the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
The first series of Promenade Concerts (or "Proms" for short) was in 1895.
The programmes were much longer than they are in concerts today.
There were lots of short pieces of music.
Wood gradually made his audiences get used to listening to longer pieces of music.
He introduced them to new music which had only recently been written.
He conducted music by many British composers and European composers.
People at that time were very prejudiced.
They thought that only German conductors knew how to conduct German composers such as Richard Wagner.
Wood showed them that he could do it too.
He conducted every night during the Proms season.
On Mondays he played a lot of Wagner and on Fridays he played Beethoven.
He played music by European composers whose music was not yet well known in England, e.g. Sibelius, Schoenberg and many Russian composers.
Wood conducted the Proms until his death in 1944.
Most of that time he was the only conductor of the Proms.
Later in life he shared the conducting with other conductors such as Basil Cameron and Sir Adrian Boult.
Wood had a big influence on the standard of music making in England.
He made orchestral playing better, making sure that the players did not send in deputies instead of them.
He made sure that the orchestral players were paid well and he allowed women to play in the orchestra.
Other musical activities
Wood is mainly remembered for the promenade concerts, but he conducted many other groups as well.
He travelled around England, conducting at music festivals.
He often conducted amateur groups.
He made sure that he knew the music he was conducting very well.
Many conductors in the 19th century did not do this.
They were more keen to show off, but Wood prepared the music carefully, marking things in his score with coloured pencils.
Wood made arrangements of other composer's music, e.g. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor for organ.
He arranged a group of songs called Fantasia on British Sea Songs for the 1905 centenary celebrations of the Battle of Trafalgar.
These are always played at the Last Night of the Proms.
In 1938 he conducted a jubilee concert in the Royal Albert Hall.
Rachmaninov was the soloist, and Vaughan Williams wrote his Serenade to Music for orchestra and sixteen soloists.
Wood often worked too hard and it was not good for his health.
He died on 19 August 1944, just over a week after the fiftieth anniversary concert of the Proms, which he had been too ill even to listen to on the radio.
Wood was given many honours: he was knighted by the king in 1911, he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1921 and was made a Companion of Honour in 1944.
At the Proms today his bust is put at the front of the Royal Albert Hall during the whole of each Prom season.
At the Last Night of the Proms it is decorated by a chaplet.
In Christianity Divine Grace means a favour of God for humankind.
God favours every person, without looking at what they did or how much they are worth.
This grace of God to humans may happen in the gifts that God gives him, such as creation or salvation.
Types of Grace
Common Grace
Common grace refers to blessings which God gives to everyone.
Jesus said that God "sends the rain upon the just and the unjust.
This idea is found in Greek philosophy.
Plato spoke of God's "gifts".
The Reformers listed many ways in which God gives undeserved gifts to mankind.
These include life itself, food and earthly pleasures.
God also restrains evil so that people will not destroy themselves in wars and conflict.
Prevenient grace (or enabling grace) is a Christian teaching in Arminian theology.
It appeared earlier in Catholic and early Anabaptist teaching.
It is divine grace that goes before human decision.
In other words, God will start showing special love to a person at a certain time of his life.
Prevenient grace is taught by Christians who are influenced by the theology of Jacob Arminius or John Wesley.
Wesleyan Arminians believe God helps people to accept the gift of salvation.
This refers to the good things that God gives to those who believe in Jesus.
The gifts include forgiveness of sin, eternal life, and the power to live a good and holy life.
"Amazing Grace" is a song that became very popular.
It is played at funerals, sometimes on a bagpipe.
This song was written by John Newton who was an evil slave trader.
His life was changed when he became a Christian.
He later worked to stop the practice of slavery.
His story is told in a 2006 movie.
In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (computer) which clients (people or computers) use to access other computers.
A proxy server that passes information to its clients without changing it is usually called a gateway or sometimes called tunneling proxy.
A client that connects to the proxy server will ask for some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, that is available on a different server.
The proxy server then goes to the other server and asks for what the client wants for them.
A proxy server can change the information that it gives to the client, and if the same information is accessed many times or by many different clients it can use what is called a cache to make things faster.
A cache is the term for information that has been accessed and saved for future use; if a proxy server has what the client is accessing in its cache, it will make it faster because it does not need to go and access the other server to provide what the client wants.
Some proxy servers use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to secure the connection between the client and the remote server.
This security layer helps to make sure that no other computers can read or understand what the client is asking from the server.
Benefits of proxy servers
There are many benefits of using a proxy server.
First, the client machine can exchange data with the remote server without making a direct connection.
This way, the client's real internet address will not be known to the remote server.
This is sometimes called anonymitizing because it makes the client anonymous.
A second advantage is that when the proxy server itself is able to serve the request made by the client, it will not contact the remote server any more.
So the load on the remote server will be reduced by using a proxy server.
This type of proxy servers are called caching servers.
Big organizations (or even countries) sometimes use proxy servers to control access to the Internet.
A large bank may use a proxy server that only allows connections to other websites relevant to banking.
The proxy server might however block access to Websites offering free email or serving pornographic material.
It might also block access to file sharing applications.
Limiting access to specific content on the internet is also called internet filtering.
Caching proxy server
A caching proxy server can service requests from clients, without contacting the remote server; instead, it sends the data which it has stored from a previous request.
This is called caching.
Caching proxy servers reduce the work load of the remote server.
However, they have their own problems, especially if they are not configured well.
Some problems are described in RFC 3143.
A web proxy is a proxy server that focuses on the traffic over the World Wide Web.
It may be used to block offensive web content, or to control access of clients to online content.
They may be used by corporations or countries.
Anonymizing proxy server
An anonymizing proxy server removes identifying information from the clients' requests, for the purpose of anonymity.
They may also be used to break through filtered contents on the internet.
A proxy server is called an open proxy if everyone can connect to it and use it.
Usually, open proxies are proxy servers which are badly configured.
Open proxies may be abused easily; for example, a bad user may send a corrupting request to a remote server, but hide himself behind an open proxy, so the administrators of the remote server cannot stop him.
Open proxies can also be used for spamming.
For this reason, some websites do not allow connections to their web servers or to edit content on them through known open proxies, including on Wikipedia.
Forced proxy
A forced proxy server is a proxy server which handles all of the traffic from the client to the internet.
The client will not know that the proxy exists, but all of the information passes through the proxy server.
They are sometimes called "transparent" proxy servers, because the user does not know a proxy server is between the client and remote server.
SMTP Proxy
A Transparent SMTP Proxy is a SMTP proxy server that is inserted in between a sending mail server and a receiving mail server.
The main purpose of the SMTP proxy is to filter outbound spam.
The proxy masquerades itself in such a way that the client and server believe that they are talking to each other even though there is a proxy in between.
There is a lot of software which can be used for running a proxy server.
Some software can only work as a proxy server, while other software can also work as a firewall or caching server.
Squid, Varnish and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA Server) are among the best known pieces of proxy server software.
Some proxy software uses the SOCKS protocol.
An example is the Java SOCKS Proxy Server.
In net jargon (words people use about the Internet) a client is a computer used by a user to connect to a network and make requests to servers.
For example, a web browser is a client software.
Caching is a term used in computer science.
The idea behind a  cache (pronounced "cash"   ) is very simple: Very often, obtaining a result for a calculation is very time-consuming, so storing the result is generally a good idea.
Two kinds of storage media are used: One is usually quite big, but accessing it is "slow"; the other one can be accessed much faster, but generally it is small.
The very basic idea behind caching is to use the medium that is fast to access to have copies of data.
There is no difference between the copy, and the original.
Accessing the original data may take a long time, or it may be expensive to do (for example: the results of a difficult problem that take a long time to solve).
For this reason, it is much "cheaper" to simply use the copy of the data from the cache.
Put differently, a cache is a temporary storage area that has copies of data that is used often.
When a copy of the data is in this cache, it is faster to use this copy rather than re-fetching or re-calculating the original data.
This will make the average time needed to access the data shorter.
Putting a new value into a cache often means that an older value needs to be replaced.
There are different ideas (usually called "strategies") on how to select the value to replace.
A buffer is very similar to a cache.
It is different in that the client accessing the data in a buffer knows there is a buffer; the buffer is managed by the application.
With a cache, the client accessing the data need not be aware there is a cache.
Typical computer applications access data in very similar ways.
Suppose the data is structured into "blocks", which can be accessed individually.
When an application accesses a block it is also very likely to access (or reference) a block that is "close" to the original block.
This is known as locality of reference.
There are different kinds of such "locality".
Locality of reference is one of the reasons why caches work well in many areas of computing.
In order to work well, caches are small, compared to the whole amount of data.
The bigger the cache, the longer it takes to lookup an entry.
Bigger caches are also more expensive to build.
How caches work
A cache is a block of memory for storing data which is likely used again.
The CPU and hard drive often use a cache, as do web browsers and web servers.
A cache is made up of many entries, called a pool.
Each entry holds a datum (a bit of data) which is a copy of a datum in another place.
Caches usually use what is called a backing store.
Backing stores are slow or expensive to access, compared to the cache.
A disk cache uses a hard disk as a backing store, for example.
Each entry also has a little information attached, called a tag.
This tag is used to find the location where the original data is stored.
Caches for reading
A client (a CPU, web browser, operating system) wants to access a bit of data, it believes to be in the backing store, it first checks to see if the datum can be found in the cache.
If the data can be found in the cache, the client can use it and does not need to use the main memory.
This is known as a cache hit.
So, for example, a web browser program might check its local cache on disk to see if it has a local copy of the contents of a web page at a particular URL.
In this example, the URL is the tag, and the contents of the web page is the datum.
The other situation that can occur is that the datum with the tag cannot be found in the cache.
This is known as cache miss.
The datum needs to be fetched from the backing store.
Usually, it is copied into the cache, so that the next time, it no longer needs to be fetched from the backing store.
The cache only has a limited size.
To make room for the previously uncached entry, another cached entry may need to be deleted from the cache.
Special rules are used to find the entry that should best be deleted.
These rules are usually called Heuristics.
Heuristics used to find the entry are called replacement policy.
A very simple rule used is called Least recently used (or LRU).
It simply takes the entry that was used the longest time ago.
Other heuristics are listed at cache algorithm..
Caches for writing
However, the entry must be written to the backing store at some point in time.
The timing when this happens is controlled by the write policy.
In a write-through cache, each entry is  written to the backing store immediately, as well as being stored in cache.
The other option is to only write to cache, and write to the backing store later.
This is known as write-back (or  write-behind) cache.
The cache marks the entries that have not yet been written to the backing store; the mark that is used is often referred to as dirty flag.
Before the entries are deleted from the cache, they are written to the backing store.
This is known as lazy write.
A miss in a write-back cache (which requires a block to be replaced by another) will often need two memory accesses: one to get the needed datum, and another to write replaced data from the cache to the store.
The caching policy may also say that a certain datum must be written to cache.
The client may have made many changes to the datum in the cache.
After it is done, it may explicitly tell the cache to write back the datum.
No-write allocation is a cache policy where only reads are cached.
This avoids the need for write-back or write-through caching.
Writes are done to the backing store all the time.
The client is not the application that changes data in the backing store.
If the data changed in the backing store, the copy in the cache will be out of date, or stale.
Alternatively, when the client updates the data in the cache, copies of that data in other caches will become stale.
There are special communication protocols that allow cache managers to talk to each other to keep the data meaningful.
These are known as coherency protocols.
Selecting the entry to replace
A cache is small, and it will be full, or almost full, most of the time.
So when a new value is added, an old one needs to be removed.
There are different ways in which this selection can be done:
First in First out: Simply replace the entry that was added to the cache the longest time ago
Least recently used: This idea is similar to the FIFO above, but when an entry is used, its timestamp/age is updated.
Least frequently used: Again, similar to the FIFO case, instead of using a timestamp use a counter, which is incremented each time an entry is used
Pick an entry at random
The word cache was first used in computing in 1967, when a scientific article was prepared to be published in IBM Systems Journal.
The article was about a new improvement of the memory in Model 85.
Model 85 was a computer of the IBM System/360 product line.
The editor of the Journal wanted a better word for high-speed buffer, used in the article.
He got no input, and suggested cache, from the French cacher, meaning "to hide".
The article was published in early 1968, and the authors were honored by IBM.
Their work was widely welcomed and improved.
Cache soon became standard usage in computer literature.
Where caches are used
CPU caches
Small memories on or close to the CPU chip can be made faster than the much larger main memory.
Most CPUs since the 1980s have used one or more caches.
Modern general-purpose CPUs inside personal computers may have as many as half a dozen.
Each cache may be specialised to a different part of the task of executing programs.
Disk caches
CPU caches are generally managed entirely by hardware, other caches are managed by a different kinds  of software.
The operating system usually manages a page cache in main memory.
Users outside computer science usually call this cache virtual memory.
It is managed by the kernel of the operating system.
Modern hard drives have disk buffers.
These are sometimes called "disk cache", but this is wrong.
The main function of these buffers is to order disk writes, and to manage reads.
Repeated cache hits are rare, because the buffer is very small compared to the size of the hard drive.
Local hard disks are fast compared to other storage devices, such as remote servers, local tape drives, or optical jukeboxes.
Using local hard disks as caches is the main concept of hierarchical storage management.
Web caches
Web browsers and web proxy servers use caches to store previous responses from web servers, such as web pages.
Web caches reduce the amount of information that needs to be transmitted over the network.
Information previously stored in the cache can often be re-used.
This reduces bandwidth and processing requirements of the web server, and helps to improve responsiveness for users of the web.
Modern web browsers use a built-in web cache, but some internet service providers or organizations also use a caching proxy server.
This is a web cache that is shared between all users of that network.
Search engines also often  make web pages they have indexed available from their cache.
For example, Google provides a "Cached" link next to each search result.
This is useful when web pages are temporarily inaccessible from a web server.
Caching with unreliable networks
Write-through operation is common in unreliable networks (like an Ethernet LAN).
The protocol used to make sure the data in the write cache makes sense when several write caches are used is very complex, in such a case.
For instance, web page caches and client-side network file system caches (like those in NFS or SMB) are typically read-only or write-through  to keep the network protocol simple and reliable.
The difference between buffer and cache
Buffer and cache are not mutually exclusive; they are also often used together.
The reason why they are used is different, though.
A buffer is a location in memory that is traditionally used because CPU instructions cannot directly address data stored in peripheral devices.
Computer memory is used as an intermediate store.
Additionally such a buffer may be feasible when a large block of data is assembled or disassembled (as required by a storage device), or when data may be delivered in a different order than that in which it is produced.
Also a whole buffer of data is usually transferred sequentially (for example to hard disk), so buffering itself sometimes increases transfer performance.
These benefits are present even if the buffered data are written to the buffer once and read from the buffer once.
A cache also increases transfer performance.
A part of the increase similarly comes from the possibility that multiple small transfers will combine into one large block.
But the main performance gain occurs because there is a good chance that the same datum will be read from cache several times, or that written data will soon be read.
The only purpose of Caches is to reduce accesses to the underlying slower storage.
Cache is also usually an abstraction layer that is designed to be invisible from the perspective of neighboring layers.
That way, the applications or clients may not be aware that there is a cache.
The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as dmoz, is an online directory that lists good web sites based on their subject.
Web sites are listed in categories on this project.
Each category is linked to relevant categories; the categories have a tree-like structure too.
dmoz website
A Web directory is a website.
It is like a directory, or a phone book.
It lists other websites, that are put into different categories.
File sharing is the practice of making files available for other users to download over the Internet and smaller networks.
Usually file sharing follows the peer-to-peer (P2P) model, where the files are stored on personal computers of the users.
In this model, most people who are sharing files are also downloading files that other users share.
Ammonium sulfide, also known as the "stink bomb" is made up of a solution of ammonium sulfide in water, sealed inside a glass ampoule (a small bottle-like container used to store a liquid securely).
When the ampoule is broken, ammonia and hydrogen sulfide gases are released from the solution.
These chemicals have a very strong and unpleasant smell.
Ammonium sulfide is a very toxic chemical.
It is also explosive and highly flammable.
It is added to cigarettes.
Metre per second is an SI unit of measurement of both speed and velocity.
It is defined by the distance in metres divided by the time in seconds.
Its abbreviation is m/s or m·s-1.
In astronomy, the unit is sometimes used in kilometres per second (equivalent to 1000 metres per second).
≈ 3.2808 feet per second (approximately)
≈ 2.2369 miles per hour (approximately)
= 3.6 km·h−1 (exactly)
1 foot per second = 0.3048 m·s−1 (exactly)
1 mile per hour ≈ 0.4470 m·s−1 (approximately)
1 km·h-1 ≈ 0.2778 m·s−1 (approximately)
≈ 0.6213 miles per second (approximately)
≈ 2,237 miles per hour (approximately)
Hydroxide in chemistry is a name given to the diatomic anion OH−, made up of oxygen and hydrogen atoms.
Most chemical compounds that contain hydroxides are bases.
An Arrhenius base is a substance that when dissolved in an aqueous solution, it produces hydroxide ions.
Therefore, hydroxide ions are heavily involved in acid-base reactions.
Many useful chemical reactions or processes involve hydroxide or hydroxide ions.
Sodium hydroxide is used in industry as a strong base, potassium hydroxide is used in agriculture, and iron hydroxide minerals such as goethite and limonite have been used as iron ore.
The aluminium ore bauxite is made mainly out of aluminium hydroxides.
Uses of hydroxides
Many useful chemicals and chemical processes involve hydroxides or hydroxide ions.
Sodium hydroxide is used in factories as an alkali, potassium hydroxide is used in farming, and iron hydroxide has been used as low grade brown iron ore.
Examples of hydroxides
Sodium hydroxide (NaOH)
Potassium hydroxide (KOH)
Calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2)
Ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH)
In meteorology, a cyclone refers to any low pressure area with winds spiralling inwards.
Cyclones rotate clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.
Cyclone is the general term for a variety of low pressure system types, such as tropical cyclones, extra tropical cyclones and tornadoes.
The largest of the low-pressure systems are the extratropical cyclones and the cold-core polar cyclones which lie on the synoptic scale which in meteorology is a horizontal length of 1000 km or more.
The Warm-core cyclones are the tropical cyclones, mesocyclones, and the polar lows that lie within the smaller mesoscale.
The Subtropical cyclones are intermediate in size.
Cyclones have also been on other planets outside of the Earth, such as Mars and Neptune.
For example the Great Red Spot of Jupiter and the Great Black Spot of Neptune.
Cyclones are also referred to as hurricanes and typhoons.
They consist of the eye, eyewall and rainbands.
The process of cyclone formation and intensification is described as Cyclogenesis.
The formation of Extratropical cyclones comes as waves in large regions of enhanced midlatitude temperature contrasts which are called baroclinic zones.
These zones contract to form weather fronts as the circulation of the cyclone closes and gets more intense.
Later in their life cycle, cyclones form what is called an occluded front.
The cyclone's track is then guided over the course of an 2 to 6 day life cycle by its steering flow of the polar or subtropical jetstream.
Cyclones destroy many things when they come into contact with land such as crops, buildings, trees, etc.
The eye is an area of calm weather in the center of strong tropical cyclones.
The cyclone's lowest barometric pressure occurs in the eye.
It is usually circular and ranges between 30 and 65 km (20 to 40 mi) in diameter, though smaller and larger eyes can occur.
In case of a cyclone it is the place where all the winds coming inside in a spiral motion converge.
In an anticyclone it is the part from where all winds move out from.
The region surrounding the eye is the eyewall, where the worst weather is seen in a cyclone.
These have strong winds, lots of rain and lots of cloud.
There are also outer bands, which surround the cyclone, which forms the greatest part of the storm.
These have winds so strong they can even form other tornadoes.
Glasgow Coma Scale or GCS is a scale that is used to measure the consciousness of a person.
It was invented in 1974 by Graham Teasdale and Bryan J. Jennett, professors of neurosurgery at the University of Glasgow.
GCS is used in evaluation of patients, especially in ICUs.
This scale consists of three tests, which are described below.
A score is given for each test, and the GCS score is calculated by adding the scores given to each test.
The maximum score is 15, which means the patient is fully conscious.
The minimum score is 3, and is usually seen in patients with brain death or those in deep coma.
Elements of the scale
Best eye response (E)
No eye opening
Eye opening in response to pain (for example when his sternum is pressed firmly).
Eye opening to speech (that is, when he is called).
Eyes opening by himself (normally).
Best verbal response (V)
No verbal response (not talking at all).
Meaking meaningless sounds (that is, moaning but no words).
Inappropriate words (like random speech, without being able to communicate correctly).
Confused. (
The patient responds to questions but there is some confusion).
Oriented. (
Patient responds appropriately to questions such as the patient’s name and age, where they are and why, the year, month, etc.).
Best motor response (M)
No motor response (no movement at all).
Extension in response to pain (decerebrate response: adduction, internal rotation of shoulder, pronation of forearm).
Flexion in response to pain (decorticate response).
Withdrawing from pain (pulling part of body away when pinched).
Localizing to pain. (
Purposeful movements towards the painful location).
Obeys commands. (
The patient does simple things he is asked to do).
Teasdale G, Jennett B. Assessment of coma and impaired consciousness.
Lancet 1974,2:81-84.
PMID 4136544.
Habsburg was a family of dukes, kings, and monarchs.
They were very important in European history.
They first ruled parts of Switzerland in the 13th century.
They ruled Austria, later Austria-Hungary for more than 600 years, and also sometimes owned Spain and the Netherlands.
They ruled the Holy Roman Empire from about 1280 to 1806.
They also ruled the Kingdom of Sardinia until the middle 19th century.
A Treaty was made in Vienna in 1515 between the king of Poland and duke of Lithuania from the Jagiellon dynasty and Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, duke of Austria from the Habsburg family.
It said that if the kings of Bohemia and Hungary, (Jagiellons), were to die without male heirs the Duke of Austria would take over their territory.
End of the House
The House of Habsburg became extinct in the 18th century.
The senior branch ended when Charles II of Spain died in 1700 and was replaced by the House of Bourbon.
The mental and physical handicaps of Charles II were probably caused by inbreeding between relatives in the royal houses of continental Europe.
Marriages of close relatives occurred for five generations before him.
He was the son of Philip IV, who married his sister's daughter.
The remaining branch went extinct in the male line in 1740 with the death of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and completely in 1780 with the death of his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa of Austria.
It was succeeded by the Vaudemont branch of the House of Lorraine.
The new successor house styled itself formally as House of Habsburg-Lorraine (German: Habsburg-Lothringen), although it was often referred to as simply the House of Habsburg.
The last empress was Zita of Bourbon-Parma.
She died in Switzerland in 1989.
She had ruled with her husband, Charles I of Austria, from 1916 to 1918.
Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was a republic in Southern Africa during the Cold War.
It was the region that is now called Zimbabwe.
The country replaced the British colony of Southern Rhodesia.
The official name of the country under British law was "Southern Rhodesia", but the government in Salisbury used the name "Rhodesia" instead.
This situation dated back to October 1964, when the colony of Northern Rhodesia changed its name to Zambia following independence,  so the colonial government felt that "Southern" Rhodesia should no longer be used because there was no "Northern" Rhodesia.
However, Britain believed that only their government could change the colony's name and not the colony itself.
Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI)
The British government adopted a policy called no independence before majority rule, which dictated that colonies with a certain amount of white settlers would not become independent until they adopted a policy of majority rule.
This had conflicted with the beliefs of the white minority Rhodesian Front, lead by Ian Smith, which believed that Rhodesia should become an independent country anyway.
This continued until relations between the colony and the British government broke down in 1965.
On 11 November 1965, Smith's government issued a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) from the United Kingdom.
Many countries condemned the UDI and the United Nations Security Council placed sanctions on Rhodesia.
The Bush War
As early as 1960, many African nationalists began to challenge Rhodesia's minority rule policies.
In 1964, tensions boiled over and the Rhodesian Bush War began.
On one side, the minority rule government, led by Ian Smith, hoped to keep the whites in power.
On the other side, the ZANU-PF, led by Robert Mugabe, fought for majority rule.
After about 15 years of fighting, the Lancaster House Agreement was signed which allowed majority rule.
This led to Zimbabwe's independence.
1980 disestablishments
1960s in Africa
1970s in Africa
Westminster is the central part of the City of Westminster, in London.
It is on the north side of the River Thames.
It contains the Houses of Parliament, Whitehall, Downing Street and Westminster Abbey.
the city Akita
Akita Prefecture in Japan
the dog breed Akita Inu
Ostara is one of the eight festivals held by Wiccans every year.
It is normally held at the time of the vernal equinox; that is, around 21 March in the Northern Hemisphere and 21 September in the Southern Hemisphere.
At Ostara Wiccans celebrate the return of Spring.
Megalosaurus was a large meat-eating theropod dinosaur of the Middle Jurassic of Europe.
It was found in 1824, and was the earliest dinosaur named.
In 1827, Gideon Mantell included Megalosaurus in his geological survey of southeastern England.
He gave the species its name, Megalosaurus bucklandii.
Because a complete skeleton of it has never been found, much is still unclear about its build.
The first naturalists who investigated Megalosaurus thought it was a gigantic lizard of twenty metres length.
In 1842 Richard Owen concluded that it was no longer than nine metres, standing on upright legs as a quadruped.
Later it was realised that all theropods were bipedal.
Today is known that the early proto-dinosaurs in the late Middle Triassic were also bipedal.
Certainly Eoraptor, from 231.4 million years ago, was bipedal.
That means the dinosaurs were bipedal from the start (primatively bipedal).
Only the heavier sauropods and armoured dinosaurs became quadrupedal, standing on all four legs.
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the highest legislative body in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories.
It alone has parliamentary sovereignty over all other political bodies.
The parliament has an upper house, the House of Lords, and a lower house, the House of Commons.
At its head is the monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
The monarch is the third part of Parliament.
The British people choose the people in the lower house (members of parliament) in elections.
The development of parliament started with the councils of bishops and earls that advised the kings and queens of the Middle Ages.
In 1707, during the early modern period, the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland joined to become the Parliament of Great Britain.
The first Parliament of the United Kingdom came into existence in 1801, after the Irish Parliament joined with the Parliament of Great Britain.
Between 1801 and 1927, the British legislature's name was the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
How the British Parliament works
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is split into three separate parts, the House of Commons (the lower house), the House of Lords (the upper house) and the monarch.
Most legislative power is concentrated in the House of Commons.
It is made up of 650 members of parliament (MPs).
These people are elected by the people of the United Kingdom to represent them in the House of Commons.
The leader of the political party who commands a majority of MPs is usually made the prime minister of the United Kingdom, the head of government.
The head of state is always the monarch.
The House of Commons starts most bills.
Other bills start in the House of Lords.
The House of Commons decides rates of taxation.
The House of Lords has the power to reject bills, except money bills (tax bills), and make the House of Commons reconsider them.
If the House of Lords vetoes a bill twice or delays a public Bill for more than one year then the House of Commons can force the Bill through under the terms of the Parliament Acts, unless it started in the House of Lords.
The monarch (now HM Queen Elizabeth II) is the sovereign in a constitutional monarchy and, theoretically, is the fount of all power in the United Kingdom.
Bills must receive the Royal Assent before becoming Acts of Parliament and the monarch is responsible for summoning, proroguing and dissolving Parliament, normally upon the advice of the incumbent Prime Minister.
It is now very rare for a monarch to object, but the sovereign still retains this prerogative for use if necessary.
How a Bill becomes an Act of Parliament
Pre-legislative Scrutiny: Joint committee of both houses review bill and vote on amendments that government can accept or reject.
Reports are influential in later stages as rejected committee recommendations are revived to be voted on.
First Reading: No vote occurs.
Bill is presented, printed, and in private members' bills, a Second Reading date is set.
Report Stage: An opportunity to amend the bill.
The House consider clauses to which amendments have been tabled.
Third Reading: A debate on final text as amended.
In the Lords, further amendments may be tabled at this stage.
First Reading: Same procedures
Second Reading: Same procedures
Committee Stage: Same procedures
Report Stage: Same procedures
Third Reading: Same procedures
In the Middle Ages and early modern period there were three kingdoms within the British Isles — England, Scotland and Ireland — and these developed separate parliaments.
The 1707 Acts of Union brought England and Scotland together under the Parliament of Great Britain, and the 1800 Act of Union included Ireland under the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The parliament at Westminster in London is sometimes called the "Mother of all Parliaments"
The English Parliament has its origins in the Anglo-Saxon .
In 1066, William of Normandy brought a feudal system, where he sought the advice of a council before making laws.
In 1215, this council got the Magna Carta from King John, which established that the king may not levy or collect any taxes (except the feudal taxes to which they were hitherto accustomed), save with the consent of his royal council, which slowly developed into a parliament.
In 1265, Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester called the first elected Parliament.
The Laws in Wales Acts of 1535–42 annexed Wales as a part of England and brought Welsh representatives to Parliament.
Parliament of Ireland
In 1541 Henry VIII declared the Kingdom of Ireland.
The Gaelic Irish lords were now entitled to attend the Irish Parliament as equals of the majority of English descent.
Blackstone, Sir William 1765.
Davies M. 2003.
Companion to the Standing Orders and guide to the proceedings of the House of Lords, 19th ed.
Farnborough, Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron 1896.
Constitutional history of England since the Accession of George the Third, 11th ed.
The Parliamentary Archives of the United Kingdom.
History of Parliament.
The British Constitution  A general introduction to the principles underlying the UK Constitution
Provides online viewing of debates in The House of Lords, House of Commons and Westminster Hall debates.
In addition, committee meetings can be viewed live or viewed from beginning to end.
Using a 56k dial up connection streamed debates can be followed, though with erratic video and sound prone to disruption.
"A–Z of Parliament."
Information links to Government, political parties and statistics.
"Special Report: House of Commons."
"Special Report: House of Lords."
Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is a chemical compound, the oxide of silicon.
Its chemical symbol is SiO2.
It is known for its hardness since the 16th century.
It is an important compound used in most types of glass and other hard substances such as concrete, porcelain and stoneware.
It is made up of 2 oxygen atoms and 1 silicon atom.
Silicon dioxide exists in nature in a number of forms, including flint, quartz and opal.
If it is breathed in as dust, it can cause silicosis and cancer, as the dust is trapped in the lungs.
Besides the dangers of inhaling it in dust form, it is harmless.
Metallic hydrogen is an alkali metal made from hydrogen gas.
This is formed when the hydrogen gas is under compression and results with the gas changing phase.
It is an example of degenerate matter.
The matter has a crystal structure of proton atoms, with spacing that is extremely small, smaller than a Bohr radius (which is 52.918 x 10-12 m).
The electrons in the molecular orbital are unbounded and they behave like the conduction electrons in a metal.
Metallic hydrogen is unusual as the element itself is not an alkali metal, but a diatomic gas.
Giovanni Domenico Cassini, also known as Jean-Dominique Cassini, (June 8, 1625 – September 14, 1712) was an Italian-French astronomer, engineer and astrologer.
Cassini was born in Perinaldo in the Republic of Genoa (part of Italy).
Cassini, along with Robert Hooke discovered the Great Red Spot on Jupiter in around 1665.
He also discovered the four of Saturn's moons, as well as the Cassini Division in Saturn's rings.
1625 births
1712 deaths
French astronomers
French engineers
Italian esotericists
Christiaan Huygens () (April 14, 1629–July 8, 1695) was a Dutch physicist, mathematician and astronomer, born in The Hague.
He was noted for his arguments that light was in the form of waves.
He discovered Saturn's largest moon Titan in 1655.
He also did detailed studies on Saturn's rings, and in 1656, he discovered that they are made up of rocks.
He also studies optics and pendulum clock.
1629 births
Dutch astronomers
Dutch mathematicians
Dutch inventors
People from The Hague
Dutch theoretical physicists
Hyperion is a moon of Saturn.
It was discovered on September 16, 1848 by William Cranch Bond, George Phillips Bond and William Lassell.
It is irregular in shape, and has a sponge-like appearance.
It is the second largest irregular (i.e. not spherical) moon in the Solar System, the largest being Proteus.
Its rotation is chaotic, meaning its axis of rotation wobbles, unlike how the Earth and the Moon rotate, or any other moon in the Solar System.
Iapetus is a large moon of Saturn.
It was discovered by Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1671.
Iapetus is unusual: one side is very bright and the other side is very dark.
This is because one half of the moon is covered in ice and the other side is coated in black, dusty  carbon deposits.
When Cassini observed the moon, he could only see the moon on one side of Saturn.
He concluded that the moon is darker on side than the other, and it was confirmed by the Voyager 1 spacecraft.
Iapetus also has an equatorial ridge discovered by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft on 31 December 2004.
Iapetus has a slow rotation rate, taking 79 Earth days for a rotation.
Another observation that has puzzled scientists is how it was a mountain range across its equator, giving it the shape of a walnut.
Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam, born as Nadezhda Yakovlevna Hazin, (31 October 1899 in Saratov - 9 December 1980 in Moscow) was a Russian writer and the wife of poet Osip Mandelstam.
She married Osip Mandelstam in 1921, and lived in Ukraine, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and Georgia.
Osip wrote a poem about the Russian leader, called Stalin Epigram.
It angered the Russian government, and in 1934 he was arrested, and ordered to live in Cherdyn, Perm region and later to Voronezh.
The government of Russia often used internal exile (sending people to live in small towns hundreds of miles from the big cities) instead of sending people to prison.
Nadezhda went into exile with Osip.
Osip Mandelstam was released but arrested again in 1938.
Before the government could decide where to send him he died in a camp near Vladivostok.
After this Nadezhda Mandelstam never lived in the same place for long, and she often changed jobs.
She did this to hide from the NKVD (Russian Secret Police).
When she was living in Kalinin the police came to arrest her her, but she had moved to a new house the day before.
She decided to spend her life collecting and publishing all of her husband's poems, and most of the poems she learned by heart (memorised).
In 1979 she gave her archives (letters, books and photographs) to Princeton University in the United States of America.
Nadezhda Mandelstam died in 1980 in Moscow, aged 81.
Books by Nadezhda Mandelstam
Hope against Hope ()
Hope Abandoned ()
Soviet writers
Writers from Kiev
Andrew Carnegie (November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American businessman.
He ran U.S. Steel, a major steel making corporation.
When he retired, he was one of the richest men in America.
He used his large amounts of money to fund charities.
These charities gave money to universities.
He had a hall built for himself (called Carnegie Hall), and he also built public libraries (called Carnegie Libraries).
Andrew Carnegie was very charitable in the will he created through the State of New York.
In his will, he gave monetary gifts to several funds, institutions, societies, and to Pittsburgh University.
He also gave gifts to his employees and family.
Carnegie had given away nearly $350, 000, 000 on charities, pensions, schools, libraries, and museums.
Carnegie had given all of that amount of money because after a disaster happened outside his company people thought he was a bad person.
He thought by giving away all that money people would think he was good.
People from Dunfermline
The German Bundesrat (commonly referred to as Bundesrat) is part of the parliament of Germany.
The cabinets of the 16 states of Germany appoint the delegations that represent them in the Bundesrat.
They can remove them at any time.
Normally, a state delegation is headed by the head of government.
The delegation is made up of members of the state government.
Thirteen of the states of Germany (in German: Bundesländer) have a Minister-Präsident (Prime Minister), the other 3 are city-states which have a Mayor.
These prime ministers or mayors each act as chairman of the Bundesrat for one year at a time.
Germany does not have a vice president.
Instead if the Bundespräsident (Federal President) cannot do his job the President of the Bundesrat can act in his place if necessary.
Although it is a part of the German Parliament, the Bundesrat does not meet in the same building as the Bundestag.
Instead new offices and a modern meeting chamber were built inside the old Prussian House of Lords building.
Number of members
There are 58 members of the Bundesrat.
How many delegates a land (state) has depends on its population.
The smallest state, Bremen, has three members.
North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous (has the most people) land.
It sends six members to the Bundesrat.
The Bundesrat decides most things by absolute majority (at least half of the number of members).
That is 35 votes.
Some important decisions need two-thirds of all of the possible votes.
That is 46 votes.
Each land votes as a block.
This means that Berlin, for example, can only cast four yes votes or four no votes.
Its delegates cannot choose to vote in different ways.
If a land decided to send only one person to the Bundesrat, that person would still have all of the land's votes.
Usually the Minister President casts all of his land's votes, even if the other members are there.
If a land has a coalition government (that is, a government of two or more political parties) then all parties must agree how to vote in the Bundesrat.
In 2002 Brandenburg did not agree how to vote about the Immigration bill.
The Federal Constitutional Court said that the bill was not law because Brandenburg's vote could not be included in the total.
This meant that the bill did not get a majority in the Bundesrat.
Situation as of December 2017.<br/ >
The Minister-President's party is the biggest party of a state's government, and often also the biggest party in a state's parliament.<br/ >
All of the votes of a state must be cast as a block.
If the parties in a coalition do not agree how to vote then the Bundesrat can ignore that state's vote.
List of presidents of the German Bundesrat
Bundesrat (Germany)
Members of the Bundesrat (German Wikipedia)
A minister-president (German: Ministerpräsident) is the head of government in a number of European countries or subnational governments, who presides over the council of ministers.
The title is similar to Prime Minister, First Minister, and President of the Council.
Each year one of the ministers-president, or one of the senior Mayors of the city states of Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen, is the President of the Bundesrat.
Because Germany does not have a vice president, The President of the Bundesrat will act as the Federal President if the Federal President dies or is out of the country.
Edward Gene "Ed" Rendell (born January 5, 1944) is an American politician.
He became governor of Pennsylvania in 2002.
He was governor from January 21, 2003 until January 18, 2011.
Rendell was born in New York City to Jewish American parents Jesse T. Rendell and Emma Sloat.
He went to the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and received a Bachelor of Arts degree and later got a Juris Doctor from Villanova Law School in 1968.
He was a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1968 to 1974.
Governors of Pennsylvania
Mayors of Philadelphia
Jacques de Morgan (1857-1924) was a French civil engineer, geologist and archaeologist.
He was the head of Antiquities in Egypt in the 19th century.
He excavated in Memphis and Dashur, providing many drawings of many Egyptian pyramids.
Jacques de Morgan at Iranica
Jacques de Morgan - ArmeniaPedia.org
Jacques de Morgan; An Archaeologist Who Found Oil
French archaeologists
French geologists
Struthiomimus was a long-legged, ostrich-like dinosaur of the ornithomimid family.