title: Final Destination 3

text: Meteor Studios produced the roller coaster and subway crashes while Digital Dimension handled the post-premonition death scenes. The death of Ian McKinley, who is bisected by a cherry picker, proved especially challenging. A clean plate of the cherry picker falling was originally shot with a plate of Lemche acting crushed and falling to the ground with his bottom half in a partial green-screen suit. After combining those plates, Wong said "he wanted more of a gruesome punch for the shot". A standard CGI body of Lemche's height was used; several animation simulations of the body being crushed with a CGI object were filmed. The director chose the version he liked most. A new plate was then filmed with Lemche imitating the chosen animation and positioning his body at the end. Soho VFX created the scene where Ashley and Ashlyn are killed on tanning beds. It consisted of about 35 shots of CG skin, glass, fire, and smoke mixed with real fire and smoke. The subway crash in the film's epilogue used a CG environment reproducing the main aspects of the set.


title: Final Destination 3

text: The score for "Final Destination 3" was composed by Shirley Walker, who wrote the soundtracks of the series' previous installments. Score mixer Bobby Fernandez created a "gore-o-meter", measuring the violence of each death to ensure the score would match the scenes. "Final Destination 3" is the only film in the series without a commercially released soundtrack. Musician Tommy Lee provided a cover of The O'Jays 1972 song "Love Train", which was used in the film's closing credits. Lee enjoyed "put[ting his] own darker spin on it for the movie".


title: Final Destination 3

text: Several months before the film's release, New Line Cinema set up a promotional website, which linked to another site where visitors could download mobile-phone ringtones and wallpapers related to the film. As a further means of promotion, a novelization written by Christa Faust was published by Black Flame a month before the film's release. "Final Destination 3" premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on February 1, 2006. During San Diego Comic-Con 2006, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, James Wong and Ryan Merriman attended a panel on July 22 to promote the DVD release of the film. They discussed the features of "Choose Their Fate" and the filming of new sequences.


title: Final Destination 3

text: "Final Destination 3" opened on February 10, 2006, in 2,880 theaters in the United States and Canada. It earned $19,173,094 on its opening weekend with an average of $6,657 per theater. The film placed second domestically behind the remake of "The Pink Panther", which opened the same day and earned $20,220,412. "Final Destination 3" fell to fifth in its second weekend and seventh in its third, dropping off the top-ten list on its fourth weekend. Its last screening, in 135 theaters, occurred during its tenth weekend; the film finished at 37th place with $105,940. "Final Destination 3" total earnings were $54,098,051 at the domestic box office and $63,621,107 internationally, for a worldwide gross of $117,719,158. At the time of its release, the film was the most financially successful installment in the franchise; it retained this title until "The Final Destination" surpassed it in 2009 with a worldwide gross of $186,167,139.


title: Final Destination 3

text: The film was released as a 2-disc DVD on July 25, 2006, by New Line Cinema, in widescreen and full screen formats. Special features include an audio commentary, a deleted scene, three documentaries, the theatrical trailer, and an original animated video. Wong, Morgan and cinematographer Robert Mclachlan provide the audio commentary. The deleted scene is an extended version of Wendy and Kevin's discussion after they are questioned by the police. The first documentary, "Dead Teenager Movie", examines the history of slasher films. The second, "Kill Shot: Making Final Destination 3", focuses on the making of the film and includes interviews with the cast and crew. "Severed Piece", the third documentary, discusses the film's special effects, pyrotechnics, and gore effects. A seven-minute animated film, "It's All Around You", explains the various ways people can die. Special DVD editions labeled "Thrill Ride Edition" also include an optional feature called "Choose Their Fate", allowing viewers to make decisions at several points in the film. Most provide only minor alterations to the death scenes, but the first choice allows the viewer to stop Wendy, Kevin, Jason, and Carrie from boarding the roller coaster before the premonition, ending the film immediately.


title: Final Destination 3

text: Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 43% of 116 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.10/10. The site's critics consensus reads: ""Final Destination 3" is more of the same: gory and pointless, with nowhere new to go." At Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 41 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Final Destination 3

text: Several critics described the story as formulaic compared to the previous installments; Roger Ebert wrote that the film's main issue was its predictability and lack of tension because it was "clear to everyone who must die and in what order". "Variety" compared the narrative negatively with the franchise's second installment, describing the third film as lacking intricacy. "The New York Times" similarly described the film as lacking the "novelty of the first [or] the panache of the second". "TV Guide" called the periods between characters' deaths "dull", highlighting one reason the film failed to match the formula set out in the previous installments. Other reviewers were more positive; IGN praised the story—Chris Carle wrote that the "formula has been perfected rather than worn out" by the third film. "Empire"s Kim Newman and "The Guardian" found the story enjoyable, but said "Final Destination 3" adhered primarily to the structure set out by the rest of the franchise.


title: Final Destination 3

text: The film's tone and death scenes were positively received by critics. Writing for "ReelViews", James Berardinelli described "Final Destination 3" as incorporating more humor compared to its predecessors and said it worked to the film's benefit. "The Seattle Times" agreed the film's humorous tone helped to elevate it and said fans of the franchise would enjoy the death sequences. Sarah Dobbs of "Den of Geek!" said the tone made "Final Destination 3" the high point of the franchise. She commended the film's style as a "brightly coloured [and] slightly silly meditation on how we're all gonna die one day, so we might as well do it explosively". The tanning bed and nail gun scenes were singled out as the best death sequences from the film and the franchise.


title: Final Destination 3

text: Some critics praised Winstead's performance. According to the BBC, "… the real tragedy is that promising young actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead must endure this torture". Berardinelli described her as delivering "as competent a job as one could expect in these dire circumstances". Felix Gonzalez, Jr. of DVD Reviews praised Winstead's and Merriman's performances as one of the few positive aspects of the film. Similarly, "The Seattle Times" praised Winstead for conveying Wendy's emotions. "The Daily Telegraph" also listed Wendy as one of the top 20 final girls in horror films and praised Winstead's performance for making Wendy a believable character.


title: Final Destination 3

text: "Final Destination 3" was nominated at the 2006 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards for Highest Body Count, Line That Killed (Best One-Liner), Sickest FX (Best Special Effects) as well as Most Thrilling Killing (Best Death Scene) for Frankie's death. At the 2007 Saturn Awards it was nominated for Best Horror Film and the "Thrill Ride Edition" was nominated for Best DVD Special Edition Release.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: Joshua Kushner (born June 12, 1985) is an American billionaire businessman, heir and investor. He is the founder and managing partner of the venture capital firm Thrive Capital, co-founder of Oscar Health, and the son of billionaire real estate developer Charles Kushner. His brother is Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and former senior advisor to former U.S. President Donald Trump. He is a minority owner of the Memphis Grizzlies.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: Kushner grew up in a Jewish family in Livingston, New Jersey to Charles and Sheryl Kushner. Kushner graduated from Harvard College in 2008, and from Harvard Business School in 2011.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: During his sophomore year, Kushner was founding executive editor of "Scene", a new Brooks Brothers-sponsored student-publication that aimed to be "Harvard's version of "Vogue" and "Vanity Fair"". According to "The Harvard Crimson", "Scene" "faced blistering criticism upon its release", with students going so far as creating a ""Scene" Magazine is Bullshit" Facebook group criticizing it for its "completely ludicrous ... skewed portrayal of the Harvard community" and "lack of models who were minorities".


title: Joshua Kushner

text: In the spring of his junior year, with two graduate students he pooled $10,000 to found social network Vostu, which aimed to "fill a void left by online communities in which English is the lingua franca", like Facebook. According to Kushner, Latin America was a promising market for a Facebook-alternative and new social networking site because "[it was] a place where Internet use is increasing every year, and technology is booming at a rapid pace". Vostu laid off the majority of its employees in 2013 and significantly scaled back its operations after a lawsuit from a competitor accused them of fraud, IP theft and copying games.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: The year after graduation, he also co-founded a start-up called Unithrive, with the cousin of the president of Kiva who was also a Harvard student. Unithrive was inspired by the peer-to-peer loan model of Kiva, but aimed to "ease the crisis in paying for college" by matching "alumni lenders to cash-strapped students ... who [could] post photographs and biographical information and request up to $2,000", interest-free for repayment within five years of graduation. After graduating from Harvard, he started his career in the Private Equity Group at Goldman Sachs, in the Merchant Banking Division, but left after a short stint.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: He founded Thrive Capital in 2009, a venture capital firm that focuses on media and internet investments. Since its founding, Thrive has raised $750 million from institutional investors, including Princeton University. Thrive has raised several capital funds, including Thrive II, which raised $40 million in 2011, Thrive III, which raised $150 million in 2012, and Thrive IV, which raised $400 million in September 2014.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: As an investor in Instagram, Kushner was the second largest investor in Instagram's Series B fundraising round. Valued at $500 million, Thrive soon doubled its money after Instagram was sold to Facebook.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: For his work with Thrive, Kushner was named to "Forbes" 30 Under 30, Inc. Magazine's 35 Under 35, Crain's 40 Under 40, and Vanity Fair's Next Establishment.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: In 2021 it was reported by "Bloomberg" that Goldman Sachs had invested in Kushner's Thrive Capital at a $3.6 billion valuation.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: Kushner is a co-founder of Oscar Health, a health insurance start-up. Founded in 2012, Oscar was valued at $2.7 billion in 2016. During calendar year 2020 Oscar's net income was -$400 million. Oscar went public in 2021 with Kushner's Thrive Capital owning a stake worth $1.14 billion. Oscar has struggled since its IPO, falling over 80% from its IPO price, as of June 2022.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: In 2020 it was revealed by "The Atlantic" that Jared Kushner had contracted Oscar Health to develop a coronavirus testing website that was later scrapped even though Jared had said publicly that Google was developing the website.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: In 2015, Kushner founded a new company called Cadre with his brother Jared and their friend Ryan Williams, with Williams as Cadre's CEO. Cadre is a technology platform designed to help certain types of client, such as family offices and endowments, invest in real estate.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: Kushner owns 50% of JK2 (also known as Westminster Management), a real estate management company, his brother Jared owns the other 50%. In April 2021, a Judge ruled that JK2 was found to be have committed "widespread and numerous" violations Maryland's consumer protection laws at Baltimore-area properties by collecting debts without the required licenses, charging tenants improper fees, and misrepresenting the condition of rental units.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: Kushner's JK2 was also featured in an episode of Netflix's "Dirty Money" series titled "Slumlord Millionaire." The episode was based on an expose from ProPublica accusing the company of abusing tenants rights, leaving homes in disrepair, humiliating late-paying renters and suing mostly poor immigrants to garnish their wages calling them a "tier-1 predator".


title: Joshua Kushner

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, JK2 filed a significant number of lawsuits against tenants for debt collection and eviction, despite an eviction moratorium being in place.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: Kushner started dating model Karlie Kloss in 2012. The couple got engaged in July 2018, a month after Kloss' conversion to Judaism (Kushner's faith). The couple married on October 18, 2018. The couple had their first child, a son, in 2021.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: His brother, Jared Kushner, is Donald Trump's son-in-law and was his senior advisor during Trump's presidency, and is an investor in Oscar Health.


title: Joshua Kushner

text: According to an investigation by the "NYTimes", in late October 2017, Joshua Kushner visited Saudi Arabia and met with several senior members of the Saudi government and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund at a conference in Riyadh, the day after he left Saudi, his brother Jared, and several other senior members of the Trump administration visited and met with the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Several ethics experts told "The Times", that while the meeting was not illegal, it raised ethical concerns for Joshua and his brother as it was a potential conflict of interest. "The Intercept" reported in 2018, that after the meeting in October 2017, the Saudi Crown Prince bragged to confidants that Jared Kushner was "in his pocket".


title: Joshua Kushner

text: In June 2017, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had implemented a naval blockade on Qatar, accusing them of aiding terrorist groups, and reportedly planned to invade Qatar. During the dispute, Jared had backed the Saudis and Emiratis in the conflict, undermined efforts by then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to stop the blockade and to bring the conflict to a peaceful outcome, and pressured President Donald Trump to back the Emiratis and Saudis in the dispute, which the President did, according to the "NYTimes".


title: Joshua Kushner

text: Kushner Companies, a firm that which Joshua serves as Principal Director, during the months prior to the blockage, had attempted to seek financing from the Qataris for their signature 666 Fifth Avenue property, which was facing a massive debt load in April 2017. Joshua's father, Charles Kushner, had met with Qatari finance minister, twice, to seek financing for the property. The deal fell through but ethics concerns were raised by US intelligence officials. Kushner Companies had, through 2015 and 2016, sought an additional $500 million from a Qatari billionaire and former Prime Minister but the deal fell through after Kushner Companies was not able to raise additional funding required for the $500 million investment. During the same week that his father was meeting with the Qatari finance minister in April 2017, Ali Shareef Al Emadi, Josh also met with Al Emadi, and pitched him on investing in Thrive Capital, which Ali Emadi declined. A Qatari source told "The Intercept" that it would have been “much cheaper” to simply pay Kushner for his failing investment and not suffer the blockade from Saudi/UAE (the blockade ended as soon as Trump left office in January). Tom Barrack, a private equity billionaire and close advisor to President Trump told "The Washington Post" in 2017 that he had tried to rescue the financing for 666 Fifth Avenue after the investment fell through and had called the former prime minister of Qatar and advised him that he should invest in the project which he still didn't.


title: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

text: An anime television series adaptation aired from July 2016 to December 2018. A live-action film directed by Yuichi Fukuda and starring Kento Yamazaki at Columbia Pictures (Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan) and Asmik Ace was released in October 2017. A six episode sequel anime series entitled "The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.: Reawakened", premiered on Netflix in December 2019.


title: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

text: Kusuo Saiki is one of the high school students who was born having various psychic powers, including psychokinesis and teleportation. He attempts to hide it from everyone at school. He is put in several seemingly normal scenarios in which he uses it to hide his special powers.


title: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

text: "The Disastrous Life of Saiki K." is written and illustrated by Shūichi Asō. He started publishing one-shot chapters of the series. The first chapter was published in the Summer 2010 issue of "Jump Next!" on August 16, 2010. Chapters were then irregularly published in "Weekly Shōnen Jump" from May 9 to November 21, 2011, and in the Winter 2012 issue of "Jump Next!" on December 26, 2011. A compiled "tankōbon" volume was published on May 2, 2012. The series was then serialized in "Weekly Shōnen Jump" from May 14, 2012, to February 26, 2018. It was later followed by a short serialization of 4-panel chapters published in the same magazine. Asō published one-shot chapters in Shueisha's "Jump GIGA" on May 25 and July 26, 2018. Shueisha has compiled its 281 individual chapters into twenty-six individual "tankōbon" volumes, published from September 4, 2012, to August 3, 2018.


title: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

text: On May 4, 2013, a light novel titled, "Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan - Extra Story of Psychics" was released, following with "Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan - Extra Story of Psychics 2" in July 2014.


title: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

text: A flash anime series based on the manga began release on "Jump Live" from August 4, 2013, featuring the same voice cast as an earlier Comic adaptation.


title: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

text: An anime television adaptation was announced by "Weekly Shōnen Jump" in 2016. J.C.Staff and Egg Firm produced the adaptation, with Hiroaki Sakurai directing, Michiko Yokote handling series composition and Masayuki Onji designing the characters. The series began airing on July 4, 2016, on TV Tokyo, with an episode airing every weekday morning followed by a compilation episode at the end of each week, the series would contain one hundred and twenty episodes in total, along with twenty four compilation episodes on Oha Suta. The opening themes are by Natsuki Hanae, by Denpagumi.inc from the thirteenth compiled episode onwards and by Denpagumi.inc from second season, while the ending theme, also used for the short episodes, is by Denpagumi.inc. From the thirteenth compiled episode onwards, the ending theme is by Hanae. From second season, the ending theme is by Denpagumi.inc. The series was simulcast by Funimation, who released an English dub on August 7, 2016.


title: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

text: A 24-episode second season aired from January to June 2018. In the last episode of the second season, an anime conclusion special was announced. It premiered on December 28, 2018.


title: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

text: On March 24, 2019, it was announced that a new anime series would be released on Netflix, with the cast and staff returning to reprise their roles. Titled "The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. Starting Arc" or "The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. Reawakened", the 6-episode new series premiered on December 30, 2019, on Netflix worldwide. While the new anime series is not a full-length season, Netflix officially lists the reboot as the fourth season on their streaming platform, while the conclusion special was listed as the third season.


title: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

text: A video game titled "Saiki Kusuo no Psi Nan: Shijō Psi Dai no Psi Nan!?" was announced in the "Weekly Shōnen Jump" magazine's 32nd issue of 2016. The game was developed by Bandai Namco Studios and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment for Nintendo 3DS. It was released on November 10, 2016, in Japan.


title: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

text: Another video game adaptation, "斉木楠雄のΨ難 妄想暴走！Ψキックバトル", is a tower defense game for mobile phones announced at Jump Festa 2018. It was released on April 16, 2018, in Japan.


title: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

text: Kusuo also appears as a playable character in the "Jump" crossover fighting game "J-Stars Victory VS" released in 2014. Its European and North American release marks the first release of "Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan" material outside Japan.


title: 2018 United States elections

text: The 2018 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 6, 2018. These midterm elections occurred during Republican Donald Trump's term. Democrats made a net gain of 41 seats in the United States House of Representatives, gaining a majority in the chamber and thereby ending the federal trifecta that the Republican Party had established in the 2016 elections. The Republican Party retained control of the United States Senate, making a net gain of two seats and defeating four Democratic incumbents in states that had voted for Trump in 2016. As a result of the 2018 elections, the 116th United States Congress became the first Congress since the 99th United States Congress (elected in 1984) in which the Democrats controlled the U.S. House of Representatives and the Republicans controlled the U.S. Senate.


title: 2018 United States elections

text: This was the first time since 1970 that one party gained Senate seats while losing House seats, which also occurred in 1914, 1962, and 2022. In the state elections, Democrats gained seven state governorships, control of approximately 350 state legislative seats, and control of six state legislative chambers.


title: 2018 United States elections

text: The elections marked the highest voter turnout seen in midterm elections since 1914, at 49.4%. The elections saw several electoral firsts for women, racial minorities, and LGBT candidates, including the election of the first openly gay governor and the first openly bisexual U.S. senator. In various referendums, numerous states voted to expand Medicaid coverage, require voter identification, establish independent redistricting commissions, legalize marijuana, repeal felony disenfranchisement laws and enact other proposals. During the campaign, Democrats focused on health care, frequently attacking Republicans for supporting repeal of provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), including protections for individuals with preexisting conditions. They also focused on tying many Republican incumbents and candidates to President Trump, who had low approval ratings at the time of the election. Republican messaging focused on immigration and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. There were allegations of attempted Russian interference in these elections as well as controversies regarding potential voter suppression and other alleged election irregularities. The election was widely characterized as a "blue wave" election. However, both Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi claimed victory after the results of the midterm elections.


title: 2018 United States elections

text: In May 2018, President Trump began to emphasize his effort to overcome the traditional strength of the non-presidential party in midterm elections, with the "top priority for the White House [being to hold] the Republican majority in the Senate". He was already well into his own 2020 reelection campaign, having launched it on his inauguration day in January 2017. By early August, the president's midterm efforts had included rallies in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Montana and elsewhere "reprising the style and rhetoric of his 2016 campaign". He focused his message on the economy, his proposed border wall, the "trade war" with China, criticism of the media, and his proposal to create the space force, a new branch of the military devoted to operations in space. In late August 2018, the "Huffington Post" reported that Trump and his administration had been engaging in campaign activity on taxpayer-funded trips. According to the report, a top White House staffer identified 35 events by Cabinet and senior staff members "with or affecting House districts in August already". White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters called the report "misleading".


title: 2018 United States elections

text: The 2018 elections featured a wider range and larger number of campaign advertisements than past midterm elections. Almost a third of Republican ads focused on taxes, especially on the recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. By mid-October 2018, at a cost of some $124 million, more than 280,000 television advertisements related to immigration had been aired in House, Senate and gubernatorial races, representing a five-fold increase compared to the 2014 cycle. In October 2018, "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post" characterized Republicans' 2018 campaign messaging as being chiefly focused on fear-mongering about immigration and race. According to "The Washington Post", President Trump "settled on a strategy of fear—laced with falsehoods and racially tinged rhetoric—to help lift his party to victory in the coming midterms, part of a broader effort to energize Republican voters". In November 2018, Facebook, NBC, and Fox News withdrew a controversial pro-Trump advertisement that focused on a migrant caravan; Facebook noted that the ad violated Facebook's rules concerning "sensational content".


title: 2018 United States elections

text: Nearly half of all advertisements by Democrats focused on health care, in particular on defending the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act) and keeping in place protections for individuals with preexisting conditions. A number of Republican candidates claimed to support provisions of the Affordable Care Act, such as protections for preexisting conditions, even though they supported efforts that either weakened or eliminated those provisions. In the final weeks of the campaign, Democrats indicated their desire to keep the focus of the campaign on Republican efforts to repeal provisions of Obamacare through the proposed American Health Care Act of 2017. A "Gallup" poll conducted days before the election found that voters considered healthcare and the economy to be the top issues among registered voters, though many voters also considered immigration to be a top priority.


title: 2018 United States elections

text: In the 2018 elections, Republicans sought to defend the Senate majority they had maintained since the 2014 elections. Thirty-five of the 100 seats were up for election, including all 33 Class1 Senate seats. Class2 Senate seats in Minnesota and Mississippi each held special elections to fill vacancies. The Class1 Senate elections were for terms lasting from January 2019 to January 2025 while the Class2 special elections were for terms ending in January 2021. 24 of the seats up for election were held by Democrats, two of the seats up for election were held by independents caucusing with the Democrats and nine of the seats up for election were held by Republicans. Three Republican incumbents did not seek election in 2018 while all Democratic and independent incumbents sought another term. 42 Republican senators and 23 Democratic senators were not up for election.


title: 2018 United States elections

text: Assuming the two independents won re-election and continued to caucus with them, Senate Democrats needed to win a net gain of two Senate seats to win a majority. Including the two independents, Democrats held approximately 74 percent of the seats up for election, the highest proportion held by one party in a midterm election since at least 1914. Prior to the 2018 elections, Nate Silver of "FiveThirtyEight" wrote that Democrats faced one of the most unfavorable Senate maps any party had ever faced in any Senate election. Silver noted that ten of the seats Democrats defended were in states won by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Meanwhile, the Class I Senate seat in Nevada was the lone Republican-held seat up for election in a state that had been won by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Silver predicted that even a nine-point victory in the nationwide popular vote for Congress would not be enough to give Democrats a majority in the Senate. Some observers speculated that Republicans might be able to pick up a net of nine seats, which would give them the 60-seat super-majority necessary to break filibusters on legislation.


title: 2018 United States elections

text: Republicans won a net gain of two seats in the Senate. The 2018 elections were the first midterm elections since 2002 in which the party holding the presidency gained Senate seats. Republicans defeated Democratic incumbents in Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and Florida. Democrats defeated the Republican incumbent in Nevada and picked up an open seat in Arizona. All four defeated Democratic incumbents represented states won by Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Democratic incumbents tallied victories in the competitive Midwestern states of Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin as well as the key Northeastern swing state of Pennsylvania. Montana and West Virginia, both of which voted for Trump by a margin of at least 20 points, also re-elected Democratic incumbents. After the election, Chris Cillizza of CNN noted that by limiting their Senate losses in 2018, Democrats put themselves in a position to potentially take control of the Senate in the 2020 or 2022 Senate elections.


title: Distilled water

text: Distilled water is water that has been boiled into vapor and condensed back into liquid in a separate container. Impurities in the original water that do not boil below or near the boiling point of water remain in the original container. Thus, distilled water is a type of purified water.


title: Distilled water

text: Drinking water has been distilled from seawater since at least about AD 200, when the process was clearly described by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Its history predates this, as a passage in Aristotle's "Meteorologica" refers to the distillation of water. Captain Israel Williams of the "Friendship" (1797) improvised a way to distill water, which he described in his journal.


title: Distilled water

text: In chemical and biological laboratories, as well as in industry, in some appliances deionised water can be used instead of distilled water as a cheaper alternative.


title: Distilled water

text: In general, non-purified water could cause or interfere with chemical reactions as well as leave mineral deposits after boiling away. One method of removing impurities from water and other fluids is distillation.


title: Distilled water

text: For example, ions commonly found in tap water would drastically reduce lifespans of lead–acid batteries used in cars and trucks. These ions are not acceptable in automotive cooling systems because they corrode internal engine components and deplete typical antifreeze anti-corrosion additives.


title: Distilled water

text: Any non-volatile or mineral components in water are left behind when the water evaporates or boils away. Water escaping as steam, for example from a boiler of heating system or steam engine, leaves behind any dissolved materials leading to mineral deposits known as boiler scale.


title: Distilled water

text: Certain biological applications require controlled impurities, especially in experiments. For example, distilling water to be added to an aquarium would remove known and unknown non-volatile contaminants. Living things require specific minerals; adding distilled water to an ecosystem, such as an aquarium, would reduce the concentration of these minerals. Fish and other living things that have evolved to survive in lakes and oceans should be expected to thrive at mineral ranges found in their original habitat.


title: Distilled water

text: Controlled impurities as well as equipment reliability are critically important in medical applications where, for example, distilled water is used in continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines to humidify air for breathing. Distilled water will not leave contaminants behind when the humidifier in the CPAP machine evaporates the water.


title: Distilled water

text: It is also possible for brewers to blend distilled water with hard water to mimic the soft waters of Pilsen.


title: Distilled water

text: Another application was to increase the density of the air to assist early airplane jet engines during takeoff in 'hot and high' atmospheric conditions, as was used on the early Boeing 707.


title: Distilled water

text: Distilled water can be used in steam irons for pressing clothes to minimizes the build-up of limescale in hard water areas shortening the lifespan of steam irons, some steam irons have built in filters to remove minerals from the water meaning standard tap water can be used.


title: Distilled water

text: Until World War II, distilling seawater to produce fresh water was time-consuming and expensive in fuel. The saying was: "It takes one gallon of fuel to make one gallon of fresh water." Shortly before the war, Dr. R. V. Kleinschmidt developed a compression still, which became known as the Kleinschmidt still, for extracting fresh water from seawater or contaminated water. By compressing the steam produced by boiling water, of fresh water could be extracted from seawater for every gallon () of fuel used. During World War II this equipment became standard on Allied ships and on trailer mounts for armies. This method was in widespread use in ships and portable water distilling units during the latter half of the century. Modern vessels now use flash-type evaporators to boil seawater, heating the water to between and evaporating the water in a vacuum; this is then collected as condensation before being stored.


title: Distilled water

text: Bottled distilled water can usually be found in supermarkets or pharmacies, and home water distillers are available as well. Water purification, such as distillation, is especially important in regions where water resources or tap water is not suitable for ingesting without boiling or chemical treatment.


title: Distilled water

text: Municipal water supplies almost always contain trace components at levels which are regulated to be safe for consumption. Some other components such as trace levels of aluminium may result from the treatment process. Fluoride and other ions are not removed through conventional water filter treatments. However, distillation eliminates most impurities.


title: Distilled water

text: Distilled water is also used for drinking water in arid seaside areas lacking sufficient freshwater, via desalination of seawater.


title: Distilled water

text: Distillation removes all minerals from water. This results in demineralised water, which has not been proven to be healthier than drinking water. The World Health Organization investigated the health effects of demineralised water in 1982, and its experiments in humans found that demineralised water increased diuresis and the elimination of electrolytes, with decreased serum potassium concentration. Magnesium, calcium, and other nutrients in water can help to protect against nutritional deficiency. Recommendations for magnesium have been put at a minimum of 10 mg/L with 20–30 mg/L optimum; for calcium a 20 mg/L minimum and a 40–80 mg/L optimum, and a total water hardness (adding magnesium and calcium) of 2–4 mmol/L. At water hardness above 5 mmol/L, higher incidence of gallstones, kidney stones, urinary stones, arthrosis, and arthropathies have been observed. For fluoride the concentration recommended for dental health is 0.5–1.0 mg/L, with a maximum guideline value of 1.5 mg/L to avoid dental fluorosis.


title: Distilled water

text: Water filtration and distillation devices are becoming increasingly common in households. Municipal water supplies often have minerals added or have trace impurities at levels which are regulated to be safe for consumption. Much of these additional impurities, such as volatile organic compounds, fluoride, and an estimated >75,000 other chemical compounds are not removed through conventional filtration; however, distillation and reverse osmosis eliminate nearly all of these impurities.


title: Distilled water

text: The drinking of distilled water as a replacement for drinking water has been both advocated and discouraged for health reasons. Distilled water lacks minerals and ions such as calcium that play key roles in biological functions such as in nervous system homeostasis, and are normally found in potable water. The lack of naturally occurring minerals in distilled water has raised some concerns. The "Journal of General Internal Medicine" published a study on the mineral contents of different waters available in the US. The study found that "drinking water sources available to North Americans may contain high levels of calcium, magnesium, and sodium and may provide clinically important portions of the recommended dietary intake of these minerals". It encouraged people to "check the mineral content of their drinking water, whether tap or bottled, and choose water most appropriate for their needs". Since distilled water is devoid of minerals, mineral intake through diet is needed to maintain good health.


title: Distilled water

text: The consumption of "hard" water (water with minerals) is associated with beneficial cardiovascular effects. As noted in the "American Journal of Epidemiology", consumption of hard drinking water is negatively correlated with atherosclerotic heart disease.


title: Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell

text: Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, ( ; (Commonly pronounced by others as ) 22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941) was a British Army officer, writer, founder and first Chief Scout of the world-wide Scout Movement, and founder, with his sister Agnes, of the world-wide Girl Guide / Girl Scout Movement. Baden-Powell authored the first editions of the seminal work "Scouting for Boys", which was an inspiration for the Scout Movement.


text: Educated at Charterhouse School, Baden-Powell served in the British Army from 1876 until 1910 in India and Africa. In 1899, during the Second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell successfully defended the town in the Siege of Mafeking. Several of his books, written for military reconnaissance and scout training in his African years, were also read by boys. In August 1907, he held a demonstration camp, the Brownsea Island Scout camp, which is now seen as the beginning of Scouting. Based on his earlier books, particularly "Aids to Scouting", he wrote "Scouting for Boys", published in 1908 by Sir Arthur Pearson, for boy readership. In 1910 Baden-Powell retired from the army and formed The Scout Association.


text: The first Scout Rally was held at The Crystal Palace in 1909. Girls in Scout uniform attended, telling Baden-Powell that they were the "Girl Scouts". In 1910, Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes Baden-Powell started the Girl Guide and Girl Scout organisation. In 1912 he married Olave St Clair Soames. He gave guidance to the Scout and Girl Guide movements until retiring in 1937. Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, Kenya, where he died and was buried in 1941. His grave is a national monument.


text: Baden-Powell was a son of Baden Powell, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University and Church of England priest, and his third wife, Henrietta Grace Smyth, eldest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth. After Baden Powell died in 1860, his widow, to identify her children with her late husband's fame, and to set her own children apart from their half-siblings and cousins, styled the family name "Baden-Powell". The name was eventually legally changed by Royal Licence on 30 April 1902.


text: The family of Baden-Powell's father originated in Suffolk. His mother's earliest known Smyth ancestor was a Royalist American colonist; her mother's father Thomas Warington was the British Consul in Naples around 1800.


text: Baden-Powell was born as Robert Stephenson Smyth Powell at 6 Stanhope Street (now 11 Stanhope Terrace), Paddington, London, on 22 February 1857. He was called Stephe (pronounced "Stevie") by his family. He was named after his godfather, Robert Stephenson, the railway and civil engineer, and his third name was his mother's surname.


text: Baden-Powell had four older half-siblings from the second of his father's two previous marriages, and was the sixth child of his father's third marriage:


text: Baden-Powell's father died when he was three. Subsequently, Baden-Powell was raised by his mother, a strong woman who was determined that her children would succeed. In 1933 he said of her "The whole secret of my getting on, lay with my mother."


text: He attended Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells and was given a scholarship to Charterhouse, a prestigious public school named after the ancient Carthusian monastery buildings it occupied in the City of London. However while he was a pupil there, the school moved out to new purpose-built premises in the countryside near Godalming in Surrey. He played the piano and violin, was an ambidextrous artist, and enjoyed acting. Holidays were spent on yachting or canoeing expeditions with his brothers. Baden-Powell's first introduction to Scouting skills was through stalking and cooking game while avoiding teachers in the nearby woods, which were strictly out-of-bounds.


text: In 1876 Baden-Powell joined the 13th Hussars in India with the rank of lieutenant. He enhanced and honed his military scouting skills amidst the Zulu in the early 1880s in the Natal Province of South Africa, where his regiment had been posted, and where he was Mentioned in Dispatches. Baden-Powell's skills impressed his superiors and in 1890 he was brevetted Major as Military Secretary and senior Aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief and Governor of Malta, his uncle General Sir Henry Augustus Smyth. He was posted to Malta for three years, also working as intelligence officer for the Mediterranean for the Director of Military Intelligence. He frequently travelled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings. In 1884 he published "Reconnaissance and Scouting".


text: Baden-Powell returned to Africa in 1896, and served in the Second Matabele War, in the expedition to relieve British South Africa Company personnel under siege in Bulawayo. This was a formative experience for him not only because he commanded reconnaissance missions into enemy territory in the Matopos Hills, but because many of his later Boy Scout ideas took hold here. It was during this campaign that he first met and befriended the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, who introduced Baden-Powell to stories of the American Old West and woodcraft (i.e., Scoutcraft), and here that he was introduced for the first time to the Montana Peaked version of a western cowboy hat, of which Stetson was a prolific manufacturer, and which also came to be known as a campaign hat and the many versatile and practical uses of a neckerchief.


text: Baden-Powell was accused of illegally executing a prisoner of war in 1896, the Matabele chief Uwini, who had been promised his life would be spared if he surrendered. Uwini was sentenced to be shot by firing squad by a military court, a sentence Baden-Powell confirmed. Baden-Powell was cleared by a military court of inquiry but the colonial civil authorities wanted a civil investigation and trial. Baden-Powell later claimed he was "released without a stain on my character".


text: After Rhodesia, Baden-Powell served in the Fourth Ashanti War in Gold Coast. In 1897, at the age of 40, he was brevetted colonel (the youngest colonel in the British Army) and given command of the 5th Dragoon Guards in India. A few years later he wrote a small manual, entitled "Aids to Scouting", a summary of lectures he had given on the subject of military scouting, much of it a written explanation of the lessons he had learned from Burnham, to help train recruits.


text: Baden-Powell returned to South Africa before the Second Boer War. Although instructed to maintain a mobile mounted force on the frontier with the Boer Republics, Baden-Powell amassed stores and established a garrison at Mafeking. The subsequent Siege of Mafeking lasted 217 days. Although Baden-Powell could have destroyed his stores and had sufficient forces to break out throughout much of the siege, especially since the Boers lacked adequate artillery to shell the town or its forces, he remained in the town to the point of his intended mounted soldiers eating their horses. The town had been surrounded by a Boer army, at times in excess of 8,000 men.


text: The siege of the small town received much attention from both the Boers and international media because Lord Edward Cecil, the son of the British Prime Minister, was besieged in the town. The garrison held out until relieved, in part thanks to cunning deceptions, many devised by Baden-Powell. Fake minefields were planted and his soldiers pretended to avoid non-existent barbed wire while moving between trenches. Baden-Powell did much reconnaissance work himself. In one instance, noting that the Boers had not removed the rail line, Baden-Powell loaded an armoured locomotive with sharpshooters and sent it down the rails into the heart of the Boer encampment and back again in a successful attack.


text: A contrary view expressed by historian Thomas Pakenham of Baden-Powell's actions during the siege argued that his success in resisting the Boers was secured at the expense of the lives of the native African soldiers and civilians, including members of his own African garrison. Pakenham claimed that Baden-Powell drastically reduced the rations to the native garrison. However, in 2001, after subsequent research, Pakenham changed this view.


text: During the siege, the Mafeking Cadet Corps of white boys below fighting age stood guard, carried messages, assisted in hospitals and so on, freeing grown men to fight. Baden-Powell did not form the Cadet Corps himself, and there is no evidence that he took much notice of them during the Siege. However, he was sufficiently impressed with both their courage and the equanimity with which they performed their tasks to use them later as an object lesson in the first chapter of "Scouting for Boys".


text: The siege was lifted on 17 May 1900. Baden-Powell was promoted to major-general and became a national hero. However, British military commanders were more critical of his performance and even less impressed with his subsequent choices to again allow himself to be besieged. Ultimately, his failure to understand properly the situation, and abandonment of the soldiers, mostly Australians and Rhodesians, at the Battle of Elands River Pakenham claimed led to his being removed from action.


text: Briefly back in the United Kingdom in October 1901, Baden-Powell was invited to visit King Edward VII at Balmoral, the monarch's Scottish retreat, and personally invested as Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB).


text: Baden-Powell was given the role of organising the South African Constabulary, a colonial police force, but during this phase, Baden-Powell was sent to Britain on sick leave, so he was only in command for seven months.


text: Baden-Powell returned to England to take up the post of Inspector-General of Cavalry in 1903. While holding this position, Baden-Powell was instrumental in reforming reconnaissance training in British cavalry, giving the force an important advantage in scouting ability over continental rivals. Also during this appointment, Baden-Powell selected the location of Catterick Garrison to replace Richmond Castle which was then the Headquarters of the Northumbrian Division. Baden-Powell was a career cavalryman, but realised that cavalry was no match against the machine gun; however, his superiors, Kitchener and French were also career cavalrymen, and still regarded the cavalry as indispensable, with the result that cavalry was used in the First World War with little effect, yet the major item exported from Britain to Flanders during the War was horse fodder.


text: In 1907 Baden-Powell was promoted to Lieutenant-General but was on the inactive list - possibly at his request, for this was when the Scout Movement was starting to "move", and Baden-Powell had his experimental camp on Brownsea Island (see below).


text: In October 1907 Baden-Powell was appointed to the command of the Northumbrian Division of the newly formed Territorial Army.


text: On 19 February 1909 Baden-Powell sailed in the SS Aragon via Portugal and Spain to South America, for what seems to have been just a holiday, a trip not related to either the Army nor to Scouting. However, the Foreign Intelligence section in the Belfast Newsletter reported that when in March 1909 he visited Santiago de Chile for three days, "He was given a warmer reception than had ever been afforded a foreigner in South America." He sailed back in the RMS Danube by 1 May 1909.


text: In 1910, aged 53, Baden-Powell retired from the Army. One account has it that Lord Kitchener said that he "could lay his hand on several competent divisional generals but could find no one who could carry on the invaluable work of the Boy Scouts". Baden-Powell wrote that this came from the King, which seems more likely, as the King had introduced the King's Scout Award in 1909 and Army officers held a Commission signed by the King, while Kitchener had nothing to do with the Scout Movement.


text: In 1915, Baden-Powell's book "My Adventures as a Spy" was published, which was interpreted as indicating that he had been active as a spy during that war.


text: On his return from Africa in 1903, Baden-Powell found that his military training manual, "Aids to Scouting", had become a best-seller, and was being used by teachers and youth organisations, including Charlotte Mason's House of Education. Following his involvement in the Boys' Brigade as a Brigade Vice-President and Officer in charge of its scouting section, with encouragement from his friend, William Alexander Smith, Baden-Powell decided to re-write "Aids to Scouting" to suit a youth readership. In August 1907 he held a camp on Brownsea Island to test out his ideas. About twenty boys attended: eight from local Boys' Brigade companies, and about twelve public school boys, mostly sons of his friends.


text: Baden-Powell was also influenced by Ernest Thompson Seton, who founded the Woodcraft Indians. Seton gave Baden-Powell a copy of his book "The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians" and they met in 1906. The first book on the Scout Movement, Baden-Powell's "Scouting for Boys" was published in six instalments in 1908, and has sold approximately 150 million copies as the fourth best-selling book of the 20th century.


text: Boys and girls spontaneously formed Scout troops and the Scouting Movement started spontaneously, first as a national, and soon an international phenomenon. A rally of Scouts was held at Crystal Palace in London in 1909, at which Baden-Powell met some of the first Girl Scouts. The Girl Guides were subsequently formed in 1910 under the auspices of Baden-Powell's sister, Agnes Baden-Powell. In 1912, Baden-Powell started a world tour with a voyage to the Caribbean. Another passenger was Juliette Gordon Low, an American who had been running a Guide Company in Scotland, and was returning to the U.S.A. Baden-Powell encouraged her to found the Girl Scouts of the USA.


text: In 1929, during the 3rd World Scout Jamboree, he received as a present a new 20-horsepower Rolls-Royce car (chassis number GVO-40, registration OU 2938) and an Eccles Caravan. This combination well served the Baden-Powells in their further travels around Europe. The caravan was nicknamed Eccles and is now on display at Gilwell Park. The car, nicknamed Jam Roll, was sold after his death by Olave Baden-Powell in 1945. Jam Roll and Eccles were reunited at Gilwell for the 21st World Scout Jamboree in 2007. It has been purchased on behalf of Scouting and is owned by a charity, B–P Jam Roll Ltd. Funds are being raised to repay the loan that was used to purchase the car.


text: Baden-Powell also had a positive impact on improvements in youth education. Under his dedicated command the world Scouting Movement grew. By 1922 there were more than a million Scouts in 32 countries; by 1939 the number of Scouts was in excess of 3.3 million.


text: Some early Scouting "Thanks Badges" (from 1911) and the Scouting "Medal of Merit" badge had a swastika symbol on them. This was undoubtedly influenced by the use by Rudyard Kipling of the swastika on the jacket of his published books, including "Kim", which was used by Baden-Powell as a basis for the Wolf Cub branch of the Scouting Movement. The swastika had been a symbol for luck in India long before being adopted by the Nazi Party in 1920, and when Nazi use of the swastika became more widespread, the Scouts stopped using it.


text: Nazi Germany banned Scouting, a competitor to the Hitler Youth, in June 1934, seeing it as "a haven for young men opposed to the new State". Based on the regime's view of Scouting as a dangerous espionage organisation, Baden-Powell's name was included in "The Black Book", a 1940 list of people to be detained following the planned conquest of the United Kingdom. A drawing by Baden-Powell depicts Scouts assisting refugees fleeing from the Nazis and Hitler. Tim Jeal, author of the biography "Baden-Powell", gives his opinion that "Baden-Powell's distrust of communism led to his implicit support, through naïveté, of fascism", an opinion based on two of B-P's diary entries. Baden-Powell met Benito Mussolini on 2 March 1933, and in his diary described him as "small, stout, human and genial. Told me about Balilla, and workmen's outdoor recreations which he imposed though 'moral force'". On 17 October 1939, Baden-Powell wrote in his diary: "Lay up all day. Read "Mein Kampf". A wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc. – and ideals which Hitler does not practice himself."


text: At the 5th World Scout Jamboree in 1937, Baden-Powell gave his farewell to Scouting, and retired from public Scouting life. 22 February, the joint birthday of Robert and Olave Baden-Powell, continues to be marked as Founder's Day by Scouts and World Thinking Day by Guides to remember and celebrate the work of the Chief Scout and Chief Guide of the World.


text: I have had a most happy life and I want each one of you to have a happy life too. I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life. Happiness does not come from being rich, nor merely being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy, so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man. Nature study will show you how full of beautiful and wonderful things God has made the world for you to enjoy. Be contented with what you have got and make the best of it. Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one. But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. Try and leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best. "Be prepared" in this way, to live happy and to die happy – stick to your Scout Promise always – even after you have ceased to be a boy – and God help you to do it.


text: Baden-Powell died on 8 January 1941: his grave is in St Peter's Cemetery in Nyeri, Kenya. His gravestone bears a circle with a dot in the centre "ʘ", which is the trail sign for "Going home", or "I have gone home". His wife Olave moved back to England in 1942, although after she died in 1977, her ashes were taken to Kenya by her grandson Robert and interred beside her husband. In 2001 the Kenyan government declared Baden-Powell's grave a National Monument.


text: Baden-Powell published books and other texts during his years of military service both to finance his life and to generally educate his men.


text: Baden-Powell was regarded as an excellent storyteller. During his whole life he told "ripping yarns" to audiences. After having published "Scouting for Boys", Baden-Powell kept on writing more handbooks and educative materials for all Scouts, as well as directives for Scout Leaders. In his later years, he also wrote about the Scout movement and his ideas for its future. He spent most of the last two years of his life in Africa, and many of his later books had African themes.


text: Baden-Powell also contributed to various other books, either with an introduction or foreword, or being quoted by the author,


text: A comprehensive bibliography of his original works has been published by Biblioteca Frati Minori Cappuccini.


text: Baden-Powell's father often sketched caricatures of those present at meetings, while his maternal grandmother was also artistic. Baden-Powell painted or sketched almost every day of his life. Most of his works have a humorous or informative character. His books are scattered with his pen-and-ink sketches, frequently whimsical. He did a large unknown number of pen-and-ink sketches; he always travelled with a sketchpad that he used frequently for pencil sketches and "cartoons" for later water-colour paintings. He also created a few sculptures. There is no catalogue of his works, many of which appear in his books, and twelve paintings hang in the British Scout Headquarters at Gilwell Park. There was an exhibition of his work at the Willmer House Museum, Farnham, Surrey, from 11 April – 12 May 1967; a text-only catalogue was produced.


text: In January 1912, Baden-Powell was en route to New York on a Scouting World Tour, on the ocean liner , when he met Olave St Clair Soames. She was 23, while he was 55; they shared the same birthday, 22 February. They became engaged in September of the same year, causing a media sensation due to Baden-Powell's fame. To avoid press intrusion, they married in private on 30 October 1912, at St Peter's Church in Parkstone. 100,000 Scouts had each donated a penny (1d) to buy Baden-Powell a wedding gift, a 20 h.p. Standard motor-car (not the Rolls-Royce they were presented with in 1929). There is a display about their marriage inside St Peter's Church, Parkstone.


text: The couple lived in Pax Hill near Bentley, Hampshire, from about 1919 until 1939. The Bentley house was a gift from her father. After they married, Baden-Powell began to suffer persistent headaches which were considered by his doctor to be psychosomatic, and which were treated with dream analysis.


text: In 1939, they moved to a cottage he had commissioned in Nyeri, Kenya, near Mount Kenya, where he had previously been to recuperate. The small one-room house, which he named "Paxtu", was located on the grounds of the Outspan Hotel, owned by Eric Sherbrooke Walker, Baden-Powell's first private secretary and one of the first Scout inspectors. Walker also owned the Treetops Hotel, approximately 10 miles (17 km) out in the Aberdare Mountains, often visited by Baden-Powell and people of the Happy Valley set. The Paxtu cottage is integrated into the Outspan Hotel buildings and serves as a small Scouting museum.


text: Baden-Powell and his wife were parents of Arthur Robert Peter (1913–1962), who succeeded his father in the barony; Heather Grace (1915–1986), who married John Hall King (1913–2004) and had two sons, the elder of whom, Michael, was killed in the sinking of in 1966; and Betty St Clair (1917–2004). When Olave's sister Auriol Davidson (née Soames) died in 1919, Olave and Robert took her three daughters into their family and brought them up as their own children.


text: Three of Baden-Powell's many biographers comment on his sexuality; the first two (in 1979 and 1986) focused on his relationship with his close friend Kenneth McLaren. Tim Jeal's later (1989) biography discusses the relationship and finds no evidence that this friendship was of an erotic nature. Jeal then examines Baden-Powell's views on women, his appreciation of the male form, his military relationships, and his marriage, concluding that, in his personal opinion, Baden-Powell was a repressed homosexual. Jeal's arguments and conclusion are dismissed by Procter and Block (2009) as "amateur psychoanalysis", for which there is no physical evidence.


text: In 1937 Baden-Powell was appointed to the Order of Merit, one of the most exclusive awards in the British honours system, and he was also awarded 28 decorations by foreign states, including the Grand Officer of the Portuguese Order of Christ, the Grand Commander of the Greek Order of the Redeemer (1920), the Commander of the French Légion d'honneur (1925), the First Class of the Hungarian Order of Merit (1929), the Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog of Denmark, the Grand Cross of the Order of the White Lion, the Grand Cross of the Order of the Phoenix, and the Order of Polonia Restituta.


text: The Silver Wolf Award was originally worn by Robert Baden-Powell. The Bronze Wolf Award, the only distinction of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, awarded by the World Scout Committee for exceptional services to world Scouting, was first awarded to Baden-Powell by a unanimous decision of the then "International Committee" on the day of the institution of the Bronze Wolf in Stockholm in 1935. He was also the first recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award in 1926, the highest award conferred by the Boy Scouts of America.


text: In 1927, at the Swedish National Jamboree he was awarded by the "Österreichischer Pfadfinderbund" with the ""Großes Dankabzeichen des ÖPB". In 1931 Baden-Powell received the highest award of the First Austrian Republic ("Großes Ehrenzeichen der Republik am Bande") out of the hands of President Wilhelm Miklas. Baden-Powell was also one of the first and few recipients of the "Goldene Gemse", the highest award conferred by the Österreichischer Pfadfinderbund.


text: In 1931, Major Frederick Russell Burnham dedicated Mount Baden-Powell in California to his old Scouting friend from forty years before. Today, their friendship is honoured in perpetuity with the dedication of the adjoining peak, Mount Burnham.


text: Baden-Powell was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on numerous occasions, including 10 separate nominations in 1928. He was awarded the Wateler Peace Prize in 1937. In 2002, Baden-Powell was named 13th in the BBC's list of the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote. As part of the Scouting 2007 Centenary, Nepal renamed Urkema Peak to Baden-Powell Peak.


text: In June 2020, following the George Floyd protests in Britain and the removal of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council (BCP Council) announced that a statue of Baden-Powell on Poole Quay would be removed temporarily for its protection, amid fears for its safety. Police believed it was on a list of monuments to be destroyed or removed, and that it was a target for protestors due to perceptions that Baden-Powell had held homophobic and racist views. The statue had been installed by BCP Council in 2008.


text: Following opposition to its removal, including from local residents, and past and present scouts, some of whom camped nearby to ensure it stayed in place, BCP Council had the statue boarded up instead. Mark Howell, deputy leader of BCP Council was quoted as saying, "It is our intention that the boarding is removed at the earliest, safe opportunity."


title: Drudge Report

text: The Drudge Report (stylized as DRUDGE REPORT) is a U.S.-based news aggregation website founded by Matt Drudge, and run with the help of Charles Hurt and Daniel Halper. The site was generally regarded as a conservative publication, though its ownership and political leanings have been questioned following business model changes in mid-to-late 2019. The site consists mainly of links to news stories from other outlets about politics, entertainment, and current events; it also has links to many columnists.


title: Drudge Report

text: The Drudge Report originated in 1995 as a weekly subscriber-based email dispatch. It was the first news source to break the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal to the public, after "Newsweek" decided to "kill the story".


title: Drudge Report

text: The Drudge Report started in 1995 as a gossip column focusing on Hollywood and Washington, D.C. Matt Drudge began the email-based newsletter from an apartment in Hollywood, California, using his connections with industry and media insiders to break stories, sometimes before they hit the mainstream media. In its early days Drudge maintained the website from his home in Miami Beach, Florida, with help from assistants in story selection and headline writing. His first assistant was Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart, who described himself as "Matt Drudge's bitch", worked the afternoon shift at the Drudge Report, at the same time as running his own website, Breitbart News, which provided a conservative perspective for people in the Los Angeles entertainment industry. John Ziegler has said that Drudge blocked Breitbart from posting content critical of Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign for the US presidency.


title: Drudge Report

text: In 2010, Drudge added former "Washington Times" columnist Joseph Curl to the Drudge Report staff. In 2011, he added to the staff Charles Hurt, most recently the Washington bureau chief of the "New York Post" and a columnist for "The Washington Times". Curl, who served as morning shift editor, left the site in 2014 and, with Drudge's blessing, in January 2015 launched his own aggregator "Right Read", for "The Washington Times".


title: Drudge Report

text: Drudge, who began his website in 1997 as a supplement to his $10 per year e-mail newsletter, received national attention in 1996 when he broke the news that Jack Kemp would be Republican Bob Dole's running mate in the 1996 US presidential election. In 1998, Drudge made national waves when he broke the news that "Newsweek" magazine had information on an inappropriate relationship between "a White House intern" and President Bill Clinton—the Monica Lewinsky scandal—but was withholding publication. After Drudge's report came out, "Newsweek" published the story.


title: Drudge Report

text: The Drudge Report site consists mainly of selected hyperlinks to news websites all over the world, each link carrying a headline written by Drudge or his editors. The linked stories are generally hosted on the external websites of mainstream media outlets. It occasionally includes stories written by Drudge himself, usually two or three paragraphs in length. They generally concern a story about to be published in a major magazine or newspaper. Drudge occasionally publishes Nielsen, Arbitron, and BookScan ratings, or early election exit polls which are otherwise not made available to the public.


title: Drudge Report

text: In April 2009, the Associated Press announced that it would be examining the fair use doctrine, used by sites like Google and the Drudge Report to justify the use of AP content without payment.


title: Drudge Report

text: On May 4, 2009, the US Attorney General's office issued a warning to employees in Massachusetts not to visit the Drudge Report and other sites because of malicious code contained in some of the advertising on the website. In March 2010, antivirus company Avast! warned that advertising at the Drudge Report, "The New York Times", Yahoo, Google, MySpace and other sites carried malware that could infect computers. "The most compromised ad delivery platforms were Yield Manager and Fimserve, but a number of smaller ad systems, including Myspace, were also found to be delivering malware on a lesser scale," said Avast Virus Labs.


title: Drudge Report

text: The site's design has seen few changes since its debut in 1997. Drudge has experimented with temporary, relatively minor design tweaks, including using all black-and-white pictures for a period in August 2017 and using colored text for holidays instead of the standard black throughout the site's existence; in all cases, the basic layout remained consistent throughout its existence. It remains entirely written in unscripted HTML, with a mostly monochromatic color scheme of black boldface monospaced font text on a plain white background. The Drudge Report has been described by Cheryl Woodard, co-founder of "PC", "Macworld", "PC World" and "Publish" magazines, as "a big, haphazard mishmash of links and photos" and by Dan Rahmel as "popular despite a plain appearance". The Drudge Report website is simple and, according to Paul Armstrong of "webwithoutwords.com", retro in feel. Jason Fried of Basecamp called it "one of the best designed sites on the web". It consists of a banner headline and a number of other selected headlines in three columns in monospaced font. Most link to an outside source, usually the online edition of a newspaper, which hosts the story. When no such source is available, either because the story is "developing", with little known details at the time, or is an exclusive scoop, a special page is created on the Drudge Report servers, which contains text and sometimes images.


title: Drudge Report

text: Stories on the site are ascribed different levels of importance, which Matt Drudge rates at his editorial discretion. The "Report" almost always holds one major story above the masthead logo, usually just one sentence hyperlinked to the most important story of the day. Other stories surrounding the main headline can be found in the upper left-hand side of the page and link to more specific articles dealing with aspects of the headline story. The standard story, either the headline or links below the logo, is written in black. The majority of stories are laid out in three columns beneath the masthead; at the bottom of each column are various links: newspapers and magazines in the left column, columnists in the middle column, and a collection of wire service links and miscellaneous links to archives, e-mail, site stats, and a box to submit anonymous tips at the right. "Weather Action," a static page of links to weather data; and "Quake Sheet," with earthquake monitoring, each have their own hosted page on the "Drudge Report" servers. The newest stories and those Drudge considers most important are in red, all under a single major headline in large bold type. For especially important breaking stories, especially if they are still emerging, Drudge places art of a flashing red light on the screen.


title: Drudge Report

text: Although the site initially featured very few images, it is now usually illustrated with five or six photographs. Generally the images, like the linked headlines, are hotlinked from the servers of other news agencies.


title: Drudge Report

text: Matt Drudge has said that he is a conservative, but "more of a populist". Some had regarded the Drudge Report as conservative in tone, and it has been referred to in the media as "a conservative news aggregator". In 2008, Richard Siklos, an editor of "Fortune" magazine, called the Drudge Report a "conservative bullhorn". Peter Wallsten, writing in the "Los Angeles Times", labeled Drudge a "well-known conservative warrior"; Saul Hansell, writing in "The New York Times", referred to him as a "conservative muckraker"; and Glenn Greenwald was quoted in "New York" magazine in August 2007 as calling him a "right-wing hack".


title: Drudge Report

text: Jesse Swick of "The New Republic" notes that the Drudge Report frequently links to stories that cast doubt upon global warming. "[Drudge] loves a press release from Senator Inhofe almost as much as he loves taking pot shots at Al Gore ... It's like flashing tasty images of popcorn and sodas between frames at movie theaters, only much less subtle." Ben Shapiro wrote, "The American left can't restrict Internet usage or ban talk radio, so it de-legitimizes these news sources. Ripping alternative news sources as illegitimate is the left's only remaining option -- it cannot compete with the right wing in the new media ... They call Matt Drudge a muckraker and a yellow journalist."


title: Drudge Report

text: A study in 2005 placed the Drudge Report "slightly left of center". "One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites", said Timothy Groseclose, the head of the study. "Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media." Professor Mark Liberman critiqued the statistical model used in this study on the basis that model assumed conservative politicians do not care about the ideological position of think tanks they cite, while liberal politicians do. The study was also criticized by media watchdog Spinwatch for its methodology and its authors' ties to conservative think tanks.


title: Drudge Report

text: In 2015 and 2016, Drudge repeatedly featured pro-Trump headlines during the Republican Party presidential primaries, leading "Salon" and "Politico" to describe Drudge as "all in" for Trump. During the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump of 2019, the Drudge Report began aggregating what CNN Business called "an overwhelming amount of negative news for the Trump White House". CNN speculated that this meant there had been a falling out. In 2019, Rasmussen Reports reported that Matt Drudge had sold the site and was no longer involved in its operations, which would also explain the change in editorial direction; however, that reporting was not confirmed. By 2020, some prominent conservatives — including President Donald Trump — had concluded that the Drudge Report had abandoned its conservative ideology, with Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson stating, "Matt Drudge is now firmly a man of the progressive left."


title: Drudge Report

text: Matt Drudge's business entity in Florida is a privately owned limited liability company called Digital, LLC. Drudge applied for and was granted a U.S. Trademark registration for the phrase "Drudge Report" on January 15, 2019, filed on May 15, 2018. The registration excludes the word "Report" from protection outside of the exact two-word phrase use and is for "standard characters without claim to any particular font style, size, or color."


title: Drudge Report

text: Revenue for the Drudge Report is driven by advertising that was managed for 20 years by Intermarkets, Inc. During the summer of 2019, after many years of being known for "changing nothing" about the website, Drudge advertising shifted to a new company by the name of Granite Cubed. The current ownership, strategy and outlook for the Drudge Report is held close as private information.


title: Drudge Report

text: In October 2019, the Drudge Report began linking to articles which were increasingly critical of Trump, reportedly the result of Drudge himself becoming "exasperated" by the president. This coincided with a near 30% decrease in traffic metrics for the Drudge website in the last months of 2019—from a 90 day-ago ranking of #637 in global internet engagement as of July to #844 in December. The site's readership briefly rebounded in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic escalated, but continued to decline to new record lows as the year went on.


title: Drudge Report

text: After a Comscore data report showing a year over year decline of 38 percent from August 2019 to August 2020, President Trump tweeted, "Such an honor! Drudge is down 40% plus since he became Fake News. Most importantly, he's bleeding profusely, and is no longer "hot". But others are! Lost ALL Trumpers."


title: Drudge Report

text: In 2006, Mark Halperin wrote that "Drudge's coverage affects the media's political coverage", effectively steering it towards what Halperin calls "the most salacious aspects of American politics". In "The Way To Win", a book written by Halperin and John Harris, Drudge is called "the Walter Cronkite of his era". Democratic Party strategist Chris Lehane also said in 2006 "phones start ringing" whenever Drudge breaks a story, and Mark McKinnon, a former media advisor to George W. Bush, said that he checked the site 30–40 times per day.


title: Drudge Report

text: Wallsten analyzed the data derived from a detailed content analysis of print, broadcast and blog discussions during the last five weeks of the 2008 campaign. Rather than the broad impact posited by professional political observers, Wallsten found that, even on issues where the site should be expected to have its largest impact, the stories highlighted on the Drudge Report exert a fairly inconsistent influence over what traditional media outlets chose to cover. Specifically, the time series analysis presented by Wallsten shows evidence of a "Drudge effect" on print and broadcast coverage for only five of the 10 political scandals that received the most attention on the Drudge Report between September 30 and November 3, 2008.


title: Drudge Report

text: Matt Drudge has been criticized by other media news personalities: Bill O'Reilly twice called Drudge a "threat to democracy" in response to Drudge disclosing his book sales figures, and Keith Olbermann referred to Drudge as "an idiot with a modem".


title: Drudge Report

text: Drudge, along with his website, was labeled one of the "Top 10 anti-Barack Obama conservatives" by the US editor of "The Daily Telegraph" in February 2009.


title: Drudge Report

text: In addition to its media influence, the Drudge Report has influenced design elements on other sites, some with opposing viewpoints and some which use the same format for listing news. A left-leaning parody site called Drudge Retort was founded in 1998 as "a send-up of Mr. Drudge's breathless style". According to online analytics data for April 2010 from the Newspaper Marketing Agency, the Drudge Report was then—now over ten years ago—the number one site referrer for all online UK commercial newspaper websites.


title: Drudge Report

text: The Drudge Report originally attained prominence when it was the first to report what came to be known as the Lewinsky scandal. It published the story on January 17, 1998, showing that "Newsweek" had turned down the story.


title: Drudge Report

text: In October 2007, during the early months of the Democratic primary for the 2008 presidential campaign, the Drudge Report broke a story, "Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge," and, "$27 Million, Sources Tell Drudge Report." "The New York Times" said, "Within minutes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's fund-raising success was injected via Drudge into the day's political news on the Internet and cable television."


title: Drudge Report

text: During the 2004 US presidential campaign, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group made claims about John Kerry's war record, which were mentioned by Drudge and investigated by major newspapers and TV networks. The book "Unfit for Command: Swiftboat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" became a best-seller in part due to its promotion in the Drudge Report.


title: Drudge Report

text: Drudge published a photo of Barack Obama in Somali tribal dress on February 25, 2008, and reported that the photo had been sent to him by a Clinton campaign staffer. The publication of the photograph resulted in a brief war of words between the Clinton and Obama campaign organizations.


title: Drudge Report

text: On February 28, 2008, Drudge published an article noting that Prince Harry was serving with his regiment in Afghanistan. Prince Harry was ten weeks into a front-line deployment in Afghanistan that was subject to a voluntary news blackout by the UK press. The blackout was designed to protect Prince Harry and the men serving with him from being specifically targeted by the Taliban. An Australian weekly women's magazine "New Idea" had broken the story in January, but it was not followed up at the time. The "New Idea" editors claimed ignorance of any news blackout. Then a German newspaper "Berliner Kurier" published a short piece on February 28, also before Drudge.


title: Drudge Report

text: Drudge subsequently claimed the report as an exclusive. Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt, professional head of the British Army, said: "I am very disappointed that foreign websites have decided to run this story without consulting us". The Prince's tour of duty was prematurely ended, since his unit might have been targeted by large-scale suicide attacks intended to kill the Prince.


title: Drudge Report

text: On March 9, 2010, The Senate Sergeant-at-Arms claimed that the site was "responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate...Please avoid using [this] site until the Senate resolves this issue...The Senate has been swamped the last couples days with this issue." The Drudge Report countered stating that "it served more than 29 million pages Monday without an e-mail complaint about 'pop ups,' or the site serving 'viruses'."


title: Drudge Report

text: Research by the media magazine Brill's Content in 1998 cast doubt on the accuracy of the majority of the "exclusives" claimed by the Drudge Report. Of the 51 stories claimed as exclusives from January to September 1998, the magazine found that 31 (61%) were truly exclusive stories. Of those, 32% were untrue, 36% were true and the remaining 32% were of debatable accuracy.


title: Drudge Report

text: In 1997, the Drudge Report reported that incoming White House assistant Sidney Blumenthal may have been perpetrating domestic violence. Drudge retracted the story the next day and apologized, saying that he was given bad information, but Blumenthal filed a $30 million libel lawsuit, "Blumenthal v. Drudge", in the District of Columbia. After four years, Blumenthal dropped his lawsuit, saying that the suit had cost him tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. He agreed to pay $2,500 to Drudge's Los Angeles attorney for travel costs, claiming that Drudge was "backed by unlimited funds from political supporters who use a tax-exempt foundation." The Individual Rights Foundation, led by conservative activist David Horowitz, paid Drudge's legal fees in the Blumenthal lawsuit. Judge Paul Friedman, a Bill Clinton appointee, noted in the judgment that Drudge "is not a reporter, a journalist, or a newsgatherer. He is, as he admits himself, simply a purveyor of gossip."


title: Drudge Report

text: During the 2004 presidential campaign, the Drudge Report ran a story in which general Wesley Clark claimed that the John Kerry campaign would implode over an intern affair. The Drudge Report reported that other news outlets were investigating the alleged affair, but removed it from the site shortly afterward when the other news outlets dropped their investigations.


title: Drudge Report

text: In 1999, the Drudge Report announced that it had viewed a videotape which was the basis of a "Star" magazine and "Hard Copy" story. Under the headline, "Woman Names Bill Clinton Father Of Son In Shocking Video Confession", Drudge reported a videotaped "confession" by a former prostitute who claimed that her son was fathered by Bill Clinton. After a paternity test using a sample of Clinton's DNA found on the dress belonging to Monica Lewinsky, a "Star" source told "Time" magazine that "there was no match, not even close." Drudge reported these findings in 1999, but during the 2016 presidential election Drudge revived the story that the child, Danney Williams, then a 30 year old man, really was Clinton's illegitimate son by twisting established facts.


title: Drudge Report

text: On April 1, 2007, the Drudge Report cited an unnamed "official" source claiming that CNN reporter Michael Ware had "heckled" Republican senators McCain and Graham during a live press conference:


title: Drudge Report

text: However, a video hosted by Rawstory showed that Ware did not make a sound nor ask any question during the press conference.


title: Drudge Report

text: On September 5, 2008, the Drudge Report reported that "The Oprah Winfrey Show" staffers were "sharply divided on the merits of booking Sarah Palin." Drudge said that he had obtained the information from an anonymous source. Winfrey responded in a written statement to news outlets by saying, "The item in today's Drudge Report is categorically untrue. There has been absolutely no discussion about having Sarah Palin on my show. At the beginning of this presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates." Oprah Winfrey's public statement came after she had already endorsed Barack Obama for president on "Larry King Live" in 2007. Drudge was accused by some commentators of planting a false story for political ends.


title: Drudge Report

text: On October 23, 2008, the Drudge Report published an unconfirmed exclusive story regarding Ashley Todd, a 20-year-old employee of the College Republican National Committee (CRNC) and John McCain volunteer who had allegedly been attacked by a black male for having a McCain sticker on her car in Pittsburgh. The story was reported without a link but as "developing", with the headline "Shock: McCain Volunteer Attacked and Mutilated in Pittsburgh – 'B' carved into 20 yr old Woman's Face." The story set off a "storm of media attention" and was repeated by some conservative bloggers and radio talk-show hosts, all citing the Drudge Report as their source. It was also reported in newspapers and on television around the world. The story was confirmed to be a hoax perpetrated by Todd and, according to Talking Points Memo, spread to reporters by McCain's Pennsylvania communications director.


title: Drudge Report

text: The Drudge Report printed a retraction, including links to the news stories detailing that the attack had been a hoax, and that Todd had performed a similar "attack" on herself while volunteering in a local Ron Paul grassroots group. She was later asked to leave the group because of the hoax.


title: Drudge Report

text: The Drudge Report included some articles intimating that U.S. president Barack Obama was not an American citizen.


title: Drudge Report

text: On August 8, 2016, the Drudge Report displayed a photo depicting two men helping Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton ascend a set of stairs during a campaign stop in South Carolina on February 27, 2016. Afterward, several Twitter accounts in support of Republican nominee Donald Trump used the photo with the hashtag #HillaryHealth. The use of the photo was criticized by several commentators for presenting a dated photograph out of context to mislead readers.


title: Drudge Report

text: On October 3, 2016, the Drudge Report published an dubious claim that Bill Clinton had an illegitimate child named Danney Williams, an allegation that the site had reported as debunked in 1999 based on a "Time" magazine article.


title: Drudge Report

text: On December 30, 2016, an article listed on the Drudge Report accused the United States federal government of attempting to bring down its website with a denial-of-service attack. Beginning roughly one week earlier, DDoS attacks had repeatedly taken the site offline for extended periods. Cybersecurity analysts speculated that the attack was on the scale of the 2016 Dyn cyberattack and suggested that only a small number of groups would have the ability to take down a highly trafficked site for extended lengths of time.


title: Drudge Report

text: The Drudge Report included articles about the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory, as well as conspiracy theories about the murder of Seth Rich.


title: Drudge Report

text: In October 2017, Drudge Report included articles with conspiracy theories about the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.


title: Drudge Report

text: In October 2017, the Drudge Report shared a dubious Breitbart News story claiming that an illegal alien caused the October 2017 Northern California wildfires. The story was rebutted by the Sonoma County's sheriff department, which stated, "This is completely false, bad, wrong information that Breitbart started and is being put out into the public."


title: Drudge Report

text: In June 2018, the Drudge Report displayed a headline and photo pairing that some perceived as a suggestion that migrant children who had been separated from their parents were violent criminals. The photo was actually that of a group of Syrian children holding toy guns.


title: Case study

text: A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular firm's strategy or a broader market; similarly, case studies in politics can range from a narrow happening over time (e.g., a specific political campaign) to an enormous undertaking (e.g., a world war).


title: Case study

text: Generally, a case study can highlight nearly any individual, group, organization, event, belief system, or action. A case study does not necessarily have to be one observation (N=1), but may include many observations (one or multiple individuals and entities across multiple time periods, all within the same case study). Research projects involving numerous cases are frequently called cross-case research, whereas a study of a single case is called within-case research.


title: Case study

text: There are multiple definitions of case studies, which may emphasize the number of observations (a small N), the method (qualitative), the thickness of the research (a comprehensive examination of a phenomenon and its context), and the naturalism (a "real-life context" is being examined) involved in the research. There is general agreement among scholars that a case study does not necessarily have to entail one observation (N=1), but can include many observations within a single case or across numerous cases. For example, a case study of the French Revolution would at the bare minimum be an observation of two observations: France before and after a revolution. John Gerring writes that the N=1 research design is so rare in practice that it amounts to a "myth".


title: Case study

text: The term "cross-case" research is frequently used for studies of multiple cases, whereas "within-case" research is frequently used for a single case study.


title: Case study

text: John Gerring defines the case study approach as an "intensive study of a single unit or a small number of units (the cases), for the purpose of understanding a larger class of similar units (a population of cases)". According to Gerring, case studies lend themselves to an idiographic style of analysis, whereas quantitative work lends itself to a nomothetic style of analysis. He adds that "the defining feature of qualitative work is its use of noncomparable observations—observations that pertain to different aspects of a causal or descriptive question", whereas quantitative observations are comparable.


title: Case study

text: According to John Gerring, the key characteristic that distinguishes case studies from all other methods is the "reliance on evidence drawn from a single case and its attempts, at the same time, to illuminate features of a broader set of cases". Scholars use case studies to shed light on a "class" of phenomena.


title: Case study

text: As with other social science methods, no single research design dominates case study research. Case studies can use at least four types of designs. First, there may be a "no theory first" type of case study design, which is closely connected to Kathleen M. Eisenhardt's methodological work. A second type of research design highlights the distinction between single- and multiple-case studies, following Robert K. Yin's guidelines and extensive examples. A third design deals with a "social construction of reality", represented by the work of Robert E. Stake. Finally, the design rationale for a case study may be to identify "anomalies". A representative scholar of this design is Michael Burawoy. Each of these four designs may lead to different applications, and understanding their sometimes unique ontological and epistemological assumptions becomes important. However, although the designs can have substantial methodological differences, the designs also can be used in explicitly acknowledged combinations with each other.


title: Case study

text: While case studies can be intended to provide bounded explanations of single cases or phenomena, they are often intended to raise theoretical insights about the features of a broader population.


title: Case study

text: Case selection in case study research is generally intended to find cases that are representative samples and which have variations on the dimensions of theoretical interest. Using that is solely representative, such as an average or typical case is often not the richest in information. In clarifying lines of history and causation it is more useful to select subjects that offer an interesting, unusual, or particularly revealing set of circumstances. A case selection that is based on representativeness will seldom be able to produce these kinds of insights.


title: Case study

text: While a random selection of cases is a valid case selection strategy in large-N research, there is a consensus among scholars that it risks generating serious biases in small-N research. Random selection of cases may produce unrepresentative cases, as well as uninformative cases. Cases should generally be chosen that have a high expected information gain. For example, outlier cases (those which are extreme, deviant or atypical) can reveal more information than the potentially representative case. A case may also be chosen because of the inherent interest of the case or the circumstances surrounding it. Alternatively, it may be chosen because of researchers' in-depth local knowledge; where researchers have this local knowledge they are in a position to "soak and poke" as Richard Fenno put it, and thereby to offer reasoned lines of explanation based on this rich knowledge of setting and circumstances.


title: Case study

text: Beyond decisions about case selection and the subject and object of the study, decisions need to be made about the purpose, approach, and process of the case study. Gary Thomas thus proposes a typology for the case study wherein purposes are first identified (evaluative or exploratory), then approaches are delineated (theory-testing, theory-building, or illustrative), then processes are decided upon, with a principal choice being between whether the study is to be single or multiple, and choices also about whether the study is to be retrospective, snapshot or diachronic, and whether it is nested, parallel or sequential.


title: Case study

text: For theoretical discovery, Jason Seawright recommends using deviant cases or extreme cases that have an extreme value on the X variable.


title: Case study

text: Arend Lijphart, and Harry Eckstein identified five types of case study research designs (depending on the research objectives), Alexander George and Andrew Bennett added a sixth category:


title: Case study

text: Aaron Rapport reformulated "least-likely" and "most-likely" case selection strategies into the "countervailing conditions" case selection strategy. The countervailing conditions case selection strategy has three components:


title: Case study

text: In terms of case selection, Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba warn against "selecting on the dependent variable". They argue for example that researchers cannot make valid causal inferences about war outbreaks by only looking at instances where war did happen (the researcher should also look at cases where war did not happen). Scholars of qualitative methods have disputed this claim, however. They argue that selecting the dependent variable can be useful depending on the purposes of the research. Barbara Geddes shares their concerns with selecting the dependent variable (she argues that it cannot be used for theory testing purposes), but she argues that selecting on the dependent variable can be useful for theory creation and theory modification.


title: Case study

text: King, Keohane, and Verba argue that there is no methodological problem in selecting the explanatory variable, however. They do warn about multicollinearity (choosing two or more explanatory variables that perfectly correlate with each other).


title: Case study

text: Case studies have commonly been seen as a fruitful way to come up with hypotheses and generate theories. Case studies are useful for understanding outliers or deviant cases. Classic examples of case studies that generated theories includes Darwin's theory of evolution (derived from his travels to the Easter Island), and Douglass North's theories of economic development (derived from case studies of early developing states, such as England).


title: Case study

text: Case studies are also useful for formulating concepts, which are an important aspect of theory construction. The concepts used in qualitative research will tend to have higher conceptual validity than concepts used in quantitative research (due to conceptual stretching: the unintentional comparison of dissimilar cases). Case studies add descriptive richness, and can have greater internal validity than quantitative studies. Case studies are suited to explain outcomes in individual cases, which is something that quantitative methods are less equipped to do.