title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: A 2010 study by Deirdre Bowen tested many of the arguments used by the anti-affirmative action camp. Her research showed that minority students experience greater hostility, and internal and external stigma in schools located in states that ban affirmative action—not the schools where students may have benefited from affirmative action admissions.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Supporters of affirmative action point out the benefits women gained from the policy as evidence of its ability to assist historically marginalized groups. In the fifty years that disenfranchised groups have been the subject of affirmative action laws, their representation has risen dramatically in the workforce, but some research suggests the increase in white women is due to their decision to enter their workforce rather than affirmative action.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: For the first 250 years of America's recorded history, Africans were traded as commodities and forced to work without pay, first as indentured servants then as slaves. In much of the United States at this time, they were barred from all levels of education, from basic reading to higher-level skills useful outside of the plantation setting.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: According to a study by Dr. Paul Brest, Hispanics or "Latinos" include immigrants who are descendants of immigrants from the countries comprising Central and South America. In 1991, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans made up 80% of the Latino population in the United States. Latinos are disadvantaged compared to White Americans and are more likely to live in poverty. They are the least well-educated major ethnic group and suffered a 3% drop in high school completion rate while African Americans experienced a 12% increase between 1975 and 1990. In 1990, they constituted 9% of the population, but only received 3.1% of the bachelors's degrees awarded. At times when it was favorable to lawmakers, Latinos were considered "white" under Jim Crow laws during Reconstruction. In other cases, according to Paul Brest, Latinos have been classified as an inferior race and a threat to white purity. Latinos have encountered considerable discrimination in areas such as employment, housing, and education. Brest finds that stereotypes continue to be largely negative and many perceive Latinos as "lazy, unproductive, and on the dole." Furthermore, native-born Latino-Americans and recent immigrants are seen as identical since outsiders tend not to differentiate between Latino groups.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: The category of Native American applies to the diverse group of people who lived in North America before European settlement. During the U.S. government's westward expansion, Native Americans were displaced from their land which had been their home for centuries. Instead, they were forced onto reservations which were far smaller and less productive. According to Brest, land belonging to Native Americans was reduced from 138 million acres in 1887 to 52 million acres in 1934. In 1990, the poverty rate for Native Americans was more than triple that of the whites and only 9.4% of Native Americans have completed a bachelor's degree as opposed to 25.2% of whites and 12.2% of African Americans.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Early Asian immigrants experienced prejudice and discrimination in the forms of not having the ability to become naturalized citizens. They also struggled with many of the same school segregation laws that African Americans faced. Particularly, during World War II, Japanese Americans were interned in camps and lost their property, homes, and businesses. Discrimination against Asians began with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and then continued with the Scott Act of 1888 and the Geary Act of 1892. At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States passed the Immigration Act of 1924 to prevent Asian immigration out of fear that Asians were stealing white jobs and lowering the standard for wages. In addition, whites and non-Asians do not differentiate among the different Asian groups and perpetuate the "model minority" stereotype. According to a 2010 article by Professor Qin Zhang of Fairfield University, Asians are characterized as one dimensional in having great work ethic and valuing education, but lacking in communication skills and personality. A negative outcome of this incorrect stereotype is that Asians have been portrayed as having poor leadership and interpersonal skills. This has contributed to the "glass ceiling" phenomenon in which although there are many qualified Asian Americans, they occupy a disproportionately small number of executive positions in businesses; although this has recently changed with the many successes of Asian billionaires, pop-culture icons including Bruce Lee, sports figures such as Jeremy Lin, gold-medal figure skater Michelle Kwan, and free-style skier Eileen Gu.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Many proponents of affirmative action recognize that the policy is inherently unequal; however, minding the inescapable fact that historic inequalities exist in America, they believe the policy is much more fair than one in which these circumstances are not taken into account. Furthermore, those in favor of affirmative action see it as an effort towards inclusion rather than a discriminatory practice. "Job discrimination is grounded in prejudice and exclusion, whereas affirmative action is an effort to overcome prejudicial treatment through inclusion. The most effective way to cure society of exclusionary practices is to make special efforts at inclusion, which is exactly what affirmative action does."


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: There are a multitude of supporters as well as opponents to the policy of affirmative action. Many presidents throughout the last century have failed to take a very firm stance on the policy, and the public has had to discern the president's opinion for themselves. Bill Clinton, however, made his stance on affirmative action very clear in a speech on July 19, 1995, nearly two and a half years after his inauguration. In his speech, he discussed the history in the United States that brought the policy into fruition: slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation. Clinton also mentioned a point similar to President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Freedom is not Enough" speech, and declared that just outlawing discrimination in the country would not be enough to give everyone in America equality. He addressed the arguments that affirmative action hurt the white middle class and said that the policy was not the source of their problems. Clinton plainly outlined his stance on affirmative action, saying:


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In the end, Clinton stated that all the evidence shows that, even though affirmative action should be a temporary policy, the time had not come for it to be ended. He felt it was still a relevant practice and overall, the goal of the nation should be to "mend it, but don't end it." Clinton's words became a slogan for many Americans on the topic of affirmative action.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: The National Conference of State Legislatures held in Washington D.C. stated in a 2014 overview that many supporters for affirmative action argue that policies stemming from affirmative action help to open doors for historically excluded groups in workplace settings and higher education. Workplace diversity has become a business management concept in which employers actively seek to promote an inclusive workplace. By valuing diversity, employers possess the capacity to create an environment in which there is a culture of respect for individual differences as well as the ability to draw in talent and ideas from all segments of the population. By creating this diverse workforce, these employers and companies gain a competitive advantage in an increasingly global economy. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, many private sector employers have concluded that a diverse workforce makes a "company stronger, more profitable, and a better place to work." Therefore, these diversity promoting policies are implemented for competitive reasons rather than as a response to discrimination, but have shown the value in having diversity.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In the year 2000, according to a study by American Association of University Professors (AAUP), affirmative action promoted diversity within colleges and universities. This has been shown to have positive effects on the educational outcomes and experiences of college students as well as the teaching of faculty members. According to a study by Geoffrey Maruyama and José F. Moreno, the results showed that faculty members believed diversity helps students to reach the essential goals of a college education, Caucasian students suffer no detrimental effects from classroom diversity, and that attention to multicultural learning improves the ability of colleges and universities to accomplish their missions. Furthermore, a diverse population of students offers unique perspectives in order to challenge preconceived notions through exposure to the experiences and ideas of others. According to Professor Gurin of the University of Michigan, skills such as "perspective-taking, acceptance of differences, a willingness and capacity to find commonalities among differences, acceptance of conflict as normal, conflict resolution, participation in democracy, and interest in the wider social world" can potentially be developed in college while being exposed to heterogeneous group of students. In addition, broadening perspectives helps students confront personal and substantive stereotypes and fosters discussion about racial and ethnic issues in a classroom setting. Furthermore, the 2000 AAUP study states that having a diversity of views leads to a better discussion and greater understanding among the students on issues of race, tolerance, fairness, etc.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Affirmative action has been the subject of numerous court cases, where it is often contested on constitutional grounds. Some states specifically prohibit affirmative action, such as California (Proposition 209), Washington (Initiative 200), Michigan (Michigan Civil Rights Initiative), and Nebraska (Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative).


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: A 2005 study by Princeton sociologists Thomas J. Espenshade and Chang Y. Chung compared the effects of affirmative action on racial and special groups at three highly selective private research universities. The data from the study represent admissions disadvantage and advantage in terms of SAT points (on the old 1600-point scale):


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In 2009, Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade and researcher Alexandria Walton Radford, in their book "No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal", examined data on students applying to college in 1997 and calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of being accepted at a top private university as whites who scored 1410 and African Americans who got 1100.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: After controlling for grades, test scores, family background (legacy status), and athletic status (whether or not the student was a recruited athlete), Espenshade and Radford found that whites were three times, Hispanics six times, and blacks more than 15 times as likely to be accepted at a US university as Asian Americans. Thomas Espenshade cautions though, "I stop short of saying that Asian-American students are being discriminated against in the college application process because we don't have sufficient empirical evidence to support that claim."


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: According to Richard Sander, artificially elevating minority students into schools they otherwise would not be capable of attending discourages them and tends to engender failure and high dropout rates for these students. For example, about half of Black college students rank in the bottom 20 percent of their classes, Black law school graduates are four times as likely to fail bar exams as are whites, and interracial friendships are more likely to form among students with relatively similar levels of academic preparation; thus, Black and Hispanic people are more socially integrated on campuses where they are less academically mismatched. He states that the supposed "beneficiaries" of affirmative action – minorities – do not actually benefit and rather are harmed by the policy. Sander's ideas have been disputed, and his empirical analyses have been subject to substantial criticism. A group including some of the country's lead statistical methodologists told the Supreme Court that Sander's analyses were sufficiently flawed that the Court would be wise to ignore them entirely. A 2008 study by Jesse Rothstein and Albert H. Yoon confirmed Sander's mismatch findings, but also found that eliminating affirmative action would "lead to a 63 percent decline in Black matriculants at all law schools and a 90 percent decline at elite law schools." These high numbers predictions were doubted in a review of previous studies by Peter Arcidiacono and Michael Lovenheim. Their 2016 article found a strong indication that racial preference results in a mismatch effect. However, they argued that the attendance by some African-American law students to less-selective schools would significantly improve the low first attempt rate at passing the state bar, but they cautioned that such improvements could be outweighed by decreases in law school attendance.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: A 2021 study in the "Quarterly Journal of Economics" found that the 1998 ban on race-based affirmative action in California public universities led to lower wages for minority applicants and deterred qualified students from applying, which it stated was inconsistent with the mismatch effect.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: The controversy surrounding affirmative action's effectiveness is based on the idea of class inequality. Opponents of racial affirmative action argue that the program actually benefits middle- and upper-class African Americans and Hispanic Americans at the expense of lower-class European Americans and Asian Americans. This argument supports the idea of class-based affirmative action. America's poor population is disproportionately made up of people of color, so class-based affirmative action would disproportionately help people of color. This would eliminate the need for race-based affirmative action as well as reducing any disproportionate benefits for middle- and upper-class people of color.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In 1976, a group of Italian American professors at City University of New York successfully advocated to be added as an affirmative action category for promotion and hiring. Italian Americans are usually considered white in the US and would not be covered under affirmative action policies, but statistical evidence suggested that Italian Americans were underrepresented relative to the proportion of Italian American residents in New York City.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Libertarian economist Thomas Sowell wrote in his book, "Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study," that affirmative action policies encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups [i.e., primary beneficiaries of affirmative action] to take advantage of group preference policies.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas opposes affirmative action. He believes the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids consideration of race, such as in race-based affirmative action or preferential treatment. He also believes it creates "a cult of victimization" and implies blacks require "special treatment in order to succeed." Thomas also cites his own experiences of affirmative action programs as a reason for his criticism.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Frederick Lynch, the author of "Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action", did a study on white males that said they were victims of reverse discrimination. Lynch explains that these white men felt frustrated and unfairly victimized by affirmative action. Shelby Steele, another author against affirmative action, wanted to see affirmative action go back to its original meaning of enforcing equal opportunity. He argued that blacks had to take full responsibility in their education and in maintaining a job. Steele believes that there is still a long way to go in America to reach our goals of eradicating discrimination.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Libertarian economist Thomas Sowell identified what he says are negative results of affirmative action in his book, "Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study". Sowell writes that affirmative action policies encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups [i.e., primary beneficiaries of affirmative action] to take advantage of group preference policies; that they tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g., upper and middle class blacks), often to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g., poor white or Asian); that they reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best – the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile – thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole; and that they engender animosity toward preferred groups as well.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Critics of affirmative action assert that while supporters define diversity as "heterogeneous in meaningful ways, for example, in skill set, education, work experiences, perspectives on a problem, cultural orientation, and so forth", the implementation is often solely based on superficial factors including gender, race and country of origin.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In the United States, a prominent form of racial preferences relates to access to education, particularly admission to universities and other forms of higher education. Race, ethnicity, native language, social class, geographical origin, parental attendance of the university in question (legacy admissions), and/or gender are sometimes taken into account when the university assesses an applicant's grades and test scores. Individuals can also be awarded scholarships and have fees paid on the basis of criteria listed above.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In the early 1970s, Walter J. Leonard, an administrator at Harvard University, invented the Harvard Plan, "one of the country's earliest and most effective affirmative-action programs, which became a model for other universities around the country." In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in "Regents of the University of California v. Bakke" that public universities (and other government institutions) could not set specific numerical targets based on race for admissions or employment; the Court said that "goals" and "timetables" for diversity could be set instead.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Dean of Yale Law School Louis Pollak wrote in 1969 that for the previous 15 years Yale "customarily gave less weight to the LSAT and the rest of the standard academic apparatus in assessing black applicants". He wrote that while most black students had "not achieved academic distinction", "very few have failed to graduate" and that "many black alumni have ... speedily demonstrated professional accomplishments of a high order". Pollak justified the university's plans to increase the number of minority students admitted with lowered standards "in the fact ... that the country needs far more—and especially far more well-trained—black lawyers, bearing in mind that today only 2 or 3 per cent of the American bar is black", and that if Yale could help "in meeting this important national need, it ought to try to do so". He believed that the "minor fraction of the student body"—up to two dozen in the class entering that year—with "prior educational deficiencies" was not likely to damage the school, and expected that the number of "well prepared" black applicants would greatly increase in the future.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Scholars such as Ronald Dworkin have asserted that no college applicant has a right to expect that a university will design its admissions policies in a way that prizes any particular set of qualities. In this view, admission is not an honor bestowed to reward superior merit but rather a way to advance the mission as each university defines it. If diversity is a goal of the university and their racial preferences do not discriminate against applicants based on hatred or contempt, then affirmative action can be judged acceptable based on the criteria related to the mission the university sets for itself.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Consistent with this view, admissions officers often claim to select students not based on academic record alone but also on commitment, enthusiasm, motivation, and potential. Highly selective institutions of higher learning do not simply select only the highest SAT performers to populate their undergraduate courses, but high performers, with scores of 2250 to 2400 points, are extraordinarily well-represented at these institutions.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: To accommodate the ruling in "Hopwood v. Texas" banning any use of race in school admissions, the State of Texas passed a law guaranteeing entry to any state university if a student finished in the top 10% of their graduating class. Florida and California also have similar college admission guarantees. Class rank tends to benefit top students at less competitive high schools, to the detriment of students at more competitive high schools. This effect, however, may be intentional since less-funded, less competitive schools are more likely to be schools where minority enrollment is high. Critics argue that class rank is more a measure of one's peers than of one's self. The top 10% rule adds racial diversity only because schools are still highly racially segregated because of residential patterns. To some extent, the class rank rule has the same effect as traditional affirmative action. From 1996 to 1998, Texas did not practice affirmative action in public college admissions, and minority enrollment dropped. The state's adoption of the "top 10 percent" rule has helped return minority enrollment to pre-1996 levels. Race-conscious admissions continue to be practiced in Texas following "Fisher v. University of Texas".


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Professor Cornel West estimated that when he attended Harvard College in the early-1970's, 95% of black students were descended from American black families dating back to the Jim Crow era. But during a panel discussion at Harvard University's reunion for black alumni during the 2003–04 academic year, two prominent black professors at the institution—Lani Guinier and Henry Louis Gates—pointed out that one unintended effect of affirmative-action policies at Harvard designed to increase the number of black students had been the replacement of American black students with black immigrants. Guinier and Gates claimed that only about a third of black Harvard undergraduates were from families in which all four grandparents were born into the African American community, and that the majority of black students at Harvard were Caribbean and immigrants or their children, and/or mixed-race children of biracial couples. By 2007, 41% of black students at Ivy League colleges were reportedly first- or second-generation immigrants, a group which made up only 13% of the US black population. In 2020, Harvard students whose families had been in the US for generations began referring to themselves as "Generational African-Americans", who hypothesized that their numbers were vanishingly small. The subject is alleged to be "taboo" among admissions officers, and black Harvard students have claimed the university has discouraged them from collecting demographic information about the backgrounds of the black student population.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: UCLA professor Richard H. Sander published an article in the November 2004 issue of the "Stanford Law Review" that questioned the effectiveness of racial preferences in law schools. He noted that, prior to his article, there had been no comprehensive study on the effects of affirmative action. The article presents a study that shows that half of all black law students rank near the bottom of their class after the first year of law school and that black law students are more likely to drop out of law school and to fail the bar exam. The article offers a tentative estimate that the production of new black lawyers in the United States would grow by eight percent if affirmative action programs at all law schools were ended. Less qualified black students would attend less prestigious schools where they would be more closely matched in abilities with their classmates and thus perform relatively better. Sander helped to develop a socioeconomically based affirmative action plan for the UCLA School of Law after the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, which prohibited the use of racial preferences by public universities in California. This change occurred after studies showed that the graduation rate of blacks at UCLA was 41%, compared to 73% for whites.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: A 2007 study by Mark Long, an economics professor at the University of Washington, demonstrated that when state referendums and court decisions forced flagship public universities in California, Texas, and Washington to abandon their large, race-based affirmative-action preferences in admissions, so-called "Top-X" alternatives to racial preferences—in which the highest-graded students at all public high schools in the state were guaranteed admission to public colleges—were unable to make up for the losses in black and Hispanic enrollment. Specifically, apparent rebounds of black and Hispanic enrollment were, in fact, explained by increasing minority enrollment in high schools of those states, and the primary beneficiaries of these "class-based" affirmative action policies appeared to be white students. On the other hand, Long noted that affirmative action itself has both moral and material costs, including the unpopularity of race-based affirmative action in college admissions; the high costs associated with full-file reviews of applicants; and the specter of litigation.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: A 2020 study by UC Berkeley Center Studies in Higher Education researcher Zachary Bleemer on the impact of California's ban on affirmative action on student outcomes using a difference-in-difference research design and a newly constructed longitudinal database linking all 1994–2002 University of California applicants to their college enrollment, course performance, major choice, degree attainment, and wages into their mid-30s found "the first causal evidence that banning affirmative action exacerbates socioeconomic inequities." According to the study, the ban on affirmative action decreased Black and Latino student enrollment within the University of California system, reduced their likelihood of graduating and attending graduate school, and resulted in a decline in wages. At the same time, the policy did not significantly impact white and Asian American students.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Dean Pollak wrote of the Yale quota for black students in response to a letter from Judge Macklin Fleming of the California Court of Appeal. Fleming criticized the Yale system as "a long step toward the practice of "apartheid" and the maintenance of two law schools under one roof", with consequent "damage to the standards of Yale Law School". He warned that such an admission policy "will serve to perpetuate the very ideas and prejudices it is designed to combat. If in a given class the great majority of the black students are at the bottom of the class", it would result in racial stratification between students, demands by black students to weaken academic standards, and other racially based "aggressive conduct". Fleming noted that racial quotas were a zero-sum game, as "discrimination in favor of X is automatic discrimination against Y"; Asians in California, for example, were overrepresented in engineering schools and would suffer if black and Mexican applicants received preferential treatment. He stated that a quota system violated "the American creed, one that Yale has proudly espoused ... that an American should be judged as an individual and not as a member of a group".


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In 2006, Jian Li, a Chinese undergraduate at Yale University, filed a civil rights complaint with the Office for Civil Rights against Princeton University, claiming that his race played a role in their decision to reject his application for admission and seeking the suspension of federal financial assistance to the university until it "discontinues discrimination against Asian Americans in all forms" by eliminating race and legacy preferences. Princeton Dean of Admissions Janet Rapelye responded to the claims in the November 30, 2006, issue of the "Daily Princetonian" by stating that "the numbers don't indicate [discrimination]." She said that Li was not admitted because "many others had far better qualifications." Li's extracurricular activities were described as "not all that outstanding". Li countered in an email, saying that his placement on the waitlist undermines Rapelye's claim. "Princeton had initially waitlisted my application," Li said. "So if it were not for a yield which was higher than expected, the admissions office very well may have admitted a candidate whose "outside activities were not all that outstanding". In September 2015, the Department of Justice concluded its nine-year investigation into alleged anti-Asian bias at Princeton and cleared Princeton of charges that it discriminated against Asian American applicants. Furthermore, the department found that a number of Asian American students benefitted from race-conscious admissions.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In 2012, Abigail Fisher, an undergraduate student at Louisiana State University, and Rachel Multer Michalewicz, a law student at Southern Methodist University, filed a lawsuit to challenge the University of Texas admissions policy, asserting it had a "race-conscious policy" that "violated their civil and constitutional rights". The University of Texas employs the "Top Ten Percent Law", under which admission to any public college or university in Texas is guaranteed to high school students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class. Fisher has brought the admissions policy to court because she believes that she was denied acceptance to the University of Texas based on her race, and thus, her right to equal protection according to the 14th Amendment was violated. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher on October 10, 2012, and rendered an ambiguous ruling in 2013 that sent the case back to the lower court, stipulating only that the university must demonstrate that it could not achieve diversity through other, non-race sensitive means. In July 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that UT maintained a "holistic" approach in its application of affirmative action, and could continue the practice. On February 10, 2015, lawyers for Fisher filed a new case in the Supreme Court. It is a renewed complaint that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit got the issue wrong—on the second try as well as on the first. The Supreme Court agreed in June 2015 to hear the case a second time. In July 2016 a majority of the Court found in favor of the University of Texas at Austin, with Justice Kennedy finding for the Court that the university's affirmative action policies were constitutional, despite the requirement of strict scrutiny.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: On November 17, 2014, Students for Fair Admissions, an offshoot of the Project on Fair Representation, filed lawsuits in federal district court challenging the admissions practices of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The UNC-Chapel Hill lawsuit alleges discrimination against white and Asian students, while the Harvard lawsuit focuses on discrimination against Asian applicants. Both universities requested the court to halt the lawsuits until the U.S. Supreme Court provides clarification of relevant law by ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin for the second time.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In May 2015, a coalition of more than 60 Asian-American organizations filed federal complaints with the Education and Justice Departments against Harvard University. The coalition asked for a civil rights investigation into what they described as Harvard's discriminatory admission practices against Asian-American applicants. The complaint asserts that recent studies indicate that Harvard has engaged in systematic and continuous discrimination against Asian Americans in its "holistic" admissions process. Asian-American applicants with near-perfect test scores, top-one-percent grade point averages, academic awards, and leadership positions are allegedly rejected by Harvard because the university uses racial stereotypes, racially differentiated standards, and "de facto" racial quotas. Harvard denies engaging in discrimination and said its admissions philosophy complies with the law. The school said the percentage of Asian-American students admitted has grown from 17% to 21% in a decade while Asian-Americans represent around 6% of the U.S. population. The lawsuit against Harvard was heard in Boston federal court in October 2018. On October 1, 2019, judge Allison D. Burroughs rejected the plaintiffs' claims, ruling that Harvard's admissions practices meet constitutional requirements and do not discriminate against Asian Americans. SFFA filed an appeal in the First Circuit Court of Appeals, with oral argument scheduled for September 2020. Some commentators expect the case to eventually reach the United States Supreme Court.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In August 2020, the US Department of Justice notified Yale University of its findings that Yale illegally discriminates against Asian American and white applicants and demanded Yale cease using race or national origin in its upcoming 2020–2021 undergraduate admissions cycles. Yale has issued a statement viewing the allegation as "baseless" and "rushed" and "will not change its admissions processes in response to today's letter because the DOJ is seeking to impose a standard that is inconsistent with existing law".


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Numerous myths and misperceptions regarding affirmative actions shape public opinion on the issue. These misperceptions often shape public opinion on specific cases as well. For example, in "Students for Fair Admissions", the conflation of two separate issues—Harvard University's affirmative action policy and specific claims of discrimination by Harvard University – colors individuals judgements on affirmative action as a whole. Such conflation allows "longstanding myths about affirmative action and socially salient racial stereotypes concerning who does, and does not, belong in elite institutions of higher education" to prosper. Hence, it is often difficult for public opinion polls on cases, let alone the general issue of affirmative action, to be unaffected by such myths.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: The use of affirmative action in higher education has been debated countless of times during college admissions seasons, especially due to the mismatch effect. Though it creates opportunities for people of color and for people of minority groups to access higher education, many public universities, have been attacked for depending on racial quotas, implemented through affirmative action policies, to reach diversity goals. This has prompted for high-profile lawsuits and Supreme Court rulings based on arguments of reverse racism or discrimination that prevents admissions to "more qualified" white students to take place. Consequently, these cases have constantly reshaped the view on affirmative action policies by referring to it, in its original sense, a race-conscious policy, which ultimately obliges the inclusion of people of minority groups in higher education. Most importantly, it has questioned whether or not affirmative action is effective in achieving numerical goals while avoiding preferential treatment, where many have deemed it a form of "reverse discrimination."


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In 1974, the California Supreme Court ruled that UC Davis violated the Equal Protection Clause and the Civil Rights Act because they were relying on racial quotas heavily. Allen Bakke was a thirty-five-year-old man who applied to UC Davis medical school in two consecutive years, but was rejected both times. This was because UC Davis had a special admission affirmative action program that reserved 16 spots for minority students, out of 100 admission slots, which Bakke argued was the reason he was rejected twice from the medical program despite having a high GPA and MCAT score. In this special program, mostly run by members from minority groups, applicants who were considered disadvantaged did not have to meet the 2.5 grade point average minimum that the general admissions program implemented, and were only rated against other applicants from minority groups. Since UC Davis wasn't able to prove that Bakke wouldn't have been admitted even if the special admission programs didn't exist, it was concluded that he was being discriminated by the color of his skin and was not being treated equally due to the racial quota. Thus, Bakke was admitted to the school, as 8 out of 9 judges declared that the heavy reliance on the racial quota violated the Equal Protection Clause on the Fourteenth Amendment. This ruling, however, did not prohibit the use of race as a factor in college admissions decisions, it only prohibited its use for non-competitive admissions that favored a small demographic of minority group students.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Public opinion polls on affirmative action have varied significantly. It is likely that survey design, the framing of the survey question itself, and other factors may have significant effects on the survey results. The following polls only discuss affirmative action in higher education. In general, "affirmative action" is supported by the general public, but "considerations based on race" are opposed.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In a survey conducted by Gallup in 2013, 67% of U.S. adults believed college admission should be solely based on merit. According to Gallup: "One of the clearest examples of affirmative action in practice is colleges' taking into account a person's racial or ethnic background when deciding which applicants will be admitted. Americans seem reluctant to endorse such a practice, and even blacks, who have historically been helped by such programs, are divided on the matter. Aside from African Americans, a majority of all other major subgroups believe colleges should determine admissions solely on merit."


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In a national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2014, among 3,335 Americans, 63% felt that affirmative action programs designed to increase the number of African American and minority students on college campuses are a good thing.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: In February 2019, Gallup published the results of a November and December 2018 survey and found that support for affirmative action programs was growing. They polled 6,502 Americans. Of survey respondents, 65% favored affirmative action programs for women and 61% favored affirmative action programs for minorities.


title: Affirmative action in the United States

text: Also in February 2019, the Pew Research Center published the results of a January and February 2019 survey and found that 73% of its respondents said that race or ethnicity should not be a factor in college admissions decisions. According to this survey's results, majorities across racial and ethnic groups agree that race should not be a factor in college admissions decisions. White adults are particularly likely to hold this view: 78% say this, compared with 65% of Hispanics, 62% of African Americans, and 58% of Asians.


title: Inflection point

text: In differential calculus and differential geometry, an inflection point, point of inflection, flex, or inflection (British English: inflexion) is a point on a smooth plane curve at which the curvature changes sign. In particular, in the case of the graph of a function, it is a point where the function changes from being concave (concave downward) to convex (concave upward), or vice versa.


title: Inflection point

text: For the graph of a function of differentiability class ("f", its first derivative "f, and its second derivative "f<nowiki>"</nowiki>", exist and are continuous), the condition "f<nowiki>"</nowiki> = 0" can also be used to find an inflection point since a point of "f<nowiki>"</nowiki> = 0" must be passed to change "f<nowiki>"</nowiki>" from a positive value (concave upward) to a negative value (concave downward) or vice versa as "f<nowiki>"</nowiki>" is continuous; an inflection point of the curve is where "f<nowiki>"</nowiki> = 0" and changes its sign at the point (from positive to negative or from negative to positive). A point where the second derivative vanishes but does not change its sign is sometimes called a point of undulation or undulation point"'.


title: Inflection point

text: In algebraic geometry an inflection point is defined slightly more generally, as a regular point where the tangent meets the curve to order at least 3, and an undulation point or hyperflex is defined as a point where the tangent meets the curve to order at least 4.


title: Inflection point

text: Inflection points in differential geometry are the points of the curve where the curvature changes its sign.


title: Inflection point

text: For example, the graph of the differentiable function has an inflection point at if and only if its first derivative has an isolated extremum at . (this is not the same as saying that has an extremum). That is, in some neighborhood, is the one and only point at which has a (local) minimum or maximum. If all extrema of are isolated, then an inflection point is a point on the graph of at which the tangent crosses the curve.


title: Inflection point

text: A "falling point of inflection" is an inflection point where the derivative is negative on both sides of the point; in other words, it is an inflection point near which the function is decreasing. A "rising point of inflection" is a point where the derivative is positive on both sides of the point; in other words, it is an inflection point near which the function is increasing.


title: Inflection point

text: For a smooth curve given by parametric equations, a point is an inflection point if its signed curvature changes from plus to minus or from minus to plus, i.e., changes sign.


title: Inflection point

text: For a smooth curve which is a graph of a twice differentiable function, an inflection point is a point on the graph at which the second derivative has an isolated zero and changes sign.


title: Inflection point

text: In algebraic geometry, a non singular point of an algebraic curve is an "inflection point" if and only if the intersection number of the tangent line and the curve (at the point of tangency) is greater than 2. The main motivation of this different definition, is that otherwise the set of the inflection points of a curve would not be an algebraic set. In fact, the set of the inflection points of a plane algebraic curve are exactly its non-singular points that are zeros of the Hessian determinant of its projective completion.


title: Inflection point

text: For a function "f", if its second derivative exists at and is an inflection point for , then , but this condition is not sufficient for having a point of inflection, even if derivatives of any order exist. In this case, one also needs the lowest-order (above the second) non-zero derivative to be of odd order (third, fifth, etc.). If the lowest-order non-zero derivative is of even order, the point is not a point of inflection, but an "undulation point". However, in algebraic geometry, both inflection points and undulation points are usually called "inflection points". An example of an undulation point is for the function given by .


title: Inflection point

text: In the preceding assertions, it is assumed that has some higher-order non-zero derivative at , which is not necessarily the case. If it is the case, the condition that the first nonzero derivative has an odd order implies that the sign of is the same on either side of in a neighborhood of . If this sign is positive, the point is a "rising point of inflection"; if it is negative, the point is a "falling point of inflection".


title: Inflection point

text: A stationary point of inflection is not a local extremum. More generally, in the context of functions of several real variables, a stationary point that is not a local extremum is called a saddle point.


title: Inflection point

text: An example of a stationary point of inflection is the point on the graph of . The tangent is the -axis, which cuts the graph at this point.


title: Inflection point

text: An example of a non-stationary point of inflection is the point on the graph of , for any nonzero . The tangent at the origin is the line , which cuts the graph at this point.


title: Inflection point

text: Some functions change concavity without having points of inflection. Instead, they can change concavity around vertical asymptotes or discontinuities. For example, the function formula_1 is concave for negative and convex for positive , but it has no points of inflection because 0 is not in the domain of the function.


title: Inflection point

text: Some continuous functions have an inflection point even though the second derivative is never 0. For example, the cube root function is concave upward when x is negative, and concave downward when x is positive, but has no derivatives of any order at the origin.


title: Las Vegas Aces

text: The Las Vegas Aces are an American professional basketball team based in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The Aces compete in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) as a member club of the league's Western Conference. The team plays their home games at Michelob Ultra Arena in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. The Aces won the 2022 WNBA Commissioner’s Cup and WNBA Championship.


title: Las Vegas Aces

text: The team was founded in Salt Lake City, Utah, as the Utah Starzz before the league's inaugural 1997 season. It then moved to San Antonio, Texas before the 2003 season and became the San Antonio Silver Stars, later shortened to the San Antonio Stars in 2014. The team relocated to Las Vegas before the 2018 season. The Aces, who are owned by Mark Davis, the current owner of the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders, are one of three WNBA franchises who compete in a market that lacks a current NBA team; the other two teams are the Connecticut Sun and the Seattle Storm.


title: Las Vegas Aces

text: As the Stars, the team qualified for the WNBA Playoffs in seven of their fifteen years in San Antonio. The franchise has been home to many high-quality players such as all-star point guard Becky Hammon, solid power-forward Sophia Young, former first-overall draft pick Ann Wauters, seven-foot-two-inch center Margo Dydek, two-time Sixth Woman of the Year Dearica Hamby, and two-time league M’VP A'ja Wilson. The franchise has gone to the WNBA Finals three times: first in 2008, losing to Detroit, in 2020 losing to Seattle, and in 2022 winning against Connecticut.


title: Las Vegas Aces

text: One of the eight original WNBA teams, the "Utah Starzz" (partially named after the old ABA team, the Utah Stars, but with the zz at the end like the Utah Jazz) never met the same success as their (former) counterpart in the NBA, the Utah Jazz. They held the distinction of having the worst record in the WNBA in 1997 and were the first team to select in the 1998 WNBA Draft. With their selection, they picked 7 ft. 2 in. center Margo Dydek, who easily became the tallest player in WNBA history. Unfortunately, the pickup of Dydek did little to help their cause and they again finished near the bottom of the league in the 1998 & 1999 seasons. The Starzz finally posted a winning record in 2000, but did not make the playoffs. In 2001, the Utah Starzz made it to the playoffs for the first time, but they were quickly swept in the first round by the Sacramento Monarchs. In 2002, the Starzz made it to the playoffs again, and this time beat the Houston Comets in the Western Conference Semifinals 2 games to 1. Their playoff run ended in the Western Finals, however, as they were swept aside by the eventual champs, the Los Angeles Sparks.


title: Las Vegas Aces

text: When the NBA divested itself of all of its WNBA franchises at the end of the 2002 season, the Utah Jazz ownership did not wish to retain ownership of the Starzz. The Starzz then looked for local Utah potential buyers, but none were found, leaving the franchise with the choices of either being sold to out-of-town investor(s) or folding. The Starzz avoided folding when the franchise was sold to Peter Holt (the owner of the NBA's San Antonio Spurs) and relocated to San Antonio. The team's name was changed to the "San Antonio Silver Stars" and would change its team colors to the silver and black motif used by the Spurs.


title: Las Vegas Aces

text: For the first four seasons (2003–2006) after moving to San Antonio, the franchise was unable to change its old losing trend and did not make the playoffs. The 2007 season brought a lot of change for the Silver Stars. They acquired stars Becky Hammon, Ruth Riley, and Sandora Irvin in trades, selected Helen Darling in Charlotte Sting's dispersal draft, drafted Camille Little in the second round, signed Erin Buescher during the off-season, and retained key players, such as Marie Ferdinand-Harris, Vickie Johnson, Shanna Crossley, Kendra Wecker, and Sophia Young. The new-look Silver Stars became an instant contender in the Western Conference. On August 4, 2007 the Silver Stars clinched their first playoff berth since the franchise relocated to San Antonio in 2003. In the first round, the Silver Stars were matched up against the Sacramento Monarchs. After losing game 1 in Sacramento, the Silver Stars would win games 2 and 3 to advance to the Western Finals. The Silver Stars faced off against a strong Phoenix Mercury team, which had the number 1 seed in the Western Conference. On September 1, 2007 the Silver Stars' season came to an end after the Stars lost Game 2 98–92 in Phoenix.


title: Las Vegas Aces

text: Heading into 2008, the Silver Stars were regarded as a premiere contender and did not disappoint. After an average start, the Stars seized control of the Western Conference and rode to the best record in the West, and the #1 seed in the playoffs. In the WNBA Finals, the Silver Stars faced the Detroit Shock, who were making their third WNBA Finals appearance in a row. In Game 1 at home, the Silver Stars fell behind early, but would tie the game at 69 with 2:15 left in the 4th quarter. But from there the Shock took control once again and won the game 77–69. The 2010 season was not much different for the Stars. They finished with an unimpressive 14–20 record but sneaked into the third seed of the playoffs in a below-average Western Conference. The Silver Stars were swept in the first round of the playoffs by Phoenix and it was clear that some changes were needed. In the 2012 playoffs, the Silver Stars lost in the first round to the Los Angeles Sparks. The team would miss the playoffs in 2013. In the 2014 playoffs, the Stars would lose in the first round to the Minnesota Lynx.


title: Las Vegas Aces

text: After the Spurs Sports & Entertainment decided to put the team up for sale, following the 2017 season, it became apparent the team would be on the move. The NBA and WNBA approved the sale of the Stars to MGM Resorts on October 17, 2017, with the intention of relocating the team to Las Vegas and playing at the Michelob Ultra Arena starting in the 2018 season. On December 11, 2017, at a press conference inside the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, the team name was officially announced as the Las Vegas Aces. They received the first pick in the 2018 WNBA Draft, and picked South Carolina's A'ja Wilson. On January 14, 2021, Mark Davis, owner of the Las Vegas Raiders agreed to purchase the team from MGM. The purchase was approved by the league on February 12, 2021. Shortly after the purchase of the team by Davis, ground was broken on a training facility for the Aces in Henderson next to the Raiders facility. The 50,000 square foot facility will house the Aces’ practice facility, offices, training room, weight room, hydrotherapy space, physical therapy area, locker rooms, a lecture hall, player and alumni lounges, and an on-site day care center and is expected to be completed by March 2023. In May 2021, Davis hired former LSU Lady Tigers basketball head coach Nikki Fargas as team president. On December 31, 2021, Becky Hammon was hired as head coach in a deal that made her the highest paid coach in the WNBA. During the 2022 season, the Aces defeated the Phoenix Mercury in round 1 and the Seattle Storm in the semifinals before deafeating the Connecticut Sun in the 2022 WNBA Finals in 4 games to win the franchise's first championship and the first professional sports championship for Las Vegas.


title: Las Vegas Aces

text: Aces games are broadcast locally on the second digital subchannel of KVCW, which is branded as My LVTV.


title: Las Vegas Aces

text: All games (excluding blackout games, which are available on ESPN3.com) are broadcast to the WNBA LiveAccess game feeds on the league website. Furthermore, some Aces games are broadcast nationally on ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, and the CBS Sports Network. The WNBA reached an eight-year agreement with ESPN, which pays rights fees to the Aces, as well as other teams in the league.


title: Byronic hero

text: The Byronic hero is a variant of the Romantic hero as a type of character, named after the English Romantic poet Lord Byron. Both Byron's own persona as well as characters from his writings are considered to provide defining features to the character type.


title: Byronic hero

text: The Byronic hero first reached a very wide public in Byron's semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (1812–1818). Historian and critic Lord Macaulay described the character as "a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection".


title: Byronic hero

text: Byron's poems with Oriental settings show more "swashbuckling" and decisive versions of the type. Later works show Byron progressively distancing himself from the figure by providing alternative hero types, like Sardanapalus ("Sardanapalus"), Juan ("Don Juan") or Torquil ("The Island"), or, when the figure is present, by presenting him as less sympathetic (Alp in "The Siege of Corinth") or criticising him through the narrator or other characters. Byron would later attempt such a turn in his own life when he joined the Greek War of Independence, with fatal results, though recent studies show him acting with greater political acumen and less idealism than previously thought. The actual circumstances of his death from disease in Greece were unglamorous in the extreme, but back in England these details were ignored in the many works promoting his myth.


title: Byronic hero

text: The initial version of the type in Byron's work, Childe Harold, draws on a variety of earlier literary characters including Hamlet, Goethe's Werther (1774), and William Godwin's Mr. Faulkland in "Caleb Williams" (1794); he was also noticeably similar to René, the hero of Chateaubriand's novella of 1802, although Byron may not have read this. Ann Radcliffe's "unrepentant" Gothic villains (beginning in 1789 with the publication of "The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, a Highland Story") also foreshadow a moody, egotistical Byronic "villain" nascent in Byron's own juvenilia, some of which looks back to Byron's Gordon relations, Highland aristocrats or Jacobites now lost between two worlds. For example, in Byron's early poem "When I Roved a Young Highlander" (1808), we see a reflection of Byron's youthful Scottish connection, but also find these lines:


title: Byronic hero

text: These lines echo William Wordsworth's treatment of James Macpherson's Ossian in "Glen-Almain" (1807):


title: Byronic hero

text: Thus Byron's poem seems to show that a brooding, melancholy influence not only from Wordsworth but also from Macpherson was very much on his mind at an early date.


title: Byronic hero

text: After "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", the Byronic hero made an appearance in many of Byron's other works, including his series of poems on Oriental themes: "The Giaour" (1813), "The Corsair" (1814) and "Lara" (1814); and his closet play "Manfred" (1817). For example, Byron described Conrad, the pirate hero of his "The Corsair" (1814), as follows:


title: Byronic hero

text: Admiration of Byron continued to be fervent in the years following his death. Notable fans included Alfred Tennyson. Fourteen at the time of Byron's death, and so grieved at the poet's passing, he carved the words "Byron is dead" on a rock near his home in Somersby, declaring the "world had darkened for him". However, the admiration of Byron as a character led some fans to emulate characteristics of the Byronic hero. Foremost was Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who took the Byron cult to remarkable extremes. His marriage to Byron's granddaughter, taking a "Byron pilgrimage" around the Continent and his anti-imperialist stance that saw him become an outcast just like his hero cemented his commitment to emulating the Byronic character.


title: Byronic hero

text: Byron's influence is manifest in many authors and artists of the Romantic movement and writers of Gothic fiction during the 19th century. Lord Byron was the model for the title character of "Glenarvon" (1816) by Byron's erstwhile lover Lady Caroline Lamb; and for Lord Ruthven in "The Vampyre" (1819) by Byron's personal physician, John William Polidori. Edmond Dantes from Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" (1844), Heathcliff from Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" (1847), and Rochester from Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" (1847) are other later 19th-century examples of Byronic heroes.


title: Byronic hero

text: In later Victorian literature, the Byronic character only seemed to survive as a solitary figure, resigned to suffering. However, Charles Dickens' representation of the character is more complex than that. Steerforth in "David Copperfield" manifests the concept of the "fallen angel" aspect of the Byronic hero; his violent temper and seduction of Emily should turn the reader, and indeed David, against him. But it does not. He still retains a fascination, as David admits in the aftermath of discovering what Steerforth has done to Emily. He may have done wrong, but David cannot bring himself to hate him. Steerforth's occasional outbreaks of remorse reveal a tortured character, echoing a Byronic remorse. Harvey concludes that Steerforth is a remarkable blend of both villain and hero, and exploration of both sides of the Byronic character.


title: Byronic hero

text: Scholars have also drawn parallels between the Byronic hero and the solipsist heroes of Russian literature. In particular, Alexander Pushkin's famed character Eugene Onegin echoes many of the attributes seen in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", particularly, Onegin's solitary brooding and disrespect for traditional privilege. The first stages of Pushkin's poetic novel "Eugene Onegin" appeared twelve years after Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", and Byron was of obvious influence (Vladimir Nabokov argued in his "Commentary to Eugene Onegin" that Pushkin had read Byron during his years in exile just prior to composing "Eugene Onegin"). The same character themes continued to influence Russian literature, particularly after Mikhail Lermontov invigorated the Byronic hero through the character Pechorin in his 1839 novel "A Hero of Our Time".


title: Byronic hero

text: The Byronic hero is also featured in many contemporary novels, and has played a role in modern literature as the precursor to a popular form of antihero. Erik, the Phantom from Gaston Leroux's "Phantom of the Opera" (1909–1910) is a well-known example from the first half of the twentieth century, while Ian Fleming's James Bond (if not his cinematic incarnations) shows all the earmarks in the second half: "Lonely, melancholy, of fine natural physique, which has become in some way ravaged ... dark and brooding in expression, of a cold and cynical veneer, above all "enigmatic," in possession of a sinister secret."


title: Byronic hero

text: There are also suggestions of the potential of a Byronic heroine in Byron's works. Charles J. Clancy argues that Aurora Raby in "Don Juan" possesses many of the characteristics typical of a Byronic hero. Described as "silent, lone" in the poem, her life has indeed been spent in isolation – she has been orphaned from birth. She validates Thorslev's assertion that Byronic heroes are "invariably solitaries". Yet, like her male counterpart, she evokes an interest from those around her, "There was awe in the homage which she drew". Again, this is not dissimilar to the description of the fascination that Byron himself encountered wherever he went. Her apparent mournful nature is also reminiscent of the regretful mien of the Byronic hero. She is described as having deeply sad eyes, "Eyes which sadly shone, as Seraphs' shine". This was a specific characteristic of the Byronic hero. This seems to express a despair with humanity, not unlike the despair present in Byron's "Cain", as Thorslev notes. She herself admits to despairing at "man's decline", therefore this brings her into direct comparison with Cain's horror at the destruction of humanity.


title: Cadmus

text: In Greek mythology, Cadmus (; ) was the legendary Phoenician founder of Boeotian Thebes. He was the first Greek hero and, alongside Perseus and Bellerophon, the greatest hero and slayer of monsters before the days of Heracles. Commonly stated to be a prince of Phoenicia, the son of king Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre, the brother of Phoenix, Cilix and Europa, Cadmus could trace his origins back to Zeus. Originally, he was sent by his royal parents to seek out and escort his sister Europa back to Tyre after she was abducted from the shores of Phoenicia by Zeus. In early accounts, Cadmus and Europa were instead the children of Phoenix. Cadmus founded the Greek city of Thebes, the acropolis of which was originally named "Cadmeia" in his honour.


title: Cadmus

text: Cadmus' homeland was the subject of significant disagreement among ancient authors. Apollodorus identifies it as Phoenicia, but Tyre, Sidon, and even Thebes in Egypt are referenced in different accounts. His parentage is sometimes modified to suit, e.g. claims of Theban origin name his mother as one of the daughters of Nilus, one of the Potamoi and deity of the Nile river.


title: Cadmus

text: Cadmus was credited by the ancient Greeks (such as Herodotus 484 – 425 BC, one of the first Greek historians, with introducing the original Phoenician alphabet to the Greeks, who adapted it to form their Greek alphabet. Herodotus estimates that Cadmus lived sixteen hundred years before his time, which would be around 2000 BC. Herodotus had seen and described the Cadmean writing in the temple of Apollo at Thebes engraved on certain tripods. He estimated those tripods to date back to the time of Laius the great-grandson of Cadmus. On one of the tripods there was this inscription in Cadmean writing, which, as he attested, resembled Ionian letters: ("Amphitryon dedicated me from the spoils of [the battle of] Teleboae.").


title: Cadmus

text: Although Greeks like Herodotus dated Cadmus's role in the founding myth of Thebes to well before the Trojan War (or, in modern terms, during the Aegean Bronze Age), this chronology conflicts with most of what is now known or thought to be known about the origins and spread of both the Phoenician and Greek alphabets. The earliest Greek inscriptions match Phoenician letter forms from the late 9th or 8th centuries BC—in any case, the Phoenician alphabet properly speaking was not developed until around 1050 BC (or after the Bronze Age collapse). The Homeric picture of the Mycenaean age betrays extremely little awareness of writing, possibly reflecting the loss during the Dark Age of the earlier Linear B script. Indeed, the only Homeric reference to writing was in the phrase "σήματα λυγρά", "sēmata lugra", literally "baneful signs", when referring to the Bellerophontic letter. Linear B tablets have been found in abundance at Thebes, which might lead one to speculate that the legend of Cadmus as bringer of the alphabet could reflect earlier traditions about the origins of Linear B writing in Greece (as Frederick Ahl speculated in 1967). However, in modern-day Lebanon, Cadmus is still revered and celebrated as the "carrier of the letter" to the world.


title: Cadmus

text: According to Greek myth, Cadmus's descendants ruled at Thebes on and off for several generations, including the time of the Trojan War.


title: Cadmus

text: The etymology of Cadmus' name remains uncertain. Possible connected words include the Semitic triliteral root "qdm" () which signifies "east" in Ugaritic, in Arabic, words derived from the root "qdm" include the verb "qdm" meaning "to come" as well as words meaning "primeval" and "forth" as well as "foot", names derived from it are "Qadim", which means "he who advances" and "of antiquity", ─ in Hebrew, "qedem" means "front", "east" and "ancient times"; the verb "qadam" () means "to be in front", and the Greek "kekasmai" (<*"kekadmai") "to shine". Therefore, the complete meaning of the name might be: "He who excels" or "from the east".


title: Cadmus

text: After his sister Europa had been carried off by Zeus from the shores of Phoenicia, Cadmus was sent out by his father to find her, and enjoined not to return without her. Unsuccessful in his search—or unwilling to go against Zeus—he came to Samothrace, the island sacred to the "Great Gods" or the Kabeiroi, whose mysteries would be celebrated also at Thebes.


title: Cadmus

text: Cadmus did not journey alone to Samothrace; he appeared with his mother Telephassa in the company of his nephew (or brother) Thasus, son of Cilix, who gave his name to the island of Thasos nearby. An identically composed trio had other names at Samothrace, according to Diodorus Siculus: Electra and her two sons, Dardanos and Eetion or Iasion. There was a fourth figure, Electra's daughter, Harmonia, whom Cadmus took away as a bride, as Zeus had abducted Europa.


title: Cadmus

text: The wedding was the first celebrated on Earth to which the gods brought gifts, according to Diodorus and dined with Cadmus and his bride.


title: Cadmus

text: Cadmus came in the course of his wanderings to Delphi, where he consulted the oracle. He was ordered to give up his quest and follow a special cow, with a half moon on her flank, which would meet him, and to build a town on the spot where she should lie down exhausted.


title: Cadmus

text: The cow was given to Cadmus by Pelagon, King of Phocis, and it guided him to Boeotia, where he founded the city of Thebes.


title: Cadmus

text: Intending to sacrifice the cow to Athena, Cadmus sent some of his companions, Deioleon and Seriphus to the nearby Ismenian spring for water. They were slain by the spring's guardian water-dragon (compare the Lernaean Hydra), which was in turn destroyed by Cadmus, the duty of a culture hero of the new order.


title: Cadmus

text: He was then instructed by Athena to sow the dragon's teeth in the ground, from which there sprang a race of fierce armed men, called the "Spartoi" ("sown"). By throwing a stone among them, Cadmus caused them to fall upon one another until only five survived, who assisted him to build the Cadmeia or citadel of Thebes, and became the founders of the noblest families of that city.


title: Cadmus

text: The dragon had been sacred to Ares, so the god made Cadmus do penance for eight years by serving him. According to Theban tellings, it was at the expiration of this period that the gods gave him Harmonia ("harmony", literally "putting or assembling together", "good assembly", or "good composition") as wife. At Thebes, Cadmus and Harmonia began a dynasty with a son Polydorus, and four daughters, Agave, Autonoë, Ino and Semele. In rare account, the couple instead had six daughters which are called the Cadmiades: Ino, Agaue, Semele, Eurynome, Kleantho and Eurydike.


title: Cadmus

text: At the wedding, whether celebrated at Samothrace or at Thebes, all the gods were present; Harmonia received as bridal gifts a "peplos" worked by Athena and a necklace made by Hephaestus. This necklace, commonly referred to as the Necklace of Harmonia, brought misfortune to all who possessed it. Notwithstanding the divinely ordained nature of his marriage and his kingdom, Cadmus lived to regret both: his family was overtaken by grievous misfortunes, and his city by civil unrest. Cadmus finally abdicated in favor of his grandson Pentheus, and went with Harmonia to Illyria, to fight on the side of the Enchelii. Later, as king, he founded the city of Lychnidos and Bouthoe.


title: Cadmus

text: Nevertheless, Cadmus was deeply troubled by the ill-fortune which clung to him as a result of his having killed the sacred dragon, and one day he remarked that if the gods were so enamoured of the life of a serpent, he might as well wish that life for himself. Immediately he began to grow scales and change in form. Harmonia, seeing the transformation, thereupon begged the gods to share her husband's fate, which they granted (Hyginus).


title: Cadmus

text: In another telling of the story, the bodies of Cadmus and his wife were changed after their deaths; the serpents watched their tomb while their souls were translated to the fields. In Euripides' "The Bacchae", Cadmus is given a prophecy by Dionysus whereby both he and his wife will be turned into snakes for a period before eventually being brought to live among the blest.


title: Cadmus

text: The legendary hero Cadmus also was used as an identification figure by the Argives, representing an intriguing example of mythical requisition in relation to the wars between Argos and Thebes. According to the Argive legend, Cadmus' father Agenor was descended from the Argive princess Io. In this light, Cadmus becomes an Argive and Thebes his "home away from home", which is connected with the emergence of hybrid identities during the period of the Great Colonization.


title: Cadmus

text: In Phoenician, as well as Hebrew, the Semitic root "qdm" signifies "the east", the Levantine origin of "Kdm" himself, according to the Greek mythographers; the equation of "Kadmos" with the Semitic "qdm" was traced to a publication of 1646 by R. B. Edwards. The name "Kadmos" has been thoroughly Hellenised. The fact that Hermes was worshipped in Samothrace under the name of Cadmus or Cadmilus seems to show that the Theban Cadmus was interpreted as an ancestral Theban hero corresponding to the Samothracian. Another Samothracian connection for Cadmus is offered via his wife Harmonia, who is said by Diodorus Siculus to be daughter of Zeus and Electra and of Samothracian birth.


title: Cadmus

text: Cadmus was of ultimately divine ancestry, the grandson of the sea god Poseidon and Libya on his father's side, and of Nilus (the River Nile) on his mother's side; overall he was considered a member of the fifth generation of beings following the (mythological) creation of the world:


title: Cadmus

text: With Harmonia, he was the father of Semele, Polydorus, Autonoe, Agave and Ino. Their youngest son was Illyrius. According to Greek mythology, Cadmus is the ancestor of Illyrians and Theban royalty.


title: Cadmus

text: It has been argued by various scholars, that in a letter from the King of Ahhiyawa to the Hittite King, written in the Hittite language in c. 1250 BC, a specific Cadmus was mentioned as a forefather of the Ahhijawa people. The latter term most probably referred to the Mycenaean world (Achaeans), or at least to a part of it. Nevertheless, this reading about a supposed Cadmus as historical person is rejected by most scholars.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Hustle is a British television crime drama series starring Adrian Lester, Robert Glenister and Robert Vaughn. Created by Tony Jordan, it was produced by Kudos Film and Television, and broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom. The show premiered on 24 February 2004, and ran for eight series, with its final episode aired on 17 February 2012. The show's premise is on a group of con artists who specialise in "long cons" – extended forms of deceptive frauds that require greater commitment, but offer higher rewards than simple confidence tricks. The show's most notable qualities are plots that involve behind-the-scenes action that the viewers are unaware of until near the end of an episode, along with fantasy scenes and occasional breaches of the fourth wall by the main actors.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: The show achieved consistently high viewing figures throughout its eight-year run and was received favourably by critics.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Each episode's plot focuses on a team of grifters who conduct the art of the "long con", often targeting a "mark" whose activities are immoral and/or illegal, or whose character retains a fundamental negative personality with others they dislike, or who they make suffer, while adhering to the credo that "you can't cheat an honest man". Although conmen, the team display a moral, honourable code within their team, which include sometimes helping others who have been victims of their mark, often with anonymous financial compensation to them, and never stealing anything that doesn't belong to them, instead borrowing them for the con and then returning them afterwards. For each mark, the team focuses on background research to uncover any issues they may face as well as a weakness in them that they can exploit, such as a passion for something they love, or an issue they are facing. Once they have a plan, the team set up a scenario, employ a "convincer" to rope in their mark, and then hit them with the sting in which they take them for a sizeable amount of cash, within the tens of thousands, before conducting a "blow-off" to ensure the mark will not come after them, either because they won't if they have to admit to conducting something illegal, or because the team has convinced them it will be impossible to do so. Although episodes feature stand-alone stories and are not referenced in later episodes, some series have featured sub-plots that occur during its broadcast, or make reference to events that occurred in previous episodes. In one such example, the first half of the third series features a sub-plot in that the team manages to pull off some long cons despite nearly suffering misfortune, which they later resolve after one of the characters determines what was causing them to suffer such bad luck.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: What makes "Hustle" unique among crime dramas is two notable qualities used within its episodes. The first notable quality is that each episode's plot tends to have an element of mystery surrounding it, usually in the form of misleading story elements – what viewers may believe to be happening within the episode, will eventually turn out to be not the full story. An example of this is that the viewers could be led to believe that a con has gone wrong towards the end and that the team has failed, only to witness that the mark has still been conned of money by them. Such a plot device is balanced out with a series of scenes that helped to explain about what happened, in the form of events that occurred "behind-the-scenes" of the con. The second other notable quality is the use of stylish fantasy scenes in a number of episodes, in which the characters perform actions that are out of context and sometimes unrealistic, but is used to help with conveying an episode's plot to viewers or what a character is thinking about in regard to a certain situation. One such example of this can be for the scene to suddenly be stopped in mid-action, and the main characters being able to freely move around and interact with each other, and possibly anything else within the frozen scene. In some episodes, the main characters break the fourth wall to either give a subtle, discreet physical tell to alert the viewers of what they are up to (e.g. a small smile), or to give an explanation to viewers about certain aspects they are doing or the situation they are in.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: "Hustle" was largely born from the same production team that created and popularised the early series of "Spooks", a similarly styled drama series first broadcast in 2002. Bharat Nalluri, that series' Executive Director, conceived the idea in early 2002 while filming for the first "Spooks" series was ongoing. Nalluri pitched the concept to Jane Featherstone, managing director of Kudos Film & Television which was the production company behind "Spooks", in the back of a taxi while returning from a day's filming. Intrigued by the idea, Featherstone recruited Tony Jordan, the lead scriptwriter of the soap opera "EastEnders", to develop it into a workable proposal.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Jordan quickly produced some initial script drafts, which Featherstone took to the BBC; Gareth Neame, Head of Drama Commissioning, rapidly approved a six-part series. Featherstone assembled a production team that had considerable overlap with the "Spooks" crew, including Simon Crawford Collins as producer and Matthew Graham as co-writer. In creating the first episodes, Jordan drew inspiration from the long tradition of confidence tricks and heists in Hollywood and television, including "The A-Team", "The Sting" and "The Grifters" (and in a similar vein, the films and TV series of ""). Featherstone remarked that ""Ocean's Eleven" was on around the time Bharat and I first spoke, and I think it helped to inspire us, but really we took our inspiration from a whole catalogue of movies and books... we wanted to make something that had the energy, verve, style and pure entertainment value of those sorts of films" At the same time, the writers attempted to draw on the success of recent blockbusters such as "Ocean's Eleven" and ""; speaking in an interview in December 2003, Crawford explained that "[such shows] worked because of the interaction within the group – the plotlines were almost irrelevant".


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: With "Hustle" greenlit for filming, the production team began searching for actors to play both the main characters and the marks for each episode. The process was initially quite difficult; Crawford described his "immediate thought [as] 'this is so good, how the hell are we going to get a cast to live up to these characters?' ... Tony had created incredibly strong characters, each with their own particular style and panache, but they also had to form a believable, if unusual, 'family' unit". Robert Vaughn, the Academy Award-nominated star of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.", was soon suggested as a natural choice to play Albert Stroller, the elderly 'roper' responsible for ensnaring potential marks. After meeting Vaughn over lunch, Crawford "[recognised] straight away that he could bring a whole new dimension to the part of Albert". Vaughn was immediately offered the role, and asked to begin filming the following day.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Jordan's script called for a group of five con artists or "grifters", with a wide range of ages, appearances and experience. The production team cast Adrian Lester, at the time playing Henry V at the National Theatre, as Michael Stone, the leader of the group; Marc Warren as Danny Blue, Stone's younger protégé; and Robert Glenister as Ash Morgan, the "fixer"; in August 2003. Although having numerous credits in film and on the stage, Lester was an unknown face in television, having had less than two hours' broadcast screen time prior to the first "Hustle" series. Lester explained that he "couldn't imagine playing the same character for years, but Hustle was completely different. In the very first rehearsal we were doing a dance routine and then the next thing I know I'm whacking out several different accents and I just thought, 'I'm in heaven, this is great!'"


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Jaime Murray completed the lead actors, playing Stacie Monroe who, as the grifters' only female member, is self-styled as "the lure". Murray, described by one of the "Hustle" production team as "that rare specimen – a stunningly beautiful actress who can actually act", and who auditioned in platform shoes to match her 5 ft 7in height with Stacie's description as having "legs that go on for miles", was reportedly "terrified" to be working with the more famous actors Vaughn and Lester, saying "when we were filming the first couple of episodes I was absolutely petrified and was convinced that it would be really obvious on screen. So when I watched some of it on tape I was totally amazed that you couldn't see how frightened I really was. I kept thinking, 'Oh my God! I'm working with Adrian Lester and Robert Vaughn. Any time now someone is going to tap me on the shoulder and ask me to get my coat!'"


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: In addition to the lead actors, the production team recruited a number of actors, both major and minor, to play the marks in each episode; including David Haig, Tamzin Outhwaite, and David Calder.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: With the cast and crew in place, filming for the first "Hustle" series took place in London between August and November 2003. The lead actors were given professional instruction in sleight-of-hand and pick-pocketing; "all the tricks of the trade from card-shuffling to stealing watches", according to Lester. The cast found the experience informative; Murray explained, "I realised that most cons are all about diversion – while you're trying to con somebody you're doing something to distract them in the opposite direction so they don't notice and that's exactly how pickpockets work".


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Several members of the cast described "Hustle's" filming schedule as incredibly hectic. Vaughn said that "[the role] was offered to me, and I was told to get on a plane an hour after I got the phone call and start shooting the following day." Speaking in 2009 after filming four series of the show, Lester explained that "when we start shooting "Hustle" we film two episodes concurrently, with the scenes out of sequence. Knowing where you are in the intricate plots at any one moment is... challenging". Murray, by contrast, claimed that the hardest scene to film was from the fourth episode, when Danny loses spectacularly to Stacie in strip poker and ends up entirely naked. "It was the toughest scene for me of the entire six months we spent filming the series... Stacie is supposed to be calm, cool and collected... she looks down, checks him out and casually and suavely makes a comment. "I" kept looking down, dissolving into fits of laughter and was almost unable to deliver my line. So all you'll see is me laughing".


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Although the programme typically contains few non-trivial stunts or dramatic special effects, the first episode includes an example of Ash Morgan's favourite con, known as "The Flop": having previously received a fractured skull in a bar brawl, Morgan deliberately steps in front of moving cars and exaggerates the accident. Although not actually hurt, X-ray scans show his fractured skull, and the driver's insurance company pays out a compensation claim. Glenister balked at doing the entire stunt himself, saying "I got a stunt man who did all the smashing against the windscreen stunts but I did everything else... We all like doing the stunts involving driving fast because it's boy's-own stuff but when it comes to the dangerous stunts I'm quite happy to leave it to someone else!"


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: The first episode of the series of "Hustle" was broadcast on BBC One on 24 February 2004, driven by a strong advertising campaign organised by Abbott Mead Vickers, surrounding its slogan, "The Con is On", the same name as that of the initial episode's title. The programme was an immediate success, attracting over 6.7 million viewers, and attracting favourable reviews (see below). Before the first series had finished airing, the BBC had sold rebroadcast licences to TV channels in twelve countries, including Italy, Norway, Germany, Israel, Russia and the Netherlands. Anita Davison, Commercial Director for BBC Worldwide, claimed that "The series [had] all the hallmarks of a huge international hit". The series was later licensed to broadcasters in India and South America.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: In response to the extremely positive reaction, the BBC recommissioned the show for a second series on 17 March 2004, after just three episodes had aired. The second series retained much of the initial production team including Jordan as lead scriptwriter, and introduced Karen Wilson as producer.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Filming for the second "Hustle" series took place in mid-2004, again in and around central London. Lester described the second shoot as "much easier" than the chaotic first series. "On the first series we didn't know each other... we were trying to work out what roles we were going to play and the scripts were still being written as we were shooting it; it was all a case of finding out what exactly "Hustle" was going to be.. second time around it was much easier, much quicker... when we were reading the script you could really hear the other actors doing their lines because you knew kind of how they were going to do them..." With the success of the first series, "Hustle's" team of writers were able to be more inventive in creating new plots for the second six-episode run, including issues some of the characters had to deal with, and stories which could keep the audience guessing until the end.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: The programme retained all of the lead actors from the first series; guest actors appearing in the second run included Lee Ingleby, Fay Ripley, and Robert Llewellyn. The second series was broadcast on BBC One from 29 March 2005, to a first-night audience of 6.7 million.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: In the wake of the equally successful second series, the BBC took "Hustle" to the American market, securing a licensing deal with AMC. In addition to exclusive broadcast rights to the first and second series in the United States, AMC also took the position of co-production partner on the third series, already in pre-production, with the option to take the same position on a fourth series. The BBC described the move as "Securing the right platform... essential for a series to succeed in the competitive US market...". The first two series premiered in the US in January 2006 on AMC The BBC also secured new licensing deals with broadcasters in Australia and New Zealand.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Capitalising on "Hustle"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s international success, the BBC created a spin off series, "The Real Hustle", which premiered on 10 February 2006. The documentary follows three genuine hustlers – a magician and professional gambler, a glamorous actress, and a professional sleight-of-hand artist and crooked gambling consultant – as they pull short-cons on unsuspecting businesses and members of the public. The BBC described the series as an attempt "to reveal how the scams work so that the viewer can avoid being ripped off by the same con".


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: All five of the lead actors again reprised their roles in the third series, which featured guest stars including Richard Chamberlain, Linford Christie, Sara Cox and Paul Nicholls. The series premiered on 10 March 2006, running until 14 April. The second episode, featuring Danny and Mickey running naked through Trafalgar Square, attracted a viewing audience of 6 million. Lester described the scene as one of his most embarrassing moments on-set, saying "you forget just how many phone cameras there are... we thought [the Square] was fairly deserted, but as soon as someone shouted 'Action' there was a tour bus behind us and the whole top deck suddenly started filming".


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: With the backing of AMC, a fourth series of "Hustle" was virtually guaranteed, and by late 2006 it was clear that the cable network was taking a commanding role in the show's development. Despite the increased funding AMC provided, which allowed the writers to set episodes in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the series was quickly mired in casting concerns. The BBC confirmed Adrian Lester's departure in September 2006, elevating Marc Warren's character to the lead role and casting Ashley Walters as a new member of the group. The BBC was quick to dispel any suggestion that Lester's resignation was connected to the shift in production focus, stating "it is a shame that, due to his current filming commitments, Adrian cannot join us this time round...", while Lester explained his action as "need[ing] to do something else, be associated with something else". However, Lester also admitted that he felt that the series "just got a little bit too 'light'".


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Despite concerns over ratings, the BBC commissioned for a fifth series in early 2008, airing on 28 October 2008, with the return of Adrian Lester, the departure of cast members Marc Warren and Jaime Murray, and the arrival of Matt Di Angelo and Kelly Adams as their replacements. With the return of Lester's character, Mickey Bricks, Ashley Walters's Billy Bond was removed. Patricia Hodge was written to return in the 5th series, however production issues resulted in her departing the show, subsequently delaying the release of the series.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Series Six started 4 January 2010. All of the fifth series cast returned with production that moved to Birmingham, despite the show retaining its London setting. The series once again consisted of 6 episodes.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: The seventh series of "Hustle" began airing on 7 January 2011. All main cast members from series 6 reprised their roles.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: The eighth series started airing on 13 January 2012 on BBC1 at 9 pm after being pushed back from 6 January. Creator Tony Jordan said that it would be the last series for at least a while; later, the BBC announced that there would not be a series 9. Guest stars featuring this series include Sheila Hancock, Martin Kemp and Paterson Joseph and former Liverpool footballer Ian Rush. Peter Polycarpou and John Barrowman also revealed on Twitter that they had guest roles in series eight. This was the third series to be filmed in Birmingham, the fifth in HD and the fourth series featuring all of the current cast. Adrian Lester directed an episode, in which Mickey is kidnapped.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: Following much media speculation, including reports of the programme being cancelled and a motion picture spin-off, the BBC announced on 12 June 2008 that "Hustle" had been recommissioned for a fifth series with series 1–3 star, Adrian Lester returning to the show alongside Robert Glenister and Robert Vaughn. Due to scheduling conflicts, Marc Warren and Jaime Murray did not feature in series five, with Matt Di Angelo and Kelly Adams joining the cast. It was also reported that Patricia Hodge who guest starred as Veronica Powell in the 4th series, would return in the 5th, however due to issues with on-set production, the episode her character was featured in was scrapped and never aired. This subsequently delayed the release of the 5th series, which instead aired in October 2008.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: In June 2006, 20th Century Fox acquired the film rights to "Hustle"; a film adaptation of the programme is currently being written by creator Tony Jordan, who has written several drafts but is still developing the script. In February 2009, executive producer, Simon Crawford Collins stated that the movie was to be produced by a major United States studio.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: The first series of "Hustle", broadcast from 24 February to 30 March 2004, attracted generally favourable reviews and audience figures. "The Guardian" described it as "defiantly high-concept, tightly plotted, knowing stuff... a laugh; slick, glossy, and smart certainly, but a laugh all the same", and "The Times" remarked that it had "the snap and style of a series that has been cryogenically frozen in the 1960s and brought back to life, like "The Clangers"... The wonderfully absurd result is a drama series that takes itself far less seriously than almost anything since "The Persuaders"". A later review from the same paper summarised the series as "an engaging, well-acted, snappily directed drama... sleekly edited, flatteringly lit, and stylishly executed... Will you remember a single moment of it five minutes after you've watched an episode? Probably not. But who cares?" The first three episodes attracted an average audience of 6.2 million, peaking at over 30% of the total audience.


title: Hustle (TV series)

text: The title sequence, created by Berger & Wyse, was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award (2005), a BAFTA (2006) and an Emmy (2007).


title: Ventura, California

text: Ventura, officially named San Buenaventura (Spanish for "Saint Bonaventure"), is a city on the Southern Coast of California and the county seat of Ventura County. The population was 110,763 at the 2020 census. Ventura is a popular tourist destination, owing to its historic landmarks, beaches, and resorts.


title: Ventura, California

text: Ventura was founded by the Spanish in 1782, when Saint Junípero Serra established Mission San Buenaventura. Following the Mexican secularization of the Californian missions, San Buenaventura was granted by Governor Pío Pico to Don José de Arnaz as Rancho Ex-Mission San Buenaventura and a small community arose. Following the American Conquest of California, San Buenaventura eventually incorporated as a city in 1866. The 1920s brought a major oil boom, which along with the post–World War II economic expansion, significantly developed and expanded Ventura.


title: Ventura, California

text: Archaeological discoveries in the area suggest that humans have populated the region for at least 10,000–12,000 years. Archaeological research demonstrates that the Chumash people have deep roots in central and southern coastal regions of California, and has revealed artifacts from their culture. Shisholop Village, designated Historic Point of Interest #18 by the city at the foot of nearby Figueroa Street, was the site of a Chumash village. They had keen oceanic navigational skills made use of the abundant local resources from sea and land. The Ventura Chumash were in contact with the Channel Islands Chumash; both mainland and island Chumash utilized large plank-sewn seagoing canoes, called Tomol, with the island people bringing shell bead money, island chert, and sea otter pelts to trade for mainland products like acorns and deer meat.


title: Ventura, California

text: In 1769, the Spanish Portolà expedition, first recorded European visitors to inland areas of California, came down the Santa Clara River Valley from the previous night's encampment near today's Saticoy and camped near the outlet of the Ventura River on August 14. Fray Juan Crespi, a Franciscan missionary traveling with the expedition, noted that "we saw a regular town, the most populous and best laid-out of all that we had seen on the journey up to the present time." Archaeological records found that the Chumash village they encountered was settled sometime around 1000 A.D.


title: Ventura, California

text: Junípero Serra, first leader of the Franciscans in California, founded Mission San Buenaventura in 1782 as his ninth and last mission established near the Chumash village as part of Spain's colonization of Alta California. The mission was named for St. Bonaventure, a Thirteenth Century Franciscan saint and a Doctor of the Church. San Miguel Chapel was the first outpost and center of operations while the first Mission San Buenaventura was being constructed. The first mission burned in 1801 and a replacement building of brick and stone was completed in 1809. The bell tower and facade of the new mission was destroyed by an 1812 earthquake. The Mission was rebuilt and functions as a parish church.