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

Question: In A League of Their Own, who played the husband of the actress who played Thelma in Thelma and Louise?

The following are given passages.
Context 1: Passage 1:
Thelma Hopkins (athlete)
Thelma Elizabeth Hopkins (born 16 March 1936) is a Northern Irish athlete, who competed in the high and the long jump 
On 5 May 1956 she broke the world record in high jump in Belfast with a jump of 1 74 metres, breaking the record of 1 73 metres set by Aleksandra Chudina of the USSR on 22 May 1954  Her record was broken on 14 July 1956 in Bucharest by Iolanda Balaș of Romania Her achievement in breaking the world record is commemorated by a plaque in Cherryvale Playing Fields, South Belfast 
Hopkins was born in Kingston upon Hull  She competed for Great Britain in the 1956 Summer Olympics held in Melbourne, Australia, in the high jump event, where she won the silver medal jointly with Maria Pisareva  In the 1954 Commonwealth Games she won a gold medal for Northern Ireland 
As well as athletics she excelled at hockey where she was a regular choice for the Ireland women's national field hockey team, playing at forward and winning 40 caps  She also represented Ireland as an international Squash player 
She was one of many signatories in a letter to The Times on 17 July 1958 opposing 'the policy of apartheid' in international sport and defending 'the principle of racial equality which is embodied in the Declaration of the Olympic Games' 
Passage 2:
That Certain Something
That Certain Something is a 1941 Australian musical film directed by Clarence G  Badger and starring Megan Edwards and Thelma Grigg  The plot concerns an American film director who decides to make a musical in Australia  It was the last film directed by Badger, a noted silent era director 

Plot
A famous director, Robert Grimble, comes to Australia to make a film about pioneering women and seeks for an unknown to play the lead role  He casts socialist Miss Hemingway, who soon proves to be temperamental  She is tricked into walking off the job by Jimmie Jones who wants his girlfriend Patsy cast  He succeeds and Patsy becomes a star 

Cast
Production
The film was the first from Argosy Films and was made with the assistance of a bank overdraft from the New South Wales government  It was directed by Clarence Badger, a Hollywood director who had retired to Australia  The original title was Daughters of Australia Megan Edwards had only appeared in a few stage shows before being cast in the lead  She later received a three-year contract from a Hollywood manager The seven-week shoot took place at Pagewood Studios, the first movie made there in three years  The colonial sequence was especially researched  The camera crew included notable cameraman John Howes, who died aged 29 

Release
Despite securing distribution from RKO, reception to the film from critics and the public was poor 
Passage 3:
The Proud and Profane
The Proud and Profane is a dramatic war romance made by William Perlberg-George Seaton Productions for Paramount Pictures  released in theaters on June 13, 1956  It was directed by George Seaton and produced by William Perlberg, from a screenplay by George Seaton, based on the 1953 novel The Magnificent Bastards by Lucy Herndon Crockett  The film stars William Holden and Deborah Kerr with Thelma Ritter, Dewey Martin, William Redfield and Peter Hansen in supporting roles 

Plot
In 1943, Lee Ashley, the widow of a Paramarine lieutenant killed in the Battle of Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal has joined the American Red Cross un Noumea, New Caledonia, to entertain American servicemen  Her leader at the service club, Kate Connors, had initially been reluctant to have her assigned there lest she use her position as a pilgrimage to find out about her late husband  In addition to entertaining, serving the soldiers and giving French lessons, the Red Cross women are expected to help with the wounded — which Lee initially refuses to do 
A Marine Raider battalion comes to New Caledonia after fighting in the South Pacific  Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Colin Black, objects to the Red Cross women treating his men softly; he states that the only place for women in war are "skirts" that the men chase and the "sweethearts" that wait for them back home  He changes his mind when he tries to seduce the attractive Lee, who initially refuses his advances  Black decides to gain her interest by pretending he knew Lee's late husband and was with him shortly before he died  Though Lee despises the colonel's arrogance and demands, she is fascinated by him and falls in love with him 
Another member of the battalion is the Navy chaplain, Lieutenant Junior Grade Holmes, whom Kate notices is a changed, silent, and saddened man since she last knew him  During a battle, Holmes had gathered some Marines together in prayer  A Japanese soldier, thought to be dead, threw a hand grenade, killing several and wounding their sergeant  Black demotes the wounded sergeant because he should have known better than to let his men gather in the open and never lets him forget that his presence caused their deaths, with the bodies of the Marines shielding the chaplain from injury  Holmes's guilt is compounded by a tropical fever and exhaustion from working that has taken its toll 
Another man in the battalion is Private Eddie Wodcik, whom Kate had adopted and raised in New York  Kate loves him like her own child and he reciprocates when he is not being watched by his fellow Marines  Eddie feels that Lee looks exactly like his sister would have if she had not died and becomes her protector  Wodcik throws a disrespectful sailor to the floor using jiu jitsu 
Lee and the colonel have dinner on board an American warship  A former neighbor of Lee is now a naval officer aboard and is present at dinner  Lee and the naval officer spend the evening talking about their pre-war civilian lives in a wealthy community  An angry Black later relates to Lee his life of childhood poverty as a half-Indian in Montana  When the Raiders are shipped out for a couple of months, Lee discovers she is pregnant and that the colonel has a wife in Washington  She later learns things about her husband that she never knew  The hot-headed Wodcik also discovers what his colonel has done to Lee 

Cast
Production
Lucy Herndon Crockett (born 4 April 1914 in Honolulu) was a Red Cross worker in the Pacific during World War II  She traveled with Basil O'Connor, national chairman of the American Red Cross, during the war as his secretary and speechwriter  An author of nine books, she wrote the 1953 book The Magnificent Bastards about her experiences with the U S  Marine Corps 

Filming
The film was made with Defense Department cooperation in the United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico with production design reflecting New Caledonia in 1943  Technical advisors were Major John W  Antonelli former 1st Marine Raider Battalion and Mary Louise Dowling, Louise A  Wood and Margaret Hagan of the American Red Cross  
Paramount picked up the film rights for The Magnificent Bastards in 1954 and announced Deborah Kerr for the lead   Paramount also stated they would release the film under a different title 

Score and original music
Composer Victor Young wrote the film's score  Ross Bagdasarian Sr  wrote a tie-in song The Ballad of Colin Black 

Reception
Film critic Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote in his review: "ANOTHER exhaustive contemplation of the effects of a wartime romance on a sensitive and susceptible woman is put forth in The Proud and Profane, a William Perlberg-George Seaton production for Paramount that came to the Astor yesterday  The lady who runs the emotional gamut for all to behold in this film is an American Red Cross worker at Noumea in the South Pacific during World War II, and the gentleman with whom she dilly-dallies more than somewhat is a major of American marines  With Deborah Kerr as the lady and William Holden as the marine, two earnest and versatile performances are initially guaranteed  That is the virtue of this picture  Miss Kerr does a continuously interesting job as a nervous and self-pitying widow of a marine killed on Guadalcanal who falls for the rough, tough, ruthless major that Mr  Holden plays  And he, in turn, commands attention with the unrelenting vigor and sting that he gives to this hardbitten soldier who starts the chase with only one thing in mind "

Awards
The Proud and Profane was nominated for two Academy Awards, for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White (Hal Pereira, A  Earl Hedrick, Samuel M  Comer, Frank R  McKelvy) and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White (Edith Head) 

See also
List of American films of 1956
Passage 4:
The Wiz (film)
The Wiz is a 1978 American musical adventure fantasy film directed by Sidney Lumet  A reimagining of L  Frank Baum's classic 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz featuring an all African-American cast, the film was adapted from the 1974 Broadway musical of the same title  It follows the adventures of Dorothy, a shy, twenty-four year old Harlem schoolteacher who finds herself magically transported to the urban fantasy Land of Oz, which resembles a dream version of New York City  Befriended by a Scarecrow, a Tin Man and a Cowardly Lion, she travels through the city to seek an audience with the mysterious Wiz, who they say is the only one powerful enough to send her home 
Produced by Universal Pictures and Motown Productions, filming took place in Queens, New York from October to December 1977, with a cast starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson (in his feature film debut), Nipsey Russell, Ted Ross, Mabel King, Theresa Merritt, Thelma Carpenter, Lena Horne and Richard Pryor  Its story was reworked from William F  Brown's Broadway libretto by Joel Schumacher, and Quincy Jones supervised the adaptation of Charlie Smalls and Luther Vandross' songs for it  A handful of new songs, written by Jones and the songwriting team of Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson, were added for the project 
The Wiz was theatrically released on October 24, 1978 to critical and commercial failure, marking the end of the resurgence of African-American films that began with the blaxploitation movement of the early 1970s  The film received generally negative reviews from critics, with many unfavorably comparing the film to its source material, and criticizing the casting of Diana Ross as Dorothy  Despite its initial failure, it became a cult classic among audiences, Jackson's fanbase and Oz enthusiasts  It also received four Oscar nominations at the 51st Academy Awards (Best Score, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design)  
Certain aspects influenced The Wiz Live!, a live television adaptation of the musical, aired on NBC in 2015 

Plot
A crowded Thanksgiving dinner brings a host of family together in a small Harlem apartment, where shy, twenty-four-year-old elementary schoolteacher Dorothy Gale lives with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry ("The Feeling That We Once Had")  Extremely introverted, she is teased by Aunt Em for having delayed moving out to start her life as an adult ("Can I Go On?")  While Dorothy cleans up after the meal, her dog Toto runs out the open kitchen door into a snowstorm  She succeeds in retrieving him but finds herself trapped in the storm  A magical whirlwind made of snow materializes and transports them to the realm of Oz, depicted as a dystopian version of New York City 
As Dorothy descends from the atmosphere she smashes through an electric "Oz" sign, which falls upon and kills Evermean, the Wicked Witch of the East who rules Munchkinland  As a result, she frees the Munchkins who populate the playground into which she lands  Dorothy soon meets the Munchkins' main benefactress, Miss One, the Good Witch of the North, a magical "numbers runner" who gives her Evermean's charmed silver slippers  Dorothy declares she just wants to get home to Aunt Em  Miss One urges her to follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and seek the help of the powerful "Wiz" ("He's the Wiz")  After telling her never to take the silver shoes off, Miss One and the Munchkins disappear and Dorothy is left to search for the road on her own ("Soon As I Get Home") 
The next morning, Dorothy happens upon a mysterious scarecrow made of garbage and saves him from being teased by a group of humanoid crows ("You Can't Win")  The Scarecrow hopes the Wiz might be able to give him the one thing he feels that he lacks: a brain  They discover the yellow brick road and begin to "Ease on Down the Road"  Along the way, they meet the Tin Man in an abandoned amusement park ("If I Could Feel"/"Slide Some Oil to Me") and a Cowardly Lion, banished from the jungle ("I'm a Mean Ol' Lion")  The Tin Man and Lion join them on their quest to find the Wiz, hoping to gain a heart and courage, respectively  En route to the Emerald City, the adventurers escape from a haunted subway station and a group of flamboyant prostitutes known as the "Poppy Girls", who seduce the Lion  The Lion feels deeply ashamed of leading Dorothy into a trap, but she and the rest of the gang cheer him up ("Be a Lion") 
Finally reaching the Emerald City, the four friends are granted an audience with the Wiz, who appears to them as a giant fire-breathing metallic head  He will only grant their wishes if they kill the sister of the Wicked Witch of the East, Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West, who runs a sweatshop in the underground sewers of Oz  Before they can reach her domain, Evillene learns of their quest to kill her and sends out the Flying Monkeys to capture them ("Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News") 
Vengeful for Dorothy having killed her sister, she dismembers the Scarecrow, flattens the Tin Man, and hangs the Lion up by his tail in hopes of making Dorothy give her the silver shoes  When she threatens to throw Toto into a fiery cauldron, Dorothy nearly gives in until the Scarecrow hints to her to activate a fire sprinkler switch  The sprinklers put out the fire and melt Evillene  With Evillene dead, her spells lose their power, resulting in the freedom of all her sweat shop workers and prisoners ("A Brand New Day") 
The Flying Monkeys give Dorothy and her friends a triumphant ride back to the Emerald City, where they discover that the Wiz is actually Herman Smith, a failed politician from Atlantic City  The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion are distraught that they will never receive their brain, heart, and courage, but Dorothy makes them realize that they already have had these things all along ("Believe in Yourself") even as she fears she will never find her own way home  Glinda appears and implores her to use the magic of the silver slippers ("Believe in Yourself (Reprise)")  After thanking Glinda and saying goodbye to her friends, she reminisces about "Home"  She clicks her heels together three times and discovers she is back near home with Toto in her arms 

Cast
Music
All songs written by Charlie Smalls, unless otherwise noted 

Production
Pre-production and development
The Wiz was the eighth feature film produced by Motown Productions, the film/television division of Berry Gordy's Motown Records label  Gordy originally wanted the teenaged future R&B singer Stephanie Mills, who had originated the role on Broadway, to be cast as Dorothy  When Motown star Diana Ross asked Gordy if she could be cast as Dorothy, he declined, saying that Ross—then 33 years old—was too old for the role  Ross went around Gordy and convinced executive producer Rob Cohen at Universal Pictures to arrange a deal where he would produce if Ross was cast as Dorothy  Gordy and Cohen agreed to the deal  Pauline Kael, a film critic, described Ross's efforts to get the film into production as "perhaps the strongest example of sheer will in film history "After filmmaker John Badham learned that Ross was cast as Dorothy, he decided not to direct, and Cohen replaced him with Sidney Lumet  Of his decision not to direct The Wiz, Badham recalled telling Cohen that he thought Ross was "a wonderful singer  She's a terrific actress and a great dancer, but she's not this character  She's not the little six-year-old girl Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz " Lumet’s hiring was met with skepticism, as he was known as a dramatic filmmaker with no previous musical directing experience Though 20th Century Fox had financially backed the stage musical, they ended up exercising their first refusal rights to the film production, which gave Universal an opening to finance the film  Initially, Universal was so excited about the film's prospects that they did not set a budget for production 

Writing
Joel Schumacher's script was influenced by Werner Erhard's teachings and his Erhard Seminars Training ("est") movement, as both Schumacher and Ross were "very enamored of Werner Erhard"  "Before I knew it," said Rob Cohen, "the movie was becoming an est-ian fable full of est buzzwords about knowing who you are and sharing and all that  I hated the script a lot  But it was hard to argue with [Ross] because she was recognizing in this script all of this stuff that she had worked out in est seminars " Schumacher spoke positively of the results of the est training, stating that he was "eternally grateful for learning that I was responsible for my life " However, he also complained that "everybody stayed exactly the way they were and went around spouting all this bull shit " Of est and Erhard references in the film itself, The Grove Book of Hollywood notes that the speech delivered by Glinda the Good Witch at the end of the film was "a litany of est-like platitudes", and the book also makes est comparisons to the song "Believe in Yourself"  Although Schumacher had seen the Broadway play before writing the script, none of the play's writing was incorporated into the film, a fact that was noted and heavily criticized after release During production, Lumet felt that the finished film would be "an absolutely unique experience that nobody has ever witnessed before " When asked about any possible influence from MGM's popular 1939 film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, Lumet stated that "there was nothing to be gained from [the 1939 film] other than to make certain we didn't use anything from it  They made a brilliant movie, and even though our concept is different – they're Kansas, we're New York; they're white, we're black, and the score and the books are totally different – we wanted to make sure that we never overlapped in any area "

Casting
Michael Jackson, a former Motown star and close friend of Ross, was cast as the Scarecrow  By the start of development, he and his brothers The Jacksons (with the exception of Jermaine Jackson) had left Motown for Epic Records in 1975, after the release of their tenth album Moving Violation, though Michael had yet to release a solo album since Forever, Michael  Cohen, head of Motown Productions, thought Jackson would be perfect for the role of the Scarecrow, and approached Gordy with the idea, who agreed, though Lumet was harder to convince  Lumet wanted Jimmie Walker, star of CBS-TV's Good Times, telling Cohen “Michael Jackson’s a Vegas act  The Jackson 5’s a Vegas act ” Quincy Jones was also skeptical of Jackson, but after Cohen arranged a meeting, flying 19-year-old Jackson to New York, Lumet and Jones saw the qualities that Cohen saw  Jackson's father, Joseph, was wary of the project and saw it as a threat to the Jacksons group cohesion  Cohen moved Michael and his sister La Toya into a Manhattan apartment, allowing him to be on his own for the first time  During production, he became a frequent visitor to New York's famous Studio 54  Jackson was dedicated to the Scarecrow role, and watched videotapes of gazelles, cheetahs and panthers in order to learn graceful movements for his part  The long hours of uncomfortable prosthetic makeup by Stan Winston did not bother him  During production, Jackson asked Quincy Jones who he would recommend as a producer on a yet unrecorded solo album project  Jones, impressed by Jackson's professionalism, talent and work ethic, offered to be producer of what became Off The Wall (1979), then later on the hugely successful albums Thriller (1982) and Bad (1987) 
Ted Ross and Mabel King were brought in to reprise their respective roles from the stage musical, while Nipsey Russell was cast as the Tin Man  Lena Horne, mother-in-law to Lumet during the time of production, was cast as Glinda the Good Witch, and comedian Richard Pryor portrayed The Wiz  The film's choreographer was Louis Johnson 

Filming
Principal photography began on October 3, 1977 and concluded on December 29, 1977  It took place at Astoria Studios in Queens, New York  The decaying New York State Pavilion from the 1964 New York World's Fair was used as the set for Munchkinland, Astroland at Coney Island was used for the Tinman scene with The Cyclone as a backdrop, while the World Trade Center served as the Emerald City  The Emerald City scenes were elaborate, using 650 dancers, 385 crew members and 1,200 costumes  Costume designer Tony Walton enlisted the help of high fashion designers in New York City for the Emerald City sequence, and obtained exotic costumes and fabric from designers such as Oscar de la Renta and Norma Kamali  Albert Whitlock created the film's visual special effects, while Stan Winston served as the head makeup artist 

Songs and score
Quincy Jones served as musical supervisor and music producer  He later wrote that he initially did not want to work on the film, but did it as a favor to Lumet  The film marked Jones' first time working with Jackson, and Jones later produced three hit albums for Jackson: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982) and Bad (1987)  Jones recalled working with Jackson as one of his favorite experiences from The Wiz, and spoke of Jackson's dedication to his role, comparing his acting style to Sammy Davis, Jr  Jones had a brief cameo during the "Gold" segment of the Emerald City sequence, playing what looks like a fifty-foot grand piano 
Of the 28 numbers originally composed by Charlie Smalls and company, 17 were retained in full or in part for the film  “Tornado Ballet”, “I Was Born On The Day Before Yesterday”, “Kalidah Battle”, “Lion's Dream”, “Emerald City Ballet (Psst)”, “So You Wanted to Meet the Wizard”, the Act 2 Entr'acte, “Funky Monkeys”, “Who Do You Think You Are?”, “Y'all Got It”, and “A Rested Body” were cut 
Four new numbers were added, "Can I Go On?", the instrumental "Poppy Girls Theme", "Emerald City Sequence" and "Is This What Feeling Gets? (Dorothy's Theme)"  “You Can't Win”, a song originally written for the musical’s Baltimore run that was cut after it was transferred to Broadway, was reincorporated 

Release and reception
Box office
The Wiz proved to be a commercial failure, as the $24 million production only earned $13 6 million at the box office  Though prerelease television broadcast rights had been sold to CBS for over $10 million, in the end, the film produced a net loss of $10 4 million for Motown and Universal  At the time, it was the most expensive film musical ever made  The film's failure steered Hollywood studios away from producing the all-black film projects that had become popular during the blaxploitation era of the early to mid-1970s for several years 

Home media
The film was first released on VHS home video in 1981 by MCA/Universal Home Video (with a reissue in 1992) and was first broadcast on television on CBS on October 11, 1980 then on May 5, 1984 (edited to 100 minutes), to capitalize on Jackson's massive popularity at the time  It continues to be broadcast periodically on Black-focused networks such as BET, TVOne, BET Her, and was the inaugural broadcast on the Bounce TV digital broadcast network  The Wiz is often broadcast on Thanksgiving Day (attributed to the opening scene of Dorothy's family gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner) The film was released on DVD in 1999; a remastered version entitled The Wiz: 30th Anniversary Edition was released in 2008  Extras on both DVD releases include a 1978 featurette about the film's production and the original theatrical trailer  A Blu-ray version was released in 2010 

Critical reception
Critics panned The Wiz upon its October 1978 release  Many reviewers directed their criticism at Diana Ross, whom they believed was too old to play Dorothy  Most agreed that what had worked so successfully on stage simply did not translate well to the screen  Hischak's Through the Screen Door: What Happened to the Broadway Musical When It Went to Hollywood criticized "Joel Schumacher's cockamamy screenplay", and called "Believe in Yourself" the score's weakest song  He described Diana Ross's portrayal of Dorothy as: "cold, neurotic and oddly unattractive"; and noted that the film was "a critical and box office bust"  In his work History of the American Cinema, Harpole characterized the film as "one of the decade's biggest failures", and, "the year's biggest musical flop"  The Grove Book of Hollywood noted that "the picture finished off Diana Ross's screen career", as the film was Ross's final theatrical feature  In his 2004 book Blockbuster, Tom Shone referred to The Wiz as "expensive crud"  In the book Mr  and Mrs  Hollywood, the author criticized the script, noting, "The Wiz was too scary for children, and too silly for adults " Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, did not think highly of The Wiz, stating "The Wiz is overblown and will never have the universal appeal that the classic MGM musical has obtained "The decision to hire Sidney Lumet, a dramatic filmmaker without any prior experience directing musicals, was criticized, with many critics believing his style was unsuited to the material or genre  The cinematography and production design, which replaced the fantastical Oz settings of the stage version with gritty urban cityscapes, were likewise criticized  Critics also questioned the decision to cut large portions of the original score, in some cases substituting original compositions that were regarded as inferior Jackson's performance as the Scarecrow was one of the few positively reviewed elements, with critics noting that Jackson possessed "genuine acting talent" and "provided the only genuinely memorable moments " Of the results of the film, Jackson stated: "I don't think it could have been any better, I really don't " In 1980, Jackson stated that his time working on The Wiz was "my greatest experience so far       I'll never forget that " Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film some of its most positive reviews on Sneak Previews  Siskel called it "superior musical theater," said Diana Ross was "superb," "terrific" and came across as "a real star" but had reservations about the film's "heavy message " Ebert praised other cast members and numerous technical aspects of the film, saying it was "fun" and in the "great tradition of the American musical " The film received another positive critique for its elaborate set design in the book American Jewish Filmmakers, which noted that it "features some of the most imaginative adaptations of New York locales since the glory days of the Astaire-Rogers films " In a 2004 review of the film, Christopher Null wrote positively of Ted Ross and Richard Pryor's performances  However, Null's overall review of the film was critical, and he wrote that other than the song "Ease on Down the Road", "the rest is an acid trip of bad dancing, garish sets, and a Joel Schumacher-scripted mess that runs 135 agonizing minutes " A 2005 piece by Hank Stuever in The Washington Post described the film as "a rather appreciable delight, even when it's a mess", and felt that the singing – especially Diana Ross's – was "a marvel" The New York Times analyzed the film within a discussion of the genre of blaxploitation: "As the audience for blaxploitation dwindled, it seemed as if Car Wash and The Wiz might be the last gasp of what had been a steadily expanding black presence in mainstream filmmaking " The St  Petersburg Times noted, "Of course, it only took one flop like The Wiz (1978) to give Hollywood an excuse to retreat to safer (i e , whiter) creative ground until John Singleton and Spike Lee came along  Yet, without blaxploitation there might not have been another generation of black filmmakers, no Denzel Washington or Angela Bassett, or they might have taken longer to emerge " The Boston Globe commented, "the term 'black film' should be struck from the critical vocabulary  To appreciate just how outmoded, deceptive and limiting it is, consider the following, all of which have been described as black films,      " and characterized The Wiz in a list that also featured 1970s films Shaft (1971), Blacula (1972), and Super Fly (1972) Despite its lack of critical or commercial success in its original release, The Wiz became a cult classic, especially because it features Michael Jackson in his first starring theatrical film role  Jackson later starred in films such as Disney's Captain EO in 1986, the anthology film Moonwalker in 1988 and the posthumous documentary This Is It in 2009 As of November 2021, The Wiz holds a 41% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 34 reviews, with the consensus; "This workmanlike movie musical lacks the electricity of the stage version (and its cinematic inspiration), but it's bolstered by strong performances by Diana Ross and Michael Jackson " On Metacritic, the film has a score of 53 out of 100 based on 11 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews" 

Accolades
See also
Adaptations of The Wizard of Oz
Passage 5:
A League of Their Own
A League of Their Own is a 1992 American sports comedy-drama film directed by Penny Marshall that tells a fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL)  It stars Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, Lori Petty, Rosie O'Donnell, Jon Lovitz, David Strathairn, Garry Marshall and Bill Pullman  It was written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel from a story by Kelly Candaele and Kim Wilson 
A League of Their Own was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $132 4 million worldwide and garnering acclaim for Marshall's direction and the performances of its ensemble cast  In 2012, the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" 

Plot
In 1988, Dottie Hinson attends the opening of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame  She sees many former teammates and friends, prompting a flashback to 1943 
When World War II threatens to shut down Major League Baseball, Chicago Cubs owner Walter Harvey persuades his fellow owners to bankroll a women's league  Ira Lowenstein is put in charge  Scout Ernie Capadino attends an industrial-league softball game in Oregon and likes what he sees in Dottie, the catcher for a local dairy  She is not interested; she is happy with her life while waiting for her husband Bob to return from the war  Her younger sister Kit Keller, however, is desperate to get away and make something of herself  Capadino is unimpressed by Kit's batting and refuses to watch her pitch, but agrees to take her along if she changes Dottie's mind  Dottie agrees for her sister's sake 
Dottie and Kit travel to Harvey Field in Chicago for the tryout  They meet taxi dancer Mae "All the Way Mae" Mordabito and her best friend, bouncer Doris Murphy, soft-spoken right fielder Evelyn Gardner, illiterate left fielder Shirley Baker, pitcher/shortstop and former Miss Georgia beauty queen Ellen Sue Gotlander, left field/relief pitcher Betty "Spaghetti" Horn, second baseman Marla Hooch, first baseman Helen Haley, and Alice "Skeeter" Gaspers  They and five others constitute the Rockford Peaches, while 48 others make up the Racine Belles, Kenosha Comets, and South Bend Blue Sox 
The Peaches are managed by former star Cubs slugger Jimmy Dugan, a cynical alcoholic  He initially treats the whole thing as a joke, forcing Dottie to take over as on-field leader initially  Dugan is also abrasive toward his players  The team travels with Evelyn's spoiled bratty son Stillwell and tightly wound team chaperone Miss Cuthburt  With a Life magazine photographer in the stands, Lowenstein begs the players to do something spectacular, as the league has attracted little attention  Dottie obliges, catching a popped-up ball behind home plate while doing a split  The resulting photograph makes the magazine cover  A publicity campaign draws more people to the ballgames, but the owners remain unconvinced 
The teammates bond  Marla marries a man named Nelson whom she met on a raucous roadhouse outing and leaves the team for the rest of the season, Mae teaches Shirley to read, and Evelyn writes a team song  Lowenstein makes Dottie the face of the league, making Kit resentful  Their sibling rivalry intensifies, resulting in Kit's trade to the Racine Belles 
The Peaches end the season with the league's best record, qualifying for the World Series  Jimmy gives Betty a telegram informing her that her husband was killed in action in the Pacific Theater  Grief-stricken, she leaves the team  That evening, Dottie receives a surprise when Bob shows up, having been wounded and discharged from the Army  Jimmy discovers that Dottie is going home with Bob  Unable to persuade her to play in the World Series, he tells her she will regret her decision 
The Peaches face the Belles in the World Series, which goes the full seven games  Dottie rejoins the Peaches for the seventh game, while Kit is the starting pitcher for the Belles  With the Belles leading by a run in the top of the ninth, Dottie drives in the go-ahead run  Kit is distraught, but gets a second chance when she comes to bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth  She gets a hit and, ignoring the third base coach's sign to stop, scores the winning run by knocking her sister over at the plate and dislodging the ball from Dottie's hand 
The sellout crowd convinces Harvey to give Lowenstein the owners' support  After the game, the sisters reconcile before Dottie leaves with Bob 
In the present, Dottie is reunited with the other players, including Kit, Capadino and Lowenstein  The surviving Peaches sing Evelyn's team song and pose for a photo  During the closing credits, they play baseball at Doubleday Field 

Cast
Rockford Peaches
Others
Production
Development
Director Penny Marshall was inspired by the 1987 TV documentary A League of their Own, about the AAGPBL  She had never heard of the league, and contacted the film's creators, Kelly Candaele and Kim Wilson, to collaborate with the scriptwriters, Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz, on producing a screenplay for 20th Century Fox  Fox eventually passed on the script and Marshall signed with Sony Pictures, who were eager to produce it 

Casting
On MLB Network's Costas at the Movies in 2013, director Penny Marshall talked about her initial interest in Demi Moore for the part of Dottie Hinson: "Demi Moore, I liked, but by the time we came around, she was pregnant " Debra Winger was then cast as Dottie and spent three months training with the Chicago Cubs in preparation  However, she dropped out of the production four weeks before the start of principal photography, later saying that the casting of Madonna was the reason for her decision  Marshall chose Geena Davis to replace Winger USC assistant baseball coach Bill Hughes was the film’s technical adviser and put the film’s ensemble cast through baseball camp three months before filming 

Filming
Principal photography began July 10, 1991  Filming the game scenes involved many physical mishaps: Anne Ramsay (Helen Haley) broke her nose with a baseball mitt while trying to catch a ball, and the large bruise seen on actress Renée Coleman's thigh was real 
Discussing the skirts they wore playing in the film, Geena Davis said on MLB Network's Costas at the Movies in 2013, "Some of our real cast, from sliding into home, had ripped the skin off their legs  It was nutty " In a 2021 interview, Petty claimed to have broken her foot during filming, but reiterated her enjoyment of the shoot and the understanding of the film's importance at the time The tryout scene, at a fictional Major League Baseball stadium in Chicago called Harvey Field, was filmed at the Chicago Cubs' home stadium, Wrigley Field  The Rockford Peaches' home games were filmed at League Stadium in Huntingburg, Indiana, and the championship game against Racine was filmed at Bosse Field in Evansville, Indiana  Additional games were filmed at Jay Littleton Ball Park in Ontario, California  The final week of shooting was during late October 1991 in Cooperstown, New York, where 65 original AAGPBL members appeared in scenes recreating the induction of the league into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988  Due to the length of the schedule, the cast entertained themselves by putting on an elaborate amateur production, "Jesus Christ Superstar Goes Hawaiian "

Soundtrack
A League of Their Own soundtrack was released on CD and cassette tape by Columbia Records on June 30, 1992  The album peaked at #159 on the US Billboard 200 albums chart on July 25, 1992  Although Madonna contributed "This Used to Be My Playground" to the film, featured over the closing credits, her recording was not included on the soundtrack album for contractual reasons 

Reception
Box office
A League of Their Own was released on July 1, 1992, and grossed $13 2 million in its first weekend, finishing second at the box office behind Batman Returns  In its second weekend it dropped just 15%, making $11 5 million and finishing first  It ended up a commercial success, making $107 5 million in the United States and Canada, but only $24 9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $132 4 million against a production budget of $40 million 

Critical response
The film was well received by critics, who praised the cast 
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an approval rating of 81% based on 79 reviews, with an average score of 7/10  The website's critical consensus reads: "Sentimental and light, but still thoroughly charming, A League of Their Own is buoyed by solid performances from a wonderful cast " On Metacritic, the film received a weighted average score of 69 based 21 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews"  Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: "Though big of budget, A League of Their Own is one of the year's most cheerful, most relaxed, most easily enjoyable comedies  It's a serious film that's lighter than air, a very funny movie that manages to score a few points for feminism in passing " Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3 out of 4 stars and wrote: "The movie has a real bittersweet charm  The baseball sequences, we've seen before  What's fresh are the personalities of the players, the gradual unfolding of their coach and the way this early chapter of women's liberation fit into the hidebound traditions of professional baseball "

Accolades
On December 19, 2012, it was announced that A League of Their Own would be preserved in the United States National Film Registry Jimmy Dugan's (Tom Hanks) remark to Evelyn Gardner (Bitty Schram), "There's no crying in baseball!", was ranked 54th on the American Film Institute's 2005 list AFI's 100 Years   100 Movie Quotes 

20th anniversary Blu-ray edition
A League of Their Own was released as a 20th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray on October 16, 2012 47 former AAGPBL players reunited in New York to celebrate the film and the real women who inspired it  Events included a trip to Cooperstown for a special program at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, reminiscent of the film's final scene depicting AAGPBL players and family meeting to honor the Women's Professional Baseball League  The reunion wrapped up with a game of softball held at Alliance Bank Stadium in nearby Syracuse Former players also made an appearance at Bosse Field in Evansville, Indiana on June 6, 2012, where many of the film's game scenes were filmed  Bosse Field still retains many of the Racine Belles themes from the movie  The event included an outdoor screening of the film, and a display of cars featured in the film  In addition to Bosse Field, the production used Huntingburg, Indiana's League Stadium, another Southwestern Indiana field older than Bosse, that was renovated for it 

Spinoffs
A short-lived series of the same title based on the film aired on CBS in April 1993, with Garry Marshall, Megan Cavanagh, Tracy Reiner, Freddie Simpson, and Jon Lovitz reprising their roles  Carey Lowell took over Geena Davis's role  Only five of the six episodes made were broadcast 
On August 6, 2020, Amazon Video ordered a reboot series with the same title as the movie  The series debuted on August 12, 2022 on  Amazon  On March 14, 2023 it was announced that the rebooted series would end with a four-episode second season bringing the total number of episodes of the series to twelve after having aired eight episodes in its first season 

See also
Women in baseball
List of baseball films
Passage 6:
Jean Grossholtz
Thelma Jean Grossholtz (April 17, 1929 – February 9, 2021) was an American professor emeritus of politics and women's studies at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts  Beyond her academic work she was also known as an activist for peace and against forced prostitution, and as a senior bodybuilder 

Academic career
After completing undergraduate work at Pennsylvania State University in 1956, Grossholtz earned a master's degree at the University of Denver in 1957, with a master's thesis on Germany–Spain relations in World War II  Grossholtz went on to earn a Doctor of Philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961, where she trained as a specialist in South East Asian Politics  At Mount Holyoke, she became a founder of the women's studies program  She retired in 1999 

Other activities
Grossholtz was arrested as an anti-war protester over dates ranging from 1941 to 2014  She was one of several pacifists from the Pioneer Valley profiled in the 2005 documentary film The Peace Patriots Although she was unathletic until her 50s, when she was 65 she won a silver medal in bodybuilding in the 1994 Gay Games   Grossholtz died February 9, 2021 

Selected publications
Grossholtz's publications include:

Grossholtz, Jean (1964), Politics in the Philippines: A Country Study, Boston, Massachusetts: Little Brown
Bourque, Susan C ; Grossholtz, Jean (June 1974), "Politics an unnatural practice: Political science looks at female participation", Politics & Society, 4 (2): 225–266, doi:10 1177/003232927400400205, S2CID 143813325
Grossholtz, Jean (1984), Forging Capitalist Patriarchy: The Economic and Social Transformation of Feudal Sri Lanka and Its Impact on Women, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press
Passage 7:
Thelma & Louise
Thelma & Louise is a 1991 American film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Callie Khouri  The film has elements of multiple genres and has been described as a drama, adventure or road movie with elements of a romantic comedy  It stars Susan Sarandon as Louise and Geena Davis as Thelma, two friends who embark on a road trip that ends up in unforeseen circumstances  Filming took place in California and Utah from June to August 1990  The supporting cast include Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Christopher McDonald, and Brad Pitt in one of his first major film roles  
The film was a critical and commercial success, receiving six Academy Award nominations and winning for Best Original Screenplay  Scott was nominated for Best Director, and both Sarandon and Davis were nominated for Best Actress  To date, this is the most recent film to have two actors nominated in the same category for either Best Actor or Best Actress  It influenced other films and artistic works and became a landmark of feminist film 
In 2016, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" 

Plot
Best friends Thelma Dickinson and Louise Sawyer set out for a weekend vacation at a fishing cabin in the mountains to take a break from their dreary lives in Arkansas  Thelma, a housewife, is married to disrespectful and controlling carpet salesman Darryl, while sharp-tongued Louise works as a waitress in a diner and is dating easygoing musician Jimmy, who is on the road most of the time 
On the way, they stop at a roadhouse bar, where Thelma dances with a flirtatious stranger, Harlan  He takes her to the parking lot and tries to rape her until Louise intervenes and threatens to shoot him  As the women walk away, Harlan yells vulgarities at them, so Louise shoots him in a fit of rage 
At a motel they discuss how to handle the situation  Thelma wants to go to the police, but Louise fears that no one will believe a claim of attempted rape as Thelma was drinking and dancing with Harlan and also having no evidence of the rape, and they will be charged with murder  They decide to flee to Mexico, but Louise demands they travel there without going through Texas, as something happened to her there several years earlier which she refuses to reveal  Heading west, they come across an attractive young drifter, J D , to whom Thelma takes a liking  Louise contacts Jimmy, asking him to wire her life savings to her  He surprises her by delivering the money in person, and they spend the night together  Jimmy proposes to Louise, but she refuses  Thelma invites J D  to her room, and they sleep together  She learns he is a convicted armed-robber who has violated the terms of his parole 
The following morning, they discover J D  has stolen Louise's life savings and fled  Louise is distraught, so a guilty Thelma takes charge and later robs a nearby convenience store using tactics she learned from J D   Meanwhile, the FBI closes in on them after witnesses at the bar identify Louise's 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible  Their whereabouts are also questioned by the owner of the fishing cabin after they failed to arrive 
Arkansas State Police Investigator Hal Slocumb, leading the investigation, questions both J D  (who was caught) and Jimmy, and taps into the phone line at Darryl's house  He sympathizes with the pair's situation and understands why they did not report Harlan's killing (partly due to Louise's own experience in Texas)  During a few brief phone conversations with Louise, Hal expresses his sympathy but is unsuccessful in persuading her to surrender 
Thelma tells Louise she understands if she wants to go back home, knowing she has Jimmy waiting for her, but explains she cannot go back to Darryl  Louise promises they will keep going together  While back on the road, Thelma recalls the incident with Harlan and tries to ask Louise if what happened with Harlan was what happened to Louise in Texas  Louise responds angrily and tells Thelma to never bring it up again 
Later, they are pulled over by a New Mexico state trooper for speeding  Knowing he will soon discover they are wanted for murder and armed robbery, Thelma holds him at gunpoint and locks him in the trunk of his police car  Driving further west, they encounter a foul-mouthed truck driver who repeatedly makes obscene gestures at them  They pull over and demand an apology from him; when he refuses, they fire at his fuel tanker, causing it to explode  The women leave him stranded in the desert furious with the tanker's wreckage 
Thelma and Louise are finally cornered by the authorities only one hundred yards from the edge of the Grand Canyon  Hal arrives on the scene, but the women refuse his last chance to talk them into surrendering  Rather than be captured, Thelma proposes that they "keep going"  Louise asks Thelma if she is certain, and Thelma says yes  They kiss and then hold hands, Louise steps on the gas, and, as Hal desperately pursues them on foot, they accelerate over the cliff to their presumed deaths 

Cast
Susan Sarandon as Louise Sawyer
Geena Davis as Thelma Dickinson
Harvey Keitel as Arkansas State Police Detective Hal Slocumb
Michael Madsen as Jimmy Lennox
Christopher McDonald as Darryl Dickinson
Stephen Tobolowsky as FBI Agent Max
Brad Pitt as J D 
Timothy Carhart as Harlan Puckett
Lucinda Jenney as The Waitress
Jason Beghe as State Trooper
Marco St  John as Truck DriverCredits adapted from American Film Institute 

Production
Development
The idea for Thelma & Louise originated in the spring of 1988 when Callie Khouri, then a music video producer, was driving home from work to her apartment in Santa Monica  She spent the following six months working on her first screenplay, which was noted to have drawn inspiration from her own experience as well as her friendship with country music singer Pam Tillis  She had intended it to be a low-budget independent film, directed by herself and produced by fellow music video producer Amanda Temple (wife of English filmmaker Julien Temple)  After shopping the project around and finding no takers, Temple showed the script to her friend Mimi Polk Gitlin, who ran Ridley Scott's Percy Main Productions (later Scott Free Productions)  Gitlin in turn showed the script to Scott, who expressed great enthusiasm for the project  He agreed to produce the film and bought the film rights for $500,000  Pathé Entertainment, then led by Scott's friend and collaborator Alan Ladd Jr , came on board as a co-producer and financier Scott considered four people for the role of director, all of whom turned down the opportunity  Per Gitlin's recollection, three of the candidates were Bob Rafelson, Kevin Reynolds and Richard Donner  Scott was reluctant to direct the film himself but eventually took on the role, having been persuaded by Michelle Pfeiffer 

Casting
Michelle Pfeiffer and Jodie Foster were originally chosen for the leads; both accepted their roles with enthusiasm  As pre-production of the film dragged on, the two eventually dropped out, with Pfeiffer going on to star in Love Field and Foster in The Silence of the Lambs  Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn then offered to play the leads, but Streep later dropped out due to scheduling conflicts while Hawn was not considered right for the part  Geena Davis (who had been vigorously pursuing the lead role for nearly a year) and Susan Sarandon were ultimately chosen  The two took extensive driving and shooting lessons in preparation for their roles Scott personally convinced Harvey Keitel to take on the role of Hal, the sympathetic Arkansas detective  The two had previously collaborated in Scott's feature directorial debut, the 1977 film The Duellists  Davis recommended her ex-boyfriend Christopher McDonald for the role of Darryl, Thelma's controlling husband  Scott wanted Michael Madsen for Harlan, Thelma's would-be rapist, but Madsen was unwilling; he eventually won the role of Jimmy, Louise's boyfriend  Brad Pitt auditioned for the hustler J D ; however, the part originally went to Billy Baldwin  Pitt eventually secured the role after both Baldwin and his replacement dropped out  George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr , Mark Ruffalo, Grant Show, John Mellencamp, Dylan McDermott, James LeGros and Dermot Mulroney were also considered for the role of J D  Davis did test scenes with Clooney, Show, Ruffalo and Pitt; her advice to the directors was to choose Pitt 

Filming
Principal photography for Thelma & Louise began on June 11, 1990, and concluded on August 31, 1990  Although the setting for the film is a fictional route between Arkansas and the Grand Canyon, it was filmed almost entirely in the states of California and Utah  The primary filming locations were rural areas around Bakersfield, California and Moab, Utah  The Grand Canyon scenes were filmed just south of Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah  Parts of the film were also shot at Shafer Overlook, Monument Valley, La Sal Mountains, La Sal Junction, Cisco, Old Valley City Reservoir, Thompson Springs, Arches National Park, and Crescent Junction in Utah 

Soundtrack
Pete Haycock on slide guitar contributed to Thunderbird, the theme music for the film  In addition to Glenn Frey's "Part of Me, Part of You", which became the film's primary theme song, the soundtrack included songs performed by Chris Whitley ("Kick The Stones"), Martha Reeves ("Wild Night" written by Van Morrison), Toni Childs ("House Of Hope"), Marianne Faithfull ("Ballad of Lucy Jordan" written by Shel Silverstein), Charlie Sexton ("Badlands"), Grayson Hugh ("I Can't Untie You From Me"), B B  King ("Better Not Look Down" written by Joe Sample & Will Jennings), Michael McDonald ("No Lookin' Back"), The Temptations ("The Way You Do The Things You Do" written by Smokey Robinson & Bobby Rogers), and Johnny Nash ("I Can See Clearly Now") 

Release
Thelma & Louise was screened out of competition as the closing film at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival  Theatrical release was delayed due to financial turmoil at MGM-Pathé  The film eventually opened in American theaters on May 24, 1991 and was a box-office success, grossing $45 million within the country In February 2023, The Criterion Collection announced the film would be joining the collection in May that year 

Reception
The film received critical acclaim  Janet Maslin of The New York Times had only praise for the film in her review:

Mr  Scott's Thelma and Louise, with a sparkling screenplay by the first-time writer Callie Khouri, is a surprise on this and many other scores  It reveals the previously untapped talent of Mr  Scott (best known for majestically moody action films like Alien, Blade Runner and Black Rain) for exuberant comedy, and for vibrant American imagery, notwithstanding his English roots  It reimagines the buddy film with such freshness and vigor that the genre seems positively new  It discovers unexpected resources in both its stars, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, who are perfectly teamed as the spirited and original title characters 
Roger Ebert also praised the film but withheld a perfect score on the basis of "the last shot before the titles begin  It's a freeze frame that fades to white, which is fine, except it does so with unseemly haste      It's unsettling to get involved in a movie that takes 128 minutes to bring you to a payoff that the filmmakers seem to fear "After watching the film, singer-songwriter Tori Amos wrote "Me and a Gun", the story of her rape several years earlier The final scene, where the two embrace before committing suicide by driving off a cliff, has become iconic  Numerous homages and parodies of the scene have appeared, including alternate film endings, cartoon parodies, video game "Easter eggs", and as a tragic ending to television series, music videos, and commercials  Right after the film's release, there were even a few copy cats who committed suicide by driving off the edge of the Grand Canyon The film also received harsh criticism from those who thought it was biased against men and that its depictions of men were unfairly negative On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 86% based on 147 reviews, with an average rating of 7 9/10  The website's critical consensus reads, "Simultaneously funny, heartbreaking, and peppered with action, Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise is a potent, well-acted road movie that transcends the feminist message at its core " On Metacritic, the film received a score of 88 based on 12 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim" The film placed second to The Silence of the Lambs as the best film of 1991 in a poll of 81 critics 

Feminism
Numerous critics and writers have remarked on the strong feminist overtones of Thelma & Louise  Film critic B  Ruby Rich praises the film as an uncompromising validation of women's experiences, while Kenneth Turan calls it a "neo-feminist road movie"  In her essay "The Daughters of Thelma and Louise", Jessica Enevold argues that the film constitutes "an attack on conventional patterns of chauvinist male behavior toward females"  In addition, it "exposes the traditional stereotyping of male–female relationships" while rescripting the typical gender roles of the road movie genre In her review for the Los Angeles Times, film critic Sheila Benson objects to the characterization of the film as feminist, arguing that it is more preoccupied with revenge and violence than feminist values In his review for the New York Post, film critic Kyle Smith describes the film as "a misogynist tale about unbelievably ditzy women who lose what remains of their reason under pressure and suffer the ultimate punishment " Smith's review focused on the terrible decisions these female characters make throughout the entire film In an article commemorating the film's 20th anniversary in 2011, Raina Lipsitz called it "the last great film about women" and said that it heralded the achievements of women that caused 1992 to become "the year of the woman"  However, she also said that women-themed films have since been losing ground 

Accolades
The British Film Institute published a book about the film in 2000 as part of a Modern Classics series  On the Writers Guild of America Award's list of 101 best screenplays, it made No  72 

Notes
Passage 8:
Breakwater Cat
Breakwater Cat is the tenth album by American singer Thelma Houston, released in 1980 on RCA Records  The 12" single "Suspicious  Minds" became a popular club hit  Breakwater Cat contains five songs written by Jimmy Webb, who was also the executive producer of the album 

Track listing
All songs were written by Jimmy Webb; except where indicated 

"Breakwater Cat" – 3:55
"Long and Lasting Love" – 5:30
"Before There Could Be Me" – 3:12
"Gone" – 3:43
"What Was That Song" – 4:19
"Suspicious Minds" (Mark James) – 4:15
"Down the Backstairs of My Life" (Eric Mercury, William Smith) – 3:00
"Understand Your Man" (Alan Gordon) – 3:27
"Lost and Found" (Daniel Moore) – 4:20
"Something We May Never Know" (Shelby Flint) – 3:38

Personnel
MusicThelma Houston – vocals
Sonny Burke – piano, arrangements
Matthew McCauley – string and horn arrangements
David T  Walker, Tim May, Steve Beckmeier, Carlos Rios, Steve Hunter, Fred Tackett, Greg Poree – guitar
David Shields, Eddie N  Watkins Jr , Keni Burke, Scott Edwards, Dennis Belfield, Reggie McBride – bass guitar
Gary Morse - steel guitar on "Something We May Never Know"
Jerry Peters - keyboards
James Gadson – drums
Jerry Hey - horn
Paulinho da Costa – percussion
Clydie King – backing vocals
Greg Wright – backing vocals
Oren Waters – backing vocals
Tom Kelly – backing vocalsProductionJames Gadson – producer
Michael Stewart – producer
Mike Vickers – assistant producer
Jimmy Webb – executive producer
Brian Christian – engineer
Frank "Cheech" D'Amici – engineer
Mark Linett – engineer
Rick Hart – engineer
Rick Ruggieri – engineer
Gribbitt! – art direction
Henry Vizcarra – art direction
Tim Bryant – art direction
Charles Veal, Jr  – contractor
Jerry Hoff – contractor
Sid Sharp – contractor
Lynne Morse – A&R coordinator
Linda Gerrity – production coordinator
Glenn Parsons - design
Gribbitt! - design
John Arrias – mixing
Ron Slenzak – photography
Passage 9:
Elizabeth Alexeievna (Louise of Baden)
Elizabeth Alexeievna (Russian: Елизавета Алексеевна; 24 January [O S  13 January] 1779 – 16 May [O S  4 May] 1826), born Princess Louise of Baden (German: Luise Marie Auguste von Baden), was Empress of Russia during her marriage to Emperor Alexander I 

Princess of Baden
Elizabeth Alexeievna was born in Karlsruhe, on 24 January [O S  13 January] 1779 as Princess Louise Maria Auguste of Baden of the House of Zähringen  She was the third of seven children of Charles Louis, Hereditary Prince of Baden, and his wife, Landgravine Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt  At birth, the child was so small and weak that doctors feared that she would not live 

Louise grew up in a close, warm family environment  She would remain particularly attached to her mother, with whom she maintained an intimate correspondence until her death (The Margravine of Baden outlived her daughter)  She received a thoughtful education at the Baden court  She spoke and wrote both in French and German; studied history, geography, philosophy, and French and German literature  Thanks to the close proximity between Baden and France, she was well acquainted with French culture and refinements, as was the custom of that era  Because her grandfather, the reigning Margrave of Baden, was not rich, the family lived modestly by royal standards 
Catherine the Great was looking for a bride for her eldest grandson, the future Alexander I, and set her eyes on the Princesses of Baden who were the nieces of the Queen of Prussia and the deceased Grand Duchess Natalia Alexeievna (Wilhelmina Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt) who had been the first spouse of Grand Duke Paul of Russia  Thus, an alliance to Prussia and several German royal houses they were closely related to would be a beneficial outcome  After favorable impressions, Catherine invited Princess Louise and her younger sister Frederica, who later became Queen of Sweden, to Russia  In the autumn of 1792, the two sisters arrived in St  Petersburg 
The Empress was delighted by Louise, finding her a model of beauty, charm, and honesty  Louise herself was attracted to Alexander; he was tall and handsome  At first, Alexander was shy with his future bride — very young and inexperienced, he did not know how to treat her — and she mistook his reserve for dislike  However, the young couple soon grew fond of each other  "You tell me that I hold the happiness of a certain person in my hands", she wrote to Alexander  "If that is true, then his happiness is assured forever… this person loves me tenderly, and I love him in return, and that will be my happiness… you can be certain that I love you more than I ever can say", she added  They were engaged in May 1793 
The Princess learned Russian, converted to the Orthodox Church, took the title of Grand Duchess of Russia and traded the name Louise Maria Auguste for Elizabeth Alexeievna  The wedding took place on 28 September 1793  "It was a marriage between Psyche and Cupid", Catherine wrote to the Prince of Ligne  Elizabeth was only fourteen, her husband a year older 

Grand Duchess of Russia
Very young when she was married, shy, and naïve, Elizabeth Alexeievna was ill-prepared for her new position  She was overwhelmed by the splendor of the Russian court and frightened by the vicious intrigues waged there with cold calculation  She was appalled by the intense sexual intrigues that flourished all around her in a court where adultery was an accepted form of entertainment  The Empress herself set the example for the licentious ways of the court  Catherine's lover, Platon Zubov, even tried to seduce Elizabeth Alexeievna The Grand Duchess felt lonely and homesick, particularly after her sister Frederica returned to Baden  Elizabeth was abandoned in an alien world where she could never be herself, even among her servants and ladies-in-waiting  The relationship with Alexander was her only source of solace  "Without my husband, who alone makes me happy, I should have died a thousand deaths"The first years of the marriage were relatively happy, but the Grand Duchess disappointed Catherine II, who did not live to see a son be born to the young couple  The death of Catherine the Great in November 1796 brought Elizabeth's father-in-law Paul I to the Russian throne  During the years of his reign, Elizabeth avoided Paul's court  She utterly disliked her father-in-law and disapproved of the injustices of his government and the bluntness of his character 

The first cracks in Elizabeth's marriage began to appear  She did not find fulfillment for her romantic nature in a husband who neglected her  Elizabeth looked for emotional solace elsewhere  She first found refuge for her loneliness in a close intimate friendship with the beautiful Countess Golovina  Later, she started a romantic liaison with Alexander's best friend, the dashing and clever Polish prince, Adam Czartoryski  Their relationship lasted for three years 
After more than five years of a childless marriage, on 29 May 1799, Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna  At court, some attributed the paternity to the Polish Prince  The child had black hair and dark eyes  At the baptism, Tsar Paul I did not fail to express his amazement that the two blonde and blue-eyed parents have a dark-haired child  Elizabeth Alexeievna soon lost both her lover and her daughter  Adam Czartoryski was sent on a diplomatic mission, and Elizabeth's baby daughter did not live long  "As of this morning, I no longer have a child, she is dead" she wrote to her mother on  27 July 1800  "Not an hour of the day passes without my thinking of her, and certainly not a day without my giving her bitter tears  It cannot be otherwise so long as I live, even if she were to be replaced by two dozen children "

Personality and appearance
Elizabeth Alexeievna was distinguished by a soft, melodious voice and a beautiful oval face with delicate features; a Greek profile, large almond-shaped blue eyes and curly ash blond hair, which she usually left floating on her shoulders  With an elegant figure, regal carriage, and a beautiful angelic face, she was regarded by contemporaries as one of the most beautiful women in Europe and probably the most beautiful consort at that time 
Charming, generous and intellectual, Elizabeth Alexeievna loved literature and the arts  She took music lessons from Ludwig-Wilhelm Tepper de Ferguson (1768–after 1824)  Unfortunately, she possessed a shy, withdrawn personality which failed to endear her to either the Russian court or her in-laws  She preferred simplicity and solitude to the pomp and ceremony of life at court 
Her marriage also failed to bring her fulfillment  Although Elizabeth Alexeievna loved her husband, and encouraged him in many personal and political crises, Alexander neglected her  Their relationship was harmonious, but emotionally distant, with each engaging in love affairs outside their marriage 

Russian Empress
The eccentricities of Emperor Paul I led to a plot to overthrow him and place Alexander on the Russian throne  Elizabeth was well aware of this scheme and on the night of Paul's assassination, she was with her husband giving him support 
Once Alexander I became Emperor, Elizabeth Alexeievna encouraged him to leave behind the trauma of Paul I's murder and dedicate himself to serve Russia  As Empress Consort, she took part in court life and the duties of representation, but the first female rank in the Empire was reserved for her mother-in-law Empress Maria Feodorovna  During official events, Empress Maria Feodorovna walked next to the Emperor while Elizabeth was forced to walk alone behind them 
Alexander I treated his wife indifferently, he was polite toward her in public ceremonies and made an effort to have his meals in her company  Elizabeth was said to be too soft and placid to keep a hold on a restless and soul tortured man such as her husband  In 1803, Alexander began a love affair that would continue for more than fifteen years with the Polish princess Maria Czetwertynska, wife of Prince Dmitri Naryshkin  Princess Maria Naryshkina flaunted her liaison at court in a tasteless, blatant fashion 

Elizabeth Alexeievna, for her part, found solace in her relationship with Adam Czartoryski, who had returned to Russia at Alexander I's ascension to the throne  This liaison ended when she started a love affair with a handsome staff captain, Alexis Okhotnikov  All the correspondence between Elizabeth and Alexis Okhotnikov, and some of her diaries were destroyed by Emperor Nicholas I after her death 
The affair with Okhotnikov had a tragic end  The staff captain, who suffered from tuberculosis, retired due to his worsened health and died in 1807  It was apparently rumored later that Alexander I or his brother Grand Duke Konstantin had ordered him killed; in the early twentieth century Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich turned those rumors into an elaborate legend for his biography of Elizabeth Alexeievna, although the chapter on Okhotnikov was not published at the time due to Nicholas II's personal intervention, and his other studies of that period 
On 16 November 1806, Elizabeth gave birth to a second daughter  There were rumors that the newborn, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Alexandrovna was not a child of Emperor Alexander but of Okhotnikov  After his death, Elizabeth Alexeievna felt more abandoned than ever and poured out all her affection on her daughter Elizabeth, "Lisinka"  Fifteen months later, the little girl died suddenly of an infection blamed on teething  "Now," wrote Elizabeth to her mother, "I am not longer good for anything in this world, my soul has no more strength to recover from this last blow "The death of their daughter temporarily brought Alexander I and Elizabeth closer  Although Elizabeth Alexeievna was not yet thirty years old, neither she nor Alexander had further hopes of a family and they would have no more children 
During the Napoleonic Wars, Elizabeth Alexeievna was a reliable supporter of her husband's policies as she had been in other personal and political crises  After the fall of Napoleon, she joined her husband and many of the crowned heads of Europe in the Congress of Vienna (1814), where she was reunited with her old paramour, Adam Czartoryski  He was still in love with her and forgave her past infidelity with Okhotnikov  Their reunion was short-lived 

Last years and death
Once she reached forty, she left behind any romantic pretensions  Her husband also experienced a personal transformation that drove the couple closer than they ever were  In 1818, Alexander I, immersed in religious mysticism, broke his long relationship with Maria Naryshkina  From then on, the husband and wife started to spend more time together  The Empress sympathized deeply with him and Alexander found her supportive when he lost his beloved natural daughter Sophia  The marked reconciliation between the Emperor and the Empress caused general surprise  "I am reduced to thinking of myself sometimes as Alexander's mistress, or as if we had been married secretly   " Elizabeth wrote to her mother 
By 1825, Elizabeth Alexeievna's health was frail; she suffered from a lung condition and a nervous indisposition  The doctors recommended her to take a rest in a temperate climate and suggested the southern city of Taganrog by the Sea of Azov  With no comfortable palace, the imperial couple were established in a modest house in Taganrog by 5 October  They were happy together living in intimate simplicity  On 17 November 1825 Alexander returned to Taganrog from visiting Crimea with a cold, which developed into typhus, from which he died that December in the arms of his wife  Elizabeth was stricken by her loss, writing "I do not understand myself, I do not understand my destiny    What am I to do with my will, which was entirely subjected to him, with my life, which I loved to devote to him?" 

The now Dowager Tsarina was too frail to come back to St  Petersburg for the funeral  When Elizabeth Alexeievna finally started her return journey to the capital, she felt so sick that she had to stop at Belev, Tula Province on the road to St  Petersburg, just a few hours before she was to meet her mother-in-law, who was coming south to greet her  In the early hours of 16 May 1826, towards 4 30 am, when her lady's maid went to check on the Empress, she found her dead in bed  Elizabeth Alexeievna had died of heart failure 
Three days after her husband's death Elizabeth had written her mother, "Do not worry too much about me, but if I dared, I would like to follow the one who has been my very life "

Children
Alexander I and Elizabeth Alexeievna had two daughters, both of whom died in early childhood  Their common sorrow drew husband and wife closer together for a brief time 

Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia (St  Petersburg, 29 May 1799 – St  Petersburg, 8 July 1800)
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Alexandrovna of Russia (St  Petersburg, 15 November 1806 – St  Petersburg, 12 May 1808)

Ancestry
Footnotes
Passage 10:
Thelma, Kentucky
Thelma is an unincorporated community in Johnson County, Kentucky, United States  The community was originally known as Buskirk, after a local family  But, when the community received its first post office on June 5, 1905, it was renamed Thelma after the daughter of Warren Meek  Meek was a successful pioneer in the newspaper field in the Big Sandy Valley Thelma's ZIP code is 41260 
Thelma is located at an elevation of 636 feet 
Context 2: Passage 1:
Plagues of Egypt
The Plagues of Egypt, in the account of the book of Exodus, are ten disasters inflicted on Biblical Egypt by the God of Israel in order to convince the Pharaoh to emancipate the enslaved Israelites, each of them confronting Pharaoh and one of his Egyptian gods; they serve as "signs and marvels" given by God to answer Pharaoh's taunt that he does not know Yahweh: "The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD" : 117

Plagues
1  Turning water to blood: Ex  7:14–24
This is what the LORD says: By this you will know that I am the LORD: With the staff that is in my hands I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood  The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink and the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water 

2  Frogs: Ex  7:25–8:11/15
This is what the great LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me  If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs  The Nile will teem with frogs  They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs  The frogs will go up on you and your people and all your officials 

3  Lice or gnats: Ex  8:12–15/8:16–19
"And the LORD said [   ] Stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt " […] When Aaron stretched out his hand with the rod and struck the dust of the ground, lice came upon men and animals  All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became lice 

4  Wild animals or flies: Ex  8:16–28/8:20–32
The fourth plague of Egypt was of creatures capable of harming people and livestock  The Bible tells us that the plagues only came against the Egyptians and did not affect the Israelites  Pharaoh asked Moses to remove this plague and promised to grant the Israelites their freedom  However, after the plague was gone, Pharaoh hardened his heart  and he refused to keep his promise 
Various sources use either "wild animals" or "flies" 

5  Pestilence of livestock: Ex  9:1–7
This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me  If you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back, the hand of the LORD will bring a terrible plague on your livestock in the field—on your horses and donkeys and camels and on your cattle and sheep and goats 

6  Boils: Ex  9:8-12
Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh  It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land "

7  Thunderstorm of hail and fire: Ex  9:13–35
This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me, or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth  For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth  But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth  You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go  Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now  Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every man and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die  […] The LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground  So the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt; hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth  It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation 

8  Locusts: Ex  10:1–20
This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me  If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow  They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen  They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields  They will fill your houses and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians—something neither your fathers nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now 

9  Three days of darkness: Ex  10:21–29
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt—darkness that can be felt " So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days  No one could see anyone else or leave his place for three days 

10  Death of firstborn son: Ex  11:1–12:36
This is what the LORD says: "About midnight I will go throughout Egypt  Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well  There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again "
Before this final plague, God commands Moses to tell the Israelites to mark a lamb's blood above their doors in order that the Angel of Death will pass over them (i e , that they will not be touched by the death of the firstborn)  Pharaoh orders the Israelites to leave, taking whatever they want, and asks Moses to bless him in the name of the Lord  The passage goes on to state that the passover sacrifice recalls the time when the LORD "passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt" 

Composition and theology
Scholars are in broad agreement that the publication of the Torah took place in the mid-Persian period (the 5th century BCE)  The Book of Deuteronomy, composed in stages between the 7th and 6th centuries, mentions the "diseases of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 7:15 and 28:60) but refers to something that afflicted the Israelites, not the Egyptians, and never specifies the plagues The traditional number of ten plagues is not actually mentioned in Exodus, and other sources differ; Psalms 78 and 105 seem to list only seven or eight plagues and order them differently  It appears that originally there were only seven, to which were added the third, sixth, and ninth, bringing the count to ten : 83–84 In this final version, the first nine plagues form three triads, each of which God introduces by informing Moses of the main lesson it will teach : 117  In the first triad, the Egyptians begin to experience the power of God;: 118  in the second, God demonstrates that he is directing events;: 119  and in the third, the incomparability of Yahweh is displayed : 117  Overall, the plagues are "signs and marvels" given by the God of Israel to answer Pharaoh's taunt that he does not know Yahweh: "The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD" : 117

Historicity
Scholars broadly agree that the Exodus is not a historical account, that the Israelites originated in Canaan and from the Canaanites and that, while a small group of proto-Israelites probably did originate from Egypt, it did not happen in the massive way the Bible describes : 81 : 6–7  The Ipuwer Papyrus, written probably in the late Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt (c  1991–1803 BCE), has been put forward in popular literature as confirmation of the biblical account, most notably because of its statement that "the river is blood" and its frequent references to servants running away; however, these arguments ignore the many points on which Ipuwer contradicts Exodus, such as Asiatics arriving in Egypt rather than leaving and the fact that the "river is blood" phrase probably refers to the red sediment colouring the Nile during disastrous floods, or is simply a poetic image of turmoil  Attempts to find natural explanations for the plagues (e g , a volcanic eruption to explain the "darkness" plague) have been dismissed by biblical scholars on the grounds that their pattern, timing, rapid succession, and above all, control by Moses mark them as supernatural : 90 : 117–118

Artistic representation
Visual art
In visual art, the plagues have generally been reserved for works in series, especially engravings  Still, relatively few depictions in art emerged compared to other religious themes until the 19th century, when the plagues became more common subjects, with John Martin and Joseph Turner producing notable canvases  This trend probably reflected a Romantic attraction to landscape and nature painting, for which the plagues were suited, a Gothic attraction to morbid stories, and a rise in Orientalism, wherein exotic Egyptian themes found currency  Given the importance of noble patronage throughout Western art history, the plagues may have found consistent disfavor because the stories emphasize the limits of a monarch's power, and images of lice, locusts, darkness, and boils were ill-suited for decoration in palaces and churches 

Music
Perhaps the most successful artistic representation of the plagues is Handel's oratorio Israel in Egypt, which, like his perennial favorite, "Messiah", takes a libretto entirely from scripture  The work was especially popular in the 19th century because of its numerous choruses, generally one for each plague, and its playful musical depiction of the plagues  For example, the plague of frogs is performed as a light aria for alto, depicting frogs jumping in the violins, and the plague of flies and lice is a light chorus with fast scurrying runs in the violins 

Documentaries
The Exodus Decoded (2006)

Films
The Ten Commandments (1923)
The Moon of Israel (1924)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
The Abominable Dr  Phibes (1971)
The Seventh Sign (1988)
Moses (1995)
The Prince of Egypt (1998)
Magnolia (1999)
The Mummy (1999)
The Reaping (2007)
Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)
Seder-Masochism (2018)

Image gallery
See also
Aaron's rod
Jochebed
Miriam
Passage 2:
Osiris
Osiris (, from Egyptian wsjr) is the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion  He was classically depicted as a green-skinned deity with a pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive atef crown, and holding a symbolic crook and flail  He was one of the first to be associated with the mummy wrap  When his brother Set cut him up into pieces after killing him, Osiris' wife Isis found all the pieces and wrapped his body up, enabling him to return to life  Osiris was widely worshipped until the decline of ancient Egyptian religion during the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire Osiris was at times considered the eldest son of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, as well as being brother and husband of Isis, and brother of Set, Nephthys, and Horus the Elder, with Horus the Younger being considered his posthumously begotten son  Through syncretism with Iah, he was also a god of the Moon Osiris was the judge and lord of the dead and the underworld, the "Lord of Silence" and Khenti-Amentiu, meaning "Foremost of the Westerners"  In the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BC) the pharaoh was considered a son of the sun god Ra who, after his death, ascended to join Ra in the sky  After the spread of the Osiris cult, however, the kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death – as Osiris rose from the dead, they would unite with him and inherit eternal life through imitative magic Through the hope of new life after death, Osiris began to be associated with the cycles in nature, in particular the sprouting of vegetation and the annual flooding of the Nile River, as well as the heliacal rising of Orion and Sirius at the start of the new year  He became the sovereign that granted all life, "He Who is Permanently Benign and Youthful" The first evidence of the worship of Osiris is from the middle of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt (25th century BC), although it is likely that he was worshiped much earlier; the Khenti-Amentiu epithet dates to at least the First Dynasty, and was also used as a pharaonic title  Most information available on the Osiris myth is derived from allusions in the Pyramid Texts at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, later New Kingdom source documents such as the Shabaka Stone and "The Contendings of Horus and Seth", and much later, in the narratives of Greek authors including Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus Some Egyptologists believe the Osiris mythos may have originated in a former living ruler – possibly a shepherd who lived in Predynastic times (5500–3100 BC) in the Nile Delta, whose beneficial rule led to him being revered as a god  The accoutrements of the shepherd, the crook and the flail – once insignia of the Delta god Andjety, with whom Osiris was associated – support this theory 

Etymology of the name
Osiris is a Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek Ὄσιρις IPA: [ó siː ris], which in turn is the Greek adaptation of the original name in the Egyptian language  In Egyptian hieroglyphs the name appears as wsjr, which some Egyptologists instead choose to transliterate as ꜣsjr or jsjrj  Since hieroglyphic writing lacks vowels, Egyptologists have vocalized the name in various ways, such as Asar, Ausar, Ausir, Wesir, Usir, or Usire 
Several proposals have been made for the etymology and meaning of the original name; as Egyptologist Mark J  Smith notes, none are fully convincing  Most take wsjr as the accepted transliteration, following Adolf Erman:

John Gwyn Griffiths (1980), "bearing in mind Erman's emphasis on the fact that the name must begin with an [sic] w", proposes a derivation from wsr with an original meaning of "The Mighty One" 
Kurt Sethe (1930) proposes a compound st-jrt, meaning "seat of the eye", in a hypothetical earlier form *wst-jrt; this is rejected by Griffiths on phonetic grounds 
David Lorton (1985) takes up this same compound but explains st-jrt as signifying "product, something made", Osiris representing the product of the ritual mummification process 
Wolfhart Westendorf (1987) proposes an etymology from wꜣst-jrt "she who bears the eye" 
Mark J  Smith (2017) makes no definitive proposals but asserts that the second element must be a form of jrj ("to do, make") (rather than jrt ("eye")) However, recently alternative transliterations have been proposed:

Yoshi Muchiki (1990) reexamines Erman's evidence that the throne hieroglyph in the word is to be read ws and finds it unconvincing, suggesting instead that the name should be read ꜣsjr on the basis of Aramaic, Phoenician, and Old South Arabian transcriptions, readings of the throne sign in other words, and comparison with ꜣst ("Isis") 
James P  Allen (2000) reads the word as jsjrt  but revises the reading (2013) to jsjrj and derives it from js-jrj, meaning "engendering (male) principle" 

Appearance
Osiris is represented in his most developed form of iconography wearing the Atef crown, which is similar to the White crown of Upper Egypt, but with the addition of two curling ostrich feathers at each side  He also carries the crook and flail  The crook is thought to represent Osiris as a shepherd god  The symbolism of the flail is more uncertain with shepherds whip, fly-whisk, or association with the god Andjety of the ninth nome of Lower Egypt proposed He was commonly depicted as a pharaoh with a complexion of either green (the color of rebirth) or black (alluding to the fertility of the Nile floodplain) in mummiform (wearing the trappings of mummification from chest downward) 

Early mythology
The Pyramid Texts describe early conceptions of an afterlife in terms of eternal travelling with the sun god amongst the stars  Amongst these mortuary texts, at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty, is found: "An offering the king gives and Anubis"  By the end of the Fifth Dynasty, the formula in all tombs becomes "An offering the king gives and Osiris" 

Father of Horus
Osiris is the mythological father of the god Horus, whose conception is described in the Osiris myth (a central myth in ancient Egyptian belief)  The myth describes Osiris as having been killed by his brother Set, who wanted Osiris' throne  His wife, Isis, finds the body of Osiris and hides it in the reeds where it is found and dismembered by Set  Isis retrieves and joins the fragmented pieces of Osiris, then briefly revives him by use of magic  This spell gives her time to become pregnant by Osiris  Isis later gives birth to Horus  Since Horus was born after Osiris' resurrection, Horus became thought of as a representation of new beginnings and the vanquisher of the usurper Set 
Ptah-Seker (who resulted from the identification of the creator god Ptah with Seker) thus gradually became identified with Osiris, the two becoming Ptah-Seker-Osiris  As the sun was thought to spend the night in the underworld, and was subsequently "reborn" every morning, Ptah-Seker-Osiris was identified as king of the underworld, god of the afterlife, life, death, and regeneration  Osiris also has the aspect and form of Seker-Osiris 

Ram god
Osiris' soul, or rather his ba, was occasionally worshipped in its own right, almost as if it were a distinct god, especially in the Delta city of Mendes  This aspect of Osiris was referred to as Banebdjedet, which is grammatically feminine (also spelt "Banebded" or "Banebdjed"), literally "the ba of the lord of the djed, which roughly means The soul of the lord of the pillar of continuity  The djed, a type of pillar, was usually understood as the backbone of Osiris 
The Nile supplying water, and Osiris (strongly connected to the vegetable regeneration) who died only to be resurrected, represented continuity and stability  As Banebdjed, Osiris was given epithets such as Lord of the Sky and Life of the (sun god) Ra  Ba does not mean "soul" in the western sense, and has to do with power, reputation, force of character, especially in the case of a god 
Since the ba was associated with power, and also happened to be a word for ram in Egyptian, Banebdjed was depicted as a ram, or as Ram-headed  A living, sacred ram was kept at Mendes and worshipped as the incarnation of the god, and upon death, the rams were mummified and buried in a ram-specific necropolis  Banebdjed was consequently said to be Horus' father, as Banebdjed was an aspect of Osiris 
Regarding the association of Osiris with the ram, the god's traditional crook and flail are the instruments of the shepherd, which has suggested to some scholars also an origin for Osiris in herding tribes of the upper Nile 

Mythology
Plutarch recounts one version of the Osiris myth in which Set (Osiris' brother), along with the Queen of Ethiopia, conspired with 72 accomplices to plot the assassination of Osiris  Set fooled Osiris into getting into a box, which Set then shut, sealed with lead, and threw into the Nile  Osiris' wife, Isis, searched for his remains until she finally found him embedded in a tamarisk tree trunk, which was holding up the roof of a palace in Byblos on the Phoenician coast  She managed to remove the coffin and retrieve her husband's body 
In one version of the myth, Isis used a spell to briefly revive Osiris so he could impregnate her  After embalming and burying Osiris, Isis conceived and gave birth to their son, Horus  Thereafter Osiris lived on as the god of the underworld  Because of his death and resurrection, Osiris was associated with the flooding and retreating of the Nile and thus with the yearly growth and death of crops along the Nile valley 
Diodorus Siculus gives another version of the myth in which Osiris was described as an ancient king who taught the Egyptians the arts of civilization, including agriculture, then travelled the world with his sister Isis, the satyrs, and the nine muses, before finally returning to Egypt  Osiris was then murdered by his evil brother Typhon, who was identified with Set  Typhon divided the body into twenty-six pieces, which he distributed amongst his fellow conspirators in order to implicate them in the murder  Isis and Hercules (Horus) avenged the death of Osiris and slew Typhon  Isis recovered all the parts of Osiris' body, except the phallus, and secretly buried them  She made replicas of them and distributed them to several locations, which then became centres of Osiris worship 

Worship
Annual ceremonies were performed in honor of Osiris in various places across Egypt  Evidences of which were discovered during underwater archaeological excavations of Franck Goddio and his team in the sunken city of Thonis-Heracleion  These ceremonies were fertility rites which symbolised the resurrection of Osiris  Recent scholars emphasize "the androgynous character of [Osiris'] fertility" clear from surviving material  For instance, Osiris' fertility has to come both from being castrated/cut-into-pieces and the reassembly by female Isis, whose embrace of her reassembled Osiris produces the perfect king, Horus  Further, as attested by tomb-inscriptions, both women and men could syncretize (identify) with Osiris at their death, another set of evidence that underlines Osiris' androgynous nature 

Death or transition and institution as god of the afterlife
Plutarch and others have noted that the sacrifices to Osiris were "gloomy, solemn, and mournful   " (Isis and Osiris, 69) and that the great mystery festival, celebrated in two phases, began at Abydos commemorating the death of the god, on the same day that grain was planted in the ground (Isis and Osiris, 13)  The annual festival involved the construction of "Osiris Beds" formed in shape of Osiris, filled with soil and sown with seed  The germinating seed symbolized Osiris rising from the dead  An almost pristine example was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun  The imiut emblem- an image of a stuffed, headless skin of an animal tied to a pole mounting a pot, was a symbol associated both with Osiris as god of the underworld and with Anubis, god of mummification, was sometimes included among a deceased person's funerary equipment The first phase of the festival was a public drama depicting the murder and dismemberment of Osiris, the search for his body by Isis, his triumphal return as the resurrected god, and the battle in which Horus defeated Set 
According to Julius Firmicus Maternus of the fourth century, this play was re-enacted each year by worshippers who "beat their breasts and gashed their shoulders     When they pretend that the mutilated remains of the god have been found and rejoined   they turn from mourning to rejoicing " (De Errore Profanarum Religionum) 
The passion of Osiris was reflected in his name 'Wenennefer" ("the one who continues to be perfect"), which also alludes to his post mortem power 

Ikhernofret Stela
Much of the extant information about the rites of Osiris can be found on the Ikhernofret Stela at Abydos erected in the Twelfth Dynasty by Ikhernofret, possibly a priest of Osiris or other official (the titles of Ikhernofret are described in his stela from Abydos) during the reign of Senwosret III (Pharaoh Sesostris, about 1875 BC)  The ritual reenactment of Osiris's funeral rites were held in the last month of the inundation (the annual Nile flood), coinciding with Spring, and held at Abydos which was the traditional place where the body of Osiris drifted ashore after having been drowned in the Nile The part of the myth recounting the chopping up of the body into 14 pieces by Set is not recounted in this particular stela  Although it is attested to be a part of the rituals by a version of the Papyrus Jumilhac, in which it took Isis 12 days to reassemble the pieces, coinciding with the festival of ploughing  Some elements of the ceremony were held in the temple, while others involved public participation in a form of theatre  The Stela of Ikhernofret recounts the programme of events of the public elements over the five days of the Festival:

The First Day, The Procession of Wepwawet: A mock battle was enacted during which the enemies of Osiris are defeated  A procession was led by the god Wepwawet ("opener of the way") 
The Second Day, The Great Procession of Osiris: The body of Osiris was taken from his temple to his tomb  The boat he was transported in, the "Neshmet" bark, had to be defended against his enemies 
The Third Day: Osiris is mourned and the enemies of the land are destroyed 
The Fourth Day, Night Vigil: Prayers and recitations are made and funeral rites performed 
The Fifth Day, Osiris is Reborn: Osiris is reborn at dawn and crowned with the crown of Ma'at  The statue of Osiris is brought back to the temple 

Wheat and clay rituals
Contrasting with the public "theatrical" ceremonies sourced from the Middle Kingdom Ikhernofret Stele, more esoteric ceremonies were performed inside the temples by priests  Plutarch mentions that (for much later period) two days after the beginning of the festival "the priests bring forth a sacred chest containing a small golden coffer, into which they pour some potable water   and a great shout arises from the company for joy that Osiris is found (or resurrected)  Then they knead some fertile soil with the water   and fashion therefrom a crescent-shaped figure, which they cloth and adorn, this indicating that they regard these gods as the substance of Earth and Water " (Isis and Osiris, 39)  Yet his accounts were still obscure, for he also wrote, "I pass over the cutting of the wood" – opting not to describe it, since he considered it as a most sacred ritual (Ibid  21) 
In the Osirian temple at Denderah, an inscription (translated by Budge, Chapter XV, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection) describes in detail the making of wheat paste models of each dismembered piece of Osiris to be sent out to the town where each piece is discovered by Isis  At the temple of Mendes, figures of Osiris were made from wheat and paste placed in a trough on the day of the murder, then water was added for several days, until finally the mixture was kneaded into a mold of Osiris and taken to the temple to be buried (the sacred grain for these cakes were grown only in the temple fields)  Molds were made from the wood of a red tree in the forms of the sixteen dismembered parts of Osiris, the cakes of "divine" bread were made from each mold, placed in a silver chest and set near the head of the god with the inward parts of Osiris as described in the Book of the Dead (XVII) 

Judgement
The idea of divine justice being exercised after death for wrongdoing during life is first encountered during the Old Kingdom in a Sixth Dynasty tomb containing fragments of what would be described later as the Negative Confessions performed in front of the 42 Assessors of Ma'at At death a person faced judgment by a tribunal of forty-two divine judges  If they led a life in conformance with the precepts of the goddess Ma'at, who represented truth and right living, the person was welcomed into the kingdom of Osiris  If found guilty, the person was thrown to the soul-eating demon Ammit and did not share in eternal life  The person who is taken by the devourer is subject first to terrifying punishment and then annihilated  These depictions of punishment may have influenced medieval perceptions of the inferno in hell via early Christian and Coptic texts  Purification for those who are considered justified may be found in the descriptions of "Flame Island", where they experience the triumph over evil and rebirth  For the damned, complete destruction into a state of non-being awaits, but there is no suggestion of eternal torture During the reign of Seti I, Osiris was also invoked in royal decrees to pursue the living when wrongdoing was observed but kept secret and not reported 

Greco-Roman era
Hellenization
The early Ptolemaic kings promoted a new god, Serapis, who combined traits of Osiris with those of various Greek gods and was portrayed in a Hellenistic form  Serapis was often treated as the consort of Isis and became the patron deity of the Ptolemies' capital, Alexandria  Serapis's origins are not known  Some ancient authors claim the cult of Serapis was established at Alexandria by Alexander the Great himself, but most who discuss the subject of Serapis's origins give a story similar to that by Plutarch  Writing about 400 years after the fact, Plutarch claimed that Ptolemy I established the cult after dreaming of a colossal statue at Sinope in Anatolia  His councillors identified the statue as the Greek god Pluto and said that the Egyptian name for Pluto was Serapis  This name may have been a Hellenization of "Osiris-Apis"  Osiris-Apis was a patron deity of the Memphite Necropolis and the father of the Apis bull who was worshipped there, and texts from Ptolemaic times treat "Serapis" as the Greek translation of "Osiris-Apis"  But little of the early evidence for Serapis's cult comes from Memphis, and much of it comes from the Mediterranean world with no reference to an Egyptian origin for Serapis, so Mark Smith expresses doubt that Serapis originated as a Greek form of Osiris-Apis's name and leaves open the possibility that Serapis originated outside Egypt 

Destruction of cult
The cult of Isis and Osiris continued at Philae until at least the 450s CE, long after the imperial decrees of the late 4th century that ordered the closing of temples to "pagan" gods  Philae was the last major ancient Egyptian temple to be closed 

See also
Aaru
Ancient Egyptian concept of the soulKhenti-Amentiu

Notes
Passage 3:
Greek underworld
In Greek mythology, the Greek underworld, or Hades, is a distinct realm (one of the three realms that make up the cosmos) where an individual goes after death  The earliest idea of afterlife in Greek myth is that, at the moment of death, an individual's essence (psyche) is separated from the corpse and transported to the underworld  In early mythology (e g , Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) the dead were indiscriminately grouped together and led a shadowy post-existence; however, in later mythology (e g , Platonic philosophy) elements of post-mortem judgment began to emerge with good and bad people being separated (both spatially and with regards to treatment)  The underworld itself— commonly referred to as Hades, after its patron god, but also known by various metonyms—is described as being located at the periphery of the earth, either associated with the outer limits of the ocean (i e , Oceanus, again also a god) or beneath the earth  Darkness and a lack of sunlight are common features associated with the underworld and, in this way, provide a direct contrast to both the 'normality' of the land of the living (where the sun shines) and also with the brightness associated with Mount Olympus (the realm of the gods)  The underworld is also considered to be an invisible realm, which is understood both in relation to the permanent state of darkness but also a potential etymological link with Hades as the 'unseen place'  The underworld is made solely for the dead and so mortals do not enter it – with only a few heroic exceptions (who undertook a mythical catabasis: Heracles, Theseus, Orpheus, possibly also Odysseus, and in later Roman depictions Aeneas) 

Geography
Rivers
Rivers are a fundamental part of the topography of the underworld and are found in the earliest source materials: In Homer's Iliad, the "ghost" of Patroclus makes specific mention of gates and a river (unnamed) in Hades; in Homer's Odyssey, the "ghost" of Odysseus's mother, Anticlea, describes there being many "great rivers and appalling streams", and reference is made to at least four specific rivers  H  A  Guerber assumed that the rivers where Charon sailed mirrored the sky in Greco-Roman thought  In the wider mythological tradition, however, there are multiple bodies of water that are associated with the underworld (varying in number and combination depending on the source), the names of which can be understood to reflect specific associations with death 
The Styx can be considered the most prominent and familiar of the underworld rivers  It is the only named underworld river mentioned in Homer's Iliad – our earliest mythological text – and three of the Homeric Hymns  Not only is it an underworld river but is also, more generally, the inviolable waters upon which the gods swear oaths and a goddess in her own right (the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys)  In later traditions it often serves as the entrance to the underworld over which Charon (the ferryman of the dead) rows the deceased in order for them to enter the underworld  It is also known as the river of hatred  There are several Styx-es in the real world: according to Herodotus, Strabo, and Pliny it was in Arcadia; while Pausanias locates one in Nonacris 
The Acheron is the river of misery or river of woe  It is mentioned in many early sources of archaic poetry but is less prominent and early than the Styx  In some mythological accounts, Charon rows the dead over the Acheron rather than the Styx  In some alternative sources Acheron is a lake (rather than/as well as the river) and also functions as a synonym for the underworld  Pausanias describes a river named Acheron in Epirus, Thesprotia, which flows into a swampy-lake and converges with a river Cocytus (like its Homeric counterpart) which Pausanias attributes as the inspiration for Homer's description of the underworld  This site is also associated with specific instances of necromantic ritual and/or catabases from the mythic-past  Likewise, later traditions note a Acheron river in Cumae, Italy, which was also identified specifically with Odysseus' necromantic/catabatic activity 
The Pyriphlegethon/Phlegethon is the river of blazing-fire (Pyriphlegéthōn being from the phrase puri phlegethonti, 'blazing like fire')  It has a single mention in Homer's Odyssey (Pyriphlegéthōn) where it is described as flowing into the river Acheron, and then does not appear again in sources until Plato  According to Plato, this river leads to the depths of Tartarus and is associated with punishment (in particular, people who hit their fathers and mothers)  There was a river/field of this name near Cumae – maintaining its association with 'burning' due to the local hot springs – which Strabo explicitly associated with the Homeric underworld 
The Cocytus is the river of wailing (from kōkuein, 'to weep, lament')
Context 3: 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



ground_truth: Bill Pullman

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

Question: What pantheon is the God of the underworld in ancient Egypt a part of?

The following are given passages.
Context 2:  It too has only a single mention in Homer's Odyssey where it is described as a branch of the Styx that flows into the Acheron  According to Plato, the Cocytus is circular and empties into  Tartarus and is associated with the punishment of murderers  It is also the name of a river in Thesprotia and Cumae which merges with the Acheron (see above) 
The Lethe is the river of forgetfulness, taking its name from Lethe, the goddess of forgetfulness and oblivion  In later accounts, a poplar branch dripping with water of the Lethe became the symbol of Hypnos, the god of sleep  Some sources reference a plain of Lethe, rather than a river  Souls undergoing reincarnation were forced to drink from the river in order to forget their past life and the underworld  Only after drinking could a soul be reborn in the living world 
Oceanus is the river that encircles the world, and it marks the border of the land of the living and the underworld 

Entrance of the underworld
The deceased could enter the underworld through various routes, but perhaps the most common depiction is that of the ferryman  Charon to take them across the river  This was a particularly common motif on Athenian white ground lekythoi (funerary vases) of fifth century BCE and it is difficult to date this figure much earlier than the 6th century BCE (perhaps the latest of Hades' inhabitants to 'appear')  While Charon doesn't feature in the earliest mythical sources, there was still a superstition that the unburied couldn't cross over until they receive a proper burial (the most famous examples being Patroclus and Hector in the Iliad)  Alternatively, Hermes Psychopompos could also be relied upon to lead the deceased to the underworld and appears first in Homer's Odyssey book 24 (also a common motif on white ground lekythoi)  Hades was well-known for its gates (the πύλαι Ἀίδαο: Hom  Il  5 646, 9 312, 23 71, Od  14 156), with one of Hades's (the god) epithets being the "gate fastener" (πυλάρτης: Hom  Il  8 367, 13 415, Od  11 277) 

Tartarus
In some Greek sources Tartarus is another name for the underworld (serving as a metonym for Hades), while in others it is a completely distinct realm separate from the underworld  Hesiod most famously describes Tartarus as being as far beneath the underworld as the earth is beneath the sky  Like Hades, it too is so dark that the "night is poured around it in three rows like a collar round the neck, while above it grows the roots of the earth and of the unharvested sea " The most famous inhabitants of Tartarus are the Titans; Zeus cast the Titans along with his father Cronus into Tartarus after defeating them  Homer wrote that Cronus then became the king of Tartarus  According to Plato's Gorgias (c  400 BC), souls are judged after death and Tartarus is where the wicked received divine punishment  Tartarus is also considered to be a primordial force or deity alongside entities such as the Earth, Night, and Time 

Asphodel Meadows
The Asphodel Meadows is the location in the underworld where the majority of the deceased dwell  The name appears as far back as Homer's Odyssey (11 359), where it features in Odysseus’ survey of the underworld (technically referred to here as the field of asphodel: ἀσφοδελὸς λειμών)  It is unclear exactly what the ancients understood this "field" to be with scholars divided between associating it with flower asphodel (genus, Asphodelus L ) or a field of ash (basing this on the etymological construction of σφοδελὸς > σποδός, "ash") 

Elysium/Elysian Fields
The Elysium (also referred to as the Elysian Fields) was a utopian, paradisiacal afterlife reserved for specially distinguished individuals  The Elysian Fields are first referenced in Homer's Odyssey Book 4 where Menelaus is promised that he will go there instead of dying (and so distinguishing it from the afterlife proper): it is described as being located at the edges of the earth (the peirata) and is where life is "easiest for men"  However, Menelaus does not achieve this fate not due to anything he has done during his lifetime but rather because he is Zeus' son-in-law (being married to Helen)  In Hesiod's Work and Days, however, this is a paradise that heroes could attain  Eventually, as concepts of the afterlife broadened and became more "democratic", the generally righteous could be sent to the Elysian Fields after being judged by the underworld judges, Rhadamanthus and Minos 

Isles of the Blessed
By Hesiod's time, the Elysium would also be known as the Fortunate Isles or the Isles of the Blessed  The isles, which were sometimes treated as a geographical location on Earth, would become known as a place of reward in the underworld for those who were judged exceptionally pure 

Known inhabitants
Hades
Hades (Aides, Aidoneus, or Haidês), the eldest son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea; brother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia, is the Greek god of the underworld  When the three brothers divided the world between themselves, Zeus received the heavens, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld; the earth itself was divided between the three  Therefore, while Hades' responsibility was in the underworld, he was allowed to have power on earth as well  However, Hades himself is rarely seen outside his domain, and to those on earth his intentions and personality are a mystery  In art and literature Hades is depicted as stern and dignified, but not as a fierce torturer or devil-like  However, Hades was considered the enemy to all life and was hated by both the gods and men; sacrifices and prayers did not appease him so mortals rarely tried  He was also not a tormenter of the dead, and sometimes considered the "Zeus of the dead" because he was hospitable to them  Due to his role as lord of the underworld and ruler of the dead, he was also known as Zeus Khthonios ("the infernal Zeus" or "Zeus of the lower world")  Those who received punishment in Tartarus were assigned by the other gods seeking vengeance  In Greek society, many viewed Hades as the least liked god and many gods even had an aversion towards him, and when people would sacrifice to Hades, it would be if they wanted revenge on an enemy or something terrible to happen to them Hades was sometimes referred to as Pluton and was represented in a lighter way – here, he was considered the giver of wealth, since the crops and the blessing of the harvest come from below the earth 

Persephone
Persephone (also known as Kore) was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, and Zeus  Persephone was abducted by Hades, who desired a wife  When Persephone was gathering flowers, she was entranced by a narcissus flower planted by Gaia (to lure her to the underworld as a favor to Hades), and when she picked it the earth suddenly opened up  Hades, appearing in a golden chariot, seduced and carried Persephone into the underworld  When Demeter found out that Zeus had given Hades permission to abduct Persephone and take her as a wife, Demeter became enraged at Zeus and stopped growing harvests for the earth  To soothe her, Zeus sent Hermes to the underworld to return Persephone to her mother  However, she had eaten six pomegranate seeds in the underworld and was thus eternally tied to the underworld, since the pomegranate seed was sacred there Persephone could then only leave the underworld when the earth was blooming, or every season except the winter  The Homeric Hymns describes the abduction of Persephone by Hades:

Persephone herself is considered a fitting other half to Hades because of the meaning of her name which bears the Greek root for "killing" and the -phone in her name means "putting to death" 

Hecate
Hecate was variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, dogs, light, the Moon, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, necromancy, and sorcery  Hecate is often shown as a tripartite goddess, which allows her to look in multiple directions at once  This emphasizes her role as a protector of the in betweens 

The Erinyes
The Erinyes (also known as the Furies) were the three goddesses associated with the souls of the dead and the avenged crimes against the natural order of the world  They consist of Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone 
They were particularly concerned with crimes done by children against their parents such as matricide, patricide, and unfilial conduct  They would inflict madness upon the living murderer, or if a nation was harboring such a criminal, the Erinyes would cause starvation and disease to the nation  The Erinyes were dreaded by the living since they embodied the vengeance of the person who was wronged against the wrongdoer  Often the Greeks made "soothing libations" to the Erinyes to appease them so as to not invoke their wrath, and overall the Erinyes received many more libations and sacrifices than other gods of the underworld  The Erinyes were depicted as ugly and winged women with their bodies intertwined with serpents 

Hermes
While Hermes did not primarily reside in the underworld and is not usually associated with the underworld, he was the one who led the souls of the dead to the underworld  In this sense, he was known as Hermes Psychopompos and with his fair golden wand he was able to lead the dead to their new home  He was also called upon by the dying to assist in their passing – some called upon him to have painless deaths or be able to die when and where they believed they were meant to die 

Judges of the underworld
Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus are the judges of the dead  They judged the deeds of the deceased and created the laws that governed the underworld Aeacus was the guardian of the Keys of the underworld and the judge of the men of Europe  Rhadamanthus was Lord of Elysium and judge of the men of Asia  Minos was the judge of the final vote 

Charon
Charon is the ferryman who, after receiving a soul from Hermes, would guide them across the rivers Styx and/or Acheron to the underworld  At funerals, the deceased traditionally had an obol placed over their eye or under their tongue, so they could pay Charon to take them across  If not, they were said to fly at the shores for one hundred years, until they were allowed to cross the river  To the Etruscans, Charon was considered a fearsome being – he wielded a hammer and was hook-nosed, bearded, and had animalistic ears with teeth  In other early Greek depictions, Charon was considered merely an ugly bearded man with a conical hat and tunic  Later on, in more modern Greek folklore, he was considered more angelic, like the Archangel Michael  Nevertheless, Charon was considered a terrifying being since his duty was to bring these souls to the underworld and no one would persuade him to do otherwise 

Cerberus
Cerberus (Kerberos), or the "Hell-Hound", is Hades' massive multi-headed (usually three-headed) dog with some descriptions stating that it also has a snake-headed tail and snake heads on its back and as its mane  Born from Echidna and Typhon, Cerberus guards the gate that serves as the entrance of the underworld  Cerberus' duty is to prevent dead people from leaving the underworld 
Heracles once borrowed Cerberus as the final part of the Labours of Heracles  Orpheus once soothed it to sleep with his music 
According to the Suda, the ancient Greeks placed a honeycake (μελιτοῦττα) with the dead in order (for the dead) to give it to Cerberus 

Thanatos
Thanatos is the personification of death  Specifically, he represented non-violent death as contrasted with his sisters the Keres, the spirits of diseases and slaughter 

Hypnos
Hypnos is the personification of sleep and twin brother of Thanatos  His cave was described as impenetrable by the light of sun and moon alike; it was surrounded by poppies and other soporific plants  The river Lethe also flowed through the cave, and here its murmuring would induce drowsiness 

Melinoë
Melinoe is a chthonic nymph, daughter of Persephone, invoked in one of the Orphic Hymns and propitiated as a bringer of nightmares and madness  She may also be the figure named in a few inscriptions from Anatolia, and she appears on a bronze tablet in association with Persephone  The hymns, of uncertain date but probably composed in the 2nd or 3rd century AD, are liturgical texts for the mystery religion known as Orphism  In the hymn, Melinoë has characteristics that seem similar to Hecate and the Erinyes, and the name is sometimes thought to be an epithet of Hecate  The terms in which Melinoë is described are typical of moon goddesses in Greek poetry 

Nyx
Nyx is the goddess of the Night   Nyx is the daughter of Chaos 

Tartarus
A deep abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans, Tartarus was also considered to be a primordial deity 

Achlys
Achlys is the personification of misery and sadness 

Styx
Styx is the goddess of the river with the same name  Not much is known about her, but she is an ally of Zeus and lives in the underworld 

Eurynomos
Eurynomos is one of the daemons of the underworld, who eats off all the flesh of the corpses, leaving only their bones 

Zagreus
Zagreus was considered by some ancient authors as an underworld god 

The dead
In the Greek underworld, the souls of the dead still existed, but they are insubstantial, and flitted around the underworld with no sense of purpose  The dead within the Homeric underworld lack menos, or strength, and therefore they cannot influence those on earth  They also lack phrenes, or wit, and are heedless of what goes on around them and on the earth above them  Their lives in the underworld were very neutral, so all social statuses and political positions were eliminated and no one was able to use their previous lives to their advantage in the underworld The idea of progress did not exist in the Greek underworld – at the moment of death, the psyche was frozen, in experience and appearance  The souls in the underworld did not age or really change in any sense  They did not lead any sort of active life in the underworld – they were exactly the same as they were in life  Therefore, those who had died in battle were eternally blood-spattered in the underworld and those who had died peacefully were able to remain that way Overall, the Greek dead were considered to be irritable and unpleasant, but not dangerous or malevolent  They grew angry if they felt a hostile presence near their graves and drink offerings were given in order to appease them so as not to anger the dead  Mostly, blood offerings were given, because they needed the essence of life to become communicative and conscious again  This is shown in Homer's Odyssey, where Odysseus had to offer blood of sheep in order for the souls to interact with him  While in the underworld, the dead passed the time through simple pastimes such as playing games, as shown from objects found in tombs such as dice and game-boards  Grave gifts such as clothing, jewelry, and food were left by the living for use in the underworld as well, since many viewed these gifts to carry over into the underworld  There was not a general consensus as to whether the dead were able to consume food or not  Homer depicted the dead as unable to eat or drink unless they had been summoned; however, some reliefs portray the underworld as having many elaborate feasts  While not completely clear, it is implied that the dead could still have sexual intimacy with another, although no children were produced  The Greeks also showed belief in the possibility of marriage in the underworld, which in a sense implies the Greek underworld was little different from the world of the living Lucian described the people of the underworld as simple skeletons  They are indistinguishable from each other, and it is impossible to tell who was wealthy or important in the living world  However, this view of the underworld was not universal – Homer depicts the dead keeping their familiar faces 
Hades itself was free from the concept of time  The dead are aware of both the past and the future, and in poems describing Greek heroes, the dead helped move the plot of the story by prophesying and telling truths unknown to the hero  The only way for humans to communicate with the dead was to suspend time and their normal life to reach Hades, the place beyond immediate perception and human time 

Greek attitudes
The Greeks had a definite belief that there was a journey to the afterlife or another world  They believed that death was not a complete end to life or human existence  The Greeks accepted the existence of the soul after death, but saw this afterlife as meaningless  In the underworld, the identity of a dead person still existed, but it had no strength or true influence  Rather, the continuation of the existence of the soul in the underworld was considered a remembrance of the fact that the dead person had existed, yet while the soul still existed, it was inactive  However, the price of death was considered a great one  Homer believed that the best possible existence for humans was to never be born at all, or die soon after birth, because the greatness of life could never balance the price of death  The Greek gods only rewarded heroes who were still living; heroes that died were ignored in the afterlife  However, it was considered very important to the Greeks to honor the dead and was seen as a type of piety  Those who did not respect the dead opened themselves to the punishment of the gods – for example, Odysseus ensured Ajax's burial, or the gods would be angered 

Myths and stories
Orpheus
Orpheus, a poet and musician that had almost supernatural abilities to move anyone to his music, descended to the underworld as a living mortal to retrieve his dead wife Eurydice after she was bitten by a poisonous snake on their wedding day  With his lyre-playing skills, he was able to put a spell on the guardians of the underworld and move them with his music  With his beautiful voice he was able to convince Hades and Persephone to allow him and his wife to return to the living  The rulers of the underworld agreed, but under one condition – Eurydice would have to follow behind Orpheus and he could not turn around to look at her  Once Orpheus reached the entrance, he turned around, longing to look at his beautiful wife, only to watch as his wife faded back into the underworld  He was forbidden to return to the underworld a second time and he spent his life playing his music to the birds and the mountains 

See also
Hades in Christianity
Passage 4:
Mark Lehner
Mark Lehner is an American archaeologist with more than 30 years of experience excavating in Egypt  He was born in North Dakota in 1950  His approach, as director of Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA), is to conduct interdisciplinary archaeological investigation  Every excavated object is examined by specialists to create an overall picture of an archaeological site—from the buildings down to the pollen spores  His international team currently runs the Giza Plateau Mapping Project, excavating and mapping the ancient city of the builders of the Giza pyramid complex, which dates to the fourth dynasty of Egypt  He discovered that Pyramid G1-a, one of the subsidiary pyramids of the Great Pyramid, belonged to Hetepheres I; it was originally thought to belong to Queen Meritites I 

Education and career
Lehner first went to Egypt as a student in the 1970s  Intrigued by the mysteries of the "Sleeping Prophet", Edgar Cayce, Lehner "found that [my] initial notions about the ancient civilization along the Nile could not stand up to the bedrock reality of the Giza Plateau"  He turned to the scientific method of discovery in order to understand the culture better, returning some years later to complete a doctoral degree at Yale University  Lehner's 1991 dissertation was titled Archaeology of an image: The Great Sphinx of Giza 
Lehner's team has more recently included parts of Menkaure's valley temple and the town attached to the monument of Queen Khentkawes in their excavations  AERA's 2009 field season was recorded in a blog  AERA has conducted a number of archaeological field schools for Egyptian antiquities inspectors under the auspices of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities  The AERA team has run basic and advanced courses at Giza, as well as courses in salvage archaeology along the Avenue of Sphinxes north of Luxor Temple in the city of Luxor 
Among his other work in Egypt, Lehner has produced the only known scale maps of the Giza Sphinx 
Lehner's book, "The Complete Pyramids" (1997), is an exhaustive catalogue of Egypt's many pyramid sites  He has appeared in many television programs about Ancient Egypt   He is a visiting assistant professor of Egyptian archaeology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago 
Lehner took part in an American Association for the Advancement of Science debate centered around controversy surrounding the age of the Sphinx at Giza  [1]
Lehner has also starred and aided in the production of several documentaries about the pyramids which are regularly aired on the National Geographic Channel 
He has argued that the Giza Necropolis was built in a span of 85 years between 2589 and 2504 BC 

Television credits
Crew
Into the Great Pyramid (2002) (TV) (consultant: archaeology)
Mysteries of Egypt (1998) (scientific consultant)
Saving the Sphinx (1998) (TV) (historical consultant)

Appearances
Pyramides: Les Mystères Révélés (2019) (TV)
Secret History Of The Sphinx (2017) (TV)
Riddles of the Sphinx [2] (2010) (TV)
Heritage Key: Pyramid Builders (2009) (TV)
Into the Great Pyramid (2002) (TV)
Secrets of the Pharaohs: Lost City of the Pyramids (2001) (TV)
Saving the Sphinx (1998) (TV)
Egypt: Secrets of the Pharaohs (1997) (TV)
Mummies: Tales from the Egyptian Crypts (1996) (TV)
The Mystery of the Sphinx (1993) (TV)
This Old Pyramid (1992) (TV)
Mysteries of the Pyramids, LIVE (1988) (TV)

Books
The Egyptian Heritage: Based on the Edgar Cayce Readings, Virginia Beach: A R E  Press (1974)  ISBN 0-87604-071-7
The Complete Pyramids, Slovenia: Thames and Hudson (1997)  ISBN 0-500-05084-8
Passage 5:
Hapi (Son of Horus)
The four sons of Horus were a group of four deities in ancient Egyptian religion who were believed to protect deceased people in the afterlife  Beginning in the First Intermediate Period of Egyptian history (c  2181–2055 BC), Imsety, Hapy, Duamutef, and Qebehsenuef were especially connected with the four canopic jars that housed the internal organs that were removed from the body of the deceased during the process of mummification  Most commonly, Imsety protected the liver, Hapy the lungs, Duamutef the stomach, and Qebehsenuef the intestines, but this pattern often varied  The canopic jars were given lids that represented the heads of the sons of Horus  Although they were originally portrayed as humans, in the latter part of the New Kingdom (c  1550–1070 BC), they took on their most distinctive iconography, in which Imsety is portrayed as a human, Hapy as a baboon, Duamutef as a jackal, and Qebehsenuef as a falcon  The four sons were also linked with stars in the sky, with regions of Egypt, and with the cardinal directions 
The worship of the sons of Horus was almost entirely restricted to the funerary sphere  They were first mentioned late in the Old Kingdom (c  2686–2181 BC) in the Pyramid Texts and continued to be invoked in funerary texts throughout ancient Egyptian history  Their connection with the canopic jars was established in the First Intermediate Period, and afterward they became ubiquitous in the decoration of canopic chests, coffins, and sarcophagi  Although they were increasingly closely associated with the internal organs, they continued to appear in burial equipment even after the use of canopic jars was abandoned in the Ptolemaic Period (303–30 BC), disappearing only in the fourth century AD with the extinction of the ancient Egyptian funerary tradition 

Names and origins
Imsety (jmstj), Hapy (ḥpy), Duamutef (dwꜣ-mwt f), and Qebehsenuef (qbḥ-snw f) are first mentioned in the Pyramid Texts, the earliest ancient Egyptian funerary texts, in the late Old Kingdom (24th and 23rd centuries BC)  In numerous sources, such as Spell 541 of the Pyramid Texts, they are stated to be the children of Horus, one of the major deities of the Egyptian pantheon  In a few of these texts they are instead called the children of the god Atum, the god Geb, or the goddess Nut  A passage in the Coffin Texts from the Middle Kingdom (c  2055–1650 BC) says they are the offspring of the goddess Isis and a form of Horus known as Horus the Elder In the Pyramid Texts, the sons of Horus are said to assist the deceased king in the afterlife  In Spell 688, for example, they "make firm a ladder" for the king to ascend into the sky, while in Spell 338 they protect him from hunger and thirst  Egyptologists often treat the protection of the deceased as their primary role, though Maarten Raven argues that the four sons originated as celestial deities, given that the Pyramid Texts frequently connect them with the sky and that Horus himself was a sky deity The name of Duamutef means "He who praises his mother", while Qebehsenuef means "He who purifies his brother by means of libation"  The Egyptologist James P  Allen translates Hapy's name as "He of Haste" and Imsety as "He of the Dill"; another Egyptologist, Joshua Roberson, believes Imsety originated as a personification of this herb  Imsety's name also resembled the Egyptian word for "liver" (mjst), which may be the reason why he became specifically linked with the liver The name of Imsety incorporates the Egyptian grammatical dual ending (-ty or -wy), and the name of Hapy may have originally done so as well, incorporating a w that was later lost  For this reason, the Egyptologist John Taylor argues that these two sons were originally two male and female pairs of deities 

Roles
Protectors of the deceased
Texts from later periods continue to invoke the sons of Horus for protection in the afterlife as the Pyramid Texts do  In many texts they were said to protect Osiris, the funerary deity whose mythological death and resurrection served as the template for ancient Egyptian funerary practices  Some texts even refer to them as the sons of Osiris rather than Horus  In a Middle Kingdom ritual, recorded in the Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus, the sons of Horus aid Osiris in his rejuvenation after death, fight the followers of his enemy Set, and restore the lost Eye of Horus to their father  Spell 137 of the Book of the Dead from the New Kingdom (c  1550–1070 BC) says to them, "as you spread your protection over your father Osiris-Khentiamentiu, so spread your protection over [the deceased person]"  In the tenth section of the New Kingdom Book of Gates, a funerary text that depicts the underworld in detail, the four sons are portrayed holding chains that bind the malign beings called "wmmtj-snakes" The four sons developed a specialized connection with the internal organs of the deceased  During the mummification process, four internal organs—the lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines—were removed from the body and dried before being placed in the burial, usually separately from the body  In the late Old Kingdom, these organs began to be placed in a set of jars known as canopic jars, and during the First Intermediate Period (c  2181–2055 BC), the jars began to be inscribed with texts invoking the sons of Horus  No text specifies which of the sons protect which organ  Burials in which the jars and organs survive show that the most common arrangement was for Imsety to guard the liver, Hapy the lungs, Duamutef the stomach, and Qebehsenuef the intestines, but many variations are known  For instance, in some cases Hapy protected the stomach and Duamutef the lungs The sons of Horus themselves were thought to be under the protection of four goddesses, usually Isis for Imsety, Nephthys for Hapy, Neith for Duamutef, and Serqet for Qebehsenuef  In the Middle Kingdom, this scheme could vary and sometimes included different goddesses, so that Sendjet guarded Duamutef and Renenutet guarded Qebehsenuef  In some inscriptions from Middle Kingdom coffins, the goddesses are invoked to protect the son of Horus "who is in you [the deceased]", suggesting that the sons were equated with the internal organs as well as being their protectors 

Directions and regions of the cosmos
The sons of Horus were also connected with the sky or parts of the cosmos as the Egyptians envisioned it  In the New Kingdom, they were sometimes thought of as stars in the northern sky or as birds flying to the four corners of the world  Bernard Mathieu suggests that they were equated with the four stars at the corners of the constellation Orion (Saiph, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and Rigel) and with four of the stars in Ursa Major (Megrez, Phecda, Merak, and Dubhe) Several Egyptologists have suggested that the four sons were equated with the four pillars that supported the vault of the sky in Egyptian cosmology  They were also connected with regions of Egypt: they were sometimes equated with the Souls of Nekhen and Pe, a set of deities that represented the Predynastic rulers of Upper in the south and Lower Egypt in the north  Hapy and Duamutef were linked with the Lower Egyptian city of Buto, and Imsety and Qebehsenuef with the Upper Egyptian city of Nekhen Egyptian beliefs drew analogies between the human body and the cosmos, and these analogies were particularly visible in burial customs  In Middle Kingdom burials, bodies were laid out with the head to the north and the feet to the south  The texts that decorated coffins in this period placed some deities in consistent locations, thus linking them with particular directions  Imsety and Hapy were invoked at the head of the coffin, with Imsety on the left and Hapy on the right, thus placing Imsety in the northeast and Hapy in the northwest  Duamutef and Qebehsenuef were invoked at the foot of the coffin, with Duamutef on the left and Qebehsenuef on the right, thus placing Duamutef in the southeast and Qebehsenuef in the southwest  Canopic chests of the time placed each deity in equivalent positions  These orientations suggest that the sons of Horus were linked with the four corners of the Egyptian cosmos  Their orientation may be related to the positions of each organ: the lungs and liver sit higher in the body, thus fitting the northerly position of Imsety and Hapy, while the stomach and intestines are lower down, matching the southerly position of Duamutef and Qebehsenuef The sons' positions shifted in the New Kingdom, when burials came to be laid out with the head to the west and the feet in the east  On some coffins, Imsety and Hapy remained at the head and Duamutef and Qebehsenuef at the foot, but in each pair, the deity who had been on the left side was moved to the right, and vice versa  In other cases, each of the sons of Horus appeared on a side wall of the coffin or canopic chest: Imsety in the south, Hapy in the north, Duamutef in the east, and Qebehsenuef in the west  The latter placement, with the sons of Horus on four sides rather than four corners, links the four deities with the cardinal directions rather than the corners of the cosmos  The coexistence of the two systems of orientation suggests that the Egyptians did not sharply distinguish the four corners from the four directions 

Iconography
The lids of canopic jars began to be sculpted in the shape of heads at the end of the First Intermediate Period, at the same time that the jars' inscriptions began to invoke the sons of Horus  These lids are therefore probably meant to represent the four sons rather than the organs' deceased owner  In some of the earliest examples, the lids have falcon heads, but in the Middle Kingdom, human heads became the norm  In some of these cases, Imsety, unlike the others, is portrayed as a woman In the Eighteenth Dynasty (c  1550–1292 BC), a few canopic jars were given varying heads: Imsety was portrayed as a man, Hapy as a baboon, Duamutef as a jackal and Qebehsenuef as a falcon  This iconography became standard during the reign of Ramesses II in the thirteenth century BC and remained so for the rest of ancient Egyptian history, although in the Third Intermediate Period the animal forms were frequently confused  For instance, Duamutef was often portrayed as a falcon and Qebehsenuef as a jackal 
In addition to the jars themselves, the four sons were often portrayed on the canopic chests that housed the jars, as well as on coffins and other burial equipment  In the vignette that accompanies Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead, they appear as small figures standing on a lotus flower in front of the throne of Osiris  In an exceptional portrayal, in the wall decoration in WV23 the tomb of Ay from the late Eighteenth Dynasty, the four sons are portrayed as fully human, with Imsety and Hapy wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt and Duamutef and Qebehsenuef wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt 

Worship
The four sons did not receive the regular cultic worship that major Egyptian deities did, and they appeared exclusively in funerary contexts   They play a minor role in the ritual from the Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus, whose purpose is uncertain but has commonalities with funerary rites, but they were found most commonly in the tomb itself  From the Middle Kingdom onward, they were almost always portrayed or invoked in the decoration of coffins, sarcophagi, and canopic equipment  During the late New Kingdom, jars that contained shabtis, a common type of funerary figurine, were given lids shaped like the heads of the sons of Horus, similar to the lids of canopic jars In the Twentieth Dynasty of the New Kingdom (1189–1077 BC), embalmers began placing wax figurines of the sons of Horus inside the body cavity  Soon afterward, at the beginning of the Third Intermediate Period, Egyptians ceased to store organs in canopic jars and instead embalmed each organ separately, wrapping them together with the corresponding wax figurines and returning them to the body cavity  Wealthy burials continued to include canopic jars with no organs inside  Toward the end of this period, the four sons were also portrayed in faience amulets attached to the exterior wrappings of the mummy  During this period, the decoration of human-shaped coffins placed the four sons near the abdomen of the mummy rather than distributing them around the coffin, a sign that their connection with the internal organs was overshadowing their other roles The use of canopic jars ceased in the early Ptolemaic Period (303–30 BC), and the use of canopic chests died out in the middle of that period  Yet in Ptolemaic and Roman times, the sons of Horus continued to appear on other burial goods, such as decorated stucco casings on wrapped mummies  A set of instructions for the embalming process, dating to the first or second century AD, calls for four officiants to take on the role of the sons of Horus as the deceased person's hand is wrapped  The last references to the sons of Horus in burial goods date to the fourth century AD, near the end of the ancient Egyptian funerary tradition 

Citations
Works cited
External links
 Media related to Four sons of Horus at Wikimedia Commons
Context 3:  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



ground_truth: ancient Egyptian religion

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 3:  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



ground_truth: NES

Family Computer

Famicom

Nintendo Entertainment System