title: Mike Gravel

text: When Gravel joined the U.S. Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971, he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then later its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973, Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977, he was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents.


title: Mike Gravel

text: By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant or a nuisance by the more senior and tradition-oriented members. Gravel relied on attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. But even senators who agreed with him on issues considered his methods to be showboating.


title: Mike Gravel

text: As part of this approach, Gravel voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd but opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox said, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do."


title: Mike Gravel

text: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Two tests, the "Milrow" and "Cannikin" tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one-megaton calibration exercise for the second and larger five-megaton Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests. Before the Milrow test took place in October 1969, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety; he then made a personal appeal to President Richard Nixon to stop the test.


title: Mike Gravel

text: After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed that the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971, Gravel sent a letter to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign).


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 1971, Gravel voted against the Nixon administration's proposed anti-ballistic missile system, the Safeguard Program, having previously vacillated over the issue, suggesting that he might be willing to support it in exchange for federal lands in Alaska being opened up for private oil drilling. His vote alienated Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who had raised funds for Gravel's primary campaign.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Six months before U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's July 1971 secret mission to the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with the P.R.C., including a proposal for unity talks between the P.R.C. and the Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council. He reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Although he did not campaign against the Vietnam War during his first Senate campaign, by the end of 1970, Gravel was speaking out against United States policy in southeast Asia: in December of that year he persuaded William Fulbright to join him in a spontaneous two-day filibuster against a $155 million military aid package to Cambodia's Khmer Republic government in the Cambodian Civil War.


title: Mike Gravel

text: President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission.


title: Mike Gravel

text: The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end. During this period he also supported efforts to mobilize and influence public opinion against the war, endorsing the "Vietnam War Out Now" rallies in Washington D.C. and San Francisco on April 24, 1971, and financing a broadcast campaign by the antiwar group War No More with a personal loan. In June 1972, he escorted a group of over 100 antiwar protesters, including psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, actress Candice Bergen, theater producer and director Joseph Papp, and pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, into the United States Capitol Building; the group was arrested after blocking a hallway outside the Senate chamber.


title: Mike Gravel

text: By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign).


title: Mike Gravel

text: Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, "The New York Times" began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the "Times".


title: Mike Gravel

text: The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in the "Times"; "The Washington Post" and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, "Post" editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington, D.C.


title: Mike Gravel

text: On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John G. Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making."


title: Mike Gravel

text: He read until 1 a.m., culminating by saying "Arms are being severed. Metal is clashing through human bodies because of the public policy this government and all its branches continue to support." Then with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's "New York Times Co. v. United States" decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in the "Times" and others resumed. In July 1971, Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material the "Times" had published.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war". After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4, he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to an FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the "Gravel v. United States" court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; in a 5-to-4 decision it held that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee; did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but compelled the aide to testify before a grand jury about matters not directly related to the legislative process; and granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers. The U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus backed Gravel in the case, but due to Republican opposition it did not pay Gravel's legal fees, leaving him owing $25,000 (the equivalent of $150,000 in 2019, adjusted for inflation).


title: Mike Gravel

text: The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the following months from an obscure freshman senator to a nationally visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income". But his speaking tours caused him to accrue one of the worst absentee records in the Senate. The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought his endorsement. In January 1972, Gravel endorsed Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping that his support would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in ethnic French-Canadian areas during the first primary contest in New Hampshire (Muskie won, but not overwhelmingly, and his campaign faltered soon after). In April 1972, Gravel appeared on all three networks' nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe blocked his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 1970, Gravel co-sponsored legislation to establish a guaranteed minimum income, entitling poor families to up to $6,300 a year (the equivalent of $42,000 in 2019 after adjustment for inflation). He subsequently voted for a "work bonus" program, which would have entitled low-income working families with dependent children if they were paying Social Security or Railroad Retirement taxes to a non-taxable bonus of up to 10 percent of their wages. Gravel also supported extending Social Security to all federal employees and introduced a campaign finance reform bill in 1971 that would have enacted full disclosure of campaign financing, placed limits on large donations, media spending and individual candidate spending.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 1969, Gravel was the only Democratic Senator outside of the South to vote for Nixon's Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynsworth. The following year, Gravel opposed Nixon's next pick, G. Harrold Carswell.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Toward this end he began soliciting delegates for their support. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact already considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose.


title: Mike Gravel

text: On the convention's final day, July 14, 1972, McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska. He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel attracted some attention for his efforts: writer Norman Mailer said he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while "Rolling Stone" correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances". Yet the process was doubly disastrous for the Democrats. In the time consumed by nominating and seconding and all the vice-presidential candidates' speeches, the attention of the delegates on the floor was lost and McGovern's speech was pushed to 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton was selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Nonetheless, after receiving support from national and local labor leaders, securing key earmarks, and producing another half-hour TV advertorial, Gravel was reelected to the Senate in 1974, with 58 percent of the vote. His Republican opponent, State Senator C. R. Lewis, was a national officer of the John Birch Society, and earned 42 percent of the vote.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel's reelection campaign left him $65,000–$75,000 in debt. In 1975, "The Washington Post" reported on a memo by his executive assistant laying out a fundraising strategy to tackle this, including raising funds from oil companies, meeting with previous donors and "inquir[ing] into the governmental priorities of these people and their groups in the coming session", as well as obtaining further speaking fees to reduce his personal debt. This was followed by a number of stories about links between Gravel, lobbyists and fundraisers, including one that was widely publicized in Alaska about his holding a share in a Colorado resort with two Washington lobbyists he was working with on land and energy legislation. Gravel had been open about the investment and had opposing views to one of the lobbyists on nuclear power. In 1980, the "Wall Street Journal" published details about his fundraising activities, including writing to individuals and PACs in the oil industry, pledging to kill off proposals for a windfall profits tax on the sector, and traveling in the Middle East with the business partner of one of his donors to sell Alaskan land to businessmen. Gravel suggested that critics of his fundraising were "naive".


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 1975, Gravel introduced an amendment to cut the number of troops overseas by 200,000, but it was defeated on a voice vote.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In September 1975, Gravel was named as one of several Congressional Advisers to the Seventh Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met to discuss problems related to economic development and international economic cooperation.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In June 1976, Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who had already been involved in a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) said that in August 1972 she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later, Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel and his main financial backer, Gottstein, had a falling out in 1978, during the Congressional debate over whether to allow a controversial sale of U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. An ardent backer of Israel, Gottstein opposed the sale and asked Gravel to vote against it. But Gravel not only voted for it but made an emotional speech attacking the anti-sale campaign. Gravel wrote in 2008 that it was the only time Gottstein had ever asked him for a favor, and the rupture resulted in their never speaking to each other again.


title: Mike Gravel

text: By 1971, Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later, the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with "The New York Times" describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies". In February 1973, the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in what the "New York Times" termed a "nip-and-tuck roll-call", the Gravel amendment was approved, as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed in what became perhaps his most lasting accomplishment as a senator.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas". The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel accumulated a complicated record on Indian affairs during his time in the Senate. During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, criticizing the agency for the pace of development of schools in Alaska, its paternalistic attitudes and the culturally inappropriate nature of its education, and advocating greater shared decision-making between the federal government and native communities in Alaska. Later, his views changed; in the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. In 1971, he fended off accusations from Alaskan natives that he was not spending enough time working on their land claims. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently, Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings. A related idea of his to build a high-speed rail line to Denali also failed to gain traction.


title: Mike Gravel

text: A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. President Jimmy Carter desired to put large portions of this land under federal protection against development, a move that some Alaskans vociferously opposed.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House–Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the blocking action earned Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who had supported the compromise. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the 1980 bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Representing Alaskan interests, Gravel tried to stop the bill, including by filibuster. But the Senate voted for cloture and passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said, "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and opined that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas". Nonetheless, the bill, known as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, was signed by President Carter shortly before leaving the White House, and led to millions of acres being set aside in the state for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other kinds of areas under protection.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 1978 Gravel authored and secured the passage into federal law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This gave states the ability to create corporations that would invest in for-profit enterprises, with all citizens within the state owning shares in the corporation. Gravel's attempt to convince the Alaska state legislature to create such a corporation failed, as did a 1980 state ballot initiative towards the same end, but nevertheless the creation of the General Stock Ownership Corporation in federal law turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 1980, Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. One of Gruening's supporters was Gravel's former backer Gottstein. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968, Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state.


title: Mike Gravel

text: The primary campaign was bitterly fought. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue. This was especially so given that the 1980 bill's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which Gravel readily acknowledged came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Gruening had pledged that he would not take special interest group money, but Gravel said that Gruening was "dishonest" in accepting individual contributors from Jewish donors living outside the state because to him such contributors comprised "a special interest group ... that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the U.S."


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gruening decisively won the primary with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel later conceded that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska". Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gruening lost the general election to Republican banker Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Of his 1980 defeat, Gravel later recalled: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel was a womanizer, and had an affair while in the Senate, and he and his wife Rita separated in December 1980. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she later received all of his Senate pension income.


title: Mike Gravel

text: During the 1980s, Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. In 1986, Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax write-offs. Gravel also learned computer programming at some point but never practiced it.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 1984, Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, who had been an administrative assistant for U.S. Senator from New York Jacob Javits.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 1989, Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention and have a Second Constitutional Convention to bring about direct democracy Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers". However such efforts met with little success.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 2003, Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the "American Free Press". The event was cosponsored by "The Barnes Review", a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. After some controversy over his appearance, Gravel apologized, saying he did not realize the group's ties. Gravel said repeatedly that he did not share the group's views on the Holocaust, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. ["The" "Barnes Review" publishers] are nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Mike and Whitney Gravel lived in Arlington County, Virginia, until 2010, and then resided in Burlingame, California. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income sustained the couple from 1998 on. In the 2000s, Gravel had poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth".


title: Mike Gravel

text: At the start of 2006, Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. (Gravel called for public financing of elections.) Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, as well as withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days and a single payer national health care system.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel had opposed the Iraq War, and President George W. Bush's rationale for it, from the beginning, and in 2006 said that U.S. troops in Iraq, as in Vietnam, had "died in vain". He also favored a regional peace initiative, as well as reparation payments for Iraqis. Gravel also called for a "U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq", with reconstruction contracts held by U.S. companies to be turned over to Iraqi firms.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel campaigned almost full-time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis". Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me – they frighten me." In one such exchange, Gravel said, "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" to which Obama responded, "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise."


title: Mike Gravel

text: Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place during the Democratic debates. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; "The New York Times"<nowiki>'</nowiki> media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements". The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular "Colbert Report" on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as "Salon". Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock", in turn, was given airtime during an episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again.


title: Mike Gravel

text: All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Like some of the other second-tier candidates, Gravel did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds.


title: Mike Gravel

text: During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier". Berkeley political scientist David Terr found that moderator George Stephanopoulos directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. In early January, "Mother Jones'" investigative reporter James Ridgeway was filmed interviewing and following Gravel in New Hampshire, in which Gravel is interviewed on the phone by Neal Conan for NPR's, "Talk of the Nation". He received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast in New Hampshire, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries.


title: Mike Gravel

text: On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism.


title: Mike Gravel

text: As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his past support of big government initiatives and his unorthodox positions around direct democracy. Nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated, "I just ended my political career", but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In June 2008, Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He later said, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing."


title: Mike Gravel

text: In August 2008, Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset rather than a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor". Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain–Palin or Obama–Biden in the general election. The following year Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people". Palin did not run, but Gravel's prediction about "TrooperGate" was accurate as Palin was found not to have violated ethics laws.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 2013, by the invitation of Hamed Ghashghavi, the secretary for international affairs of the 3rd International Conference on Hollywoodism in Tehran, Iran, Gravel attended that event as an Iranian government-organized anti-Hollywood conference. Gravel noted that the conference was attended by "various elements of extremes" but said it was necessary to discuss how the U.S. film industry portrayed Iran in order to prevent "an insane war" between the two nations.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In May 2013, Gravel was one of several former members of Congress to accept $20,000 from the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy group for UFO disclosure, as part of holding what they termed a Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, modeled after congressional hearings, regarding supposed U.S. government suppression of evidence concerning UFOs. Gravel said, "Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet," and, "What we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific knowledge."


title: Mike Gravel

text: In December 2014, Gravel was announced as the new CEO of KUSH, a company which makes marijuana-infused products for medicinal and recreational use, and a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. He also became an Independent Director of Cannabis Sativa.


title: Mike Gravel

text: During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Gravel praised Bernie Sanders and his campaign, saying "Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He's a person of great integrity and very clever." Gravel predicted that Sanders would be elected president but would be unable to get his key reforms through Congress, and thus that Sanders and his supporters should back some of the proposals of the National Initiative.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 2016, Gravel said in relation to the September 11 attacks: "We killed 58,000 American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. What's so unusual about killing 3,000 more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the military industrial complex?" and "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job". The remarks were later disavowed by even Gravel supporters.


title: Mike Gravel

text: By 2019, Gravel was living in Seaside, California. He was working on a book, at the time titled "Human Governance", about his principal idea for direct democracy, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to create a "Legislature of the People" that would circumvent the existing Congress. The book was self-published at the end of the year by AuthorHouse under the title "The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People".


title: Mike Gravel

text: On March 19, 2019, Gravel announced that he was considering running in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He said, "The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage." An exploratory committee was formed, with filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on that same day. The filing was the idea of a group of teenagers, led by David Oks and Henry Williams, inspired by the podcast "Chapo Trap House", and done with Gravel's consent (after a week spent convincing him of the idea's merits), but without his involvement. Intrigued by the group's commitment to amplifying his long-held policy goals, Gravel (who would be old on Inauguration Day in 2021) said he planned to meet with them in April, and to discuss a 2020 White House run with his wife. On April 2, 2019, Gravel filed to officially run for office. The campaign called itself the "#Gravelanche".


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel's initial stated goal was merely to qualify for debates by getting the required 65,000 small donors. He discouraged people from voting for him and said his preferences were Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom favor a non-interventionist foreign policy. But on April 29, Gravel's campaign said he was running to win, not just to participate in debates. In a subsequent interview, though, Gravel emphasized the virtue of Sanders and Gabbard in some order as a presidential ticket. Statements like these caused Vox to call Gravel "2020's oddest Democratic presidential candidate". The "New York Times Magazine" included Gravel as an example in the rise of democratic socialism in the United States also exemplified by Sanders's 2016 race and the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "[Gravel's] campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party."


title: Mike Gravel

text: In June 2019, Gravel touted the endorsement of Muntadher al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who, in December 2008, made headlines after he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in protest of the U.S. war in Iraq. Al-Zaidi endorsed Gravel based on his promise to improve White House policies regarding Iraq and the Middle East.


title: Mike Gravel

text: On June 13, 2019, the Democratic Party announced the 20 major candidates who qualified for the first debate later that month. Gravel was one of the four who missed out (the others were Montana Governor Steve Bullock, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam). Gravel had been unable to get the requisite number of donations, or to score one percent or better in enough polls (many polls did not even include him). Nevertheless, Gravel said he would not drop out and would try to qualify for the July debate. In early July, however, Gravel's campaign said it was still 10,000 contributions short of the 65,000-donor threshold and that it was "nearing its conclusion". It solicited suggestions for where to donate $100,000 to $150,000 of leftover campaign funds. Gravel added that he had always planned on ending the campaign before the teenagers in charge of it needed to return to school. A few days later, the campaign became the first to run an attack ad against Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, using the text "Is this the best our party has to offer?"


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel's campaign crossed the threshold of 65,000 donors on July 12, 2019, meeting the qualification mark for that month's debate. But because 20 other candidates, the maximum allowed to participate, had already met at least the polling criterion, which takes priority over the donor criterion, Gravel was not invited.


title: Mike Gravel

text: The campaign officially came to a close on August 6, 2019, with Gravel endorsing both Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard for president. Gravel's campaign later stated on Twitter that they never wanted to win but saw the campaign as an "intimately democratic" project and expressed honor at working with Gravel. Gravel said he would divide remaining campaign funds between charity and a new think tank which would espouse his ideas.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel used some of the funds remaining from his 2020 presidential campaign to found an eponymous progressive think tank called The Gravel Institute in 2019. As noted by "Vice" magazine, the institute aimed to do battle with PragerU from a left-wing perspective. Launched in September 2020, the new entity said it would "carry on the life's work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel in fighting for global peace and democracy. Its mission is to promote bold and forward-looking ideas about a more peaceful and egalitarian world, and to build a robust movement of young people to win it". Contributors to the institute included Cornel West and Slavoj Žižek.


title: Mike Gravel

text: The obituary for him in "The New York Times" stated that Gravel was "a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska ... who was perhaps better known as an unabashed attention-getter" who later become known for "mounting long-shot presidential runs". The obituary in "The Washington Post" was similar, saying that Gravel was "an Alaska Democrat with a flair for the theatrical who rose from obscurity to brief renown" and later "ran quixotic campaigns for the presidency". The "Anchorage Daily News" quoted Gravel as saying of himself in 1989, "I'm an independent kind of guy. A rough and ready kind of guy. My glands work in a certain way that make me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight."


title: Mike Gravel

text: Alan Abramowitz and Jeffrey Allan Segal described Gravel as "a maverick, if not an eccentric, in the Senate." His Americans for Democratic Action "Liberal Quotient" scores ranged from 81 out of 100 (1971) to 39 out of 100 (1980), with an average of around 61. His American Conservative Union scores ranged from 0 out of 100 (several years, including 1971 and 1972) to 38 out of 100 (1979), with an average of 14. Abramowitz and Segal note that Gravel's lowest ADA ratings coincided with his two Senate re-election bids, and for the most part his highest ACU ratings followed the same pattern.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 1972, as a young senator, Gravel published "", a manifesto outlining what "Kirkus Reviews" termed a "populist reform [that] would provide 'balanced political power' between the people and government and business interests."


title: Mike Gravel

text: On drug policy, Gravel said in 2007 that he favored decriminalization and treating addiction as a public health matter. During his 2008 presidential candidacy, he condemned the War on Drugs as a failure, saying that it did "nothing but savage our inner cities and put our children at risk". Gravel called for abolition of capital punishment in his book "Citizen Power", and adhered to this position during his 2008 run for president. He supported abortion rights.


title: Mike Gravel

text: During the 2008 campaign, Gravel was a strong supporter of LGBT rights. He supported same-sex marriage and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He wrote in 2008 that "depriving gays and lesbians of equal rights is immoral".


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel firmly opposed U.S. military action against Iran and Syria. He voiced opposition to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the use of torture, indefinite detention, and what he called "flagrant ignorance" of the Geneva Convention. In 2014, Gravel called for the release of the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel opposed the use of international sanctions as a policy tool and blamed the ones against Iraq under Saddam Hussein for the deaths of a half-million children in that country. In 2013, Gravel said that sanctions against Iran were "illegal".


title: Mike Gravel

text: During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel called for a cut in military spending, variously reported to be 15 percent or 50 percent. He called for the savings to boost public education spending. To spur international nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Gravel called for unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 2008, Gravel criticized the decision of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pursue the efforts to impeach George W. Bush and the attempted impeachment of Dick Cheney, saying also that Bush and Cheney had committed crimes and deserved "to be prosecuted" at The Hague. In 2013, he expressed disdain for President Obama, calling him "a total fraud" and saying that both Bush and Obama should be tried "for the crimes and murders they've committed" in the International Court of Justice. Gravel specifically condemned Obama for drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.


title: Mike Gravel

text: During his 2008 candidacy, Gravel favored a FairTax scheme, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the federal income tax (which Gravel called "corrupt"), and impose a national sales tax. While Gravel described FairTax as "progressive", others have criticized it as "regressive", disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest Americans. To offset the new sales taxes on essential goods, Gravel's plan called for monthly government rebate payments to individuals and families. During his 2020 campaign Gravel also voiced support for a third legislative body that would give the people direct control of the budget as well as the implementation of a land value tax.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his 2008 candidacy, calling it unfair and economically harmful and needing renegotiation. Gravel believed that NAFTA was the "root cause" of illegal migration to the U.S. He favored a guest worker program and "setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring immigrants into legal status". In a 2007 interview, Gravel identified himself as "very much of a globalist" who believed in open markets and open borders and condemned the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants. Gravel also said that he favored eliminating the cap on H1B visas.


title: Mike Gravel

text: As a senator from Alaska, Gravel favored drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but opposed it during his 2008 campaign. In 2008, Gravel supported a carbon tax to combat climate change.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel called for the cost of college tuition to be borne by the federal government, rather than students. In his 2008 campaign, he called the No Child Left Behind Act "a failure" and called for it to be "reformed and fully funded". He expressed support for universal pre-kindergarten and the expansion of the Head Start program; and expressed an openness to charter schools and school vouchers. He also suggested extending the school day and the school year, and supported merit pay for teachers.


title: Mike Gravel

text: Gravel also called for publicly funded universal health care to replace the current employer-sponsored health insurance system. He supported "full funding" of the VA system. When asked in 2007 about naturopathy, homeopathy, and acupuncture, Gravel said that he was "very very much in favor" of holistic health care.


title: Mike Gravel

text: In 2008, Gravel received the Columbia University School of General Studies' first annual Isaac Asimov Lifetime Achievement Award.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Dynamic range compression (DRC) or simply compression is an audio signal processing operation that reduces the volume of loud sounds or amplifies quiet sounds, thus reducing or "compressing" an audio signal's dynamic range. Compression is commonly used in sound recording and reproduction, broadcasting, live sound reinforcement and in some instrument amplifiers.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: A dedicated electronic hardware unit or audio software that applies compression is called a compressor. In the 2000s, compressors became available as software plugins that run in digital audio workstation software. In recorded and live music, compression parameters may be adjusted to change the way they affect sounds. Compression and limiting are identical in process but different in degree and perceived effect. A limiter is a compressor with a high ratio and, generally, a short attack time.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: There are two types of compression, downward and upward. Both downward and upward compression "reduce" the dynamic range of an audio signal.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: "Downward" compression reduces the volume of loud sounds "above" a certain threshold. The quiet sounds "below" the threshold remain unaffected. This is the most common type of compressor. A limiter can be thought of as an extreme form of downward compression as it compresses the sounds over the threshold especially hard.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: "Upward" compression increases the volume of quiet sounds "below" a certain threshold. The louder sounds "above" the threshold remain unaffected.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Some compressors also have the ability to do the "opposite" of compression, namely "expansion". Expansion "increases" the dynamic range of the audio signal. Like compression, expansion comes in two types, downward and upward.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: "Downward" expansion make the quiet sounds below the threshold even quieter. A noise gate can be thought of as an extreme form of downward expansion as the noise gate make the quiet sounds (for instance: noise) quieter or even silent, depending on the floor setting.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: The signal entering a compressor is split; one copy is sent to a variable-gain amplifier and the other to a "side-chain" where the signal level is measured and a circuit controlled by the measured signal level applies the required gain to the amplifier. This design, known as a "feed-forward" type, is used today in most compressors. Earlier designs were based on a "feedback" layout where the signal level was measured after the amplifier.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: There are a number of technologies used for variable-gain amplification, each having different advantages and disadvantages. Vacuum tubes are used in a configuration called "variable-mu" where the grid-to-cathode voltage changes to alter the gain. Optical compressors use a photoresistor stimulated by a small lamp (incandescent, LED, or electroluminescent panel) to create changes in signal gain. Other technologies used include field effect transistors and a diode bridge.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: When working with digital audio, digital signal processing (DSP) techniques are commonly used to implement compression as audio plug-ins, in mixing consoles, and in digital audio workstations. Often the algorithms are used to emulate the above analog technologies.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: A number of user-adjustable control parameters and features are used to adjust dynamic range compression signal processing algorithms and components.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: A compressor reduces the level of an audio signal if its amplitude exceeds a certain "threshold". Threshold is commonly set in decibels (dBFS for digital compressors and dBu for hardware compressors), where a lower threshold (e.g.−60 dB) means a larger portion of the signal is treated. When the signal level is below the threshold, no processing is performed and the input signal is passed, unmodified, to the output. Thus a higher threshold of, e.g.,−5 dB, results in less processing, less compression.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Threshold timing behavior is subject to attack and release settings (see below). When the signal level goes above threshold, compressor operation is delayed by the "attack" setting. For an amount of time determined by the "release" after the input signal has fallen below the threshold, the compressor continues to apply dynamic range compression.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: The amount of gain reduction is determined by ratio: a ratio of 4:1 means that if input level is 4 dB over the threshold, the output signal level is reduced to 1 dB over the threshold. The gain and output level has been reduced by 3 dB. Another way of stating this is that any input signal level over the threshold will, in this case, be output at a level which is only 25% as much over the threshold as its input level was.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: The highest ratio of ∞:1 is often known as "limiting", and effectively denotes that any signal above the threshold is brought down to the threshold level once the "attack" time has expired.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: A compressor may provide a degree of control over how quickly it acts. The "attack" is the period when the compressor is decreasing gain in response to increased level at the input to reach the gain determined by the ratio. The "release" is the period when the compressor is increasing gain in response to reduced level at the input to reach the output gain determined by the ratio, or, to unity, once the input level has fallen below the threshold. Because the loudness pattern of the source material is modified by the time-varying operation of compressor, it may change the character of the signal in subtle to quite noticeable ways depending on the attack and release settings used.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: The length of each period is determined by the rate of change and the required change in gain. For more intuitive operation, a compressor's attack and release controls are labeled as a unit of time (often milliseconds). This is the amount of time it takes for the gain to change a set amount of dB or a set percentage towards the target gain. There is no industry standard for the exact meaning of these time parameters.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: In many compressors, the attack and release times are adjustable by the user. Some compressors, however, have the attack and release times determined by the circuit design and cannot be adjusted. Sometimes the attack and release times are "automatic" or "program dependent", meaning that the behavior may change depending on the input signal.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Another control a compressor might offer is hard knee or soft knee selection. This controls whether the bend in the response curve between below threshold and above threshold is abrupt (hard) or gradual (soft). A soft knee slowly increases the compression ratio as the level increases and eventually reaches the compression ratio set by the user. A soft knee reduces the potentially audible transition from uncompressed to compressed, and is especially applicable for higher ratio settings where the changeover at the threshold would be more noticeable.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: A peak-sensing compressor responds to the peak level of the input signal. While providing tighter peak level control, peak level sensing does not necessarily relate to human perception of loudness. Some compressors apply a power measurement function (commonly root mean square or RMS) on the input signal before comparing its level to the threshold. This produces a more relaxed compression that more closely relates to human perception of loudness.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: A compressor in "stereo linking" mode applies the same amount of gain reduction to both the left and right channels. This is done to prevent image shifting that can occur if each channel is compressed individually. This becomes particularly noticeable when a loud element that is panned close to either edge of the stereo field raises the level of the program to the compressor's threshold, causing its image to shift toward the center of the stereo field.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Stereo linking can be achieved in two ways: The compressor uses the sum of the left and right inputs to produce a single measurement that drives the compressor; or, the compressor calculates the required amount of gain reduction independently for each channel and then applies the highest amount of gain reduction to both (in such case it could still make sense to dial different settings on left and right channels as one might wish to have less compression for left-side events).


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Because a downward compressor only reduces the level of the signal, the ability to add a fixed amount of "make-up gain" at the output is usually provided so that an optimum output level is produced.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: The look-ahead function is designed to overcome the problem of being forced to compromise between slow attack rates that produce smooth-sounding gain changes, and fast attack rates capable of catching transients. Look-ahead is implemented by splitting the input signal and delaying one side (the audio signal) by the look-ahead time. The non-delayed side (the gain control signal) is used to drive the compression of the delayed signal, which then appears at the output. This way a smooth-sounding slower attack rate can be used to catch transients. The cost of this solution is added audio latency through the processor.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Compression is often applied in audio systems for restaurants, retail, and similar public environments that play background music at a relatively low volume and need it compressed, not just to keep the volume fairly constant, but also to make quiet parts of the music audible over ambient noise.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Compression can increase average output gain of a power amplifier by 50 to 100% with a reduced dynamic range. For paging and evacuation systems, this adds clarity under noisy circumstances and saves on the number of amplifiers required.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Compression is often used in music production to make instruments more consistent in dynamic range, so that they "sit" more nicely in the mix with the other instruments (neither disappear during short periods of time, nor overpower the other instruments during short periods). Vocal performances in rock music or pop music are compressed for the same reason.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Compression can also be used on instrument sounds to create effects not primarily focused on stabilizing the volume. For instance, drum and cymbal sounds tend to decay quickly, but a compressor can make the sound appear to have a more sustained tail. Guitar sounds are often compressed to produce a fuller, more sustained sound.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Most devices capable of compressing audio dynamics can also be used to reduce the volume of one audio source when another audio source reaches a certain level; this is called side-chaining. In electronic dance music, side-chaining is often used on basslines, controlled by the kick drum or a similar percussive trigger, to prevent the two from conflicting, and provide a pulsating, rhythmic dynamic to the sound.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: A compressor can be used to reduce sibilance ('ess' sounds) in vocals (de-essing) by feeding the compressor's side-chain an equalized version of the input signal, so that specific, sibilance-related frequencies (typically 4000 to 8000 hz) activate the compressor more.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Compression is used in voice communications in amateur radio that employ single-sideband (SSB) modulation to make a particular station's signal more readable to a distant station, or to make one's station's transmitted signal stand out against others. This is applicable especially in DXing. An SSB signal's strength depends on the level of modulation. A compressor increases the average level of the modulation signal thus increasing the transmitted signal strength. Most modern amateur radio SSB transceivers have speech compressors built-in. Compression is also used in land mobile radio, especially in transmitted audio of professional walkie-talkies and remote control dispatch consoles.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Compression is used extensively in broadcasting to boost the perceived volume of sound while reducing the dynamic range of source audio. To avoid overmodulation, broadcasters in most countries have legal limits on instantaneous peak volume they may broadcast. Normally these limits are met by permanently inserted compression hardware in the on-air chain.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Broadcasters use compressors in order that their station sounds louder than comparable stations. The effect is to make the more heavily compressed station jump out at the listener at a given volume setting. This is not limited to inter-channel differences; they also exist between programme material within the same channel. Loudness differences are a frequent source of audience complaints, especially TV commercials and promos that seem too loud.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has been addressing this issue in the EBU PLOUD group, which consists of over 240 audio professionals, many from broadcasters and equipment manufacturers. In 2010, the EBU published EBU R 128 which introduces a new way of metering and normalizing audio. The Recommendation uses ITU-R BS.1770 loudness metering. , several European TV stations have announced their support for the new norm and over 20 manufacturers have announced products supporting the new "EBU Mode" loudness meters.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: To help audio engineers understand what loudness range their material consists of (e.g. to check if some compression may be needed to fit it into the channel of a specific delivery platform), the EBU also introduced the "Loudness Range" (LRA) descriptor.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Most television commercials are heavily compressed to achieve near-maximum perceived loudness while staying within permissible limits. This causes a problem that TV viewers often notice: when a station switches from minimally compressed program material to a heavily compressed commercial, the volume sometimes seems to increase dramatically. Peak loudness might be the same—meeting the letter of the law—but high compression puts much more of the audio in the commercial at close to the maximum allowable, making the commercial seem much louder.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Record companies, mixing engineers and mastering engineers have been gradually increasing the overall loudness of commercial albums. This is achieved by using higher degrees of compression and limiting during mixing and mastering; compression algorithms have been engineered specifically to accomplish the task of maximizing audio level in the digital stream. Hard limiting or clipping can result, affecting the tone and timbre of the music. The effort to increase loudness has been referred to as the loudness war.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Noise reduction systems use a compressor to reduce the dynamic range of a signal for transmission or recording, expanding it afterward, a process called companding. This reduces the effects of a channel or recording medium with limited dynamic range.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Instrument amplifiers often include compression circuitry to prevent sudden high-wattage peaks that could damage the speakers. Electric bass players often use compression effects, either effects units available in pedal, rackmount units, or built-in devices in bass amps, to even out the sound levels of their basslines.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Gain pumping, where a regular amplitude peak (such as a kick drum) causes the rest of the mix to change in volume due to the compressor, is generally avoided in music production. However, many dance and hip-hop musicians purposefully use this phenomenon, causing the mix to alter in volume rhythmically in time with the beat.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Hearing aids use a compressor to bring the audio volume into the listener's hearing range. To help the patient perceive the direction sound comes from, some hearing aids use binaural compression.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Compressors are also used for hearing protection in some electronic active hearing protection earmuffs and earplugs, to let sounds at ordinary volumes be heard normally while attenuating louder sounds, possibly also amplifying softer sounds. This allows, for example, shooters wearing hearing protection at a shooting range to converse normally, while sharply attenuating the much louder sounds of the gunshots, and similarly for musicians to hear quiet music but be protected from loud noises such as drums or cymbal crashes.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: In applications of machine learning where an algorithm is training on audio samples, dynamic range compression is a way to augment samples for a larger data set.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Compression and limiting are identical in process but different in degree and perceived effect. A limiter is a compressor with a high ratio and, generally, a fast attack time. Compression with ratio of 10:1 or more is generally considered limiting.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: "Brick wall limiting" has a very high ratio and a very fast attack time. Ideally, this ensures that an audio signal never exceeds the amplitude of the threshold. Ratios of 20:1 all the way up to ∞:1 are considered "brick wall". The sonic results of more than momentary and infrequent brick-wall limiting are harsh and unpleasant, thus it is more common as a safety device in live sound and broadcast applications.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Some bass amps and PA system amplifiers include limiters to prevent sudden volume peaks from causing distortion or damaging the speakers.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: A compressor with a side-chain input controls gain from main input to output based on the level of the signal at the side-chain input. An early innovator of side-chain compression in an effects unit was the Eventide Omnipressor from 1974. With side-chaining, the compressor behaves in the conventional manner when both main and side-chain inputs are supplied with the same signal. The side-chain input is used by disc jockeys for ducking – lowering the music volume automatically when speaking. The DJ's microphone signal is routed to the side-chain input so that whenever the DJ speaks the compressor reduces the volume of the music. A sidechain with equalization controls can be used to reduce the volume of signals that have a strong spectral content within a certain frequency range: it can act as a de-esser, reducing the level of vocal sibilance in the range of 6–9 kHz. Another use of the side-chain in music production serves to maintain a loud bass track without the bass drum causing undue peaks that result in loss of overall headroom.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Inserting the compressor in a parallel signal path is known as parallel compression. It is a form of upward compression that facilitates dynamic control without significant audible side effects so long as the ratio is relatively low and the compressor's sound is relatively neutral. On the other hand, a high compression ratio with significant audible artifacts can be chosen in one of the two parallel signal paths. This is used by some concert mixers and recording engineers as an artistic effect called "New York compression" or "Motown compression". Combining a linear signal with a compressor and then reducing the output gain of the compression chain results in low-level detail enhancement without any peak reduction; The compressor significantly adds to the combined gain at low levels only.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Multiband compressors can act differently on different frequency bands. The advantage of multiband compression over full-bandwidth compression is that problems related to a specific frequency range can be fixed without unnecessary compression in the other, unrelated frequencies. The downside is that frequency-specific compression is more complex and requires more processing capacity than full-bandwidth compression and can introduce phase issues.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Multiband compressors work by first splitting the signal through some number of band-pass filters, crossover filters or filter banks. Each split signal then passes through its own compressor and is independently adjustable for threshold, ratio, attack, and release. The signals are then recombined and an additional limiting circuit may be employed to ensure that the combined signals do not create unwanted peak levels.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: In music production, multiband compressors are primarily an audio mastering tool, but their inclusion in digital audio workstation plug-in sets is increasing their use among mix engineers.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: On-air signal chains of radio stations commonly use multiband compressors to increase loudness while avoiding overmodulation. Having a louder sound is often considered an advantage in commercial broadcasting.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Serial compression is a technique used in sound recording and mixing. Serial compression is achieved by using two fairly different compressors in a signal chain. One compressor generally stabilizes the dynamic range while the other aggressively compresses stronger peaks. This is the normal internal signal routing in common combination devices marketed as "compressor-limiters", where an RMS compressor (for general gain control) is followed by a fast peak-sensing limiter (for overload protection). Done properly, even heavy serial compression can sound natural in a way not possible with a single compressor. It is most often used to even out erratic vocals and guitars.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Some software audio players support plugins that implement compression. These can increase loudness of audio tracks, or level out the volume of highly-variable music (such as classical music, or a playlist that spans multiple music types). This improves the listenability of audio played through poor-quality speakers, or when played in noisy environments (such as in a car or during a party).


title: Dynamic range compression

text: In an article published in January 2014 by the "Journal of the Audio Engineering Society", Emmanuel Deruty and Damien Tardieu performed a systematic study describing the influence of compressors and brickwall limiters on the musical audio signal. The experiment involved four software limiters: Waves L2, Sonnox Oxford Limiter, Thomas Mundt’s Loudmax, Blue Cat’s Protector, as well as four software compressors: Waves H-Comp, Sonnox Oxford Dynamics, Sonalksis SV-3157, and URS 1970. The study provides objective data on what limiters and compressors do to the audio signal.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: Five signal descriptors were considered: RMS power, EBU R 128 integrated loudness, crest factor, R 128 LRA, and density of clipped samples. RMS power accounts for the signal's physical level, R 128 loudness for the perceived level. The crest factor, which is the difference between the signal's peak and its average power, is on occasions considered as a basis for the measure of micro-dynamics, for instance in the "TT Dynamic Range Meter" plug-in. Finally, R 128 LRA has been repeatedly considered as a measure of macro-dynamics or dynamics in the musical sense.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: In other words, limiters increase both physical and perceptual levels, increase the density of clipped samples, decrease the crest factor and decrease macro-dynamics (LRA) given that the amount of limiting is substantial.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: As far as the compressors are concerned, the authors performed two processing sessions, using a fast attack (0.5 ms) in one case, and a slow attack (50 ms) in the other. Make-up gain is deactivated, but the resulting file is normalized.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: In other words, fast-attack compressors increase both physical and perceptual levels, but only slightly. They decrease the density of clipped samples, and decrease both crest factor and macro-dynamics.


title: Dynamic range compression

text: In other words, slow-attack compressors decrease both physical and perceptual levels, decrease macro-dynamics, but have no influence on crest factor and clipped sample density.


title: Duck Hunt

text: In "Duck Hunt", players use the NES Zapper in combination with a CRT television to shoot ducks that appear on the screen. The ducks appear one or two at a time, and the player is given three shots to shoot them down. The player receives points upon shooting each duck. If the player shoots the required number of ducks in a single round, the player will advance to the next round; otherwise, the player will receive a game over.


title: Duck Hunt

text: The game initially received a positive reception in the mid-1980s, but was later given mild critical praise in retrospective reviews. Prior to the NES version, Nintendo also made a "Duck Hunt" game based on the Laser Clay Shooting System released in 1976. Upon release as a video game, "Duck Hunt" became a major commercial success both for arcades and consoles in the 1980s, helping to popularize light gun video games and selling over 28 million copies worldwide.


title: Duck Hunt

text: Beginning with the nationwide roll-out of the NES in 1986, "Duck Hunt" was one of several titles Nintendo included as a pack-in game with some of its releases. The initial Deluxe Set included "Duck Hunt" and "Gyromite". The later Action Set was packaged with "Duck Hunt" and "Super Mario Bros.", which was the pack-in for an upgraded Basic Set; unlike with those releases, Nintendo opted to place both games on one cartridge as opposed to having separate individual cartridges. The last NES release to include "Duck Hunt" as a pack-in was the Power Set, which came with the Power Pad; for that particular release, the multicart added "World Class Track Meet" as a third selectable game with "Duck Hunt" and "Super Mario Bros." The game was released as a Virtual Console title for the Wii U in 2014.


title: Duck Hunt

text: "Duck Hunt" is a shooter game in which the objective is to shoot moving targets on the screen in mid-flight. The game is played from a first-person perspective and requires the NES Zapper light gun, which the player aims and fires at the screen. It also requires a CRT television screen since the Zapper gun will not work with LCD or HDTV's. Each round consists of a total of ten targets to shoot. Depending on the game mode the player selects prior to beginning play, one or two targets will appear on the screen at any given time, and the player has three attempts to hit them before they disappear.


title: Duck Hunt

text: The player is required to successfully shoot a minimum number of targets in order to advance to the next round. Therefore, failure will result directly in a game over. The difficulty increases as the player advances to higher rounds; targets will move faster, and the minimum number of targets to shoot will increase. The player receives points upon shooting a target and will also receive bonus points for shooting all ten targets in a single round. "Duck Hunt" keeps track of the players' highest score for all games played in a single session; it is lost, however, upon shutting the game off.


title: Duck Hunt

text: "Duck Hunt" has three different game modes to choose from. In "Game A" and "Game B", the targets are flying ducks in a woodland area, and in "Game C" the targets are clay pigeons that are launched away from the player's perspective into the distance. In "Game A", only one duck will appear on the screen at a time while in "Game B" two ducks will appear at a time. "Game A" allows a second player to control the movement of the flying ducks by using a normal NES controller. The gameplay starts at Round 1 and may continue up to Round 99. If the player completes Round 99, they will advance to Round 0, which is a kill screen (in "Game A") where the game behaves erratically, such as targets that move haphazardly or do not appear at all and eventually ends.


title: Duck Hunt

text: "Duck Hunt" was released as an arcade game in the "Nintendo VS." series as "Vs. Duck Hunt" in April 1984, and was later included in the PlayChoice-10 arcade console. The console supports two light guns, allowing two players at once.


title: Duck Hunt

text: Gameplay consists of alternating rounds of Games B and C, with 12 ducks/targets per round instead of 10 and sometimes requires the player to shoot three ducks/targets at a time instead of two. In addition, the player is given a limited number of lives; every duck/target that is not hit costs one life. When all lives are gone, the game ends.


title: Duck Hunt

text: After every second round, a bonus stage is played in which ducks can be shot for points as they fly out of the grass. However, the hunting dog occasionally jumps out, putting himself in the line of fire and creating a distraction. If the player shoots the dog, the bonus stage immediately ends.


title: Duck Hunt

text: "Duck Hunt" is based on a 1976 electronic toy version titled "Beam Gun: Duck Hunt", part of the "Beam Gun" series. The toy version was designed by Gunpei Yokoi and Masayuki Uemura for Nintendo. Nintendo Research & Development 1 developed both "Duck Hunt" for the NES and the NES Zapper. The game was supervised by Takehiro Izushi, and was produced by Gunpei Yokoi. The music was composed by Hirokazu Tanaka, who did music for several other Nintendo games at the time. The game's music was represented in the classic games medley on the Video Games Live concert tour. Designer Hiroji Kiyotake created the graphics and characters.


title: Duck Hunt

text: "Duck Hunt" has been placed in several combination ROM cartridges. In the Action Set configuration of the NES in the late 1980s, "Duck Hunt" was included with "Super Mario Bros." This particular cartridge is found very often in the United States, due to it being included with the purchase of a NES. A Power Set was also available, which included the Action Set, the Power Pad and a 3-in-1 cartridge that included "Duck Hunt", "World Class Track Meet", and "Super Mario Bros."


title: Duck Hunt

text: "Duck Hunt" was re-released as a downloaded Virtual Console title for the Wii U console in Japan on December 24, 2014, and internationally on December 25. This version is modified to require a Wii Remote controller in place of the NES Zapper to aim and shoot targets on the screen.


title: Duck Hunt

text: In North America, the Nintendo Vs. System version of "Duck Hunt" became popular in arcades and popularized light gun video games along with Nintendo's "Hogan's Alley" by 1985. "Vs. Duck Hunt" was the third top-grossing arcade software on the "RePlay" arcade charts in November 1985, below "Vs. Hogan's Alley" at number one. It came bundled with the Nintendo Entertainment System console 1985, and went on to sell copies worldwide.


title: Duck Hunt

text: Upon release in arcades, Eddie Adlum of "RePlay" magazine praised both "Duck Hunt" and "Hogan's Alley", calling them the "cream on the cake" among the Nintendo VS. System titles and noting they successfully captured the experience of older electro-mechanical gun games in video game format. He said "Duck Hunt" and "Hogan's Alley" "sported simulated handguns on a wire capble and pop, pop, pop, you do your thing just like in the old days only at video targets."


title: Duck Hunt

text: AllGame called the game an "attractive but repetitive target shooter" and "utterly mindless… the game is fun for a short time, but gets old after a few rounds of play". Several user groups have rated the game positively. 1UP.com users gave it an 8.7 out of 10, and the GameSpot community gave the Mario-Duck Hunt package a 9.1 out of 10. It was rated the 150th best game made on a Nintendo System in Nintendo Power's Top 200 Games list. IGN also placed the game at number 77 on its "Top 100 NES Games of All Time" feature. The game was ranked 24th in GamesRadar’s "The best NES games of all time" Jeremy Parish of "USgamer" stated that "Duck Hunt" paired with the NES Zapper "made the NES memorable" and was one of the key factors behind the success of the NES. Parish related "Duck Hunt" to the Wii Remote of the Wii in that they made their respective consoles more approachable and reach a wider demographic.


title: Duck Hunt

text: "Duck Hunt" features a nameless non-playable hunting dog, known simply as "Dog" according to his collectable trophy in "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U", and often referred to by the media as the "Duck Hunt Dog" or the "Laughing Dog". The dog accompanies the player in the "Game A" and "Game B" modes, in which he serves to both flush (spook) the ducks and retrieve any fallen ones. The dog is notorious for laughing at the player whenever the player fails to shoot any of the ducks on screen. The dog's perceived "smugness" has seen the character appear on several "best of" or "top" lists.


title: Duck Hunt

text: The dog makes a cameo appearance in the NES game "Barker Bill's Trick Shooting" (another Zapper game) and he can be shot. In "Wii Play" (2006) and its sequel "" (2011) some elements from "Duck Hunt" and "Hogan's Alley" are included in the mini-games "Shooting Range" and "Trigger Twist" in which some of the various targets are ducks and cans. In the 2014 fighting games "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" and "Wii U", the dog and one of the ducks appear collectively as playable characters under the name "Duck Hunt", or "Duck Hunt Duo" in PAL releases. Masahiro Sakurai, the creator and director of the "Super Smash Bros." series, stated that "Duck Hunt"s commercial success as "the most-sold shooting game in the world" was one of the primary reasons for the team's inclusion. In the games, the "Duck Hunt" team utilizes multiple attacks related to the NES Zapper, including throwing clay pigeons; kicking an explosive version of the can from "Hogan's Alley"; being able to summon the cast of "Wild Gunman" to fire at opponents with their guns; or comically dodging shots fired at opponents from the Zapper. The games also feature an unlockable "Duck Hunt"-themed stage. Both the "Duck Hunt" team and stage reappear in "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate", and the team is featured in the June 2019 trailer announcing Banjo and Kazooie as downloadable content for "Ultimate".


title: Duck Hunt

text: In the 2015 film "Pixels", the dog has a cameo appearance, where it is given as a "trophy" by the aliens when Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler) and Ludlow Lamonsoff (Josh Gad) defeat the creatures of the video game "Centipede" in London. The dog is adopted by an old woman who was present during the attack.


title: Duck Hunt

text: The premise for the psychological horror VR game "Duck Season" by Stress Level Zero is based in part on "Duck Hunt".


title: Dashiki

text: The dashiki is a colorful garment that covers the top half of the body, worn mostly in West Africa. It is also known as a Kitenge in East Africa and is a common item of clothing in Tanzania and Kenya. It has formal and informal versions and varies from simple draped clothing to fully tailored suits. A common form is a loose-fitting pullover garment, with an ornate V-shaped collar, and tailored and embroidered neck and sleeve lines. It is frequently worn with a brimless kufi cap (which is worn in Islamic communities in Africa and the African diaspora) and pants. It has been popularized and claimed by communities in the African diaspora, especially African Americans.


title: Dashiki

text: The now trademark dashiki design was born from the "Angelina print," a wax print pattern by Dutch designer Toon van de Mannaker for Netherlands-based Vlisco, whose designs are "inspired by Africa". The exact inspiration for the Angelina print pattern was traditional silk embroidered tunics worn by Ethiopian women. The Angelina print's popularity coincided with the release of Ghanaian high-life hit song "Angelina", a name the West African market would begin to call the wax print pattern. In Congo it would be called "Ya Mamado!" and later "Miriam Makeba", the former being song lyrics of a hit song by a local band that helped popularise the pattern and the latter being a legendary South African musician who often wore wax prints.


title: Dashiki

text: The word "dashiki" comes from , a Yoruba loanword from the Hausa , literally meaning 'shirt' or 'inner garment' (as compared to the outer garment, "babban riga").


title: Dashiki

text: The informal version of the dashiki is a traditional print or embroidered dashiki. Three formal versions exist. The first type consists of a dashiki, "sokoto" (drawstring trousers), and a matching kufi. This style is called a "dashiki suit" or "dashiki trouser set" and it is the attire worn by most grooms during wedding ceremonies. The second version consists of an ankle-length shirt, matching kufi, and sokoto and is called a Senegalese kaftan. The third type consists of a dashiki and matching trousers. A flowing gown is worn over these. This type is called a grand boubou or an agbada.


title: Dashiki

text: There are several different styles of dashiki suits available from clothing stores. The type of shirt included in the set determines the name. The "traditional" dashiki suit includes a thigh-length shirt. The short sleeve, traditional style is preferred by purists. A "long" dashiki suit includes a shirt that is knee-length or longer. However, if the shirt reaches the ankles, it is a Senegalese kaftan. Finally, the "lace" dashiki suit includes a shirt made of lace. A hybrid of the dashiki and caftan worn by females is a traditional male dashiki with a western skirt.


title: Dashiki

text: Grey is the traditional color for some West African weddings. Some grooms wear white dashiki suits during wedding ceremonies. Some couples wear non-traditional colors. The most common non-traditional colors are purple and blue.