Muck was one of the first conductors to be internationally famous for travelling about conducting orchestras in many parts of the world. He was a strict conductor who thought it was very important that the players should do exactly what the composer asks for in the score.
He was imprisoned in the United States during World War I, because of his support for Germany and because he refused to conduct the "Star Spangled Banner". After the war he was sent away and not allowed to return to America. After his death a square in Hamburg was named after him, although in 1997 it was renamed “Johannes Brahms Square” because Muck had praised Adolf Hitler.
Town square
A town square is a large open area in the center of a town. Town squares were traditionally places where people came together to meet, or to sell and buy things, or to be entertained. They often had markets, lynchings, or they were used for concerts. They are often surrounded by shops or cafés.
Other names for town square are civic center, city square, urban square, market square, public square, Platz (from German), plaza (from Spanish), piazza (from Italian), and place (from French).
Many town squares in the 20th century became used as car parks. In recent years cars have been banned from some town squares so that people can enjoy the open space once more, free from traffic and pollution.
In other parts of towns there are often smaller open spaces which are called “squares”. They are often square in shape, but some are different shapes.
Some famous squares include: Red Square in Moscow, Beijing's Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Times Square in New York City and Trafalgar Square in London.
Torture in the United States
Torture in the United States includes cases of torture reported in the United States and outside the USA by U.S. government workers.
The United States and other countries involved in the War on Terror have used torture to get information from suspected terrorists. Some of the most well known cases of torture involving the U.S. are the Abu Ghraib scandal and Guantanamo Bay.
Starting in 2004 there were reports of abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The New Yorker newspaper had an article in May 2004 about the abuse and the article had pictures that were taken by soldiers involved. According to an investigation by the Department of Defense called the Taguba Report, the military had been looking into the abuse since 2003. In the end nine soldiers were discharged from the military and sent to prison.
Human rights organisations like Amnesty International have said CIA agents used waterboarding and other ways to get information out of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Because of the abuse President Barack Obama ordered the base to be closed down.
Itumbiara
Itumbiara is a Brazilian city of the state of Goiás. It has 95.265 inhabitants and an area of 2.461 km². It was founded in 1909 and it is one of the most important cities in state of Goiás.
Below is a list of famous people born in Itumbiara.
Legal tender
Legal tender is fiat money, or currency (bank notes and coins). It has value because a government creates it and backs it, and people using it have faith in its value. Fiat money such as US dollars can be used as an exchange for goods and services.
The point is that other kinds of money have been used. Legal tender differs from commodity money and representative money. Commodity money is based on a "good", often a precious metal such as gold or silver, which is desired or has other uses. Representative money is a claim on the commodity rather than the actual good. In that case, the gold stays in a bank, and its ownership changes from time to time as the money is used. Why might a good be used at all? One reason is that governments cannot just make it. It is said that this stops inflation because, with fiat money, governments can just print more.
Some economists argue that an economy can only grow if it can produce more capital goods and not more money in the form of credit. This means that good economies must produce things rather than borrow money to buy things produced in other countries.
Alan Greenspan was an early critic of fiat money arguing that "Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth". He thought the value of money should be backed by gold. Richard Nixon ended gold backing for the United States dollar in 1971. Other countries also changed to Fiat currency.
Anal retentive
The words anal-retentive (or anally retentive, anal retentive), often shortened to "anal", are used in everyday language to describe a person with so much attention to detail that the obsession becomes annoying to other people. The idea was thought up by Sigmund Freud
In the psychology ideas of Freud, the anal stage is said to follow the oral stage of development in babies and young kids. This is usually when they are learning toilet training. Freud made a theory which said that children who experience troubles during this time may develop "anal" personality traits, as well as a general interest in collecting and keeping things.
Although Freud's theories have been influential, research suggests patterns of parental attitudes has a major effect on how a baby will grow up.
San Joaquin River
The San Joaquin River is one of the two major rivers of California, in the United States. At long, it is the second longest river in California, after the Sacramento River. It begins on the west Sierra Nevada Mountains and flows west and north to its end at San Francisco Bay, at the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Its basin, which is about 32,000 square miles (82,879 square kilometers) in size, contains mostly farmland. The river provides drinking water to over 22 million California citizens. Its three largest tributaries are the Merced, Tuolumne, and Stanislaus rivers.
The river was once one of the richest river ecosystems in California. However, now over of the river is dry except during floods, because lots of water has been taken away for irrigation. In fact, below Friant Dam, a dam built in the 1940s on the San Joaquin River, 95 percent of the river's flow is dry. Much of the river is polluted, destroying the historic population of chinook salmon, once the southernmost in the United States. Pesticides, selenium, and many more toxic materials are carried by the San Joaquin into San Francisco Bay.
Now, one of the largest projects in the American West has been begun to restore the San Joaquin River. On September 13, 2006, the Natural Resources Defense Council signed an agreement with Friant Dam users and the United States Department of the Interior. This agreement would restore the San Joaquin River below the dam, reducing pollution.
Three forks of the San Joaquin River join to form the San Joaquin River at two places, called "Balloon Dome" and "Junction Butte".
The river continues west into the Central Valley of California, and is joined by many other rivers flowing off the Sierra Nevada mountains. The most largest of these are the Stanislaus River, Tuolumne River, and Merced River. The Tuolumne and Merced river both flow out of Yosemite National Park.
As the river flows north and west, it is joined by the following tributaries:
The San Joaquin River and its tributaries pass through/feed the following lakes and reservoirs:
Several man-made channels are also part of the river system:
The San Joaquin River eventually meets the Sacramento River, forming the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This is one of the biggest estuaries in the United States. It is near the city of Antioch. At this place, the San Joaquin River splits into two rivers: the "Old River" and the "Middle River". The Old River sometimes confuses fish to go down its channel. As a result, a wall is built between the San Joaquin River and the Old River.