title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: The text of "Il Canto degli Italiani" was written by the Genoese Goffredo Mameli, then a young student and a fervent patriot, in a historical context characterized by that widespread patriotism that already heralded the revolutions of 1848 and the First Italian War of Independence (1848-1849).


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: On the precise date of the drafting of the text, the sources differ: according to some scholars, the hymn was written by Mameli on 10 September 1847, while according to others the date of birth of the composition was two days before, 8 September.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: After having discarded the idea of adapting it to existing music, 10 November 1847 Goffredo Mameli sent the text of the hymn to Turin to set it to music by the Genoese composer Michele Novaro, who was in the house at that time of the patriot Lorenzo Valerio.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: Novaro was immediately conquered and, on 24 November 1847, he decided to set it to music. Thus Anton Giulio Barrili, patriot and poet, remembered in April 1875, during a commemoration of Mameli, the words of Novaro on the birth of the music of "Il Canto degli Italiani":


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: Mameli, who was Republican, Jacobin and supporter of the motto born from the French Revolution "liberté, égalité, fraternité", to write the text of "Il Canto degli Italiani" was inspired by the French national anthem, "La Marseillaise". For example, "" recalls the verse of the "La Marseillaise", "" ("Form your battalions").


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: In origin was, in the first version of "Il Canto degli Italiani", another verse that was dedicated to Italian women. The verse, eliminated by Mameli himself before the official debut of the hymn, read: "Tessete o fanciulle / bandiere e coccarde / fan l'alme gagliarde / l'invito d'amor. (. English: Weave maidens / flags and cockades / they make souls gallant / the invitation of love.)"


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: In the original version of the hymn, the first verse of the first verse read "Hurray Italy", Mameli then changed it to "Fratelli d'Italia" almost certainly at the suggestion of Michele Novaro himself. The latter, when he received the manuscript, also added a rebellious "Yes!" at the end of the refrain sung after the last strophe.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: 10 December 1847 was an historical day for Italy: the demonstration, organized in front of of the Genoese district of Oregina, was officially dedicated to the 101st anniversary of the popular rebellion of the Genoese quarter of Portoria during the War of the Austrian Succession which led to the expulsion of the Austrians from the city; in fact it was an excuse to protest against foreign occupations in Italy and induce Charles Albert of Sardinia to embrace the Italian cause of liberty and of unity.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: On this occasion the flag of Italy was shown and Mameli's hymn was publicly sung for the first time. It was played by the Filarmonica Sestrese, then municipal band of Sestri Ponente, in front of a part of those 30 000 patriots - coming from all over Italy - who had come to Genoa for the event. On 18 December 1847 the newspaper "L'Italia" of Pisa published this news from Turin:


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: There was perhaps a previous public rendition, of which the original documentation was lost, by the Filarmonica Voltrese founded by Nicola Mameli, brother of Goffredo, on 9 November 1847 in Genoa. In this first public performance the first version of "Il Canto degli Italiani" was sung, later modified in the definitive version. Being its notoriously Mazzinian author, the piece was forbidden by the Savoy police until March 1848: its execution was also forbidden by the Austrian police, which also pursued its singing interpretation - considered a political crime - until the end of the First World War.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: There are two autograph manuscripts up to the 21st century; the first, the original one linked to the first draft, with hand annotations by Mameli himself, is located at the Mazzinian Institute of Genoa, while the second, sent by Mameli on 10 November 1847 to Novaro, is kept at the Museo del Risorgimento in Turin. The autograph manuscript that Novaro sent to the publisher Francesco Lucca is instead located in the Ricordi Historical Archive. The sheet that is found at Istituto Mazziniano, subsequent to the two manuscripts, lacks the last strophe ("Son giunchi che piegano...") for fear of censorship. These leaflets were to be distributed at the 10 December demonstration, in Genoa. The hymn was also printed on leaflets in Genoa, by the printing office Casamara.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: When "Il Canto degli Italiani" debuted, there were only a few months left to the revolutions of 1848. Shortly before the promulgation of the "Statuto Albertino", the constitution that Charles Albert of Sardinia conceded to the Kingdom of Sardinia in Italy on 4 March 1848, a coercive law had been abrogated that prohibited gatherings of more than ten people. From this moment on, "Il Canto degli Italiani" experienced a growing success thanks to its catchiness, which facilitated its diffusion among the population. After 10 December the hymn spread all over the Italian peninsula, brought by the same patriots that participated in the Genoa demonstration. In the 1848, Mameli's hymn was very popular among the Italian people and it was commonly sung during demonstrations, protests and revolts as a symbol of the Italian unification in most parts of Italy.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: When "Il Canto degli Italiani" became popular, the Savoy authorities censored the fifth strophe, extremely harsh with the Austrians; however after the declaration of war to Austrian Empire and the beginning of the First Italian War of Independence (1848-1849), the soldiers and the Savoy military bands performed it so frequently that King Charles Albert was forced to withdraw all censorship. The anthem was in fact widespread, especially among the ranks of the Republican volunteers.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: In the Five Days of Milan, the rebels sang "Il Canto degli Italiani" during clashes against the Austrian Empire and was sung frequently during the celebrations for the promulgation, by Charles Albert of Sardinia, of the "Statuto Albertino" (also in 1848). Even the brief experience of the Roman Republic (1849) had, among the hymns most sung by the volunteers, "Il Canto degli Italiani", with Giuseppe Garibaldi who used to hum and whistle it during the defense of Rome and the flight to Venice. In the 1860, the corps of volunteers led by Giuseppe Garibaldi used to sing the hymn in the battles against the Bourbons in Sicily and Southern Italy during the Expedition of the Thousand. Giuseppe Verdi, in his "Inno delle nazioni" ("Hymn of the nations"), composed for the London International Exhibition of 1862, chose "Il Canto degli Italiani" to represent Italy, putting it beside "God Save the Queen" and "La Marseillaise".


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: After the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy (1861) the "Marcia Reale" ("Royal March"), composed in 1831, was chosen as the national anthem of unified Italy: the decision was taken because "Il Canto degli Italiani", which had too little conservative contents and was characterized by a strong republican imprint and Jacobin, did not combine with the epilogue of the unification of Italy, of monarchical origin. The references to the republican creed of Mameli - which was in fact Mazzinian - were, however, more historical than political; on the other hand, the "Il Canto degli Italiani" was disliked also by the socialist and anarchist circles, which considered it instead the opposite, that is too little revolutionary.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: The song was one of the most common songs during the Third Italian War of Independence (1866), and even the Capture of Rome on 20 September 1870, the last part of the Italian unification, was accompanied by choirs that sang it together with "Bella Gigogin" and the "Marcia Reale"; on this occasion, "Il Canto degli Italiani" was often performed also by the fanfare of the Bersaglieri.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: Even after the end of the Italian unification, "Il Canto degli Italiani", which was taught in schools, remained very popular among Italians, but it was joined by other musical pieces that were connected to the political and social situation of the time as, for example, the "Inno dei lavoratori" ("Hymn of the workers") or "Goodbye to Lugano", which partly obscured the popularity of the hymns used during Italian unification (including "Il Canto degli Italiani"), since they had a meaning more related to everyday problems.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: "Fratelli d'Italia", thanks to references to patriotism and armed struggle, returned to success during the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912), where it joined "A Tripoli", and in the trenches of the First World War (1915–1918): the Italian irredentism that characterized it indeed found a symbol in "Il Canto degli Italiani", although in the years following the last war context cited he would have been preferred, in the patriotic ambit, musical pieces of greater military style such as "La Leggenda del Piave", the "Canzone del Grappa" or "La campana di San Giusto". Shortly after Italy entered the First World War, on 25 July 1915, Arturo Toscanini performed "Il Canto degli Italiani" during an interventionist demonstration.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: After the march on Rome (1922) the purely fascist chants such as "Giovinezza" (or "Inno Trionfale del Partito Nazionale Fascista") took on great importance, which were widely disseminated and publicized, as well as taught in schools, although they were not official hymns. In this context the non-fascist melodies were discouraged, and "Il Canto degli Italiani" was not an exception. In 1932 the secretary of the National Fascist Party Achille Starace decided to prohibit the musical pieces that did not sing to Benito Mussolini and, more generally, those not directly linked to fascism.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: Thus the tracks judged to be subversive, i.e. those of anarchist or socialist type, such as the hymn of the workers or "The Internationale", and the official hymns of foreign nations not sympathizing with fascism, such as "La Marseillaise", were banned. After the signing of the Lateran Treaty between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See (1929), anti-clerical passages were also banned. The chants used during the Italian unification were however tolerated: "Il Canto degli Italiani", which was forbidden in official ceremonies, was granted a certain condescension only on particular occasions.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: In the spirit of this directive, for example, songs such as the Nazi hymn "Horst-Wessel-Lied" and the Francoist song "Cara al Sol" were encouraged, as they were official musical pieces from regimes akin to that led by Benito Mussolini. Otherwise, some songs were resized, such as "La leggenda del Piave", sung almost exclusively during the National Unity and Armed Forces Day every 4 November.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: During the Second World War, fascist pieces composed by regime musicians were released, also via radio: there were very few songs spontaneously born among the population. In the years of the second war were common songs like "A primavera viene il bello", "Battaglioni M", "Vincere!" and "Camerata Richard", while, among the spontaneously born songs, the most famous was On the "Sul ponte di Perati".


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: After the armistice of 8 September 1943, the Italian government provisionally adopted as a national anthem, replacing the "Marcia Reale", "La leggenda del Piave": the Italian monarchy had in fact been questioned for having allowed the establishment of the fascist dictatorship; recalling the Italian victory in the First World War, it could infuse courage and hope to the troops of the Royal Italian Army who fought the Italian Social Republic of Benito Mussolini and the Nazi Germany.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: In this context, "Fratelli d'Italia", along with other songs used during Italian unification and partisan songs, resounded in Southern Italy freed by the Allies and in the areas controlled by the partisans north of the war front. "Il Canto degli Italiani", in particular, had a good success in anti-fascist circles, where it joined the partisan songs "Fischia il vento" and "Bella ciao". Some scholars believe that the success of the piece in anti-fascist circles was then decisive for its choice as a provisional anthem of the Italian Republic.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: Often, "Il Canto degli Italiani" is wrongly referred to as the national anthem of the Italian Social Republic of Benito Mussolini. However, the lack of an official national anthem of the Republic of Mussolini is documented: in fact, "Il Canto degli Italiani" or "Giovinezza" was performed in the ceremonies. "Il Canto degli Italiani" and - more generally - the themes referring to unification of Italy were used by the Republic of Mussolini, with a change of course compared to the past, for propaganda purposes only.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: So Mameli's hymn was, curiously, sung by both the Italian partisans and the people who supported the Italian Social Republic (fascists).


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: In 1945, at the end of the war, Arturo Toscanini directed the performance of the "Inno delle nazioni" in London, composed by Giuseppe Verdi in 1862 and including "Il Canto degli Italiani"; however, as a provisional national anthem, even after the birth of the Italian Republic, "La leggenda del Piave" was temporarily confirmed.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: For the choice of the national anthem a debate was opened which identified, among the possible options: the "Va, pensiero" from Giuseppe Verdi's "Nabucco", the drafting of a completely new musical piece, "Il Canto degli Italiani", the "Inno di Garibaldi" and the confirmation of "La Leggenda del Piave". The political class of the time then approved the proposal of the War Minister Cipriano Facchinetti, who foresaw the adoption of "Il Canto degli Italiani" as a provisional anthem of the State.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: "La Leggenda del Piave" then had the function of national anthem of the Italian Republic until the Council of Ministers of 12 October 1946, when Cipriano Facchinetti (of republican political belief), officially announced that during the celebrations of 4 November for National Unity and Armed Forces Day, in which the armed services of the republic will perform their oath of loyalty to the young republic, as provisional anthem, "Il Canto degli Italiani" would have been adopted. The press release stated that:


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: Facchinetti also declared that a draft decree would be proposed which would confirm "Il Canto degli Italiani" as the provisional national anthem of the newly formed Republic, an intention which, however, was not followed up.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: Facchinetti proposed to formalize "Il Canto degli Italiani" in the Constitution of Italy, in preparation at that time, but without success. The Constitution, which came into force in 1948, sanctioned, in article 12, the use of the flag of Italy as a national flag, but did not establish what the national anthem would be, nor even the national symbol of Italy, which was later adopted by legislative decree dated 5 May 1948.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: A draft constitutional law prepared in the immediate post-war period whose final objective was the insertion, in article 12, of the paragraph "The Anthem of the Republic is the "Il Canto degli Italiani"" was not followed, as well as the hypothesis of a decree presidential election that issued a specific regulation.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: "Il Canto degli Italiani" then had a great success among Italian emigrants: scores of "Fratelli d'Italia" can be found, together with the flag of Italy, in many shops of the various Little Italy scattered in the Anglosphere. "Il Canto degli Italiani" is often played on more or less official occasions in North and South America: in particular, it was the "soundtrack" of the fundraisers destined to the Italian population leaving devastated by the conflict, which were organized in the second post-war period in the Americas.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: It was the President of the Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, in charge from 1999 to 2006, to activate a work of valorisation and re-launch of "Il Canto degli Italiani" as one of the national symbol of Italy. With reference to "Il Canto degli Italiani", Ciampi declared that:


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: In August 2016, a bill was submitted to the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the Chamber of Deputies to make "Il Canto degli Italiani" Italy's national anthem. In July 2017, the committee approved this bill. On 15 December 2017, on"Gazzetta Ufficiale" law nº 181 of 4 December 2017 was published after passing both houses of Parliament, and the law came into force on 30 December 2017.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: This is the complete text of the Italian anthem, as commonly performed in official occasions. The original poem written by Goffredo Mameli does not include the repetitions nor the loud "" ("Yes!") at the end of the chorus.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: The first strophe presents the personification of Italy who is ready to go to war to become free, and shall be victorious as Rome was in ancient times, "wearing" the helmet of Scipio Africanus who defeated Hannibal at the final battle of the Second Punic War at Zama; there is also a reference to the ancient Roman custom of slaves who used to cut their hair short as a sign of servitude, hence the Goddess of Victory must cut her hair in order to be slave of Rome (to make Italy victorious).


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: In the second strophe the author complains that Italy has been a divided nation for a long time, and calls for unity; in this strophe Goffredo Mameli uses three words taken from the Italian poetic and archaic language: (modern Italian: ), (modern ), (modern ).


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: The third strophe is an invocation to God to protect the loving union of the Italians struggling to unify their nation once and for all. The fourth strophe recalls popular heroic figures and moments of the Italian fight for independence such as the battle of Legnano, the defence of Florence led by Ferruccio during the Italian Wars, the riot started in Genoa by Balilla, and the Sicilian Vespers. The fifth strophe of the poem refers to the part played by Habsburg Austria and Czarist Russia in the partitions of Poland, linking its quest for independence to the Italian one.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: The sixth and final verse, which is almost never performed, is missing in Mameli's original draft but appears in his second manuscript, however it was omitted in the first printed editions of the text on leaflet. The verse joyfully announces the unity of Italy and goes on to close the song with the same six lines that conclude the initial verse, thus giving the poem a circular structure.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: Novaro's musical composition is written in a typical marching time (4/4) in the key of B-flat major. It has a catchy character and an easy melodic line that simplifies memory and execution.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: On the other hand, on the harmonic and rhythmic level, the composition presents a greater complexity, which is particularly evident from bar 31, with the important final modulation in the near tone of E-flat major, and with the agogic variation from the initial "Allegro martial" to a more lively "Allegro mosso", which results in an "accelerando". This second characteristic is well recognizable especially in the most accredited engravings of the autograph score.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: From a musical point of view, the piece is divided into three parts: the introduction, the strophes and the refrain.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: The introduction consists of twelve bars, characterized by a dactyl rhythm that alternates one eighth note sixteenth note. The first eight bars present a bipartite harmonic succession between B flat major and G minor, alternating with the respective dominant chords (F major and D major seventh. This section is only instrumental. The last four bars, introducing the actual song, return to B flat.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: The strophes therefore attack in B♭ and are characterized by the repetition of the same melodic unit, replicated in various degrees and at different pitch. Each melodic unit corresponds to a fragment of the Mamelian hexasyllable, whose emphatic rhythm enthused Novaro, who set it to music according to the classical scheme of dividing the verse into two parts ("Fratelli / d'Italia / Italia / s'è desta").


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: However, there is also an unusual choice, since the usual leap of a correct interval does not correspond to the anacrusic rhythm: on the contrary, the verses «Fratelli / d'Italia» and «dell'elmo / di Scipio» carry each one, at the beginning, two identical notes (F o D depending on the case). This partly weakens the accentuation of the syllable in beat to the advantage of the upbeat one, and produces audibly a syncopated effect, contrasting the natural short-long succession of the paroxytone verse.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: On the strong tempo of the basic melodic unit we perform an unequal group of pointed eighth note and sixteenth note.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: <score sound=1>\relative f' { \clef treble \time 4/4 \key bes \major r2 r4 f4 f8. g16 f4 r4 d'4 d8. ees16 d4 r4 d4 f8. ees16 d4 r4 c4 d8. c16 bes4 r4 } \addlyrics { Fra -- tel - li d'I -- ta - lia, l'I -- ta - lia s'è de - sta }</score>


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: Some musical re-readings of the "Il Canto degli Italiani" intended to give greater prominence to the melodic aspect of the song, and have therefore softened this rhythmic scan bringing it closer to that of two notes of the same duration (eighth note).


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: <score sound=1>\relative f' { \clef treble \time 4/4 \key bes \major r2 r4 f4 f8 g8 f4 r4 d'4 d8 ees8 d4 r4 d4 f8 ees8 d4 r4 c4 d8 c8 bes4 r4 } \addlyrics { Fra -- tel - li d'I -- ta - lia, l'I -- ta - lia s'è de - sta }</score>


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: At bar 31, again with an unusual choice, the key changes to E flat major until the end of the melody, yielding only to the relative minor in the performance of the tercet "Stringiamci a coorte /siam pronti alla morte / L'Italia chiamò", while time becomes an "Allegro mosso". Also the refrain is characterized by a melodic unit replicated several times; dynamically, in the last five bars it grows in intensity, passing from "pianissimo" to "forte" and to "fortissimo" with the indication "crescendo e accelerando sino alla fine" ("growing and accelerating to the end").


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: The copyrights have lapsed; the work is in the public domain, the two authors having been dead for more than 70 years. Novaro never asked for compensation for printing music, ascribing his work to the patriotic cause. Giuseppe Magrini, who made the first print of "Il Canto degli Italiani", asked only for a certain number of printed copies for personal use. In 1859, Novaro, at Tito Ricordi's request to reprint the text of the song with his publishing house, ordered that the money be directly paid in favor of a subscription for Giuseppe Garibaldi.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: The score of "Il Canto degli Italiani" is instead owned by the publisher Sonzogno, which therefore has the possibility of making the official prints of the piece.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: The oldest known sound recording of "Il Canto degli Italiani" (disc at 78 rpm for gramophone, 17 cm in diameter) is dated 1901 and was recorded by the Municipal Band of Milan under the direction of Pio Nevi.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: One of the first recordings of "Fratelli d'Italia" was that of 9 June 1915, which was performed by the Neapolitan opera and music singer Giuseppe Godono. The song was recorded for the Phonotype label of Naples.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: Another ancient recording received is that of the Gramophone Band, recorded in London for His Master's Voice on 23 January 1918.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: Over the years a public ceremonial has been established for the anthem's performance, which is still in force. According to the custom, whenever the anthem is played, if in an outdoor military ceremony personnel in formation present arms while personnel not in formation stand at attention (unless when saluting during the raising and lowering of the national flag, as well as the trooping of the national flag for service or unit decorations). If indoors (including military band concerts), all personnel stand at attention. Civilians, if they wish, can also put themselves to attention.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: According to the ceremonial, on the occasion of official events, only the first two stanzas should be performed without the introduction. If the event is institutional, and a foreign hymn must also be performed, this is played first as an act of courtesy.


title: Il Canto degli Italiani

text: In 1970 the obligation, however, remained almost always unfulfilled, to perform the "Ode to Joy" of Ludwig van Beethoven, that is the official anthem of Europe, whenever "Il Canto degli Italiani" is played.


title: Levi Miller

text: Levi Zane Miller (born 30 September 2002) is an Australian actor and model. He is known for playing Peter Pan in "Pan" (2015), Luke in "Better Watch Out" (2016), and Calvin in "A Wrinkle in Time" (2018).


title: Levi Miller

text: Miller was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. At the age of 5 or 6 he entered and won a drama competition with a "Peter Pan" monologue. He appeared in several Australian television commercials.


title: Levi Miller

text: Miller appeared in the film "A Heartbeat Away" (2012) and in short films such as "Akiva" (2010) and "Great Adventures" (2012). He was selected by the film's director Joe Wright for the role of Peter Pan in "Pan". He appeared in "" where he played Mick.


title: Levi Miller

text: In 2016, Miller starred as Luke in the psychological horror Christmas-themed film "Better Watch Out" where the young Australian actor's performance was highly regarded by film critics. He played Charlie Bucktin in the film adaptation of Australian novel "Jasper Jones".


title: Levi Miller

text: In 2018, he played Calvin O'Keefe in the American fantasy adventure "A Wrinkle in Time". The next year, he played Leo in the film "American Exit" (2019). Miller also played Bejamin Lane in the sports drama film "Streamline" (2021). In 2022, Miller was cast in the superhero film "Kraven the Hunter".


title: Boom Technology

text: Boom Technology, Inc. (trade name Boom Supersonic) is an American company designing a , 65-88-passenger supersonic airliner. Named the Boom Overture, the airliner is planned to have a range of and to be introduced in 2025.


title: Boom Technology

text: After being incubated by Y Combinator in 2016, Boom Technology raised $51 million of venture capital in 2017, and $100 million by January 2019. The Boom XB-1 Baby Boom one-third-scale demonstrator is expected to begin flight testing in 2022.


title: Boom Technology

text: It participated in a Y Combinator startup incubation program in early 2016, and has been funded by Y Combinator, Sam Altman, Seraph Group, Eight Partners, and others.


title: Boom Technology

text: In March 2017, $33 million were invested by several venture funds: Continuity Fund, RRE Ventures, Palm Drive Ventures, 8VC and Caffeinated Capital.


title: Boom Technology

text: In December 2017, Japan Airlines invested $10 million, raising the company capital to $51 million: enough to build the XB-1 “Baby Boom” demonstrator and complete its testing, and to start early design work on the 55-seat airliner. In January 2019, Boom raised a further $100 million, bringing the total to $151 million, then planning the demonstrator first flight for later in 2019.


title: Boom Technology

text: In January 2022, the company announced plans to build a 400,000-square-foot manufacturing facility on a 65-acre site at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina.


title: Boom Technology

text: The XB-1 Baby Boom is a one-third-scale supersonic demonstrator, designed to maintain Mach 2.2, with over of range, and powered by three dry General Electric J85-15s.


title: Boom Technology

text: With 500 viable routes, Boom suggests there could be a market for 1,000 supersonic airliners with business class fares. It had gathered 76 commitments by December 2017. It decided to use the delta wing configuration of Concorde and make use of composite materials. It is to be powered by three dry turbofan engines. A derivative or a clean-sheet design was to be selected in 2019.


title: Boom Technology

text: In September 2020, the company announced that it had been contracted to develop the Overture for possible use as Air Force One.


title: Boom Technology

text: In January 2021, Boom announced plans to begin Overture test flights in 2026. In June 2021, United Airlines announced that it had signed a deal to purchase 15 Boom Overture aircraft, with an option to buy 35 more. They are scheduled to begin operating in 2029.


title: Boom Technology

text: On August 16, 2022, Boom announced that American Airlines had agreed to purchase 20 Boom Overture aircraft.


title: Boom Technology

text: In December 2022, Boom announced the Symphony, a new propulsion system to be designed for the Overture. Boom will work with three companies to develop Symphony: Florida Turbine Technologies for engine design, GE Additive for additive technology design consulting, and StandardAero for maintenance.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: Michael Yeadon is a British anti-vaccine activist and retired pharmacologist who attracted media attention in 2020 and 2021 for making false or unfounded claims about the COVID-19 pandemic and the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. "The Times" has described him as "a hero of Covid conspiracy theorists" and "a key figure in the antivax movement".


title: Michael Yeadon

text: He previously served as the chief scientist and vice-president of the allergy and respiratory research division of the drug company Pfizer, and is the co-founder and former CEO of the biotechnology company Ziarco.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: Yeadon received his PhD under Ian Kitchen at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK. His thesis was in the respiratory system of rats.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: Yeadon worked with Salvador Moncada at the Wellcome Research Laboratories, focusing on airway hyper-responsiveness and the effects of pollutants such as Ozone and Nitrogen oxide, as well as working on drug discovery of 5-LO and COX.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: He served as the chief scientist and vice-president of Pfizer's allergy and respiratory research unit in Sandwich, Kent, where he oversaw the development of drugs for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).


title: Michael Yeadon

text: During his work at Pfizer, Yeadon was responsible for the selection of targets and the progression of new molecules into human trials. His unit developed inhaled and oral NCEs that showed positive results in clinical trials for asthma, allergic rhinitis and COPD.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: When Pfizer closed its Kent research facility in 2011. Yeadon, who had not worked with vaccines, then left Pfizer and with three colleagues founded the biotechnology company Ziarco which was sold to Novartis for $325 million in 2017.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: Yeadon falsely claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom was "effectively over" in October 2020,


title: Michael Yeadon

text: Yeadon has also discouraged COVID-19 lockdowns and the use of face masks despite evidence for their effectiveness.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: In a letter to the European Medicines Agency, Yeadon and the German physician Wolfgang Wodarg called for all vaccine trials to be stopped, falsely suggesting that mRNA vaccines could target the syncytin-1 protein needed for placenta formation.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: A Telegram account under his name has promoted the unfounded claim that the vaccines cause recipients to become magnetic.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: In an interview with American political strategist Steve Bannon, Yeadon falsely asserted that children were "50 times more likely to be killed by the COVID vaccines than the virus itself", citing a high number of events following COVID-19 vaccination reported on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: The US Centers for Disease Control, which operates the database, cautions that such reports are not verified and do not prove that vaccines caused any given adverse event.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: Yeadon founded the Liberal Spring movement in the UK, with the goal of turning the Liberal Democrats into a movement for "Covid-sceptic beliefs", according to "The Times".


title: Michael Yeadon

text: He has contributed funding to Liberty Places, a group promising to build a community on the African archipelago of Zanzibar for Europeans to escape COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates.


title: Michael Yeadon

text: Interviewed on Bannon’s "War Room" podcast, Yeadon indicated he would also be providing support for “U.S. politicians and influencers".


title: Charlie Robinson (actor)

text: Charles P. Robinson (November 9, 1945 – July 11, 2021) was an American stage, film and television actor. He is best known for his role on the NBC sitcom "Night Court" as Macintosh "Mac" Robinson (Seasons 2–9), the clerk of the court and a Vietnam War veteran. Although his most frequent on-screen billing was Charlie Robinson, "Night Court" had credited him as Charles Robinson throughout his 1984–1992 stint as Mac. In two of his earliest film appearances, 1974's "Sugar Hill" and 1975's "The Black Gestapo", he was credited as Charles P. Robinson. Some of his credits have been occasionally commingled with ones of older actor Charles Knox Robinson who, billed as Charles Robinson, was featured in numerous films and TV episodes between 1958 and 1971.


title: Charlie Robinson (actor)

text: In Robinson's early career, he was a singer: as a teenager with the group Archie Bell and the Drells and later with a group called Southern Clouds of Joy.


title: Charlie Robinson (actor)

text: Robinson's acting credits include appearances in "Black Gestapo", "Emergency!", "The White Shadow", "Flamingo Road", "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air", "The Game", "Touched by an Angel", and "Antwone Fisher". Robinson was cast in the role of Newdell in the NBC comedy "Buffalo Bill". Not the success it was expected to be, "Buffalo Bill" was canceled after two seasons and replaced by "Night Court". Robinson was cast as court clerk Mac Robinson, after the first season in 1984, when Karen Austin, who played the original court clerk, left the cast. Robinson played the role on "Night Court" from 1984 until the show ended in 1992. He also directed three episodes of the series. Also worked on Home Improvement


title: Charlie Robinson (actor)

text: From 1992 to 1995, Robinson co-starred on the sitcom "Love & War", replacing John Hancock who died a few episodes into the series run. Robinson played character Bud Harper in "Home Improvement", and appeared in many other television shows including "House", "The Bernie Mac Show", "My Wife and Kids", "Soul Food", "Charmed", "Hart of Dixie", "How I Met Your Mother", and "My Name Is Earl".


title: Charlie Robinson (actor)

text: He did commercial work for NEXTEL in which he asks a worker if he's "agitating my dots" after he walks in on two other dispatchers staring at the dots, which represented delivery workers, on a computer screen. He also did commercials for Old Spice, where he played the head coach of the NFL's Denver Broncos, appearing with perennial All-Pro Bronco linebacker Von Miller.


title: Charlie Robinson (actor)

text: In 2010, Robinson worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and co-starred in the film "Jackson" which was directed by J.F. Lawton. Robinson appeared as "Troy" in August Wilson's "Fences" at Southern California's South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa from January 22, 2010 until February 21, 2010. In September 2013, he returned to the theater to portray Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman". In 2015, he played Mr. Munson, the blind tenant on "Mom" whom Bonnie avoids helping out with apartment issues.


title: Charlie Robinson (actor)

text: Robinson died on July 11, 2021, at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, from cardiac arrest with multisystem organ failure due to septic shock and metastatic adenocarcinoma, a type of glandular cancer. He was 75.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: Salvia hispanica, commonly known as chia (), is a species of flowering plant in the mint family, Lamiaceae, native to central and southern Mexico and Guatemala. It is considered a pseudocereal, cultivated for its edible, hydrophilic chia seed, grown and commonly used as food in several countries of western South America, western Mexico, and the southwestern United States.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: "S. hispanica" is one of two plants known as "chia", the other being "Salvia columbariae", which is sometimes called "golden chia".


title: Salvia hispanica

text: Chia is an annual herb growing up to tall, with opposite leaves that are long and wide. Its flowers are purple or white and are produced in numerous clusters in a spike at the end of each stem. Chia is hardy from USDA Zones 9–12. Many plants cultivated as "S.hispanica" are in fact "Salvia lavandulifolia".


title: Salvia hispanica

text: Typically, the seeds are small ovals with a diameter around . They are mottle-colored, with brown, gray, black, and white. The seeds are hydrophilic, absorbing up to 12 times their weight in liquid when soaked. While soaking, the seeds develop a mucilaginous coating that gives chia-based beverages a distinctive gelatinous texture.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: Chia is grown and consumed commercially in its native Mexico and Guatemala, as well as Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua, northwestern Argentina, parts of Australia, and the southwestern United States. New patented varieties of chia have been bred in Kentucky for cultivation in northern latitudes of the United States.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: Chia is grown commercially for its seed, a food rich in omega-3 fatty acids since the seeds yield 25–30% extractable oil, including α-linolenic acid. Typical composition of the fat of the oil is 55% ω-3, 18% ω-6, 6% ω-9, and 10% saturated fat.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: The length of the growing cycle for chia varies based on location and is influenced by elevation. For production sites located in different ecosystems in Bolivia, Ecuador and northwestern Argentina, growing cycles are between 100 and 150 days in duration. Accordingly, commercial production fields are located in the range of altitude across a variety of ecosystems ranging from tropical coastal desert, to tropical rain forest, and inter-Andean dry valley. In northwestern Argentina, a time span from planting to harvest of 120–180 days is reported for fields located at elevations of .


title: Salvia hispanica

text: "S. hispanica" is a short-day flowering plant, indicating its photoperiodic sensitivity and lack of photoperiodic variability in traditional cultivars, which has limited commercial use of chia seeds to tropical and subtropical latitudes until 2012. Now, traditional domesticated lines of "Salvia" species grow naturally or can be cultivated in temperate zones at higher latitudes in the United States. In Arizona and Kentucky, seed maturation of traditional chia cultivars is stopped by frost before or after flower set, preventing seed harvesting. Advances in plant breeding during 2012, however, led to development of new early-flowering chia genotypes proving to have higher yields in Kentucky.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: Seed yield varies depending on cultivars, mode of cultivation, and growing conditions by geographic region. For example, commercial fields in Argentina and Colombia vary in yield range from . A small-scale study with three cultivars grown in the inter-Andean valleys of Ecuador produced yields up to , indicating that the favorable growing environment and cultivar interacted to produce the high yields. Genotype has a larger effect on yield than on protein content, oil content, fatty acid composition, or phenolic compounds, whereas high temperature reduces oil content and degree of unsaturation, and raises protein content.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: The cultivation of "S. hispanica" requires light to medium clay or sandy soils. The plant prefers well-drained, moderately fertile soils, but can cope with acid soils and moderate drought. Sown chia seeds need moisture for seedling establishment, while the maturing chia plant does not tolerate wet soils during growth.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: Traditional cultivation techniques of "S. hispanica" include soil preparation by disruption and loosening followed by seed broadcasting. In modern commercial production, a typical sowing rate of and row spacing of are usually applied.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: "S. hispanica" can be cultivated under low fertilizer input, using nitrogen or in some cases, no fertilizer is used.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: Irrigation frequency in chia production fields may vary from none to eight irrigations per growing season, depending on climatic conditions and rainfall.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: The wide range of wild and cultivated varieties of "S. hispanica" are based on seed size, shattering of seeds, and seed color. Seed weight and color have high heritability, with a single recessive gene responsible for white color.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: Currently, no major pests or diseases affect chia production. Essential oils in chia leaves have repellent properties against insects, making it suitable for organic cultivation. Virus infections, however, possibly transmitted by white flies, may occur. Weeds may present a problem in the early development of the chia crop until its canopy closes, but because chia is sensitive to most commonly used herbicides, mechanical weed control is preferred.


title: Salvia hispanica

text: During the 1980s in the United States, the first substantial wave of chia seed sales was tied to Chia Pets. These "pets" come in the form of clay figures that serve as a base for a sticky paste of chia seeds; the figures then are watered and the seeds sprout into a form suggesting a fur covering for the figure. About 500,000 Chia Pets a year are sold in the US as novelties or house plants.


title: Billy Budd

text: Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) is a novella by American writer Herman Melville, left unfinished at his death in 1891. Acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece when a hastily transcribed version was finally published in 1924, it quickly took its place as a classic second only to "Moby-Dick" among Melville's works. Billy Budd is a "handsome sailor" who strikes and inadvertently kills his false accuser, Master-at-arms John Claggart. The ship's Captain, Edward Vere, recognizes Billy's lack of intent, but claims that the law of mutiny requires him to sentence Billy to be hanged.


title: Billy Budd

text: Melville began work on the novella in November 1886, revising and expanding it from time to time, but he left the manuscript in disarray. Melville's widow Elizabeth began to edit the manuscript for publication, but was not able to discern her husband's intentions at key points, even as to the book's title. Raymond M. Weaver, Melville's first biographer, was given the manuscript and published the 1924 version, which was marred by misinterpretation of Elizabeth's queries, misreadings of Melville's difficult handwriting, and even inclusion of a preface Melville had cut. Melville scholars Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts Jr. published what is considered the best transcription and critical reading text in 1962. In 2017, Northwestern University Press published a "new reading text" based on a "corrected version" of Hayford and Sealts' genetic text prepared by G. Thomas Tanselle.


title: Billy Budd

text: Billy Budd is a seaman impressed into service aboard HMS "Bellipotent" in the year 1797, when the Royal Navy was reeling from two major mutinies and was threatened by the 's military ambitions. He is impressed to this large warship from another, smaller, merchant ship, "The Rights of Man" (named after the book by Thomas Paine). As his former ship moves off, Budd shouts, "And good-bye to you too, old "Rights-of-Man"."


title: Billy Budd

text: Billy, a foundling from Bristol, has an innocence, good looks and a natural charisma that make him popular with the crew. He has a stutter, which becomes more noticeable when under intense emotion. He arouses the antagonism of the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart. Claggart, while not unattractive, seems somehow "defective or abnormal in the constitution", possessing a "natural depravity." Envy is Claggart's explicitly stated emotion toward Budd, foremost because of his "significant personal beauty," and also for his innocence and general popularity. (Melville further opines that envy is "universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime.") This leads Claggart to falsely charge Billy with conspiracy to mutiny. When the captain, Edward Fairfax "Starry" Vere, is presented with Claggart's charges, he summons Claggart and Billy to his cabin for a private meeting. Claggart makes his case and Billy, astounded, is unable to respond, due to his stutter. In his extreme frustration he strikes out at Claggart, killing him instantly.


title: Billy Budd

text: Vere convenes a drumhead court-martial. He acts as convening authority, prosecutor, defense counsel and sole witness (except for Billy). He intervenes in the deliberations of the court-martial panel to persuade them to convict Billy, despite their and his beliefs in Billy's moral innocence. (Vere says in the moments following Claggart's death, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!") Vere claims to be following the letter of the Mutiny Act and the Articles of War.


title: Billy Budd

text: Although Vere and the other officers did not believe Claggart's charge of conspiracy and think Billy justified in his response, they find that their own opinions matter little. The martial law in effect states that during wartime the blow itself, fatal or not, is a capital crime. The court-martial convicts Billy following Vere's argument that any appearance of weakness in the officers and failure to enforce discipline could stir more mutiny throughout the British fleet. Condemned to be hanged the morning after his attack on Claggart, Billy before his execution says, "God bless Captain Vere!" His words were repeated by the gathered crew in a "resonant and sympathetic echo."


title: Billy Budd

text: Composed fitfully over the last five years of his life, the novella "Billy Budd" represents Melville's return to prose fiction after three decades of only writing poetry. Melville had a difficult time writing, describing his process with "Moby-Dick" as follows: "And taking a book off the brain is akin to the ticklish and dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—and even then the painting may not be worth the trouble..."


title: Billy Budd

text: The "scrapings" of "Billy Budd" lie in the 351 leaves of manuscript now in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.


title: Billy Budd

text: The state of this manuscript has been described as "chaotic," with a bewildering array of corrections, cancellations, cut and pasted leaves, annotations by several hands, and with at least two different attempts made at a fair copy. The composition proceeded in three general phases, as shown by the Melville scholars Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., who did an extensive study of the original papers from 1953 to 1962. They concluded from the evidence of the paper used at each stage, the writing instruments (pencil, pen, color of ink), insertions, and crossings out that Melville introduced the three main characters in three stages of composition: first Billy, in a draft of what became "Billy in the Darbies"; then Claggart: and finally Vere.


title: Billy Budd

text: The work started as a poem, a ballad entitled "Billy in the Darbies", which Melville intended for his book, "John Marr and Other Sailors". He added a short, prose head-note to introduce the speaker and set the scene. The character of "Billy" in this early version was an older man condemned for inciting mutiny and apparently guilty as charged. He did not include the poem in his published book. Melville incorporated the ballad and expanded the head-note sketch into a story that eventually reached 150 manuscript pages. This was the first of the three major expansions, each related to one of the principal characters. As the focus of his attention shifted from one to another of these three principals, he modified the plot and thematic emphasis. Because Melville never entirely finished the revisions, critics have been divided as to where the emphasis lay and to Melville's intentions.


title: Billy Budd

text: After Melville's death, his wife Elizabeth, who had acted as his amanuensis on other projects, scribbled notes and conjectures, corrected spelling, sorted leaves and, in some instances, wrote over her husband's faint writing. She tried to follow through on what she perceived as her husband's objectives but her editing was confusing to the first professional editors, Weaver and Freeman, who mistook her writing for Melville's. For instance, she put several pages into a folder and marked it "Preface?" indicating that she did not know what her husband had intended. At some point Elizabeth Melville placed the manuscript in "a japanned tin box" with the author's other literary materials, where it remained undiscovered for another 28 years.


title: Billy Budd

text: In August 1918, Raymond M. Weaver, a professor at Columbia University, doing research for what would become the first biography of Melville, paid a visit to Melville's granddaughter, Eleanor Melville Metcalf, at her South Orange, New Jersey home. She gave him access to all the records of Melville that survived in the family: manuscripts, letters, journals, annotated books, photographs, and a variety of other material. Among these papers, Weaver was astonished to find a substantial manuscript for an unknown prose work entitled "Billy Budd".


title: Billy Budd

text: After producing a text that would later be described as "hastily transcribed", he published the first edition of the work in 1924 as "Billy Budd, Foretopman" in Volume XIII of the Standard Edition of Melville's "Complete Works" (London: Constable and Company). In 1928 he published another version of the text that, despite numerous variations, may be considered essentially the same text.


title: Billy Budd

text: F. Barron Freeman published a second text in 1948, edited on different principles, as "Melville's Billy Budd" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). He believed he stayed closer to what Melville wrote, but still relied on Weaver's text, with what are now considered mistaken assumptions and textual errors. Subsequent editions of "Billy Budd" up through the early 1960s are, strictly speaking, versions of one or the other of these two basic texts.


title: Billy Budd

text: After several years of study, in 1962, Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., established what is now considered the correct, authoritative text. It was published by the University of Chicago Press, and contains both a "reading" and a "genetic" text. Most editions printed since then follow the Hayford-Sealts text.


title: Billy Budd

text: Based on the confusing manuscripts, the published versions had many variations. For example, early versions gave the book's title as "Billy Budd, Foretopman", while it now seems clear Melville intended "Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)"; some versions wrongly included as a preface a chapter that Melville had excised (the correct text has no preface). In addition, some early versions did not follow his change of the name of the ship to "Bellipotent" (from the Latin "bellum" war and "potens" powerful), from "Indomitable", as Melville called it in an earlier draft. His full intentions in changing the name of the ship are unclear, since he used the name "Bellipotent" only six times.


title: Billy Budd

text: The book has undergone a number of substantial, critical reevaluations in the years since its discovery. Raymond Weaver, its first editor, was initially unimpressed and described it as "not distinguished". After its publication debut in England, and with critics of such caliber as D. H. Lawrence and John Middleton Murry hailing it as a masterpiece, Weaver changed his mind. In the introduction to its second edition in the 1928 "Shorter Novels of Herman Melville", he declared: "In "Pierre", Melville had hurled himself into a fury of vituperation against the world; with "Billy Budd" he would justify the ways of God to man." German novelist Thomas Mann declared that "Billy Budd" was "one of the most beautiful stories in the world" and that it "made his heart wide open"; he declared that he wished he had written the scene of Billy's dying.


title: Billy Budd

text: In mid-1924 Murry orchestrated the reception of "Billy Budd, Foretopman," first in London, in the influential "Times Literary Supplement", in an essay called "Herman Melville's Silence" (July 10, 1924), then in a reprinting of the essay, slightly expanded, in "The New York Times Book Review" (August 10, 1924). In relatively short order he and several other influential British literati had managed to canonize "Billy Budd", placing it alongside "Moby-Dick" as one of the great books of Western literature. Wholly unknown to the public until 1924, "Billy Budd" by 1926 had joint billing with the book that had just recently been firmly established as a literary masterpiece. In its first text and subsequent texts, and as read by different audiences, the book has kept that high status ever since.


title: Billy Budd

text: In 1990 the Melville biographer and scholar Hershel Parker pointed out that all the early estimations of "Billy Budd" were based on readings from the flawed transcription texts of Weaver. Some of these flaws were crucial to an understanding of Melville's intent, such as the famous "coda" at the end of the chapter containing the news account of the death of the "admirable" John Claggart and the "depraved" William Budd (25 in Weaver, 29 in Hayford & Sealts reading text, 344Ba in the genetic text) :


title: Billy Budd

text: "Weaver": "Here ends a story not unwarranted by what happens in this incongruous world of ours—innocence and 'infirmary', spiritual depravity and fair 'respite'."


title: Billy Budd

text: "The Ms": "Here ends a story not unwarranted by what happens in this {"word undeciphered"} world of ours—innocence and 'infamy', spiritual depravity and fair 'repute'."


title: Billy Budd

text: Melville had written this as an end-note after his second major revision. When he enlarged the book with the third major section, developing Captain Vere, he deleted the end-note, as it no longer applied to the expanded story. Many of the early readers, such as Murry and Freeman, thought this passage was a foundational statement of Melville's philosophical views on life. Parker wonders what they could possibly have understood from the passage as printed.


title: Billy Budd

text: Hershel Parker agrees that "masterpiece" is an appropriate description of the book, but he adds a proviso. [E]xamining the history and reputation of "Billy Budd" has left me more convinced than before that it deserves high stature (although not precisely the high stature it holds, whatever that stature is) and more convinced that it is a wonderfully teachable story—as long as it is not taught as a finished, complete, coherent, and totally interpretable work of art. Given this unfinished quality and Melville's reluctance to present clear lessons, the range of critical response is not surprising. A wide range of views by about twenty-five different authors, including Raymond Weaver, Lewis Mumford, Newton Arvin, and W.H. Auden, are published in "Melville's Billy Budd and the Critics".


title: Billy Budd

text: Some critics have interpreted "Billy Budd" as a historical novel that attempts to evaluate man's relation to the past. Thomas J. Scorza has written about the philosophical framework of the story. He understands the work as a comment on the historical feud between poets and philosophers. By this interpretation, Melville is opposing the scientific, rational systems of thought, which Claggart's character represents, in favor of the more comprehensive poetic pursuit of knowledge embodied by Billy.


title: Billy Budd

text: The centrality of Billy Budd's extraordinary good looks in the novella, where he is described by Captain Vere as "the young fellow who seems so popular with the men—Billy, the Handsome Sailor," have led to interpretations of a homoerotic sensibility in the novel. Laura Mulvey added a theory of scopophilia and masculine and feminine subjectivity/objectivity. This version tends to inform interpretations of Britten's opera, perhaps owing to the composer's own homosexuality. In her book "Epistemology of the Closet" (1990/2008), Eve Sedgwick, expanding on earlier interpretations of the same themes, posits that the interrelationships between Billy, Claggart and Captain Vere are representations of male homosexual desire and the mechanisms of prohibition against this desire. She points out that Claggart's "natural depravity," which is defined tautologically as "depravity according to nature," and the accumulation of equivocal terms ("phenomenal", "mystery", etc.) used in the explanation of the fault in his character, are an indication of his status as the central homosexual figure in the text. She also interprets the mutiny scare aboard the "Bellipotent", the political circumstances that are at the center of the events of the story, as a portrayal of homophobia.


title: Billy Budd

text: Melville's dramatic presentation of the contradiction between the requirements of the law and the needs of humanity made the novella an iconic text in the field of law and literature. Earlier readers viewed Captain Vere as good man trapped by bad law. Richard Weisberg, who holds degrees in both comparative literature and law, argued that Vere was wrong to play the roles of witness, prosecutor, judge, and executioner, and that he went beyond the law when he sentenced Billy to immediate hanging. Based on his study of statutory law and practices in the Royal Navy in the era in which the book takes place, Weisberg argues that Vere deliberately distorted the applicable substantive and procedural law to bring about Billy's death. Judge Richard Posner has sharply criticized these claims. He objects to ascribing literary significance to legal errors that are not part of the imagined world of Melville's fiction and accused Weisberg and others of calling Billy an "innocent man" and making light of the fact that he "struck a lethal blow to a superior officer in wartime." The first issue of "Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature" is devoted to "Billy Budd" and includes essays by Weisberg and Posner.


title: Billy Budd

text: H. Bruce Franklin sees a direct connection between the hanging of Budd and the controversy around capital punishment. While Melville was writing "Billy Budd" between 1886 and 1891, the public's attention was focused on the issue. Other commentators have suggested that the story may have been based on events on board USS "Somers", an American naval vessel; Lt. Guert Gansevoort, a defendant in a later investigation, was a first cousin of Melville. If so then the character Billy Budd was likely inspired by a young man named Philip Spencer who was hanged on USS "Somers" on December 1, 1842.


title: Billy Budd

text: Harold Schechter, a professor who has written books on American serial killers, has said that the author's description of Claggart could be considered to be a definition of a sociopath. He acknowledges that Melville was writing at a time before the word "sociopath" was used. Dr. Robert Hare might classify Claggart as a psychopath, since his personality did not demonstrate the traits of a sociopath (rule-breaking) but of grandiosity, cunning manipulation, and a lack of empathy or remorse.


title: Billy Budd

text: Since the late 20th century, "Billy Budd" has become a central text in the field of legal scholarship known as law and literature.


title: Billy Budd

text: The climactic trial has been the focus of scholarly inquiry regarding the motives of Vere and the legal necessity of Billy's condemnation. Vere states, given the circumstances of Claggart's slaying, condemning Billy to death would be unjust. While critics have viewed Vere as a character caught between the pressures between unbending legalism and malleable moral principles, other critics have differed in opinion. Such other critics have argued that Vere represents a ressentient protagonist whose disdain for Lord Admiral Nelson he takes out on Billy, in whom Vere sees the traits of Nelson's that he resents. One scholar argues that Vere manipulated and misrepresented the applicable laws to condemn Billy, showing that the laws of the time did not require a sentence of death and that legally any such sentence required review before being carried out. While this argument has been criticized for drawing on information outside the novel, Weisberg also shows that sufficient liberties existed in the laws Melville describes to avoid a capital sentence.


title: Maddock Films

text: Maddock Films Pvt. Ltd. is an Indian film & web series production company founded by film director and producer Dinesh Vijan. Established in 2005, Maddock Films has produced critically and commercially acclaimed Hindi films such as, "Love Aaj Kal (2009)" "Cocktail" (2012), "Badlapur" (2015), "Hindi Medium" (2017), "Stree" (2018), "Luka Chuppi" (2019), "Bala" (2019), and "Mimi" (2021).


title: Total quality management

text: climate where employees continuously improve their ability to provide on demand products and services that customers will find of particular value." "Total" emphasizes that departments in addition to production (for example sales and marketing, accounting and finance, engineering and design) are obligated to improve their operations; "management" emphasizes that executives are obligated to actively manage quality through funding, training, staffing, and goal setting. While there is no widely agreed-upon approach, TQM efforts typically draw heavily on the previously developed tools and techniques of quality control. TQM enjoyed widespread attention during the late 1980s and early 1990s before being overshadowed by ISO 9000, Lean manufacturing, and Six Sigma.


title: Total quality management

text: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the developed countries of North America and Western Europe suffered economically in the face of stiff competition from Japan's ability to produce high-quality goods at competitive cost. For the first time since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the United Kingdom became a net importer of finished goods. The United States undertook its own soul-searching, expressed most pointedly in the television broadcast of "If Japan Can... Why Can't We?." Firms began reexamining the techniques of quality control invented over the past 50 years and how those techniques had been so successfully employed by the Japanese. It was in the midst of this economic turmoil that TQM took root.


title: Total quality management

text: The exact origin of the term "total quality management" is uncertain. It is almost certainly inspired by Armand V. Feigenbaum's multi-edition book "Total Quality Control" () and Kaoru Ishikawa's "What Is Total Quality Control? The Japanese Way" (). It may have been first coined in the United Kingdom by the Department of Trade and Industry during its 1983 "National Quality Campaign". Or it may have been first coined in the United States by the Naval Air Systems Command to describe its quality-improvement efforts in 1985.


title: Total quality management

text: In the spring of 1984, an arm of the United States Navy asked some of its civilian researchers to assess statistical process control and the work of several prominent quality consultants and to make recommendations as to how to apply their approaches to improve the Navy's operational effectiveness. The recommendation was to adopt the teachings of W. Edwards Deming. The Navy branded the effort "Total Quality Management" in 1985.


title: Total quality management

text: The US Environmental Protection Agency's Underground Storage Tanks program, which was established in 1985, also employed Total Quality Management to develop its management style. The private sector followed suit, flocking to TQM principles not only as a means to recapture market share from the Japanese, but also to remain competitive when bidding for contracts from the Federal Government since "total quality" requires involving suppliers, not just employees, in process improvement efforts.


title: Total quality management

text: There is no widespread agreement as to what TQM is and what actions it requires of organizations, however a review of the original United States Navy effort gives a rough understanding of what is involved in TQM.


title: Total quality management

text: While there is no generally accepted definition of TQM, several notable organizations have attempted to define it. These include:


title: Total quality management

text: "Total Quality Management (TQM) in the Department of Defense is a strategy for continuously improving performance at every level, and in all areas of responsibility. It combines fundamental management techniques, existing improvement efforts, and specialized technical tools under a disciplined structure focused on continuously improving all processes. Improved performance is directed at satisfying such broad goals as cost, quality, schedule, and mission need and suitability. Increasing user satisfaction is the overriding objective. The TQM effort builds on the pioneering work of Dr. W. E. Deming, Dr. J. M. Juran, and others, and benefits from both private and public sector experience with continuous process improvement."


title: Total quality management

text: "A management philosophy and company practices that aim to harness the human and material resources of an organization in the most effective way to achieve the objectives of the organization."


title: Total quality management

text: "A management approach of an organisation centred on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at long term success through customer satisfaction and benefits to all members of the organisation and society."


title: Total quality management

text: "A term first used to describe a management approach to quality improvement. Since then, TQM has taken on many meanings. Simply put, it is a management approach to long-term success through customer satisfaction. TQM is based on all members of an organization participating in improving processes, products, services and the culture in which they work. The methods for implementing this approach are found in the teachings of such quality leaders as Philip B. Crosby, W. Edwards Deming, Armand V. Feigenbaum, Kaoru Ishikawa and Joseph M. Juran."


title: Total quality management

text: "TQM is a philosophy for managing an organization in a way which enables it to meet stakeholder needs and expectations efficiently and effectively, without compromising ethical values."


title: Total quality management

text: In the United States, the Baldrige Award, created by Public Law 100–107, annually recognizes American businesses, education institutions, health care organizations, and government or nonprofit organizations that are role models for organizational performance excellence. Organizations are judged on criteria from seven categories:


title: Total quality management

text: Joseph M. Juran believed the Baldrige Award judging criteria to be the most widely accepted description of what TQM entails.


title: Total quality management

text: During the 1990s, standards bodies in Belgium, France, Germany, Turkey, and the United Kingdom attempted to standardize TQM. While many of these standards have since been explicitly withdrawn, they all are effectively superseded by ISO 9000:


title: Total quality management

text: The Federal Quality Institute was shuttered in September 1995 as part of the Clinton administration's efforts to streamline government. The European Centre for Total Quality Management closed in August 2009, a casualty of the Great Recession.


title: Total quality management

text: TQM, as a vaguely defined quality management approach, was largely supplanted by the ISO 9000 collection of standards and their formal certification processes in the 1990s. Business interest in quality improvement under the TQM name also faded as Jack Welch's success attracted attention to Six Sigma and Toyota's success attracted attention to lean manufacturing, though the three share many of the same tools, techniques, and significant portions of the same philosophy.


title: We're Not Gonna Take It (Twisted Sister song)

text: "We're Not Gonna Take It" is a song by the American band Twisted Sister from their album "Stay Hungry". It was first released as a single (with "You Can't Stop Rock & Roll" as the B-side) on April 27, 1984. The "Stay Hungry" album was released two weeks later, on May 10, 1984. The single reached No. 21 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 singles chart, making it Twisted Sister's only Top 40 single. In addition, it is also the band's highest-selling single in the United States, having been certified Gold on June 3, 2009 for sales of over 500,000 units. The song was ranked No. 47 on 100 Greatest 80's Songs and No. 21 on VH1's "100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 80s". It also received criticism when the Parents Music Resource Center included the song on its "Filthy Fifteen" list for alleged violent lyrical content, allegations that were refuted by lead singer Dee Snider.


text: "We're Not Gonna Take It" was written by vocalist Dee Snider. As influences for the song, he cites the glam rock band Slade and the Christmas carol "O Come, All Ye Faithful". The end of the song uses lines from character Douglas C. Niedermeyer in the film "Animal House" (e.g., "You're all worthless and weak!"). Mark Metcalf, who played Niedermeyer, stars in the video.


text: "Cash Box" said the song has "glaring lead vocals, "sneering lyrics," "heavy metal skill and...a refreshing dose of humor."


text: The music video was directed by Marty Callner with an emphasis on slapstick comedy. The video begins with a disobedient son (played by Callner's son, Dax) playing Twisted Sister songs in his bedroom while the rest of the family is eating dinner. The father, "Douglas C." (played by Mark Metcalf as a character similar to his Douglas C. Niedermeyer from the 1978 film "Animal House"), goes to the boy's room and scolds him for being interested only in his guitar and Twisted Sister. At the end of the speech, he screams "What do you want to do with your life?", to which the son replies "I Wanna Rock!" He strums his guitar and the sound blasts the father out of a nearby window. The boy transforms into Dee Snider, and the music begins. Snider sings to the other children, who turn into the rest of the band, and they wreak havoc on the family. The father gets the worst of the band's mischief, as he repeatedly tries and fails to get back at the band members, getting knocked out of more windows and even a wall. Still, even after a series of the father’s failed retaliations, his wife happens by to awkwardly recover him, such as throwing a bucket of water onto him, dropping a first aid kit onto him, and even spraying his face with a hose.


text: The song has been covered by various artists including German pop punk band Donots in 2002 (which became a minor hit in Germany, reaching 33 in the Singles Chart). It was also covered by Bif Naked for the film "Ready to Rumble" which also became David Arquette's entrance theme while he appeared on WCW programing.


text: In 2016, Dee Snider gave magician Criss Angel the rights to use the song as an "anthem" for his HELP (Heal Every Life Possible) charity. "Dee and I have known each other since the 1990s and he was a strong proponent of mine for years. We are both from Long Island, or as we like to think of it, 'Strong Island,' and his record publishing company gave me the rights to the song and it is our anthem for gratis." Snider appeared in a video of a stripped down acoustic version for the charity, recorded in the desert outside Las Vegas and featuring children in hospital and a young woman shaving her head to symbolize fighting cancer.


text: VH-1's series "True Spin" explains the song as simply an anthem of teen rebellion, but Snider appeared saying that he was happy that long after he is gone, "any time that the team is down by two, or somebody had a bad day at the office, they're gonna stand up and sing We're Not Gonna Take It".


text: In 2012, Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan's campaign used the song in Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, until Snider asked Ryan not to play it anymore. Snider stated that he does not support Ryan and he planned on voting for Obama.


text: In the summer of 2015, the song was adopted as the theme song for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The song was played after all his campaign appearances where it was known unofficially as the Trump fight song. "Newsweek" reported Snider gave Trump permission to use the song. Snider later changed his mind, saying that he had only allowed Trump to use the song because the two were friends, but then respectfully asked Trump to stop using it as he did not agree with many of Trump's stances. Snider did not want people to get the impression that he was endorsing Trump or his campaign.


text: During the 2018 teachers' strikes in the United States, the song was used as a rallying cry by teachers striking in Oklahoma and Arizona.


text: In Australia, Clive Palmer altered the lyrics to "Australia ain't gonna cop it" in a national TV campaign for United Australia Party ahead of the 2019 election. Twisted Sister condemned the unauthorized use of the song. Palmer disputed Twisted Sister's claim that they have any copyright over the portion of the song used in the advertisements, as he composed the lyrics and the melody was derived from "O Come, All Ye Faithful". In April 2021, Palmer was ordered by the Federal Court of Australia to pay $1.5 million in damages for copyright infringement. Palmer was also ordered to pay legal costs and to remove all copies of the song and accompanying videos off the internet.


text: Supporters of J.League club Vegalta Sendai used the song melody for a chant to support the team, in which a video from November 2008 of fans at an away game against Yokohama FC cheering, was highlighted on Twisted Sister's website in the wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: Quigley Down Under is a 1990 western film directed by Simon Wincer and starring Tom Selleck, Alan Rickman, and Laura San Giacomo.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: Matthew Quigley is an American cowboy with a specially modified rifle with which he can shoot accurately at extraordinary distances. Seeing a newspaper advertisement that asks for a man with his special talent, he answers using just four words: "M. Quigley 900 yards", written on a copy of the advertisement that is punctured by six closely spaced bullet holes.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: When he arrives in Australia, then part of the British Empire, he gets into a fight with employees of the man who hired him as they try to force "Crazy Cora" onto their wagon. After he identifies himself, he is taken to the station of Elliot Marston, who informs Quigley his sharpshooting skills will be used to eradicate the increasingly elusive Aboriginal Australians. Quigley turns down the offer and throws Marston out of his own house. When the Aboriginal manservant knocks Quigley over the head, Marston's men beat him and Cora unconscious and dump them in the Outback with no water and little chance of survival. However, they are rescued by Aborigines.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: Cora now reveals that she comes from Texas. When her home was attacked by Comanches, she hid in the root cellar and accidentally suffocated her child while trying to prevent him from crying. Her husband had then put her alone on a ship to Australia. Now Cora consistently calls Quigley by her husband's name (Roy), much to his annoyance.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: When Marston's men attack the Aborigines who helped them, Quigley kills three. Escaping on a single horse, they encounter more of the men driving Aborigines over a cliff. Quigley drives them off with his deadly shooting and Cora rescues an orphaned baby she finds among the dead. Leaving Cora and the infant in the desert with food and water, Quigley rides alone to a nearby town. There he obtains new ammunition from a local German gunsmith, who hates Marston for his murdering ways. Quigley learns as well that he has become a legendary hero among the Aborigines.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: Marston's men are also in town and recognize Quigley's saddle. When they attack, cornering him in a burning building, he escapes through a skylight and kills all but one of them. The injured survivor is sent back to say Quigley will be following. But first Quigley returns to Cora and the baby, which she has just saved from an attack by dingoes. She had tried to stop that child from crying too, but finally let him make as much noise as he liked as she killed the animals using a revolver that Quigley had left for her. Back in town, Cora gives the baby to Aborigines trading there after Quigley tells her that she (Cora) has a right to happiness.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: Next morning, Quigley rides away to confront Marston at his station. At first he shoots the defenders from his location in the hills, but is eventually shot in the leg and captured by Marston's last two men. Marston, who has noticed that Quigley only ever carries a rifle, decides to give him a lesson in the "quick-draw" style of gunfighting. However, Marston and his men are beaten to the draw by Quigley; as Marston lies dying, Quigley refers to an earlier conversation, telling him, "I said I never had much use for one [a revolver]; never said I didn't know how to use it."


title: Quigley Down Under

text: Marston's servant comes out of the house and gives Quigley his rifle back, then walks away from the ranch, stripping off his western-style clothing as he goes. An army troop now arrives to arrest Quigley, until they notice the surrounding hills are lined with Aborigines and decide to withdraw. Later Quigley and Cora book a passage back to America in the name of Cora's husband, since Quigley is still wanted. On the wharf, she reminds him that he once told her that she had to say two words before he could make love to her. Smiling broadly, she calls him "Matthew Quigley" and the two embrace for the first time.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: John Hill first began writing "Quigley Down Under" in 1974. He was inspired by a "Los Angeles Times" article about the genocide of the aborigines in 19th-century Australia. Although Westerns were in decline in the 1970s, Hill said that the script "opened a lot of doors for me," and led to other assignments.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: The script was first optioned in 1979 by producer Mort Engelberg for Steve McQueen, with whom he teamed on "The Hunter"; however McQueen died of cancer shortly after completing "The Hunter". The script was bought by CBS Theatrical Films where it was attached to director Rick Rosenthal. It then went to Warner Bros with Tom Selleck to star and Lewis Gilbert to direct around 1987. Warner Bros had the script for three years but then dropped their option. The script then became the subject of bidding between Pathe Entertainment, Disney and Warner Bros. It sold to Pathé for $250,000 which Hill said "is pretty good, when you consider that for 15 years I'd been making money optioning and rewriting that screenplay."


title: Quigley Down Under

text: Pathé's then head of production, Alan Ladd Jr., agreed to commit a $20 million budget. Selleck agreed to star and the director was an Australian, Simon Wincer.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: Wincer felt a good story had been ruined by numerous rewrites from people who knew little about Australian history, so he brought on Ian Jones as writer. They went back to the original draft, re-set it from the 1880s to the 1860s and made it more historically accurate.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: The firearm used by Quigley (Selleck) is a custom 13.5 pound (6 kg), single-shot, 1874 Sharps Rifle, with a 34-inch (860 mm) barrel. The rifle used for filming was a replica manufactured for the film by the Shiloh Rifle Manufacturing Company of Big Timber, Montana. In 2002 Selleck donated the rifle, along with six other firearms from his other films, to the National Rifle Association, as part of the NRA's exhibit "Real Guns of Reel Heroes" at the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: The film was shot entirely in Australia. Scenes were filmed in and around Warrnambool and Apollo Bay, Victoria.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: Although several scenes of the story depict violence and cruelty toward and involving animals, a film spokesperson explained that no animal was harmed, and special effects were used. For example, Quigley and Cora are reduced to consuming "grub worms" (actually blobs of dough) for survival. A pack of dingoes attacks Cora, and she finally saves herself by shooting the animals. Those animals were specially trained, and were actually "playing" for that scene, which was later enhanced by visual and sound effects. Several scenes involve falling horses; they were performed by specially-trained animals and were not hurt. When a horse falls off a cliff, the "horse" was a mechanical creation. The film's producer stated that a veterinarian was on the set whenever animals were being used in filming.


title: Quigley Down Under

text: Critical responses were mixed, with "Quigley" having a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 20 reviews. Roger Ebert of "The Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars, writing it was a well-made but formulaic neo-western. He particularly praised the performances of Rickman and San Giacomo, saying "[T]his may be the movie that proves her staying power."


title: Quigley Down Under

text: The film, and, more specifically, the protagonist's skill with his rifle, has led snipers to refer to the act of killing two targets with a single bullet as "a Quigley".


title: Harbor seal

text: The harbor (or harbour) seal (Phoca vitulina), also known as the common seal, is a true seal found along temperate and Arctic marine coastlines of the Northern Hemisphere. The most widely distributed species of pinniped (walruses, eared seals, and true seals), they are found in coastal waters of the northern Atlantic, Pacific Oceans, Baltic and North Seas.


title: Harbor seal

text: Harbor seals are brown, silvery white, tan, or gray, with distinctive V-shaped nostrils. An adult can attain a length of 1.85 m (6.1 ft) and a mass of up to . Blubber under the seal's skin helps to maintain body temperature. Females outlive males (30–35 years versus 20–25 years). Harbor seals stick to familiar resting spots or haulout sites, generally rocky areas (although ice, sand, and mud may also be used) where they are protected from adverse weather conditions and predation, near a foraging area. Males may fight over mates under water and on land. Females bear a single pup after a nine-month gestation, which they care for alone. Pups can weigh up to and are able to swim and dive within hours of birth. They develop quickly on their mothers' fat-rich milk, and are weaned after four to six weeks.


title: Harbor seal

text: The global population of harbor seals is 350,000–500,000, but the freshwater subspecies Ungava Seal in Northern Quebec is endangered. Once a common practice, sealing is now illegal in many nations within the animal's range.


title: Harbor seal

text: Individual harbor seals possess a unique pattern of spots, either dark on a light background or light on a dark. They vary in colour from brownish black to tan or grey; underparts are generally lighter. The body and flippers are short, heads are rounded. Nostrils appear distinctively V-shaped. As with other true seals, there is no pinna (ear flap). An ear canal may be visible behind the eye. Including the head and flippers, they may reach an adult length of 1.85 m (6.1 ft) and a weight of 55 to 168 kg (120 to 370 lb). Females are generally smaller than males.


title: Harbor seal

text: There are an estimated 350,000–500,000 harbor seals worldwide. While the population is not threatened as a whole, the Greenland, Hokkaidō and Baltic Sea populations are exceptions. Local populations have been reduced or eliminated through disease (especially the phocine distemper virus) and conflict with humans, both unintentionally and intentionally. Killing seals perceived to threaten fisheries is legal in Norway, and Canada, but commercial hunting is illegal. Seals are also taken in subsistence hunting and accidentally as bycatch (mainly in bottomset nets). Along the Norwegian coast, bycatch accounted for 48% of pup mortality. Killing or taking seals has been illegal in the United Kingdom since 1 March 2021.


title: Harbor seal

text: Seals in the United Kingdom are protected by the 1970 Conservation of Seals Act, which prohibits most forms of killing. In the United States, the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 prohibits the killing of any marine mammals and most local ordinances, as well as NOAA, instruct citizens to leave them alone unless serious danger to the seal exists.


title: Harbor seal

text: Harbor seals prefer to frequent familiar resting sites. They may spend several days at sea and travel up to 50 km in search of feeding grounds, and will also swim more than a hundred miles upstream into fresh water in large rivers in search of migratory fish like shad and likely salmon. Resting sites may be both rugged, rocky coasts, such as those of the Hebrides or the shorelines of New England, or sandy beaches, like the ones that flank Normandy in Northern France or the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Harbor seals frequently congregate in harbors, bays, sandy intertidal zones, and estuaries in pursuit of prey fish such as salmon, menhaden, anchovy, sea bass, herring, mackerel, cod, whiting and flatfish, and occasionally shrimp, crabs, mollusks, and squid. Atlantic subspecies of either Europe or North America also exploit deeper-dwelling fish of the genus "Ammodytes" as a food source and Pacific subspecies have been recorded occasionally consuming fish of the genus "Oncorhynchus". Although primarily coastal, dives of over 500 m have been recorded. Harbor seals have been recorded to attack, kill and eat several kinds of ducks.


title: Harbor seal

text: Harbor seals are solitary, but are gregarious when hauled out and during the breeding season, though they do not form groups as large as some other seals. When not actively feeding, they haul to rest. They tend to be coastal, not venturing more than 20 km offshore. The mating system is not known, but thought to be polygamous. Females give birth once per year, with a gestation period around nine months. Females have a mean age at sexual maturity of 3.72 years and a mean age at first parturition of 4.64. Both courtship and mating occur under water. Researchers have found males gather under water, turn on their backs, put their heads together, and vocalize to attract females ready for breeding. Pregnancy rate of females was 92% from age 3 to age 36, with lowered reproductive success after the age of 25 years.


title: Harbor seal

text: Birthing of pups occurs annually on shore. The timing of the pupping season varies with location, occurring in February for populations in lower latitudes, and as late as July in the subarctic zone. The mothers are the sole providers of care, with lactation lasting 24 days. The single pups are born well developed, capable of swimming and diving within hours. Suckling for three to four weeks, pups feed on the mother's rich, fatty milk and grow rapidly; born weighing up to 16 kilograms, the pups may double their weight by the time of weaning.


title: Harbor seal

text: Harbor seals must spend a great deal of time on shore when molting, which occurs shortly after breeding. This onshore time is important to the life cycle, and can be disturbed when substantial human presence occurs. The timing of onset of molt depends on the age and sex of the animal, with yearlings molting first and adult males last. A female mates again immediately following the weaning of her pup. Harbor seals are sometimes reluctant to haul out in the presence of humans, so shoreline development and access must be carefully studied in known locations of seal haul out.


title: Harbor seal

text: In comparison to many pinniped species, and in contrast to otariid pinnipeds, harbor seals are generally regarded to be more vocally reticent. However, they do utilize non-harmonic vocalizations to maintain breeding territories and to attract mates during specified times of year, and also during mother and pup interactions.


title: Harbor seal

text: Annual survival rates were calculated at 0.91 for adult males, and 0.902 for adult females. Maximum age for females was 36 and for males 31 years.


title: Harbor seal

text: The California population of subspecies "P. v. richardsi" amounted to about 25,000 individuals as of 1984. Pacific harbor seals or California harbor seals are found along the entire Pacific Coast shoreline of the state. They prefer to remain relatively close to shore in subtidal and intertidal zones, and have not been seen beyond the Channel Islands as a pelagic form; moreover, they often venture into bays and estuaries and even swim up coastal rivers. They feed in shallow littoral waters on herring, flounder, hake, anchovy, codfish, and sculpin.


title: Harbor seal

text: Breeding occurs in California from March to May, with pupping between April and May, depending on local populations. As top-level feeders in the kelp forest, harbor seals enhance species diversity and productivity. They are preyed upon by killer whales (orcas) and white sharks. Haul out sites in California include urban beaches and from time to time they can be seen having a nap on the beach in all of San Francisco Bay, which would include the conurbation of Richmond, Oakland, and San Francisco, the Greater Los Angeles area, which would include Santa Barbara, the city of Los Angeles itself, and Long Beach, and all of San Diego Bay, most famously beaches near La Jolla.


title: Harbor seal

text: Considerable scientific inquiry has been carried out by the Marine Mammal Center and other research organizations beginning in the 1980s regarding the incidence and transmission of diseases in harbor seals in the wild, including analysis of phocine herpesvirus. In San Francisco Bay, some harbor seals are fully or partially reddish in color, possibly caused by an accumulation of trace elements such as iron or selenium in the ocean, or a change in the hair follicles.


title: Harbor seal

text: Although some of the largest harbor seal pupping areas are found in California, they are also found north along the Pacific Coast in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska. Large populations move with the season south along the west coast of Canada and may winter on the islands in Washington and Oregon. Pupping is known to occur in both Washington and Oregon as of 2020. People are advised to stay at least 50m away from harbor seals that have hauled out on land, especially the pups, as mothers will abandon them if there's too much human activity nearby.


title: Harbor seal

text: Historically, the range of the harbor seal extended from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and Greenland to the sandy beaches of North Carolina, a distance of well over a thousand miles (greater than 1600 km.) Evidence of their presence in these areas is consistent with both the fossil record as well as a few landmarks named for them during colonization: Robbin's Reef, off of Bayonne, New Jersey, gets its name from the Dutch word "robben," meaning ""seals"". On the border between Canada and the US is an island known as Machias Seal Island, a place where today the harbor seal will occasionally visit but is now a sanctuary for puffins. Over the course of hundreds of years, however, the seal was wiped out steadily by being shot on sight by fishermen and by massive pollution. The evidence for this is found in documents all along the coast of New England which put a bounty on the head of every seal shot, as well as the accounts of harbormasters. New York City, when it was founded in the 1640s, was founded on top of an enormous estuary teeming with life that included the harbor seal. Oil in the 1800s started the process of pollution that was later compounded by even more toxic 20th century chemicals that included PCB's and dioxin. By the 1972 Clean Water Act, New York Harbor was almost dead-almost no living thing could survive in it. Approximately 300 miles to the north, Boston Harbor was equally polluted. Raw sewage had been dumped in the harbor since the late 1800s and the stench of fecal matter in the Charles River was overpowering, as evidenced by the song "Dirty Water" by the Standells, written in 1966. Flatfish, abundant in the area, had enormous tumors in their livers by the 1980s and the harbor seal was long gone, shot to oblivion.


title: Harbor seal

text: As of 2020, however, the seals have returned. They never were extirpated from Canada and certain pockets of the Maine coast, and thus an important mother population was created from whence the species could reclaim the home of their ancestors. Currently, they are sighted as far south as the barrier islands of North Carolina on a regular basis, with Massachusetts being the southernmost point of known pupping areas along the Atlantic Coast. Harbor seals move south from eastern Canadian waters to breed along the coast of Maine, Cape Cod, and the South Shore in Massachusetts in May and June, and return northward in fall. Others will head south from these areas to "vacation" in warmer waters, particularly young seals unable to compete with adults for food and territory; they do not return north until spring.


title: Harbor seal

text: One park ranger in New York City, which is dead center of its West Atlantic range, says that "New York is like their Miami resort." This refers to the habit of young seals leaving Cape Cod and even some Arctic waters to inhabit the harbor in winter. In 2018 the New York Post reported that the harbor is now "cleaner than it has been in 110 years," and since the first decade of the 21st century, the harbor seal has found the old turf of its ancestors to be a land of plenty and the water to be livable. Within sight of the New York skyline, known colonies of harbor seals are found on Hoffman and Swinburne Islands as well as portions of Red Hook and Staten Island, readily hauling out every from October until very early May. Known favorite foods of the seal are returning in grand numbers to New York Harbor as well as nearby New Jersey, from Raritan Bay all the way down the entire Jersey Shore, with schools of mossbunker regularly attracting harbor seals, their cousins the grey seals, dolphins and, most recently, whales. Both the northern and southern shores of Long Island have a reliable population of harbor seals as well as greys, where they will take sand lance as well as some species of crab as part of their diet.


title: Relativism

text: Anthropological relativism refers to a methodological stance, in which the researcher suspends (or brackets) his or her own cultural prejudice while trying to understand beliefs or behaviors in their contexts. This has become known as methodological relativism, and concerns itself specifically with avoiding ethnocentrism or the application of one's own cultural standards to the assessment of other cultures. This is also the basis of the so-called "emic" and "etic" distinction, in which:


title: Relativism

text: Philosophical relativism, in contrast, asserts that the truth of a proposition depends on the metaphysical, or theoretical frame, or the instrumental method, or the context in which the proposition is expressed, or on the person, groups, or culture who interpret the proposition.


title: Relativism

text: Methodological relativism and philosophical relativism can exist independently from one another, but most anthropologists base their methodological relativism on that of the philosophical variety.


title: Relativism

text: The concept of relativism also has importance both for philosophers and for anthropologists in another way. In general, anthropologists engage in descriptive relativism ("how things are" or "how things seem"), whereas philosophers engage in normative relativism ("how things ought to be"), although there is some overlap (for example, descriptive relativism can pertain to concepts, normative relativism to truth).