title: Pindar

text: Pindar doesn't necessarily mean himself when he uses the first person singular. Many of his 'I' statements are generic, indicating somebody engaged in the role of a singer i.e. a 'bardic' I. Other 'I' statements articulate values typical of the audience, and some are spoken on behalf of the subjects celebrated in the poems. The 'I' that received the prophecy in "Pythian 8" therefore might have been the athlete from Aegina, not Pindar. In that case the prophecy must have been about his performance at the Pythian Games, and the property stored at the shrine was just a votive offering.


title: Pindar

text: Nothing is recorded about Pindar's wife and son except their names, Megacleia and Daiphantus. About ten days before he died, the goddess Persephone appeared to him and complained that she was the only divinity to whom he had never composed a hymn. She said he would come to her soon and compose one then.


title: Pindar

text: Pindar lived to about eighty years of age. He died around 438 BC while attending a festival at Argos. His ashes were taken back home to Thebes by his musically-gifted daughters, Eumetis and Protomache.


title: Pindar

text: One of Pindar's female relatives claimed that he dictated some verses to her in honour of Persephone after he had been dead for several days. Some of Pindar's verses were inscribed in letters of gold on a temple wall in Lindos, Rhodes. At Delphi, where he had been elected a priest of Apollo, the priests exhibited an iron chair on which he used to sit during the festival of the Theoxenia. Every night, while closing the temple doors, they intoned: "Let Pindar the poet go unto the supper of the gods!"


title: Pindar

text: Pindar's house in Thebes became one of the city's landmarks. When Alexander the Great demolished Thebes in 335 BC, as punishment for its resistance to Macedonian expansionism, he ordered the house be left intact out of gratitude for verses praising his ancestor, Alexander I of Macedon.


title: Pindar

text: Pindar's values and beliefs have been inferred from his poetry. No other ancient Greek poet has left so many comments about the nature of his art. He justified and exalted choral poetry at a time when society was turning away from it. It "... had for two centuries reflected and shaped the sentiments, the outlook, and the convictions of the Greek aristocracies ... and Pindar spoke up for it with passionate assurance". His poetry is a meeting ground for gods, heroes and meneven the dead are spoken of as participants: "Deep in the earth their heart listens".


title: Pindar

text: His view of the gods is traditional but more self-consistent than Homer's and more reverent. He never depicts gods in a demeaning role. He seems indifferent to the intellectual reforms that were shaping the theology of the times. Thus an eclipse is not a mere physical effect, as contemplated by early thinkers such as Thales, Anaximander and Heraclitus, nor was it even a subject for bold wonder, as it was for an earlier poet, Archilochus; instead Pindar treated an eclipse as a portent of evil.


title: Pindar

text: Gods are the embodiment of power, uncompromisingly proud of their nature and violent in defense of their privileges. There is some rationalization of religious belief, but it is within a tradition at least as old as Hesiod, where abstractions are personified, such as "Truth the daughter of Zeus". Sometimes the wording suggests a belief in 'God' rather than 'a god' (e.g. "What is God? Everything"), but the implications are not given full expression and the poems are not examples of monotheism. Nor do they vocalize a belief in Fate as the background to the gods, unlike the plays of Aeschylus for example. Pindar subjects both fortune and fate to divine will (e.g. "child of Zeus ... Fortune").


title: Pindar

text: He selects and revises traditional myths so as not to diminish the dignity and majesty of the gods. Such revisionism was not unique. Xenophanes had castigated Homer and Hesiod for the misdeeds they ascribed to gods, such as theft, adultery and deception, and Pythagoras had envisioned those two poets being punished in Hades for blasphemy. A subtle example of Pindar's approach can be found in his treatment of the myth of Apollo's rape of the nymph Cyrene. As the god of the Delphic oracle, Apollo is all-knowing, yet in keeping with his anthropomorphic nature he seeks information about the nymph from a third party, in this case the centaur Chiron. Chiron however affirms the god's omniscience with an elegant compliment, as if Apollo had only pretended to be ignorant: "You, Sire, who know the appointed end of all, and all paths..." Apollo's abduction of the nymph is not presented as a shameful act. Pindar's gods are above such ethical issues and it is not for men to judge them by ordinary human standards. Indeed, the finest breeds of men resulted from divine passions: "For Pindar a mortal woman who is loved by a god is an outstanding lesson in divine favours handsomely bestowed".


title: Pindar

text: Being descendants of divine unions with privileged mortals, mythical heroes are an intermediate group between gods and men, and they are sympathetic to human ambitions. Thus, for example, Pindar not only invokes Zeus for help on behalf of the island of Aegina but also its national heroes Aeacus, Peleus and Telamon. Unlike the gods, however, heroes can be judged according to ordinary human standards and they are sometimes shown in the poems to demean themselves. Even in that case, they receive special consideration. Thus Pindar refers obliquely to the murder of Phocus by his brothers Peleus and Telamon ("I am shy of speaking of a huge risk, hazarded not in right"), telling the audience that he will not talk of it ("silence is a man's wisest counsel"). The Theban hero Heracles was a favourite subject but in one poem he is depicted as small in order to be compared with a small Theban patron who had won the pankration at the Isthmian Games: a unique example of Pindar's readiness to shape traditional myths to fit the occasion, even if not always flattering to the mythical hero. A hero's status is not diminished by an occasional blemish but rests on a summary view of his heroic exploits.


title: Pindar

text: Some of his patrons claimed divine descent, such as Diagoras of Rhodes, but Pindar makes all men akin to gods if they realize their full potential: their innate gifts are divinely bestowed, and even then success still depends on the gods' active favour. In honouring such men, therefore, Pindar was honouring the gods too. His statements about life after death were not self-consistent but that was typical for the times. Traditional ambivalence, as expressed by Homer, had been complicated by a growth of religious sects, such as the Eleusinian mysteries and Pythagoreanism, representing various schemes of rewards and punishments in the next life. However, for the poet, glory and lasting fame were men's greatest assurance of a life well-lived. He presents no theory of history apart from the view that Fortune is variable even for the best men, an outlook suited to moderation in success, courage in adversity. Notions of 'good' and 'bad' in human nature were not analysed by him in any depth nor did he arrive at anything like the compassionate ethics of his near contemporary, Simonides of Ceos. His poems are indifferent to the ordinary mass of people. They are dismissed with phrases such as "the brute multitude" ("Pythian Ode" 2.87). Nor are the poems concerned with the fate of rich and powerful men once they lose their wealth and social status (compared for example with the bitter and disillusioned poems of Theognis of Megara). They are more interested in what successful men do with their good fortune: success brings obligations, and religious and artistic activities need patrons.


title: Pindar

text: Whereas the Muses inspired Homer with relevant information and with the language to express it, Pindar seems to receive only their inspiration: his role is to shape that inspiration with his own wisdom and skill. Like his patrons, whom he immortalizes in verse, he owes his success to hard work as well as to innate gifts; though he hires himself out, he has a vocation. The Muses are to him as an oracle is to a prophet, and lesser poets are to him as ravens are to an eagle; the art of such men is as hackneyed as garland-making; his is magical:


title: Pindar

text: Pindar's strongly individual genius is apparent in all his extant compositions but, unlike Simonides and Stesichorus for example, he created no new lyrical genres. He was however innovative in his use of the genres he inheritedfor example, in one of his victory odes ("Olympian" 3), he announces his invention of a new type of musical accompaniment, combining lyre, flute and human voice (though our knowledge of Greek music is too sketchy to allow us to understand the full nature of this innovation). Although he probably spoke Boeotian Greek he composed in a literary language that tended to rely more on the Doric dialect than his rival Bacchylides, but less insistently than Alcman. There is an admixture of other dialects, especially Aeolic and epic forms, and an occasional use of some Boeotian words. He composed 'choral' songs yet it is by no means certain that they were all sung by choirsthe use of choirs is testified only by the generally unreliable scholiasts. Scholars at the Library of Alexandria collected his compositions in seventeen books organized according to genre:


title: Pindar

text: Of this vast and varied corpus, only the "epinikia"odes written to commemorate athletic victoriessurvive in complete form; the rest survive only by quotations in other ancient authors or from papyrus scraps unearthed in Egypt. Even in fragmentary form however they reveal the same complexity of thought and language that are found in the victory odes. Dionysius of Halicarnassus singled out Pindar's work as an outstanding example of austere style () but he noted its absence in the maiden songs or "parthenia". One surviving fragment of a maiden song does seem to be different in tone, due however to the fact that it is spoken in the character of a girl:


title: Pindar

text: Enough of his dithyrambic poetry survives for comparison with that of Bacchylides, who used it for narrative. Pindar's dithyrambs are an exuberant display of religious feeling, capturing the wild spirit of Dionysus and pointing forward to the ecstatic songs of Euripides' "Bacchae". In one of these, dedicated to the Athenians and written to be sung in Spring, he depicts the divine energy of the revitalized world.


title: Pindar

text: Almost all Pindar's victory odes are celebrations of triumphs gained by competitors in Panhellenic festivals such as the Olympian Games. The establishment of these athletic and musical festivals was among the greatest achievements of the Greek aristocracies. Even in the 5th century BC, when there was an increased tendency towards professionalism, they were predominantly aristocratic assemblies, reflecting the expense and leisure needed to attend such events either as a competitor or spectator. Attendance was an opportunity for display and self-promotion, and the prestige of victory, requiring commitment in time and/or wealth, went far beyond anything that accrues to athletic victories today, even in spite of the modern preoccupation with sport. Pindar's odes capture something of the prestige and the aristocratic grandeur of the moment of victory, as in this stanza from one of his Isthmian Odes, here translated by Geoffrey S. Conway:


title: Pindar

text: His victory odes are grouped into four books named after the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean GamesPanhellenic festivals held respectively at Olympia, Delphi, Corinth and Nemea. This reflects the fact that most of the odes were composed in honour of boys, youths, and men who had recently enjoyed victories in athletic (and sometimes musical) contests at those festivals. In a few odes however much older victories, and even victories in lesser games, are celebrated, often as a pretext for addressing other issues or achievements. For example, "Pythian 3", composed in honour of Hieron of Syracuse, briefly mentions a victory he had once enjoyed at the Pythian Games, but it is actually intended to console him for his chronic illness (similarly, "Pythian" 2 is like a private letter in its intimacy). "Nemean 9" and "Nemean 10" celebrate victories in games at Sicyon and Argos, and "Nemean 11" celebrates a victory in a municipal election on Tenedos (though it also mentions some obscure athletic victories). These three odes are the final odes in the "Nemean" book of odes, and there is a reason for their inclusion. In the original manuscripts, the four books of odes were arranged in the order of importance assigned to the festivals, with the Nemean festival, considered least important, coming last. Victory odes that lacked a Panhellenic subject were then bundled together at the end of the book of "Nemean" odes.


title: Pindar

text: Pindar's poetic style is very distinctive, even when the peculiarities of the genre are set aside. The odes typically feature a grand and arresting opening, often with an architectural metaphor or a resounding invocation to a place or goddess. He makes rich use of decorative language and florid compound adjectives. Sentences are compressed to the point of obscurity, unusual words and periphrases give the language an esoteric quality, and transitions in meaning often seem erratic, the images seem to burst outit is a style that sometimes baffles but also makes his poetry vivid and unforgettable.


title: Pindar

text: Some of these qualities can be found, for example, in this stanza from "Pythian 2", composed in honour of Hieron:


title: Pindar

text: The stanza begins with a celebration of divine power, and then abruptly shifts to a darker, more allusive train of thought, featuring condemnation of a renowned poet, Archilochus, "Grown fat on the harsh words of hate". Archilochus was an iambic poet, working within a genre that licensed abusive and scurrilous versea regrettable tendency from the viewpoint of Pindar, whose own persona is intensely earnest, preaching to Hieron the need for moderation (wealth with wisdom) and submission to the divine will. The reference to the embittered poet appears to be Pindar's meditative response to some intrigues at Hieron's court, possibly by his rivals, condemned elsewhere as "a pair of ravens" ("Olympian 2"). The intensity of the stanza suggests that it is the culmination and climax of the poem. In fact, the stanza occupies the middle of "Pythian 2" and the intensity is sustained throughout the poem from beginning to end. It is the sustained intensity of his poetry that Quintilian refers to above as a "rolling flood of eloquence" and Horace below refers to as the "uncontrollable momentum" of a river that has burst its banks. Longinus likens him to "a vast fire" and Athenaeus refers to him as "the great-voiced Pindar".


title: Pindar

text: Pindar's treatment of myth is another unique aspect of his style, often involving variations on the traditional stories, since his original audience was familiar with the myths and this allowed him to concentrate on unique and surprising effects. Reversing the chronological order was one such effect, as in "Olympian VII" dedicated to Diagoras of Rhodes, but this could also resemble a circular pattern, beginning with a culminating event, followed by scenes leading up to it, and ending with its restatement, as in his account of the Dioscuri in "Nemean 10". Myths enabled him to develop the themes and lessons that pre-occupy himin particular mankind's exulted relation with the gods via heroic ancestors and, in contrast, the limitations and uncertainties of human existencebut sometimes the traditional stories were an embarrassment and were carefully edited, as for example:


title: Pindar

text: "Be still my tongue: here profits not / to tell the whole truth with clear face unveiled," ("Nemean 5", epode 1); "Away, away this story! / Let no such tale fall from my lips! / For to insult the gods is a fool's wisdom," ("Olympian 9", strophe 2); "Senseless, I hold it, for a man to say / the gods eat mortal flesh. / I spurn the thought," ("Olympian 1", epode 2). His mythical accounts are edited for dramatic and graphic effects, usually unfolding through a few grand gestures against a background of large, often symbolic elements such as sea, sky, darkness, fire or mountain.


title: Pindar

text: Pindar's odes typically begin with an invocation to a god or the Muses, followed by praise of the victor and often of his family, ancestors and home-town. Then follows a narrated myth, usually occupying the central and longest section of the poem, which exemplify a moral, while aligning the poet and his audience with the world of gods and heroes. The ode usually ends in more eulogies, for example of trainers (if the victor is a boy), and of relatives who have won past events, as well as with prayers or expressions of hope for future success. The event where the victory was gained is never described in detail, but there is often some mention of the hard work needed to bring the victory about.


title: Pindar

text: A lot of modern criticism tries to find hidden structure or some unifying principle within the odes. 19th century criticism favoured 'gnomic unity' i.e. that each ode is bound together by the kind of moralizing or philosophic vision typical of archaic Gnomic poetry. Later critics sought unity in the way certain words or images are repeated and developed within a particular ode. For others, the odes are just celebrations of men and their communities, in which the elements such as myths, piety, and ethics are stock themes that the poet introduces without much real thought. Some conclude that the requirement for unity is too modern to have informed Pindar's ancient approach to a traditional craft.


title: Pindar

text: The great majority of the odes are triadic in structurei.e., stanzas are grouped together in three's as a lyrical unit. Each triad comprises two stanzas identical in length and meter (called 'strophe' and 'antistrophe') and a third stanza (called an 'epode'), differing in length and meter but rounding off the lyrical movement in some way. The shortest odes comprise a single triad, the largest ("Pythian 4") comprises thirteen triads. Seven of the odes however are monostrophic (i.e., each stanza in the ode is identical in length and meter). The monostrophic odes seem to have been composed for victory marches or processions, whereas the triadic odes appear suited to choral dances. Pindar's metrical rhythms are nothing like the simple, repetitive rhythms familiar to readers of English versetypically the rhythm of any given line recurs infrequently (for example, only once every ten, fifteen or twenty lines). This adds to the aura of complexity that surrounds Pindar's work. In terms of meter, the odes fall roughly into two categoriesabout half are in dactylo-epitrites (a meter found for example in the works of Stesichorus, Simonides and Bacchylides) and the other half are in Aeolic metres based on iambs and choriambs.


title: Pindar

text: Modern editors (e.g., Snell and Maehler in their Teubner edition), have assigned dates, securely or tentatively, to Pindar's victory odes, based on ancient sources and other grounds. The date of an athletic victory is not always the date of composition but often serves merely as a "terminus post quem". Many dates are based on comments by ancient sources who had access to published lists of victors, such as the Olympic list compiled by Hippias of Elis, and lists of Pythian victors made by Aristotle and Callisthenes. There were however no such lists for the Isthmian and Nemean GamesPausanias (6.13.8) complained that the Corinthians and Argives never kept proper records. The resulting uncertainty is reflected in the chronology below, with question marks clustered around Nemean and Isthmian entries, and yet it still represents a fairly clear general timeline of Pindar's career as an epinician poet. The code M denotes monostrophic odes (odes in which all stanzas are metrically identical) and the rest are triadic (i.e. featuring strophes, antistrophes, epodes):


title: Pindar

text: Pindar's verses have come down to us in a variety of ways. Some are only preserved as fragments via quotes by ancient sources and papyri unearthed by archeologists, as at Oxyrhynchusin fact the extant works of most of the other canonic lyric poets have survived only in this tattered form. Pindar's extant verses are unique in that the bulk of themthe victory odeshave been preserved in a manuscript tradition, i.e., generations of scribes copying from earlier copies, possibly originating in a single archetypal copy and sometimes graphically demonstrated by modern scholars in the form of a stemma codicum, resembling a 'family tree'. Pindar's victory odes are preserved in just two manuscripts, but incomplete collections are located in many others, and all date from the mediaeval period. Some scholars have traced a stemma through these manuscripts, for example Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, who inferred from them the existence of a common source or archetype dated no earlier than the 2nd century AD, while others, such as C.M. Bowra, have argued that there are too many discrepancies between manuscripts to identify a specific lineage, even while accepting the existence of an archetype. Otto Schroeder identified two families of manuscripts but, following on the work of Polish-born classicist, Alexander Turyn, Bowra rejected this also. Different scholars interpret the extant manuscripts differently. Bowra for example singled out seven manuscripts as his primary sources (see below), all featuring errors and/or gaps due to loss of folios and careless copying, and one arguably characterized by the dubious interpolations of Byzantine scholars. These he cross-referenced and then supplemented or verified by reference to other, still more doubtful manuscripts, and some papyrus fragmentsa combination of sources on which he based his own edition of the odes and fragments. His general method of selection he defined as follows:


title: Pindar

text: The Latin poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, was an admirer of Pindar's style. He described it in one of his Sapphic poems, addressed to a friend, Iullus Antonius:


title: Pindar

text: C. M. Bowra, the leading Pindaric scholar of his generation and the editor of the 1935 OUP edition of his poems, summarized Pindar's qualities in the following words:


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: The M111 engine family is a straight-4 automobile engine from Mercedes-Benz, produced from 1992 to 2003. Debuted in the 1992 Mercedes-Benz E-Class (W124), this engine family is relatively oversquare and uses 4 valves per cylinder. All engines in the family use a cast iron engine block and aluminum alloy cylinder head.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: The M111.920 is a 16 valve engine with bore and stroke of 85.3 mm × 78.7 mm. It produces of power at 5500 rpm and at 4200 rpm. Starting with 1996 it has a variant called the M111.921 which has a MAF (Mass Air Flow)-sensor instead of MAP-sensor on the first one, and using ECU instead of PMS.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: The M111.940 is a 16-valve engine with bore and stroke of and compression ratio of 9.6:1. It produces of power and of torque.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: Unlike the 102, 103, and early 104 series engines, the engine did not use mechanical fuel injection but the Siemens PEC/PMS (Pressure Engine Control) management system, which integrates fuel and spark management.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: It is a speed-density type of system, as mixture formation is dependent on RPM, TPS angle, and manifold pressure (MAP).


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: It uses 2 ignition coils and no ignition distributor. Cylinders are fired in pairs (dual fire) - 1 and 4 together, and 2 and 3 together. The crankshaft position sensor is sensing the movement of two radially opposed position plates on the flywheel, one of which is magnetized, and the other is not. Thus, the engine management has precise information which group of cylinders to fire, and which group of injectors to spray.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: This motor never had PMS. Early models -95 to -97 has a HFM-motronic, hot-film type air/fuel metering device, and -97 to -2002 with ME2.1 motronic. The later system also has a magnet on the intake camshaft, and gives signal to ECU, to assist the motor in producing more torque at low revs. The early motor didn't have any camshaft position sensor, so wiring was much different.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: The only problem experienced with this M111 excellent reliability motor is the originally installed Victor Reinz headgasket, which eventually tore apart by age, and made the top lose coolant on the side. Other than that, only some year models, had bad insulation on the engine wiring, that needed all the wiring to be replaced.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: The M111.944 is a 16-valve engine utilizing a supercharger similar to the 2.3L M111.973 engine. It produces of power and of torque. This engine was built especially for SLK 170 and CLK 208 exported to Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal and Greece for tax reasons. The 'executive cars' tax limit was based in engine's capacity bigger than 2000 cc, so Mercedes in order to hit these markets made a mixture of the M111.940 with the supercharger of M111.973 for high performance at low engine capacity.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: EVO engine (M 111 E 20 EVO). Naturally aspirated, compression ratio is 10.6:1. The power is at 5300 rpm, torque - at 4000 rpm. Improvement includes reinforced cylinder block, new cylinder head, individual coil-on-plug ignition with new iridium-tipped spark plugs for 100,000km/60,000 mile replacement intervals, connecting rods and pistons for higher compression ratio, fuel injection now Siemens SIM4, EuroIV emissions compliant, dual oxygen sensors.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: A M111.952 variant of this engine was fitted to the final model year S202 where it replaced the older 1.8l 122hp version for MY 2001. 2295 built from 06.2000 until 1.2001.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: This is a 2.0L Kompressor engine utilizing a supercharger and produces of power. It has 4 cylinders with 16 valves.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: This is a 2.0L Kompressor engine utilizing a supercharger similar to the 2.3L M111.974 engine, but with a lower power output of and torque of @ 2500 rpm.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: The M111.960 is a 16-valve engine with bore and stroke of and compression ratio of 10:1. It produces of power and of torque.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: The M111.970 is a 16-valve engine with bore and stroke of and compression ratio of 10.4:1. It produces or 90 kW (122 PS; 120 hp) of power and or 180 N·m (132 lb·ft) of torque.


title: Mercedes-Benz M111 engine

text: Similar to the 2.3L M111.970 engine, except the usage of a supercharger (kompressor), boosting its power output to .


title: Bullwhip effect

text: The bullwhip effect is a supply chain phenomenon where orders to suppliers tend to have a larger variability than sales to buyers, which results in an amplified demand variability upstream. In part, this results in increasing swings in inventory in response to shifts in consumer demand as one moves further up the supply chain. The concept first appeared in Jay Forrester's "Industrial Dynamics" (1961) and thus it is also known as the Forrester effect. It has been described as “the observed propensity for material orders to be more variable than demand signals and for this variability to increase the further upstream a company is in a supply chain”.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: Science at Stanford University helped incorporate the concept into supply chain vernacular using a story about Volvo. Suffering a glut in green cars, sales and marketing developed a program to sell the excess inventory. While successful in generating the desired market pull, manufacturing did not know about the promotional plans. Instead, they read the increase in sales as an indication of growing demand for green cars and ramped up production.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: Research indicates a fluctuation in point-of-sale demand of five percent will be interpreted by supply chain participants as a change in demand of up to forty percent. Much like cracking a whip, a small flick of the wrist - a shift in point of sale demand - can cause a large motion at the end of the whip - manufacturers' responses.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: Because customer demand is rarely perfectly stable, businesses must forecast demand to properly position inventory and other resources. Forecasts are based on statistics, and they are rarely perfectly accurate. Because forecast errors are given, companies often carry an inventory buffer called "safety stock".


title: Bullwhip effect

text: Moving up the supply chain from end-consumer to raw materials supplier, each supply chain participant has greater observed variation in demand and thus greater need for safety stock. In periods of rising demand, down-stream participants increase orders. In periods of falling demand, orders fall or stop, thereby not reducing inventory. The effect is that variations are amplified as one moves upstream in the supply chain (further from the customer). This sequence of events is well simulated by the beer distribution game which was developed by MIT Sloan School of Management in the 1960s.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: The first theories focusing onto the bullwhip effect were mainly focusing on the irrational behavior of the human in the supply chain, highlighting them as the main cause of the bullwhip effect. Since the 90’s, the studies evolved, placing the supply chain’s misfunctioning at the heart of their studies abandoning the human factors.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: Previous control-theoretic models have identified as causes the tradeoff between stationary and dynamic performance as well as the use of independent controllers. In accordance with Dellaert et al. (2017), one of the main behavioral causes that contribute to the bullwhip effect is the under-estimation of the pipeline. In addition, the complementary bias, over-estimation of the pipeline, also has a negative effect under such conditions. Nevertheless, it has been shown that when the demand stream is stationary, the system is relatively robust to this bias. In such situations, it has been found that biased policies (both under-estimating and over-estimating the pipeline) perform just as well as unbiased policies.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: Human factors influencing the behavior in supply chains are largely unexplored. However, studies suggest that people with increased need for safety and security seem to perform worse than risk-takers in a simulated supply chain environment. People with high self-efficacy experience less trouble handling the bullwhip-effect in the supply chain.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: A seminal Lee et. al (1997) study found that the bullwhip effect did not solely result from irrational decision making: it found that under some circumstances it is rational for a firm to order with greater variability than variability of demand, i.e., distort demand and cause the bullwhip effect. They established a list of four major factors which cause the bullwhip effect: demand signal processing, rationing game, order batching, and price variations. This list has become a standard and is used as a framework to identify bullwhip effect.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: In addition to greater safety stocks, the described effect can lead to either inefficient production or excessive inventory, as each producer needs to fulfill the demand of its customers in the supply chain. This also leads to a low utilization of the distribution channel.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: In spite of having safety stocks there is still the hazard of stock-outs which result in poor customer service and lost sales. In addition to the (financially) hard measurable consequences of poor customer services and the damage to public image and loyalty, an organization has to cope with the ramifications of failed fulfillment which may include contractual penalties. Moreover, repeated hiring and dismissal of employees to manage the demand variability induces further costs due to training and possible lay-offs.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: The impact of the bullwhip effect has been especially acute at the beginning stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, when sudden spikes in demand for everything from medical supplies such as masks or ventilators to consumer items such as toilet paper or eggs created feedback loops of panic buying, hoarding, and rationing.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: Information sharing across the supply chain is an effective strategy to mitigate the bullwhip effect. For example, it has been successfully implemented in Wal-Mart's distribution system. Individual Wal-Mart stores transmit point-of-sale (POS) data from the cash register back to corporate headquarters several times a day. This demand information is used to queue shipments from the Wal-Mart distribution center to the store and from the supplier to the Wal-Mart distribution center. The result is near-perfect visibility of customer demand and inventory movement throughout the supply chain. Better information leads to better inventory positioning and lower costs throughout the supply chain.


title: Bullwhip effect

text: Another recommended strategy to limit the bullwhip effect is order smoothing. Previous research has demonstrated that order smoothing and the bullwhip effect are concurrent in industry. It has been proved that order smoothing is beneficial for the system's performance when the demand is stationary. However, its impact is limited to the worst-case order amplification when the demand is unpredictable. Having said that, dynamic analysis reveals that order smoothing can degrade performance in the presence of demand shocks. The opposite bias (i.e., over-reaction to mismatches), on the other hand, degrades the stationary performance but can increase dynamic performance; controlled over-reaction can aid the system reach its new goals quickly. The system, nevertheless, is considerably sensitive to that behaviour; extreme over-reaction significantly reduces performance. Overall, unbiased policies offer in general good results under a large range of demand types. Although these policies do not result in the best performance under certain criteria. It is always possible to find a biased policy that outperforms an unbiased policy for any one performance metric.


title: Pula Arena

text: The Pula Arena (; ) is a Roman amphitheatre located in Pula, Croatia. It is the only remaining Roman amphitheatre to have four side towers entirely preserved. It was constructed between 27 BC and AD 68, and is among the world's six largest surviving Roman arenas. The arena is also the country's best-preserved ancient monument.


title: Pula Arena

text: The amphitheatre is depicted on the reverse of the Croatian 10 kuna banknote, issued in 1993, 1995, 2001 and 2004.


title: Pula Arena

text: The Arena was built between 27 BC and 68 AD, as the city of Pula became a regional centre of Roman rule, called "Pietas Julia". The building is named after the sand (Latin "harena") that once covered the inner, performance area. It was built outside the town walls along the "Via Flavia", the road from Pula to Aquileia and Rome.


title: Pula Arena

text: The amphitheatre was first built in timber during the reign of Augustus (2–14 AD). It was replaced by a small stone amphitheatre during the reign of emperor Claudius. In 79 AD it was enlarged to accommodate gladiator fights by Vespasian and to be completed in 81 AD under emperor Titus. This was confirmed by the discovery of a Vespasian coin in the malting.


title: Pula Arena

text: St. Germanus, of whom little is known, was allegedly tortured in the Amphitheatre in or around 290, and subsequently martyred outside the city, on the road to Nesactium. The legend is apocryphal. The amphitheatre remained in use until the 5th century, when emperor Honorius prohibited gladiatorial combats. It was not until 681 that combat between convicts, particularly those sentenced to death, and wild animals was forbidden. In the 5th century the amphitheatre began to see its stone plundered by the local populace. By the 13th century, the patriarch of Aquileia forbade further removal from the Arena.


title: Pula Arena

text: The exterior wall is constructed in limestone. The part facing the sea consists of three stories, while the other part has only two stories since the amphitheatre was built on a slope. The maximum height of the exterior wall is . The first two floors have each 72 arches, while the top floor consists of 64 rectangular openings.


title: Pula Arena

text: The axes of the elliptical amphitheatre are long, and the walls stand high. It could accommodate 23,000 spectators in the cavea, which had forty steps divided into two "meniani". The seats rest directly on the sloping ground; The field for the games, the proper "arena", measured . The field was separated from the public by iron gates.


title: Pula Arena

text: The arena had a total of 15 gates. A series of underground passageways were built underneath the arena along the main axis from which animals, ludi scenes and fighters could be released; stores and shops were located under the raked seating. The amphitheatre was part of the circuit of the gladiators.


title: Pula Arena

text: Each of the four towers had two cisterns filled with perfumed water that fed a fountain or could be sprinkled on the spectators. The amphitheatre could be covered with "velaria" (large sails), protecting the spectators from sun or rain (as attested by rare construction elements). Below the arena was a system of canals which collected rainwater and effluent and drained into the sea.


title: Pula Arena

text: This amphitheatre, through its conservation, has served as an example for the study of ancient building techniques.


title: Pula Arena

text: In the Middle Ages the interior of the Arena was used for grazing, occasional tournaments by the Knights of Malta and medieval fairs. In 1583 the Venetian Senate proposed dismantling the arena and rebuilding it within Venice. The proposals were rejected. Today, a headstone celebrating the Venetian senator Gabriele Emo's opposition to the plan is currently visible on the second tower.


title: Pula Arena

text: In 1789, stone was taken from Pula arena for the belfry foundations at Pula Cathedral. This was the last time the arena was used as a source of stone.


title: Pula Arena

text: General Auguste de Marmont, as governor of the Illyrian Provinces during the First French Empire, started the restoration of the arena. This was continued in 1816 by the Ticinese architect Pietro Nobile, commissioned by the emperor Francis I of Austria.


title: Pula Arena

text: In 1932, the arena was adapted for theatre productions, military ceremonies and public meetings. In its present state, seating capacity is around 7,000 and 12,500 for all standing events.


title: Pula Arena

text: The arena is used as a venue for many concerts. Performances have included ones by Foo Fighters, Luciano Pavarotti, Đorđe Balašević, Plácido Domingo, Andrea Bocelli, Patrizio Buanne, Jose Carreras, Dino Merlin, Jamiroquai, Anastacia, Eros Ramazzotti, Maksim Mrvica, Norah Jones, Zucchero, Zdravko Čolić, Alanis Morissette, Sinéad O'Connor, Elton John, 2Cellos, Sting, Michael Bolton, Seal, Il Divo, Tom Jones, Gibonni, Manu Chao, Oliver Dragojević, Leonard Cohen, Grace Jones, Moderat, David Gilmour, Arctic Monkeys and Frank Zivkovic. It has a capacity of about 5000 spectators, and also hosts operas, ballets, sports competitions as well as the Pula Film Festival. The arena is open to the public daily, and the underground passages house exhibitions of viticulture and olive growing in Istria.


title: Pula Arena

text: The arena has also been used for cinematic works such as "Titus", a 1999 film adaptation of Shakespeare's revenge tragedy "Titus Andronicus" by Julie Taymor. On July 8, 2019; a football match was played between the former players of FC Bayern Munich and Croatia national football team as part of a tourism partnership deal between FC Bayern Munich and the Istria Tourist Board signed in 2018. Two professional ice hockey games were played there on September 14 and 16, 2012; KHL Medveščak, a Zagreb-based Erste Bank Eishockey Liga club, hosted HDD Olimpija Ljubljana and the Vienna Capitals.


title: Make It or Break It

text: Make It or Break It ( "MIOBI)" is an American teen/family drama television series that focused on the lives of teen gymnasts who strived to make it to the Olympic Games in 2012. The series was inspired by Touchstone's 2006 teen comedy-drama film "Stick It". It premiered on ABC Family on June 22, 2009, with 2.5 million viewers.The series ended after Season 3. The show was picked up for an additional 10 episodes on July 27, 2009, which started airing on January 4, 2010, bringing the total number of episodes in the first season to 20. In January 2010, the show was renewed for a second season, which premiered on June 28, 2010 at 10 pm. Starting on July 13, 2010, new episodes aired following "Pretty Little Liars". The show's second season resumed after a six-month hiatus on March 28, 2011. The series was renewed for a third season on September 16, 2011, which premiered on March 26, 2012. It was announced on April 26, 2012, that the series had ended and the third season would be the final season. The series finale aired on May 14, 2012.


title: Make It or Break It

text: Internationally, the show aired on E4 in the United Kingdom, Zee Café in India, Fox8 in Australia, ABC Spark in Canada, RTM2 in Malaysia, and on TV2 in New Zealand.


title: Make It or Break It

text: "Make It or Break It" was created by Holly Sorensen who, along with Paul Stupin and John Ziffren, served as the show's executive producers. The stunt doubles were former elite, Olympian or NCAA champion gymnasts.


title: Make It or Break It

text: Payson Keeler (Ayla Kell), Kaylie Cruz (Josie Loren), Lauren Tanner (Cassie Scerbo), and newcomer Emily Kmetko (Chelsea Hobbs) are elite-level gymnasts training for the 2012 Summer Olympics at a gym called "The Rock." The girls' futures are thrown into turmoil when their head coach, Marty Walsh (Erik Palladino), is blackmailed out of his job and is forced to move to a rival gym. It is revealed later that Kaylie's mother (Rosa Blasi) and Marty were having an affair and he left to keep the secret from being exposed. All four girls harbor secrets they must conceal for the sake of their athletic careers. Eventually, they put aside their differences in time to leave for nationals. Payson is favorite to win, but after a fall on the uneven bars, she fractures her spine and is told she can never do gymnastics again. The other three receive spots on the National Team, but clash with the head of the National Gymnastics Committee, Ellen Beals (Michelle Clunie), who prizes obedience to her authority and feels threatened by The Rock girls' independence. To get The Rock girls recognized as being international standard, The Rock holds a private meet between them and the Chinese National Team. Working together, the girls get five medals, more than the U.S. National Team got in Beijing.


title: Make It or Break It

text: In the second season, the girls are joined at The Rock by superstar male gymnast Austin Tucker (Zane Holtz). Payson, who has undergone surgery, attempts to revitalize her gymnastic career and becomes romantically involved with her coach Sasha Belov. The Kmetko family struggles financially with the loss of Emily's scholarship. The girls compete at trials for the World Championships and all four make the Worlds team. Emily is forced to wear an ankle monitor due to her probation after being caught stealing. The other girls train for the World Gymnastics Competition, a task made harder by the presence of their arch enemy, Kelly Parker, at The Rock. In the season two finale, the four girls lead the team to the World Competition in Rio de Janeiro, where they win team gold.


title: Make It or Break It

text: Season Three opens with Payson, Lauren, and Kaylie heading to the American Olympic Training Center as they prepare for the 2012 London Olympics. They deal with a new coach and teammates, including up-and-coming gymnast Jordan Randall, whose presence causes tension within the group. Coach Mac pairs up the girls, forcing Kaylie to live and work with Kelly Parker and Lauren to work with Payson. Kelly is not good enough for the Olympics and leaves gymnastics. Austin does not make the Olympic Team and blames Kaylie. Jordan reveals that a former coach molested her when she was young. Desperate to ensure her spot on the team, Wendy drugs Kaylie with a cold medicine containing a banned substance. After Austin and Kaylie reunite, then Lauren, Payson, and Jordan tell the NGO that they are boycotting Olympic tryouts unless Kaylie is allowed to perform. Lauren discovers the secret Wendy has been hiding and exposes her, getting Wendy kicked out. The season three finale culminates with the five girls, Payson, Lauren, Kaylie, Jordan, and Colleen, being chosen to represent the U.S. in the Olympics.


title: Make It or Break It

text: The following is a table with the average estimated number of viewers per episode, each season of "Make It or Break It" on ABC Family.


title: Make It or Break It

text: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the first ten episodes in a set entitled "Make It or Break It – Volume 1: Extended Edition". Bonus material includes deleted scenes, the never-before-seen extended finale, and the featurette, "Making It", which shows how the stars manage the acting with the difficult stunts they do.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The economy of Africa consists of the trade, industry, agriculture, and human resources of the continent. , approximately 1.3 billion people were living in 54 countries in Africa. Africa is a resource-rich continent. Recent growth has been due to growth in sales in commodities, services, and manufacturing. West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa and Southern Africa in particular, are expected to reach a combined GDP of $29 trillion by 2050.


title: Economy of Africa

text: In March 2013, Africa was identified as the world's poorest inhabited continent; however, the World Bank expects that most African countries will reach "middle income" status (defined as at least US$1,025 per person a year) by 2025 if current growth rates continue.


title: Economy of Africa

text: There are a number of reasons for Africa's poor economy: historically, even though Africa had a number of empires trading with many parts of the world, most people lived in tribal rural societies; in addition, European colonization and the later Cold War created political, economic and social instability.


title: Economy of Africa

text: However, Africa was the world's fastest-growing continent at 5.6% a year, and GDP is expected to rise by an average of over 6% a year between 2013 and 2023. In 2017, the African Development Bank reported Africa to be the world's second-fastest growing economy, and estimates that average growth will rebound to 3.4% in 2017, while growth is expected to increase by 4.3% in 2018. Growth has been present throughout the continent, with over one-third of African countries posting 6% or higher growth rates, and another 40% growing between 4% to 6% per year. Several international business observers have also named Africa as the future economic growth engine of the world.


title: Economy of Africa

text: For millennia, Africa's economy has been diverse, driven by extensive trade routes that developed between cities and kingdoms. Some trade routes were overland, some involved navigating rivers, still others developed around port cities. Large African empires became wealthy due to their trade networks, for example Ancient Egypt, Nubia, Mali, Ashanti, the Oyo Empire and Ancient Carthage


title: Economy of Africa

text: Some parts of Africa had close trade relationships with Arab kingdoms, and by the time of the Ottoman Empire, Africans had begun converting to Islam in large numbers. This development, along with the economic potential in finding a trade route to the Indian Ocean, brought the Portuguese to sub-Saharan Africa as an imperial force. Colonial interests created new industries to feed European appetites for goods such as palm oil, rubber, cotton, precious metals, spices, cash crops other goods, and integrated especially the coastal areas with the Atlantic economy.


title: Economy of Africa

text: A significant factor on economic development was the gain of human capital by the elite. Between the 14th and 20th century there can be observed that in regions with more elite violence and hence higher chances to die at a younger age the elite did not invest much in education. Therefore their numeracy (as a measure of human capital) tend to be lower than in less safe countries and vice versa. This can explain the difference in economic development between the African regions.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Following the independence of African countries during the 20th century, economic, political and social upheaval consumed much of the continent. An economic rebound among some countries has been evident in recent years, however.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The dawn of the African economic boom (which is in place since the 2000s) has been compared to the Chinese economic boom that had emerged in Asia since late 1970s. In 2013, Africa was home to seven of the world's fastest-growing economies.


title: Economy of Africa

text: As of 2018, Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa by nominal GDP, followed by South Africa; in terms of PPP, Egypt is second biggest after Nigeria. Equatorial Guinea has Africa's highest GDP per capita. Oil-rich countries such as Algeria, Libya and Gabon, and mineral-rich Botswana have emerged among the top economies since the 21st century, while Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo are potentially among the world's richest nations by natural resources, but have sunk into the list of the world's poorest nations due to pervasive political corruption, warfare, end emigration. Botswana stands out for its sustained strong and stable growth since independence.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The United Nations predicts Africa's economic growth will reach 3.5% in 2018 and 3.7% in 2019. As of 2007, growth in Africa had surpassed that of East Asia. Data suggest parts of the continent are now experiencing fast growth, thanks to their resources and increasing political stability and 'has steadily increased levels of peacefulness since 2007'. The World Bank reports the economy of Sub-Saharan African countries grew at rates that match or surpass global rates. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the improvement in the region's aggregate growth is largely attributable to a recovery in Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa, three of Africa's largest economies.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Sub-Saharan Africa was severely harmed when government revenue declined from 22% of GDP in 2011 to 17% in 2021. 15 African nations hold significant debt risk, and 7 are currently in financial crisis according to the IMF. The region went on to receive IMF Special Drawing Rights of $23 billion in 2021 to assist critical public spending.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The economies of the fastest growing African nations experienced growth significantly above the global average rates. The top nations in 2007 include Mauritania with growth at 19.8%, Angola at 17.6%, Sudan at 9.6%, Mozambique at 7.9% and Malawi at 7.8%. Other fast growers include Rwanda, Mozambique, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia. Nonetheless, growth has been dismal, negative or sluggish in many parts of Africa including Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo and Burundi. Many international agencies are increasingly interested in investing in emerging African economies, especially as Africa continues to maintain high economic growth despite current global economic recession.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Debt relief is being addressed by some international institutions in the interests of supporting economic development in Africa. In 1996, the UN sponsored the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, subsequently taken up by the IMF, World Bank and the African Development Fund (AfDF) in the form of the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). As of 2013, the initiative has given partial debt relief to 30 African countries.


title: Economy of Africa

text: In early 2021, the European Investment Bank, with the help of the Making Finance Work for Africa Partnership (MFW4A), surveyed 78 banks in Sub-Saharan Africa for the EIB Banking in Africa study. The banks that took part control nearly 30% of the continent's assets. Almost two-thirds of Banks surveyed tightened lending rules, but more than 80% expanded their use of restructuring or loan moratoriums. Few banks were required to modify their employee levels, while slightly under one-third adjusted their prices. Approximately half of the answering banks had employee guarantees, the majority of which came from the central bank, the government, or an international financial institution.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Fiscal stimulus packages in African countries through to mid-2020 amounted to roughly 1–2% of GDP, with monetary stimulus amounting to about 2% of GDP. This is close to the IMF's global average for low-income developing nations, which is around 2% of 2020 GDP over a one-year period from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, developing markets adopted a package worth around 4% of GDP, whereas advanced countries executed a package worth approximately 16% of GDP. As African nations struggled to address the health and economic repercussions of the pandemic, the average fiscal deficit throughout Africa increased from 5% of GDP in 2019 to over 8% in 2020. Due to a lack of fiscal headroom, the deficit resulted in increasing borrowing, which African countries have less capacity to absorb than other developed economies.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Northern and Southern African countries have taken the most total measures to address the financial sector crisis resulting from the pandemic, with an average of 14 measures per country. 34 African nations have adopted steps to increase liquidity and lower borrowing costs, mostly through lowering the policy rate. South Africa, for example, has decreased policy rates by 200 basis points or more. The most used measure has been to modify the handling of nonperforming loans by lowering provisioning requirements. To help banks get through the COVID-19 crisis, authorities have limited dividends or other uses of earnings, permitted the temporary release of capital buffers, eased capital or liquidity requirements, or made other temporary adjustments to prudential standards. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, African private investment was steady in 2020, rising to $4.3 billion from $3.9 billion in 2019 as pipeline and current transactions were closed. For resource-intensive nations, real per capita GDP is anticipated to stay below pre-pandemic levels until at least 2024, with growth of barely 1% per year in 2022 and 2023. Before the pandemic, 2% or more of growth had been anticipated.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Trade has driven much of the growth in Africa's economy in the early 21st century. China and India are increasingly important trade partners; 12.5% of Africa's exports are to China, and 4% are to India, which accounts for 5% of China's imports and 8% of India's. The Group of Five (Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates) are another increasingly important market for Africa's exports.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Africa's economy—with expanding trade, English language skills (official in many Sub-Saharan countries), improving literacy and education, availability of splendid resources and cheaper labour force—is expected to continue to perform better into the future. Trade between Africa and China stood at US$166 billion in 2011.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Africa will only experience a "demographic dividend" by 2035, when its young and growing labour force will have fewer children and retired people as dependents as a proportion of the population, making it more demographically comparable to the US and Europe. It is becoming a more educated labour force, with nearly half expected to have some secondary-level education by 2020. A consumer class is also emerging in Africa and is expected to keep booming. Africa has around 90 million people with household incomes exceeding $5,000, meaning that they can direct more than half of their income towards discretionary spending rather than necessities. This number could reach a projected 128 million by 2020.


title: Economy of Africa

text: During the President of the United States Barack Obama's visit to Africa in July 2013, he announced a US$7 billion plan to further develop infrastructure and work more intensively with African heads of state. A new program named Trade Africa, designed to boost trade within the continent as well as between Africa and the U.S., was also unveiled by Obama.


title: Economy of Africa

text: With the introduction of the new economic growth and development plan introduced by the African Union members about 27 of its members who average some of the most developing economies of the continent will further boost economic social and political integration of the continent. The African Continental Free Trade Area will boost business activities between member states and within the continent. This will further reduce too much reliance on importation of finished products and raw materials in to the continent.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Entrepreneurship is a key to growth. Governments will need to ensure business friendly regulatory environments in order to help foster innovation. In 2019, venture capital startup funding grew to 1.3 billion dollars, increasing rapidly. The causes are as of yet unclear, but education is certainly a factor.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The seemingly intractable nature of Africa's poverty has led to debate concerning its root causes. Endemic warfare and unrest, widespread corruption, and despotic regimes are both causes and effects of the continued economic problems. The decolonization of Africa was fraught with instability aggravated by cold war conflict. Since the mid-20th century, the Cold War and increased corruption, poor governance, disease and despotism have also contributed to Africa's poor economy.


title: Economy of Africa

text: According to The Economist, the most important factors are government corruption, political instability, socialist economics, and protectionist trade policy.


title: Economy of Africa

text: According to the researchers at the Overseas Development Institute, the lack of infrastructure in many developing countries represents one of the most significant limitations to economic growth and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Infrastructure investments and maintenance can be very expensive, especially in such areas as landlocked, rural and sparsely populated countries in Africa.


title: Economy of Africa

text: It has been argued that infrastructure investments contributed to more than half of Africa's improved growth performance between 1990 and 2005 and increased investment is necessary to maintain growth and tackle poverty. The returns to investment in infrastructure are very significant, with on average 30–40% returns for telecommunications (ICT) investments, over 40% for electricity generation, and 80% for roads.


title: Economy of Africa

text: In Africa, it is argued that to meet the MDGs by 2015, infrastructure investments would need to reach about 15% of GDP (around $93 billion a year). Currently, the source of financing varies significantly across sectors. Some sectors are dominated by state spending, others by overseas development aid (ODA) and yet others by private investors. In sub-Saharan Africa, the state spends around $9.4 billion out of a total of $24.9 billion.


title: Economy of Africa

text: In irrigation, SSA states represent almost all spending; in transport and energy a majority of investment is state spending; in Information and communication technologies and water supply and sanitation, the private sector represents the majority of capital expenditure. Overall, aid, the private sector and non-OECD financiers between them exceed state spending. The private sector spending alone equals state capital expenditure, though the majority is focused on ICT infrastructure investments. External financing increased from $7 billion (2002) to $27 billion (2009). China, in particular, has emerged as an important investor.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The principal aim of colonial rule in Africa by European colonial powers was to exploit natural wealth in the African continent at a low cost. Some writers, such as Walter Rodney in his book "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa", argue that these colonial policies are directly responsible for many of Africa's modern problems. Critics of colonialism charge colonial rule with injuring African pride, self-worth and belief in themselves. Other post-colonial scholars, most notably Frantz Fanon continuing along this line, have argued that the true effects of colonialism are psychological and that domination by a foreign power creates a lasting sense of inferiority and subjugation that creates a barrier to growth and innovation. Such arguments posit that a new generation of Africans free of colonial thought and mindset is emerging and that this is driving economic transformation.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Historians L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan have argued that Africa probably benefited from colonialism on balance. Although it had its faults, colonialism was probably "one of the most efficacious engines for cultural diffusion in world history". These views, however, are controversial and are rejected by some who, on balance, see colonialism as bad. The economic historian David Kenneth Fieldhouse has taken a kind of middle position, arguing that the effects of colonialism were actually limited and their main weakness wasn't in deliberate underdevelopment but in what it failed to do. Niall Ferguson agrees with his last point, arguing that colonialism's main weaknesses were "sins of omission". Analysis of the economies of African states finds that independent states such as Liberia and Ethiopia did not have better economic performance than their post-colonial counterparts. In particular the economic performance of former British colonies was better than both independent states and former French colonies.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Africa's relative poverty predates colonialism. Jared Diamond argues in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" that Africa has always been poor due to a number of ecological factors affecting historical development. These factors include low population density, lack of domesticated livestock and plants and the north–south orientation of Africa's geography. However Diamond's theories have been criticized by some including James Morris Blaut as a form of environmental determinism. Historian John K. Thornton argues that sub-Saharan Africa was relatively wealthy and technologically advanced until at least the seventeenth century. Some scholars who believe that Africa was generally poorer than the rest of the world throughout its history make exceptions for certain parts of Africa. Acemoglue and Robinson, for example, argue that most of Africa has always been relatively poor, but "Aksum, Ghana, Songhay, Mali, [and] Great Zimbabwe ... were probably as developed as their contemporaries anywhere in the world." A number of people including Rodney and Joseph E. Inikori have argued that the poverty of Africa at the onset of the colonial period was principally due to the demographic loss associated with the slave trade as well as other related societal shifts. Others such as J. D. Fage and David Eltis have rejected this view.


title: Economy of Africa

text: African countries suffer from communication difficulties caused by language diversity. Greenberg's diversity index is the chance that two randomly selected people would have different mother tongues. Out of the most diverse 25 countries according to this index, 18 (72%) are African. This includes 12 countries for which Greenberg's diversity index exceeds 0.9, meaning that a pair of randomly selected people will have less than 10% chance of having the same mother tongue. However, the primary language of government, political debate, academic discourse, and administration is often the language of the former colonial powers; English, French, or Portuguese.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Dependency theory asserts that the wealth and prosperity of the superpowers and their allies in Europe, North America and East Asia is dependent upon the poverty of the rest of the world, including Africa. Economists who subscribe to this theory believe that poorer regions must break their trading ties with the developed world in order to prosper.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Less radical theories suggest that economic protectionism in developed countries hampers Africa's growth. When developing countries have harvested agricultural produce at low cost, they generally do not export as much as would be expected. Abundant farm subsidies and high import tariffs in the developed world, most notably those set by Japan, the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy, and the United States Department of Agriculture, are thought to be the cause. Although these subsidies and tariffs have been gradually reduced, they remain high.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Local conditions also affect exports; state over-regulation in several African nations can prevent their own exports from becoming competitive. Research in Public Choice economics such as that of Jane Shaw suggest that protectionism operates in tandem with heavy State intervention combining to depress economic development. Farmers subject to import and export restrictions cater to localized markets, exposing them to higher market volatility and fewer opportunities. When subject to uncertain market conditions, farmers press for governmental intervention to suppress competition in their markets, resulting in competition being driven out of the market. As competition is driven out of the market, farmers innovate less and grow less food further undermining economic performance.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Although Africa and Asia had similar levels of income in the 1960s, Asia has since outpaced Africa, with the exception of a few extremely poor and war-torn countries like Afghanistan and Yemen. One school of economists argues that Asia's superior economic development lies in local investment. Corruption in Africa consists primarily of extracting economic rent and moving the resulting financial capital overseas instead of investing at home; the stereotype of African dictators with Swiss bank accounts is often accurate. University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers estimate that from 1970 to 1996, capital flight from 30 sub-Saharan countries totalled $187bn, exceeding those nations' external debts. Authors Leonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce estimate that from 1970 to 2008, capital flight from 33 sub-Saharan countries totalled $700bn. This disparity in development is consistent with the model theorized by economist Mancur Olson. Because governments were politically unstable and new governments often confiscated their predecessors' assets, officials would stash their wealth abroad, out of reach of any future expropriation.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko became notorious for corruption, nepotism, and the embezzlement of between US$4 billion and $15 billion during his reign. Socialist governments influenced by Marxism, and the land reform they have enacted, have also contributed to economic stagnation in Africa. For example, the regime of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, particularly the land seizures from white farmers, led to the collapse of the country's agricultural economy, which had formerly been one of Africa's strongest; Mugabe had been previously supported by the USSR and China during the Zimbabwe War of Liberation. Tanzania was left as one of the world's poorest and most aid-dependent nations, and has taken decades to recover. Since the abolition of the socialist one-party state in 1992 and the transition to democracy, Tanzania has experienced rapid economic growth, with growth of 6.5% in 2017.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Food shipments in case of dire local shortage are generally uncontroversial; but as Amartya Sen has shown, most famines involve a local lack of income rather than of food. In such situations, food aid—as opposed to financial aid—has the effect of destroying local agriculture and serves mainly to benefit Western agribusiness which are vastly overproducing food as a result of agricultural subsidies.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Historically, food aid is more highly correlated with excess supply in Western countries than with the needs of developing countries. Foreign aid has been an integral part of African economic development since the 1980s.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The aid model has been criticized for supplanting trade initiatives. Growing evidence shows that foreign aid has made the continent poorer. One of the biggest critics of the aid development model is economist Dambisa Moyo (a Zambian economist based in the US), who introduced the Dead Aid model, which highlights how foreign aid has been a deterrent for local development.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Today, Africa faces the problem of attracting foreign aid in areas where there is potential for high income from demand. It is in need of more economic policies and active participation in the world economy. As globalization has heightened the competition for foreign aid among developing countries, Africa has been trying to improve its struggle to receive foreign aid by taking more responsibility at the regional and international level. In addition, Africa has created the ‘Africa Action Plan’ in order to obtain new relationships with development partners to share responsibilities regarding discovering ways to receive aid from foreign investors.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The African Union is the largest international economic grouping on the continent. The confederation's goals include the creation of a free trade area, a customs union, a single market, a central bank, and a common currency (see African Monetary Union), thereby establishing economic and monetary union. The current plan is to establish an African Economic Community with a single currency by 2023. The African Investment Bank is meant to stimulate development. The AU plans also include a transitional African Monetary Fund leading to an African Central Bank. Some parties support development of an even more unified United States of Africa.


title: Economy of Africa

text: During the 1960s, Ghanaian politician Kwame Nkrumah promoted economic and political union of African countries, with the goal of independence. Since then, objectives, and organizations, have multiplied. Recent decades have brought efforts at various degrees of regional economic integration. Trade between African states accounts for only 11% of Africa's total commerce as of 2012, around five times less than in Asia. Most of this intra-Africa trade originates from South Africa and most of the trade exports coming out of South Africa goes to abutting countries in Southern Africa.


title: Economy of Africa

text: After an initial rebound from the 2009 world economic crisis, Africa's economy was undermined in the year 2011 by the Arab uprisings. The continent's growth fell back from 5% in 2010 to 3.4% in 2011. With the recovery of North African economies and sustained improvement in other regions, growth across the continent is expected to accelerate to 4.5% in 2012 and 4.8% in 2013. Short-term problems for the world economy remain as Europe confronts its debt crisis. Commodity prices—crucial for Africa—have declined from their peak due to weaker demand and increased supply, and some could fall further. But prices are expected to remain at levels favourable for African exporter.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Economic activity has rebounded across Africa. However, the pace of recovery was uneven among groups of countries and subregions. Oil-exporting countries generally expanded more strongly than oil-importing countries. West Africa and East Africa were the two best-performing subregions in 2010.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Intra-African trade has been slowed by protectionist policies among countries and regions, and remains low at 17 percent, compared to Europe, where intra-regional trade is at 69 percent. Despite this, trade between countries belonging to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), a particularly strong economic region, grew six-fold over the past decade up to 2012. Ghana and Kenya, for example, have developed markets within the region for construction materials, machinery, and finished products, quite different from the mining and agriculture products that make up the bulk of their international exports.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The African Ministers of Trade agreed in 2010 to create a Pan-Africa Free Trade Zone. This would reduce countries' tariffs on imports and increase intra-African trade, and it is hoped, the diversification of the economy overall.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Because Africa's export portfolio remains predominantly based on raw material, its export earnings are contingent on commodity price fluctuations. This exacerbates the continent's susceptibility to external shocks and bolsters the need for export diversification. Trade in services, mainly travel and tourism, continued to rise in year 2012, underscoring the continent's strong potential in this sphere.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The situation whereby African nations export crops to the West while millions on the continent starve has been blamed on the economic policies of the developed countries. These advanced nations protect their own agricultural sectors with high import tariffs and offer government subsidies to their farmers. which many contend leads the overproduction of such commodities as grain, cotton and milk. The impact of agricultural subsidies in developed countries upon developing-country farmers and international development is well documented. Agricultural subsidies can help drive prices down to benefit consumers, but also mean that unsubsidised developing-country farmers have a more difficult time competing in the world market; and the effects on poverty are particularly negative when subsidies are provided for crops that are also grown in developing countries since developing-country farmers must then compete directly with subsidised developed-country farmers, for example in cotton and sugar. The IFPRI has estimated in 2003 that the impact of subsidies costs developing countries $24 billion in lost incomes going to agricultural and agro-industrial production; and more than $40Bn is displaced from net agricultural exports. The result of this is that the global price of such products is continually reduced until Africans are unable to compete, except for cash crops that do not grow easily in a northern climate.


title: Economy of Africa

text: In recent years countries such as Brazil, which has experienced progress in agricultural production, have agreed to share technology with Africa to increase agricultural production in the continent to make it a more viable trade partner. Increased investment in African agricultural technology in general has the potential to reduce poverty in Africa. The demand market for African cocoa has experienced a price boom in 2008. The Nigerian, South African and Ugandan governments have targeted policies to take advantage of the increased demand for certain agricultural products and plan to stimulate agricultural sectors. The African Union has plans to heavily invest in African agriculture and the situation is closely monitored by the UN.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Ticks are a constant pressure on the continent's livestock. Although acaricides have been commonly used by farmers here, they are becoming less effective. Tick vaccines are under development and may fill this void.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Africa has significant resources for generating energy in several forms (hydroelectric, reserves of petroleum and gas, coal production, uranium production, renewable energy such as solar, wind and geothermal). The lack of development and infrastructure means that little of this potential is actually in use today. The largest consumers of electric power in Africa are South Africa, Libya, Namibia, Egypt, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe, which each consume between 1000 and 5000 KWh/m per person, in contrast with African states such as Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Tanzania, where electricity consumption per person is negligible.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Petroleum and petroleum products are the main export of 14 African countries. Petroleum and petroleum products accounted for a 46.6% share of Africa's total exports in 2010; the second largest export of Africa as a whole is natural gas, in its gaseous state and as liquified natural gas, accounting for a 6.3% share of Africa's exports. Only South Africa is using nuclear power commercially.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Lack of infrastructure creates barriers for African businesses. Although it has many ports, a lack of supporting transportation infrastructure adds 30–40% to costs, in contrast to Asian ports.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Railway projects were important in mining districts from the late 19th century. Large railway and road projects characterize the late 19th century. Railroads were emphasized in the colonial era, and roads in 'post-colonial' times. Jedwab & Storeygard find that in 1960–2015 there were strong correlations between transportation investments and economic development. Influential political include pre-colonial centralization, ethnic fractionalization, European settlement, natural resource dependence, and democracy.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Many large infrastructure projects are underway across Africa. By far, most of these projects are in the production and transportation of electric power. Many other projects include paved highways, railways, airports, and other construction.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Telecommunications infrastructure is also a growth area in Africa. Although Internet penetration lags other continents, it has still reached 9%. As of 2011, it was estimated that 500,000,000 mobile phones of all types were in use in Africa, including 15,000,000 "smart phones".


title: Economy of Africa

text: The mineral industry of Africa is one of the largest mineral industries in the world. Africa is the second biggest continent, with 30 million km of land, which implies large quantities of resources. For many African countries, mineral exploration and production constitute significant parts of their economies and remain keys to future economic growth. Africa is richly endowed with mineral reserves and ranks first or second in quantity of world reserves of bauxite, cobalt, industrial diamond, phosphate rock, platinum-group metals (PGM), vermiculite, and zirconium.


title: Economy of Africa

text: African mineral reserves rank first or second for bauxite, cobalt, diamonds, phosphate rocks, platinum-group metals (PGM), vermiculite, and zirconium. Many other minerals are also present in quantity. The 2005 share of world production from African soil is the following: bauxite 9%; aluminium 5%; chromite 44%; cobalt 57%; copper 5%; gold 21%; iron ore 4%; steel 2%; lead (Pb) 3%; manganese 39%; zinc 2%; cement 4%; natural diamond 46%; graphite 2%; phosphate rock 31%; coal 5%; mineral fuels (including coal) & petroleum 13%; uranium 16%.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Both the African Union and the United Nations have outlined plans in modern years on how Africa can help itself industrialize and develop significant manufacturing sectors to levels proportional to the African economy in the 1960s with 21st-century technology. This focus on growth and diversification of manufacturing and industrial production, as well as diversification of agricultural production, has fueled hopes that the 21st century will prove to be a century of economic and technological growth for Africa. This hope, coupled with the rise of new leaders in Africa in the future, inspired the term "the African Century", referring to the 21st century potentially being the century when Africa's vast untapped labor, capital, and resource potentials might become a world player.


title: Economy of Africa

text: This hope in manufacturing and industry is helped by the boom in communications technology and local mining industry in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Namibia has attracted industrial investments in recent years and South Africa has begun offering tax incentives to attract foreign direct investment projects in manufacturing.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Countries such as Mauritius have plans for developing new "green technology" for manufacturing. Developments such as this have huge potential to open new markets for African countries as the demand for alternative "green" and clean technology is predicted to soar in the future as global oil reserves dry up and fossil fuel-based technology becomes less economically viable.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Nigeria in recent years has been embracing industrialization, It currently has an indigenous vehicle manufacturing company, "Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing (IVM)" which manufactures Rapid Transit Buses, Trucks and SUVs with an upcoming introduction of Cars. Their various brands of vehicle are currently available in Nigeria, Ghana and other West African Nations. Nigeria also has few Electronic manufacturers like Zinox, the first Branded Nigerian Computer and Electronic gadgets (like tablet PCs) manufacturers. In 2013, Nigeria introduced a policy regarding import duty on vehicles to encourage local manufacturing companies in the country. In this regard, some foreign vehicle manufacturing companies like Nissan have made known their plans to have manufacturing plants in Nigeria. Apart from Electronics and vehicles, most consumer, pharmaceutical and cosmetic products, building materials, textiles, home tools, plastics and so on are also manufactured in the country and exported to other west African and African countries. Nigeria is currently the largest manufacturer of cement in Sub-saharan Africa. and Dangote Cement Factory, Obajana is the largest cement factory in sub-saharan Africa. Ogun is considered to be Nigeria's industrial hub (as most factories are located in Ogun and even more companies are moving there), followed by Lagos.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The manufacturing sector is small but growing in East Africa. The main industries are textile and clothing, leather processing, agribusiness, chemical products, electronics and vehicles. East African countries like Uganda also produce motorcycles for the domestic market.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Africa's US$107 billion financial services industry will log impressive growth for the rest of the decade as more banks target the continent's emerging middle class. The banking sector has been experiencing record growth, among others due to various technological innovations.


title: Economy of Africa

text: China and India have showed increasing interest in emerging African economies in the 21st century. Reciprocal investment between Africa and China increased dramatically in recent years amidst the current world financial crisis.


title: Economy of Africa

text: The increased investment in Africa by China has attracted the attention of the European Union and has provoked talks of competitive investment by the EU. Members of the African diaspora abroad, especially in the EU and the United States, have increased efforts to use their businesses to invest in Africa and encourage African investment abroad in the European economy.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Remittances from the African diaspora and rising interest in investment from the West will be especially helpful for Africa's least developed and most devastated economies, such as Burundi, Togo and Comoros. However, experts lament the high fees involved in sending remittances to Africa due to a duopoly of Western Union and MoneyGram that is controlling Africa's remittance market, making Africa is the most expensive cash transfer market in the world. According to some experts, the high processing fees involved in sending money to Africa are hampering African countries' development.


title: Economy of Africa

text: Angola has announced interests in investing in the EU, Portugal in particular. South Africa has attracted increasing attention from the United States as a new frontier of investment in manufacture, financial markets and small business, as has Liberia in recent years under their new leadership.


title: Economy of Africa

text: There are two African currency unions: the West African Banque Centrale des États de l'Afrique de l'Ouest (BCEAO) and the Central African Banque des États de l'Afrique Centrale (BEAC). Both use the CFA franc as their legal tender. The idea of a single currency union across Africa has been floated, and plans exist to have it established by 2020, though many issues, such as bringing continental inflation rates below 5 percent, remain hurdles in its finalization.


title: Economy of Africa

text: As of 2012, Africa has 23 stock exchanges, twice as many as it had 20 years earlier. Nonetheless, African stock exchanges still account for less than 1% of the world's stock exchange activity. The top ten stock exchanges in Africa by stock capital are (amounts are given in billions of United States dollars):


title: Economy of Africa

text: Between 2009 and 2012, a total of 72 companies were launched on the stock exchanges of 13 African countries.


title: Dingo Fence

text: The Dingo Fence or Dog Fence is a pest-exclusion fence in Australia to keep dingoes out of the relatively fertile south-east part of the continent (where they have largely been exterminated) and protect the sheep flocks of southern Queensland. It is one of the longest structures in the world. It stretches from Jimbour on the Darling Downs near Dalby through thousands of kilometres of arid land ending west of Eyre peninsula on cliffs of the Nullarbor Plain above the Great Australian Bight near Nundroo. It has been partly successful, though dingoes can still be found in parts of the southern states. Although the fence has helped reduce losses of sheep to predators, this has been countered by holes in fences found in the 1990s through which dingo offspring have passed and by increased pasture competition from rabbits and kangaroos.


title: Dingo Fence

text: The section of the fence in Queensland is also known as the Great Barrier Fence or Wild Dog Barrier Fence 11. It is administered by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. The Wild Dog Barrier Fence staff consists of 23 employees, including two-person teams that patrol a section of the fence once every week. There are depots at Quilpie and Roma.


title: Dingo Fence

text: The Queensland Border Fence stretches for westwards along the border with New South Wales, into the Strzelecki Desert. The fence passes the point where the three states of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia meet (Cameron Corner). At this point, it connects with the South Australian Border Fence, which runs for southwards along the border with New South Wales, these two sections are managed by the New South Wales Wild Dog Destruction Board. It then joins a section known as the Dog Fence in South Australia, which is long.


title: Dingo Fence

text: The fence varies in construction. Mostly it is made of high wire mesh but some sections in South Australia comprise multi-strand electric fence. The fence line on both sides is cleared to a width. Sheep and cattle stations protected by the fence are exceptionally large. While varying in size, some stations can be larger than small countries. One station alone in South Australia lost over 11,000 sheep in a year due to dingo attacks before the completion of the fence. As recently as 1991, one station lost 3000 sheep in a year . Sheep farmers fought back by using poisoning, shooting, and eventually constructing the longest fence in the world. Aerial poison bait drops are still used today.


title: Dingo Fence

text: Parts of the Dingo Fence are lit at night by cold cathode fluorescent lamps which are alternately red and white. They are powered by long life batteries which are charged by photovoltaic cells during the day. At minor and farm crossings, a series of gates allow vehicles to pass through the fence. Where the fence intersects major roads and highways, cattle grids are used to allow high-speed vehicles through.


title: Dingo Fence

text: The earliest pest exclusion fences in Australia were created to protect small plots of cropland from the predation by marsupials. In the 1860s and 1870s, introduced rabbit populations began to spread rapidly across southern Australia. By 1884, a rabbit-proof fence was built. Having been unsuccessful at keeping rabbits out, and more successful at keeping out pigs, kangaroos, emus and brumbies, and as more sheep farms were established, the interest for a dingo-proof barrier increased enough that government funds were being used to heighten and expand the fence. In 1930, an estimated 32,000 km of dog netting in Queensland alone was being used on top of rabbit fences. Prior to 1948, the idea of a Dingo Barrier Fence Scheme had not come into fruition as a statewide project for which annual maintenance and repair were kept. Since this time, there have been pushes to move away from a method of barrier-exclusion to complete extinction of the dingo and wild-dog cross-breeds. Poisoning the species with compound 1080 (sodium monofluoroacetate) baits has been seen as a much cheaper alternative than fence maintenance. A compromise in the form of the continued use of poison and the shortening of the fence from its previous length of over 8000 km has been made.


title: Dingo Fence

text: In 2009 as part of the Q150 celebrations, the dingo fence was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for its role as an iconic "innovation and invention".


title: Dingo Fence

text: It seems that there are fewer kangaroos and emus on the northwestern side of the fence where the dingoes are, suggesting that the dingoes' presence reduces the populations of those animals.


title: Dingo Fence

text: It has also been suggested that the larger kangaroo populations inside the fence have been caused by the lack of dingo predation, and competition for food leads to lower sheep stocking rates than would be possible without the fence.


title: Dingo Fence

text: Believed to have been introduced into Australia by Aboriginals between 4,600 and 18,300 years ago, the dingo's status as a native or introduced species in Australia has been a controversy. According to Dr. Mike Letnic, at the Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW, the dingo, as Australia's top predator, has an important role in maintaining the balance of nature and that reintroduced or existing dingo populations could increase biodiversity across more than 2 million square kilometres of Australia (Avolia 2009). Where dingoes had been exterminated, Dr. Letnic found increased abundances of introduced red foxes and herbivores, while small native mammals and grasses were lost. In 2011 the Liberal MP for Stuart, Dan van Holst Pellekaan, called for a $200 bounty on dingoes.


title: Dingo Fence

text: Although the fence has helped reduce the loss of sheep to predators, the exclusion of dingoes has allowed for increased pasture competition from rabbits, kangaroos and emus. Sheep are being lost to increasing numbers of feral dogs.


title: Maniac (Michael Sembello song)

text: "Maniac" is a song from the 1983 film "Flashdance" that was written by Dennis Matkosky and its performer, Michael Sembello. The original idea for the song came to Matkosky while watching a news report on a serial killer, which inspired gruesome lyrics that he and Sembello expanded upon after finding a 1980 horror film with the same name. When "Flashdance" director Adrian Lyne grew attached to the demo of the song used during filming, his music supervisor Phil Ramone requested lyrics more appropriate for their story of a dancer and worked with Sembello to produce a new version for the soundtrack. The new recording was used for a scene in which protagonist Alexandra Owens trains rigorously at home.


title: Maniac (Michael Sembello song)

text: After the film became a surprise success, a music video was made using scenes from the film and began airing on the cable channel MTV in May 1983, coinciding with the release of the single. The song spent two weeks at number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and performed well in several countries. Because its video was shown extensively on MTV and "Flashdance" became the third highest-grossing film of 1983 in the U.S., Hollywood began to see music videos as a profitable way to market films.


title: Maniac (Michael Sembello song)

text: The song thrust Sembello into the spotlight for the first time with personal appearances to promote it and even won Matkosky and him a Grammy for their composition. He included "Maniac" on his debut album but made it clear that he would not be putting out a similar song just to capitalize on its success and that he wanted people to forget his hit record and focus on his latest material. Cover versions of the song cropped up in the UK, however, and one recording of a DJ rapping over a remix spent 10 weeks at number 1 in Ireland in 2000 and became the country's fifth biggest-selling single of all time.


title: Maniac (Michael Sembello song)

text: The general concept for what became the "Flashdance" hit came to songwriter Dennis Matkosky while watching a news report about a serial killer. He jokingly thought, "With my luck, this guy lives next door to me," and immediately jotted down the lyrics that came to mind: "He's a maniac. He just moved in next door. He'll kill your cat and nail it to the floor." He took the idea to his friend Michael Sembello, whose eyes widened with interest when he heard the title. As soon as Matkosky was seated at a piano, Sembello said, "All right. Hit the weirdest chord you know," and they began composing the music. Their inspiration for the bridge came from the Bloodrock song "D.O.A.", a number 36 hit on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in 1971 that recreated the two-tone siren used on ambulances in England at that time, and Sembello came up with the idea of using "Chopsticks" to introduce the instrumental portion of the song. Matkosky said, "We thought it was a joke because we weren't trying to write a song. We were trying to make our friends laugh."


title: Maniac (Michael Sembello song)

text: Sembello recalled their usual process for situations where they needed more lyrics: "Whenever we get an idea, we start researching, but we didn't have Google." Matkosky found the 1980 slasher film "Maniac" and rented it to see if they could come up with more to put in the song. It did provide the additional lyrics they wanted, but the demo they recorded wound up on a tape sent to Phil Ramone, who was looking for songs to use in "Flashdance". During the film's pre-production, the two-tone siren music used in the bridge stood out for the film's director, Adrian Lyne, who said, "One of the tunes I'd heard had a kind of a chime in it, that kind of 'bing-bong-bing-bong-bing-bong', like that, and I said, 'Let's use that. Let's use that as a kind of a motive, as a kind of a driving thing for a dance.'" Lyne had grown accustomed to using the music by the end of filming and wanted it in the final cut, so Ramone asked for lyrics to fit the movie and had Sembello re-record the song.


title: Maniac (Michael Sembello song)

text: Before "Flashdance" was released on April 15, 1983, its distributor Paramount Pictures had doubts that it would do well at the box office. The May 7 issue of "Cash Box", however, reported on the surprise success of the film and Paramount's plan to have Lyne take parts of scenes from it to create music videos to be shown on the cable channel MTV as well as on television programs and at other venues featuring such clips. "Maniac" was listed on the reports that MTV provided to "Billboard" that indicated what videos were in rotation on the cable network and made its first appearance there in the May 21 issue, which indicated that it had been added to their playlist as of May 11.


title: Maniac (Michael Sembello song)

text: The June 4, 1983, issue of "Billboard" magazine included the first appearance of the 7-inch single of "Maniac" on the "Billboard" Hot 100, where it spent 22 weeks, and the September 10 "Billboard" marked its first of 2 weeks as the most popular song in the US. It reached number 34 during its 8 weeks on the magazine's Top Rock Tracks chart that began in the July 30 issue, and also made a number 34 showing over the course of 9 weeks on the Adult Contemporary chart as of the September 3 "Billboard". Their September 10 Chartbeat column bemoaned the latter appearance as a "sign of the times", noting that "AC clearly isn't just for Anne Murray anymore", an uncannily prescient assessment considering that the song went to number 1 on the Adult Contemporary and pop charts in Murray's native Canada just weeks later. It also made the top 10 on the pop charts in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, and Switzerland. The 12-inch remix began 15 weeks on the Dance/Disco Top 80 in the June 25 "Billboard" and eventually got as high as number 6.


title: Maniac (Michael Sembello song)

text: "Maniac" was selected as the best song on the soundtrack album by the editors of "Digital Audios Guide to Compact Discs", who described how "it opens with a fast disco drum machine beat, augmented by frantic synthesizers and a pulsating bass line." In their retrospective reviews, AllMusic labeled the song as one of their Album Picks from the "Flashdance" soundtrack and the 1994 "Casablanca Records Story" compilation.