title: Mind uploading

text: It may be possible to create functional 3D maps of the brain activity, using advanced neuroimaging technology, such as functional MRI (fMRI, for mapping change in blood flow), magnetoencephalography (MEG, for mapping of electrical currents), or combinations of multiple methods, to build a detailed three-dimensional model of the brain using non-invasive and non-destructive methods. Today, fMRI is often combined with MEG for creating functional maps of human cortex during more complex cognitive tasks, as the methods complement each other. Even though current imaging technology lacks the spatial resolution needed to gather the information needed for such a scan, important recent and future developments are predicted to substantially improve both spatial and temporal resolutions of existing technologies.


title: Mind uploading

text: There is ongoing work in the field of brain simulation, including partial and whole simulations of some animals. For example, the "C. elegans" roundworm, "Drosophila" fruit fly, and mouse have all been simulated to various degrees.


title: Mind uploading

text: The Blue Brain Project by the Brain and Mind Institute of the "École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne," Switzerland is an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering mammalian brain circuitry.


title: Mind uploading

text: Underlying the concept of "mind uploading" (more accurately "mind transferring") is the broad philosophy that consciousness lies within the brain's information processing and is in essence an emergent feature that arises from large neural network high-level patterns of organization, and that the same patterns of organization can be realized in other processing devices. Mind uploading also relies on the idea that the human mind (the "self" and the long-term memory), just like non-human minds, is represented by the current neural network paths and the weights of the brain synapses rather than by a dualistic and mystic soul and spirit. The mind or "soul" can be defined as the information state of the brain, and is immaterial only in the same sense as the information content of a data file or the state of a computer software currently residing in the work-space memory of the computer. Data specifying the information state of the neural network can be captured and copied as a "computer file" from the brain and re-implemented into a different physical form. This is not to deny that minds are richly adapted to their substrates. An analogy to the idea of mind uploading is to copy the temporary information state (the variable values) of a computer program from the computer memory to another computer and continue its execution. The other computer may perhaps have different hardware architecture but emulates the hardware of the first computer.


title: Mind uploading

text: These issues have a long history. In 1775, Thomas Reid wrote: “I would be glad to know... whether when my brain has lost its original structure, and when some hundred years after the same materials are fabricated so curiously as to become an intelligent being, whether, I say that being will be me; or, if, two or three such beings should be formed out of my brain; whether they will all be me, and consequently one and the same intelligent being.”


title: Mind uploading

text: A considerable portion of transhumanists and singularitarians place great hope into the belief that they may become immortal, by creating one or many non-biological functional copies of their brains, thereby leaving their "biological shell". However, the philosopher and transhumanist Susan Schneider claims that at best, uploading would create a copy of the original person's mind. Schneider agrees that consciousness has a computational basis, but this does not mean we can upload and survive. According to her views, "uploading" would probably result in the death of the original person's brain, while only outside observers can maintain the illusion of the original person still being alive. For it is implausible to think that one's consciousness would leave one's brain and travel to a remote location; ordinary physical objects do not behave this way. Ordinary objects (rocks, tables, etc.) are not simultaneously here, and elsewhere. At best, a copy of the original mind is created. Neural correlates of consciousness, a sub-branch of neuroscience, states that consciousness may be thought of as a state-dependent property of some undefined complex, adaptive, and highly interconnected biological system.


title: Mind uploading

text: Others have argued against such conclusions. For example, Buddhist transhumanist James Hughes has pointed out that this consideration only goes so far: if one believes the self is an illusion, worries about survival are not reasons to avoid uploading, and Keith Wiley has presented an argument wherein all resulting minds of an uploading procedure are granted equal primacy in their claim to the original identity, such that survival of the self is determined retroactively from a strictly subjective position. Some have also asserted that consciousness is a part of an extra-biological system that is yet to be discovered; therefore it cannot be fully understood under the present constraints of neurobiology. Without the transference of consciousness, true mind-upload or perpetual immortality cannot be practically achieved.


title: Mind uploading

text: Another potential consequence of mind uploading is that the decision to "upload" may then create a mindless symbol manipulator instead of a conscious mind (see philosophical zombie). Are we to assume that an upload is conscious if it displays behaviors that are highly indicative of consciousness? Are we to assume that an upload is conscious if it verbally insists that it is conscious? Could there be an absolute upper limit in processing speed above which consciousness cannot be sustained? The mystery of consciousness precludes a definitive answer to this question. Numerous scientists, including Kurzweil, strongly believe that the answer as to whether a separate entity is conscious (with 100% confidence) is fundamentally unknowable, since consciousness is inherently subjective (see solipsism). Regardless, some scientists strongly believe consciousness is the consequence of computational processes which are substrate-neutral. On the contrary, numerous scientists believe consciousness may be the result of some form of quantum computation dependent on substrate (see quantum mind).


title: Mind uploading

text: In light of uncertainty on whether to regard uploads as conscious, Sandberg proposes a cautious approach:


title: Mind uploading

text: The process of developing emulation technology raises ethical issues related to animal welfare and artificial consciousness. The neuroscience required to develop brain emulation would require animal experimentation, first on invertebrates and then on small mammals before moving on to humans. Sometimes the animals would just need to be euthanized in order to extract, slice, and scan their brains, but sometimes behavioral and "in vivo" measures would be required, which might cause pain to living animals.


title: Mind uploading

text: In addition, the resulting animal emulations themselves might suffer, depending on one's views about consciousness. Bancroft argues for the plausibility of consciousness in brain simulations on the basis of the "fading qualia" thought experiment of David Chalmers. He then concludes: “If, as I argue above, a sufficiently detailed computational simulation of the brain is potentially operationally equivalent to an organic brain, it follows that we must consider extending protections against suffering to simulations.” Chalmers himself has argued that such virtual realities would be genuine realities. However, if mind uploading occurs and the uploads are not conscious, there may be a significant opportunity cost. In the book "", Nick Bostrom expresses concern that we could build a "Disneyland without children."


title: Mind uploading

text: It might help reduce emulation suffering to develop virtual equivalents of anaesthesia, as well as to omit processing related to pain and/or consciousness. However, some experiments might require a fully functioning and suffering animal emulation. Animals might also suffer by accident due to flaws and lack of insight into what parts of their brains are suffering. Questions also arise regarding the moral status of "partial" brain emulations, as well as creating neuromorphic emulations that draw inspiration from biological brains but are built somewhat differently.


title: Mind uploading

text: Brain emulations could be erased by computer viruses or malware, without need to destroy the underlying hardware. This may make assassination easier than for physical humans. The attacker might take the computing power for its own use.


title: Mind uploading

text: Many questions arise regarding the legal personhood of emulations. Would they be given the rights of biological humans? If a person makes an emulated copy of themselves and then dies, does the emulation inherit their property and official positions? Could the emulation ask to "pull the plug" when its biological version was terminally ill or in a coma? Would it help to treat emulations as adolescents for a few years so that the biological creator would maintain temporary control? Would criminal emulations receive the death penalty, or would they be given forced data modification as a form of "rehabilitation"? Could an upload have marriage and child-care rights?


title: Mind uploading

text: If simulated minds would come true and if they were assigned rights of their own, it may be difficult to ensure the protection of "digital human rights". For example, social science researchers might be tempted to secretly expose simulated minds, or whole isolated societies of simulated minds, to controlled experiments in which many copies of the same minds are exposed (serially or simultaneously) to different test conditions.


title: Mind uploading

text: Research led by cognitive scientist Michael Laakasuo has shown that attitudes towards mind uploading are predicted by an individual's belief in an afterlife; the existence of mind uploading technology may threaten religious and spiritual notions of immortality and divinity.


title: Mind uploading

text: Emulations might be preceded by a technological arms race driven by first-strike advantages. Their emergence and existence may lead to increased risk of war, including inequality, power struggles, strong loyalty and willingness to die among emulations, and new forms of racism, xenophobia, and religious prejudice. If emulations run much faster than humans, there might not be enough time for human leaders to make wise decisions or negotiate. It is possible that humans would react violently against the growing power of emulations, especially if that depresses human wages. Emulations may not trust each other, and even well-intentioned defensive measures might be interpreted as offense.


title: Mind uploading

text: The book "The Age of Em" by Robin Hanson poses many hypotheses on the nature of a society of mind uploads, including that the most common minds would be copies of adults with personalities conducive to long hours of productive specialized work.


title: Mind uploading

text: Kenneth D. Miller, a professor of neuroscience at Columbia and a co-director of the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, raised doubts about the practicality of mind uploading. His major argument is that reconstructing neurons and their connections is in itself a formidable task, but it is far from being sufficient. Operation of the brain depends on the dynamics of electrical and biochemical signal exchange between neurons; therefore, capturing them in a single "frozen" state may prove insufficient. In addition, the nature of these signals may require modeling down to the molecular level and beyond. Therefore, while not rejecting the idea in principle, Miller believes that the complexity of the "absolute" duplication of an individual mind is insurmountable for the nearest hundreds of years.


title: Mind uploading

text: There are very few feasible technologies that humans have refrained from developing. The neuroscience and computer-hardware technologies that may make brain emulation possible are widely desired for other reasons, and logically their development will continue into the future. We may also have brain emulations for a brief but significant period on the way to non-emulation based human-level AI. Assuming that emulation technology will arrive, a question becomes whether we should accelerate or slow its advance.


title: Mind uploading

text: Emulation research would also speed up neuroscience as a whole, which might accelerate medical advances, cognitive enhancement, lie detectors, and capability for psychological manipulation.


title: Mind uploading

text: Because of the postulated difficulties that a whole brain emulation-generated superintelligence would pose for the control problem, computer scientist Stuart J. Russell in his book "Human Compatible" rejects creating one, simply calling it "so obviously a bad idea".


title: Mind uploading

text: Moravec (1979) describes and endorses mind uploading using a brain surgeon. Moravec (1988) uses a similar description and calls it "transmigration".


title: Mind uploading

text: Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, has long predicted that people will be able to "upload" their entire brains to computers and become "digitally immortal" by 2045. Kurzweil made this claim for many years, e.g. during his speech in 2013 at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York, which claims to subscribe to a similar set of beliefs. Mind uploading has also been advocated by a number of researchers in neuroscience and artificial intelligence, such as the late Marvin Minsky. In 1993, Joe Strout created a small web site called the Mind Uploading Home Page, and began advocating the idea in cryonics circles and elsewhere on the net. That site has not been actively updated in recent years, but it has spawned other sites including MindUploading.org, run by Randal A. Koene, who also moderates a mailing list on the topic. These advocates see mind uploading as a medical procedure which could eventually save countless lives.


title: Mind uploading

text: Many transhumanists look forward to the development and deployment of mind uploading technology, with transhumanists such as Nick Bostrom predicting that it will become possible within the 21st century due to technological trends such as Moore's law.


title: Mind uploading

text: Michio Kaku, in collaboration with Science, hosted a documentary, "", based on his book "Physics of the Impossible". Episode four, titled "How to Teleport", mentions that mind uploading via techniques such as quantum entanglement and whole brain emulation using an advanced MRI machine may enable people to be transported vast distances at near light-speed.


title: Mind uploading

text: The book "Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds" by Gregory S. Paul & Earl D. Cox, is about the eventual (and, to the authors, almost inevitable) evolution of computers into sentient beings, but also deals with human mind transfer. Richard Doyle's "Wetwares: Experiments in PostVital Living" deals extensively with uploading from the perspective of distributed embodiment, arguing for example that humans are currently part of the "artificial life phenotype". Doyle's vision reverses the polarity on uploading, with artificial life forms such as uploads actively seeking out biological embodiment as part of their reproductive strategy.


title: House of Lies

text: House of Lies is an American comedy-drama television series created by Matthew Carnahan. The show, which premiered on Showtime on January 8, 2012, is based on the book "House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time," written by Martin Kihn, a former consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. It follows a group of management consultants who stop at nothing to get business deals done. On May 17, 2016, Showtime canceled the series after five seasons, with the series finale airing June 12, 2016.


title: House of Lies

text: The show focuses on both the personal and business lives of Marty Kaan, a manipulative, immoral, driven and cold management consultant.


title: House of Lies

text: Originally, Marty was a highly successful partner at consultancy firm Galweather Stearn, where he headed up a pod consisting of engagement manager Jeannie van der Hooven, and associates Clyde Oberholt and Doug Guggenheim. He later leaves this position to head up his own firm, Kaan & Associates.


title: House of Lies

text: In addition to the questionable business practices of Marty and his team, the series also focuses on Marty's personal life. He deals with his disagreeable management consultant ex-wife Monica, his retired-psychiatrist father Jeremiah and his confidently flamboyant son Roscoe. The main character, Marty, often breaks the fourth wall; he talks to the viewers in a freeze-frame bit in which he alone moves and the others in the background 'freeze' but continue where they left off. Alternatively, he talks to the audience while everyone moves but the others seem oblivious to the fact that he is on a monologue.


title: House of Lies

text: The series is executive produced by Matthew Carnahan, Jessika Borsiczky, and Stephen Hopkins, with the pilot written by Carnahan and directed by Hopkins.


title: House of Lies

text: On December 13, 2010, "House of Lies" was given a pilot order. On April 7, 2011, the series was given a 12 episode pick-up by Showtime. The series is based on Martin Kihn's book, "House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time". David Nevins, president of entertainment at Showtime, announced during the 2011 Television Critics Association press tour that the show was set to premiere on January 8, 2012.


title: House of Lies

text: Casting announcements began in December 2010, with Don Cheadle as the first actor to be cast, as Marty Kaan, "a highly successful, cut-throat consultant who is never above using any means (or anyone) necessary to get his clients the information they want". The next actor to be cast was Dawn Olivieri who plays Monica, "Marty's crazy, pill-popping ex-wife and biggest professional competition as her consulting firm is No. 1 compared to Marty's No. 2." Ben Schwartz and Josh Lawson were cast next, Schwartz playing Clyde Oberholt, a member of Marty's team and his closest friend, and Lawson as Doug Guggenheim, Marty's Harvard-educated associate. Last cast were Kristen Bell, who plays Jeannie van der Hooven, "a razor-sharp, Ivy-League graduate who works at Marty’s firm", Donis Leonard Jr. as Roscoe Kaan, Marty's son, and Glynn Turman as Jeremiah Kaan, Marty's psychoanalyst father. Later, Richard Schiff was cast as Marty's boss.


title: House of Lies

text: On December 29, 2013, Showtime presented "House of Lies Live" which featured members of the main cast and guest actors on the show performing at the UCB theatre in the first broadcast of long form improv.


title: House of Lies

text: "Entertainment Weekly"s Ken Tucker, reviewing the pilot episode, thought the show's premise "sounds terrific in concept", that "Cheadle and Bell are each in their own way exceedingly charming performers with a devilish aspect to their images", and that it has debuted at a good time: "at this time in history, who doesn't want to see undeservingly wealthy people get fleeced, or at least brought low by their avarice?" But ultimately Tucker found "House of Lies" wanting, writing that it is actually not "all that interesting", and that its "crucial weakness is its dead language". For Tucker, "there's no novelty or freshness in House of Lies' patter or its penis-placement" (the latter comment being a reference to House of Lies' "butt-load of the sort of sexual activity one can get away with on pay-cable"). He later included it on his Top 5 Worst TV Shows of 2012, taking the fourth spot.


title: House of Lies

text: In stark contrast, Matt Rouch, writing for "TV Guide", thought that "as a pitiless, biting satire of the debauched state of American big business, it's no lie to call this one of the smartest, funniest shows of the new year", praising its being "[d]eeply cynical, garish in its raunchiness and always rudely, lewdly hilarious". It "swims in a shark tank of such appalling survival-of-the-nastiest bad behavior it could launch its own channel: Human Animal Planet". Where Tucker finds "House of Lies" lines and dialogue poor, Rouch praises Don Cheadle's character's lines: Cheadle's character "often steps out of a freeze-frame to deliver scathing stylized asides to the audience, talking straight to the camera to teach us his lingo and soulless trade secrets". (By contrast, Tucker found these freeze-frame asides a "visual gimmick" and complained of derivative lines: "Creator Matthew Carnahan [...] loads his new show with lines that sound borrowed from "Glengarry Glen Ross" ("Closing is what I do!")."


title: House of Lies

text: Sarah Huges of "The Independent" called House of Lies "A Comedy for the One Per Cent," saying it's a "half-hour comedy about wealthy slicksters screening right in the middle of one of the biggest economic depressions America has experienced." Although calling the cast and production outstanding and funny in an artistic and technical way, the UK reception - by the standards of the Independent - seemed less positive than the rest. "House of Lies is asking us not simply to laugh at this bunch of chancers, but to admire them for the way in which they rip people off," she writes, calling for a check-up on corporate America.


title: United States Postmaster General

text: The United States Postmaster General (PMG) is the chief executive officer of the United States Postal Service (USPS). The PMG is responsible for managing and directing the day-to-day operations of the agency.


title: United States Postmaster General

text: The PMG is selected and appointed by the Board of Governors of the Postal Service, the members of which are appointed by the president of the United States, with the advice and consent of the United States Senate. The postmaster general then also sits on the board. The PMG does not serve at the pleasure of the president, and can be dismissed by the Board of Governors. The appointment of the postmaster general does not require Senate confirmation. The governors and the postmaster general elect the deputy postmaster general.


title: United States Postmaster General

text: The office, in one form or another, dates from before the United States Constitution and the United States Declaration of Independence, having been based on the much older English and later British position of Postmaster General. Benjamin Franklin was appointed by the Continental Congress as the first postmaster general in 1775 serving just over 15 months. Franklin had previously served as deputy postmaster for the British colonies of North America since 1753.


title: United States Postmaster General

text: Until 1971, the postmaster general was the head of the Post Office Department (or simply "Post Office" until the 1820s). During that era, the postmaster general was appointed by the president of the United States, with the advice and consent of the United States Senate. From 1829 to 1971, the postmaster general was a member of the president's Cabinet. After the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883 and prior to the passage of the Hatch Act of 1939, the postmaster general was in charge of the governing party's patronage and was a powerful position which held much influence within the party, as exemplified by James Farley's 1933–1940 tenure under Franklin D. Roosevelt.


title: United States Postmaster General

text: After the spoils system was reformed, the position remained a Cabinet post, and it was often given to a new president's campaign manager or other key political supporter, including Arthur Summerfield, W. Marvin Watson, and Larry O'Brien (all of whom played key roles organizing the campaigns of presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, respectively), and was considered something of a sinecure. Notably, poet and literary scholar Charles Olson (who served as a Democratic National Committee official during the 1944 United States presidential election) declined the position in January 1945.


title: United States Postmaster General

text: In 1971, the Post Office Department was re-organized into the United States Postal Service, an independent agency of the executive branch, and the postmaster general was no longer a member of the Cabinet nor in line of presidential succession. The postmaster general is now appointed by the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service, appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shantanu Mukherjee (born 30 September 1972), popularly known as Shaan, is an Indian playback singer, composer, live perfomer ,actor and television personality. He has recorded songs for films and albums in various Indian languages and has established himself as one of the highest-paid and best-established playback singers of Indian cinema.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan hosted the shows "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa", "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa L'il Champs", "Star Voice of India" and "STAR Voice of India 2". In "Music Ka Maha Muqabla", his team, "Shaan's Strikers", finished as the runners up to Shankar Mahadevan's team. He appeared as a judge in "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa L'il Champs" 2014–2015 and "The Voice India Kids 2016". In 2015 and 2016, Shaan was the winning coach in each of the first two seasons of "The Voice". In 2016, in "The Voice India Kids", he was the coach of the runner-up contestant. His sister Sagarika is also a singer.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan was born on 30 September 1972 in Bombay in a Bengali family. His grandfather was Jahar Mukherjee, a well known lyricist, his father late Manas Mukherjee, was a music director and his sister Sagarika is a singer as well. He grew up in Mumbai, Maharashtra.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan began his career singing jingles for advertisements. After giving it up for a brief period, he returned and, along with jingles, began to sing remixes and cover versions.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan and his sister signed up with Magnasound recording company and recorded a few successful albums, including the hit album "Naujawan" followed by "Q-Funk".


title: Shaan (singer)

text: He entered the pop scene with sister "Sagarika", singing Biddu's melodies and doing re-mixes. Then came "Roop Tera Mastana", a remix album of R.D. Burman's songs, that brought them further into the limelight. Later, Shaan launched "Love-Ology" after this.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: In 1999, He wrote the lyrics of the ballad "Bhool Ja" on his album "Tanha Dil", which appeared in the charts within days of its release and was popular on radio. In 2000, he sang a superhit song "Tanha Dil Tanha Safar". This song is also used in his sister's album "Mere Liye" in 2001.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: In 2002, he won the MTV Asia Award for Favorite Artist India for best solo album for his album "Tanha Dil". One year later, Shaan launched his album "Aksar", which was successful and contained songs featuring international stars such as Blue, Melanie C and Samira Said. For both the albums "Tanha Dil" and "Aksar", Shaan sang, composed and wrote the lyrics of all the songs, except the title track "Tanha Dil", which was composed by Ram Sampath.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: He released "Tomar Aakash" in 2004, a Bengali album, along with his sister and featuring his father's unreleased songs. He also plans to release an album remaking his father's compositions with his sister in Hindi. He recently sang one of his father's compositions on sets of STAR Plus's "Music Ka Maha Muqqabla".


title: Shaan (singer)

text: In 2006, he released a song with MLTR, "Take me to your heart". The song appears on his album "Tishnagi", which is produced by Ranjit Barot and engineered by Ashish Manchanda. The song "Shuruaat" on his album "Tishnagi" was made into a music video to promote the film, "".


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Apart from studio albums, he also sang several other albums songs such as "Channel Hits", "Bollywood Sensation 2", "Club Class", "A Reason To Smile", "The Ultimate Party Album", "Maa" (his sister's album), "Mon", "Akou Mon", "Mere Liye" (his sister's album), "Bodo Asha Kore", "Hoyoth Prem", "Khoji Tare", "Notes from a peculiar time in Space" etc.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Apart from singing on his own albums, Shaan has provided the voice for many of Bollywood's leading actors. He made his debut as a playback singer where he sang a single line song "Kitni Hai Pyari Pyari" along with his younger sister in the film Parinda when he was only seventeen. The film was successful and established himself as one of the leading playback singers in Bollywood.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan sang, composed the music and wrote the lyrics of his songs on his albums "Loveology", "Tanha Dil", "Aksar" and "Tishnagi", and has also composed music for many TV serials, winning the "Best TV music director award". Shaan also gives advice on music and lyrics to the music directors for whom he sings.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: He has recently recorded a playback for an upcoming Bengali feature film "Network" which is composed by Dabbu.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan hosted the television show "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa" on Zee TV between the years 2000–2006, which won the Music Programme of the Year award at the Indian Telly Awards in 2003. At the same awards, Shaan won Best TV Music Director, for creating the music of the Zee TV show, "Lipstick", for his friend Goldie Behl. He also appeared as the guest in the first episode of the new show "Antakshari: The Great Challenge" which aired on 9 February 2007 on Star One.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan is now the host of a music show called "Star Voice of India" (SVOI) which airs on Star Plus. He was offered the role of host for "Star Voice of India Chote Ustaad", but opted out to spend time with his family. However, he returned to host the next season of "Star Voice of India".


title: Shaan (singer)

text: In June 2015, Shaan was introduced as a coach in the first season of the singing-based reality TV show "The Voice", appearing with a swollen face caused by an exercising accident. He was the coach of Pawandeep Rajan, the eventual winner. In 2016, in season 2, he again was the winning coach, of contestant Farhan Sabir. In 2016, in "The Voice India Kids", he was the coach of the runner-up contestant.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan is one of the few Indian singers who have collaborated with international singers. After working with "blue" for the song "One Love" and singing the theme song ("Shuruaat") for the movie "", Shaan collaborated with "Michael Learns to Rock" for his album "Tishnagi". Shaan also composed six of the album's nine tracks and penned most of the songs, excluding the number "Take Me To Your Heart" with "Michael Learns to Rock". The video of this number has been popular too.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan has sung the title songs for many TV shows, including the title song for the comedy show "Khichdi", which airs on Star Plus. He also sang the title song for "Shakuntala", which airs on Star One.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Along with singing, Shaan has acted in the movie "Daman: A Victim of Marital Violence", also starring Raveena Tandon. His songs have appeared in the movies, "Zameen" and "Hungama".


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan often performs for Pro Shows which are conducted as a part of the cultural festivals of various colleges. Among the prominent festivals where he has performed live recently are Moksha at NSIT (New Delhi), PULSE at AIIMS (New Delhi), Recstacy at NIT Durgapur, Spring Fest at IIT Kharagpur, REBECA at IIEST Shibpur, Mood Indigo at IIT Bombay, Ragam at NIT Calicut, Anakronos at Techno India, Alcheringa at IIT Guwahati, Riviera (festival) at VIT University and Crossroads at Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) (New Delhi). Recently he has performed live in Fun@Work Oracle Event at Bangalore. Previously he had performed in an IBM event "Imprint 2008, Hyderabad" for IBM GBS exclusively.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: He said in an interview that music directors are avoiding established singers to bring some novelty into the playback singing, while compromising on the quality. Auto tuning software ensures that even a rough voice can sound good during the final recording and release of the song.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan has been a judge on many talent shows. Shaan is a team captain, judge and mentor on STAR Plus's "Music Ka Maha Muqqabla" for the team Shaan's Strikers. His team won the Runner-up prize, amounting to Rs. 2.5 million (Rs. 2.5 million) in this game show on 20 March 2010, losing to Shanker Mahadevan and his team, with 43.1 points to 46.3 points.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan performed live alongside Atif Aslam, Malaika Arora Khan and Bipasha Basu for the first time in a series of concerts in Birmingham and London in the summer of 2012.


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Currently, he is a member of the Board of Advisors of India's International Movement to Unite Nations (I.I.M.U.N.).


title: Shaan (singer)

text: Shaan's song "Chand Sifarish" (from the movie "Fanaa") and "Jab Se Tere Naina" (from "Saawariya") won the Filmfare Best Male Playback Award and the Zee Cine Award Best Playback Singer - Male, in addition to receiving several other nominations. In 2002, he won the MTV Asia Music Award for best solo album for his album "Tanha Dil." Following are the list of awards and nominations in different categories.


title: Man with a Plan (TV series)

text: Man with a Plan is an American television sitcom created by Jackie and Jeff Filgo and starring Matt LeBlanc, who also served as an executive producer. The series ran on CBS from October 24, 2016, to June 11, 2020, airing for 69 episodes over 4 seasons. The series was a staple on CBS' Monday night comedy lineup for its first three seasons, before being moved to Thursday nights for the fourth and final season.


title: Man with a Plan (TV series)

text: LeBlanc stars as Adam Burns, a contractor raising three children (Grace Kaufman, Matthew McCann, Hala Finley) in suburban Pittsburgh with his wife Andi (Liza Snyder), who decides to go back to work as a medical lab technician in the pilot. Kevin Nealon and Matt Cook co-starred through all four seasons as Adam's brother and friend, respectively. Stacy Keach and Kali Rocha recurred as Adam's father and sister-in-law, respectively, and were upgraded to regular cast members in later seasons.


title: Man with a Plan (TV series)

text: When his wife Andi returns to work, old-school father Adam Burns takes on more of the responsibilities of parenting his three rambunctious children (Kate, Teddy and Emme). Adam must learn to balance this challenge with running a contracting business with his brother Don, while at the same time dealing with his overbearing father Joe. The series is set in suburban Pittsburgh.


title: Man with a Plan (TV series)

text: On February 3, 2016, the production officially received a pilot order and James Burrows would direct the pilot. The pilot was written by Jackie and Jeff Filgo who was also set to executive produce with Michael Rotenberg and Troy Zien. Production companies involved with the pilot include Double Double Bonus Entertainment, CBS Television Studios, and 3 Arts Entertainment. On May 12, 2016, it was announced that CBS had given the production, now titled "Man with a Plan", a series order. A day after that, it was announced that the series would premiere on October 24, 2016, by Monday at 8:30pm. On November 14, 2016, CBS picked up the series for a full season of 19 episodes. On January 6, 2017, CBS ordered three additional episodes, increasing the first season order to 22.


title: Man with a Plan (TV series)

text: On March 23, 2017, CBS renewed the series for a second season, which premiered on November 13, 2017. On November 27, 2017, CBS ordered eight additional episodes for the second season, bringing the total to 21 episodes. On May 12, 2018, CBS renewed the series for a third season which premiered on February 4, 2019. On May 10, 2019, the series was renewed for fourth season, which premiered on April 2, 2020.


title: Man with a Plan (TV series)

text: Casting for the main cast started in February 2016 with Matt LeBlanc and ended the next month with Matt Cook and Grace Kaufman. On May 13, 2016, it was reported that Jenna Fischer, who was originally cast to play the female lead opposite LeBlanc in the series, had exited and her role would be recast. In 2021, Fischer asserted on the "Office Ladies" podcast that her role had been recast because test audiences didn't "believe Pam would marry Joey", referring to Fischer and LeBlanc's respective roles on "The Office" and "Friends".


title: Man with a Plan (TV series)

text: On August 1, it was announced Liza Snyder would replace Fischer as the female lead. On August 2, 2016, it was reported that Kevin Nealon had joined the cast in a main role. On September 4, 2018, it was announced that Kali Rocha was promoted to series regular for season 3.


title: Man with a Plan (TV series)

text: On May 6, 2020, CBS announced that "Man with a Plan" had been cancelled after four seasons. While ratings for the fourth season were satisfactory, the network was reportedly looking to lower costs following the merger of CBS and Viacom that had taken place that same season. The series was expensive to produce for the network, which was a major factor in its decision to cancel the series. The series concluded on June 11, 2020, following a 69-episode run.


title: Man with a Plan (TV series)

text: "Man with a Plan" received negative reviews from critics. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an approval rating of 21%, based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 3.29/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Man with a Plan"'s flawed, unimaginative writing fails to properly showcase the charm of its unfortunately underperforming lead." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the series has a score 36 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".


title: Man with a Plan (TV series)

text: The first season was released in Region 1, via Amazon's Manufacture on Demand (MOD) service, on November 16, 2018. The second season was released on July 8, 2019. The third season was released on September 22, 2020. The fourth season was released on November 26, 2020.


title: Man with a Plan (TV series)

text: All episodes are also available with Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access) including several episodes which stream live.


title: Martin Pistorius

text: Martin Pistorius (born 31 December 1975) is a South African-British man who had locked-in syndrome and was unable to move or communicate for 12 years.


title: Martin Pistorius

text: When he was 12, he began losing voluntary motor control and eventually fell into a vegetative state for three years. He began regaining consciousness around age 16 and achieved full consciousness by age 19, although he was still completely paralysed with the exception of his eyes. He was unable to communicate with other people until his caregiver Virna van der Walt noticed that he could use his eyes to respond to her words. She sent him to the Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication at the University of Pretoria for testing, where they confirmed that he was conscious and aware of his surroundings.


title: Martin Pistorius

text: His parents then gave him a speech computer, and he began slowly regaining some upper body functions. In 2008 he met his wife Joanna through his sister Kim, and in 2009 they married. He co-wrote his autobiography "Ghost Boy" with Megan Lloyd Davies, which was published in 2011. By that time, Pistorius had regained limited control over his head and arms, but still needed his speech computer to communicate with others. In 2018 it was announced that the couple were expecting a child, and Pistorius was wheelchair-racing.


title: Martin Pistorius

text: During the late 1980s, Pistorius and his parents were living in South Africa, when at the age of 12 he slowly began developing symptoms that included losing the ability to move by himself. Doctors were unable to diagnose the exact ailment and believed it was cryptococcal meningitis and tuberculosis of the brain.


title: Martin Pistorius

text: Pistorius eventually fell into a vegetative state that lasted four years, during which time doctors informed his parents that they did not expect Pistorius to re-awaken or survive for much longer. Starting at age 14, Pistorius received part of his daily care via a care home during the day. At night, he was primarily cared for by his father Rodney, who stated that he woke up every two hours to turn his son so that he would not develop bed sores. While unconscious, Pistorius was able to hear and understand conversations his relatives were having by his bedside, although they did not know this. After recovery, he spoke about major world events – such as the death of Princess Diana, Nelson Mandela becoming president, and the September 11 attacks – that happened when he was unable to communicate. He hated the children's television program character "Barney" – re-runs of which were shown in units where he was recovering – and subsequently tried to think about things that gave him some control over his external reality, such as telling the time by tracking sunlight in a room.


title: Martin Pistorius

text: Pistorius believes that he began regaining consciousness around age 16 (around 1992), during which time he was able to sense the people around him but did not immediately recall previous events, something he has described as "a bit like a baby being born". Around age 19, Pistorius regained full consciousness and awareness, but was initially unable to impart this to the people around him. He was capable of making small movements that were not initially detected by his primary caregivers. One day, Virna van der Walt—an aromatherapist and one of Pistorius's day carers—began noticing that Pistorius would react to specific statements and questions she made. Upon her recommendations, Pistorius was sent to the Centre For Augmentative And Alternative Communication at the University of Pretoria around age 25. There, they confirmed that he was aware and could respond to statements. Pistorius's parents gave him a computer with software to communicate with the people around him.


title: Martin Pistorius

text: Pistorius met his wife Joanna, a UK resident in 2008 through his sister Kim, who had moved to the United Kingdom for her job. He later moved to the United Kingdom and they were married in 2009. He described the terrifying experience of being aware but paralysed in a short video recording in 2018, when the couple were about to have a child. By that time, while still using a wheelchair, he was racing in it. Their son, Sebastian Albert Pistorius, was born a few months later on 6 December.


title: Martin Pistorius

text: In 2011, Simon & Schuster published Pistorius's autobiography, "Ghost Boy", which he co-wrote with Megan Lloyd Davies. The book met with a favourable response. By 2011, Pistorius had regained some control over his head and arms and could communicate with others via a computer equipped with text-to-speech software.


title: Martin Pistorius

text: Pistorius's story found a considerably larger audience after being featured on the first episode of NPR's podcast "Invisibilia", titled "The Secret History of Thoughts".


title: Martin Pistorius

text: In 2015, at the TEDx event in Kansas City, Pistorius described how he freed himself from a life locked inside his own body in his talk "How my mind came back to life — and no one knew". He has given other talks. In 2018, he made a video describing his illness and recovery, and the experience of being fully conscious but unable to communicate.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: The DAO, whose logo featured a capital letter Đ, was a digital decentralized autonomous organization and a form of investor-directed venture capital fund. After launching in April 2016 via a token sale, it became one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns in history.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: The DAO had an objective to provide a new decentralized business model for organizing both commercial and non-profit enterprises. It was instantiated on the Ethereum blockchain and had no conventional management structure or board of directors. The code of the DAO is open-source.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: In June 2016, users exploited a vulnerability in The DAO code to enable them to siphon off one-third of The DAO's funds to a subsidiary account. The Ethereum community controversially decided to hard-fork the Ethereum blockchain to restore approximately all funds to the original contract. This split the Ethereum blockchain into two branches, each with its own cryptocurrency, where the original unforked blockchain continued as Ethereum Classic.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: By September 2016, the value token of The DAO, known by the moniker DAO, was delisted from major cryptocurrency exchanges (such as Poloniex and Kraken) and had, in effect, become defunct.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: The open source computer code behind the organization was written principally by Christoph Jentzsch, and released publicly on GitHub, where other contributors added to and modified the code. Simon Jentzsch, Christoph Jentzsch's brother, was also involved in the venture.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: The DAO was launched on 30 April 2016 at 01:42:58 AM +UTC on Ethereum Block 1428757, with a website and a 28-day crowdsale to fund the organization.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: The token sale had raised more than by 10 May 2016, and more than -worth of "Ether" (ETH)—the digital value token of the Ethereum network—by 12 May, and over by 15 May 2016. On 17 May 2016, the largest investor in the DAO held less than 4% of all DAO tokens and the top 100 holders held just over 46% of all DAO tokens. The fund's Ether value was more than , from more than 11,000 investors.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: A paper published in May 2016 noted a number of security vulnerabilities associated with The DAO and recommended that investors in The DAO hold off from directing The DAO to invest in projects until the problems had been resolved. An Ethereum developer on GitHub pointed out a flaw relating to "recursive calls". On June 9 it was blogged about by Peter Vessenes, founder of the Blockchain Foundation. By June 14, fixes had been proposed and were awaiting approval by members of The DAO.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: On June 16, further attention was called to recursive call vulnerabilities by bloggers affiliated with the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies & Contracts (IC3).


title: The DAO (organization)

text: On June 17, 2016, the DAO was subjected to an attack exploiting a combination of vulnerabilities, including the one concerning recursive calls, that resulted in the transfer of 3.6 million Ether - around a third of the 11.5 million Ether that had been committed to The DAO - valued at the time at around $50M. The funds were moved into an account subject to a 28-day holding period under the terms of the Ethereum smart contract so were not actually gone.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: Members of The DAO and the Ethereum community debated what to do next, with some calling the attack a valid but unethical maneuver, others calling for the Ether to be re-appropriated, and some calling for The DAO to be shut down. Eventually on July 20, 2016, the Ethereum network was hard forked to move the funds in The DAO to a recovery address where they could be exchanged back to Ethereum by their original owners. However, some continued to use the original unforked Ethereum blockchain, now called Ethereum Classic.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: The DAO was a decentralized autonomous organization that exists as a set of contracts that resides on the Ethereum blockchain;


title: The DAO (organization)

text: It did not have a physical address or people in formal management roles. The original theory underlying the DAO was that by removing delegated power from directors and placing it directly in the hands of owners, the DAO removed the ability of directors and fund managers to misdirect and waste investor funds.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: As a blockchain-enabled organization, The DAO claimed to be completely transparent: everything was done by the code, which anyone could see and audit. However, the complexity of the code base and the rapid deployment of the DAO meant that the intended behavior of the organization and its actual behavior differed in serious ways that weren't apparent until after the attack occurred.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: The DAO was intended to operate as "a hub that disperses funds (currently in Ether, the Ethereum value token) to projects". Investors received voting rights by means of a digital share token; they vote on proposals that are submitted by "contractors" and a group of volunteers called "curators" check the identity of people submitting proposals and make sure the projects are legal before "whitelisting" them. The profits from the investments will then flow back to its stakeholders.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: The DAO did not hold the money of investors; instead, the investors owned DAO tokens that gave them rights to vote on potential projects. Anyone could pull out their funds by the time they first voted.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: The DAO's reliance on Ether allowed people to send their money to it from anywhere in the world without providing any identifying information.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: In order to provide an interface with real-world legal structures, the founders of The DAO established a Swiss-based company, DAO. Link, registered as a Société à responsabilité limitée (SARL) in Switzerland, apparently co-founded by Slock.it and Neuchatel-based digital currency exchange Bity SA. According to Jentzsch, DAO. Link was in Switzerland because Swiss law allowed it to "take money from an unknown source as long as you know where it's going."


title: The DAO (organization)

text: In May 2016, "TechCrunch" described The DAO as "a paradigm shift in the very idea of economic organization. ... It offers complete transparency, total shareholder control, unprecedented flexibility, and autonomous governance."


title: The DAO (organization)

text: In May 2016, the plan called for The DAO to invest Ether into ventures. It would back contractors and receive in return "clear payment terms" from contractors. The organizers promoted the DAO as providing investors with a return on their investment via those "clear payment terms" and they warned investors that there was a "significant risk" that the ventures funded by them may fail.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: Risks included unknown attack vectors and programming errors. Additional risks included the lack of precedence in regulatory and corporate law; it was unknown how governments and their regulatory agencies would treat The DAO and the contracts it made. There was also a risk that there would be no corporate veil protecting investors from individual legal and financial liability for actions taken by The DAO and by contractors in which they have invested. It was unclear if the DAO was selling securities, and if it was, what type of securities those might be.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: DAO has a democratized organizational structure so that control can be spread among members. There is no leadership or regulation in this structure. If members transfer cryptocurrency under little regulation, the risk of fraud remains. There is also no way to recover funds if a member mistakenly transfers cryptocurrency to the wrong wallet.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: Additionally, to function in the real world, contractors would likely need to convert the invested Ether into real-world currencies. In May 2016, attorney Andrew Hinkes said that those sales of Ether would be likely to depress the value of Ether.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: The code behind the DAO had several safeguards that aimed to prevent its creators or anyone else from mechanically gaming the voting of shareholders to win investments. However, this would not prevent the making of fraudulent profitability projections, and in addition, a paper cited a "number of security vulnerabilities".


title: The DAO (organization)

text: Slock.it (a German Blockchain venture), and Mobotiq (a French electric vehicle start-up) were listed as seeking potential funding on the daohub.org website during the May "creation period". Both Jentzsch brothers were involved in Slock.it as well.


title: The DAO (organization)

text: On 25 July 2017, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published a report on initial coin offerings (ICOs) and The DAO, examining "whether The DAO and associated entities and individuals violated federal securities laws with unregistered offers and sales of DAO Tokens in exchange for 'Ether,' a virtual currency." The SEC concluded that DAO tokens sold on the Ethereum blockchain were securities and therefore possible violations of U.S. securities laws.


title: Battle axe

text: A battle axe (also battle-axe, battle ax, or battle-ax) is an axe specifically designed for combat. Battle axes were specialized versions of utility axes. Many were suitable for use in one hand, while others were larger and were deployed two-handed.


title: Battle axe

text: Axes designed for warfare ranged in weight from just over , and in length from just over to upwards of , as in the case of the Danish axe or the sparth axe. Cleaving weapons longer than 150 cm would arguably fall into the category of polearms.


title: Battle axe

text: Through the course of human history, commonplace objects have been pressed into service as weapons. Axes, by virtue of their ubiquity, are no exception. Besides axes designed for combat, there were many battle axes that doubled as tools. Axes could be modified into deadly projectiles as well (see the francisca for an example). Axes were often cheaper than swords and considerably more available.


title: Battle axe

text: Battle axes generally weigh far less than modern splitting axes, especially mauls, because they were designed to cut legs and arms rather than wood; consequently, slightly narrow slicing blades are the norm. This facilitates deep, devastating wounds. Moreover, a lighter weapon is much quicker to bring to bear in combat and manipulate for repeated strikes against an adversary.


title: Battle axe

text: The crescent-shaped heads of European battle axes of the Roman and post-Roman periods were usually made of wrought iron with a carbon steel edge or, as time elapsed across the many centuries of the medieval era, steel. The hardwood handles of military axes came to be reinforced with metal bands called langets, so that an enemy warrior could not cut the shaft. Some later specimens had all-metal handles.


title: Battle axe

text: Battle axes are particularly associated in Western popular imagination with the Vikings. Certainly, Scandinavian foot soldiers and maritime marauders employed them as a stock weapon during their heyday, which extended from the beginning of the 8th century to the end of the 11th century. They produced several varieties, including specialized throwing axes (see francisca) and "bearded" axes or "skeggox" (so named for their trailing lower blade edge which increased cleaving power and could be used to catch the edge of an opponent's shield and pull it down, leaving the shield-bearer vulnerable to a follow-up blow). Viking axes may have been wielded with one hand or two, depending on the length of the plain wooden haft. See Viking Age arms and armor.


title: Battle axe

text: Stone hand axes were in use in the Paleolithic period for hundreds of thousands of years. The first hafted stone axes appear to have been produced about 6000 BCE during the Mesolithic period. Technological development continued in the Neolithic period with the much wider usage of hard stones in addition to flint and chert and the widespread use of polishing to improve axe properties. The axes proved critical in wood working and became cult objects (for example, the entry for the Battle-axe people of Scandinavia, treated their axes as high-status cultural objects). Such stone axes were made from a wide variety of tough rocks such as picrite and other igneous or metamorphic rocks, and were widespread in the Neolithic period. Many axe heads found were probably used primarily as mauls to split wood beams, and as sledgehammers for construction purposes (such hammering stakes into the ground, for example).


title: Battle axe

text: Narrow axe heads made of cast metals were subsequently manufactured by artisans in the Middle East and then Europe during the Copper Age and the Bronze Age. The earliest specimens were socket-less.


title: Battle axe

text: More specifically, bronze battle-axe heads are attested in the archaeological record from ancient China and the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt. Some of them were suited for practical use as infantry weapons while others were clearly intended to be brandished as symbols of status and authority, judging by the quality of their decoration.


title: Battle axe

text: The epsilon axe was widely used during the Bronze Age by irregular infantry unable to afford better weapons. Its use was limited to Europe and the Middle East.


title: Battle axe

text: In the eastern Mediterranean Basin during the Iron Age, the double-bladed labrys axe was prevalent, and a hafted, single-bitted axe made of bronze or later iron was sometimes used as a weapon of war by the heavy infantry of ancient Greece, especially when confronted with thickly-armored opponents. The sagaris—described as either single bitted or double bitted—became associated by the Greeks with the mythological Amazons, though these were generally ceremonial axes rather than practical implements.


title: Battle axe

text: The Barbarian tribes that the Romans encountered north of the Alps did include iron war axes in their armories, alongside swords and spears. The Cantabri from the Iberian peninsula also used battle axes.


title: Battle axe

text: Battle axes were very common in Europe in the Migration Period and the subsequent Viking Age, and they famously figure on the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts Norman mounted knights pitted against Anglo-Saxon infantrymen. They continued to be employed throughout the rest of the Middle Ages, with significant combatants being noted axe wielders in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries.


title: Battle axe

text: King Stephen of England famously used a 'Dane axe' at the Battle of Lincoln 1141. One account says that he used it after his sword broke. Another says he used his sword only after his axe broke.


title: Battle axe

text: Richard the Lionheart was often recorded in Victorian times wielding a large war axe, though references are sometimes wildly exaggerated as befitted a national hero: "Long and long after he was quiet in his grave, his terrible battle-axe, with twenty English pounds of English steel in its mighty head..." – "A Child's History of England" by Charles Dickens. Richard is, however, recorded as using a Danish Axe at the relief of Jaffa. Geoffrey of Lusignan is another famous crusader associated with the axe.


title: Battle axe

text: Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, used an axe to defeat Henry de Bohun in single combat at the start of the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Given that Bruce was wielding the axe on horseback, it is likely that it was a one handed horseman's axe. They enjoyed a sustained revival among heavily armored equestrian combatants in the 15th century.


title: Battle axe

text: In the 14th century, the use of axes is increasingly noted by Froissart in his Chronicle, which records the engagements between the kingdoms of France and England and the rise of professional (and mercenary) armies in the 14th century. King John II is recorded as using one at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 and Sir James Douglas at the Battle of Otterburn in 1388. Bretons were apparently noted axe users, with noted mercenaries Bertrand du Guesclin and Olivier de Clisson both wielding axes in battle. In these instances the type of battle axe - whether a Danish axe, or the proto-pollaxe - is not recorded.


title: Battle axe

text: Most medieval European battle axes had a socketed head (meaning that the thicker, butt-end of the blade contained an opening into which a wooden haft was inserted), and some included langets—long strips of metal affixed to the faces of the haft to prevent it from being damaged during combat. Occasionally the cheeks of the axehead bore engraved, etched, punched or inlaid decorative patterns. Late-period battle axes tended to be of all-metal construction.


title: Battle axe

text: Steel plate-armor covering almost all of a knight's body, and incorporating features specifically designed to defeat axe and sword blades, become more common in the late 14th and early 15th century. Its development led to a generation of hafted weapons with points that concentrated impact, either to penetrate steel plate or to damage the joints of articulated plate. Increasingly daggers called misericords were carried which enabled a sharp point to be thrust though gaps in armour if an opponent was disabled or being grappled with. Swords styles became more diverse – from the two-handed zweihänders to more narrow thrusting instruments with sharply pointed tips, capable of penetrating any "chinks in the armour" of a fully encased opponent: for example, the estoc.


title: Battle axe

text: The newly invented flanged mace, for example, was no crude bludgeon like its predecessors. The vertical flanges projecting at regular intervals from its head could fracture plate armor and smash into underlying body tissue—yet it was a much cheaper weapon to make than a sword, whose blade was inclined in any case to glance harmlessly off the smooth, curved plates of a well-designed suit of armor if used in a chopping manner.


title: Battle axe

text: A sharp, sometimes curved pick was often fitted to the rear of the battle axe's blade to provide the user with a secondary weapon of penetration. A stabbing spike could be added, too, as a finial. Similarly, the war hammer evolved in late-medieval times with fluted or spiked heads, which would help a strike to "bite" into the armour and deliver its energy through to the wearer, rather than glance off the armor's surface. Strikes from these armour penetrating picks were not always fatal. There are many accounts of plate armored knights being struck with said weapons and while the armour was damaged, the individual underneath survived and in some cases completely unharmed.


title: Battle axe

text: It eventually became common for these various kinds of impact weapons to be made entirely from metal, thus doing away with reinforced wooden shafts.


title: Battle axe

text: A useful visual guide to high-medieval battle axes, contemporary with their employment, are the scenes of warfare depicted in the Maciejowski Bible (Morgan Bible) of circa 1250.


title: Battle axe

text: Battle axes also came to figure as heraldic devices on the coats of arms of several English and mainland European families.


title: Battle axe

text: Battle axes were eventually phased out at the end of the 16th century as military tactics began to revolve increasingly around the use of gunpowder. However, as late as the 1640s, Prince Rupert—a Royalist general and cavalry commander during the English Civil War—is pictured carrying a battle axe, and this was not merely a decorative symbol of authority: the "short pole-axe" was adopted by Royalist cavalry officers to penetrate Roundhead troopers' helmets and cuirasses in close-quarters fighting, and it was also used by their opponents: Sir Bevil Grenville was slain by a Parliamentarian pole-axe at the Battle of Lansdowne, and Sir Richard Bulstrode was wounded by one at the Battle of Edgehill.


title: Battle axe

text: In Scandinavia, however, the battle axe continued in use alongside the halberd, crossbow and pole-axe until the start of the 18th century. The nature of Norwegian terrain in particular made pike and shot tactics impracticable in many cases. A law instituted in 1604 required all farmers to own weaponry to serve in the militia. The Norwegian peasant militia battle axe, much more wieldy than the pike or halberd and yet effective against mounted enemies, was a popular choice. Many such weapons were ornately decorated, and yet their functionality shows in the way that the axe head was mounted tilting upwards slightly, with a significant forward curve in the shaft, with the intent of making them more effective against armoured opponents by concentrating force onto a narrower spot.


title: Battle axe

text: During Napoleonic times, and later on in the 19th century, farriers in army service carried long and heavy axes as part of their kit. Although these could be used in an emergency for fighting, their primary use was logistical: the branded hooves of deceased military horses needed to be removed in order to prove that they had indeed died (and had not been stolen). Napoleon's Pioneer Corps also carried axes that were used for clearing vegetation—a practice employed by similar units in other armies.


title: Battle axe

text: The "tabarzin" (, lit. "saddle axe" or "saddle hatchet") is the traditional battle axe of Persia. It bears one or two crescent-shaped blades. The long form of the tabar was about seven feet long, while a shorter version was about three feet long. What made the Persian axe unique is the very thin handle, which is very light and always metallic. The tabar became one of the main weapons throughout the Middle East, and was always carried at a soldier's waist not only in Persia but Egypt, and the Arab world from the time of the Crusades. Mamluk bodyguards were known as "tabardiyya" after the weapon. The tabarzin is sometimes carried as a symbolic weapon by wandering dervishes (Muslim ascetic worshippers).


title: Battle axe

text: Different types of battleaxes may be found in ancient China. In Chinese mythology, Xingtian (), a deity, uses a battle axe against other gods. The "qi" () and "yue" () are heavy axes. They were common in Zhou dynasty but fell out of favor with users due to the lack of mobility. The eventually became used only for ceremonial purposes and such battleaxes made of bronze and jade have been found. The dagger axe (ge) is another form used in ancient times.


title: Battle axe

text: Chinese battleaxes can be divided in three subgroups: Fu (), () and Ge (). The distinction between a Yue and a Fu is that a Yue is, as a general rule, broader than a Fu. In the Shang dynasty the Yue was also a symbol of power, the bigger the Yue, the greater the power. There are a few rare examples of Yue with a round blade and a hole in the middle.


title: Battle axe

text: The Chinese Fu appeared in the Stone Age as a tool. In the Shang dynasty (–) the Fu began to be made from bronze, and began to be used as a weapon. However, the prominence of the Fu waned on the battlefield as the Zhou dynasty came to power. In the Warring States era iron axes started to appear. Up until the Han and Jin dynasty, after having lost its importance on the battle-field, the Fu once again appeared as the cavalry was used more often.


title: Battle axe

text: In the Sui and Tang dynasties there is evidence of the subdivision of the Fu. During the Song dynasty axes were popularized and many types of axes began to exist. The types include Phoenix Head Axes ( ), Invincible Axe ( ), Opening Mountain Axe ( ), Emei Axe ( ) and Chisel Head Axes ( ).


title: Battle axe

text: A well known novel from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) knows as the Outlaws of the Marsh (or the Water Margin - Shui Hu Zhuan ) features a character known as Li Kui, the Black Whirlwind who wields two axes and fights naked.


title: Battle axe

text: In the Yuan and Ming dynasties, axes retained their use in the army. In the Qing dynasty new types of axes emerge among the Eight Banners Army with straight edges. The Green Standard Army among the Eight Banners used double axes weighing each, with a length of .


title: Battle axe

text: In modern Chinese wushu and Chinese opera there are many depictions of the axe. Many of these axes look thick and heavy, however, the axe heads are hollow.


title: Battle axe

text: The battle axe of ancient India was known as a parashu (or farasa in some dialects). Made from iron, bamboo, wood, or wootz steel, it usually measures though some are as long as . A typical parashu could have a single edge or double edge, with a hole for fixing a shaft. The haft is often tied with a leather sheet to provide a good grip. The cutting edge is invariably broad and the length of the haft could be about three to four feet. The parashu is often depicted in religious art as one of the weapons of Hindu deities such as Shiva and Durga. The sixth avatar of Lord Vishnu, Parashurama, is named after the weapon. Parashu are still used as domestic tools in Indian households, particularly in the villages, as well as being carried by certain sects of eremitic sadhu.


title: Battle axe

text: The panabas is the 19th-century battle axe as well as the chopping tool favored by the Moro tribes of Mindanao. It ranges in size from and usually long and can be held with one or two hands. Hilts were often wrapped in rattan bindings or had metal collars. Due to its clean cutting capabilities it was also sometimes used as an execution weapon. It is said that the Moro warriors wielding panabas would follow the main group of warriors up front and would immediately charge in on any American survivors of the first wave of attack during the Philippine–American War.


title: Battle axe

text: The keteriya was a type of battle axe that was used in ancient Sri Lanka. A keteriya consisted of a single edge and a short handle made of wood. This would allow the user to wield it with a single hand.


title: Battle axe

text: The battle axe is one of the most common type of weapons found in Vietnamese ancient cultures, particularly Dong Son culture.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; as such, it was a founding member of the Stentor Alliance. It is also a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) for enterprise customers in the western provinces.


title: Bell Canada

text: Its subsidiary Bell Aliant provides services in the Atlantic provinces. It provides mobile service through its Bell Mobility (including flanker brand Virgin Mobile Canada) subsidiary, and television through its Bell Satellite TV (direct broadcast satellite) and Bell Fibe TV (IPTV) subsidiaries.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Canada's principal competitors are Rogers Communications in Ontario, Telus and Shaw Communications in Western Canada, and Quebecor (Videotron) and Telus in Quebec. The company serves over 13 million phone lines and is headquartered at the Campus Bell complex in the borough of Verdun in Montreal.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Canada is one of the main assets of the holding company BCE Inc., formerly known as Bell Canada Enterprises. In addition to the Bell Canada telecommunications properties, BCE also owns Bell Media (which operates mass media properties including the national CTV Television Network) and holds significant interests in the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey club and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, owner of several Toronto professional sports franchises. BCE ranked number 301 on the 2021 edition of the Forbes Global 2000 list.


title: Bell Canada

text: Historically, Bell Canada has been one of Canada's most important and most powerful companies and, in 1975, was listed as the fifth largest in the country. The company is named after the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, who also co-founded Bell Telephone Company in Boston, Massachusetts. Bell Canada operated as the Canadian subsidiary of the Bell System from 1880 to 1975. However, unlike the other regional Bell operating companies, Bell Canada had its own research and development labs.


title: Bell Canada

text: In the mid-1870s Alexander Graham Bell, who was Scottish-born but lived in Canada, invented an analogue electromagnetic telecommunication device that could simultaneously transmit and receive human speech. In March 1876 he successfully patented his invention in the United States under the title of "Improvement In Telegraphy" (). His device later adopted the name now used worldwide, the telephone. Bell also patented it in Canada and transferred 75% of the Canadian patent rights to his father, Alexander Melville Bell, with the remaining 25% being awarded to Boston telephone manufacturer Charles Williams Jr. in exchange for 1,000 telephones to be provided to the Canadian market. This order could not be fulfilled due to surging demand in the United States.


title: Bell Canada

text: For a few years, the senior Bell and his friend and business associate Reverend Thomas Philip Henderson collected royalties from the lease of telephones to customers in the limited late-1870s Canadian market, who either operated their own private telephone lines or subscribed to a third party telecommunications service provider.


title: Bell Canada

text: In 1879 Bell's father sold his Canadian rights to the National Bell Telephone Company, formed in Boston, Massachusetts earlier that year by the merger of the Bell Telephone Company and the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, which in 1880 reorganized as the American Bell Telephone Company, initiating the Bell System. That same year the Canadian division was renamed to "The Bell Telephone Company of Canada Ltd.", eventually to be headed by U.S. executive Charles Fleetford Sise from Chicago who served as its first general manager.


title: Bell Canada

text: The first supplier of telephones to Bell was a company established by Thomas C. Cowherd and his son James H. Cowherd, in a three-storey brick building in Brantford, Ontario, creating Canada's first telephone factory. Thomas and James had been good friends of Alexander Graham Bell, providing stovepipe wire with which Bell conducted his early telephone experiments from his father's home in Tutelo Heights, Ontario, and also building some 2,398 telephones to Bell's specifications for the Canadian market until James Cowherd's untimely death from tuberculosis in 1881. With a government-granted monopoly on Canadian long-distance telephone service, The Bell Telephone Company of Canada was serving 237,000 subscribers by 1914.


title: Bell Canada

text: Since its early years The Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd. had been known colloquially as "The Bell" or "Bell Telephone". On March 7, 1968, Canadian federal legislation renamed The Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd. to Bell Canada.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Canada extended lines from Nova Scotia to the foot of the Rocky Mountains in what is now Alberta. However, most of the attention given to meeting demand for service focused on major cities in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces.


title: Bell Canada

text: During the late 19th century, Bell sold its Atlantic operations in the three Maritime provinces, where many small independent companies also operated and eventually came under the ownership of three provincial companies. Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada with several private companies, and a government operation that was transferred to the control of Canadian National Railways.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell acquired interests in all Atlantic companies during the early 1960s, starting with Newfoundland Telephone (which later was organized as NewTel Communications) on July 24, 1962. Bell acquired controlling interest in Maritime Telephone and Telegraph Company, later known as MT&T, which also owned PEI-based Island Telephone, and in Bruncorp, the parent company of NBTel in 1966. The purchase of MT&T was made despite efforts of the Nova Scotia legislature on September 10, 1966, to limit the voting power of any shareholder to 1000 votes. Bell-owned MT&T absorbed some 120 independent companies, most serving fewer than 50 customers each. Bell-owned NewTel purchased the CNR-owned Terra Nova Tel in 1988.


title: Bell Canada

text: In the late 1990s, Newtel, Bruncorp, MT&T and Island Tel merged into Aliant, now Bell Aliant which owns many services in rural areas of Ontario and Quebec formerly owned by Bell Canada.


title: Bell Canada

text: On January 1, 2011, Bell acquired xwave from Bell Aliant for $40 million, an information technology company offering sales and services in Atlantic Canada.


title: Bell Canada

text: Independent companies appeared in many areas of Ontario, Quebec and Maritime provinces without adequate Bell Canada service. During the 20th century Bell acquired most of the independent companies in Ontario and Quebec, most notably the purchase of Nexxlink Technologies, a Montreal-based integrated IT solutions and telecommunications provider founded by Karol Brassard. Alongside the acquisition of Charon Systems, Nexxlink now operates today as Bell Business Solutions—a division of Bell Canada. Quebec, however, still has large swaths of relatively rural areas served by Telus Québec (formerly Québec Telephone, later acquired by Telus) and Télébec (now owned by Bell Canada via Bell Aliant) and by some 20 small independent companies. As of 1980, Ontario still had some 30 independent companies, and Bell has not acquired any; the smaller ones were sold to larger independents with larger capital resources. Cellcom Communications is the largest franchisee of Bell Canada, currently operating 25 Bell stores in both Québec and Ontario regions.


title: Bell Canada

text: At separate times, the three Prairie provinces acquired Bell Canada operations and formed provincial utility services, investing to develop proper telephone services throughout those provinces; Bell Canada's investment in the prairies had been scant or insufficient relative to growth, and all three had various local telephone companies. The Alberta government's Alberta Government Telephones Commission and Manitoba Government Telephones purchased the Bell operations of their provinces in 1908. Saskatchewan's Department of Railways, Telegraphs and Telephones, established in June 1908, purchased the Bell operations on October 1, 1909; all three provinces' government operations eventually acquired the independent companies.


title: Bell Canada

text: Having achieved a high level of development, Manitoba moved to privatize its telephone utility and Alberta privatized Alberta Government Telephones to create Telus in the 1990s. Saskatchewan continues to own SaskTel as a crown corporation. Edmonton was served by a city-owned utility, Edmonton Telephones Corporation, that was sold to Telus in 1995. BCE re-gained ownership of the Manitoba system, now known as Bell MTS, on March 17, 2017.


title: Bell Canada

text: British Columbia, served today by Telus, was served by numerous small companies that mostly amalgamated to form British Columbia Telephone, later known as BC Tel (the last known acquisition was the Okanagan Telephone Company in the late 1970s), which served the province from the 1960s until its merger with Telus. (The amalgamations produced one anomaly: Atlin is surrounded by the territory of Northwestel, implying that the company that established service there was acquired by a company serving territories further south.)


title: Bell Canada

text: Although Bell Canada entered the Northwest Territories (NWT) with an exchange at Iqaluit (then known as Frobisher Bay, in the territory now known as Nunavut) in 1958, Canadian National Telecommunications, a subsidiary of Canadian National Railways (CNR), provided most of the telephone service in Canada's northern territories (specifically, Yukon, northern BC and the western NWT). CNR created Northwestel in 1979, and Bell Canada Enterprises acquired the company in 1988 as a wholly owned subsidiary. Bell Canada sold its 22 exchanges in the eastern region of the NWT to Northwestel in 1992, and BCE transferred ownership of the company to Bell Canada in 1999. Northwestel's operating area was in 2001 opened to long-distance competition (which has materialized only in the form of prepaid card business, and service to large national customers with some operating locations in the north) and in 2007 to resale of local telephone service (which has not yet occurred).


title: Bell Canada

text: Northern British Columbia, northeastern Ontario and the James Bay region of northern Quebec were served by independent companies, though Bell Canada eventually provided service in more far-flung reaches of Ontario and Quebec, acquired ownership interests in companies serving large swaths of northwestern Quebec and northeastern Ontario, and in Northwestel.


title: Bell Canada

text: The Bell System had two main companies in the telephone industry in Canada: Bell Canada as a regional operating company (affiliated with AT&T, with an ownership stake of approximately 39%) and Northern Electric as an equipment manufacturer (affiliated with Western Electric, with an ownership stake of approximately 44%). The Bell Telephone Company of Canada and Northern Electric were structured similarly in Canada to the analogous portions of the Bell System in the United States; the regional operating company (Bell Canada) sold telephone services as a local exchange carrier, and Western Electric (Northern Electric) designed and manufactured telephone equipment.


title: Bell Canada

text: As part of the consent decree signed in 1956 to resolve the antitrust lawsuit filed in 1949 by the United States Department of Justice, AT&T and the Bell System proper divested itself of Northern Electric in 1956.


title: Bell Canada

text: In October 1973, AT&T and Bell Canada signed an agreement stating that AT&T would no longer furnish Bell System communications and research to Bell Canada. AT&T's at-the-time chairman John DeButts explained that the main reason for this was because Bell Canada had developed its own research and development lab (Bell-Northern Research), making Bell Canada ready to serve its Canadian landline customers on its own. As a result, AT&T divested Bell Canada on June 30, 1975.


title: Bell Canada

text: Even though Bell Canada had been divested, it was allowed to participate in Bell System projects which could be completed shortly after its divestiture date.


title: Bell Canada

text: Northern Electric renamed itself Northern Telecom in 1976, which in turn became Nortel Networks in 1998 with the acquisition of Bay Networks.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Canada acquired 100 percent of Northern Electric in 1964; starting in 1973, Bell's ownership stake in Northern Electric was diminished through public stock offerings, though it retained majority control. In 1983, as a result of deregulation, Bell Canada Enterprises (later shortened to BCE) was formed as the parent company to Bell Canada and Northern Telecom. As a result of the stock transaction used by Northern Telecom to purchase Bay Networks, BCE ceased to be the majority owner of Nortel, and in 2000, BCE spun out its share of Nortel, distributing its holdings to its shareholders.


title: Bell Canada

text: Between 1980 and 1997, the federal government fully deregulated the telecommunications industry and Bell Canada's monopoly largely ended. Bell Canada currently provides local phone service only in major city centres in Ontario and Quebec.


title: Bell Canada

text: In July 2006, Bell and former subsidiary Aliant completed a restructuring whereby Aliant, renamed Bell Aliant Regional Communications, took over Bell's wireline operations in much of Ontario and Quebec (while continuing to use the "Bell" name in those regions), as well as its 63% ownership in rural lines operator Bell Nordiq (a publicly traded income trust that controls NorthernTel and Télébec). These are in addition to Bell Aliant's operations in Atlantic Canada. In turn, Bell has assumed responsibility for Bell Aliant's wireless and retail operations. Bell Aliant, now an income trust, is 44% owned by Bell.


title: Bell Canada

text: On April 30, 2007, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced its decision to allow pay phone rates for Bell Canada, Telus, Bell Aliant, SaskTel, and MTS Allstream to increase from 25 cents to 50 cents, starting as early as June 1. The CRTC also permitted local rural rates to increase by the lesser of the annual rate of inflation or five percent, and removed price caps on optional rural services, such as call display and voicemail.


title: Bell Canada

text: On June 2, 2007, Bell Canada increased the cost of a local pay phone call to 50 cents when paid in cash and one dollar when paid by calling card or credit card,


title: Bell Canada

text: In 2009, Bell Canada purchased electronics retailer The Source and all other assets of InterTAN Canada Ltd. from bankrupt Circuit City.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell has deployed MPLS on their nationwide fibre ring network to support consumer and enterprise-level IP applications, such as IPTV and VoIP.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Canada has faced controversy and scandal. In late 2011, Bell Canada admitted to a policy of bandwidth throttling of BitTorrent traffic across its network when it announced it would stop the practice of "traffic shaping" during periods of high demand beginning in March 2012. In November 2011, only a few weeks before, the CRTC issued a ruling that stopped the controversial practice of usage-based billing of smaller internet service providers who purchase space on Bell Canada networks, providing a fee structure based on total capacity needed. Bell Canada had originally wanted to charge providers by how much data each user downloaded.


title: Bell Canada

text: In May 2017, the email addresses of 1.9 million Bell customers were stolen, along with the name and phone numbers of 1.7 million customers. Then in January 2018, there was another data breach affecting about 100 thousand Bell customers.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Canada's mobile phone services has been criticized for monopolistic practices, including during its acquisition of MTS.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Canada provides standard voice service. It used to offer VoIP to customers, branded as "Digital Voice". Businesses can still obtain VoIP service. It now offers BTC (Bell Total Connect) SIP service as a digital voice package.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Home Phone and Bell Mobility provide voicemail service as an optional feature for residences and businesses. Bell Prepaid customers, however, receive a basic voice mail at no additional charge. The complimentary voice mail can store five messages of one minute each, for up to five days.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Mobility operates a cellular network in all Canadian provinces. It also owns Virgin Mobile Canada . While it created the Solo Mobile brand in 1999, Bell shut down all standalone Solo stores in 2011 while discontinuing third-party sales of all Solo phones in November 2011. The brand continues to be active for its current customers, but there are no incentives to encourage new subscriptions.


title: Bell Canada

text: Formerly known as ExpressVu, Bell Satellite TV is a satellite television service provider. There is also a mobile TV service, Bell Mobile TV, and an locked IPTV service known as Bell Fibe TV and Alt TV. The latter is available in most of Alberta, British Columbia, the Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa, Montreal, Québec City and Atlantic Canada.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Internet provides high speed DSL and fiber to the home FTTH Internet service in many areas where it offers phone service. DSL is offered in various speeds ranging from 500 kbit/s to 100 Mbit/s download and 256 kbit/s to 10 Mbit/s upload on DSL while up to 8 Gbit/s on fiber optic depending on what the local infrastructure can support.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell began offering Fibre-to-the-node Internet access to some subscribers in 2010. Bell markets this service under the name "Fibe". Many urban Fibe regions can access all speeds up to and including 50+mbps down and 15+mbps up but some rural Fibe regions can only obtain 16 Mbit/s down and 1 Mbit/s up. Non-Fibe regions are limited to legacy DSL technology, supporting speeds of up to 7 Mbit/s down and 1 Mbit/s up. Bell Canada has now rolled out Fibre to the Home services to certain subscribers across Eastern Canada, this service can provide guaranteed download of 3 Gbit/s and upload speeds of 3 Gbit/s. In August 2019, the company announced it would cut roughly 200,000 households from a rural internet expansion program after a federal regulator lowered wholesale broadband prices that major telecom companies can charge smaller internet providers.


title: Bell Canada

text: In a press release issued February 24., Bell announced that it has acquired Internet service provider EBOX. Bell wishes to keep the brand and the activities of EBOX and let the company continue to operate independently while remaining based in Longueuil.


title: Bell Canada

text: Bell Canada also previously offered cable television services in the United Kingdom via Bell Cablemedia plc (a joint venture with Jones Intercable and Cable & Wireless plc) from 1994 until 1997, when Vidéotron first sold its UK operations to Bell Cablemedia, after which Bell Cablemedia and the UK operations of NYNEX Corporation merged with Cable & Wireless plc to form Cable & Wireless Communications.


title: Bell Canada

text: Coinciding with its advertising campaign as part of its sponsorship of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Bell introduced a new logo and minimalist ad style, with the slogans "Today just got better" (with emphasis on the suffix "er") in English Canada and "La vie est Bell" (a pun on "La vie est Belle" — ) in French Canada. The font used in Bell's marketing is a custom typeface known as 'Bell Slim', by Canadian typeface designer Ian Brignell.


title: Bell Canada

text: The financial performance of the company is reported to shareholders on an annual basis. The unit (except where noted) is millions of Canadian dollars.


title: Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo

text: Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo (Elena María Isabel Dominica de Silos de Borbón y de Grecia; born 20 December 1963) is the first child and eldest daughter of Juan Carlos I (King of Spain from 1975 to 2014) and Queen Sofía of Spain, and third in the line of succession to the Spanish throne. She has a younger sister, Cristina, and a younger brother, King Felipe VI.


title: Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo

text: Elena has represented her family abroad on several occasions, having travelled to Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Argentina, Japan, Peru, and the Philippines.


title: Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo

text: Infanta Elena was born on 20 December 1963 at Our Lady of Loreto Hospital, now known as ORPEA Madrid Loreto, in Madrid. She is the first member to be born in hospital from King Juan Carlos I's family and she is eldest child of King Juan Carlos I, the former Spanish monarch, and his wife, Queen Sofía (the former Princess of Greece and Denmark), She has one sister and one brother. In 1987, Infanta Elena met her future husband while she was studying French literature in Paris.


title: Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo

text: Elena married Jaime de Marichalar y Sáenz de Tejada, Lord of Tejada, son of and his wife , on 18 March 1995, in Seville Cathedral, Seville, at which time her father conferred on her the title Duchess of Lugo for life. The couple have two children: Felipe (born 17 July 1998) and Victoria (born 9 September 2000) were born at Ruber International Hospital in Madrid .


title: Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo

text: On 13 November 2007, it was announced that Elena had separated from her husband. In November 2009, the Spanish media reported that she and her husband would divorce, although a rumour to that effect had been circulating for a year before the announcement was made. Their divorce papers were signed on 25 November 2009. The Duchess and Duke of Lugo were divorced in December 2009. On 21 January 2010, the divorce was registered at the Civil Registry of the Spanish Royal Family. It was officially announced on 9 February 2010, that Jaime de Marichalar was no longer permitted to use the ducal title and that he was no longer considered to be an official member of the Spanish Royal Family.


title: Samus Aran

text: Samus is the protagonist of several "Metroid" games, films, manga series, and a comic book continuation of "". She also appears in the film "Metroid: The Sky Calls", portrayed by actresses Jessica Chobot and America Young. She has featured in several other game franchises, including as a playable character in every installment of the "Super Smash Bros." series.


title: Samus Aran

text: In terms of gender representation in video games, she has received largely positive reviews. She is also recognized as one of the earliest female video game protagonists and has remained a popular and well-received character.


title: Samus Aran

text: Samus Aran is typically seen wearing the Power Suit, a powered exoskeleton which protects her from most dangers she encounters and can be enhanced by power-ups collected during gameplay. With the Power Suit's Arm Cannon, Samus can fire various energy beams, charge beams to shoot an extra-powerful blast, or launch a limited number of missiles. The Power Suit can be reconfigured into a small, spherical form called the Morph Ball, which allows her to roll through tight areas, such as tunnels, and use Bombs. It is also equipped with a Grapple Beam, which can be used to tether onto objects to cross large distances, such as chasms. Additionally, its visor can be used to scan objects to learn more about them, a feature that has been used since "Metroid Prime". Aside from her Power Suit, Samus is also in possession of a Gunship, which is used in the games to save progress and restore her health and ammunition.


title: Samus Aran

text: Instances of Samus appearing without the Power Suit occur mainly in cutscenes, such as post-game screenshots of her in more revealing clothing, which are unlocked depending on difficulty level, game completion, or play time. "" introduced the Zero Suit, a form-fitting jumpsuit that she wears beneath the Power Suit. In "", the Zero Suit (which here was given wedge heels despite a footnote in Zero Mission's concept art specifically stating not to) is capable of materializing the Power Suit from within itself. She is and while wearing the Power Suit. The "Super Metroid Nintendo's Player's Guide" instead describes Samus as tall and weighs without her Power Suit.


title: Samus Aran

text: The "Metroid" e-manga covers Samus's origins. She was born and raised on the Earth mining colony K-2L, and when she was a child, the planet was raided by Space Pirates led by Ridley in an attack that killed her parents and destroyed the colony. The orphaned Samus was then found by a bird-like alien race known as the Chozo, who brought her to their home planet, Zebes. To preserve her life and ensure that her status as the "Protector of the Galaxy" would come to pass, the Chozo infused their DNA within Samus, which granted her superhuman athleticism and a strong resistance to foreign environments. In addition, they trained her in combat by equipping her with one of their artifacts, the Power Suit. Upon completing her training and being granted the Power Suit by the Chozo, Samus then enlisted in the Galactic Federation at an unknown point after leaving the Chozo, but left over disagreements with her commanding officer, Adam Malkovich. Samus then started working as a freelance bounty hunter, and has since been called on by the Galactic Federation to execute missions "because of her superior skills and sense of justice". Most of her missions revolve around travelling the galaxy while eliminating unsavory elements, such as the enigmatic organisms known as the Metroids, which can drain life energy and are frequently sought after as biological weapons due to their extreme durability.


title: Samus Aran

text: The style for the original "Metroid" game was designed to be a cross between the side-scrolling gameplay of the "Super Mario" series, the exploration and puzzle-solving aspects of "The Legend of Zelda" series, and inspiration from science fiction, particularly Ridley Scott's film "Alien". The game's characters were conceived by Makoto Kano, while Hiroji Kiyotake designed the protagonist Samus Aran. Her signature ability to collapse into a ball to travel through tight areas was initially called the Maru Mari, meaning "round ball" in Japanese, and was rechristened as the Morph Ball in "Super Metroid". The Morph Ball was conceived by the developers because it requires less effort to animate than "a cyborg crawling on all fours", and the producer for "Metroid", Gunpei Yokoi, took advantage of this shortcut.


title: Samus Aran

text: The series' co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto recalled: "We were partway through the development process when one of the staff members said 'Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned out that this person inside the suit was a woman?'" The developers voted on the concept, and it passed. The game's instruction manual refers to Samus as if she were male to obscure her real sex until the surprise reveal at the end of the game. Sakamoto noted that during the course of the "Metroid" series, developers constantly try to express her femininity without sexually objectifying her. Samus's image was based on actress Sigourney Weaver in her role as Ellen Ripley from "Aliens", and actress Kim Basinger from "9½ Weeks" and "My Stepmother Is an Alien". Sakamoto and Kiyotake said that the character's last name "Aran" was taken from Edson "Aran"tes do Nascimento, the birth name of the famous football player Pelé.