title: Echo chamber (media)

text: In discussions of news media, an echo chamber refers to situations in which beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a closed system and insulated from rebuttal. By participating in an echo chamber, people are able to seek out information that reinforces their existing views without encountering opposing views, potentially resulting in an unintended exercise in confirmation bias. Echo chambers may increase social and political polarization and extremism. On social media, it is thought that echo chambers limit exposure to diverse perspectives, and favour and reinforce presupposed narratives and ideologies.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: The term is a metaphor based on an acoustic echo chamber, in which sounds reverberate in a hollow enclosure. Another emerging term for this echoing and homogenizing effect within social media communities on the Internet is cultural tribalism.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Many scholars note the effects that echo chambers can have on citizens' stances and viewpoints, and specifically implications has for politics. However, some studies have suggested that the effects of echo chambers are weaker than often assumed.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: The Internet has expanded the variety and amount of accessible political information. On the positive side, this may create a more pluralistic form of public debate; on the negative side, greater access to information may lead to selective exposure to ideologically supportive channels. In an extreme "echo chamber", one purveyor of information will make a claim, which many like-minded people then repeat, overhear, and repeat again (often in an exaggerated or otherwise distorted form) until most people assume that some extreme variation of the story is true.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: The echo chamber effect occurs online when a harmonious group of people amalgamate and develop tunnel vision. Participants in online discussions may find their opinions constantly echoed back to them, which reinforces their individual belief systems due to the declining exposure to other's opinions. Their individual belief systems are what culminate into a confirmation bias regarding a variety of subjects. When an individual wants something to be true, they often will only gather the information that supports their existing beliefs and disregard any statements they find that are contradictory or speak negatively upon their beliefs. Individuals who participate in echo chambers often do so because they feel more confident that their opinions will be more readily accepted by others in the echo chamber. This happens because the Internet has provided access to a wide range of readily available information. People are receiving their news online more rapidly through less traditional sources, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. These and many other social platforms and online media outlets have established personalized algorithms intended to cater specific information to individuals’ online feeds. This method of curating content has replaced the function of the traditional news editor. The mediated spread of information through online networks causes a risk of an algorithmic filter bubble, leading to concern regarding how the effects of echo chambers on the internet promote the division of online interaction.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: It is important to note that members of an echo chamber are not fully responsible for their convictions. Once part of an echo chamber, an individual might adhere to seemingly acceptable epistemic practices and still be further misled. Many individuals may be stuck in echo chambers due to factors existing outside of their control, such as being raised in one.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Furthermore, the function of an echo chamber does not entail eroding a member's interest in truth; it focuses upon manipulating their credibility levels so that fundamentally different establishments and institutions will be considered proper sources of authority.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: However, empirical findings to clearly support these concerns are needed and the field is very fragmented when it comes to empirical results. There are some studies that do measure echo chamber effects, such as the study of Bakshy et al. (2015). In this study the researchers found that people tend to share news articles they align with. Similarly, they discovered a homophily in online friendships, meaning people are more likely to be connected on social media if they have the same political ideology. In combination, this can lead to echo chamber effects. Bakshy et al. found that a person's potential exposure to cross-cutting content (content that is opposite to their own political beliefs) through their own network is only 24% for liberals and 35% for conservatives.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Another set of studies suggests that echo chambers exist, but that these not a widespread phenomenon: Based on survey data, Dubois and Blank (2018) show that most people do consume news from various sources, while around 8% consume media with low diversity. Similarly, Rusche (2022) shows that, most Twitter users do not show behavior that resembles that of an echo chamber. However, through high levels of online activity, the small group of users that do, make up a substantial share populist politicians' followers, thus creating homogeneous online spaces.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Finally, there are other studies which contradict the existence of echo chambers. Some found that people also share news reports that don't align with their political beliefs.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Others found that people using social media are being exposed to more diverse sources than people not using social media.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: In summation, it remains that clear and distinct findings are absent which either confirm or falsify the concerns of echo chamber effects.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Research on the social dynamics of echo chambers shows that the fragmented nature of online culture, the importance of collective identity construction, and the argumentative nature of online controversies can generate echo chambers where participants encounter self-reinforcing beliefs. Researchers show that echo chambers are prime vehicles to disseminate disinformation, as participants exploit contradictions against perceived opponents amidst identity-driven controversies.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: There are several reasons why empirical findings are so fragmented and unclear, making it difficult to achieve consistent and comparable results. There is a lack of conceptual clarity due to different definitions and the novelty of these phenomena. Measurement methods and usages of concepts are inconsistent. The data used in empirical research isn't representative of the entire population because the effects are measured in either an individual or a specific group; Facebook users in the US, for example, are more likely to be feminine and have a higher educational status than the average US population. Social media platforms continually change their algorithmic filtering without making these algorithms public. Finally, most studies are done in the US, which has a two-party system, and their results cannot be applied to political systems with more political parties.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: In recent years, closed epistemic networks have increasingly been held responsible for the era of post-truth and fake news. However, the media frequently conflates two distinct concepts of social epistemology: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: An epistemic bubble is an informational network in which important sources have been excluded by omission, perhaps unintentionally. It is an impaired epistemic framework which lacks strong connectivity. Members within epistemic bubbles are unaware of significant information and reasoning.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: On the other hand, an echo chamber is an epistemic construct in which voices are actively excluded and discredited. It does not suffer from a lack in connectivity; rather it depends on a manipulation of trust by methodically discrediting all outside sources. According to research conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, members of echo chambers become dependent on the sources within the chamber and highly resistant to any external sources.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: An important distinction exists in the strength of the respective epistemic structures. Epistemic bubbles are not particularly robust. Relevant information has merely been left out, not discredited. One can ‘pop’ an epistemic bubble by exposing a member to the information and sources that they have been missing.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Echo chambers, however, are incredibly strong. By creating pre-emptive distrust between members and non-members, insiders will be insulated from the validity of counter-evidence and will continue to reinforce the chamber in the form of a closed loop. Outside voices are heard, but dismissed.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: As such, the two concepts are fundamentally distinct and cannot be utilized interchangeably. However, one must note that this distinction is conceptual in nature, and an epistemic community can exercise multiple methods of exclusion to varying extents.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: A filter bubble – a term coined by internet activist Eli Pariser – is a state of intellectual isolation that allegedly can result from personalized searches when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click-behavior and search history. As a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. The choices made by these algorithms are not transparent.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Homophily is the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others, as in the proverb "birds of a feather flock together". The presence of homophily has been detected in a vast array of network studies. For example, a study conducted by Bakshy et. al. explored the data of 10.1 million Facebook users. These users identified as either politically liberal, moderate, or conservative, and the vast majority of their friends were found to have a political orientation that was similar to their own. Facebook algorithms recognize this and selects information with a bias towards this political orientation to showcase in their newsfeed.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Recommender systems are information filtering systems put in place on different platforms that provide recommendations depending on information gathered from the user. In general, recommendations are provided in three different ways: based on content that was previously selected by the user, content that has similar properties or characteristics to that which has been previously selected by the user, or a combination of both.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Both echo chambers and filter bubbles relate to the ways individuals are exposed to content devoid of clashing opinions, and colloquially might be used interchangeably. However, echo chamber refers to the overall phenomenon by which individuals are exposed only to information from like-minded individuals, while filter bubbles are a result of algorithms that choose content based on previous online behavior, as with search histories or online shopping activity. Indeed, specific combinations of homophily and recommender systems have been identified as significant drivers for determining the emergence of echo chambers.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Online social communities become fragmented by echo chambers when like-minded people group together and members hear arguments in one specific direction with no counter argument addressed. In certain online platforms, such as Twitter, echo chambers are more likely to be found when the topic is more political in nature compared to topics that are seen as more neutral. Social networking communities are communities that are considered to be some of the most powerful reinforcements of rumors due to the trust in the evidence supplied by their own social group and peers, over the information circulating the news. In addition to this, the reduction of fear that users can enjoy through projecting their views on the internet versus face-to-face allows for further engagement in agreement with their peers.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: This can create significant barriers to critical discourse within an online medium. Social discussion and sharing can potentially suffer when people have a narrow information base and do not reach outside their network. Essentially, the filter bubble can distort one's reality in ways which are not believed to be alterable by outside sources.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Many offline communities are also segregated by political beliefs and cultural views. The echo chamber effect may prevent individuals from noticing changes in language and culture involving groups other than their own. Online echo chambers can sometimes influence an individual's willingness to participate in similar discussions offline. A 2016 study found that "Twitter users who felt their audience on Twitter agreed with their opinion were more willing to speak out on that issue in the workplace".


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Group polarization can occur as a result of growing echo chambers. The lack of external viewpoints and the presence of a majority of individuals sharing a similar opinion or narrative can lead to a more extreme belief set. Group polarisation can also aid the current of fake news and misinformation through social media platforms. This can extend to offline interactions, with data revealing that offline interactions can be as polarising as online interactions (Twitter), arguably due to social media-enabled debates being highly fragmented.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: However, since the creation of the internet, scholars have been curious to see the changes in political communication. Due to the new changes in information technology and how it is managed, it is unclear how opposing perspectives can reach common ground in a democracy. The effects seen from the echo chamber effect has largely been cited to occur in politics, such as Twitter and Facebook during the 2016 presidential election in the United States. Some believe that echo chambers played a big part in the success of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential elections.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: Some companies have also made efforts in combating the effects of an echo chamber on an algorithmic approach. A high-profile example of this is the changes Facebook made to its "Trending" page, which is an on-site news source for its users. Facebook modified their "Trending" page by transitioning from displaying a single news source to multiple news sources for a topic or event. The intended purpose of this was to expand the breadth of news sources for any given headline, and therefore expose readers to a variety of viewpoints. There are startups building apps with the mission of encouraging users to open their echo chambers, such as u"nFound.news". Another example is a beta feature on BuzzFeed News, called "Outside Your Bubble". This experiment adds a module at the bottom of BuzzFeed News articles to show reactions from various platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. This concept aims to bring transparency and prevent biased conversations, diversifying the viewpoints their readers are exposed to.


title: Echo chamber (media)

text: A recent study focused on how one can resolve online echo chambers without surveillance of individuals. In social networks, users often engage with like-minded peers. This selective exposure to opinions might result in echo chambers, i.e., political fragmentation and social polarization of user interactions. When echo chambers form, opinions have a bimodal distribution with two peaks on opposite sides. In certain issues, where either extreme positions contain a degree of misinformation, neutral consensus is preferable for promoting discourse. In a recent study the researchers introduce the "random dynamical nudge" (RDN), which presents each agent with input from a random selection of other agents’ opinions and does not require surveillance of every person’s opinions. the computational results in two different models suggest that the "random dynamical nudge" leads to a unimodal distribution of opinions centered around the neutral consensus. Furthermore, the "random dynamical nudge" is effective both for preventing the formation of echo chambers and also for depolarizing existing echo chambers. Due to the simple and robust nature of the "random dynamical nudge", social media networks might be able to implement a version of this self-feedback mechanism, when appropriate, to prevent the segregation of online communities on complex social issues.


title: Shari Belafonte

text: Shari Lynn Belafonte (born September 22, 1954) is an American actress, model, writer and singer. The daughter of singer Harry Belafonte, she began her career as a fashion model before making her big screen debut appearing in the 1982 drama film "If You Could See What I Hear". She is best known for her role as Julie Gillette in the ABC drama series "Hotel" from 1983 to 1988. She later went to star in the Canadian science fiction series "Beyond Reality" (1991–93). Belafonte also released two studio albums in the 1980s, and acted on stage in later years.


title: Shari Belafonte

text: Shari Belafonte is the second daughter of Marguerite (née Byrd), a psychologist, and New York-born Harry Belafonte, a singer and actor. Her parents separated when her mother was pregnant with her. She attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC, Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, Massachusetts and Buxton School in Williamstown, Massachusetts, then Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts before transferring to Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drama. Her paternal grandmother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish Jamaican mother and an Afro-Jamaican father. Her paternal grandfather also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and Dutch-Jewish father of Sephardic Jewish descent. Harry, Jr. was raised Catholic.


title: Shari Belafonte

text: Belafonte began her career as a model, becoming a successful cover girl model and appearing in commercials for Calvin Klein jeans. She made her feature film debut in 1982 in the movies "Time Walker" and "If You Could See What I Hear". She then worked as a production assistant and assistant director in public television on the East Coast before moving to Los Angeles, where she became an assistant to the publicist at Hanna-Barbera productions. While getting her hands wet "behind the scenes", she also received a number of modeling and commercial assignments, and was known to have appeared on the covers of over 300 magazines as of 2015. Other feature films include "Speed Zone", the made-for-television horror-comedy film "The Midnight Hour", in which she also sang a song titled "Get Dead", and "Fire, Ice and Dynamite".


title: Shari Belafonte

text: The television producer Aaron Spelling chose Belafonte as a finalist for Julie Rogers on "Charlie's Angels", a role written with her specifically in mind, but the part instead went to Tanya Roberts. In 1981 she was cast as a fashion model in a 2nd-season episode of Hart to Hart.


title: Shari Belafonte

text: In 1984, Spelling did choose her for another pilot, this one for the action-adventure series "Velvet" alongside Leah Ayres, Mary Margaret Humes, and Sheree J. Wilson. In the same year, Spelling signed Belafonte as Julie Gilette in the ABC drama series "Hotel", in which she starred during the show's five-year run, which extended from 1983 to 1988. It was during this time that, Belafonte began her music career by signing a contract to record on the Metronome Records label, releasing two studio albums; these were "The Eyes of Night" in 1987 and "Shari" in 1989.


title: Shari Belafonte

text: In 1990, Belafonte made her theatrical debut in "Tamara", playing the title role in the long-running Los Angeles production. Shortly thereafter, she starred as Dr. Laura Wingate in the USA Network's drama series "Beyond Reality", which ran for two seasons from 1991 to 1993. She co-starred in a number of made-for-television movies in 1990s, including "French Silk" (1994) starring Susan Lucci, "The Heidi Chronicles" (1995) starring Jamie Lee Curtis, "" (1998) and "Loving Evangeline" (1999). In addition, she co-hosted the syndicated series "Lifestyles with Robin Leach and Shari Belafonte" (1994–95), an updated version of Leach's signature program, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". In 2006, she hosted a travel program called ""Travels In Mexico And The Caribbean With Shari Belafonte"" on NYC Media.


title: Shari Belafonte

text: Belafonte's multi-faceted career also includes moderating and voiceovers. Belafonte provided the voice of Gerald's mother, Mrs. Johanssen, in four episodes of "Hey Arnold!", Diana Cruz in an episode of "The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest", and the undead Southern belle zombie Blanche in "Gravedale High". She has producing credits for theater, public and network television, and feature films. In addition to her affiliation with numerous children's, animal, and environment causes, she has also become the international spokesman for the Starlight Children's Foundation. Named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top ten celebrity endorsers, Shari has been the spokesman for numerous corporations including Bally's International Health and Fitness, Slim-Fast, Diet System 6, and Estroven.


title: Shari Belafonte

text: In 2000s, Belafonte made a number of limited screen appearances, guest starring in an episode of "The District" and "Nip/Tuck". In December 2015, it was announced that Belafonte would take over the role of Mayor Janice Lomax from Saidah Arrika Ekulona on January 19, 2016, on the ABC daytime soap opera "General Hospital". She made her last appearance on December 20, 2017. In 2019, she began appearing in a recurring role as Julia in the Apple TV+ drama series "The Morning Show". Later that year, she took the recurring role as Ebony Obsidian's character's mother in the BET comedy-drama series, "Sistas".


title: Shari Belafonte

text: Belafonte has been married twice, first to Robert Harper (May 21, 1977 – 1988). She has been married to Sam Behrens since December 31, 1989. Belafonte posed nude for "Playboy" in the magazine's September 2000 edition, and was herself an avid photographer.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Andrew Stuart "Andy" Fastow (born December 22, 1961) is a convicted felon and former financier who was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation, an energy trading company based in Houston, Texas, until he was fired shortly before the company declared bankruptcy. Fastow was one of the key figures behind the complex web of off-balance-sheet special purpose entities (limited partnerships which Enron controlled) used to conceal Enron's massive losses in their quarterly balance sheets. By unlawfully maintaining personal stakes in these ostensibly independent ghost-entities, he was able to defraud Enron out of tens of millions of dollars.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into his and the company's conduct in 2001. Fastow was sentenced to a six-year prison sentence and ultimately served five years for convictions related to these acts. His wife, Lea Weingarten, also worked at Enron, where she was an assistant treasurer; she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy and filing fraudulent income tax returns, and was sentenced to 12 months in prison despite a plea bargain which proposed she serve five months in jail, and 5 months in home-detention.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Fastow was born in Washington, D.C. He grew up in New Providence, New Jersey, the son of middle class Jewish parents, Carl and Joan Fastow, who worked in retail and merchandising. Fastow graduated from New Providence High School, where he took part in student government, played on the tennis team, and played in the school band. He was the sole student representative on the New Jersey State Board of Education.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Fastow graduated from Tufts University in 1983 with a B.A. in Economics and Chinese. While there, he met his future wife, Lea Weingarten, daughter of Miriam Hadar Weingarten (a former Miss Israel 1958), whom he married in 1984. Fastow and Weingarten both earned MBAs at Northwestern University and worked for Continental Illinois bank in Chicago. Both he and his wife attended Congregation Or Ami, a conservative synagogue in Houston where he taught Hebrew School.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: While at Continental, Fastow worked on the newly emerging "asset-backed securities". The practice spread across the industry "because it provides an obvious advantage for a bank", noted the "Chicago Tribune". "It moves assets off the bank's balance sheet while creating revenue." In 1984, Continental became the largest U.S. bank to fail in American history until the seizure of Washington Mutual in 2008.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Due to his work at Continental, Fastow was hired in 1990 by Jeffrey Skilling at the Enron Finance Corp. Fastow was named the chief financial officer at Enron in 1998.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Deregulation in the US energy markets in the late 1990s provided Enron with trade opportunities, including buying energy from cheap producers and selling it at markets with floating prices. Andrew Fastow was familiar with the market and knowledgeable in how to play it in Enron's favor. This quickly drew the attention of then chief executive officer of Enron Finance Corp Jeffrey Skilling. Skilling, together with Enron founder Kenneth Lay, was constantly concerned with various ways in which he could keep company stock price up, in spite of the true financial condition of the company.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Fastow designed a complex web of companies that solely did business with Enron, with the dual purpose of raising money for the company, and also hiding its massive losses in their quarterly balance sheets. This effectively allowed Enron's audited balance sheet to appear debt free, while in reality it owed more than 30 billion dollars at the height of its debt. While presented to the outside world as being independent entities, the funds Fastow created were to take write-downs off Enron's books and guaranteed not to lose money. Yet, Fastow himself had a personal financial stake in these funds, either directly or through partners amongst them Michael Kopper.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Kopper, Fastow's chief lieutenant, pleaded guilty to taking part in a scam with Fastow that defrauded Enron shareholders of many millions. While defrauding Enron in this way, Fastow was also neglecting basic financial practices such as reporting the "cash on hand" and total liabilities. Fastow pressured some of the largest investment banks in the United States, such as Merrill Lynch, Citibank, and others to invest in his funds, threatening to cause them to lose Enron's future business if they did not.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: In August, Skilling, who had been promoted to CEO of the entire company in February 2001, abruptly resigned after only six months, citing personal reasons. When reporters for "The Wall Street Journal" discovered an Enron "senior officer" had recently sold his interest in several partnerships that had done business with Enron, they initially thought that officer was Skilling. However, Enron spokesman Mark Palmer revealed that the "senior officer" was actually Fastow.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: After a former Enron executive leaked a copy of the offering memorandum for one of Fastow's partnerships, LJM–named for Fastow's wife and two sons–to the "Journal," reporters bombarded Enron with further questions about the partnerships. The scrutiny died down after the September 11 attacks, but ramped up anew two weeks later with pointed questions about how much Fastow had earned from LJM. This culminated in a series of stories that appeared in the "Journal" in mid-October detailing the "vexing conflict-of-interest questions" about the partnerships, as well as the huge windfall he had reaped from them.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: On October 23, during a conference call with two directors delegated by the board, Fastow revealed that he had made a total of $45 million from his work with LJM–a staggering total, since he claimed to spend no more than three hours a week on LJM work. On October 24, several banks told Enron that they would not issue loans to the company as long as Fastow remained CFO. The combined weight of these revelations led the board to accept Lay's recommendation to remove Fastow as CFO on October 25, replacing him with industrial markets chief and former treasurer Jeff McMahon. He was officially placed on leave of absence, though the board subsequently determined that it had grounds to fire him for cause.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: It was later revealed that Fastow had been so focused on creating SPEs that he had neglected the most rudimentary aspects of corporate finance. Under his watch, Enron merely operated on a quarterly basis. Fastow never implemented procedures for tracking the company's cash or debt maturities. As a result, McMahon and a "financial SWAT team" put together in the wake of Fastow's ouster discovered Enron had almost no liquidity.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Fastow's approach to hiding losses was so effective that the year before Enron declared bankruptcy, the Enron stock was at an all-time high of $90. As it turned out, the company was already well on its way to financial collapse, to the point that it was all but forced to seek a merger with rival Dynegy. By then, Enron's financial picture had declined so rapidly that the prospect of the Dynegy merger was the only thing keeping it alive. Dynegy tore up the merger agreement on November 28 in part due to the liquidity problems revealed after Fastow's ouster, and Enron declared bankruptcy three days later. By then, Enron's stock had dwindled to 40 cents per share, but not before many employees had been told to invest their retirement savings in Enron stock.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: On October 31, 2002, Fastow was indicted by a federal grand jury in Houston, Texas, on 78 counts, including fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy. On January 14, 2004, he pleaded guilty to two counts of wire and securities fraud, and agreed to serve a ten-year prison sentence. He also agreed to become an informant and cooperate with federal authorities in the prosecutions of other former Enron executives in order to receive a reduced sentence.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Prosecutors were so impressed with his performance that they ultimately lobbied for an even shorter sentence for Fastow. He was finally sentenced to six years at Oakdale Federal Correctional Complex in Oakdale, Louisiana. On May 18, 2011, Fastow was released to a Houston halfway house for the remainder of his sentence.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: On May 6, 2004, his wife, Lea Fastow, a former Enron assistant treasurer, pleaded guilty to a tax charge and was sentenced to one year in a federal prison in Houston, and an additional year of supervised release. She was released to a halfway house on July 8, 2005.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: After entering into a plea agreement with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and the forfeiture of $23.8 million in assets, on September 26, 2006, Fastow was sentenced to six years in prison, followed by two years of probation. U.S. District Judge Ken Hoyt believed Fastow deserved leniency for his cooperation with the prosecution in several civil and criminal trials involving former Enron employees. Hoyt recommended that Fastow's sentence be served at the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in Bastrop, Texas. Fastow was incarcerated at the Federal Prison Camp near Pollock, Louisiana.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Soon after his release on December 16, 2011, he began working as a document review clerk for law firm Smyser Kaplan Veselka LLP in Houston.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Since his release, Fastow has worked the public speaking circuit with presentations on ethics and business. In one such speech, Fastow recounts his crimes at Enron and reflects on his guilt:“"I found every way I could to technically comply with the [accounting] rules... But what I did was unethical and unprincipled. And it caused harm to people. For that, I deserved to go to prison".”In March 2012, Fastow spoke on ethics to students at the University of Colorado Boulder Leeds School of Business.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: In June 2013, Fastow addressed more than 2,000 anti-fraud professionals at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners' 24th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: In April 2016, March 2017, March 2018, and March 2019 Fastow spoke at the Ivey Business School. The University of Tampa's Center for Ethics hosted him in October 2017. In March 2022 the National Investor Relations Institute New York Chapter hosted Fastow as guest speaker for a discussion on business ethics, and the ambiguity and complexity of laws and regulations.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Fastow became principal and investor in KeenCorp in 2016. KeenCorp is a Netherlands-based company that offers analytics and artificial intelligence products that monitor "day-to-day workflow: E-mails, Microsoft Teams chats, Google Suite, and Slack" in order to analyze employee sentiment and engagement.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Originally, Fastow connected with KeenCorp when the company was beta testing its software using a digital database of Enron emails.


title: Andrew Fastow

text: In 2003, Fastow was a prominent figure in "24 Days: How Two Wall Street Journal Reporters Uncovered the Lies that Destroyed Faith in Corporate America" by the reporters who had broken some of the key stories in the saga, Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller. They painted Fastow as in their words "a screamer, who negotiated by intimidation and tirade".


title: Andrew Fastow

text: Also in 2003, Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind wrote the book "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron" . In 2005, the book was made into a documentary film "".


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: Confessions on a Dance Floor is the tenth studio album by American singer and songwriter Madonna. It was released on November 9, 2005, by Warner Bros. Records. A complete departure from her previous studio album "American Life" (2003), the album includes influences of 1970s disco and 1980s electropop, as well as modern-day club music. Initially, she began working with Mirwais Ahmadzaï for the album but later felt that their collaboration was not going in the direction she desired. Madonna took her collaboration with Stuart Price who was overseeing her documentary "I'm Going to Tell You a Secret". The album was mainly recorded at Price's home-studio where Madonna spent most of her time during the recordings.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: Musically, the record is structured like a DJ's set. The songs are sequenced and blended so that they are played continuously without any gaps. The title arrived from the fact that the album tracklisting consists of light-hearted and happy songs in the beginning, and progresses to much darker melodies and lyrics describing personal feelings and commitments. Songs on the album sample and reference the music of other dance-oriented artists like ABBA, Donna Summer, Pet Shop Boys, the Bee Gees and Depeche Mode, as well as Madonna's 1980s output.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: Madonna promoted the album through several live performances and a promotional tour. She embarked on the Confessions Tour in 2006, which became the highest-grossing tour ever for a female artist at that time. Four singles were released from the album. "Hung Up", the lead single, topped the charts in a total of 41 countries. According to "Billboard", it was the most successful dance song of the decade. It was followed by "Sorry" which became Madonna's twelfth number-one single in the United Kingdom. "Get Together" and "Jump" were also released as singles, both becoming top-ten hits in several countries.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: The album received widespread acclaim, with critics calling it a return to form for Madonna and ranking it alongside her best albums. Madonna was honored with a Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album in 2007, as well as International Female Solo Artist at the 2006 BRIT Awards. Commercially, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" peaked at number one in 40 countries, earning a place in the 2007 "Guinness World Records" for topping the record charts in the most countries. The album sold between 3.6 to 4 million copies in its first-week worldwide, and remains one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century, with over 10 million copies. Ranked third on "The 99 Greatest Dance Albums of All Time" by "Vice" magazine, the album is noted as a testament to Madonna's longevity with the ability to continuously reinvent herself in the third decade of her career.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: "Confessions on a Dance Floor" merged elements from 1970s disco, 1980s electropop and 2000s club music. Madonna decided to incorporate disco-influenced elements in her songs while trying not to remake her music from past, instead choosing to pay tribute towards artists like the Bee Gees and Giorgio Moroder. The songs reflected Madonna's thoughts on love, fame and religion, hence the title "Confessions on a Dance Floor". It was the complete opposite direction from her previous studio effort "American Life" (2003). The songs on that album were a form of diatribe directed at the American society. However, Madonna decided to take a different direction with this album. Regarding the development, Madonna commented:


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: "When I wrote "American Life", I was very agitated by what was going on in the world around me, [...] I was angry. I had a lot to get off my chest. I made a lot of political statements. But now, I feel that I just want to have fun; I want to dance; I want to feel buoyant. And I want to give other people the same feeling. There's a lot of madness in the world around us, and I want people to be happy."


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: She started to work with Mirwais Ahmadzaï with whom she had previously developed her eighth album "Music" (2000). However, that collaboration did not suit Madonna's musical direction. According to Madonna, "[Producer] Mirwais is also very political, seriously cerebral and intellectual. All we did was sit around, talking politics all the time. So, that couldn't help but find its way into the music. I think there's an angry aspect to the music that directly reflects my feelings at the time." Hence after recording tracks with Mirwais, Madonna decided to stop the project and start fresh. It was then that she turned to Stuart Price who had served as musical director on her two previous concert tours and co-wrote one song on "American Life".


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: In 2004, after the release of "American Life", Madonna began working on two different musicals: one tentatively called "Hello Suckers" and another one with Luc Besson, who previously directed the music video for her single "Love Profusion", which would portray her as a woman on her deathbed looking back on her life. Madonna collaborated with Patrick Leonard, Ahmadzaï and Price to write new songs, the latter being assigned to pen disco-influenced songs sounding like "ABBA on drugs". However, Madonna found herself dissatisfied with the script written by Besson and scrapped it. Hence Madonna and Price decided to use the compositions for the album instead. According to Madonna, it was easy for her to shift from her previous album's sentiments, since she included those political views in her documentary "I'm Going to Tell You a Secret". She elaborated:


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: I was running back and forth, literally, from the editing room with [the documentary's director] Jonas Akerlund to working with Stuart, who was also mixing the music in the film. We were together, non-stop, all of us. Cutting 350 hours of film down to two hours. There are a lot of serious aspects to the movie. I needed a release. When I would go to Stuart's, and we'd go up to his loft, it was like, 'Honey, I want to dance.' I wanted to be happy, silly and buoyant. I wanted to lift myself and others up with this record. So, yes, the new album was a reaction to all the other stuff I was doing, which was very serious in nature. I hope that doesn't imply that I wanted to make a superficial record, because it's not. I want people to smile when they hear this record. I wanted it to put a smile on my face, too.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: The first three songs that were written for the album were "Hung Up", "Sorry" and "Future Lovers" In an interview with "Billboard", Madonna commented that the recording process was a give-and-take situation. According to her, Price used to stay up all night working on the songs. This was helped by the fact that he is a DJ and is used to staying awake all night. This gave Madonna the chance to work on other aspects of the compositions. She noted the fact that she and Price had opposite characteristics, which helped in their collaboration. The songs were mainly recorded at Price's home. Madonna said:


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: We did a lot of recording at his house. I'd come by in the morning and Stuart would answer the door in his stocking feet - as he'd been up all night. I'd bring him a cup of coffee and say, 'Stuart, your house is a mess, there's no food in the cupboard.' Then I'd call someone from my house to bring food over for him. And then we'd work all day. We're very much the odd couple.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: She further elaborated that their camaraderie was also because they had toured together for Madonna's Re-Invention World Tour. Hence Madonna reflected that her relationship with Price was more of a brother-sister kind than the formal collaborations she was accustomed to during the recording process.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: "Confessions on a Dance Floor" is primarily a dance-pop, nu-disco, EDM, album, which is structured like a nightly set composed by a DJ. The music starts light and happy, and as it progresses, it becomes intense, with the lyrics dealing more about personal feelings, hence "Confessions". According to Madonna, "[t]his is the direction of my record. That's what we intended, to make a record that you can play at a party or in your car, where you don't have to skip past a ballad. It's nonstop." Madonna used samples and references of music by other disco artists. In the album's first song, "Hung Up", she sampled ABBA's 1979 hit "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)", for which she wrote a personal letter to songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, who permitted Madonna to use the track. References of other disco-influenced acts, including Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, and Daft Punk, were also used on the album, as were the disco hits of Parisian DJ Cerrone. The album has a song called "Forbidden Love", which is different from the same-titled song from Madonna's sixth studio album "Bedtime Stories". Regarding sampling herself and her own song names, Madonna commented:


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: "I did all of that on purpose, [...] I mean, if I'm going to plagiarize somebody, it might as well be me, right? I feel like I've earned the right to rip myself off. 'Talent borrows, genius steals,' [...] "Let's see how many other clichés I can throw in there. That's exactly it. I was only hinting early on, but then I tell it like it is. It's like, now that I have your attention, I have a few things to tell you."


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: A pulsating rhythm is present in the song "Isaac", which is regarded as the only song close to a ballad on the album. However, the song was heavily criticized by a group of Israeli rabbis who commented that Madonna was committing a blasphemy with their religion. They said that the song was about sixteenth-century Kabbalah scholar Yitzhak Luria. In reality, the song was named after the featured vocalist Yitzhak Sinwani, who sang portions of the Yemenite Hebrew poem "Im Nin'alu" in the track, as well as references to the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Initially, Madonna toyed with the idea of calling the song "Fear of Flying", since the idea behind the composition was to let go. In the end she decided to just call it "Isaac", after the English version of Sinwani's name. Regarding the song's development and the condemnation of the rabbis, Madonna said:


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: "You do appreciate the absurdity of a group of rabbis in Israel claiming that I'm being blasphemous about someone when they haven't heard the record, right? And then, everyone in the media runs with it as if it's the truth. And that's a little weird. But what's even weirder is that the song is not about Isaac Lurier, as the rabbis claim. It's named after Yitzhak Sinwani, who's singing in Yemenite on the track. I couldn't think of a title for the song. So I called it "Isaac" [the English transliteration of "Yitzhak"]. It's interesting how their minds work, those naughty rabbis. [...] He's saying, "If all of the doors of all of the generous peoples' homes are closed to you, the gates of heaven will always be open." The words are about 1,000 years old. [...] [Yitzhak] is an old friend of mine. He's never made a record. He comes from generations of beautiful singers. Stuart and I asked him to come into the studio one day. We said, "We're just going to record you. We don't know what we're going to do with it." He's flawless. One take, no bad notes. He doesn't even need a microphone. We took one of the songs he did and I said to Stuart, "Let's sample these bits. We'll create a chorus and then I'll write lyrics around it." That's how we constructed it."


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: The lyrics of the songs on the album incorporate bits of Madonna's musical history and are written in the form of confessions. "Hung Up" contains lyrics from Madonna's 1989 duet with Prince called "Love Song", from the "Like a Prayer" album. "How High" continues the themes of two songs from Madonna's eighth studio album "Music", namely "Nobody's Perfect" and "I Deserve It". The lyrics of "Push" thank the person who challenged her to expand her limits and also incorporate elements of the Police's song "Every Breath You Take". Other tracks like "Sorry" include the title word in ten different languages (several of which are non-idiomatic). In "I Love New York" (written at the time of "American Life"), she praises the city where her career began and replies to negative comments made by George W. Bush. Elsewhere, Madonna sings about success and fame ("Let It Will Be") and the crossroads of past, present and future ("Like It or Not").


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: On November 4, 2005, Madonna opened the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards with her first performance of "Hung Up". She emerged from a glitter ball to perform the song, while wearing a purple leotard and matching leather boots. During the next days, Madonna performed "Hung Up" on TV shows such as "Wetten, dass..?" in Germany, and "Star Academy" in France, as well as on the Children in Need 2005 telethon in London. In order to promote the album's release, Madonna appeared on "Parkinson". She played a number of songs from the album at London's Koko Club and G-A-Y as part of a promo tour to support the album.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: In December, Madonna travelled to Japan, where "Hung Up" was performed on TV show "SMAP×SMAP" and her concert at Studio Coast. On February 8, 2006, Madonna opened the 48th Grammy Awards, by pairing up with the fictional animated band Gorillaz. The band appeared on the stage via a three dimensional technique which projected their holograms on the stage. They performed their song "Feel Good Inc." while rappers De La Soul made a guest appearance. Madonna then appeared on the stage and started performing the song while interchanging places with the hologram figures of the band. She was later joined by her own group of dancers and the performance was finished on the main stage rather than the virtual screen. Another performance of "Hung Up" came on April 30, 2006 during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: A remix only album titled "Confessions Remixed" was also released in limited vinyl editions. In Japan, "Confessions on a Dance Floor – Japan Tour Special Edition" (CD+DVD) was released on August 23, 2006. It reached number 27 on the Oricon weekly albums chart and stayed on the chart for 12 weeks. The album received further promotion from the Confessions Tour which began in May 2006. The tour grossed over US $194.7 million, becoming highest-grossing tour ever for a female artist, at that time. Additionally, the tour received the "Most Creative Stage Production" at the Pollstar Concert Industry Awards, as well as "Top Boxscore" from the Billboard Touring Awards.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: "Hung Up" was released as the album's lead single on October 17, 2005. The song received critical appreciation amongst reviewers, who suggested that the track would restore the singer's popularity, which had diminished following the release of her 2003 album "American Life". Critics claimed that it was her best dance track to date and have compared it to other Madonna tracks in the same genre. They also complimented the effective synchronization of the ABBA sample with Madonna's song. "Hung Up" became a worldwide commercial success, peaking atop the charts of 41 countries and earning a place in the "Guinness Book of World Records" along with the album. In the United States it became her 36th top ten hit, tying her with Elvis Presley. The corresponding music video was a tribute to John Travolta, his movies and dancing in general. Directed by Johan Renck, the video featured Madonna dancing in a ballet studio in a pink leotard, which she left to go to a gaming parlour to dance with her backup dancers. It also featured the physical discipline parkour.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: "Sorry" was released as the second single from the album on February 6, 2006. The song received positive reviews from contemporary critics who declared the track as the strongest song on "Confessions on a Dance Floor". It achieved commercial success, topping the singles charts in Italy, Spain, Romania and the United Kingdom, where it became Madonna's 12th number one single. Elsewhere, the song was a top ten hit in more than a dozen countries around the world. However, in the United States, the song was less commercially successful due to underplay on radio, but managed to reach the top of "Billboard"s dance charts.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: "Get Together" was released as the third single from the album by Warner Bros. Records on May 30, 2006. The decision was spurred by the fact that "Get Together" was the third most downloaded song from the album. It was also released to coincide with the start of Madonna's Confessions Tour. Critics complimented Madonna's ability to turn cliché comments into pop slogans with the song. The song became a success on the United States dance charts, but failed to enter the Hot 100. It reached the top ten in countries such as Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and Italy, and peaked at number one in Spain. "Jump" was released as fourth and the final single from the album on September 11, 2006. Critics complimented the song and its empowerment theme. The song peaked inside the top ten of the charts in some European countries, while reaching the peak position in Italy and Hungary. In the United States, "Jump" charted in several "Billboard" dance charts but failed to chart on the Hot 100.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: "Confessions on a Dance Floor" received acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 80, based on 28 reviews. Keith Caulfield from "Billboard" commented that "Confessions" is a "welcome return to form for the Queen of Pop." Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic commented that "Confessions" is the first album where Madonna sounds like a veteran musician since she created the record for "the dance clubs or, in other words, Madonna's core audience." Alan Braidwood from the BBC commented that "[t]his is the most commercial album Madonna has made in 15 years and it's magic." David Browne from "Entertainment Weekly" noted that for "all its pretenses of being giddy and spontaneous, though, "Confessions" is rarely either."


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: Alexis Petridis from "The Guardian" said that the album "may be a return to core values, but there's still a bravery about "Confessions on a Dancefloor". It revels in the delights of wilfully plastic dance pop in an era when lesser dance-pop artists – from Rachel Stevens to Price's protege Juliet – are having a desperately thin time of it." Peter Robinson from Observer Music Monthly declared that the album ranks alongside Madonna's other albums like "True Blue" (1986) and "Like a Prayer" (1989). He credited producer Stuart Price for the album, noting that ""Confessions" clearly wouldn't exist without Madonna, but it's Price who steals the show." Stephen M. Deusner from "Pitchfork" noted that with the album "Madonna again reinvents herself, and it appears she's nearly lapped herself." According to Deusner, the music also makes her appear young. However he felt that the first half of the album till "I Love New York" was strong, while the second half "loses its delicate balance between pop frivolity and spiritual gravity."


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: Thomas Inskeep from "Stylus Magazine" stated that the album is "Madonna's most purely beat-driven album since her self-titled 1983 debut" and "easily her finest effort since "Ray of Light"." Kelefa Sanneh from "The New York Times" called the album "exuberant". Christian John Wikane from "PopMatters" commented that the album "proved that Madonna, approaching 50 years-old, is a vital force in the ever-expansive landscape of popular music." Joan Morgan from "The Village Voice" noted that "[w]ith "Confessions on a Dance Floor", Madonna at long last finds her musical footing. Easily dance record of the year, Confessions is an almost seamless tribute to the strobe-lit sensuality of the '80s New York club scene that gave Madge her roots, which she explores with compelling aplomb." Josh Tyrangiel from "Time" magazine commented that "In dance music, words exist to be repeated, twisted, obscured and resurrected. How they sound in the moment is far more important than what they mean, and Madonna knows that better than anyone. "Confessions on a Dance Floor" is 56 minutes of energetic moments. It will leave you feeling silly for all the right reasons."


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: Sal Cinquemani from "Slant Magazine" was impressed with the album and said that "Madonna, with the help of Price, [...] has succeeded at creating a dance-pop odyssey with an emotional, if not necessarily narrative, arc — and one big continuously-mixed F you to the art-dismantling iPod Shuffle in the process." He compared the album to Australian recording artist Kylie Minogue's studio album "Light Years" (2000), saying "Comparisons to "Light Years", Kylie Minogue's own discofied comeback album from 2000, are inevitable". Alan Light from "Rolling Stone" declared that the album illustrated that "Madonna has never lost her faith in the power of the beat." However, he opined that ""Confessions on a Dance Floor" won't stand the test of time like her glorious early club hits, but it proves its point. Like Rakim back in the day, Madonna can still move the crowd."


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: The album sold about 3.6 to 4 million copies worldwide during the first-week of release. Despite being released late in the year, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" was ranked by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) as the sixth biggest-selling album of 2005 worldwide, with sales of 6.3 million. Worldwide sales of the album stand at 10 million copies, and is considered to be one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century as well one of the best-selling by women.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: In the United States, the album debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200 chart, selling 350,000 copies in its first week. It became her sixth number one album on the chart and the third consecutive album to debut at the top, following "Music" (2000) and "American Life" (2003). On December 14, 2005, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of one million copies. As of December 2016, the album has sold over 1.734 million copies in America, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The album also debuted at the top of the charts in Canada, with first-week sales of 74,000. It was present on the chart for a total of 46 weeks and received a quintuple platinum certification from Music Canada (MC) for total shipment of 500,000 copies in the country.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: "Confessions on a Dance Floor" enjoyed commercial success in Latin American countries. The album earned a gold certification in Chile and Brazil for the sales of 10,000 and 50,000 copies respectively. As of 2006, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" moved 80,000 units in Brazil. In Mexico, it received a platinum certification from AMPROFON for sales of 100,000 copies. In Argentina, the album became in one of the highest-certified albums of all time with five-time platinum from Cámara Argentina de Productores de Fonogramas y Videogramas (CAPIF) for total shipment of 200,000 units.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: The album was also successful in Asia-Pacific countries. In Australia, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" debuted at the top of the ARIA Albums Chart for the issue dated November 21, 2005, and was present for a total of 33 weeks within the top 50 of the chart. It was certified two times platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) denoting shipments of 140,000 copies. It debuted at number five on the New Zealand albums chart, and was certified platinum by Recorded Music NZ (RMNZ) for shipment of 15,000 copies. The same peak position was attained on the Oricon charts in Japan, where the album was certified double platinum for shipment of 500,000 copies by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ). In Hong Kong, the album was awarded a Gold Disc Award by the IFPI for becoming one of ten biggest-selling international album for 2005.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: The album found its biggest reception in Europe, where topped the European Top 100 Albums chart for four weeks and was certified quadruple platinum by IFPI for shipping a total of four million copies across the continent. In the United Kingdom, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" debuted at the top of the UK Albums Chart with first-week sales of 217,610 units, her highest ever in the country. It became Madonna's ninth number-one album, and has sold 1,360,000 copies as of November 2020, according to the Official Charts Company, while being certified quadruple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). That same week, the first single from the album, "Hung Up", topped the singles chart. The album became the fifth consecutive Madonna album to top the chart. In Ireland, the album debuted and peaked at number three. In France, the album debuted at position 113 on the albums chart, jumping to the top of the chart the next week. According to "Paris Match", "Confessions on a Dance Floor" sold 650,000 copies in the first two months in France, and was later certified diamond by the Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP). Actual sales in France stand at between 800,000 to 900,000 units. In Italy, "Musica e dischi" reported sales of 400,000 copies during the 2005–2006 period, more than any other album by an international act and behind only Eros Ramazzotti's "Calma apparente", Luciano Ligabue's "Nome e Cognome" and "Io canto" by Laura Pausini. Across Europe, the album peaked at number one in Austria, Belgium (Flanders and Wallonia), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: Madonna won the Best International Female Solo Artist at the 2006 BRIT Awards. She also won World's Best Selling Pop Artist and Best Selling U.S. Artist at the 2006 World Music Awards for the album. She was nominated for five awards at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards for the music video of the album's first single, "Hung Up". Madonna also got nominated for Best Album of the Year, Best Pop Video, and Best Female Artist at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2006. She also won a Grammy Award in the category of "Best Dance/Electronic Album" at the 2007 ceremony. The album peaked at number one in 40 countries, earning a place in the "Guinness World Records" for topping the record charts in the most countries.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: "Rolling Stone" ranked "Confessions on a Dance Floor" as the twenty-second top album of 2005. "NME" also placed it at number 29 on the magazine's list of the 50 best albums of 2005. Sal Cinquemani of "Slant Magazine" ranked the album at the third position on his list of the top ten albums of 2005. The same magazine considered the album the 38th best one from the 2000s. Three critics writing for Stylus Magazine also included "Confessions on a Dance Floor" in their year-end lists of the best albums of 2005. Q Magazine named the record the 26th best one of 2005. On their ranking of the best albums from 2005, "The Observer" listed the album at number 26. By the end of the 2000s, "Slant Magazine" placed the album at number 38 on their list of "The 100 Best Albums of the Aughts". In 2015, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" was ranked third on "The 99 Greatest Dance Albums of All Time" by "Vice" magazine.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: Mike Nied from Idolator praised "Confessions on a Dance Floor" as one of the most influential pop albums of the decade and dubbed Madonna as a "timeless trendsetter" and "creative genius". According to Michael Arceneaux from NBC News, it is "arguably her last great, impactful album; it's the last time she still felt truly forward-thinking, even if it looked back sonically." Christopher Rosa from VH1 called it her "best album to date" and explained that is a "near-perfect pop record" and "her most natural reinvention". It was ranked as the third best dance album of all-time by "Vice" magazine—the highest peak by a female performer. The magazine staff commented: "This is the album all her subsequent albums is compared to; for its enduring relevance and how it redefined Madonna as an artist, it should be". Author Sancho Xavi from "El País" noted that the album started the during the 21st century and popularized the revivals concept of others musical genres during the first decade.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: Justin Myers from the UK Official Charts Company commented: "An 'imperial phase' is when a pop star is at the pinnacle of their career, shifting stacks of records, having big hits, selling out arenas, owning the radio and being generally unavoidable and untouchable. Many pop acts barely manage one. Thanks to this album, Madonna claimed her third. How many popstars can honestly say that?" Calling her the "Mother of Reinvention", Jim Schembri from "The Age" wrote a detailed article of Madonna's impact with "Confessions on a Dance Floor":


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: [The album] went straight to No. 1 everywhere except Mars. So too did the first single, "Hung Up", the video for which is on every time you turn on the TV. [Madonna] has reclaimed her place in the pop firmament with unrivaled ferocity. And she is a sterling example of pop survival. In a firmament that eats up artists like popcorn and where chart success is as fleeting as Jessica Simpson's attention span, Madonna remains an inspiring, intimidating beacon of permanence. Her longevity has thrived on her ability to continually reinvent herself by reading the winds of pop culture and taking her cue from there.


title: Confessions on a Dance Floor

text: With the "Confessions on a Dance Floor" era, Madonna broke several world records and the album resuscitated her music sales and popularity, after the critical and commercial disappointment of "American Life". At that time, Madonna became the best-selling female artist in the European market and the fifth best-selling artist overall with a quadruple platinum award by the IFPI, equivalent of 4 million copies sold across the continent. In the United Kingdom, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" became one of the fastest selling albums ever, with first week sales of 217,610 copies according to the Official Charts Company. Also, Madonna earned a place in the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the "oldest artist to simultaneously top the UK singles and album charts". English singer Dua Lipa's 2020 album, "Future Nostalgia", also produced by Price, was influenced by "Confessions on a Dance Floor".


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: The 1988 FIA Formula One World Championship was the 42nd season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 1988 Formula One World Championship for Drivers and the 1988 Formula One World Championship for Constructors, which were contested concurrently over a sixteen-race series that commenced on 3 April and ended on 13 November. The World Championship for Drivers was won by Ayrton Senna, and the World Championship for Constructors by McLaren-Honda. Senna and McLaren teammate Alain Prost won fifteen of the sixteen races between them; the only race neither driver won was the Italian Grand Prix, where Ferrari's Gerhard Berger took an emotional victory four weeks after the death of team founder Enzo Ferrari. McLaren's win tally has only been bettered or equalled in seasons with more than sixteen races; their Constructors' Championship tally of 199 points, more than three times that of any other constructor, was also a record until .


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: The following drivers and constructors competed in the 1988 season. All teams competed with tyres supplied by Goodyear.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: The pre-season was a very contentious time, with many theories of the championship flying around: whether the Honda engines would prove successful with McLaren; whether Ferrari would be able to continue the trend set by the last two rounds of 1987 in which Gerhard Berger scored successive victories in Japan and Australia; whether Williams would be able to continue their success without Honda and Nelson Piquet; and whether reigning world champion Piquet could succeed in defending his title with the Honda-powered Lotus.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: The Jim Clark and Colin Chapman cups, awarded the previous year for drivers and constructors, respectively, who were using naturally aspirated engines, had been withdrawn as such engines would become mandatory from 1989 onwards, with severe restrictions on turbocharged units for this season. Of the eighteen teams on the grid, twelve – including Williams and Benetton – took the gamble of using either the new Judd CV or 1987's Cosworth DFZ (badged as Ford) V8 engines, to give themselves an extra year to get used to the new regulations. As they had a contract with Ford, Benetton had exclusive use of the Cosworth DFR engine.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: The DFR, a development of the customer DFZ engine used by various teams in 1988, was reportedly the most powerful non-turbo engine, producing approximately (compared to around for the DFZ). Six teams – McLaren and Lotus with their Honda engines, Ferrari with a version of their 1987 engine (though early in the season power output of the Ferrari V6 was only around 620 bhp), Arrows with their Megatron engines, Osella with the old Alfa Romeo 890T V8 turbo re-badged as the "Osella V8" which produced around (the second most powerful engine on the grid, but nowhere near the class of the Honda or Ferrari and often proved slower than the DFZ V8), and Zakspeed with their own 4cyl turbo (though like the Osella, such horsepower was wasted by the small German team) – decided to build one last turbo car to make the most out of their experience using such engines, despite the aforementioned restrictions.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Of the teams running turbocharged engines, only McLaren and Lotus produced completely new cars for the season, the McLaren MP4/4 and Lotus 100T. Ferrari, Arrows, Zakspeed and Osella all fronted with updated versions of their 1987 cars and engines. Honda also went all out and produced the RA168E which was specifically designed to cope with the new 2.5 bar turbo limit and the lower fuel limit of 150 litres, down from 1987's 195 litre limit. This was hoped to give Honda teams an advantage as all other turbo engines had been originally designed for previous years higher boost levels and greater fuel allowance.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: The turbo-powered cars were producing approximately less than in 1987 thanks to the FIA's controversial pop-off valves. Introduced in 1987 to restrict turbo boost to 4.0 bar, this was further reduced in 1988 to only 2.5 bar, while the turbos were also restricted to a fuel tank size of only 150 litres compared to a maximum of 215 litres for the "atmos".


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: The March team introduced a new designer to Formula One in 1988, one who would go on to produce many Grand Prix and World Championship winning cars in his career. Adrian Newey designed the sleek-looking and aerodynamically effective March 881 for the team's second season back in F1. Like Williams, March took a gamble on the new Judd V8 engine (an engine John Judd had based on a Honda Indycar block). Looking for an advantage now that they couldn't rely on superior Honda turbo power, Williams added their reactive suspension system, introduced late in 1987, to the new Williams FW12. Lotus on the other hand, who had re-introduced active suspension to Formula One at the start of 1987 (after previously experimenting with the system in and ), reverted to conventional suspension for their 1988 challenger, the Lotus 100T, due to the extra weight and the 5% engine power that the computer-controlled system required to run properly. As Williams would find out, the power needed to run the suspension made the already underpowered Judd V8 sluggish compared to its rivals.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: There were three new teams on the grid this year – BMS Scuderia Italia (using a Dallara chassis), Rial and EuroBrun – while Coloni was embarking on its first full season after entering two races towards the end of 1987. BMS, Rial and Coloni all entered one car while EuroBrun entered two, thus increasing the number of participants at each race to 31. It was decided that only 30 cars should be allowed to participate in the qualifying sessions, and so pre-qualifying, which had been used in several races during the late 1970s and early 1980s, was re-introduced. For 1988, this consisted of the aforementioned five cars taking part in an extra session on Friday morning before the first session of qualifying proper (the session was run concurrently with the first un-timed practice session on the three street circuits on the calendar, though it took place on Thursday at Monaco), with the slowest car to miss out on the rest of the weekend. Dallara were late in producing their first Formula One car, the F188, so BMS were forced to use a modified Dallara Formula 3000 chassis, the 3087, at the first race in Brazil.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: While there were new teams on the grid in 1988, the Brabham team would not appear in a Grand Prix season for the first time since . After losing use of the turbo BMW engines and failing to secure a replacement, and after missing the FIA's entry deadline for the 1988 season, team owner Bernie Ecclestone announced Brabham's withdrawal before the opening race in Brazil. Ecclestone later sold the team to Swiss slot machine magnate Walter Brun (part owner of the Eurobrun team), who in turn sold it to Swiss financier Joachim Luhti who returned the team to F1 in . No team used Brabham's 1987 car numbers 7 and 8.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Pre-season testing in Rio de Janeiro at the newly named Autódromo Internacional Nelson Piquet (formerly known as the Jacarepaguá Circuit) was dominated by Ferrari seemingly continuing on with the form that saw Gerhard Berger win the final two races of 1987. Both Berger and Michele Alboreto set times during the Rio tests which were significantly faster than anyone else, and faster than had been recorded during the 1987 Brazilian Grand Prix, prompting rumours that the Scuderia had been running their cars without the FIA's mandatory pop-off valve, or had the valve set at 1987's 4.0 bar limit. The rumours seemed to carry weight when just a month later for the opening race at the same circuit when the pop-off valves were to be in use, neither Berger nor Alboreto could get near their testing times from the previous month, and both were well down on top speed compared to the McLaren and Lotus-Hondas.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: For the first race of the season in Brazil, with Ferrari being the only completely stable option and having dominated the Rio tests the previous month, many agreed that both Berger and Alboreto (should he find the motivation) would be in serious contention, and this was supported in Berger's second place behind Alain Prost's McLaren as well as setting the fastest race lap for the Ferrari. Though in a post-race interview Berger warned that Ferrari had a lot of work to do to catch up with Honda as the Ferrari V6 seemed to lack power compared to its rivals. Remarkable also, was Nigel Mansell's recovery from his accident in Japan to score a front row position for his non-turbo Judd-powered Williams on his first race back. Making Mansell's lap even more remarkable was that his Judd engined Williams FW12 was only timed at only on the long back straight compared to over for the Honda turbos of McLaren and Lotus. Mansell was the first non-turbo front row starter in Formula One since Keke Rosberg had qualified his Williams-Ford on pole at the same circuit for the opening race of the season.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Of the new teams and drivers, both EuroBruns qualified for the race, as did the Rial of Andrea de Cesaris, while Luis Pérez-Sala also qualified his Minardi-Ford. The Tyrrell-Ford of Julian Bailey failed to qualify, as did the turbocharged Zakspeed of Bernd Schneider. The converted F3000 Dallara-Ford of Alex Caffi failed to pre-qualify for its only race, with the full F1 chassis ready before the next race.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Senna's first race for McLaren got off to a bad start when the cars gear selector broke on the grid, causing a restart. The Brazilian was eventually disqualified for switching to the spare car after the green flag had been waved following the warm-up lap. At the time he had risen up to second place after starting from the pits. Making it look easy and confirming his mastery of the circuit, Prost won his fifth Brazilian Grand Prix in seven years, easing off over the last few laps to ensure he finished with enough fuel not to be underweight to finish 10 seconds in front of Berger, with World Champion Nelson Piquet finishing third in his first race for Lotus-Honda. With Derek Warwick (Arrows-Megatron), Alboreto (Ferrari) and Satoru Nakajima (Lotus-Honda) finishing 4th, 5th and 6th respectively the points were a clean sweep for the turbo powered cars, though Mansell and the Benettons of Boutsen and Nannini did run in the points for long periods of the race.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: At Imola however, it was plain to see what all the teams had feared. Steve Nichols' McLaren MP4/4, combined with the championship winning Honda V6 turbo, made a mockery of the rest of the grid. In qualifying both Senna and Prost were 3 seconds faster than the Lotus-Honda of Piquet in 3rd. At the end of the race Senna and Prost (who had almost stalled at the start and was only in 8th by the time the field got to Tosa, giving Senna a clear track while Prost took a number of laps to get to second) had lapped the entire field, with teammate Prost only 2.3 seconds behind a fuel conserving Senna at the finish. Indeed, both McLarens set faster race laps than anyone else had qualified. The McLarens lapping the field with 5 laps remaining was bad news for the normally-aspirated Benettons of Thierry Boutsen and Alessandro Nannini: as the lapped cars had a reduced distance to complete the race, the turbos of Piquet (Lotus) and Berger (Ferrari) had less need to stretch their fuel and now could afford to up their turbo boost if needed. Over the final 5 laps, Piquet pulled away from a challenging Boutsen (who was down on power due to a cracked exhaust), while Berger passed Nannini for 5th place on the last lap by cutting the grass at the Acque Minerali chicane, though no action was taken for cutting a corner to make a pass for position.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: During qualifying, World Champion and the last driver to win the title driving a naturally aspirated car Keke Rosberg, said in an interview at about the new rules that if you ignored the McLarens it was quite a competitive race between the turbos and the 'atmos'. Considering that the Imola circuit had always been considered a power track that spelled good news for the FIA's turbo restriction rules, especially with drivers of the faster atmo cars, Nigel Mansell's Williams-Judd and the Benetton-Fords of Nannini and Boutsen, regularly challenging the turbos of Lotus-Honda (fastest through the speed trap in qualifying at ), Ferrari and Arrows-Megatron, though the McLarens (which were 1.5 km/h slower at Tosa than Piquet in qualifying) were out of reach of everyone. The acceleration of the Honda V6 turbo in the sleek, lowline McLaren, and their downforce in the corners was unsurpassed. That, combined with who many considered the two best drivers in the world, saw the McLarens simply in another league at Imola. Though most in the F1 paddock and the press agreed that while Senna and Prost were the best drivers, all things being equal they weren't three seconds a lap faster than every one else.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: For the first time since the team entered Formula One in , both Ligiers failed to qualify for a race. Stefan Johansson, who could boast 11 podium finishes over the past 3 seasons with Ferrari and McLaren, could only manage 28th fastest, with 7 time Grands Prix winner René Arnoux (who also had 18 pole positions to his credit, including 2 at Imola) could only manage 29th fastest. Both drivers were over 8.5 seconds slower than Senna's pole time. The problem for the Ligiers was a lack of downforce from the Judd powered JS31 with Johansson telling that he had to use a wet weather technique even on a dry track.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Despite what many expected, the championship would hardly be considered boring with the McLaren onslaught peaking with the drivers fighting in several feuds. At Monaco, after Alain Prost set the fastest lap, Senna refused to accept that his teammate could be driving faster than he was, especially after Senna out qualified Prost by over a second. Senna pushed and after taking back the fastest lap, Ron Dennis got on the radio and told his drivers to effectively 'cool it' as Senna's lead was 50 seconds with only 12 laps remaining. Senna, his rhythm broken, then had a major lapse in concentration and hit the wall at Portier. What made Senna's mistake all the more astounding was that he had completely dominated the weekend, taking pole by 1.4 seconds from Prost (who was 1.2 seconds faster than Berger's 3rd placed Ferrari) and from the start of the race had simply run away and hid from the field.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Prost, who had made the best start but was passed in quick succession by Senna and Berger when he couldn't engage second gear, spent 54 laps trying to find a way around the Ferrari as his teammate pulled away by almost a second per lap. The McLaren got alongside the Ferrari many times past the pits but simply ran out of room to pass before Sainte Dévote. Finally on lap 54 Prost got a good run out of the final turn and was able to out brake Berger going into Sainte Dévote. He then set about pulling away from the Ferrari while also trying to put some pressure on Senna. Thanks to Senna's crash, Berger picked up second place behind Prost with teammate Alboreto third.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: After Senna's crash, the McLaren team didn't see or hear from him until that night as he didn't return to the pits until the team was packing up after the race. As the Brazilian lived in Monaco, the general belief was that he went back to his home to contemplate losing a race he had totally dominated.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: In Mexico, it was nearly a repeat of San Marino: McLaren 1–2, with this time only one other driver on the lead lap. Gerhard Berger had picked up his third podium in four races, giving him the edge on Piquet and Alboreto for the title of "Best of the Rest" – the race for third. As expected, turbo cars dominated in the thin air of Mexico City, with the front three rows of the grid shared between the McLaren-Hondas, Ferraris, Lotus-Hondas. This dominance continued in the race. Behind the Prost-Senna 1–2 came a Ferrari 3–4 with Alboreto finishing behind his teammate, while Derek Warwick and Eddie Cheever finished 5th and 6th after a race long dice in their Arrows-Megatron turbos. Warwick and Cheever would later remark that their race was "good fun".


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: In the thin air of Mexico City's high altitude, the turbos were able to perform at their optimum, while the naturally aspirated cars actually lost approximately 20–25% of their power. This advantage allowed the Zakspeed of Bernd Schneider to qualify an impressive 15th for his first Grand Prix start in what wasn't the most competitive car in the field. Incredibly though, the turbocharged Osella of Nicola Larini with its ancient "Osella V8" (a re-badged Alfa Romeo 890T first seen in 1983), allegedly the most powerful engine in the field, failed to qualify.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: The last qualifying session was dominated by Philippe Alliot's terrifying crash after he lost control of his Lola, coming out of the Peraltada curve that leads onto the pit straight (the Peraltada, being slightly banked, was being taken at speeds in excess of in qualifying). After riding the outside curbing, the car suddenly pulled hard right, cut across the track and collided with the pit wall, barrel-rolling down the straight and back across the track, immediately disintegrating, and in the end stopped upside down in the middle of the track. Remarkably, Alliot was not only unhurt, but the Larrousse team was able to rebuild the car overnight and Alliot was able to take his place on the starting grid.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: The fastest atmo qualifier, the Benetton-Ford of Alessandro Nannini, finished in 7th place. The Italian, who finished just in front of teammate Thierry Boutsen after another race long duel between teammates, finished the race without a point and in severe pain from a pinched nerve in his right foot from never having to drive as hard for so long.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Honda's 1–2 finish with McLaren had its flip side though as both Nelson Piquet and Satoru Nakajima failed to finish due to blown Honda engines.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: After not racing in Canada in 1987 due to a sponsorship dispute, Formula One returned to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve for the 1988 Canadian Grand Prix. The circuit had been changed since the last visit in 1986, with the pits relocated to the opposite end of the circuit, the new complex gaining general approval from those who mattered, the teams themselves. Canada again proved a repeat of the McLaren onslaught, this time Boutsen's Benetton being the only other car on the lead lap, and 50 seconds behind. Canada saw the first on-track fight for the lead between the two McLaren drivers. Prost won the start and led until lap 19 when Senna passed him under braking for the L'Epingle Hairpin. The Brazilian then pulled away from his teammate to win by 5 seconds, with Boutsen and further 46 seconds back in third.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Nelson Piquet's season of disappointment continued with a 4th-place finish in his Lotus-Honda, again one lap down on the McLarens. After qualifying 6th, the reigning World Champion was passed early on by ex-teammate Nigel Mansell's Williams-Judd, and then spent many laps fighting off the AGS-Ford of Philippe Streiff until the Frenchman suffered suspension failure on lap 41.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: This was repeated in Detroit, however this time third placed Boutsen failed to stay on the lead lap as Senna took his second victory in a row, and his third in a row in Detroit, making it six out of six for McLaren and Honda. Prost finished 38.7 seconds behind in second. For the first time since Brazil, there was something other than a McLaren on the front row. Gerhard Berger qualified second behind Senna (who took his record 7th straight pole position), with Alboreto third and Prost only managing fourth on the grid on his least favorite track on the calendar. This would prove to be the final ever Formula One Detroit Grand Prix, the temporary street circuit failing to meet the FIA's minimum pit requirements.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: The French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard saw another 1–2 for McLaren, this time with Prost at the helm for his home Grand Prix, followed by the Ferraris, though this time Alboreto led home Berger with the Italian the only driver not lapped by the McLarens. Piquet raced a brilliant race, despite losing second gear, to come through for a fifth place. For the first time in 1988, Ayrton Senna was not on pole position. In France it was French hero Prost who qualified fastest almost half a second up on his teammate. The race saw the second true fight of the season between the McLarens, with Prost coming out on top after a brave passing move at the ultra fast Courbe de Signes when Senna had been momentarily baulked by the Dallara of Alex Caffi and the Minardi of Pierluigi Martini.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: At the team's home Grand Prix, Ligier suffered the embarrassment of neither René Arnoux (who turned 40 the day after the race) or Stefan Johansson being able to qualify for the race.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: At the wet British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Nigel Mansell surprised all by scoring a second place for an atmos car for his first finish of the season after seven races of DNFs, a result which definitely pleased the hordes of British fans who were still gripped in Mansell-mania despite the driver's (or rather, the car's) lacklustre performance through the year. Senna won, with the podium rounded off by Nannini, proving that Silverstone was an unusually good race for the atmos cars. Silverstone also saw the only non-McLaren pole position when Gerhard Berger claimed pole in his Ferrari. It was also the only time neither McLaren qualified on the front row as Alboreto qualified second.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Mansell's race was helped when the 'reactive suspension' used on the Williams FW12 was dumped by the team after Friday qualifying and a conventional suspension was put in its place. Team Technical Director Patrick Head called the work "a bit of a bodge", but the new suspension transformed the car and allowed Mansell and teammate Riccardo Patrese to enter the race with confidence for the first time all season (after Friday qualifying, Patrese had been 30th and last, almost 21 seconds slower than provisional pole man Alboreto).


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Prost got a horror start and was down in 9th at the end of the first lap with BBC commentator and World Champion James Hunt noting as early as lap 2 that his Honda engine was badly misfiring. Prost was later lapped by his teammate going into Woodcote in a move that also saw Senna take the lead for the first time from Berger. Prost suffered his first DNF of the season when he retired on lap 24 citing an engine misfire and poor handling, though in complete contrast to his win in France a week earlier, he was attacked in the French press, many of whom felt he had simply given up.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: McLaren had dominated, winning the first eight races of the season, with Prost and Senna winning four each. Prost led the championship with 54 points from Senna on 48 and Gerhard Berger on 21. McLaren were making a mockery of the Constructors' Championship having scored 102 points, 68 in front of second placed Ferrari.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Germany proved a return to the year's trend, with the long straights of Hockenheim showcasing the brute strength of the turbos, with the only atmos car on the lead lap behind both McLarens and Ferraris respectively being Capelli's March. Capelli recorded the fastest 'atmo' speed trap of the season during qualifying, the Judd V8 pushing the March 881 to , though this was significantly slower than the McLarens at , and Ferraris at . Unable to exploit the power of their Megatron turbos thanks to the pop-off valve regularly cutting in at around 2.3 bar instead of the full 2.5 bar limit, the Arrows A10Bs of Derek Warwick and Eddie Cheever struggled, only trapping at around .


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Gerhard Berger survived a high speed spin in qualifying. His Ferrari was attempting to pass the EuroBrun of Oscar Larrauri and the Arrows of Eddie Cheever on the final straight before the stadium section of the track. Berger went to his left to pass both cars only to find Cheever had done the same to pass Larrauri, and the American had what was left of the road. At almost , the Ferrari put its left wheels on the grass, sending it into a spin between the Arrows and EuroBrun. Luckily, Larrauri had only been cruising at the time and was able to avoid the spinning Ferrari. Berger managed to stop his car before it hit the barrier on the opposite side of the track.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: In the second wet race in a row, Senna took the win from Prost, with Berger taking the bottom step of the rostrum. Alessandro Nannini set his first career fastest lap in his Benetton-Ford V8. The Italian had been in 4th place before having to pit to fix a broken throttle bracket which cost him 4 laps and almost 20 places and angrily drove the rest of the race flat out, setting a time that was 1.856 seconds faster than the next best set by Prost. Defending World Champion Nelson Piquet made the strange decision to start the race on slick tyres. It proved to be the wrong choice as his Lotus aquaplaned on the wet surface and clouted the tyre barrier going into the Ostkurve chicane on the first lap. Larrousse driver Philippe Alliot would later repeat Piquet's mistake. He changed from wets to slicks just 8 laps later and while being lapped by Senna, went offline and aquaplaned into the same tyre barrier the Lotus had hit. Like Piquet's Lotus, Alliot's Lola was out on the spot with rear suspension damage.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: At the following Grand Prix at Hungary, Senna secured his 24th pole position, securing the third highest total after legendary champions Jim Clark and Juan Manuel Fangio, backing his qualifying effort up by taking victory over teammate Prost by just over half a second. This was Senna's sixth win of the season, and third on the trot, with Prost on just four wins.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Despite suffering from Chickenpox, Nigel Mansell secured his first front row start since the opening race in Brazil. On the tight and twisty Hungaroring, the only turbo powered cars in the top 7 were the McLarens, with Prost down in 7th place. Mansell got the better of the start and briefly led, but before the first turn the power of the Honda turbo told and Senna was through into the lead. Mansell and teammate Riccardo Patrese then pressured Senna until Mansell spun his Williams on lap 12, dropping him to 4th place. Patrese then set about taking the lead from Senna but was forced to drop back with engine trouble and would eventually finish 6th.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Prost's race was better than qualifying, and though he again made a slow start and was 9th at the end of the opening lap, he fought his way up to second behind Senna on lap 47. On lap 49 he took the lead from Senna down the pit straight in a breathtaking move where he not only passed Senna but also the lapped Yannick Dalmas and Gabriele Tarquini. Unfortunately his burst of speed also saw him run wide at the first corner allowing Senna to dive underneath and re-take the lead. From that point Prost's McLaren developed a vibration which saw him drop back from Senna, though he again charged late in the race and was only half a second behind at the finish. Thierry Boutsen once more finished "best of the rest" in his Benetton, finishing half a minute behind the McLarens, his race not helped by a broken exhaust which robbed the Ford DFR of power. Rounding out the points were Berger, Gugelmin and Patrese. After a race long duel, the Lotus pair finished out of the points in 7th and 8th respectively, with Satoru Nakajima gaining praise for finishing in front of his more illustrious teammate. Nakajima and Piquet finished 3 laps behind the McLarens.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: The 1988 Belgian Grand Prix showed Prost one thing: to not change his set-up at the last minute. All through the year, Prost's better feel at setting up a car was not only noticed by his teammate, but mimicked. Senna had used Prost's set-ups for every race thus far, and the race at Spa was no different. This annoyed Prost, and he changed his aero-settings at the last minute (running less wing with the hopes of being faster on the straights and the long run from Stavelot to the Bus Stop chicane), hoping to give himself an edge over the pole-sitting Senna. At the start, Prost took the lead after Senna suffered wheel spin, but on the first lap Senna with greater downforce was noticeably faster through Eau Rouge. Despite running with more wing than his teammate, Senna was able to then slipstream Prost up the Kemmel Straight and easily out braked him into Les Combes. From there Senna steadily drew away from his teammate who was unhappy with the balance of his car after his last minute setting change, going on to take an easy 30 second win. Third and fourth was filled by the two Benettons, however they were both disqualified from the results long after the race had ended for using illegal fuel (in fact, the DQ was not known until after the season had ended meaning most publications showed the Benettons as finishing 3rd and 4th). This saw Ivan Capelli gain his first ever podium in Formula One. The 1–2 for McLaren meant that the points gap became big enough that Ferrari lost any chance of catching them in Constructors' Championship, securing McLaren one of the earliest recorded Constructors' Championship victories.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: After racing in Hungary against doctors orders, Nigel Mansell was forced to miss the Belgian Grand Prix through illness and was replaced by Martin Brundle, who after four years in F1 was driving a V12 Jaguar XJR-9 for Tom Walkinshaw Racing in the 1988 World Sportscar Championship (Brundle would win that championship). After qualifying 12th, and actually being fastest in the 2nd, wet qualifying session, Brundle finished in 7th place, one lap behind his former British Formula 3 rival Senna.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Two weeks before the Belgian Grand Prix, Formula One lost its best known and one of its most loved people. Enzo Ferrari, the founding father of Ferrari and its F1 team Scuderia Ferrari, died on 14 August at the age of 90. In the first race since the death of their teams founder, Berger and Alboreto qualified 3rd and 4th respectively with Alboreto being the fastest through the speed trap on the Kemmel Straight at . Both were a DNF in the race however, Berger out on lap 11 with injection trouble, and while Alboreto's engine blew on lap 35.


title: 1988 Formula One World Championship

text: Before the Italian Grand Prix, Prost was quoted as saying that, as it was very possible that McLaren would take out a perfect sixteen out of sixteen victories, the winner would be determined between which McLaren driver would take the most wins, and on the chance they both took eight, it would be determined on their second places, which at the time Prost had more of despite having fewer wins. This meant Prost with 4 wins to Senna's 7 could only let Senna win one more time.