title: Talia al Ghul

text: In "Batman: Death and the Maidens" (2003) written by Greg Rucka, it is revealed that Ra's al Ghul met a woman by whom he had a daughter named Nyssa during his travels in Russia in the 20th century. Ra's abandons Nyssa at a crucial time: she is tortured, her entire family is killed in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, and she is rendered sterile when Nazi doctors pour acid into her uterus. Seeking vengeance, Nyssa plans to use her considerable wealth and resources to kill Ra's by befriending, kidnapping, and brainwashing Talia, turning her into a weapon to kill their father. To this end, she captures Talia and kills and resurrects her in rapid succession in a Lazarus Pit, leaving Talia virtually broken from the trauma of dying again and again in so short a time as Nyssa asks Talia why her father is 'letting' this happen to her. Rendered apathetic by her time in the camp, unable to feel anything, Nyssa also plans to assassinate Superman with Kryptonite bullets she stole from the Batcave, hoping that, by uniting the world in one moment of tragedy, she would manage to rouse herself once more.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: While Batman is successful in preventing the assassination of Superman, he is unable to stop Nyssa from killing Ra's. This, in turn, is actually part of a greater plan concocted by Ra's, who wants to ensure that his daughters would accept their destinies as his heirs and take up his genocidal campaign. Realizing and accepting this, Nyssa and Talia become the heads of The Demon, with Talia disavowing her love for Bruce Wayne as another result of her torture at Nyssa's hands (both sisters then consider Batman to be their enemy). Talia from then on became more often Batman's enemy than an ally.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: In "Countdown to Infinite Crisis", it is revealed that Talia is one of the core members of the Secret Society of Super Villains (the others were Lex Luthor (secretly Alexander Luthor, Jr. in disguise), Black Adam, Doctor Psycho, Deathstroke, and Calculator). This is revealed to be part of one of half-sister Nyssa's plans to take over the planet and bring about world peace and equality. After Nyssa is killed by Batgirl Cassandra Cain, Talia assumes leadership of the League.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: During the "" (1988) storyline, Jason Todd, the second Robin, is murdered by the Joker in Ethiopia. He was later revived as a character, and in "" (2005), he is discovered by the League of Assassins. In "Lost Days", out of her love for Batman, Talia takes Jason to her father and Jason spends months in the care of the League of Assassins. Although his body recuperates, Jason's mind is shattered.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: Seeing no other way to help him, Talia takes Jason down to the Lazarus Pit and throws his body in while her father regenerates himself. Jason is fully revived in the body and mind. Immediately afterward, to spare Jason her father's wrath, she aids the boy's escape.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: Livid at the fact that Batman failed to avenge his (Jason's) death by killing the Joker and that Batman had done nothing more than imprison him again, Jason pursues his own brand of justice. To stall him from killing Batman, Talia agrees to finance Jason and aid him in his training, so that he can then become the second Red Hood.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, this story was changed, whereby "Red Hood and the Outlaws" #2 (2011) shows that, shortly after Jason Todd's return from the dead, Talia al Ghul, out of her love for Batman, takes him to a secret cult of warrior monks called the All Caste to train in becoming a skilled assassin.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: The concept of Talia and Batman having a child from "Son of the Demon" is reinterpreted into continuity in the story "Batman and Son" (2006), written by Grant Morrison. Their son is grown in an artificial womb and named Damian. He is raised and trained in the League of Assassins. Talia introduces him to Batman as part of a grand scheme involving ninja Man-Bats and the kidnapping of the British Prime Minister's wife. Morrison admitted that they relied on their shaky memories of "Son of the Demon" before writing, so they "messed up a lot of the details" such as changing the consensual marriage between Talia and Batman that ended after she faked a miscarriage to her drugging him to have sex to have his child without his knowledge. Morrison's mistake would later be retconned in later comic books, citing Batman and Talia's tryst as consensual.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: During the "Batman R.I.P." storyline, Talia and Damian become aware of the Black Glove's plot against Batman and begins devising a plan to help save him. They arrive at Wayne Manor just in time to save Commissioner James Gordon from being killed by assorted booby traps created by the Black Glove. This is referenced in issue 39 of the old 52. She offers to join forces with Gordon to save Batman. She and Gordon arrive too late, however, and are informed by Robin that Batman went missing and maybe dead following a battle with Doctor Hurt.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: Furious that her love may be dead, she sends out her ninja Man-Bats to murder Jezebel Jet, who plays a major role in trying to kill Batman. Soon after it is revealed Batman did not die, but survives only to be captured by Darkseid during the "Final Crisis" and then apparently murdered by the New God.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: Following Batman's apparent death, Talia apparently decides to leave Damian in the hands of his adoptive brother Dick Grayson, who later takes on the role of Batman, and selects Damian to succeed Tim Drake as Robin.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: In "Final Crisis", she is placed on the new Society's inner circle by Libra. Despite Talia's interaction with the new Society she still behaves lovingly and almost devoted to Batman.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: It is revealed in "Gotham City Sirens" #2 that Talia has trained Selina Kyle to resist even the most intense psychological coercion to reveal Bruce Wayne's secret identity.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: Following an operation in which Damian's spine is replaced, it is revealed that Talia inserts an implant into his spine that allows her or anyone she chooses, including Deathstroke, to control Damian's body remotely. She intends to use this device to force Damian to kill Dick Grayson, whom she perceives as holding her son back from his potential. After Grayson frees Damian, Talia reveal to her son that she has begun cloning him after realizing that the Boy Wonder has completely sided with his father's circle during their confrontation. She is too much of a perfectionist to love her son after he has defied her in such a manner, and is no longer welcome in the House of al Ghul.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: In 2011, "The New 52" rebooted the DC universe. In "Batman Incorporated", written by Grant Morrison, Talia is revealed to be the mastermind behind the Leviathan, a shadowy organization formed to oppose Bruce's "Batman Incorporated" project. She places a bounty of US$500 million on Damian's head, and declares war on Batman. In "Batman Incorporated" Vol. 2, #2 (2012), a Talia origin issue, she puts her father, Ra's al Ghul, under house arrest for opposing her plan and takes his men away with her. She claims to Batman that her agents have infiltrated all of Gotham's infrastructure and that she is providing the poor with purpose by arming them and giving them slogans to chant, as well as an enemy to fight. Talia says Batman must choose between saving Gotham from suicide or saving their son Damian from a death sentence. Her clone of Damian, known as the Heretic, stabs Damian through the chest and delivers the killing stroke to her son, leaving Batman devastated.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: After the Heretic loses his final confrontation with Batman, Talia kills him, destroys Wayne Tower, and challenges Batman to a duel to the death in the Batcave. There, Talia poisons Batman. He embraces and kisses her mid-battle, not knowing that her lips were covered with poison, and he apologizes for not being able to love her the way she wants and admits defeat. Talia asks Batman to beg for the antidote but he does not respond. Jason Todd arrives at the Batcave and offers Talia the Oroboro trigger, a device that would trigger the destruction of seven cities and that she claims would provide a new source of energy for the world. When she attempts to activate the device, Jason reveals that he has double-crossed her and that the weapons the device would trigger had already been disarmed. Talia is then shot and killed by Spyral agent Kathy Kane, buried, and her body later disappears from the gravesite along with that of Damian.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: Morrison's writing of the Batman, Talia, and Damian saga drew from their own personal experience as a child of divorce. The end of "Batman Incorporated" marked the end of his seven-year run on the characters.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: While Batman was preoccupied with a series of cases, Talia's body is taken from the grave by her father, Ra's, so that he may resurrect his daughter and his grandson, Damian, whose body was also taken. Batman continues his pursuit for Ra's and to reclaim his son's body. Ra's attempted to resurrect Talia alongside Damian in what he thought was a Lazarus Pit in the island of Themyscira, but instead Ra's discovered that it was a portal to a Netherworld in the Pit's former location, which both Wonder Woman and Batman already knew. Ra's flees with the bodies afterwards. Batman arrives too late, after Ra's has successfully had the bodies placed in a Lazarus Pit. The resurrections fail, leaving Ra's to realize his arrogance in allowing the Heretic to kill his grandson, and regret for allowing Talia to clone Damian.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: After defeating Ra's in combat, as Batman intends to reclaim his son's body, their battle is disrupted by Darkseid's elite member Glorious Godfrey, as well as a number of Parademons. Batman is forced to team up with Ra's to battle Godfrey (who came to retrieve the Chaos Shard, a powerful crystal that once belonged to Darkseid, which Ra's had hidden in Damian's body) and the Parademons who had taken the bodies of Talia and Damian. Ra's manages to get his daughter's body from the Parademons in the sky, but falls into the gorge of Nanda Parbat along with Talia's body, while Batman tries to retrieve his son's body from Godfrey.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: Following Damian's resurrection, Talia had emerged on Nanda Parbat with no memory of who she was. She kills a nearby Tibetan to eat their food.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: Later, Talia was approached by a shadowy figure; she is able to recognize the robed figure and feared that a faction known as the Lu'un Darga is upon release, she is then knocked unconscious. The robed figure restores Talia's memory and attempts to influence her as a servant, but Talia resists his control and knocks him unconscious with stalagmites. She tries to escape the Lu'un Darga's unknown lair of the inner core with the heart of the Lazarus Pit. When Talia was reunited with her son in the Lu'un Darga's lair on al Ghul Island, Damian is aware of his quest about the Lu'un Darga. He doesn't wish to see Talia however and attacks her.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: During their battle, Talia tries, unsuccessfully, to convince Damian that Ra's and his al Ghul family wage war against the ancient immortals of the Lu'un Darga, claiming to be guardians of the Lazarus Pit. While Ra's sought to bring power and balance of life to Earth, the Lu'un Darga then tried to take back all life and cleanse Earth entirely, because they would bring their own destruction to Earth and the heart of the Lazarus Pit. Talia also tells him he is being used as a pawn by Ra's to steal the Lu'un Darga's power. The mysterious robed figure was revealed to be Den Darga, who thanked Damian for inadvertently bringing the relic and attempts to bring about the end of life on Earth.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: While Den Darga destroys al Ghul Island by sinking it, he attempts to cleanse Talia and Damian's souls. However, his clones protect Damian and sacrifice themselves to save his life. Den Darga flees, leaving Talia and Damian to the abyss; where they were rescued by Damian's friends. Afterward, Talia is hopeful that she and Damian can move to a safe place and tells her unconscious son to rest. When Damian wakes, Talia convinces her son to calm down. She explains that she had been finding redemption for herself, for her retribution against him and inaction after Den Darga's attack. She informs him that if he chooses vigilantism, it will corrupt him. Talia goes on to say that he, too, can choose between staying or leaving, after accepting who he is, except that his mother has been reforming herself and regrets her choices. As he chooses to leave and says goodbye to his mother, Talia rejoins the League of Assassins to prepare for war against Den Darga and the Lu'un Darga.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: Talia, along with Batman, show up again later in the title to aid their son in saving all life on Earth from the threat of Den and the Lu'un Darga. They are portrayed as a bickering couple but also put things aside to help. Their mission is a success though Damian ends up giving his life to save humanity. He is later brought back to life by Suren Darga. With the world saved, and satisfied her son is safe, she goes to rejoin the League of Assassins.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: During "DC Rebirth", Talia al Ghul shows up for her son, Damian Wayne's birthday and warns him of Ra's al Ghul plot to send the Demon's Fist against Damian and the Teen Titans in a plan to assassinate them to prove their worth to the Demon's Head. These targets will later become Damian's Teen Titans teammates after he saves them and makes them aware of the Fist and their plans.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: After observing how happy both of his daughter and grandson are while living a peaceful life without killing, the now reformed Ra's al Ghul decides that he wants to turn himself in to the authority to atone for all the crimes he committed as well as publicly share all the secrets he kept hidden over the centuries, this decision has sparked a huge interest in both the superhero community and the villain community due the amount of knowledge the immortal Demon's Head has about the world, so all eyes were on him during a press conference he held before his incarceration. However, as soon as the conference started, Ra's was immediately shot by a sniper wearing a Deathstroke-looking costume, who also threw a bomb that turned his body to ashes to insure that there would be nothing left of him that can be resurrected through the Lazarus Pit.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: This incident has deeply hurt both Damian and his mother, Talia, who had to watch her father get murdered even though he finally made the right choice for the first time in his life and was willing to turn a new leaf for his family's sake. In her grief, she gathered all the members of the League of Assassins and put a hit on Deathstroke as well as all of his associates in revenge for killing her father. On the other hand, Damian has teamed-up with his father, who wasn't fully convinced that it was the real Deathstroke that killed Ra's al Ghul, to investigate the murder and find out who was really behind it.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: This event concludes with a war between The League of Assassins and Deathstroke Inc, which ends with Talia killing Slade in a one-on-one battle, but shortly afterward the Deathstroke imposter reveals himself to be Geo-Force, who plotted this whole war in hope of having both Slade and Talia killing each other . Damian and Bruce arrive shortly soon and help Talia defeat Geo-Force, with Damian managing to convince his mother to not kill Geo-Force afterward because his grandfather believed that their family could be better than this.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: Talia has been written to be an athlete at the peak of physical conditioning and has been trained in many forms of martial arts. She was educated in the arts and sciences, and she holds advanced degrees in biology, engineering, and business as an MBA. She is also quite proficient with most hand weapons. Often underestimated, Talia is also an excellent hand-to-hand fighter.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: In "Batman: Brotherhood of the Bat", Earth has been decimated by a plague unleashed by Ra's a decade or so before, prompting Ra's to claim Wayne Manor as his new base of operations; at this point, Bruce Wayne has been dead for some time under undisclosed circumstances, but Talia has been raising his son Tallant in secret. As Ra's transforms a group of his elite assassins into a 'Brotherhood of the Bat', using Batman's discarded costume designs to create a group of different Batmen, Talia decides that the time has come to tell Tallant of his father's heritage, with Tallant infiltrating the Brotherhood to dismantle it from within.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: In "", Talia is present when Bruce Wayne enters a Lazarus Pit with her father in 1979; when two men enter the Pit simultaneously, one will perish while the other will become permanently immortal with no way to determine which will be the sacrifice. When Bruce Wayne emerges restored to full youth, he spends the next two decades turning the League of Assassin's front organizations into the true operation with Talia at his side, although the exact nature of their relationship is never explicitly confirmed.


title: Talia al Ghul

text: In "Elseworld's Finest", when Ra's and the League are searching for the lost city of Argos, they come into contact with another group of explorers; impoverished archaeologist Bruce Wayne, reporter Clark Kent, Kent's childhood friend Lana Lang, and newspaper-boy Jimmy Olsen. Witnessing Kent's exceptional strength, Ra's offers him Talia's hand in marriage, but although Kent is tempted by the offer, he chooses to escape with his friends to continue their search for Lana's abducted father. Later, after Ra's is killed when he attempts to claim the power of Argos for himself and Kent is left mortally wounded in a confrontation with Lex Luthor, Talia is able to use her father's Lazarus formula to restore Kent to life, expressing grief that she would never have the chance to see how their relationship would develop if this fails. The story concludes with an elderly Lana talking to a young woman named Kara, who is clearly intended to be the child of Clark Kent and Talia al Ghul.


title: Geopolitics

text: Geopolitics (from Greek γῆ "gê" "earth, land" and πολιτική "politikḗ" "politics") is the study of the effects of Earth's geography (human and physical) on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually refers to countries and relations between them, it may also focus on two other kinds of states: "de facto" independent states with limited international recognition and relations between sub-national geopolitical entities, such as the federated states that make up a federation, confederation, or a quasi-federal system.


title: Geopolitics

text: At the level of international relations, geopolitics is a method of studying foreign policy to understand, explain, and predict international political behavior through geographical variables. These include area studies, climate, topography, demography, natural resources, and applied science of the region being evaluated.


title: Geopolitics

text: Geopolitics focuses on political power linked to geographic space. In particular, territorial waters and land territory in correlation with diplomatic history. Topics of geopolitics include relations between the interests of international political actors focused within an area, a space, or a geographical element, relations which create a geopolitical system. Critical geopolitics deconstructs classical geopolitical theories, by showing their political/ideological functions for great powers. There are some works that discuss the geopolitics of renewable energy.


title: Geopolitics

text: According to Christopher Gogwilt and other researchers, the term is currently being used to describe a broad spectrum of concepts, in a general sense used as "a synonym for international political relations", but more specifically "to imply the global structure of such relations"; this usage builds on an "early-twentieth-century term for a pseudoscience of political geography" and other pseudoscientific theories of historical and geographic determinism.


title: Geopolitics

text: Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914) was a frequent commentator on world naval strategic and diplomatic affairs. Mahan believed that national greatness was inextricably associated with the sea—and particularly with its commercial use in peace and its control in war. Mahan's theoretical framework came from Antoine-Henri Jomini, and emphasized that strategic locations (such as choke points, canals, and coaling stations), as well as quantifiable levels of fighting power in a fleet, were conducive to control over the sea. He proposed six conditions required for a nation to have sea power:


title: Geopolitics

text: Mahan distinguished a key region of the world in the Eurasian context, namely, the Central Zone of Asia lying between 30° and 40° north and stretching from Asia Minor to Japan. In this zone independent countries still survived – Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, China, and Japan. Mahan regarded those countries, located between Britain and Russia, as if between "Scylla and Charybdis". Of the two monsters – Britain and Russia – it was the latter that Mahan considered more threatening to the fate of Central Asia. Mahan was impressed by Russia's transcontinental size and strategically favorable position for southward expansion. Therefore, he found it necessary for the Anglo-Saxon "sea power" to resist Russia.


title: Geopolitics

text: Homer Lea, in "The Day of the Saxon" (1912), asserted that the entire Anglo-Saxon race faced a threat from German (Teuton), Russian (Slav), and Japanese expansionism: The "fatal" relationship of Russia, Japan, and Germany "has now assumed through the urgency of natural forces a coalition directed against the survival of Saxon supremacy." It is "a dreadful Dreibund". Lea believed that while Japan moved against Far East and Russia against India, the Germans would strike at England, the center of the British Empire. He thought the Anglo-Saxons faced certain disaster from their militant opponents.


title: Geopolitics

text: Two famous security advisors from the Cold War period, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, argued to continue the United States geopolitical focus on Eurasia and, particularly on Russia, despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Both continued their influence on geopolitics after the end of the Cold War, writing books on the subject in the 1990s—"Diplomacy" and "". The Anglo-American classical geopolitical theories were revived.


title: Geopolitics

text: Kissinger argued against the belief that with the dissolution of the USSR, hostile intentions had come to an end and traditional foreign policy considerations no longer applied. "They would argue … that Russia, regardless of who governs it, sits astride the territory which Halford Mackinder called the geopolitical heartland, and it is the heir to one of the most potent imperial traditions." Therefore, the United States must "maintain the global balance of power vis-à-vis the country with a long history of expansionism."


title: Geopolitics

text: After Russia, the second geopolitical threat which remained was Germany and, as Mackinder had feared ninety years ago, its partnership with Russia. During the Cold War, Kissinger argues, both sides of the Atlantic recognized that, "unless America is organically involved in Europe, it would later be obliged to involve itself under circumstances which would be far less favorable to both sides of the Atlantic. That is even more true today. Germany has become so strong that existing European institutions cannot strike a balance between Germany and its European partners all by themselves. Nor can Europe, even with the assistance of Germany, manage […] Russia" all by itself. Thus Kissinger believed that no country's interests would ever be served if Germany and Russia were to ever form a partnership in which each country would consider itself the principal partner. They would raise fears of condominium. Without America, Britain and France cannot cope with Germany and Russia; and "without Europe, America could turn … into an island off the shores of Eurasia."


title: Geopolitics

text: Nicholas J. Spykman's vision of Eurasia was strongly confirmed: "Geopolitically, America is an island off the shores of the large landmass of Eurasia, whose resources and population far exceed those of the United States. The domination by a single power of either of Eurasia's two principal spheres—Europe and Asia—remains a good definition of strategic danger for America. Cold War or no Cold War. For such a grouping would have the capacity to outstrip America economically and, in the end, militarily. That danger would have to be resisted even if the dominant power was apparently benevolent, for if its intentions ever changed, America would find itself with a grossly diminished capacity for effective resistance and a growing inability to shape events." The main interest of the American leaders is maintaining the balance of power in Eurasia.


title: Geopolitics

text: Having converted from an ideologist into a geopolitician, Kissinger retrospectively interpreted the Cold War in geopolitical terms—an approach which was not characteristic of his works during the Cold War. Now, however, he focused on the beginning of the Cold War: "The objective of moral opposition to Communism had merged with the geopolitical task of containing Soviet expansion." Nixon, he added, was a geopolitical rather than an ideological cold warrior.


title: Geopolitics

text: Three years after Kissinger's "Diplomacy", Zbigniew Brzezinski followed suit, launching "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" and, after three more years, The Geostrategic Triad: Living with China, Europe, and Russia. The Grand Chessboard described the American triumph in the Cold War in terms of control over Eurasia: for the first time ever, a "non-Eurasian" power had emerged as a key arbiter of "Eurasian" power relations. The book states its purpose: "The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book." Although the power configuration underwent a revolutionary change, Brzezinski confirmed three years later, Eurasia was still a mega-continent. Like Spykman, Brzezinski acknowledges that: "Cumulatively, Eurasia's power vastly overshadows America's."


title: Geopolitics

text: In classical Spykman terms, Brzezinski formulated his geostrategic "chessboard" doctrine of Eurasia, which aims to prevent the unification of this mega-continent."Europe and Asia are politically and economically powerful…. It follows that… American foreign policy must…employ its influence in Eurasia in a manner that creates a stable continental equilibrium, with the United States as the political arbiter.… Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played, and that struggle involves geo- strategy – the strategic management of geopolitical interests…. But in the meantime it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus also of challenging America… For America the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia…and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained."


title: Geopolitics

text: The Austro-Hungarian historian Emil Reich (1854–1910) is considered to be the first having coined the term in English as early as 1902 and later published in England in 1904 in his book "Foundations of Modern Europe".


title: Geopolitics

text: Sir Halford Mackinder's Heartland Theory initially received little attention outside the world of geography, but some thinkers would claim that it subsequently influenced the foreign policies of world powers. Those scholars who look to MacKinder through critical lenses accept him as an organic strategist who tried to build a foreign policy vision for Britain with his Eurocentric analysis of historical geography. His formulation of the Heartland Theory was set out in his article entitled "The Geographical Pivot of History", published in England in 1904. Mackinder's doctrine of geopolitics involved concepts diametrically opposed to the notion of Alfred Thayer Mahan about the significance of navies (he coined the term "sea power") in world conflict. He saw navy as a basis of Colombian era empire (roughly from 1492 to the 19th century), and predicted the 20th century to be domain of land power. The Heartland theory hypothesized a huge empire being brought into existence in the Heartland—which wouldn't need to use coastal or transoceanic transport to remain coherent. The basic notions of Mackinder's doctrine involve considering the geography of the Earth as being divided into two sections: the World Island or Core, comprising Eurasia and Africa; and the Peripheral "islands", including the Americas, Australia, Japan, the British Isles, and Oceania. Not only was the Periphery noticeably smaller than the World Island, it necessarily required much sea transport to function at the technological level of the World Island—which contained sufficient natural resources for a developed economy.


title: Geopolitics

text: Mackinder posited that the industrial centers of the Periphery were necessarily located in widely separated locations. The World Island could send its navy to destroy each one of them in turn, and could locate its own industries in a region further inland than the Periphery (so they would have a longer struggle reaching them, and would face a well-stocked industrial bastion). Mackinder called this region the "Heartland". It essentially comprised Central and Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Western Russia, and Mitteleuropa. The Heartland contained the grain reserves of Ukraine, and many other natural resources. Mackinder's notion of geopolitics was summed up when he said:


title: Geopolitics

text: Nicholas J. Spykman was both a follower and critic of geostrategists Alfred Mahan, and Halford Mackinder. His work was based on assumptions similar to Mackinder's, including the unity of world politics and the world sea. He extends this to include the unity of the air. Spykman adopts Mackinder's divisions of the world, renaming some:


title: Geopolitics

text: Under Spykman's theory, a Rimland separates the Heartland from ports that are usable throughout the year (that is, not frozen up during winter). Spykman suggested this required that attempts by Heartland nations (particularly Russia) to conquer ports in the Rimland must be prevented. Spykman modified Mackinder's formula on the relationship between the Heartland and the Rimland (or the inner crescent), claiming that "Who controls the rimland rules Eurasia. Who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world." This theory can be traced in the origins of containment, a U.S. policy on preventing the spread of Soviet influence after World War II (see also Truman Doctrine).


title: Geopolitics

text: Another famous follower of Mackinder was Karl Haushofer who called Mackinder's Geographical Pivot of History a "genius' scientific tractate." He commented on it: "Never have I seen anything greater than those few pages of geopolitical masterwork." Mackinder located his Pivot, in the words of Haushofer, on "one of the first solid, geopolitically and geographically irreproachable maps, presented to one of the earliest scientific forums of the planet – the Royal Geographic Society in London" Haushofer adopted both Mackinder's Heartland thesis and his view of the Russian-German alliance – powers that Mackinder saw as the major contenders for control of Eurasia in the twentieth century. Following Mackinder he suggested an alliance with the Soviet Union and, advancing a step beyond Mackinder, added Japan to his design of the "Eurasian Bloc."


title: Geopolitics

text: In 2004, at the centenary of The Geographical Pivot of History, famous Historian Paul Kennedy wrote: "Right now with hundreds of thousands of US troops in the Eurasian rimlands and with administration constantly explaining why it has to stay the course, it looks as if Washington is taking seriously Mackinder's injunction to ensure control of the geographical pivot of history."


title: Geopolitics

text: Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904), influenced by thinkers such as Darwin and zoologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, contributed to 'Geopolitik' by the expansion on the biological conception of geography, without a static conception of borders. Positing that states are organic and growing, with borders representing only a temporary stop in their movement, he held that the expanse of a state's borders is a reflection of the health of the nation—meaning that static countries are in decline. Ratzel published several papers, among which was the essay "Lebensraum" (1901) concerning biogeography. Ratzel created a foundation for the German variant of geopolitics, "geopolitik". Influenced by the American geostrategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, Ratzel wrote of aspirations for German naval reach, agreeing that sea power was self-sustaining, as the profit from trade would pay for the merchant marine, unlike land power.


title: Geopolitics

text: The geopolitical theory of Ratzel has been criticized as being too sweeping, and his interpretation of human history and geography being too simple and mechanistic. Critically, he also underestimated the importance of social organization in the development of power.


title: Geopolitics

text: After World War I, the thoughts of Rudolf Kjellén and Ratzel were picked up and extended by a number of German authors such as Karl Haushofer (1869–1946), Erich Obst, Hermann Lautensach and Otto Maull. In 1923, Karl Haushofer founded the "Zeitschrift für Geopolitik" (Journal for Geopolitics), which was later used in the propaganda of Nazi Germany. The key concepts of Haushofer's Geopolitik were Lebensraum, autarky, pan-regions, and organic borders. States have, Haushofer argued, an undeniable right to seek natural borders which would guarantee autarky.


title: Geopolitics

text: Haushofer's influence within the Nazi Party has been challenged, given that Haushofer failed to incorporate the Nazis' racial ideology into his work. Popular views of the role of geopolitics in the Nazi Third Reich suggest a fundamental significance on the part of the geo-politicians in the ideological orientation of the Nazi state. Bassin (1987) reveals that these popular views are in important ways misleading and incorrect.


title: Geopolitics

text: Despite the numerous similarities and affinities between the two doctrines, geopolitics was always held suspect by the National Socialist ideologists. This was understandable, for the underlying philosophical orientation of geopolitics did not comply with that of National Socialism. Geopolitics shared Ratzel's scientific materialism and geographic determinism, and held that human society was determined by external influences—in the face of which qualities held innately by individuals or groups were of reduced or no significance. National Socialism rejected in principle both materialism and determinism and also elevated innate human qualities, in the form of a hypothesized 'racial character,' to the factor of greatest significance in the constitution of human society. These differences led after 1933 to friction and ultimately to open denunciation of geopolitics by Nazi ideologues. Nevertheless, German Geopolitik was discredited by its (mis)use in Nazi expansionist policy of World War II and has never achieved standing comparable to the pre-war period.


title: Geopolitics

text: The resultant negative association, particularly in U.S. academic circles, between classical geopolitics and Nazi or imperialist ideology, is based on loose justifications. This has been observed in particular by critics of contemporary academic geography, and proponents of a "neo"-classical geopolitics in particular. These include Haverluk et al., who argue that the stigmatization of geopolitics in academia is unhelpful as geopolitics as a field of positivist inquiry maintains potential in researching and resolving topical, often politicized issues such as conflict resolution and prevention, and mitigating climate change.


title: Geopolitics

text: Negative associations with the term "geopolitics" and its practical application stemming from its association with World War II and pre-World War II German scholars and students of geopolitics are largely specific to the field of academic geography, and especially sub-disciplines of human geography such as political geography. However, this negative association is not as strong in disciplines such as history or political science, which make use of geopolitical concepts. Classical geopolitics forms an important element of analysis for military history as well as for sub-disciplines of political science such as international relations and security studies. This difference in disciplinary perspectives is addressed by Bert Chapman in "Geopolitics: A Guide To the Issues", in which Chapman makes note that academic and professional International Relations journals are more amenable to the study and analysis of Geopolitics, and in particular Classical geopolitics, than contemporary academic journals in the field of political geography.


title: Geopolitics

text: In disciplines outside geography, geopolitics is not negatively viewed (as it often is among academic geographers such as Carolyn Gallaher or Klaus Dodds) as a tool of imperialism or associated with Nazism, but rather viewed as a valid and consistent manner of assessing major international geopolitical circumstances and events, not necessarily related to armed conflict or military operations.


title: Geopolitics

text: French geopolitical doctrines broadly opposed to German Geopolitik and reject the idea of a fixed geography. French geography is focused on the evolution of polymorphic territories being the result of mankind's actions. It also relies on the consideration of long time periods through a refusal to take specific events into account. This method has been theorized by Professor Lacoste according to three principles: Representation; Diachronie; and Diatopie.


title: Geopolitics

text: In "The Spirit of the Laws", Montesquieu outlined the view that man and societies are influenced by climate. He believed that hotter climates create hot-tempered people and colder climates aloof people, whereas the mild climate of France is ideal for political systems. Considered one of the founders of French geopolitics, Élisée Reclus, is the author of a book considered a reference in modern geography (Nouvelle Géographie universelle). Alike Ratzel, he considers geography through a global vision. However, in complete opposition to Ratzel's vision, Reclus considers geography not to be unchanging; it is supposed to evolve commensurately to the development of human society. His marginal political views resulted in his rejection by academia.


title: Geopolitics

text: French geographer and geopolitician Jacques Ancel (1879–1936) is considered to be the first theoretician of geopolitics in France, and gave a notable series of lectures at the European Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Paris and published "Géopolitique" in 1936. Like Reclus, Ancel rejects German determinist views on geopolitics (including Haushofer's doctrines).


title: Geopolitics

text: Braudel's broad view used insights from other social sciences, employed the concept of the "longue durée", and downplayed the importance of specific events. This method was inspired by the French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blache (who in turn was influenced by German thought, particularly that of Friedrich Ratzel whom he had met in Germany). Braudel's method was to analyse the interdependence between individuals and their environment. Vidalian geopolitics is based on varied forms of cartography and on "possibilism" (founded on a societal approach of geography—i.e. on the principle of spaces polymorphic faces depending from many factors among them mankind, culture, and ideas) as opposed to determinism.


title: Geopolitics

text: Due to the influence of German "Geopolitik" on French geopolitics, the latter were for a long time banished from academic works. In the mid-1970s, Yves Lacoste—a French geographer who was directly inspired by Ancel, Braudel and Vidal de la Blache—wrote "La géographie, ça sert d'abord à faire la guerre" (Geography first use is war) in 1976. This book—which is very famous in France—symbolizes the birth of this new school of geopolitics (if not so far the first French school of geopolitics as Ancel was very isolated in the 1930s–40s). Initially linked with communist party evolved to a less liberal approach. At the end of the 1980s he founded the Institut Français de Géopolitique (French Institute for Geopolitics) that publishes the Hérodote revue. While rejecting the generalizations and broad abstractions employed by the German and Anglo-American traditions (and the "new geographers"), this school does focus on spatial dimension of geopolitics affairs on different levels of analysis. This approach emphasizes the importance of multi-level (or multi-scales) analysis and maps at the opposite of critical geopolitics which avoid such tools. Lacoste proposed that every conflict (both local or global) can be considered from a perspective grounded in three assumptions:


title: Geopolitics

text: Connected with this stream, and former member of Hérodote editorial board, the French geographer Michel Foucher developed a long term analysis of international borders. He coined various neologism among them: "Horogenesis": Neologism that describes the concept of studying the "birth of borders", "Dyade": border shared by two neighbouring states (for instance US territory has two terrestrial dyades : one with Canada and one with Mexico). The main book of this searcher "Fronts et frontières" (Fronts and borders) first published in 1991, without equivalent remains untranslated in English. Michel Foucher is an expert of the African Union for borders affairs.


title: Geopolitics

text: More or less connected with this school, Stéphane Rosière can be quoted as the editor in Chief of the online journal "L'Espace politique", this journal created in 2007 became the most prominent French journal of political geography and Geopolitics with Hérodote.


title: Geopolitics

text: A much more conservative stream is personified by François Thual. Thual was a French expert in geopolitics, and a former official of the Ministry of Civil Defence. Thual taught geopolitics of the religions at the French War College, and has written thirty books devoted mainly to geopolitical method and its application to various parts of the world. He is particularly interested in the Orthodox, Shiite, and Buddhist religions, and in troubled regions like the Caucasus. Connected with F. Thual, Aymeric Chauprade, former professor of geopolitics at the French War College and now member of the extreme-right party "Front national", subscribes to a supposed "new" French school of geopolitics which advocates above all a return to "realpolitik" and "clash of civilization" (Huntington). The thought of this school is expressed through the French Review of Geopolitics (headed by Chauprade) and the International Academy of Geopolitics. Chauprade is a supporter of a Europe of nations, he advocates a European Union excluding Turkey, and a policy of compromise with Russia (in the frame of a Eurasian alliance which is "en vogue" among European extreme-right populists) and supports the idea of a multi-polar world—including a balanced relationship between China and the U.S.


title: Geopolitics

text: French philosopher Michel Foucault's dispositif introduced for the purpose of biopolitical research was also adopted in the field of geopolitical thought where it now plays a role.


title: Geopolitics

text: The geopolitical stance adopted by Russia has traditionally been informed by a Eurasian perspective, and Russia's location provides a degree of continuity between the Tsarist and Soviet geostrategic stance and the position of Russia in the international order. In the 1990s, a senior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, (1957–2009), coined the term "island-Russia" and developed the "Great Limitrophe" concept.


title: Geopolitics

text: Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov (retired), a Russian geopolitics specialist of the early 21st century, headed the Academy of Geopolitical Problems (), which analyzes the international and domestic situations and develops geopolitical doctrine. Earlier, he headed the Main Directorate for International Military Cooperation of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation.


title: Geopolitics

text: Vladimir Karyakin, leading researcher at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, has proposed the term "geopolitics of the third wave".


title: Geopolitics

text: Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian political analyst who has developed a close relationship with Russia's Academy of the General Staff wrote ""The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia"" in 1997, which has had a large influence within the Russian military, police, and foreign policy elites and it has been used as a textbook in the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian military. Its publication in 1997 was well received in Russia and powerful Russian political figures subsequently took an interest in Dugin.


title: Geopolitics

text: According to Li Lingqun, a major feature of the People's Republic of China's geopolitics is attempting to change the laws of the sea to advance claims in the South China Sea. Another geopolitical issue is China's claims over Taiwan, amounting to a geopolitical rivalry between the two independent states.


title: Geopolitics

text: Various analysts state that China created the Belt and Road Initiative as a geostrategic effort to take a larger role in global affairs, and undermine what the Communist Party perceives as a hegemony of liberalism. It has also been argued that China co-founded the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and New Development Bank to compete with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in development finance. According to Bobo Lo, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has been advertised as a "political organization of a new type" claimed to transcend geopolitics. Political scientist Pak Nung Wong says that a major form of geopolitics between the US and China includes cybersecurity competition, policy regulations regarding technology standards and social media platforms, and traditional and non-traditional forms of espionage.


title: Geopolitics

text: One view of the New Great Game is a shift to geoeconomic compared to geopolitical competition. The interest in oil and gas includes pipelines that transmit energy to China's east coast. Xiangming Chen believes that China's role is more like Britain's than Russia's in the New Great Game, where Russia plays the role that the Russian Empire originally did. Chen stated, "Regardless of the prospect, China through the BRI is deep in playing a 'New Great Game' in Central Asia that differs considerably from its historical precedent about 150 years ago when Britain and Russia jostled with each other on the Eurasian steppes." In the Carnegie Endowment, Paul Stronski and Nicole Ng wrote in 2018 that China has not fundamentally challenged any Russian interests in Central Asia.


title: American Sign Language

text: American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in West Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of language contact. Since then, ASL use has been propagated widely by schools for the deaf and Deaf community organizations. Despite its wide use, no accurate count of ASL users has been taken. Reliable estimates for American ASL users range from 250,000 to 500,000 persons, including a number of children of deaf adults and other hearing individuals.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL signs have a number of phonemic components, such as movement of the face, the torso, and the hands. ASL is not a form of pantomime although iconicity plays a larger role in ASL than in spoken languages. English loan words are often borrowed through fingerspelling, although ASL grammar is unrelated to that of English. ASL has verbal agreement and aspectual marking and has a productive system of forming agglutinative classifiers. Many linguists believe ASL to be a subject–verb–object (SVO) language. However, there are several alternative proposals to account for ASL word order.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL emerged as a language in the American School for the Deaf (ASD), founded by Thomas Gallaudet in 1817, which brought together Old French Sign Language, various village sign languages, and home sign systems. ASL was created in that situation by language contact. ASL was influenced by its forerunners but distinct from all of them.


title: American Sign Language

text: The influence of French Sign Language (LSF) on ASL is readily apparent; for example, it has been found that about 58% of signs in modern ASL are cognate to Old French Sign Language signs. However, that is far less than the standard 80% measure used to determine whether related languages are actually dialects. That suggests that nascent ASL was highly affected by the other signing systems brought by the ASD students although the school's original director, Laurent Clerc, taught in LSF. In fact, Clerc reported that he often learned the students' signs rather than conveying LSF:


title: American Sign Language

text: It has been proposed that ASL is a creole in which LSF is the superstrate language and the native village sign languages are substrate languages. However, more recent research has shown that modern ASL does not share many of the structural features that characterize creole languages. ASL may have begun as a creole and then undergone structural change over time, but it is also possible that it was never a creole-type language. There are modality-specific reasons that sign languages tend towards agglutination, such as the ability to simultaneously convey information via the face, head, torso, and other body parts. That might override creole characteristics such as the tendency towards isolating morphology. Additionally, Clerc and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet may have used an artificially constructed form of manually coded language in instruction rather than true LSF.


title: American Sign Language

text: Although the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia share English as a common oral and written language, ASL is not mutually intelligible with either British Sign Language (BSL) or Auslan. All three languages show degrees of borrowing from English, but that alone is not sufficient for cross-language comprehension. It has been found that a relatively high percentage (37–44%) of ASL signs have similar translations in Auslan, which for oral languages would suggest that they belong to the same language family. However, that does not seem justified historically for ASL and Auslan, and it is likely that the resemblance is caused by the higher degree of iconicity in sign languages in general as well as contact with English.


title: American Sign Language

text: American Sign Language is growing in popularity in many states. Many high school and university students desire to take it as a foreign language, but until recently, it was usually not considered a creditable foreign language elective. ASL users, however, have a very distinct culture, and they interact very differently when they talk. Their facial expressions and hand movements reflect what they are communicating. They also have their own sentence structure, which sets the language apart.


title: American Sign Language

text: American Sign Language is now being accepted by many colleges as a language eligible for foreign language course credit; many states are making it mandatory to accept it as such. in some states however, this is only true with regard to high school coursework.


title: American Sign Language

text: Prior to the birth of ASL, sign language had been used by various communities in the United States. In the United States, as elsewhere in the world, hearing families with deaf children have historically employed ad hoc home sign, which often reaches much higher levels of sophistication than gestures used by hearing people in spoken conversation. As early as 1541 at first contact by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, there were reports that the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains widely spoke a sign language to communicate across vast national and linguistic lines.


title: American Sign Language

text: In the 19th century, a "triangle" of village sign languages developed in New England: one in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts; one in Henniker, New Hampshire, and one in Sandy River Valley, Maine. Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL), which was particularly important for the history of ASL, was used mainly in Chilmark, Massachusetts. Due to intermarriage in the original community of English settlers of the 1690s, and the recessive nature of genetic deafness, Chilmark had a high 4% rate of genetic deafness. MVSL was used even by hearing residents whenever a deaf person was present, and also in some situations where spoken language would be ineffective or inappropriate, such as during church sermons or between boats at sea.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL is thought to have originated in the American School for the Deaf (ASD), founded in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817. Originally known as "The American Asylum, At Hartford, For The Education And Instruction Of The Deaf And Dumb", the school was founded by the Yale graduate and divinity student Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. Gallaudet, inspired by his success in demonstrating the learning abilities of a young deaf girl Alice Cogswell, traveled to Europe in order to learn deaf pedagogy from European institutions. Ultimately, Gallaudet chose to adopt the methods of the French Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, and convinced Laurent Clerc, an assistant to the school's founder Charles-Michel de l'Épée, to accompany him back to the United States. Upon his return, Gallaudet founded the ASD on April 15, 1817.


title: American Sign Language

text: The largest group of students during the first seven decades of the school were from Martha's Vineyard, and they brought MVSL with them. There were also 44 students from around Henniker, New Hampshire, and 27 from the Sandy River valley in Maine, each of which had their own village sign language. Other students brought knowledge of their own home signs. Laurent Clerc, the first teacher at ASD, taught using French Sign Language (LSF), which itself had developed in the Parisian school for the deaf established in 1755. From that situation of language contact, a new language emerged, now known as ASL.


title: American Sign Language

text: More schools for the deaf were founded after ASD, and knowledge of ASL spread to those schools. In addition, the rise of Deaf community organizations bolstered the continued use of ASL. Societies such as the National Association of the Deaf and the National Fraternal Society of the Deaf held national conventions that attracted signers from across the country. All of that contributed to ASL's wide use over a large geographical area, atypical of a sign language.


title: American Sign Language

text: Up to the 1950s, the predominant method in deaf education was oralism, acquiring oral language comprehension and production. Linguists did not consider sign language to be true "language" but as something inferior. Recognition of the legitimacy of ASL was achieved by William Stokoe, a linguist who arrived at Gallaudet University in 1955 when that was still the dominant assumption. Aided by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Stokoe argued for manualism, the use of sign language in deaf education. Stokoe noted that sign language shares the important features that oral languages have as a means of communication, and even devised a transcription system for ASL. In doing so, Stokoe revolutionized both deaf education and linguistics. In the 1960s, ASL was sometimes referred to as "Ameslan", but that term is now considered obsolete.


title: American Sign Language

text: Counting the number of ASL signers is difficult because ASL users have never been counted by the American census. The ultimate source for current estimates of the number of ASL users in the United States is a report for the National Census of the Deaf Population (NCDP) by Schein and Delk (1974). Based on a 1972 survey of the NCDP, Schein and Delk provided estimates consistent with a signing population between 250,000 and 500,000. The survey did not distinguish between ASL and other forms of signing; in fact, the name "ASL" was not yet in widespread use.


title: American Sign Language

text: Incorrect figures are sometimes cited for the population of ASL users in the United States based on misunderstandings of known statistics. Demographics of the deaf population have been confused with those of ASL use since adults who become deaf late in life rarely use ASL in the home. That accounts for currently-cited estimations that are greater than 500,000; such mistaken estimations can reach as high as 15,000,000. A 100,000-person lower bound has been cited for ASL users; the source of that figure is unclear, but it may be an estimate of prelingual deafness, which is correlated with but not equivalent to signing.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL is sometimes incorrectly cited as the third- or fourth-most-spoken language in the United States. Those figures misquote Schein and Delk (1974), who actually concluded that ASL speakers constituted the third-largest population "requiring an interpreter in court". Although that would make ASL the third-most used language among monolinguals other than English, it does not imply that it is the fourth-most-spoken language in the United States since speakers of other languages may also speak English.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL is used throughout Anglo-America. That contrasts with Europe, where a variety of sign languages are used within the same continent. The unique situation of ASL seems to have been caused by the proliferation of ASL through schools influenced by the American School for the Deaf, wherein ASL originated, and the rise of community organizations for the Deaf.


title: American Sign Language

text: Throughout West Africa, ASL-based sign languages are signed by educated Deaf adults. Such languages, imported by boarding schools, are often considered by associations to be the official sign languages of their countries and are named accordingly, such as Nigerian Sign Language, Ghanaian Sign Language. Such signing systems are found in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Liberia, Mauritania, Mali, Nigeria, and Togo. Due to lack of data, it is still an open question how similar those sign languages are to the variety of ASL used in America.


title: American Sign Language

text: In addition to the aforementioned West African countries, ASL is reported to be used as a first language in Barbados, Bolivia, Cambodia (alongside Cambodian Sign Language), the Central African Republic, Chad, China (Hong Kong), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, the Philippines, Singapore, and Zimbabwe. ASL is also used as a lingua franca throughout the deaf world, widely learned as a second language.


title: American Sign Language

text: Sign production can often vary according to location. Signers from the South tend to sign with more flow and ease. Native signers from New York have been reported as signing comparatively quicker and sharper. Sign production of native Californian signers has also been reported as being fast. Research on that phenomenon often concludes that the fast-paced production for signers from the coasts could be due to the fast-paced nature of living in large metropolitan areas. That conclusion also supports how the ease with which Southern sign could be caused by the easygoing environment of the South in comparison to that of the coasts.


title: American Sign Language

text: Sign production can also vary depending on age and native language. For example, sign production of letters may vary in older signers. Slight differences in finger spelling production can be a signal of age. Additionally, signers who learned American Sign Language as a second language vary in production. For Deaf signers who learned a different sign language before learning American Sign Language, qualities of their native language may show in their ASL production. Some examples of that varied production include fingerspelling towards the body, instead of away from it, and signing certain movement from bottom to top, instead of top to bottom. Hearing people who learn American Sign Language also have noticeable differences in signing production. The most notable production difference of hearing people learning American Sign Language is their rhythm and arm posture.


title: American Sign Language

text: Most popularly, there are variants of the signs for English words such as "birthday", "pizza", "Halloween", "early", and "soon", just a sample of the most commonly recognized signs with variants based on regional change. The sign for "school" is commonly varied between black and white signers. The variation between signs produced by black and white signers is sometimes referred to as Black American Sign Language.


title: American Sign Language

text: The prevalence of residential Deaf schools can account for much of the regional variance of signs and sign productions across the United States. Deaf schools often serve students of the state in which the school resides. That limited access to signers from other regions, combined with the residential quality of Deaf Schools promoted specific use of certain sign variants. Native signers did not have much access to signers from other regions during the beginning years of their education. It is hypothesized that because of that seclusion, certain variants of a sign prevailed over others due to the choice of variant used by the student of the school/signers in the community.


title: American Sign Language

text: However, American Sign Language does not appear to be vastly varied in comparison to other signed languages. That is because when Deaf education was beginning in the United States, many educators flocked to the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, whose central location for the first generation of educators in Deaf education to learn American Sign Language allows ASL to be more standardized than its variant.


title: American Sign Language

text: Varieties of ASL are found throughout the world. There is little difficulty in comprehension among the varieties of the United States and Canada.


title: American Sign Language

text: Mutual intelligibility among those ASL varieties is high, and the variation is primarily lexical. For example, there are three different words for English "about" in Canadian ASL; the standard way, and two regional variations (Atlantic and Ontario). Variation may also be phonological, meaning that the same sign may be signed in a different way depending on the region. For example, an extremely common type of variation is between the handshapes /1/, /L/, and /5/ in signs with one handshape.


title: American Sign Language

text: There is also a distinct variety of ASL used by the Black Deaf community. Black ASL evolved as a result of racially segregated schools in some states, which included the residential schools for the deaf. Black ASL differs from standard ASL in vocabulary, phonology, and some grammatical structure. While African American English (AAE) is generally viewed as more innovating than standard English, Black ASL is more conservative than standard ASL, preserving older forms of many signs. Black sign language speakers use more two-handed signs than in mainstream ASL, are less likely to show assimilatory lowering of signs produced on the forehead (e.g. KNOW) and use a wider signing space. Modern Black ASL borrows a number of idioms from AAE; for instance, the AAE idiom "I feel you" is calqued into Black ASL.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL is used internationally as a lingua franca, and a number of closely related sign languages derived from ASL are used in many different countries. Even so, there have been varying degrees of divergence from standard ASL in those imported ASL varieties. Bolivian Sign Language is reported to be a dialect of ASL, no more divergent than other acknowledged dialects. On the other hand, it is also known that some imported ASL varieties have diverged to the extent of being separate languages. For example, Malaysian Sign Language, which has ASL origins, is no longer mutually comprehensible with ASL and must be considered its own language. For some imported ASL varieties, such as those used in West Africa, it is still an open question how similar they are to American ASL.


title: American Sign Language

text: When communicating with hearing English speakers, ASL-speakers often use what is commonly called Pidgin Signed English (PSE) or 'contact signing', a blend of English structure with ASL vocabulary. Various types of PSE exist, ranging from highly English-influenced PSE (practically relexified English) to PSE which is quite close to ASL lexically and grammatically, but may alter some subtle features of ASL grammar. Fingerspelling may be used more often in PSE than it is normally used in ASL. There have been some constructed sign languages, known as Manually Coded English (MCE), which match English grammar exactly and simply replace spoken words with signs; those systems are not considered to be varieties of ASL.


title: American Sign Language

text: Tactile ASL (TASL) is a variety of ASL used throughout the United States by and with the deaf-blind. It is particularly common among those with Usher's syndrome. It results in deafness from birth followed by loss of vision later in life; consequently, those with Usher's syndrome often grow up in the Deaf community using ASL, and later transition to TASL. TASL differs from ASL in that signs are produced by touching the palms, and there are some grammatical differences from standard ASL in order to compensate for the lack of nonmanual signing.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL changes over time and from generation to generation. The sign for telephone has changed as the shape of phones and the manner of holding them have changed. The development of telephones with screens has also changed ASL, encouraging the use of signs that can be seen on small screens.


title: American Sign Language

text: In 2013, the White House published a response to a petition that gained over 37,000 signatures to "officially recognize American Sign Language as a community language and a language of instruction in schools". The response is titled "there shouldn't be any stigma about American Sign Language" and addressed that ASL is a vital language for the Deaf and hard of hearing. Stigmas associated with sign languages and the use of sign for educating children often lead to the absence of sign during periods in children's lives when they can access languages most effectively. Scholars such as Beth S. Benedict advocate not only for bilingualism (using ASL and English training) but also for early childhood intervention for children who are deaf. York University psychologist Ellen Bialystok has also campaigned for bilingualism, arguing that those who are bilingual acquire cognitive skills that may help to prevent dementia later in life.


title: American Sign Language

text: Most children born to deaf parents are hearing. Known as CODAs ("Children Of Deaf Adults"), they are often more culturally Deaf than deaf children, most of whom are born to hearing parents. Unlike many deaf children, CODAs acquire ASL as well as Deaf cultural values and behaviors from birth. Such bilingual hearing children may be mistakenly labeled as being "slow learners" or as having "language difficulties" because of preferential attitudes towards spoken language.


title: American Sign Language

text: Although there is no well-established writing system for ASL, written sign language dates back almost two centuries. The first systematic writing system for a sign language seems to be that of Roch-Ambroise Auguste Bébian, developed in 1825. However, written sign language remained marginal among the public. In the 1960s, linguist William Stokoe created Stokoe notation specifically for ASL. It is alphabetic, with a letter or diacritic for every phonemic (distinctive) hand shape, orientation, motion, and position, though it lacks any representation of facial expression, and is better suited for individual words than for extended passages of text. Stokoe used that system for his 1965 "A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles".


title: American Sign Language

text: SignWriting, proposed in 1974 by Valerie Sutton, is the first writing system to gain use among the public and the first writing system for sign languages to be included in the Unicode Standard. SignWriting consists of more than 5000 distinct iconic graphs/glyphs. Currently, it is in use in many schools for the Deaf, particularly in Brazil, and has been used in International Sign forums with speakers and researchers in more than 40 countries, including Brazil, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Tunisia, and the United States. Sutton SignWriting has both a printed and an electronically produced form so that persons can use the system anywhere that oral languages are written (personal letters, newspapers, and media, academic research). The systematic examination of the International Sign Writing Alphabet (ISWA) as an equivalent usage structure to the International Phonetic Alphabet for spoken languages has been proposed. According to some researchers, SignWriting is not a phonemic orthography and does not have a one-to-one map from phonological forms to written forms. That assertion has been disputed, and the process for each country to look at the ISWA and create a phonemic/morphemic assignment of features of each sign language was proposed by researchers Msc. Roberto Cesar Reis da Costa and Madson Barreto in a thesis forum on June 23, 2014. The SignWriting community has an open project on Wikimedia Labs to support the various Wikimedia projects on Wikimedia Incubator and elsewhere involving SignWriting. The ASL Wikipedia request was marked as eligible in 2008 and the test ASL Wikipedia has 50 articles written in ASL using SignWriting.


title: American Sign Language

text: The most widely used transcription system among academics is HamNoSys, developed at the University of Hamburg. Based on Stokoe Notation, HamNoSys was expanded to about 200 graphs in order to allow transcription of any sign language. Phonological features are usually indicated with single symbols, though the group of features that make up a handshape is indicated collectively with a symbol.


title: American Sign Language

text: Several additional candidates for written ASL have appeared over the years, including SignFont, ASL-phabet, and Si5s.


title: American Sign Language

text: For English-speaking audiences, ASL is often glossed using English words. Such glosses are typically all-capitalized and are arranged in ASL order. For example, the ASL sentence DOG NOW CHASE>IX=3 CAT, meaning "the dog is chasing the cat", uses NOW to mark ASL progressive aspect and shows ASL verbal inflection for the third person (written with >IX=3). However, glossing is not used to write the language for speakers of ASL.


title: American Sign Language

text: Each sign in ASL is composed of a number of distinctive components, generally referred to as parameters. A sign may use one hand or both. All signs can be described using the five parameters involved in signed languages, which are handshape, movement, palm orientation, location and nonmanual markers. Just as phonemes of sound distinguish meaning in spoken languages, those parameters are the phonemes that distinguish meaning in signed languages like ASL. Changing any one of them may change the meaning of a sign, as illustrated by the ASL signs THINK and DISAPPOINTED:


title: American Sign Language

text: There are also meaningful nonmanual signals in ASL, which may include movement of the eyebrows, the cheeks, the nose, the head, the torso, and the eyes.


title: American Sign Language

text: William Stokoe proposed that such components are analogous to the phonemes of spoken languages. There has also been a proposal that they are analogous to classes like place and manner of articulation. As in spoken languages, those phonological units can be split into distinctive features. For instance, the handshapes /2/ and /3/ are distinguished by the presence or absence of the feature [± closed thumb], as illustrated to the right. ASL has processes of allophony and phonotactic restrictions. There is ongoing research into whether ASL has an analog of syllables in spoken language.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL has a rich system of verbal inflection, which involves both grammatical aspect: how the action of verbs flows in time—and agreement marking. Aspect can be marked by changing the manner of movement of the verb; for example, continuous aspect is marked by incorporating rhythmic, circular movement, while punctual aspect is achieved by modifying the sign so that it has a stationary hand position. Verbs may agree with both the subject and the object, and are marked for number and reciprocity. Reciprocity is indicated by using two one-handed signs; for example, the sign SHOOT, made with an L-shaped handshape with inward movement of the thumb, inflects to SHOOT, articulated by having two L-shaped hands "shooting" at each other.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL has a productive system of classifiers, which are used to classify objects and their movement in space. For example, a rabbit running downhill would use a classifier consisting of a bent V classifier handshape with a downhill-directed path; if the rabbit is hopping, the path is executed with a bouncy manner. In general, classifiers are composed of a "classifier handshape" bound to a "movement root". The classifier handshape represents the object as a whole, incorporating such attributes as surface, depth, and shape, and is usually very iconic. The movement root consists of a path, a direction and a manner.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL possesses a set of 26 signs known as the American manual alphabet, which can be used to spell out words from the English language. Such signs make use of the 19 handshapes of ASL. For example, the signs for 'p' and 'k' use the same handshape but different orientations. A common misconception is that ASL consists only of fingerspelling; although such a method (Rochester Method) has been used, it is not ASL.


title: American Sign Language

text: Fingerspelling is a form of borrowing, a linguistic process wherein words from one language are incorporated into another. In ASL, fingerspelling is used for proper nouns and for technical terms with no native ASL equivalent. There are also some other loan words which are fingerspelled, either very short English words or abbreviations of longer English words, e.g. "O-N" from English 'on', and "A-P-T" from English 'apartment'. Fingerspelling may also be used to emphasize a word that would normally be signed otherwise.


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL is a subject–verb–object (SVO) language, but various phenomena affect that basic word order. Basic SVO sentences are signed without any pauses:


title: American Sign Language

text: However, other word orders may also occur since ASL allows the topic of a sentence to be moved to sentence-initial position, a phenomenon known as topicalization. In object–subject–verb (OSV) sentences, the object is topicalized, marked by a forward head-tilt and a pause:


title: American Sign Language

text: Besides, word orders can be obtained through the phenomenon of subject copy in which the subject is repeated at the end of the sentence, accompanied by head nodding for clarification or emphasis:


title: American Sign Language

text: ASL also allows null subject sentences whose subject is implied, rather than stated explicitly. Subjects can be copied even in a null subject sentence, and the subject is then omitted from its original position, yielding a verb–object–subject (VOS) construction:


title: American Sign Language

text: Topicalization, accompanied with a null subject and a subject copy, can produce yet another word order, object–verb–subject (OVS).


title: American Sign Language

text: Those properties of ASL allow it a variety of word orders, leading many to question which is the true, underlying, "basic" order. There are several other proposals that attempt to account for the flexibility of word order in ASL. One proposal is that languages like ASL are best described with a topic–comment structure whose words are ordered by their importance in the sentence, rather than by their syntactic properties. Another hypothesis is that ASL exhibits free word order, in which syntax is not encoded in word order but can be encoded by other means such as head nods, eyebrow movement, and body position.


title: American Sign Language

text: Common misconceptions are that signs are iconically self-explanatory, that they are a transparent imitation of what they mean, or even that they are pantomime. In fact, many signs bear no resemblance to their referent because they were originally arbitrary symbols, or their iconicity has been obscured over time. Even so, in ASL iconicity plays a significant role; a high percentage of signs resemble their referents in some way. That may be because the medium of sign, three-dimensional space, naturally allows more iconicity than oral language.


title: American Sign Language

text: In the era of the influential linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, it was assumed that the mapping between form and meaning in language must be completely arbitrary. Although onomatopoeia is a clear exception, since words like 'choo-choo' bear clear resemblance to the sounds that they mimic, the Saussurean approach was to treat them as marginal exceptions. ASL, with its significant inventory of iconic signs, directly challenges that theory.


title: American Sign Language

text: Research on acquisition of pronouns in ASL has shown that children do not always take advantage of the iconic properties of signs when they interpret their meaning. It has been found that when children acquire the pronoun "you", the iconicity of the point (at the child) is often confused, being treated more like a name. That is a similar finding to research in oral languages on pronoun acquisition. It has also been found that iconicity of signs does not affect immediate memory and recall; less iconic signs are remembered just as well as highly-iconic signs.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: Steven Haworth Miller (born October 5, 1943) is an American guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter, known as leader of the Steve Miller Band. He began his career in blues and blues rock and evolved to a more pop-oriented arena rock sound during the mid-1970s through the early 1980s, releasing popular singles and albums. Miller was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Miller received his first exposure to music from his mother, Bertha, whom he described as a remarkable jazz-influenced singer, and his physician father, George, known as "Sonny" who, in addition to his profession as a pathologist, was a jazz enthusiast and an accomplished amateur recording engineer. Guitar virtuoso Les Paul and his musical partner Mary Ford were regular visitors at the Miller house. The Millers were best man and matron of honor at the December 1949 Paul/Ford wedding. Paul became Steve's godfather. Les Paul heard Steve, who was six, on a wire recording made by Dr. Miller, "banging away" on a guitar given to him by his uncle, Dr. K. Dale Atterbury. Paul encouraged Miller to continue with his interest in the guitar... and "perhaps he will be something one day."


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: In 1950, the family relocated to Dallas, Texas. Many distinguished musicians came to the house to record, and Steve absorbed much from "greats" such as T-Bone Walker, Charles Mingus, and Tal Farlow. Walker taught Steve how to play his guitar behind his back and also with his teeth in 1952. In 1955, Steven began attending Dallas' St. Mark's School, a non-denominational preparatory day school for boys where he formed his first band, The Marksmen. He taught his older brother Buddy to play the bass guitar and also instructed his classmate, future musical star Boz Scaggs, on guitar chords so that he could join the band. After leaving St. Mark's—"I got kicked out", he recalled with a laugh in a 2004 interview—he then attended a school in the Lakewood area of Dallas, Woodrow Wilson High School, from which he graduated in 1961. He was inducted into Woodrow's Hall of Fame in 2009. Another member is Dusty Hill of ZZ Top.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: In 1962, Miller returned to Wisconsin, and entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he formed The Ardells. Scaggs joined the Ardells the next year, and Ben Sidran became the band's keyboardist in the following year. After attending the University of Copenhagen in Denmark for a semester in his senior year to study comparative literature, Miller dropped out six credit hours shy of a literature degree, opting to pursue a music career with his mother's encouragement and his father's misgivings:


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: [Interviewer:] "When you look back over the span of your career, what are the lasting moments, the sweetest highs?"


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: [Miller:] I would have to say my father's relationship with Les Paul and T-Bone Walker when I was young. Growing up in Dallas, being part of that phenomenal music scene. I found a way to do what I really wanted to do, which is so important for a kid. Near the end of college, my parents said, 'Steve, what are you going to do?' I said, 'I want to go to Chicago and play the blues.' My father looked at me like I was insane. But my mom said, 'You should do it now.' So I went to Chicago. And that was a special time. I played with Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. I got to work with adults and realized music was what I wanted to do, what I loved.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: Upon his return to the United States, Miller moved to Chicago where he immersed himself in the city's blues scene. During his time there, he worked with harmonica player Paul Butterfield and jammed with blues greats Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Buddy Guy, all of whom encouraged the young guitarist to pursue music. In 1965, Miller and keyboardist Barry Goldberg formed the Goldberg-Miller Blues Band and began playing on the Chicago club scene. They signed with Epic Records and released a single, "The Mother Song". They began a residency at a New York City blues club.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: When Miller returned from New York, he was disappointed by the Chicago blues scene, so he moved to Texas in hopes of finishing his education at the University of Texas at Austin. He was disenchanted with academic politics at the university, so he took a Volkswagen Bus his father had given him and headed to San Francisco. Upon arrival, he used his last $5 to see the Butterfield Blues Band and Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore Auditorium. Miller fell in love with the vibrant San Francisco music scene and decided to stay.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: In 1966, he formed the Steve Miller Band (at first called "The Steve Miller Blues Band"), with Miller handling vocals. They backed Chuck Berry on his "Live at Fillmore Auditorium" album released that year. In 1968, they released an album, "Children of the Future", the first in a series of discs rooted solidly in the psychedelic blues style that then dominated the San Francisco scene. Writing in "Crawdaddy!", Peter Knobler called the album "a triple moment of experience, knowledge, inspiration". Boz Scaggs rejoined Miller for this album and the next one, before starting his solo career.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: The group followed the release of their second album, "Sailor", with "Brave New World", "Your Saving Grace", and "Number 5". These albums performed respectably on the U.S. "Billboard" 200 chart but failed to yield a major hit single. The highest single was "Livin' in the USA" from "Sailor". Songs from this period are featured in a portion of the double album compilation "Anthology", which includes a guest appearance on bass guitar, drums, and backing vocals by Paul McCartney (as Paul Ramon) on "Celebration" and "My Dark Hour".


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: Miller established his persona of the "Gangster of Love" (from "Sailor") and the "Space Cowboy" (from "Brave New World"), which were reused in later works. In 1972, Miller recorded the album "Recall the Beginning...A Journey from Eden", in which a third persona, "Maurice", was introduced in the tune "Enter Maurice".


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: In 1973, "The Joker" marked the start of the second phase of Miller's career: this work was less blues oriented and simpler in composition. The album received significant radio airplay, which helped the title track reach number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart. The single hit No 1 on the UK Singles Chart in September 1990 after it was used for a television commercial.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: Miller followed up with "Fly Like an Eagle" in 1976, and "Book of Dreams" in 1977. (The songs for both had been recorded at the same time, and released over two single albums rather than one double-album.) This pair of albums represented the peak of Miller's commercial career, both reaching the top echelons of the album charts and spawning a lengthy series of hit singles, including "Fly Like an Eagle", "Rock'n Me", "Take the Money and Run", "Jet Airliner", and "Jungle Love". The Steve Miller Band co-headlined a major stadium tour with the Eagles in 1978.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: The Steve Miller Band's ongoing popularity has been notable. In 1978, "Greatest Hits 1974–78" was released, featuring the big hits from his two most popular albums, "Fly Like an Eagle" and "Book of Dreams" along with the title track from "The Joker". This popularity also fueled successful concert tours throughout the 1980s and 1990s, often with large numbers of younger people being present at the concerts, many of whom were fans of the big hits and inevitably purchased the greatest hits album. Miller would often headline shows with other classic rock acts, and played a variety of his music, including a selection of his blues work dating from the late 1960s.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: Miller developed a high degree of music business acumen. Aware that songs earn individual publishing royalties no matter what their length, he separated the 57-second electronic introduction from the song "Sacrifice" on "Book of Dreams", named it "Electro Lux Imbroglio" and published it separately, earning thousands of extra dollars as a result. On the heels of this massive success, Miller took a long hiatus from recording and touring, emerging in 1981 with "Circle of Love". Sales were disappointing, however, and in 1982 he returned to the pop formula with another hit album, "Abracadabra". This was Miller's last great commercial success; a series of collections, live albums and attempts to find a new style appeared in 1984 ("Italian X-Rays"), 1986 ("Living in the 20th Century"), and 1988 ("Born 2B Blue"). He released "Wide River" in 1993, which was his only studio release of new material between 1988 and 2010.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: Miller released "Bingo!" on June 15, 2010. The album of blues covers, issued through his own Space Cowboy label in partnership with Roadrunner/Loud & Proud Records, was his first studio album release since 1993. "Let Your Hair Down", a companion release to "Bingo!", was released 10 months later (on April 18, 2011).


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: For the 2010–11 academic year, Miller was an Artist in Residence at the USC Thornton School of Music, where he taught students in the Popular Music and Music Industry programs.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: In 2016, Miller was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The ceremony caused controversy, due to Miller's disparaging remarks about the experience being "unpleasant" and that the Hall of Fame was misogynistic, and ignoring the "need to respect the artists they say they're honoring, which they don't." His speech that night only hinted at his anger, congenially thanking the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame "for all of your hard work on behalf of all musicians," but adding, "and I encourage you to keep expanding your vision, to be more inclusive of women and to be more transparent in your dealings with the public, and most importantly, to do much more to provide music in our schools." Miller himself said part of his angry behavior that evening was because the Hall vetoed his proposal to be inducted by Elton John, as he "knows me and probably knows my music better than most people", and its controlling aspects such as the licensing contracts. The Black Keys, who were asked to induct Miller and accepted, having been long-time fans, later stated that they regretted the experience. Dan Auerbach said that for him and Patrick Carney, the unpleasant experience was being around Miller, as he had no idea who the band was and did not care. Auerbach and Carney left the ceremony as soon as they finished their speech, instead of staying for the entire event.


title: Steve Miller (musician)

text: Miller has been married four times, and his current wife is Janice Ginsberg Miller. From 1976 to 1986, Miller owned the Lippincott-Wagner House and a ranch in rural southwestern Oregon in the hamlet of Williams. In 2015, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.


title: Zen 3

text: Zen 3 is the codename for a CPU microarchitecture by AMD, released on November 5, 2020. It is the successor to Zen 2 and uses TSMC's 7 nm process for the chiplets and GlobalFoundries's 14 nm process for the I/O die on the server chips and 12 nm for desktop chips. Zen 3 powers Ryzen 5000 mainstream desktop processors (codenamed "Vermeer") and Epyc server processors (codenamed "Milan"). Zen 3 is supported on motherboards with 500 series chipsets; 400 series boards also saw support on select B450 / X470 motherboards with certain BIOSes. Zen 3 is expected to be the last microarchitecture before AMD switches to DDR5 memory and new sockets. According to AMD, Zen 3 has a 19% higher instructions per cycle (IPC) on average than Zen 2. On April 1, 2022, AMD released the new Ryzen 6000 series for the laptop, using an improved "Zen 3+" architecture, bringing RDNA 2 graphics integrated in a APU to the PC for the first time. On April 20, 2022, AMD also released the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which increases the single threading performance by another 15% in gaming by using, for the first time in a PC product, 3D vertically stacked L3 cache.


title: Zen 3

text: Zen 3 is a significant incremental improvement over its predecessors, with an IPC increase of 19%, and being capable of reaching higher clock speeds.


title: Zen 3

text: Like Zen 2, Zen 3 is composed of up to 2 core complex dies (CCD) along with a separate IO die containing the I/O components. A Zen 3 CCD is composed of a single core complex (CCX) containing 8 CPU cores and 32MB of shared L3 cache, this is in contrast to Zen 2 where each CCD is composed of 2 CCX, each containing 4 cores each as well as 16MB of L3 cache. The new configuration allows all 8 cores of the CCX to directly communicate with each other and the L3 Cache instead of having to use the IO die through the Infinity Fabric.


title: Zen 3

text: Zen 3 (along with AMD's RDNA2 GPUs) were also the first implementation of Resizable BAR, an optional feature introduced in PCIe2.0, that was branded as "Smart Access Memory" (SAM). This technology allows CPU to directly access all of compatible video card's VRAM. Intel and Nvidia have since implemented this feature as well.


title: Zen 3

text: In Zen 3, a single 32MB L3 cache pool is shared among all 8 cores in a chiplet, vs. Zen 2's two 16MB pools each shared among 4 cores in a core complex, of which there were two per chiplet. This new arrangement improves the cache hit rate as well as performance in situations that require cache data to be exchanged among cores, but increases cache latency from 39 cycles in Zen 2 to 46 clock cycles and halves per-core cache bandwidth, although both problems are partially mitigated by higher clock speeds. Total cache bandwidth on all 8 cores combined remains the same due to power consumption concerns. L2 cache capacity and latency remain the same at 512KB and 12 cycles. All cache read and write operations are done at 32 bytes per cycle.


title: Zen 3

text: Ryzen 6000 series, which was later released on April 1, 2022, introduced PCIe 4.0 and DDR5/LPDDR5 for the first time in an APU for the laptop and also introduced RDNA2 APU graphics to the PC.


title: Zen 3

text: On April 20, 2022, AMD released the last member of the AM4 family, the 5800X3D. It features, for the first time in a desktop PC product, 3D-stacked vertical L3 cache, which in the size of an extra 64 MB on top of the usual 32 MB increases the total amount to 96 MB and brings tremendous performance improvements for gaming, rivalling the newest processors of the competition while being much more power efficient.


title: Zen 3

text: On October 8, 2020, AMD announced four Zen 3-based desktop Ryzen processors, consisting of one Ryzen 5, one Ryzen 7, and two Ryzen 9 CPUs and featuring between 6 and 16 cores.


title: Zen 3

text: The Ryzen 5000 series desktop CPUs are codenamed "Vermeer", except for the Ryzen 5 5500, which is a "Cezanne" APU with its integrated GPU disabled. Meanwhile the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 series were codenamed "Chagall".


title: Zen 3

text: The Epyc server line of chips based on Zen 3 is named Milan and is the final generation of chips using the SP3 socket. Epyc Milan was released on March 15, 2021.


title: Pretty Good Privacy

text: Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partitions and to increase the security of e-mail communications. Phil Zimmermann developed PGP in 1991.


title: Pretty Good Privacy

text: PGP and similar software follow the OpenPGP, an open standard of PGP encryption software, standard (<nowiki>RFC 4880</nowiki>) for encrypting and decrypting data.


title: Pretty Good Privacy

text: PGP encryption uses a serial combination of hashing, data compression, symmetric-key cryptography, and finally public-key cryptography; each step uses one of several supported algorithms. Each public key is bound to a username or an e-mail address. The first version of this system was generally known as a web of trust to contrast with the X.509 system, which uses a hierarchical approach based on certificate authority and which was added to PGP implementations later. Current versions of PGP encryption include options through an automated key management server.


title: Pretty Good Privacy

text: A public key fingerprint is a shorter version of a public key. From a fingerprint, someone can validate the correct corresponding public key. A fingerprint like C3A6 5E46 7B54 77DF 3C4C 9790 4D22 B3CA 5B32 FF66 can be printed on a business card.


title: Pretty Good Privacy

text: As PGP evolves, versions that support newer features and algorithms can create encrypted messages that older PGP systems cannot decrypt, even with a valid private key. Therefore, it is essential that partners in PGP communication understand each other's capabilities or at least agree on PGP settings.


title: Pretty Good Privacy

text: PGP can be used to send messages confidentially. For this, PGP uses a hybrid cryptosystem by combining symmetric-key encryption and public-key encryption. The message is encrypted using a symmetric encryption algorithm, which requires a symmetric key generated by the sender. The symmetric key is used only once and is also called a session key. The message and its session key are sent to the receiver. The session key must be sent to the receiver so they know how to decrypt the message, but to protect it during transmission it is encrypted with the receiver's public key. Only the private key belonging to the receiver can decrypt the session key, and use it to symmetrically decrypt the message.