title: John Milton

text: Milton's political thought may be best categorized according to respective periods in his life and times. The years 1641–42 were dedicated to church politics and the struggle against episcopacy. After his divorce writings, "Areopagitica", and a gap, he wrote in 1649–54 in the aftermath of the execution of Charles I, and in polemic justification of the regicide and the existing Parliamentarian regime. Then in 1659–60 he foresaw the Restoration, and wrote to head it off.


title: John Milton

text: Milton's own beliefs were in some cases unpopular, particularly his commitment to republicanism. In coming centuries, Milton would be claimed as an early apostle of liberalism. According to James Tully:


title: John Milton

text: A friend and ally in the pamphlet wars was Marchamont Nedham. Austin Woolrych considers that although they were quite close, there is "little real affinity, beyond a broad republicanism", between their approaches. Blair Worden remarks that both Milton and Nedham, with others such as Andrew Marvell and James Harrington, would have taken their problem with the Rump Parliament to be not the republic itself, but the fact that it was not a proper republic. Woolrych speaks of "the gulf between Milton's vision of the Commonwealth's future and the reality". In the early version of his "History of Britain", begun in 1649, Milton was already writing off the members of the Long Parliament as incorrigible.


title: John Milton

text: He praised Oliver Cromwell as the Protectorate was set up; though subsequently he had major reservations. When Cromwell seemed to be backsliding as a revolutionary, after a couple of years in power, Milton moved closer to the position of Sir Henry Vane, to whom he wrote a sonnet in 1652. The group of disaffected republicans included, besides Vane, John Bradshaw, John Hutchinson, Edmund Ludlow, Henry Marten, Robert Overton, Edward Sexby and John Streater; but not Marvell, who remained with Cromwell's party. Milton had already commended Overton, along with Edmund Whalley and Bulstrode Whitelocke, in "Defensio Secunda". Nigel Smith writes that


title: John Milton

text: As Richard Cromwell fell from power, he envisaged a step towards a freer republic or "free commonwealth", writing in the hope of this outcome in early 1660. Milton had argued for an awkward position, in the "Ready and Easy Way", because he wanted to invoke the Good Old Cause and gain the support of the republicans, but without offering a democratic solution of any kind. His proposal, backed by reference (amongst other reasons) to the oligarchical Dutch and Venetian constitutions, was for a council with perpetual membership. This attitude cut right across the grain of popular opinion of the time, which swung decisively behind the restoration of the Stuart monarchy that took place later in the year. Milton, an associate of and advocate on behalf of the regicides, was silenced on political matters as Charles II returned.


title: John Milton

text: Milton was neither a clergyman nor a theologian; however, theology, and particularly English Calvinism, formed the palette on which John Milton created his greatest thoughts. John Milton wrestled with the great doctrines of the Church amidst the theological crosswinds of his age. The great poet was undoubtedly Reformed (though his grandfather, Richard "the Ranger" Milton had been Roman Catholic). However, Milton's Calvinism had to find expression in a broad-spirited Humanism. Like many Renaissance artists before him, Milton attempted to integrate Christian theology with classical modes. In his early poems, the poet narrator expresses a tension between vice and virtue, the latter invariably related to Protestantism. In "Comus", Milton may make ironic use of the Caroline court masque by elevating notions of purity and virtue over the conventions of court revelry and superstition. In his later poems, Milton's theological concerns become more explicit.


title: John Milton

text: His use of biblical citation was wide-ranging; Harris Fletcher, standing at the beginning of the intensification of the study of the use of scripture in Milton's work (poetry and prose, in all languages Milton mastered), notes that typically Milton clipped and adapted biblical quotations to suit the purpose, giving precise chapter and verse only in texts for a more specialized readership. As for the plenitude of Milton's quotations from scripture, Fletcher comments, "For this work, I have in all actually collated about twenty-five hundred of the five to ten thousand direct Biblical quotations which appear therein". Milton's customary English Bible was the Authorized King James. When citing and writing in other languages, he usually employed the Latin translation by Immanuel Tremellius, though "he was equipped to read the Bible in Latin, in Greek, and in Hebrew, including the Targumim or Aramaic paraphrases of the Old Testament, and the Syriac version of the New, together with the available commentaries of those several versions".


title: John Milton

text: Milton embraced many heterodox Christian theological views. He has been accused of rejecting the Trinity, believing instead that the Son was subordinate to the Father, a position known as Arianism; and his sympathy or curiosity was probably engaged by Socinianism: in August 1650 he licensed for publication by William Dugard the "Racovian Catechism", based on a non-trinitarian creed. Milton's alleged Arianism, like much of his theology, is still subject of debate and controversy. Rufus Wilmot Griswold argued that "In none of his great works is there a passage from which it can be inferred that he was an Arian; and in the very last of his writings he declares that "the doctrine of the Trinity is a plain doctrine in Scripture." In "Areopagitica," Milton classified Arians and Socinians as "errorists" and "schismatics" alongside Arminians and Anabaptists. A source has interpreted him as broadly Protestant, if not always easy to locate in a more precise religious category. In 2019, John Rogers stated, "Heretics both, John Milton and Isaac Newton were, as most scholars now agree, Arians."


title: John Milton

text: In his 1641 treatise, "Of Reformation", Milton expressed his dislike for Catholicism and episcopacy, presenting Rome as a modern Babylon, and bishops as Egyptian taskmasters. These analogies conform to Milton's puritanical preference for Old Testament imagery. He knew at least four commentaries on "Genesis": those of John Calvin, Paulus Fagius, David Pareus and Andreus Rivetus.


title: John Milton

text: Through the Interregnum, Milton often presents England, rescued from the trappings of a worldly monarchy, as an elect nation akin to the Old Testament Israel, and shows its leader, Oliver Cromwell, as a latter-day Moses. These views were bound up in Protestant views of the Millennium, which some sects, such as the Fifth Monarchists predicted would arrive in England. Milton, however, would later criticise the "worldly" millenarian views of these and others, and expressed orthodox ideas on the prophecy of the Four Empires.


title: John Milton

text: The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 began a new phase in Milton's work. In "Paradise Lost", "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes", Milton mourns the end of the godly Commonwealth. The Garden of Eden may allegorically reflect Milton's view of England's recent Fall from Grace, while Samson's blindness and captivity—mirroring Milton's own lost sight—may be a metaphor for England's blind acceptance of Charles II as king.


title: John Milton

text: Illustrated by "Paradise Lost" is mortalism, the belief that the soul lies dormant after the body dies.


title: John Milton

text: Despite the Restoration of the monarchy, Milton did not lose his personal faith; "Samson" shows how the loss of national salvation did not necessarily preclude the salvation of the individual, while "Paradise Regained" expresses Milton's continuing belief in the promise of Christian salvation through Jesus Christ.


title: John Milton

text: Though he maintained his personal faith in spite of the defeats suffered by his cause, the "Dictionary of National Biography" recounted how he had been alienated from the Church of England by Archbishop William Laud, and then moved similarly from the Dissenters by their denunciation of religious tolerance in England.


title: John Milton

text: Writing of the enigmatic and often conflicting views of Milton in the Puritan age, David Daiches wrote convincingly,"Christian and Humanist, Protestant, patriot and heir of the golden ages of Greece and Rome, he faced what appeared to him to be the birth-pangs of a new and regenerate England with high excitement and idealistic optimism.”A fair theological summary may be: that John Milton was a Puritan, though his tendency to press further for liberty of conscience, sometimes out of conviction and often out of mere intellectual curiosity, made the great man, at least, a vital if not uncomfortable ally in the broader Puritan movement.


title: John Milton

text: Milton called in the "Areopagitica" for "the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties" to the conflicting Protestant denominations. According to American historian William Hunter, "Milton argued for disestablishment as the only effective way of achieving broad toleration. Rather than force a man's conscience, government should recognise the persuasive force of the gospel."


title: John Milton

text: Milton wrote "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" in 1643, at the beginning of the English Civil War. In August of that year, he presented his thoughts to the Westminster Assembly of Divines, which had been created by the Long Parliament to bring greater reform to the Church of England. The Assembly convened on 1 July against the will of King Charles I.


title: John Milton

text: Milton's thinking on divorce caused him considerable trouble with the authorities. An orthodox Presbyterian view of the time was that Milton's views on divorce constituted a one-man heresy:


title: John Milton

text: Even here, though, his originality is qualified: Thomas Gataker had already identified "mutual solace" as a principal goal in marriage. Milton abandoned his campaign to legitimise divorce after 1645, but he expressed support for polygamy in the "De Doctrina Christiana", the theological treatise that provides the clearest evidence for his views.


title: John Milton

text: Milton wrote during a period when thoughts about divorce were anything but simplistic; rather, there was active debate among thinkers and intellectuals at the time. However, Milton's basic approval of divorce within strict parameters set by the biblical witness was typical of many influential Christian intellectuals, particularly the Westminster divines. Milton addressed the Assembly on the matter of divorce in August 1643, at a moment when the Assembly was beginning to form its opinion on the matter. In the Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce, Milton argued that divorce was a private matter, not a legal or ecclesiastical one. Neither the Assembly nor Parliament condemned Milton or his ideas. In fact, when the Westminster Assembly wrote the Westminster Confession of Faith they allowed for divorce ('Of Marriage and Divorce,' Chapter 24, Section 5) in cases of infidelity or abandonment. Thus, the Christian community, at least a majority within the 'Puritan' sub-set, approved of Milton's views.


title: John Milton

text: Nevertheless, reaction among Puritans to Milton's views on divorce was mixed. Herbert Palmer, a member of the Westminster Assembly, condemned Milton in the strongest possible language:


title: John Milton

text: Palmer expressed his disapproval in a sermon addressed to the Westminster Assembly. The Scottish commissioner Robert Baillie described Palmer's sermon as one "of the most Scottish and free sermons that ever I heard any where."


title: John Milton

text: History was particularly important for the political class of the period, and Lewalski considers that Milton "more than most illustrates" a remark of Thomas Hobbes on the weight placed at the time on the classical Latin historical writers Tacitus, Livy, Sallust and Cicero, and their republican attitudes. Milton himself wrote that "Worthy deeds are not often destitute of worthy relaters", in Book II of his "History of Britain". A sense of history mattered greatly to him:


title: John Milton

text: Once "Paradise Lost" was published, Milton's stature as epic poet was immediately recognised. He cast a formidable shadow over English poetry in the 18th and 19th centuries; he was often judged equal or superior to all other English poets, including Shakespeare. Very early on, though, he was championed by Whigs, and decried by Tories: with the regicide Edmund Ludlow he was claimed as an early Whig, while the High Tory Anglican minister Luke Milbourne lumped Milton in with other "Agents of Darkness" such as John Knox, George Buchanan, Richard Baxter, Algernon Sidney and John Locke. The political ideas of Milton, Locke, Sidney, and James Harrington strongly influenced the Radical Whigs, whose ideology in turn was central to the American Revolution. Modern scholars of Milton's life, politics, and work are known as Miltonists: "his work is the subject of a very large amount of academic scholarship".


title: John Milton

text: In 2008, John Milton Passage, a short passage by Bread Street into St Mary-le-Bow Churchyard in London, was unveiled.


title: John Milton

text: John Dryden, an early enthusiast, in 1677 began the trend of describing Milton as the poet of the sublime. Dryden's "The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man: an Opera" (1677) is evidence of an immediate cultural influence. In 1695, Patrick Hume became the first editor of "Paradise Lost", providing an extensive apparatus of annotation and commentary, particularly chasing down allusions.


title: John Milton

text: In 1732, the classical scholar Richard Bentley offered a corrected version of "Paradise Lost". Bentley was considered presumptuous, and was attacked in the following year by Zachary Pearce. Christopher Ricks judges that, as critic, Bentley was both acute and wrong-headed, and "incorrigibly eccentric"; William Empson also finds Pearce to be more sympathetic to Bentley's underlying line of thought than is warranted.


title: John Milton

text: There was an early, partial translation of "Paradise Lost" into German by Theodore Haak, and based on that a standard verse translation by Ernest Gottlieb von Berge. A subsequent prose translation by Johann Jakob Bodmer was very popular; it influenced Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. The German-language Milton tradition returned to England in the person of the artist Henry Fuseli.


title: John Milton

text: Many Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century revered and commented on Milton's poetry and non-poetical works. In addition to John Dryden, among them were Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, Thomas Newton, and Samuel Johnson. For example, in "The Spectator", Joseph Addison wrote extensive notes, annotations, and interpretations of certain passages of "Paradise Lost". Jonathan Richardson, senior, and Jonathan Richardson, the younger, co-wrote a book of criticism. In 1749, Thomas Newton published an extensive edition of Milton's poetical works with annotations provided by himself, Dryden, Pope, Addison, the Richardsons (father and son) and others. Newton's edition of Milton was a culmination of the honour bestowed upon Milton by early Enlightenment thinkers; it may also have been prompted by Richard Bentley's infamous edition, described above. Samuel Johnson wrote numerous essays on "Paradise Lost", and Milton was included in his "Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets" (1779–1781). In "The Age of Louis XIV", Voltaire said "Milton remains the glory and the wonder ("l'admiration") of England."


title: John Milton

text: William Blake considered Milton the major English poet. Blake placed Edmund Spenser as Milton's precursor, and saw himself as Milton's poetical son. In his "", Blake uses Milton as a character.


title: John Milton

text: Edmund Burke was a theorist of the sublime, and he regarded Milton's description of Hell as exemplary of sublimity as an aesthetic concept. For Burke, it was to set alongside mountain-tops, a storm at sea, and infinity. In "The Beautiful and the Sublime", he wrote: "No person seems better to have understood the secret of heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression, in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity than Milton."


title: John Milton

text: The Romantic poets valued his exploration of blank verse, but for the most part rejected his religiosity. William Wordsworth began his sonnet "London, 1802" with "Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour" and modelled "The Prelude", his own blank verse epic, on "Paradise Lost". John Keats found the yoke of Milton's style uncongenial; he exclaimed that "Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful or rather artist's humour." Keats felt that "Paradise Lost" was a "beautiful and grand curiosity", but his own unfinished attempt at epic poetry, "Hyperion", was unsatisfactory to the author because, amongst other things, it had too many "Miltonic inversions". In "The Madwoman in the Attic", Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar note that Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein" is, in the view of many critics, "one of the key 'Romantic' readings of "Paradise Lost"."


title: John Milton

text: The Victorian age witnessed a continuation of Milton's influence, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy being particularly inspired by Milton's poetry and biography. Hostile 20th-century criticism by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound did not reduce Milton's stature. F. R. Leavis, in "The Common Pursuit", responded to the points made by Eliot, in particular the claim that "the study of Milton could be of no help: it was only a hindrance", by arguing, "As if it were a matter of deciding "not" to study Milton! The problem, rather, was to escape from an influence that was so difficult to escape from because it was unrecognized, belonging, as it did, to the climate of the habitual and 'natural'." Harold Bloom, in "The Anxiety of Influence", wrote that "Milton is the central problem in any theory and history of poetic influence in English [...]".


title: John Milton

text: Milton's "Areopagitica" is still cited as relevant to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. A quotation from "Areopagitica"—"A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life"—is displayed in many public libraries, including the New York Public Library.


title: John Milton

text: The title of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy is derived from a quotation, "His dark materials to create more worlds", line 915 of Book II in "Paradise Lost". Pullman was concerned to produce a version of Milton's poem accessible to teenagers, and has spoken of Milton as "our greatest public poet".


title: John Milton

text: Titles of a number of other well-known literary works are also derived from Milton's writings. Examples include Thomas Wolfe's "Look Homeward, Angel", Aldous Huxley's "Eyeless in Gaza", Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon", and William Golding's "Darkness Visible".


title: John Milton

text: T. S. Eliot believed that "of no other poet is it so difficult to consider the poetry simply as poetry, without our theological and political dispositions... making unlawful entry".


title: John Milton

text: Milton's use of blank verse, in addition to his stylistic innovations (such as grandiloquence of voice and vision, peculiar diction and phraseology) influenced later poets. At the time, poetic blank verse was considered distinct from its use in verse drama, and "Paradise Lost" was taken as a unique exemplar. Said Isaac Watts in 1734, "Mr. Milton is esteemed the parent and author of blank verse among us". "Miltonic verse" might be synonymous for a century with blank verse as poetry, a new poetic terrain independent from both the drama and the heroic couplet.


title: John Milton

text: Lack of rhyme was sometimes taken as Milton's defining innovation. He himself considered the rhymeless quality of "Paradise Lost" to be an extension of his own personal liberty:


title: John Milton

text: This pursuit of freedom was largely a reaction against conservative values entrenched within the rigid heroic couplet. Within a dominant culture that stressed elegance and finish, he granted primacy to freedom, breadth and imaginative suggestiveness, eventually developed into the romantic vision of sublime terror. Reaction to Milton's poetic worldview included, grudgingly, acknowledgement that of poet's resemblance to classical writers (Greek and Roman poetry being unrhymed). Blank verse came to be a recognised medium for religious works and for translations of the classics. Unrhymed lyrics like Collins' "Ode to Evening" (in the meter of Milton's translation of Horace's "Ode to Pyrrha") were not uncommon after 1740.


title: John Milton

text: Before Milton, "the sense of regular rhythm ... had been knocked into the English head so securely that it was part of their nature". The "Heroick measure", according to Samuel Johnson, "is pure ... when the accent rests upon every second syllable through the whole line ... The repetition of this sound or percussion at equal times, is the most complete harmony of which a single verse is capable". Caesural pauses, most agreed, were best placed at the middle and the end of the line. In order to support this symmetry, lines were most often octo- or deca-syllabic, with no enjambed endings. To this schema Milton introduced modifications, which included hypermetrical syllables (trisyllabic feet), inversion or slighting of stresses, and the shifting of pauses to all parts of the line. Milton deemed these features to be reflective of "the transcendental union of order and freedom". Admirers remained hesitant to adopt such departures from traditional metrical schemes: "The English ... had been writing separate lines for so long that they could not rid themselves of the habit". Isaac Watts preferred his lines distinct from each other, as did Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Pemberton, and Scott of Amwell, whose general opinion it was that Milton's frequent omission of the initial unaccented foot was "displeasing to a nice ear". It was not until the late 18th century that poets (beginning with Gray) began to appreciate "the composition of Milton's harmony ... how he loved to vary his pauses, his measures, and his feet, which gives that enchanting air of freedom and wilderness to his versification". By the 20th century, American poet and critic John Hollander would go so far as to say that Milton "was able, by plying that most remarkable instrument of English meter ... to invent a new mode of image-making in English poetry."


title: John Milton

text: Milton's pursuit of liberty extended into his vocabulary as well. It included many Latinate neologisms, as well as obsolete words already dropped from popular usage so completely that their meanings were no longer understood. In 1740, Francis Peck identified some examples of Milton's "old" words (now popular). The "Miltonian dialect", as it was called, was emulated by later poets; Pope used the diction of "Paradise Lost" in his Homer translation, while the lyric poetry of Gray and Collins was frequently criticised for their use of "obsolete words out of Spenser and Milton". The language of Thomson's finest poems (e.g. "The Seasons", "The Castle of Indolence") was self-consciously modelled after the Miltonian dialect, with the same tone and sensibilities as "Paradise Lost". Following to Milton, English poetry from Pope to John Keats exhibited a steadily increasing attention to the connotative, the imaginative and poetic, value of words.


title: John Milton

text: Milton's ode "At a solemn Musick" was set for choir and orchestra as "Blest Pair of Sirens" by Hubert Parry (1848–1918), and Milton's poem "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" was set as a large-scale choral work by Cyril Rootham (1875–1938). Milton also wrote the hymn Let us with a gladsome mind, a versification of Psalm 136. His 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso', with additional material, were magnificently set by Handel (1740).


title: Looper (film)

text: Looper is a 2012 American science fiction action-thriller film written and directed by Rian Johnson, and produced by Ram Bergman and James D. Stern. It stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels and Bruce Willis. It revolves around "present-day" contract killers called "loopers" hired by criminal syndicates from the future to terminate victims whom they send back through time.


title: Looper (film)

text: "Looper" was selected as the opening film of the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in the United States on September 28, 2012. The film received critical acclaim and was a box office success, grossing $176 million worldwide on a $30 million budget.


title: Looper (film)

text: In 2044, 25-year-old Joe works for a Kansas City crime syndicate as an assassin, or "looper." Since tracking systems in the future of 2074 have made it nearly impossible to dispose of bodies undetected, the syndicate sends its enemies back in time to be executed. Managed by a man from the future named Abe, loopers kill and dispose of victims whose faces are concealed, recovering silver bars attached to their targets as payment. To hide connections to the syndicate, any loopers who survive until 2074 are sent back and killed by their own younger selves, referred to as "closing the loop." These targets are identified by gold bars instead of silver, marking the end of the looper's contract.


title: Looper (film)

text: Joe's friend Seth confesses to Joe that he failed in an assignment to kill his future self. Old Seth has escaped, after warning Seth that a person in the future called the Rainmaker will overthrow the five major bosses and close all loops. Joe reluctantly hides Seth in his apartment's floor safe, but later reveals his location after Abe threatens to confiscate half of Joe's saved silver. Abe's elite "Gat Men" capture Seth, cut an address into his arm, and begin severing body parts. These effects appear on Old Seth's body; he goes to the address on his arm and is shot dead by Kid Blue, one of the Gat Men.


title: Looper (film)

text: When Joe's next target arrives, it is his older self, but with his face uncovered and hands unbound. Old Joe escapes before Joe can kill him. Returning to his apartment and finding it ransacked by the Gat Men, Joe fights with Kid Blue, falls off a fire escape and blacks out.


title: Looper (film)

text: In another timeline, Joe does kill his older self. He moves to Shanghai and becomes a hitman to finance his drug addiction and wild lifestyle. Eventually, he marries and breaks the addiction with his wife's help. Seven years later, his wife is killed when Joe is taken to close the loop. Overpowering his captors, Old Joe sends himself back to 2044, altering his history by evading Joe and escaping.


title: Looper (film)

text: Old Joe experiences vague memories of Joe's actions in the present, and meets his younger self at a diner. He wants to alter history again and save his wife by killing the Rainmaker as a child. He acquires a map from a local library using numbers written on his hand that are supposed to pertain to the Rainmaker's identity. Kid Blue and the Gat Men appear, and a gunfight ensues. Both Joes escape, with pieces of the map.


title: Looper (film)

text: Joe follows the map to a farm where a woman named Sara lives with her young son Cid. Sara recognizes the numbers on the map as Cid's birthday and the location of the hospital where he was born. Joe guesses that Old Joe is going to kill all three children born at that hospital on the same day, not knowing which one will become the Rainmaker.


title: Looper (film)

text: Jesse, a Gat Man, comes to the farm, but Cid helps Joe hide. Later that night, Sara and Joe have sex, and Sara reveals that while she has slightly above-average telekinetic powers, Cid's abilities are far stronger. In the morning, Joe wakes to find Jesse holding Sara at gunpoint. Terrified, Cid kills Jesse using telekinesis. Joe realizes that Cid will become the Rainmaker and that Old Joe will now know this.


title: Looper (film)

text: Kid Blue captures Old Joe and takes him to Abe. Old Joe breaks free, killing Abe and his henchmen, and goes to Sara's farm, followed by Kid Blue. While Young Joe kills Kid Blue, Old Joe pursues Sara and Cid. When Cid's face is grazed by a bullet, Sara calms him before he can react and kill anyone. She sends Cid into a sugar cane field and positions herself to block Old Joe's line of fire. Joe realizes that Cid will become the Rainmaker if Old Joe kills Sara. He commits suicide, erasing Old Joe's existence, saving Sara and potentially preventing Cid from becoming the Rainmaker.


title: Looper (film)

text: "Looper" was written and directed by Rian Johnson, originally conceived as a short film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, shortly after making "Brick", Johnson's first feature. After Johnson released "The Brothers Bloom" in 2008, he re-teamed with producer Ram Bergman, who produced Johnson's previous two films, with the goal of starting production of "Looper" in 2009. In May 2010, Gordon-Levitt was cast in one of the lead roles, which he would play after completing "Premium Rush". Later in the month, Bruce Willis was also cast. In the following October, Emily Blunt joined Gordon-Levitt and Willis. Noah Segan, Jeff Daniels and Piper Perabo were cast in January 2011. Filming began in Louisiana on January 24, 2011.


title: Looper (film)

text: Makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji created the prosthetics that Gordon-Levitt wore in the film so that he would physically resemble Willis. The film's score was composed by Nathan Johnson, Rian Johnson's cousin.


title: Looper (film)

text: Other influences cited by Rian Johnson include "The Terminator", "Witness", "Akira", "", "12 Monkeys", "Timecrimes", and "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World".


title: Looper (film)

text: "Looper" premiered on September 6, 2012, at the opening night of the Toronto International Film Festival. The film was then released theatrically in the United States on , 2012 by FilmDistrict, who obtained the domestic rights from production company Endgame Entertainment at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. In turn, FilmDistrict chose to release the film with Sony Pictures, over their genre label TriStar Pictures.


title: Looper (film)

text: The Chinese release of the film reintegrates a substantial number of scenes set in Shanghai. The move was requested by Chinese production company DMG Entertainment in order to further appeal to Chinese audiences. Several of these scenes were shortened or cut for the American release.


title: Looper (film)

text: Johnson released a free audio commentary on SoundCloud (which was heavily requested after making one for "The Brothers Bloom") to be downloaded and listened to during the film, with the warning: "Needless to say, this is NOT to be listened to on a first viewing, or before you've seen the film."


title: Looper (film)

text: The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD in North America on December 31, 2012. The film was also released on January 28, 2013 in online UK stores, with a general release on February 4, 2013. The film made $20,583,583 in domestic DVD sales and $11,468,974 from domestic Blu-ray sales for a total of $32,052,557. The film was remastered for an Ultra HD Blu-ray release in 2021.


title: Looper (film)

text: "Looper" opened on September 28, 2012, in 2,992 theaters in North America and grossed US$20,801,522 in its opening weekend averaging US$6,952 per theater and ranking #2 at the box office. The widest release of the film in the U.S was 2,993 theaters and it ended up earning US$66.5 million domestically and US$110 million internationally for a total of US$176.5 million, against its US$30 million production budget.


title: Looper (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 271 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "As thought-provoking as it is thrilling, "Looper" delivers an uncommonly smart, bravely original blend of futuristic sci-fi and good old-fashioned action." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 84 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Looper (film)

text: James Mottram of "Total Film" gave "Looper" 5 stars out of 5, concluding that it was "the best sci-fi movie since "Moon". The best time-travel yarn since "12 Monkeys". And one of the best films of 2012."


title: Looper (film)

text: Todd McCarthy of "The Hollywood Reporter" gave the film a positive review, calling it "an engaging, neatly worked-out time-travel sci-fi thriller", but also criticizing the effects involved in making Gordon-Levitt resemble Willis: "At first, the effect is a bit odd, and you can't quite put your finger on what's off; then it feels downright weird to be looking at a version of Gordon-Levitt who is no longer the actor you've known for a few years now."


title: Looper (film)

text: Peter Debruge of "Variety" also gave the film a positive review, writing that writer-director Johnson's "grandly conceived, impressively mounted third feature shows a giddy, geeky interest in science-fiction, then forces it into the back seat and lets the multidimensional characters drive. In a genre infamous for loose ends, this thinking man's thriller marshals action, romance and a dose of very dark comedy toward a stunning payoff."


title: Looper (film)

text: Kim Newman of "Empire" magazine gave "Looper" 5 stars out of 5, writing, "Intelligent science-fiction sometimes seems an endangered species—too much physics and there's a risk of creating something cold and remote, too many explosions and get lost in the multiplex. "Looper" isn't perfect, but it pulls off the full "Wizard Of Oz": it has a brain, courage and a heart." Noel Murray of "The A.V. Club" gave the film an A− grade, writing, ""Looper" is a remarkable feat of imagination and execution, entertaining from start to finish, even as it asks the audience to contemplate how and why humanity keeps making the same rotten mistakes." Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" gave the film a positive review, writing, ""Looper" is way inventive but it wears its creativity lightly, like it's no big deal. This is a highflying, super-stylish science-fiction thriller that brings a fresh approach to mind-bending genre material. We're not always sure where this time-travel film is going, but we wouldn't dream of abandoning the ride."


title: Looper (film)

text: Claudia Puig of "USA Today" gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, writing, ""Looper"s heady blend of time travel, gritty action and a jot of romance is such a thrilling and cerebral mind-bender that it will likely have moviegoers gathering outside the theater afterward to hash out details of its intricately constructed universe. Not that that's a bad thing." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" also gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, praising the performances of Willis and Gordon-Levitt and concluding, "Lacing tremendously exciting action with touching gravity, "Looper" hits you like a shot in the heart." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" also gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, praising its screenplay, stating ""Looper", a smart and tricky sci-fi story, sidesteps the paradoxes of time travel by embracing them. Most time travel movies run into trouble in the final scenes, when impossibilities pile up one upon another. This film leads to a startling conclusion that wipes out the story's paradoxes so neatly it's as if it never happened."


title: Looper (film)

text: Lisa Schwarzbaum of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a B+ grade, writing, "The time swivels in "Looper" evoke some of "Inception"s fancy temporal tricks (some of which, of course, also involved Gordon-Levitt straddling multiple time zones at once). But it's the glimpses of "Children of Men"-like societal dystopia that give the movie its real weight". Keith Staskiewicz, also writing for "Entertainment Weekly" (reviewing the DVD) and also giving a "B+", said, "The film's premise is markedly inventive, and [writer-director Rian] Johnson spends a lot of time making his universe seem lived-in and believable, but he's not just concerned with whiz-bang what-ifs. The showdown of selves illuminates just how little Gordon-Levitt's character has changed over the intervening years, stuck as he is in a feedback loop of drug use and violence despite his pipe dream of moving to Europe. The retro trench coats and firearms also suggest a sort of eternal recurrence, and as "Looper"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s plot gets more complex, its central question simplifies: If we can't fix our mistakes, can we at least make sure we don't repeat the same ones over and over again?"


title: Looper (film)

text: Richard Corliss of "Time" magazine gave the film a positive review, calling "Looper" a "hybrid, mashing Quentin Tarantino and Philip K. Dick into a species of pulp science fiction" and also writing, "A fanciful film with the patina of hyper-realism, "Looper" is well served by actors who behave not as if they were dropped carelessly into the future but spent their whole desperate lives there." Dana Stevens of "Slate" gave the film a mixed review, writing, ""Looper" felt to me like a maddening near-miss: It posits an impossible but fascinating-to-imagine relationship – a face-to-face encounter between one's present and future self, in which each self must account for its betrayal of the other – and then throws away nearly all the dramatic potential that relationship offers."


title: Jamie Oliver

text: James Trevor Oliver MBE OSI (born 27 May 1975) is an English chef, restaurateur and cookbook author. He is known for his casual approach to cuisine, which has led him to front numerous television shows and open many restaurants.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver reached the public eye when his series "The Naked Chef" premiered in 1999. In 2005, he opened a campaign, Feed Me Better, to introduce schoolchildren to healthier foods, which was later backed by the government. He was the owner of a restaurant chain, Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group, which opened its first restaurant, Jamie's Italian, in Oxford in 2008. The chain went into administration in May 2019.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: His TED Talk won him the 2010 TED Prize. In June 2003, Oliver was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for "services to the hospitality industry".


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver was born and raised in the village of Clavering in Essex. His parents, Trevor and Sally Oliver, ran a pub/restaurant, The Cricketers, where he practised cooking in the kitchen with his parents. He has one sibling, sister Anne-Marie and was educated at Newport Free Grammar School.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: He left school at the age of 16 with two GCSE qualifications in Art and Geology and went on to attend Westminster Technical College now Westminster Kingsway College. He then earned a City & Guilds National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) in home economics.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver's first job was a pastry chef at Antonio Carluccio's Neal Street restaurant, where he first gained experience at preparing Italian cuisine, and developed a relationship with his mentor Gennaro Contaldo; later in his career Oliver employed Contaldo to help run his collection of high street restaurants, Jamie's Italian. Oliver moved to The River Café, Fulham, as a sous-chef. He was noticed there by the BBC in 1997, after making an unscripted appearance in a documentary about the restaurant, "Christmas at the River Cafe".


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 1999, his BBC show "The Naked Chef" debuted, and his cookbook became a bestseller in the United Kingdom. That same year, Oliver was invited to prepare lunch for the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: After three series of "Naked Chef" programmes ("The Naked Chef", "Return of the Naked Chef" & "Happy Days with The Naked Chef") for the BBC, Oliver moved to Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, where his first series was a documentary, "Jamie's Kitchen", which followed the setting up of Fifteen restaurant in London. The restaurant, in Westland Place, London continued to train young adults who have a disadvantaged background for careers in the restaurant business until its closure on 21 May 2019.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In June 2003, Oliver was awarded an MBE for his services to the hospitality industry. Although it is customary to wear morning dress or a lounge suit for the event, Oliver did not wear a tie with his brown Paul Smith suit, saying: "I like ties but I prefer not to wear one when I am nervous."


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2005, Oliver initiated a campaign originally called "Feed Me Better" to move British schoolchildren towards eating healthy foods and cutting out junk food. As a result, the British government also pledged to address the issue. His public campaign for changes in nutrition resulted in people voting him as the "Most Inspiring Political Figure of 2005", according to a Channel 4 News annual viewer poll. His emphasis on cooking fresh, nutritious food continued as he created "Jamie's Ministry of Food", a television series where Oliver travelled to inspire everyday people in Rotherham, Yorkshire, to cook healthy meals. Another television series is "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" (2010–11), where he travelled first to Huntington, West Virginia and then to Los Angeles to change the way Americans eat, and address their dependence on fast food.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver's holding company, Jamie Oliver Holdings Ltd., earned enough for Oliver to have been listed on "The Sunday Times" list of richest Britons under 30.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver is the second-best-selling British author, behind J. K. Rowling, and the best-selling British non-fiction author since records began. , Oliver has sold more than 14.55 million books, generating just under £180m for the chef.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In June 2008, Oliver launched a restaurant, Jamie's Italian, his first high street business venture, in Oxford, England. At its peak, there were 42 Jamie's Italian restaurants in the UK. The brand was franchised and includes branches in Australia (which Oliver part-bought back in November 2016 after its founders went bankrupt), Canada, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Qatar, Russia, Taiwan, Turkey, the UAE and Singapore.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In January 2017, Chief Executive Simon Blagden announced the closure of six restaurants in the UK affecting 120 jobs, at sites in Aberdeen, Cheltenham, Exeter, Royal Tunbridge Wells, and in London at Ludgate and Richmond.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In January 2018, as part of an agreement with creditors to secure £71.5M of debt, JORG proposed to enter the UK company Jamie's Italian Ltd into a company voluntary arrangement, seeking rent reductions on eight outlets and closing a further 12 in Bath, Bristol, Bluewater, Chelmsford, Harrogate, Kingston, Milton Keynes, Reading, and St Albans, and Greenwich, Piccadilly and Threadneedle Street in London. As part of the agreement, court papers revealed that Jamie's Italian had debts of £71.5m, including £2.2m in wages owed to staff; £30.2m of overdrafts and loans; £41.3m owed to landlords, HM Revenue and Customs, suppliers and other creditors; with £47m of the debts covered by loans from HSBC Bank and Oliver's other companies.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2009, Oliver's chain of cooking school/delis, Recipease, opened in several locations in the UK including Brighton, Battersea, and Notting Hill in London. By the end of 2015, all stores had been closed.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2011, Oliver set up Barbecoa, a barbecued meat-based restaurant with his friend, American barbecue expert Adam Perry Lang. There were two outlets, both in London, one in Piccadilly and a second in St Pauls. In 2014 the Piccadilly outlet voluntarily closed for 24 hours after hygiene inspectors gave it the second-lowest rating. "The Times" reported they had found mouse droppings, mouldy carcasses and out-of-date meat. In February 2018, JORG confirmed that they had "instructed a firm of real estate agents to ascertain the potential value and market suitability of two of our sites". On 19 February 2018, Barbecoa Ltd went into administration, with Oliver immediately buying back the St Paul's site in a pre-packed agreement via a new subsidiary.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: The group went into administration on 21 May 2019 with 22 of 25 restaurants closed and 1,000 jobs lost. Jamie's Italian restaurants and Jamie Oliver's Diner at Gatwick Airport continued operations until they were sold to catering company SSP. Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Cornwall at Watergate Bay, as well as 61 overseas locations and the catering services operated by Aramark in the U.S., are all operated by franchisees so they were unaffected.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In January 2020, KPMG, the firm administrators, said that most of the £80 million Jamie Oliver's restaurant chain owed after its collapse in May 2019 will not be recovered. Hundreds of suppliers, as well as some town councils, will bear the brunt of the losses. In 2020 an employment tribunal ruled that Oliver's restaurants broke labour laws by failing to consult employees prior to making them redundant.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver also partnered with Toronto restaurateur King Street Co. and executive chef Rob Gentile to open "Jamie's Italians" including a location in Yorkdale Shopping Centre.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: From June 2000, Oliver became the public face of the Sainsbury's supermarket chain in the UK, appearing on television and radio advertisements and in-store promotional material. The deal earned him an estimated £1.2 million every year, although neither J. Sainsbury nor Oliver has ever discussed the exact figure. By 2004, the company had made 65 advertisements with him, but the arrangement was not without controversy. Oliver was reported to have admitted that he does not use supermarkets, despite regularly having "product placement" in his early TV series.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: He criticised Sainsbury's CEO Justin King when Oliver slammed the "junk" sold by supermarkets that ends up in the lunchboxes of millions of children. King reportedly hit back, saying: "Dictating to people—or unleashing an expletive-filled tirade—is not the way to get engagement." In July 2011, after eleven years, the partnership between Oliver and Sainsbury's ended. The final television advertisement was for Christmas 2011.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver also markets a line of non-stick pans and cookware for Tefal and has appeared in Australian television commercials for Yalumba wines, using Del Boy's catchphrase of "Lovely Jubbly".


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In August 2013, Oliver and Canadian supermarket chain Sobeys announced a partnership in improving nationwide nutrition and advertising campaigns. In October 2013, he began a partnership with the Australian chain Woolworths Supermarkets on a series of better nutrition initiatives and advertising campaigns.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In January 2016, Oliver and HelloFresh, an international meal kit subscription service, announced a partnership to incorporate his recipes to the weekly subscription deliveries. Customers receive one recipe written by Jamie Oliver with all the exact ingredients and steps for the dish. HelloFresh also agreed to the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation per Meal Box in addition to supporting other Foundation activities.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In September 2018, Oliver created a series of recipes and tips for Tesco and participated in the promotion of the company's food products.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2005, Oliver was widely criticised by animal rights groups for slaughtering a lamb on his TV show without first stunning it, with PETA stating that it showed to the public problems with the methods used within slaughterhouses. PETA spokesman Sean Gifford said that it was hoped the footage "could turn the more die-hard carnivore into a vegetarian". British TV regulator Ofcom reported seven complaints from the public.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver has commented on other chefs and has spoken out against Marco Pierre White, who has been critical of Oliver in the past, and the swearing of Gordon Ramsay.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2005, Oliver embarked upon his school dinners campaign to improve the quality of food fed to pupils in schools. The campaign was arguably successful.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2011, Oliver, an advocate of cooking meals from scratch and using local produce, caused controversy after it turned out the sauces used in Jamie's Italian in Glasgow were from an industrial park almost away in Bicester. That same year, he came under fire for lack of food safety protections in his restaurants and illnesses associated with under-cooking mincemeat that may have been contaminated with "E. coli".


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver and Gordon Ramsay are spokespeople for the "Big Fish Fight", which campaigns for sustainable seafood, but were criticised for their use of endangered fish.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver was criticised for underestimating the cost of supposedly cheap food he encouraged poor people to prepare for themselves, as well as for an unrealistic view of poverty in Britain and round the Mediterranean. Cookery writer and poverty campaigner Jack Monroe stated that Oliver's comments "support damaging myths that poor people are only poor because they spend their money on the wrong things, rather than being constrained by time, equipment, knowledge or practicalities".


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2014, Oliver became the culinary face of Woolworths Supermarkets. Oliver came under strong criticism over the funding of the advertising surrounding his relationship with the supermarket."Moreover, in this case he is not a spectator but effectively a beneficiary of these demands on our farmers. If he doesn't approve of Woolworths' ethics, he can withdraw from the campaign, and refund his endorsement fee. In the last 12 months, the average vegetable grower has gone from making a small profit to making a loss. In the same 12 months, Mr Oliver's wealth rose by an estimated £90 million. Now we know how."


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In February 2017, Oliver criticised the Red Tractor scheme, earning the ire of farming leaders, such as Minette Batters, the president of the NFU. Oliver said: "Chickens are bred to grow fast with a high ratio of meat to bone, but this makes them heavy so they can struggle to walk...I think people would be shocked by the reality of what we are buying...I personally wouldn't feed it to my kids." Batters pointed out that: "There are a lot of people on tight budgets and they must not be disadvantaged in all of this. It is about making sure we can provide quality affordable, safe, traceable food to everybody regardless of budgets, regardless of background."


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2019, Oliver partnered with Royal Dutch Shell to offer a "Jamie Oliver Deli by Shell" branded range at 500 Shell petrol stations in the UK for £5 million. The deal was criticised as a way to improve their image due to Shell's lack of action on climate change, corruption and bribery allegations and damaged Oliver's image of working in the interests of children and for action on climate change.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver conceived and established the Fifteen charity restaurant, where he trained disadvantaged young people to work in the hospitality industry. Following the success of the original restaurant in London, more Fifteens have opened around the globe: Fifteen Amsterdam opened in December 2004, Fifteen Cornwall in Newquay in May 2006 and Fifteen Melbourne in September 2006 with an Australian friend and fellow chef Tobie Puttock. Fifteen Melbourne has since closed, as has Fifteen Cornwall.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver began a formal campaign to ban unhealthy food in British schools and to get children eating nutritious food instead. Oliver's efforts to bring radical change to the school meals system, chronicled in the series "Jamie's School Dinners", challenged the junk-food culture by showing schools they could serve healthy, cost-efficient meals that kids enjoyed eating. His efforts brought the subject of school dinners to the political forefront and changed the types of food served in schools.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver's Ministry of Food campaign began in 2008 with the Channel 4 series of the same name and the opening of the first Ministry of Food Centre in Rotherham. More MoF Centres have since opened in Bradford, Leeds, Newcastle/North-East, Stratford (now known as Food Academy) and Alnwick. Ministry of Food Centres and trucks have opened in Australia in Ipswich, near Brisbane and Geelong, near Melbourne. State governments in Australia provided funding for these Centres.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In December 2009, Oliver was awarded the 2010 TED Prize for his campaigns to "create change on both the individual and governmental levels" to "bring attention to the changes that the English, and now Americans, need to make in their lifestyles and diet". In 2010, he joined several other celebrity chefs on the series "The Big Fish Fight", in which Oliver and fellow chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Gordon Ramsay made a variety of programmes to raise awareness about the discarding of hundreds of thousands of saltwater fish because the fishermen are prohibited from keeping any fish other than the stated target of the trawl. He is a patron of environmental charity Trees for Cities.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2017, Oliver was approached by senior managers asking if he was interested in becoming a supporter for a campaign to tackle food waste called "Fresh Thinking for Forgotten Food" an idea invented by the British Domestic Appliance manufacturer Hotpoint. As well as the company allowing Oliver to have a free of charge Electric Single Oven and Gas Hob with their latest technologies to advertise. In 2018, Hotpoint built a pop up cafe based around on their campaign in London with Oliver opening it.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In April 2022, Oliver co-organized together with Ukrainian chef Yurii Kovryzhenko a charity dinner in London within an initiative #CookForUkraine to raise money for Ukrainians who suffered from Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: On 13 May 2001, Oliver's series "The Naked Chef" won the BAFTA award for "Best Feature" at the prestigious 2001 British Academy Television Awards, held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, London.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In June 2003, Oliver was awarded the MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours. A proponent of fresh organic foods, Oliver was named the most influential person in the UK hospitality industry when he topped the inaugural Caterersearch.com 100 in May 2005. The list placed Oliver higher than Sir Francis Mackay, the then-chairman of the contract catering giant Compass Group, which Oliver had soundly criticised in "Jamie's School Dinners". In 2006, Oliver dropped to second on the list behind fellow celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. In July 2010, Oliver regained the top spot and was named as the most powerful and influential person in the UK hospitality industry once again.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: On 21 August 2010, Oliver won an Emmy for "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" at the 62nd Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. The series tackled the problem of childhood obesity in America.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2013, Oliver was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal College of General Practitioners for his work in tackling childhood obesity by improving the nutritional value of school dinners.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: On 29 October 2015, Oliver was listed by UK-based company Richtopia at number 2 in the list of 100 Most Influential British Entrepreneurs.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2019, Oliver was awarded the Order of the Star of Italy with the rank of Knight. The investiture took place at the Italian embassy in 2021.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In July 2000, Oliver married former model and writer Juliette Norton, usually known as "Jools". They have five children: Poppy Honey Rosie (born 18 March 2002), Daisy Boo Pamela (born 10 April 2003), Petal Blossom Rainbow (born 3 April 2009), Buddy Bear Maurice (born 15 September 2010), and River Rocket Blue Dallas (born 7 August 2016).


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver has severe dyslexia, and read his first novel, "Catching Fire", by American novelist Suzanne Collins (the second book in the three-book "The Hunger Games" series) in 2013, at the age of 38.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: In 2015 Oliver told "The Times" magazine that he had lost in three months by changing his diet and getting enough sleep.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: During the summer of 2019, Jamie and his family moved into Spains Hall, the 16th-century mansion in Finchingfield, Essex. The £6m property is located on a estate and includes a six-bedroom farmhouse, three-bedroom lodge, swimming pool, tennis court and converted stables.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver was chosen by Disney Pixar to provide the British English voice of the health inspector in the 2007 animated movie "Ratatouille".


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver has twice guest-hosted Channel 4's "The Friday Night Project" and has made two appearances in the "Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car" segment of BBC Two's "Top Gear". In his first appearance he attempted to make a green salad in the back of his Volkswagen Microbus, which was fitted with a Porsche engine, while the Stig drove it around the "Top Gear" test track.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver is the second British celebrity chef (after Robert Irvine) to appear as a challenger on "Iron Chef America," taking on Iron Chef Mario Batali in 2008 in a losing battle with cobia as the theme ingredient.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver was one of the judges in the "Oprah's Big Give" hosted by Oprah Winfrey in the United States in 2008.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: The Happy Days Live tour was Oliver's first live show in 2001 and included several dates in the UK and Australasia. Performing to sold-out venues, he cooked on stage and interacted with the audiences with competitions, music and special effects only usually seen in pop concerts. He took the audiences by surprise by singing and drumming to a song called "Lamb Curry" written by his longtime friend Leigh Haggerwood.


title: Jamie Oliver

text: Oliver took to the road once more in 2006 on an Australian tour where he performed in Sydney and Melbourne. Following the entertaining format of his first live show, the 2006 Australian tour featuring special guests including mentor Gennaro Contaldo, and students from Fifteen London. He performed a new song written by Leigh Haggerwood called "Fish Stew" which Oliver cooked to and also drummed along to at the end of the show. The shows were featured in a one-off TV documentary called "Jamie Oliver: Australian Diary".


title: Pseudoscience

text: Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited.


title: Pseudoscience

text: The demarcation between science and pseudoscience has scientific, philosophical, and political implications. Philosophers debate the nature of science and the general criteria for drawing the line between scientific theories and pseudoscientific beliefs, but there is general agreement on examples such as ancient astronauts, climate change denial, dowsing, evolution denial, Holocaust denialism, astrology, alchemy, alternative medicine, occultism, ufology, and creationism. There are implications for health care, the use of expert testimony, and weighing environmental policies. Addressing pseudoscience is part of science education and developing scientific literacy.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Pseudoscience can have dangerous effects. For example, pseudoscientific anti-vaccine activism and promotion of homeopathic remedies as alternative disease treatments can result in people forgoing important medical treatments with demonstrable health benefits, leading to deaths and ill-health. Furthermore, people who refuse legitimate medical treatments for contagious diseases may put others at risk. Pseudoscientific theories about racial and ethnic classifications have led to racism and genocide.


title: Pseudoscience

text: The term "pseudoscience" is often considered pejorative particularly by purveyors of it because it suggests something is being presented as science inaccurately or even deceptively. Therefore, those practicing or advocating pseudoscience frequently dispute the characterization.


title: Pseudoscience

text: The word "pseudoscience" is derived from the Greek root "pseudo" meaning false and the English word "science", from the Latin word "scientia", meaning "knowledge". Although the term has been in use since at least the late 18th century (e.g., in 1796 by James Pettit Andrews in reference to alchemy), the concept of pseudoscience as distinct from real or proper science seems to have become more widespread during the mid-19th century. Among the earliest uses of "pseudo-science" was in an 1844 article in the "Northern Journal of Medicine", issue 387:


title: Pseudoscience

text: An earlier use of the term was in 1843 by the French physiologist François Magendie, that refers to phrenology as ""a pseudo-science of the present day"". During the 20th century, the word was used pejoratively to describe explanations of phenomena which were claimed to be scientific, but which were not in fact supported by reliable experimental evidence.


title: Pseudoscience

text: From time to time, however, the usage of the word occurred in a more formal, technical manner in response to a perceived threat to individual and institutional security in a social and cultural setting.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Pseudoscience is differentiated from science because – although it usually claims to be science – pseudoscience does not adhere to scientific standards, such as the scientific method, falsifiability of claims, and Mertonian norms.


title: Pseudoscience

text: A number of basic principles are accepted by scientists as standards for determining whether a body of knowledge, method, or practice is scientific. Experimental results should be reproducible and verified by other researchers. These principles are intended to ensure experiments can be reproduced measurably given the same conditions, allowing further investigation to determine whether a hypothesis or theory related to given phenomena is valid and reliable. Standards require the scientific method to be applied throughout, and bias to be controlled for or eliminated through randomization, fair sampling procedures, blinding of studies, and other methods. All gathered data, including the experimental or environmental conditions, are expected to be documented for scrutiny and made available for peer review, allowing further experiments or studies to be conducted to confirm or falsify results. Statistical quantification of significance, confidence, and error are also important tools for the scientific method.


title: Pseudoscience

text: During the mid-20th century, the philosopher Karl Popper emphasized the criterion of falsifiability to distinguish science from nonscience. Statements, hypotheses, or theories have falsifiability or refutability if there is the inherent possibility that they can be proven false. That is, if it is possible to conceive of an observation or an argument which negates them. Popper used astrology and psychoanalysis as examples of pseudoscience and Einstein's theory of relativity as an example of science. He subdivided nonscience into philosophical, mathematical, mythological, religious and metaphysical formulations on one hand, and pseudoscientific formulations on the other.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Another example which shows the distinct need for a claim to be falsifiable was stated in Carl Sagan's publication "The Demon-Haunted World" when he discusses an invisible dragon that he has in his garage. The point is made that there is no physical test to refute the claim of the presence of this dragon. Whatever test one thinks can be devised, there is a reason why it does not apply to the invisible dragon, so one can never prove that the initial claim is wrong. Sagan concludes; "Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?". He states that "your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true", once again explaining that even if such a claim were true, it would be outside the realm of scientific inquiry.


title: Pseudoscience

text: During 1942, Robert K. Merton identified a set of five "norms" which characterize real science. If any of the norms were violated, Merton considered the enterprise to be nonscience. These are not broadly accepted by the scientific community. His norms were:


title: Pseudoscience

text: In 1978, Paul Thagard proposed that pseudoscience is primarily distinguishable from science when it is less progressive than alternative theories over a long period of time, and its proponents fail to acknowledge or address problems with the theory. In 1983, Mario Bunge suggested the categories of "belief fields" and "research fields" to help distinguish between pseudoscience and science, where the former is primarily personal and subjective and the latter involves a certain systematic method. The 2018 book about scientific skepticism by Steven Novella, et al. "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe" lists hostility to criticism as one of the major features of pseudoscience.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Philosophers of science such as Paul Feyerabend argued that a distinction between science and nonscience is neither possible nor desirable. Among the issues which can make the distinction difficult is variable rates of evolution among the theories and methods of science in response to new data.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Larry Laudan has suggested pseudoscience has no scientific meaning and is mostly used to describe human emotions: "If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like 'pseudo-science' and 'unscientific' from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us". Likewise, Richard McNally states, "The term 'pseudoscience' has become little more than an inflammatory buzzword for quickly dismissing one's opponents in media sound-bites" and "When therapeutic entrepreneurs make claims on behalf of their interventions, we should not waste our time trying to determine whether their interventions qualify as pseudoscientific. Rather, we should ask them: How do you know that your intervention works? What is your evidence?"


title: Pseudoscience

text: For philosophers Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz "pseudo-science may be defined as one where the uncertainty of its inputs must be suppressed, lest they render its outputs totally indeterminate". The definition, in the book "Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy", alludes to the loss of craft skills in handling quantitative information, and to the bad practice of achieving precision in prediction (inference) only at the expenses of ignoring uncertainty in the input which was used to formulate the prediction. This use of the term is common among practitioners of post-normal science. Understood in this way, pseudoscience can be fought using good practices to assesses uncertainty in quantitative information, such as NUSAP and – in the case of mathematical modelling – sensitivity auditing.


title: Pseudoscience

text: The history of pseudoscience is the study of pseudoscientific theories over time. A pseudoscience is a set of ideas that presents itself as science, while it does not meet the criteria to be properly called such.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Distinguishing between proper science and pseudoscience is sometimes difficult. One proposal for demarcation between the two is the falsification criterion, attributed most notably to the philosopher Karl Popper. In the history of science and the history of pseudoscience it can be especially difficult to separate the two, because some sciences developed from pseudosciences. An example of this transformation is the science of chemistry, which traces its origins to pseudoscientific or pre-scientific study of alchemy.


title: Pseudoscience

text: The vast diversity in pseudosciences further complicates the history of science. Some modern pseudosciences, such as astrology and acupuncture, originated before the scientific era. Others developed as part of an ideology, such as Lysenkoism, or as a response to perceived threats to an ideology. Examples of this ideological process are creation science and intelligent design, which were developed in response to the scientific theory of evolution.


title: Pseudoscience

text: A topic, practice, or body of knowledge might reasonably be termed pseudoscientific when it is presented as consistent with the norms of scientific research, but it demonstrably fails to meet these norms.


title: Pseudoscience

text: The Ministry of AYUSH in the Government of India is purposed with developing education, research and propagation of indigenous alternative medicine systems in India. The ministry has faced significant criticism for funding systems that lack biological plausibility and are either untested or conclusively proven as ineffective. Quality of research has been poor, and drugs have been launched without any rigorous pharmacological studies and meaningful clinical trials on Ayurveda or other alternative healthcare systems. There is no credible efficacy or scientific basis of any of these forms of treatment.


title: Pseudoscience

text: In his book "The Demon-Haunted World", Carl Sagan discusses the government of China and the Chinese Communist Party's concern about Western pseudoscience developments and certain ancient Chinese practices in China. He sees pseudoscience occurring in the United States as part of a worldwide trend and suggests its causes, dangers, diagnosis and treatment may be universal.


title: Pseudoscience

text: A large percentage of the United States population lacks scientific literacy, not adequately understanding scientific principles and method. In the "Journal of College Science Teaching", Art Hobson writes, "Pseudoscientific beliefs are surprisingly widespread in our culture even among public school science teachers and newspaper editors, and are closely related to scientific illiteracy." However, a 10,000-student study in the same journal concluded there was no strong correlation between science knowledge and belief in pseudoscience.


title: Pseudoscience

text: During 2006, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) issued an executive summary of a paper on science and engineering which briefly discussed the prevalence of pseudoscience in modern times. It said, "belief in pseudoscience is widespread" and, referencing a Gallup Poll, stated that belief in the 10 commonly believed examples of paranormal phenomena listed in the poll were "pseudoscientific beliefs". The items were "extrasensory perception (ESP), that houses can be haunted, ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, that people can communicate mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation, and channelling". Such beliefs in pseudoscience represent a lack of knowledge of how science works. The scientific community may attempt to communicate information about science out of concern for the public's susceptibility to unproven claims. The NSF stated that pseudoscientific beliefs in the U.S. became more widespread during the 1990s, peaked about 2001, and then decreased slightly since with pseudoscientific beliefs remaining common. According to the NSF report, there is a lack of knowledge of pseudoscientific issues in society and pseudoscientific practices are commonly followed. Surveys indicate about a third of adult Americans consider astrology to be scientific.


title: Pseudoscience

text: There have been many connections between writers and researchers of pseudoscience and their anti-semitism, racism and neo-Nazism backgrounds. They often use pseudoscience to reinforce their beliefs. One of the most predominant pseudoscientific writers is Frank Collin, a self-proclaimed Nazi who goes by Frank Joseph in his writings. The majority of his works include the topics of Atlantis, extraterrestrial encounters, and Lemuria as well as other ancient civilizations, often with white supremacist undertones. For example, he posited that European peoples migrated to North America before Columbus, and that all Native American civilizations were initiated by descendants of white people.


title: Pseudoscience

text: The Alt-Right using pseudoscience to base their ideologies on is not a new issue. The entire foundation of anti-semitism is based on pseudoscience, or scientific racism. In an article from "Newsweek" by Sander Gilman, Gilman describes the pseudoscience community's anti-semitic views. "Jews as they appear in this world of pseudoscience are an invented group of ill, stupid or stupidly smart people who use science to their own nefarious ends. Other groups, too, are painted similarly in 'race science', as it used to call itself: African-Americans, the Irish, the Chinese and, well, any and all groups that you want to prove inferior to yourself". Neo-Nazis and white supremacist often try to support their claims with studies that "prove" that their claims are more than just harmful stereotypes. For example Bret Stephens published a column in "The New York Times" where he claimed that Ashkenazi Jews had the highest IQ among any ethnic group. However, the scientific methodology and conclusions reached by the article Stephens cited has been called into question repeatedly since its publication. It has been found that at least one of that study's authors has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist.


title: Pseudoscience

text: The journal "Nature" has published a number of editorials in the last few years warning researchers about extremists looking to abuse their work, particularly population geneticists and those working with ancient DNA. One article in "Nature", titled "Racism in Science: The Taint That Lingers" notes that early-twentieth-century eugenic pseudoscience has been used to influence public policy, such as the Immigration Act of 1924 in the United States, which sought to prevent immigration from Asia and parts of Europe. Research has repeatedly shown that race is not a scientifically valid concept, yet some scientists continue to look for measurable biological differences between 'races'.


title: Pseudoscience

text: In a 1981 report Singer and Benassi wrote that pseudoscientific beliefs have their origin from at least four sources.


title: Pseudoscience

text: A 1990 study by Eve and Dunn supported the findings of Singer and Benassi and found pseudoscientific belief being promoted by high school life science and biology teachers.


title: Pseudoscience

text: The psychology of pseudoscience attempts to explore and analyze pseudoscientific thinking by means of thorough clarification on making the distinction of what is considered scientific vs. pseudoscientific. The human proclivity for seeking confirmation rather than refutation (confirmation bias), the tendency to hold comforting beliefs, and the tendency to overgeneralize have been proposed as reasons for pseudoscientific thinking. According to Beyerstein, humans are prone to associations based on resemblances only, and often prone to misattribution in cause-effect thinking.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Michael Shermer's theory of belief-dependent realism is driven by the belief that the brain is essentially a "belief engine" which scans data perceived by the senses and looks for patterns and meaning. There is also the tendency for the brain to create cognitive biases, as a result of inferences and assumptions made without logic and based on instinct – usually resulting in patterns in cognition. These tendencies of patternicity and agenticity are also driven "by a meta-bias called the bias blind spot, or the tendency to recognize the power of cognitive biases in other people but to be blind to their influence on our own beliefs".


title: Pseudoscience

text: Lindeman states that social motives (i.e., "to comprehend self and the world, to have a sense of control over outcomes, to belong, to find the world benevolent and to maintain one's self-esteem") are often "more easily" fulfilled by pseudoscience than by scientific information. Furthermore, pseudoscientific explanations are generally not analyzed rationally, but instead experientially. Operating within a different set of rules compared to rational thinking, experiential thinking regards an explanation as valid if the explanation is "personally functional, satisfying and sufficient", offering a description of the world that may be more personal than can be provided by science and reducing the amount of potential work involved in understanding complex events and outcomes.


title: Pseudoscience

text: There is a trend to believe in pseudoscience more than scientific evidence. Some people believe the prevalence of pseudoscientific beliefs is due to widespread scientific illiteracy. Individuals lacking scientific literacy are more susceptible to wishful thinking, since they are likely to turn to immediate gratification powered by System 1, our default operating system which requires little to no effort. This system encourages one to accept the conclusions they believe, and reject the ones they do not. Further analysis of complex pseudoscientific phenomena require System 2, which follows rules, compares objects along multiple dimensions and weighs options. These two systems have several other differences which are further discussed in the dual-process theory. The scientific and secular systems of morality and meaning are generally unsatisfying to most people. Humans are, by nature, a forward-minded species pursuing greater avenues of happiness and satisfaction, but we are all too frequently willing to grasp at unrealistic promises of a better life.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Psychology has much to discuss about pseudoscience thinking, as it is the illusory perceptions of causality and effectiveness of numerous individuals that needs to be illuminated. Research suggests that illusionary thinking happens in most people when exposed to certain circumstances such as reading a book, an advertisement or the testimony of others are the basis of pseudoscience beliefs. It is assumed that illusions are not unusual, and given the right conditions, illusions are able to occur systematically even in normal emotional situations. One of the things pseudoscience believers quibble most about is that academic science usually treats them as fools. Minimizing these illusions in the real world is not simple. To this aim, designing evidence-based educational programs can be effective to help people identify and reduce their own illusions.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Philosophers classify types of knowledge. In English, the word "science" is used to indicate specifically the natural sciences and related fields, which are called the social sciences. Different philosophers of science may disagree on the exact limits – for example, is mathematics a formal science that is closer to the empirical ones, or is pure mathematics closer to the philosophical study of logic and therefore not a science? – but all agree that all of the ideas that are not scientific are non-scientific. The large category of non-science includes all matters outside the natural and social sciences, such as the study of history, metaphysics, religion, art, and the humanities. Dividing the category again, unscientific claims are a subset of the large category of non-scientific claims. This category specifically includes all matters that are directly opposed to good science. Un-science includes both "bad science" (such as an error made in a good-faith attempt at learning something about the natural world) and pseudoscience. Thus pseudoscience is a subset of un-science, and un-science, in turn, is subset of non-science.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Science is also distinguishable from revelation, theology, or spirituality in that it offers insight into the physical world obtained by empirical research and testing. The most notable disputes concern the evolution of living organisms, the idea of common descent, the geologic history of the Earth, the formation of the solar system, and the origin of the universe. Systems of belief that derive from divine or inspired knowledge are not considered pseudoscience if they do not claim either to be scientific or to overturn well-established science. Moreover, some specific religious claims, such as the power of intercessory prayer to heal the sick, although they may be based on untestable beliefs, can be tested by the scientific method.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Some statements and common beliefs of popular science may not meet the criteria of science. "Pop" science may blur the divide between science and pseudoscience among the general public, and may also involve science fiction. Indeed, pop science is disseminated to, and can also easily emanate from, persons not accountable to scientific methodology and expert peer review.


title: Pseudoscience

text: If claims of a given field can be tested experimentally and standards are upheld, it is not pseudoscience, regardless of how odd, astonishing, or counterintuitive those claims are. If claims made are inconsistent with existing experimental results or established theory, but the method is sound, caution should be used, since science consists of testing hypotheses which may turn out to be false. In such a case, the work may be better described as ideas that are "not yet generally accepted". "Protoscience" is a term sometimes used to describe a hypothesis that has not yet been tested adequately by the scientific method, but which is otherwise consistent with existing science or which, where inconsistent, offers reasonable account of the inconsistency. It may also describe the transition from a body of practical knowledge into a scientific field.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Karl Popper stated it is insufficient to distinguish science from pseudoscience, or from metaphysics (such as the philosophical question of what existence means), by the criterion of rigorous adherence to the empirical method, which is essentially inductive, based on observation or experimentation. He proposed a method to distinguish between genuine empirical, nonempirical or even pseudoempirical methods. The latter case was exemplified by astrology, which appeals to observation and experimentation. While it had empirical evidence based on observation, on horoscopes and biographies, it crucially failed to use acceptable scientific standards. Popper proposed falsifiability as an important criterion in distinguishing science from pseudoscience.


title: Pseudoscience

text: To demonstrate this point, Popper gave two cases of human behavior and typical explanations from Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler's theories: "that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning it; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child." From Freud's perspective, the first man would have suffered from psychological repression, probably originating from an Oedipus complex, whereas the second man had attained sublimation. From Adler's perspective, the first and second man suffered from feelings of inferiority and had to prove himself, which drove him to commit the crime or, in the second case, drove him to rescue the child. Popper was not able to find any counterexamples of human behavior in which the behavior could not be explained in the terms of Adler's or Freud's theory. Popper argued it was that the observation always fitted or confirmed the theory which, rather than being its strength, was actually its weakness. In contrast, Popper gave the example of Einstein's gravitational theory, which predicted "light must be attracted by heavy bodies (such as the Sun), precisely as material bodies were attracted." Following from this, stars closer to the Sun would appear to have moved a small distance away from the Sun, and away from each other. This prediction was particularly striking to Popper because it involved considerable risk. The brightness of the Sun prevented this effect from being observed under normal circumstances, so photographs had to be taken during an eclipse and compared to photographs taken at night. Popper states, "If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted." Popper summed up his criterion for the scientific status of a theory as depending on its falsifiability, refutability, or testability.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Paul R. Thagard used astrology as a case study to distinguish science from pseudoscience and proposed principles and criteria to delineate them. First, astrology has not progressed in that it has not been updated nor added any explanatory power since Ptolemy. Second, it has ignored outstanding problems such as the precession of equinoxes in astronomy. Third, alternative theories of personality and behavior have grown progressively to encompass explanations of phenomena which astrology statically attributes to heavenly forces. Fourth, astrologers have remained uninterested in furthering the theory to deal with outstanding problems or in critically evaluating the theory in relation to other theories. Thagard intended this criterion to be extended to areas other than astrology. He believed it would delineate as pseudoscientific such practices as witchcraft and pyramidology, while leaving physics, chemistry, astronomy, geoscience, biology, and archaeology in the realm of science.


title: Pseudoscience

text: In the philosophy and history of science, Imre Lakatos stresses the social and political importance of the demarcation problem, the normative methodological problem of distinguishing between science and pseudoscience. His distinctive historical analysis of scientific methodology based on research programmes suggests: "scientists regard the successful theoretical prediction of stunning novel facts – such as the return of Halley's comet or the gravitational bending of light rays – as what demarcates good scientific theories from pseudo-scientific and degenerate theories, and in spite of all scientific theories being forever confronted by 'an ocean of counterexamples'". Lakatos offers a "novel fallibilist analysis of the development of Newton's celestial dynamics, [his] favourite historical example of his methodology" and argues in light of this historical turn, that his account answers for certain inadequacies in those of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. "Nonetheless, Lakatos did recognize the force of Kuhn's historical criticism of Popper – all important theories have been surrounded by an 'ocean of anomalies', which on a falsificationist view would require the rejection of the theory outright...Lakatos sought to reconcile the rationalism of Popperian falsificationism with what seemed to be its own refutation by history".


title: Pseudoscience

text: The boundary between science and pseudoscience is disputed and difficult to determine analytically, even after more than a century of study by philosophers of science and scientists, and despite some basic agreements on the fundamentals of the scientific method. The concept of pseudoscience rests on an understanding that the scientific method has been misrepresented or misapplied with respect to a given theory, but many philosophers of science maintain that different kinds of methods are held as appropriate across different fields and different eras of human history. According to Lakatos, the typical descriptive unit of great scientific achievements is not an isolated hypothesis but "a powerful problem-solving machinery, which, with the help of sophisticated mathematical techniques, digests anomalies and even turns them into positive evidence".


title: Pseudoscience

text: The demarcation problem between science and pseudoscience brings up debate in the realms of science, philosophy and politics. Imre Lakatos, for instance, points out that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at one point declared that Mendelian genetics was pseudoscientific and had its advocates, including well-established scientists such as Nikolai Vavilov, sent to a Gulag and that the "liberal Establishment of the West" denies freedom of speech to topics it regards as pseudoscience, particularly where they run up against social mores.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Something becomes pseudoscientific when science cannot be separated from ideology, scientists misrepresent scientific findings to promote or draw attention for publicity, when politicians, journalists and a nation's intellectual elite distort the facts of science for short-term political gain, or when powerful individuals of the public conflate causation and cofactors by clever wordplay. These ideas reduce the authority, value, integrity and independence of science in society.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Distinguishing science from pseudoscience has practical implications in the case of health care, expert testimony, environmental policies, and science education. Treatments with a patina of scientific authority which have not actually been subjected to actual scientific testing may be ineffective, expensive and dangerous to patients and confuse health providers, insurers, government decision makers and the public as to what treatments are appropriate. Claims advanced by pseudoscience may result in government officials and educators making bad decisions in selecting curricula.


title: Pseudoscience

text: The extent to which students acquire a range of social and cognitive thinking skills related to the proper usage of science and technology determines whether they are scientifically literate. Education in the sciences encounters new dimensions with the changing landscape of science and technology, a fast-changing culture and a knowledge-driven era. A reinvention of the school science curriculum is one that shapes students to contend with its changing influence on human welfare. Scientific literacy, which allows a person to distinguish science from pseudosciences such as astrology, is among the attributes that enable students to adapt to the changing world. Its characteristics are embedded in a curriculum where students are engaged in resolving problems, conducting investigations, or developing projects.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Friedman mentions why most scientists avoid educating about pseudoscience, including that paying undue attention to pseudoscience could dignify it.


title: Pseudoscience

text: On the other hand, Park emphasizes how pseudoscience can be a threat to society and considers that scientists have a responsibility to teach how to distinguish science from pseudoscience.


title: Pseudoscience

text: Pseudosciences such as homeopathy, even if generally benign, are used by charlatans. This poses a serious issue because it enables incompetent practitioners to administer health care. True-believing zealots may pose a more serious threat than typical con men because of their delusion to homeopathy's ideology. Irrational health care is not harmless and it is careless to create patient confidence in pseudomedicine.


title: Pseudoscience

text: On 8 December 2016, journalist Michael V. LeVine pointed out the dangers posed by the "Natural News" website: "Snake-oil salesmen have pushed false cures since the dawn of medicine, and now websites like "Natural News" flood social media with dangerous anti-pharmaceutical, anti-vaccination and anti-GMO pseudoscience that puts millions at risk of contracting preventable illnesses."


title: Pseudoscience

text: The anti-vaccine movement has persuaded large number of parents not to vaccinate their children, citing pseudoscientific research that links childhood vaccines with the onset of autism. These include the study by Andrew Wakefield, which claimed that a combination of gastrointestinal disease and developmental regression, which are often seen in children with ASD, occurred within two weeks of receiving vaccines. The study was eventually retracted by its publisher, and Wakefield was stripped of his license to practice medicine.


title: World Series

text: The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the World Series championship is determined through a best-of-seven playoff, and the winning team is awarded the Commissioner's Trophy.


title: World Series

text: Prior to the AL and NL being split into divisions in 1969, the team with the best regular-season win–loss record in each league automatically clinched its league's pennant and advanced to the World Series, barring the rare tie necessitating a pennant playoff. Since then each league has conducted a League Championship Series (ALCS and NLCS) preceding the World Series to determine which teams will advance, while those series have been preceded in turn by Division Series (ALDS and NLDS) since 1995, and Wild Card games or series in each league since 2012. Until 2002, home-field advantage in the World Series alternated from year to year between the AL and NL. From 2003 to 2016, home-field advantage was given to the league that won that year's All-Star Game. Starting in 2017, home-field advantage was awarded to the league champion team with the better regular-season win–loss record. The World Series has been contested 118 times as of 2022, with the AL winning 67 and the NL winning 51.


title: World Series

text: Until the formation of the American Association in 1882 as a second major league, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (1871–1875) and then the National League (founded 1876) represented the top level of organized baseball in the United States. All championships were awarded to the team with the best record at the end of the season, without a postseason series being played. From 1884 to 1890, the National League and the American Association faced each other in a series of games at the end of the season to determine an overall champion. These series were disorganized in comparison to the modern World Series, with the terms arranged through negotiation of the owners of the championship teams beforehand. The number of games played ranged from as few as three in 1884 (Providence defeated New York three games to zero), to a high of fifteen in 1887 (Detroit beat St. Louis ten games to five). Both the 1885 and 1890 Series ended in ties, each team having won three games with one tie game.


title: World Series

text: The series was promoted and referred to as "The Championship of the United States", "World's Championship Series", or "World's Series" for short.


title: World Series

text: In his book "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883", Simon Winchester mentions in passing that the World Series was named for the "New York World" newspaper, but this view is disputed.


title: World Series

text: The 19th-century competitions are, however, not officially recognized as part of World Series history by Major League Baseball, as it considers 19th-century baseball to be a prologue to the modern baseball era. Until about 1960, some sources treated the 19th-century Series on an equal basis with the post-19th-century series. After about 1930, however, many authorities list the start of the World Series in 1903 and discuss the earlier contests separately.


title: World Series

text: In more recent times, the series has sometimes been nicknamed the Fall Classic, as it is played during the fall season in North America.


title: World Series

text: Following the collapse of the American Association after the 1891 season, the National League was again the only major league. The league championship was awarded in 1892 by a playoff between split season champions. This scheme was abandoned after one season. Beginning in 1893—and continuing until divisional play was introduced in 1969—the pennant was awarded to the first-place club in the standings at the end of the season. For four seasons, 1894–1897, the league champions played the runners-up in the postseason championship series called the Temple Cup. A second attempt at this format was the "Chronicle-Telegraph" Cup series, which was played only once, in 1900.


title: World Series

text: In 1901, the American League was formed as a second major league. No championship series were played in 1901 or 1902 as the National and American Leagues fought each other for business supremacy (in 1902, the top teams instead opted to compete in a "football" championship).


title: World Series

text: After two years of bitter competition and player raiding, the National and American Leagues made peace and, as part of the accord, several pairs of teams squared off for interleague exhibition games following the 1903 season. These series were arranged by the participating clubs, as the 1880s World's Series matches had been. One of them, a best-of nine affair matching that year's pennant winners – the Pittsburgh Pirates of the NL and Boston Americans (later known as the Red Sox) of the AL – has come to be regarded as the 1903 World Series. It had been arranged well in advance by the two club owners, as both teams were league leaders by large margins.


title: World Series

text: Boston upset Pittsburgh by five games to three, winning with pitching depth behind Cy Young and Bill Dinneen and with the support of the band of Royal Rooters. The Series brought much civic pride to Boston and proved the new American League could beat the Nationals.