it is not mentioned in the constitution 

Constitutional change
Federations often have special procedures for amendment of the federal constitution  As well as reflecting the federal structure of the state this may guarantee that the self-governing status of the component states cannot be abolished without their consent  An amendment to the constitution of the United States must be ratified by three-quarters of either the state legislatures, or of constitutional conventions specially elected in each of the states, before it can come into effect  In referendums to amend the constitutions of Australia and Switzerland it is required that a proposal be endorsed not just by an overall majority of the electorate in the nation as a whole, but also by separate majorities in each of a majority of the states or cantons  In Australia, this latter requirement is known as a double majority 
Some federal constitutions also provide that certain constitutional amendments cannot occur without the unanimous consent of all states or of a particular state  The US constitution provides that no state may be deprived of equal representation in the senate without its consent  In Australia, if a proposed amendment will specifically impact one or more states, then it must be endorsed in the referendum held in each of those states  Any amendment to the Canadian constitution that would modify the role of the monarchy would require unanimous consent of the provinces  The German Basic Law provides that no amendment is admissible at all that would abolish the federal system 

Other technical terms
Fiscal federalism – the relative financial positions and the financial relations between the levels of government in a federal system 
Formal federalism (or 'constitutional federalism') – the delineation of powers is specified in a written constitution, which may or may not correspond to the actual operation of the system in practice 
Executive federalism refers in the English-speaking tradition to the intergovernmental relationships between the executive branches of the levels of government in a federal system and in the continental European tradition to the way constituent units 'execute' or administer laws made centrally 
Gleichschaltung – the conversion from a federal governance to either a completely unitary or more unitary one, the term was borrowed from the German for conversion from alternating to direct current  During the Nazi era the traditional German states were mostly left intact in the formal sense, but their constitutional rights and sovereignty were eroded and ultimately ended and replaced with the Gau system  Gleichschaltung also has a broader sense referring to political consolidation in general 
defederalize – to remove from federal government, such as taking a responsibility from a national level government and giving it to states or provinces

In relation to conflict
It has been argued that federalism and other forms of territorial autonomy are a useful way to structure political systems in order to prevent violence among different groups within countries because it allows certain groups to legislate at the subnational level  Some scholars have suggested, however, that federalism can divide countries and result in state collapse because it creates proto-states  Still others have shown that federalism is only divisive when it lacks mechanisms that encourage political parties to compete across regional boundaries Federalism is sometimes viewed in the context of international negotiation as "the best system for integrating diverse nations, ethnic groups, or combatant parties, all of whom may have cause to fear control by an overly powerful center " However, those skeptical of federal prescriptions sometimes believe that increased regional autonomy can lead to secession or dissolution of the nation  In Syria, for example, federalization proposals have failed in part because "Syrians fear that these borders could turn out to be the same as the ones that the fighting parties have currently carved out "

See also
Notes and references
Sources
External links

P -J  Proudhon (1863), The Principle of Federation 



ground_truth: University of Toronto

UT