title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Chateaubriand, along with other Catholic traditionalists such as Ballanche or, on the other side of the political divide, the socialist and republican Pierre Leroux, was one of the few men of his time who attempted to conciliate the three terms of "Liberté", "égalité" and "fraternité", going beyond the antagonism between liberals and socialists as to what interpretation to give the seemingly contradictory terms. Chateaubriand thus gave a Christian interpretation of the revolutionary motto, stating in the 1841 conclusion to his "Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe":


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: In his final years, he lived as a recluse in an apartment at 120 rue du Bac, Paris, leaving his house only to pay visits to Juliette Récamier in Abbaye-aux-Bois. His final work, "Vie de Rancé", was written at the suggestion of his confessor and published in 1844. It is a biography of Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé, a worldly seventeenth-century French aristocrat who withdrew from society to become the founder of the Trappist order of monks. The parallels with Chateaubriand's own life are striking. As late as 1845–1847, he also kept revising "Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe", particularly the earlier sections, as evidenced by the revision dates on the manuscript.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Chateaubriand died in Paris on 4 July 1848, in the midst of the Revolution of 1848, in the arms of his dear friend Juliette Récamier, and was buried, as he had requested, on the tidal island Grand Bé near Saint-Malo, accessible only when the tide is out.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: His descriptions of Nature and his analysis of emotion made him the model for a generation of Romantic writers, not only in France but also abroad. For example, Lord Byron was deeply impressed by "René". The young Victor Hugo scribbled in a notebook, "To be Chateaubriand or nothing." Even his enemies found it hard to avoid his influence. Stendhal, who despised him for political reasons, made use of his psychological analyses in his own book "De l'amour".


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Chateaubriand was the first to define the "vague des passions" ("intimations of passion") that later became a commonplace of Romanticism: "One inhabits, with a full heart, an empty world" ("Génie du Christianisme"). His political thought and actions seem to offer numerous contradictions: he wanted to be the friend both of legitimist royalty and of republicans, alternately defending whichever of the two seemed more in danger: "I am a Bourbonist out of honour, a monarchist out of reason, and a republican out of taste and temperament". He was the first of a series of French men of letters (Lamartine, Victor Hugo, André Malraux, Paul Claudel) who tried to mix political and literary careers.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: "We are convinced that the great writers have told their own story in their works", wrote Chateaubriand in "Génie du christianisme". "One only truly describes one's own heart by attributing it to another, and the greater part of genius is composed of memories". This is certainly true of Chateaubriand himself. All his works have strong autobiographical elements, overt or disguised.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: The year 1800 was the first to produce a book bearing the imprint of the new era, a work small in size, but great in significance and mighty in the impression it made. "Atala" took the French public by storm in a way which no book had done since the days of "Paul and Virginia". It was a romance of the plains and mysterious forests of North America, with a strong, strange aroma of the untilled soil from which it sprang; it glowed with rich foreign colouring, and with the fiercer glow of consuming passion.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Chateaubriand was a food enthusiast; Chateaubriand steak is most likely to have been named after him.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: In 1806, Chateaubriand was invested as a Knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.


title: Busy beaver

text: In theoretical computer science, the busy beaver game aims at finding a terminating program of a given size that produces the most output possible. Since an endlessly looping program producing infinite output is easily conceived, such programs are excluded from the game.


title: Busy beaver

text: More precisely, the busy beaver game consists of designing a halting Turing machine with alphabet {0,1} which writes the most 1s on the tape, using only a given set of states. The rules for the 2-state game are as follows:


title: Busy beaver

text: A player should conceive a transition table aiming for the longest output of 1s on the tape while making sure the machine will halt eventually.


title: Busy beaver

text: An n"th busy beaver, BB-"n or simply "busy beaver" is a Turing machine that wins the "n"-state Busy Beaver Game. That is, it attains the largest number of 1s among all other possible "n"-state competing Turing Machines. The BB-2 Turing machine, for instance, achieves four 1s in six steps.


title: Busy beaver

text: Determining whether an arbitrary Turing machine is a busy beaver is undecidable. This has implications in computability theory, the halting problem, and complexity theory. The concept was first introduced by Tibor Radó in his 1962 paper, "On Non-Computable Functions".


title: Busy beaver

text: The "n"-state busy beaver game (or BB-"n" game), introduced in Tibor Radó's 1962 paper, involves a class of Turing machines, each member of which is required to meet the following design specifications:


title: Busy beaver

text: "Running" the machine consists of starting in the starting state, with the current tape cell being any cell of a blank (all-0) tape, and then iterating the transition function until the Halt state is entered (if ever). If, and only if, the machine eventually halts, then the number of 1s finally remaining on the tape is called the machine's "score".


title: Busy beaver

text: The "n"-state busy beaver (BB-"n") game is a contest to find such an "n"-state Turing machine having the largest possible score — the largest number of 1s on its tape after halting. A machine that attains the largest possible score among all "n"-state Turing machines is called an "n"-state busy beaver, and a machine whose score is merely the highest so far attained (perhaps not the largest possible) is called a "champion" "n"-state machine.


title: Busy beaver

text: Radó required that each machine entered in the contest be accompanied by a statement of the exact number of steps it takes to reach the Halt state, thus allowing the score of each entry to be verified (in principle) by running the machine for the stated number of steps. (If entries were to consist only of machine descriptions, then the problem of verifying every potential entry is undecidable, because it is equivalent to the well-known halting problem — there would be no effective way to decide whether an arbitrary machine eventually halts.)


title: Busy beaver

text: The busy beaver function quantifies the maximum score attainable by a Busy Beaver on a given measure. This is a noncomputable function. Also, a busy beaver function can be shown to grow faster asymptotically than any computable function.


title: Busy beaver

text: The busy beaver function, formula_1, is defined so that Σ("n") is the maximum attainable score (the maximum number of 1s finally on the tape) among all halting 2-symbol "n"-state Turing machines of the above-described type, when started on a blank tape.


title: Busy beaver

text: It is clear that Σ is a well-defined function: for every "n", there are at most finitely many "n"-state Turing machines as above, up to isomorphism, hence at most finitely many possible running times.


title: Busy beaver

text: This infinite sequence Σ is the busy beaver function, and any "n"-state 2-symbol Turing machine "M" for which "σ"("M") = Σ("n") (i.e., which attains the maximum score) is called a busy beaver. Note that for each "n", there exist at least four "n"-state busy beavers (because, given any "n"-state busy beaver, another is obtained by merely changing the shift direction in a halting transition, another by shifting all direction changes to their opposite, and the final by shifting the halt direction of the all-swapped busy beaver).


title: Busy beaver

text: Radó's 1962 paper proved that if formula_2 is any computable function, then Σ("n") > "f"("n") for all sufficiently large "n", and hence that Σ is not a computable function.


title: Busy beaver

text: Moreover, this implies that it is undecidable by a general algorithm whether an arbitrary Turing machine is a busy beaver. (Such an algorithm cannot exist, because its existence would allow Σ to be computed, which is a proven impossibility. In particular, such an algorithm could be used to construct another algorithm that would compute Σ as follows: for any given "n", each of the finitely many "n"-state 2-symbol Turing machines would be tested until an "n"-state busy beaver is found; this busy beaver machine would then be simulated to determine its score, which is by definition Σ("n").)


title: Busy beaver

text: Even though Σ("n") is an uncomputable function, there are some small "n" for which it is possible to obtain its values and prove that they are correct. It is not hard to show that Σ(0) = 0, Σ(1) = 1, Σ(2) = 4, and with progressively more difficulty it can be shown that Σ(3) = 6 and Σ(4) = 13 . Σ("n") has not yet been determined for any instance of "n" > 4, although lower bounds have been established (see the Known values section below).


title: Busy beaver

text: In 2016, Adam Yedidia and Scott Aaronson obtained the first (explicit) upper bound on the minimum "n" for which Σ("n") is unprovable in ZFC. To do so they constructed a 7910-state Turing machine whose behavior cannot be proven based on the usual axioms of set theory (Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice), under reasonable consistency hypotheses (stationary Ramsey property). This was later reduced to 1919 states, with the dependency on the stationary Ramsey property eliminated, and later to 748 states.


title: Busy beaver

text: A variant of Kolmogorov complexity is defined as follows [cf. Boolos, Burgess & Jeffrey, 2007]: The "complexity" of a number "n" is the smallest number of states needed for a BB-class Turing machine that halts with a single block of "n" consecutive 1s on an initially blank tape. The corresponding variant of Chaitin's incompleteness theorem states that, in the context of a given axiomatic system for the natural numbers, there exists a number "k" such that no specific number can be proved to have complexity greater than "k", and hence that no specific upper bound can be proven for Σ("k") (the latter is because "the complexity of "n" is greater than "k"" would be proved if ""n" > Σ("k")" were proved). As mentioned in the cited reference, for any axiomatic system of "ordinary mathematics" the least value "k" for which this is true is far less than 10↑↑10; consequently, in the context of ordinary mathematics, neither the value nor any upper-bound of Σ(10 ↑↑ 10) can be proven. (Gödel's first incompleteness theorem is illustrated by this result: in an axiomatic system of ordinary mathematics, there is a true-but-unprovable sentence of the form "Σ(10 ↑↑ 10) = "n"", and there are infinitely many true-but-unprovable sentences of the form "Σ(10 ↑↑ 10) < "n"".)


title: Busy beaver

text: In addition to the function Σ, Radó [1962] introduced another extreme function for Turing machines, the maximum shifts function, "S", defined as follows:


title: Busy beaver

text: Because these Turing machines are required to have a shift in each and every transition or "step" (including any transition to a Halt state), the max-shifts function is at the same time a max-steps function.


title: Busy beaver

text: Radó showed that "S" is noncomputable for the same reason that Σ is noncomputable — it grows faster than any computable function. He proved this simply by noting that for each "n", "S"("n") ≥ Σ("n"). Each shift may write a 0 or a 1 on the tape, while Σ counts a subset of the shifts that wrote a 1, namely the ones that hadn't been overwritten by the time the Turing machine halted; consequently, "S" grows at least as fast as Σ, which had already been proved to grow faster than any computable function.


title: Busy beaver

text: The following connection between Σ and "S" was used by Lin & Radó ["Computer Studies of Turing Machine Problems", 1965] to prove that Σ(3) = 6: For a given "n", if "S"("n") is known then all "n"-state Turing machines can (in principle) be run for up to "S"("n") steps, at which point any machine that hasn't yet halted will never halt. At that point, by observing which machines have halted with the most 1s on the tape (i.e., the busy beavers), one obtains from their tapes the value of Σ("n"). The approach used by Lin & Radó for the case of "n" = 3 was to conjecture that "S"(3) = 21, then to simulate all the essentially different 3-state machines for up to 21 steps. By analyzing the behavior of the machines that had not halted within 21 steps, they succeeded in showing that none of those machines would ever halt, thus proving the conjecture that "S"(3) = 21, and determining that Σ(3) = 6 by the procedure just described.


title: Busy beaver

text: Inequalities relating Σ and "S" include the following (from [Ben-Amram, et al., 1996]), which are valid for all :


title: Busy beaver

text: and an asymptotically improved bound (from [Ben-Amram, Petersen, 2002]): there exists a constant "c", such that for all ,


title: Busy beaver

text: The current (as of 2018) 5-state busy beaver champion produces 1s, using steps (discovered by Heiner Marxen and Jürgen Buntrock in 1989), but there remain 18 or 19 (possibly under 10, see below) machines with non-regular behavior which are believed to never halt, but which have not been proven to run infinitely. Skelet lists 42 or 43 unproven machines, but 24 are already proven. The remaining machines have been simulated to 81.8 billion steps, but none halted. Daniel Briggs also proved some machines. Another source says 98 machines remain unproven. There is an analysis of holdouts. So, it is likely that Σ(5) = 4098 and S(5) = 47176870, but this remains unproven, and it is unknown if there are any holdouts left (as of 2018). At the moment the record 6-state champion produces over (exactly (25×4+23)/9), using over (found by Pavel Kropitz in 2010). As noted above, these are 2-symbol Turing machines.


title: Busy beaver

text: A simple extension of the 6-state machine leads to a 7-state machine which will write more than 10 1s to the tape, but there are undoubtedly much busier 7-state machines. However, other busy beaver hunters have different sets of machines.


title: Busy beaver

text: Milton Green, in his 1964 paper "A Lower Bound on Rado's Sigma Function for Binary Turing Machines", constructed a set of Turing machines demonstrating that


title: Busy beaver

text: In 1964 Milton Green developed a lower bound for the Busy Beaver function that was published in the proceedings of the 1964 IEEE symposium on switching circuit theory and logical design. Heiner Marxen and Jürgen Buntrock described it as "a non-trivial (not primitive recursive) lower bound". This lower bound can be calculated but is too complex to state as a single expression in terms of n. When n=8 the method gives


title: Busy beaver

text: In contrast, the best current (as of 2018) lower bound on Σ(6) is , which is greater than the lower bound given by Green's formula, 3 = 27 (which is tiny in comparison). In fact, it is much greater than the lower bound: 3 ↑↑ 3 = 3 = , which is Green's first lower bound for Σ(8), and also much greater than the second lower bound: 3×(7×3−1)/2.


title: Busy beaver

text: Σ(7) is by the same way much, much greater than current common lower bound 3 (nearly 618 trillion), so the second lower bound is also very, very weak.


title: Busy beaver

text: Suppose that "S"("n") is a computable function and let "EvalS" denote a TM, evaluating "S"("n"). Given a tape with "n" 1s it will produce "S"("n") 1s on the tape and then halt. Let "Clean" denote a Turing machine cleaning the sequence of 1s initially written on the tape. Let "Double" denote a Turing machine evaluating function "n" + "n". Given a tape with "n" 1s it will produce 2"n" 1s on the tape and then halt.


title: Busy beaver

text: Let us create the composition "Double" | "EvalS" | "Clean" and let "n" be the number of states of this machine. Let "Create_n" denote a Turing machine creating "n" 1s on an initially blank tape. This machine may be constructed in a trivial manner to have "n" states (the state "i" writes 1, moves the head right and switches to state "i" + 1, except the state "n", which halts). Let "N" denote the sum "n" + "n".


title: Busy beaver

text: Let "BadS" denote the composition "Create_n" | "Double" | "EvalS" | "Clean". Notice that this machine has "N" states. Starting with an initially blank tape it first creates a sequence of "n" 1s and then doubles it, producing a sequence of "N" 1s. Then "BadS" will produce "S"("N") 1s on tape, and at last it will clear all 1s and then halt. But the phase of cleaning will continue at least "S"("N") steps, so the time of working of "BadS" is strictly greater than "S"("N"), which contradicts to the definition of the function "S"("n").


title: Busy beaver

text: The uncomputability of Σ("n") may be proved in a similar way. In the above proof, one must exchange the machine "EvalS" with "EvalΣ" and "Clean" with "Increment" — a simple TM, searching for a first 0 on the tape and replacing it with 1.


title: Busy beaver

text: The uncomputability of "S"("n") can also be established by reference to the blank tape halting problem. The blank tape halting problem is the problem of deciding for any Turing machine whether or not it will halt when started on an empty tape. The blank tape halting problem is equivalent to the standard halting problem and so it is also uncomputable. If "S"("n") was computable, then we could solve the blank tape halting problem simply by running any given Turing machine with "n" states for "S"("n") steps; if it has still not halted, it never will. So, since the blank tape halting problem is not computable, it follows that "S"("n") must likewise be uncomputable.


title: Busy beaver

text: For any model of computation there exist simple analogs of the busy beaver. For example, the generalization to Turing machines with "n" states and "m" symbols defines the following generalized busy beaver functions:


title: Busy beaver

text: For example, the longest-running 3-state 3-symbol machine found so far runs steps before halting. The longest running 6-state, 2-symbol machine which has the additional property of reversing the tape value at each step produces 1s after steps. So for the Reversal Turing Machine (RTM) class, "S"(6) ≥ and Σ(6) ≥ .


title: Busy beaver

text: It is possible to further generalize the busy beaver function by extending to more than one dimension.


title: Busy beaver

text: Likewise we could define an analog to the Σ function for register machines as the largest number which can be present in any register on halting, for a given number of instructions.


title: Busy beaver

text: The following table lists the exact values and some known lower bounds for "S"("n", "m") and Σ("n", "m") for the generalized busy beaver problems. Note: entries listed as "?" are bounded from below by the maximum of all entries to left and above. These machines either haven't been investigated or were subsequently surpassed by a smaller machine.


title: Busy beaver

text: The Turing machines that achieve these values are available on Pascal Michel's webpage. This websites also contains some analysis of the Turing machines and references to the proofs of the exact values.


title: Busy beaver

text: The problem can be extended to Nondeterministic Turing machines by looking for the system with the most states across all branches or the branch with the longest number of steps. The question of whether a given NDTM will halt is still computationally irreducible, and the computation required to find an NDTM busy beaver is significantly greater than the deterministic case, since there are multiple branches that need to be considered. For a 2-state, 2-color system with "p" cases or rules, the table to the right gives the maximum number of steps before halting and maximum number of unique states created by the NDTM.


title: Busy beaver

text: In addition to posing a rather challenging mathematical game, the busy beaver functions offer an entirely new approach to solving pure mathematics problems. Many open problems in mathematics could in theory, but not in practice, be solved in a systematic way given the value of "S"("n") for a sufficiently large "n".


title: Busy beaver

text: Consider any conjecture that could be disproven via a counterexample among a countable number of cases (e.g. Goldbach's conjecture). Write a computer program that sequentially tests this conjecture for increasing values. In the case of Goldbach's conjecture, we would consider every even number ≥ 4 sequentially and test whether or not it is the sum of two prime numbers. Suppose this program is simulated on an "n"-state Turing machine. If it finds a counterexample (an even number ≥ 4 that is not the sum of two primes in our example), it halts and indicates that. However, if the conjecture is true, then our program will never halt. (This program halts "only" if it finds a counterexample.)


title: Busy beaver

text: Now, this program is simulated by an "n"-state Turing machine, so if we know "S"("n") we can decide (in a finite amount of time) whether or not it will ever halt by simply running the machine that many steps. And if, after "S"("n") steps, the machine does not halt, we know that it never will and thus that there are no counterexamples to the given conjecture (i.e., no even numbers that are not the sum of two primes). This would prove the conjecture to be true.


title: Busy beaver

text: Thus specific values (or upper bounds) for "S"("n") could be used to systematically solve many open problems in mathematics (in theory). However, current results on the busy beaver problem suggest that this will not be practical for two reasons:


title: Busy beaver

text: A 748-state binary Turing machine has been constructed that halts iff ZFC is inconsistent. A 744-state Turing machine has been constructed that halts iff the Riemann hypothesis is false. A 43-state Turing machine has been constructed that halts iff Goldbach's conjecture is false, and a 27-state machine for that conjecture has been proposed but not yet verified.


title: Busy beaver

text: A 15-state Turing machine has been constructed that halts iff the following conjecture formulated by Paul Erdős in 1979 is false: for all n > 8 there is at least one digit 2 in the base 3 representation of 2.


title: Busy beaver

text: These are tables of rules for the Turing machines that generate Σ(1) and "S"(1), Σ(2) and "S"(2), Σ(3) (but not "S"(3)), Σ(4) and "S"(4), and the best known lower bound for Σ(5) and "S"(5), and Σ(6) and "S"(6). For other visualizations,


title: Busy beaver

text: In the tables, columns represent the current state and rows represent the current symbol read from the tape. Each table entry is a string of three characters, indicating the symbol to write onto the tape, the direction to move, and the new state (in that order). The halt state is shown as H.


title: Busy beaver

text: Each machine begins in state A with an infinite tape that contains all 0s. Thus, the initial symbol read from the tape is a 0.


title: Busy beaver

text: Note in the image to the right how this solution is similar qualitatively to the evolution of some cellular automata.


title: Busy beaver

text: In the following table, the rules for each busy beaver (maximizing Σ) are represented visually, with orange squares corresponding to a "1" on the tape, and white corresponding to "0". The position of the head is indicated by the black ovoid, with the orientation of the head representing the state. Individual tapes are laid out horizontally, with time progressing vertically. The halt state is represented by a rule which maps one state to itself (head doesn't move).


title: Australian Survivor (season 5)

text: Australian Survivor: Champions vs. Contenders, is the fifth season of Australian Survivor and the third season to air on Network Ten and to be hosted by Jonathan LaPaglia, and was filmed on the Fijian community of Savusavu.


title: Australian Survivor (season 5)

text: The television series is based on the international reality game show franchise "Survivor". This season featured 24 contestants divided into two tribes: "Champions", composed of twelve high-achievers who excelled in their fields, and "Contenders", composed of twelve everyday Australians. The season premiered on 1 August 2018, and concluded on 9 October 2018, where Shane Gould was named the winner over Sharn Coombes in a 5–4 vote, winning the grand prize of A$500,000 and title of Sole Survivor.


title: Australian Survivor (season 5)

text: The 24 contestants were divided into two tribes based on celebrity status: "Champions," composed of 12 people who have received accolades and fame for their exceptional work in their given fields, and "Contenders," composed of 12 non-celebrities. Among the Champions were Russell Hantz, a three-time contestant on the American "Survivor" series (having competed on seasons , and ; the American host broadcaster, CBS, acquired Network Ten in 2017), "The Biggest Loser" trainer Steve "Commando" Willis, and Olympic gold medalists Lydia Lassila and Shane Gould. The Contenders included Benji Wilson, brother of "Australian Survivor" season 4 contestant Anneliese Wilson, and Zach Kozyrski, who appeared as a Gladiator in the 2008 revival of "Gladiators".


title: Australian Survivor (season 5)

text: Moana Hope, Zach Kozyrski, Lydia Lassila, Mat Rogers, Shonee Fairfax, Sharn Coombes and Shane Gould competed in "".


title: Australian Survivor (season 5)

text: The 24 contestants were divided into two tribes. The Contenders, representing everyday Australians, faced off against the Champions, high achievers in their respective fields. Brian, Jackie, Monika, and Shane were initially outsiders at the Champions tribe. Meanwhile, at the Contenders tribe, Benji took strategic control of the tribe, and three pairs emerged: Benji & Robbie, Fenella & Shonee, and Heath & Tegan (the latter of whom re-entered the game from Exile Beach after getting blindsided by Benji). The Champions dominated challenges until a tribe swap sent Shonee and Tegan to the Champions and Lydia, Monika, & Sharn to the Contenders. Benji and Robbie worked with their new Champions tribemates, while the Contenders on the new Champions tribe tried, but failed, to infiltrate the majority.


title: Australian Survivor (season 5)

text: The merge occurred with 12 players left; though most of the Champions wanted to pick off the rest of the Contenders, Mat and Shane were threatened by Lydia's challenge prowess and blindsided her before Robbie was eliminated. Having lost his closest ally, Benji overthrew the majority to blindside Mat before his own elimination followed. The pairs of Brian & Monika and Fenella & Shonee realigned against Sharn; she played an idol, and Brian's paranoia led to him deviating from their alliance's split-vote plan in order to vote out Fenella. Shonee sought revenge by eliminating Brian's own closest ally Monika, but Brian's victory in the final four immunity challenge led to Shane and Sharn voting out Shonee. Sharn then voted Brian out after winning final immunity, staying true to her final two deal with Shane.


title: Australian Survivor (season 5)

text: Despite being the more strategically and physically dominant of the two, Sharn was criticized for being unlikeable and preaching loyalty despite playing both sides and failing to save her closest ally Mat. Shane, however, despite being less aggressive, was commended for her grace, likeability, underdog status and work ethic despite her advanced age. She won the votes from the female jurors Fenella, Monika and Shonee, plus Mat and Brian to narrowly win the title of Sole Survivor.


title: Australian Survivor (season 5)

text: Ratings data is from OzTAM and represents the viewership from the 5 largest Australian metropolitan centres (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide).


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: On August 20, 2010, Ben McDaniel (born April 15, 1980), of Memphis, Tennessee, United States, was reported missing after employees in the dive shop at Vortex Spring, north of Ponce de Leon, Florida, noticed that his pickup truck had remained in the shop's parking lot for the previous two days. McDaniel, who had been diving regularly at the spring while living in his parents' nearby beach house, had last been seen by two of those employees on the evening of August 18, on a dive entering a cave below the water's surface. While he was initially believed to have drowned on that dive, and his parents still strongly believe his body is in an inaccessible reach of the extensive cave system, no trace of him has ever been found. The state of Florida issued his family a death certificate in 2013.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: McDaniel had been living at his parents' beach house on the Emerald Coast during a sabbatical in the wake of a divorce, a business failure, and the death of his younger brother two years earlier. An avid diver since his teens, he had been a regular at the spring, where he had apparently been covertly exploring the cave despite lacking the required certification. Lengthy searches have only located some anomalously placed and filled decompression tanks; many of the divers who took part in those searches believe that if McDaniel is indeed dead, his body is not in the cave as he was too large to enter its narrower passages. The McDaniels devoted their family's extensive financial resources to the search, at one point guaranteeing the replacement cost of a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV). A reward they offered was rescinded in 2012 after the death of another diver who may have been trying to collect it, vindicating the criticism of the divers who had warned of that possibility and resented the McDaniels' insinuation that those who had searched for their son at great personal risk had not been "brave" enough.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Although the McDaniels continue to believe Ben's body is in an area of the cave beyond the reach of current search capabilities, they have also entertained the possibility that his death was not an accident but the result of foul play. A private investigator they hired believes that his body may have been removed before any authorities were contacted, or that he may even have been murdered on land and the narrative of his disappearance fabricated as a cover story.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: A segment of Investigation Discovery's "Disappeared" has been devoted to the case, as well as "Ben's Vortex", a documentary co-directed by diver Jill Heinerth. In addition to the accident and murder theories, the documentary also considers the possibility that Ben staged the disappearance to escape a troubled recent past that included a divorce and financial setbacks. The McDaniels have vehemently rejected that theory, pointing to the dog and girlfriend he left behind as well as doubting that he would have knowingly subjected them to that level of grief after seeing how his brother's death had affected them.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: In the late 2000s Ben McDaniel was going through a difficult period in his life. The oldest of three sons born to Shelby and Patty McDaniel, a wealthy couple who lived in Collierville, Tennessee, outside Memphis, he had returned to live with his parents after his marriage ended in divorce and his construction business failed, the latter leaving him with tax debts of almost $50,000 to the Internal Revenue Service and the state of Tennessee.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: He was also still grieving for his younger brother Paul, a frequent rock climbing partner during their youth, who died in 2008 at the age of 22 from a stroke. Ben had found Paul unconscious in the family home and tried to revive him; he later became active in raising money for the foundation his parents established to support research into prevention and treatment of strokes. Later, it was revealed that Paul's cause of death was "anoxic encephalopathy due to combined drug (opiate/benzodiazepine) toxicity", a drug overdose, not a stroke. Paul was not being prescribed opiates.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: The McDaniels suggested their son take a sabbatical, offering to support him financially while he and his dog, a chocolate Labrador he had rescued, lived in the family's beach home at Santa Rosa Beach on the Emerald Coast of the Florida Panhandle. He accepted the offer and moved into the house in April 2010. His parents and girlfriend say the move was proving beneficial, as Ben was beginning to think and talk about moving on from his recent personal setbacks.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Relocating to the Gulf Coast allowed Ben to indulge in his preferred hobby, scuba diving. He had first taken it up at the age of 15, practicing with his tanks in the family pool. Despite living on the coast during his sabbatical, he preferred to dive in fresh water, becoming a frequent visitor to Vortex Spring, located inland a short distance north of Ponce de Leon.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: At Vortex Spring, which claims on its website to be the largest diving facility in the state, divers descend into clear waters at a constant temperature of fed by the Floridan Aquifer. Diving instruction is offered for all levels; experienced divers come for the underwater wildlife and the cavern, which begins below the surface. All divers are required to present proof of open-water certification and sign a release of liability.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: For the most experienced divers, some of whom come from around the world, the main attraction of Vortex Spring is the cave, which starts from the cavern, at a depth of . At the entrance is a sign depicting the Grim Reaper which warns divers of the dangers of continuing onwards. The cave steadily narrows, reaching a makeshift rebar gate with a chain and padlock, at a point almost from the entrance. The dive shop withheld the gate key, unless a diver showed proof of cave diving certification, which requires two months' training including 125 dives with an instructor or certified diving partner. This policy was instituted after the deaths of 13 divers in the cave during the 1990s, and in response to threats from the state to ban diving in the cave entirely. Beginning at the gate, over through the area's limestone bedrock have been mapped, to a depth of ; the cave's full extent is unknown. At some points, the passage narrows to , requiring divers to remove their tanks, push them forward through the passage, and then twist their bodies to follow.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: McDaniel's dives at the site were regular enough that the dive shop employees and other frequent visitors came to know him. One of the employees, Chuck Cronin, believed that while McDaniel had the proper equipment and considerable diving knowledge, he was often overly confident in his abilities and not shy about saying so. That opinion, the "Memphis Commercial Appeal" later reported, was shared by posters on a scuba diving website, scubaboard.com, who had also met Ben during trips to Vortex Spring. (According to a 2014 online comment by his father, he could not find anyone at Vortex Spring willing to be his diving partner, so he did his dives alone.) His parents later defended him from those criticisms by seeing them as positive traits. "Ben was brave," his father later said. "Ben was fearless. He followed his passions."


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: In mid-August, four months into his Florida sojourn, Ben returned to Tennessee for a week. His parents and girlfriend, Emily Greer, said he seemed optimistic. He told them he was working on getting certified as an instructor so he could find a job and that he was researching cave diving with an eye toward getting that certification as well. On his nights out with Greer, he told her of plans to eventually start a diving-related business. On the weekend of August 14–15, he returned to Florida, leaving behind a letter thanking his parents for the sabbatical and promising to look after them as they grew older. They never saw him again.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: On August 18, the Wednesday after he returned to the Santa Rosa Beach house, he went up to Vortex Spring again. In the middle of the day, he did one dive. Other divers saw him looking closely at the area around the cave entrance, as if, it was later reported, he was planning something. After resurfacing he filled his tanks at the dive shop, a transaction recorded on security cameras (it is not known what he filled those tanks with). He spent much of the rest of the afternoon by himself alongside the spring, witnesses said, testing equipment and making notes in his dive log.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: The day had been hot, with temperatures around , and as evening came Ben began preparing for another dive. He called his mother on his cell phone, the last contact he had with his family. Around 7:30 p.m., as the sun began to set, he went in again.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Cronin and fellow employee Eduardo Taran, on their way back from a dive themselves – something they often did on Wednesdays after the shop closed – saw Ben as he began descending, with his lights on and wearing a helmet, suggesting he was venturing into the cave. Taran, who had suspected for some time that Ben was forcing the gate open, went down to him and unlocked it, watching Ben go in and then returning to Cronin. No one is known to have seen him since.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: On some nights when they had seen Ben dive late, the two had stayed at the spring after resurfacing until they saw bubbles on the surface, indicating that he was beginning to decompress in order to safely resurface. But on the night of the 18th, they instead went back to Taran's house for coffee.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Ben's truck was still in the parking lot the next morning, but with many summer visitors coming to enjoy the site's many water-based recreational opportunities and picnic grounds in addition to diving, the employees said they were too busy to notice. They did see the truck the next morning. After determining that no one else had seen Ben, Taran called the Holmes County sheriff's office.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Upon arrival, the sheriff's deputies sealed off the spring with crime-scene tape. Ben's tanks, wet suit and other diving equipment were not present and there were no signs of a struggle near his truck or anywhere else he could have been. His wallet, with almost $1,100 in cash, and cell phone were in the cab of his truck; dive logs showed that he had explored the cave and a map he made was also found.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: At the Santa Rosa Beach house officers found his dog, hungry from having been unfed for two days. Based on these circumstances, police and dive shop employees assumed that he had never resurfaced and had in all probability drowned somewhere in the cave trying to get out. Cadaver dogs alerted on the water surface, further supporting that theory.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Reports of a missing diver in the Vortex Spring cave spread and other cave divers volunteered for what they assumed would be a recovery operation, taking advantage of the weekend. The McDaniels were called, and they drove to Florida, along with Greer, to observe from the shore. News media in the Panhandle and Memphis followed the search closely.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Captain Harry Hamilton, an investigator in Holmes County, assumed at first that a very large number of divers, both amateur and expert, would volunteer to search for and recover McDaniel's body. He soon realized that very few divers "in the world" possessed the training and skill to attempt such a dangerous cave diving recovery. Experienced divers scoured the cave, investigating small crevices and fissures Ben might have entered in a panicked attempt to exit the cave, as his tanks ran low, a pattern found in other cave diving deaths. It was risky work, and one diver said they had nearly died during the search. Multiple divers searched through the weekend, but did not find Ben.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: They did, however, find some of his equipment. Two tanks known to belong to McDaniel were found near the entrance to the cave. But this discovery struck some searchers as inconsistent with Ben's supposed intent to explore the cave he was technically not permitted to enter. Cave divers usually place extra "air" tanks, needed for decompression, at points along their exit route so they can follow them out, and not only at the entrance to the cave. When tested, the tanks were found to contain normal air, not the specialized gas mix required for diving at depth. Ben would have been aware of this requirement, if he had been researching cave diving, as his parents reported.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: More detailed information regarding tanks was given in the "Ben's Vortex" documentary. Three tanks believed to belong to Ben were recovered. Tank one, an "aluminum 80" (80 cubic ft capacity), full tank with a regulator, was found inside the cave. Two other tanks, lacking regulators, were attached to the "talk box" in the outer cavern area, (Piano Room) where the talk box was located at the time. All contained normal air, not a specialized gas mix. The talk box, originally located in the Piano Room of the cave, was moved to the basin area of Vortex Springs and is now at a depth of only .


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: By Sunday, August 22, no other signs of Ben had been found. A text message was sent to Edd Sorenson, a veteran cave diver and recovery specialist with nearly 2,500 logged dives. He was on a yacht in the Bahamas, leading an expedition. He came to Vortex Springs the next day. Other divers, and an official with International Underwater Cave Rescue and Recovery, told him it was too dangerous to search any deeper into the cave.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Sorenson, who has been described by the "Tampa Bay Times" as being able to go where other divers cannot, persisted. He made three separate dives that day, going (by his account) into the cave, further than those sections Ben had mapped, using a diver propulsion vehicle and smaller tanks to increase his range. He found nothing – no body, and no evidence of one such as increased activity by carnivorous aquatic scavengers, nor any evidence that Ben had gotten into those sections, such as marks on the cave walls or disturbed silt.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Ben was tall and weighed , one inch (2.5 cm) taller and heavier than Sorenson. Without cave diving training, Sorenson said, there was no way Ben could have gotten through some of the narrower passages, called restrictions by divers, in the cave. "I know what I'm doing and I barely made it through," he told the "Commercial Appeal". "The last place I searched was pristine, without a mark that a diver had been there. It would be impossible to go through that restriction without making a mark on the floor or ceiling. He's not in there."


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: The McDaniels did what they could to help the search. They hired Steve Keene, who had originally mapped the Vortex Spring cave in 2003, to look. After seven dives, he apologized to the McDaniels for not finding any fresh sign of Ben. "If he's in there, I don't know where he'd be," he said later. They agreed to put up $54,000 to guarantee the cost of replacing a remotely operated underwater vehicle brought to the spring by the Fort Lauderdale police, in case it was lost in the cave. (Due to technical issues, it was unable to go any farther than the human divers had ventured.) In total, 16 divers spent 36 straight days looking for Ben's body in the cave with no results. Volunteer searches continued afterwards at the spring through November, often with the McDaniels and Greer in attendance.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: With the cave thoroughly searched, some divers began questioning whether Ben was there at all. Perhaps his body had been secretly removed from the cave before searching began and disposed of on land or it had washed out through the spring's outlet. Others, including Cronin and Kelly, suggested he had staged his own disappearance to start his life over under another identity and escape his past troubles. Authorities began to consider these possibilities and adjust their search.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: The cadaver dogs searched the woods around Vortex Spring without success. Assisted by helicopters, they searched the swamps along the spring's outflow into Blue Creek and Sandy Creek to the Choctawhatchee River. Thirty separate tests of the water over the next several months showed no sign of an increase in the bacteria that would indicate the presence of a decomposing human body. Taran, who said he had let Ben into the cave despite knowing he lacked certification to dive in it, passed a lie detector test of his account.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Frustrated by the limitations the search had thus far encountered, and increasingly coming to believe that Ben's body was in an area of the cave no one had yet reached, the McDaniels offered a reward of $10,000, raised from money contributed at a benefit held on what would have been their son's 31st birthday, at the end of the year to anyone "brave" enough to go to those places and find it. The insinuation of cowardice alienated divers who had already risked their lives searching the cave, and raised fears among them that it would only encourage untrained divers to enter the cave and take potentially fatal risks for the reward money. Undeterred, the McDaniels increased the award, twice.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: In March 2012, by which time the reward had been increased to $30,000, the fears of the cave divers were realized. Two days before the Investigation Discovery cable channel series "Disappeared" aired a segment on Ben's case, a diver from Biloxi, Mississippi, Larry Higginbotham, died in the cavern at Vortex Spring. His body was found the next day after he, too, had failed to return from a dive. "He just got himself in a pinch and couldn't find his way back out", said one of the divers who recovered the body.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: There was no explicit evidence that Higginbotham was trying to find Ben and claim the reward. The divers who recovered his body believed he was, however. "He was found near a shovel left near a restriction so small that no one could get through it," said Sorenson, who had pulled Higginbotham's body back through four tight restrictions.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: The following month, amid increasing criticism, the McDaniels rescinded the reward offer. "Not only did it endanger the lives of divers who would risk going farther than they should," said Sorenson, who was by then even more firmly convinced that their son had not died in the cave, "it put all of our lives at risk because we have to go in to recover the bodies." By that time the McDaniels had also come to believe that, if he had not died in the cave, Ben had been murdered. A phone tip line they set up had not received any calls, and no one who had not yet said anything was likely to be further motivated to do so, they said. (Ben's father elaborated the following year that the family was told to rescind the reward while in the Vortex Spring area for exactly this reason.)


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: McDaniel was not the only person associated with Vortex Spring at the time facing serious legal issues. Lowell Kelly, who had owned Vortex Spring since 2007, was facing criminal charges. He had allegedly taken a temporary employee who he said owed him thousands of dollars out into an isolated wooded area and attempted to beat him with a baseball bat to make him pay up. The man escaped, and prosecutors later charged Kelly with assault and kidnapping in the incident.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: In 2011 Kelly ameliorated the charges against him by pleading no contest. Consequently he was fined, and sentenced to seven years of probation. He died before the first year was completed.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: During a chili cook-off he was hosting at Vortex Spring in December, Kelly reportedly fell down the stairs and sustained a head injury. A guest drove Kelly to his home in Ponce de Leon, helped Kelly shower and then placed a blanket over him and left Kelly to rest in the bathtub. In the morning, a different person came to Kelly's home, and realized his condition had worsened overnight. Emergency medical services responded to a call and he was admitted to a hospital in Pensacola.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Kelly remained comatose, and was eventually placed in hospice care, where he died the following month. The Holmes County sheriff's office, which had also been the lead agency investigating the McDaniel disappearance, implied that it had not gotten the full story of what had occurred the night of Kelly's injury and that it had some questions it wanted answered. However, police would not name the individuals who had taken Kelly home and found him there in the morning. The sheriff's office also refused to release the autopsy report to the "Northwest Florida Daily News" despite its status as a public record under the Florida Sunshine Law; it claimed that release of the report would compromise an ongoing investigation.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: By 2011, it seemed unlikely that Ben's body would be found in the cave. The McDaniels began considering the possibility that he had died as a result of foul play, and that his diving disappearance was staged to cover up a crime. Or, perhaps he had been found dead by the dive shop staff, who feared the consequences of that discovery. They hired a Florida private investigator, Lynn-Marie Carty, who found that other people associated with Vortex Spring besides Kelly had criminal records. "There is just as much reason to look above the water for Ben's body as there was to look below it in the cave," she told the "Commercial Appeal".


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Some other events reported to have occurred on the day Ben disappeared supported that theory. Kelly said shortly afterwards that on that evening, a man he described as "wild-eyed" and apparently drunk showed up at the shop and asked if it was too late to dive; the possibility has been raised that this man, if he existed, may have been involved. Earlier that day, a diver had had a confrontation with several teenagers on the property about their drinking; they eventually left but may have come back in an attempt to exact revenge.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: In March 2012, the McDaniels arranged for cadaver dogs to search the area of the springs again, but with no results.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Among the divers who heard about the case was Jill Heinerth, a Canadian who has set the world record for deepest dive by a woman. Afterwards, she and her husband Robert McClellan, both certified cave divers and documentary filmmakers, went to Vortex Spring to make a short video. They hoped to show it to the McDaniel family in the hopes of giving them a better understanding of the risks associated with cave diving, and "closure", as Heinerth put it. At the time she believed that Ben, whatever his fate, was not in the cave's depths.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: But then during the research process, she was able to read Ben's dive logs and the map he had made. She realized that he had, in fact, gotten very far into the cave. Knowing that divers in trouble will often burrow deeper into narrow crevices such as those within the cave in a mistaken effort to get back to the surface, she revised her opinion. "I simply see no reasonable evidence that he is NOT in the cave," the "Commercial Appeal" quoted her as writing in an email.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: She and McClellan turned their private video short into a feature-length documentary, "Ben's Vortex", released in 2012. It considers all the theories regarding its subject's disappearance: an accident as originally believed, a murder or coverup of the accident as the McDaniels have sometimes alleged, and the possibility of a staged disappearance to allow Ben to escape his problems, which McClellan believes.


title: Disappearance of Ben McDaniel

text: Shelby does not believe Ben had any intention of abandoning his life. He had left his dog in Santa Rosa Beach and had not given Greer any indication of such plans. Shelby also noted that Ben had seen the impact Paul's death had had on his parents. "After what we went through with Paul, we know our son well enough to know he wouldn't put us through that again," his mother told the "Commercial Appeal".


title: The Biggest Little Farm

text: The Biggest Little Farm is a 2018 American documentary film, directed by John Chester. The film profiles the life of John Chester and his wife Molly as they acquire and establish themselves on Apricot Lane Farms in Moorpark, California.


title: The Biggest Little Farm

text: The film premiered on September 1, 2018 at the Telluride Film Festival. It had its second screening at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was named second runner-up for the . It was selected as the Opening Night film at Doc NYC in November 2018. The film was screened as part of the Spotlight Section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. It also screened at the 29th New Orleans Film Festival on October 24, 2018.


title: The Biggest Little Farm

text: The film was acquired for theatrical distribution by the independent film company Neon, and was released on May 10, 2019 in Los Angeles and New York. The film expanded into Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis, Nashville, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington D.C on May 17 and additional markets throughout May and June. The film was acquired by The Exchange for international distribution.


title: The Biggest Little Farm

text: In 2010, married couple Molly and John Chester decide to leave their old lives in Los Angeles behind and purchase an abandoned, 234-acre farm near Moorpark in neighboring Ventura County, California. Rechristening it "Apricot Lane Farms", the couple spends the next seven years transforming the arid landscape into a fully functional farm and biodiverse habitat for neighboring flora and fauna. They face hardship as the difficulties of keeping a farm running mount up, often resulting in frustration and anger, but also happiness at their harmonious relationship with nature.


title: The Biggest Little Farm

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads, "Uplifting, educational, and entertaining, "The Biggest Little Farm" is an environmental advocacy documentary with a satisfying side dish of hope for the future." On Metacritic, it holds a 74/100 score (indicating "generally favorable reviews") based on 25 critics.


title: The Biggest Little Farm

text: In his "Variety" review of the film, Peter DeBruge noted that it "feel[s] like fresh air for the soul.", and "New York Times" critic Glenn Kenny wrote "it may also revive your wonder at the weird but ultimately awe-inspiring ways in which humans can help nature do its work". Additionally, "The Los Angeles Times"'s Robert Abele wrote that the film is a "lush tour of transformed land and photogenic fauna, is so appealing as a chronicle of dedicated do-gooders who actually did good (and shot every frame of it). [...] Watching the Chesters fight past disillusionment to learn the real lessons of harvesting in communion with nature is what gives the movie its rousing, illuminating power."


title: The Biggest Little Farm

text: On December 4, 2019, the film's composer, Jeff Beal, conducted the Hollywood Chamber Orchestra, performing his score live to picture at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.


title: The Biggest Little Farm

text: The film is distributed by Energia in Latin America. It is currently available for streaming in Netflix Latin America as "Mi gran pequeña granja".


title: Dexter (season 7)

text: The seventh season of "Dexter" premiered on September 30, 2012. The season follows Dexter's tangles with a Ukrainian mob boss and introduces the character Hannah McKay, a mysterious widow with a green thumb and a checkered past. The season seven story arc is continued over the course of the eighth season, which premiered on June 30, 2013.


title: Dexter (season 7)

text: On November 21, 2011, Showtime renewed "Dexter" for both a seventh and eighth seasons, each consisting of 12 episodes. Showtime officially announced that the seventh season would premiere Sunday, September 30, 2012. These two seasons feature a story arc spanning across both seasons. The premiere episode of Season 7 featured a flashback to Debra and Dexter's childhood. On April 24, it was confirmed that Ray Stevenson would guest star in the upcoming Season 7, and he would play the head of a Ukrainian crime syndicate who arrives in Miami determined to find out who killed one of his associates. Jason Gedrick appears in a multi-episode arc playing the manager of a Miami-area gentlemen’s club that is linked to a high-profile murder case. Yvonne Strahovski, known for starring in the NBC television series "Chuck", joined "Dexter" as Hannah McKay, a woman with a checkered past who arrives to help Miami Metro Homicide reopen an old murder case out of mutual benefit, and becomes Dexter's new love interest.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: Rachel Zoe Rosenzweig (born September 1, 1971) is an American fashion designer, businesswoman and author who rose to prominence as a celebrity wardrobe stylist. She has been credited with the creation of "the boho-meets-rock chic look that came to define a new breed of Hollywood ‘it’-girls who were as adept at setting trends as they were at causing trouble" in the mid-2000s. Describing her signature look to "Vogue" magazine, Zoe said: "It's very 60s to 70s glamour. It's Mod meets Grecian. A lot of gold and a lot of bronze, shimmer and glamour, but relaxed glamour, very unstructured, bold accessories." Zoe's clients as a stylist have included Cameron Diaz, Kate Hudson, Kate Beckinsale, Debra Messing, Demi Moore, Liv Tyler, Joy Bryant, Molly Sims, Beau Garett, Eva Mendes, Paula Patton, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lawrence, Miley Cyrus, and Pauly Shore.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: During the mid-2000s, Zoe's look was heavily associated with Nicole Richie, who hired Zoe as a stylist in 2005, as well as with actresses Mischa Barton and Lindsay Lohan. Zoe's influence on her clients was discussed in the media, with speculation that she was responsible for Richie's widely-reported weight loss and more generally setting a trend for 'size zero' bodies. The "LA Times" claimed that "Fashion insiders have whispered privately that Zoe is single-handedly bringing back anorexia", accusations that she denied. In December 2006, Zoe was fired by Richie and the media reported a "feud" between the pair, who had previously been close friends. Following the subsequent decline of 'boho' fashion, the tabloid media lost much of its interest in Zoe, although she continued working as a stylist to celebrities.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: Zoe manages lifestyle brand The Zoe Report, which began as a newsletter which she launched in 2009. She launched her eponymous fashion brand in 2011. From 2008 until 2013, Zoe starred in the Bravo reality television series "The Rachel Zoe Project", which ran for five seasons.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: She was born Rachel Zoe Rosenzweig in New York City, the daughter of art collectors Leslie and Ron Rosenzweig. Ron Rosenweig managed two different companies. She has a sister, Pamela Rosenzweig. Zoe dropped her last name in favor of her middle when she began her career as a fashion stylist, as Rosenzweig sounded "too Jewish".


title: Rachel Zoe

text: Zoe grew up in Millburn, New Jersey and graduated from Millburn High School. She studied psychology and sociology at George Washington University, where she met her future husband, Rodger Berman. After graduating, she moved to New York City to pursue a career in fashion. She later moved to Los Angeles in 2002.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: Zoe began her career working for "YM Magazine" aged 22, before leaving to work as a freelance publicist after three years. She later changed her focus to fashion. Around 2002–03, Zoe worked with her "first big client", Jennifer Garner. In 2004, Zoe styled Garner for the Academy Awards, which she considers a turning point for her career as a stylist. "This was when I crossed over from the pop stars -- I realized that it was much more my style, creatively, to do the incredibly glamorous red-carpet thing."


title: Rachel Zoe

text: In 2005, Zoe was hired by reality TV star Nicole Richie as a stylist. Zoe's association with Richie led to tabloid coverage that elevated her profile. Zoe became known as the pioneer of the 'boho-chic' look. This look is influenced by the 1970s, consisting of oversized jewellery, loose-fitting dresses and shirts, paired with a slim frame. Those wearing the look were described as "Zoebots".


title: Rachel Zoe

text: Critics accused Zoe of promoting the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, both during the height of her fame as a celebrity stylist in the mid-2000s and in retrospective work on that period: writing for "Grazia" in 2020 on the 2000s fashion revival of the early 2020s, Laura Antonia Jordan wrote, "The ‘zoebot’ look became inextricable from the glorification of size zero. The cartoonish proportions only served to exaggerate those jutting hipbones, spaghetti limbs and protruding clavicles."


title: Rachel Zoe

text: There was also media speculation that Zoe gave clients drugs to lose weight, which she refuted in a 2007 interview with "W Magazine": “There was something that came out about me giving horse pills or diet pills from Mexico to my clients.” “Anyone who knows me, they laugh. I’m so drug clueless. If I can get through a glass and a half of wine in a night, that’s a momentous occasion."


title: Rachel Zoe

text: After she fired Zoe as her stylist in 2006, Richie wrote in a MySpace blog which was later deleted, "What 35-year-old raisin-face whispers her order of three pieces of asparagus for dinner at Chateau every night, and hides her deathly disorder by pointing the finger at me, and used her last paycheck I wrote her to pay for a publicist instead of a nutritionist? HINT: Her nickname is Lettucecup."


title: Rachel Zoe

text: The blog was widely interpreted to be written about Zoe. In response, Zoe released a statement to "TMZ": "After trying to be a good friend to Nicole, we made a mutual decision to sever our working relationship. Changes are inevitable in any business relationship. I am fortunate to have a wonderful life; I have been married for 10 years and been a stylist for 15 years. And I am lucky to work with a diverse group of women, of all shapes and sizes, that inspire me every day. I have nothing but love for Nicole and wish her only health and happiness."


title: Rachel Zoe

text: In September 2008, Zoe's reality series, "The Rachel Zoe Project", debuted on Bravo. The series' second season premiered in August 2009. Bravo announced they would be picking up a third season of the show which premiered in August 2010 and covered the departure of Zoe's longtime assistant, Taylor Jacobson, while introducing her new assistant, Ashley. The fourth season premiered in September 2011 and involved Zoe dealing with Brad Goreski's departure as well as her pregnancy with her first child. The fifth and final season aired during spring 2013, focusing on the development of her collection and other projects like blowout salon DreamDry, as well as the preparation for the release of her second book, "Living in Style: Inspiration and Advice for Everyday Glamour".


title: Rachel Zoe

text: Zoe founded a free daily newsletter called "The Zoe Report" in August 2009, which later grew into a lifestyle brand. The newsletter featured items that Zoe was coveting in the worlds of fashion, beauty and lifestyle, and had over 750,000 subscribers. In 2011, Zoe launched Zoe Beautiful focused on all things beauty. "The Zoe Report" was acquired by Bustle Digital Group in 2019.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: In 2015 The Zoe Report launched Box of Style, a service that delivers a selection of Zoe-approved goods to subscribers' doorsteps four times a year. Consumers may purchase a single box for $100 or pay $350 for an annual subscription. Subscribers receive items valued at over $300 quarterly each year, including one "hero" item that retails for over $100. This special piece is revealed in advance, but all other items (which may include clothing, beauty, accessories, home or lifestyle items) are a surprise.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: In July 2015, a talk show entitled "Fashionably Late with Rachel Zoe" was announced, with Zoe as host and focusing on "what's hot and what's not" in the fashion world. The show lasted for one season. Richie collaborated with accessories maker Judith Leiber on a line of bags.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: In 2007 Zoe partnered with Served as the face of Samsung's BlackJack cell phone national ad campaign.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: "Style A to Zoe: The Art of Fashion, Beauty and Everything Glamour", a book co-written with Rose Apodaca, was published in 2007.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: In 2010, she made an appearance on "Gossip Girl" as herself. Zoe also appeared on VH1 reality TV show "Barely Famous".


title: Rachel Zoe

text: In 2011, Zoe released her first contemporary collection of separates, footwear, and handbags influenced by her vintage-inspired, 60s and 70s style. The collection was available in over 275 department stores including Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom, and Neiman Marcus. In 2012 Rachel announced her plans to expand the line to include jewellery and cold weather accessories. Zoe's brand did not participate in the 2014 New York Fashion Week.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: In 2009, the Luxe Rachel Zoe collection, a QVC exclusive consisting of handbags, jewelry, scarves, sunglasses, and outerwear, was announced. The line sold over 260,000 units.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: In February 2011, Swedish fashion retailer Lindex announced a collaboration with Zoe, her first bigger collaboration with a European brand.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: In 2019, a partnership between Zoe and Starbucks Asia Pacific was announced, with a six-piece collection of Starbucks X Rachel Zoe branded items appearing in select Starbuck stores in Asia.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: Zoe met Rodger Berman in 1991, when both were attending The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. They married in 1998, and have two sons, born in March 2011 and December 2013. The family live in Los Angeles.


title: Rachel Zoe

text: Zoe has been the subject of media speculation because of her "superthin" frame, with some press labeling her "anorexic". In a 2008 interview with "Harper's Bazaar", she said, "Truthfully, I've never seen myself as being too thin. Sometimes I'll look at photos and be like, 'Oh, that's not a good look.' But generally speaking, I'm not too thin."


title: Paul Simon discography

text: Paul Simon is an American singer-songwriter who is possibly best known as a member of the folk-duo Simon & Garfunkel with Art Garfunkel. He has released studio albums, live albums, compilation albums and singles. His music career has spanned over 50 years. He started recording music in the 1950s and his most recent album, "In the Blue Light", was released on September 7, 2018.


title: James I of Aragon

text: James I the Conqueror (, ; 2 February 1208 – 27 July 1276) was King of Aragon and Lord of Montpellier from 1213 to 1276; King of Majorca from 1231 to 1276; and Valencia from 1238 to 1276 and Count of Barcelona. His long reign—the longest of any Iberian monarch—saw the expansion of the Crown of Aragon in three directions: Languedoc to the north, the Balearic Islands to the southeast, and Valencia to the south. By a treaty with Louis IX of France, he achieved the renunciation of any possible claim of French suzerainty over the County of Barcelona and the other Catalan counties, while he renounced northward expansion and taking back the once Catalan territories in Occitania and vassal counties loyal to the County of Barcelona, lands that were lost by his father Peter II of Aragon in the Battle of Muret during the Albigensian Crusade and annexed by the Kingdom of France, and then decided to turn south. His great part in the Reconquista was similar in Mediterranean Spain to that of his contemporary Ferdinand III of Castile in Andalusia. One of the main reasons for this formal renunciation of most of the once Catalan territories in Languedoc and Occitania and any expansion into them is the fact that he was raised by the Knights Templar crusaders, who had defeated his father fighting for the Pope alongside the French, so it was effectively forbidden for him to try to maintain the traditional influence of the Count of Barcelona that previously existed in Occitania and Languedoc.


title: James I of Aragon

text: As a legislator and organiser, he occupies a high place among the European kings. James compiled the "Llibre del Consolat de Mar", which governed maritime trade and helped establish Aragonese supremacy in the western Mediterranean. He was an important figure in the development of the Catalan language, sponsoring Catalan literature and writing a quasi-autobiographical chronicle of his reign: the "Llibre dels fets".


title: James I of Aragon

text: James was born at Montpellier as the only son of Peter II of Aragon and Marie of Montpellier. As a child, James was made a pawn in the power politics of Provence, where his father was engaged in struggles helping the Cathar heretics of Albi against the Albigensian Crusaders led by Simon IV de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who were trying to exterminate them. Peter endeavoured to placate the northern crusaders by arranging a marriage between his two-year-old son James and Simon's daughter. He entrusted the boy to be educated in Montfort's care in 1211, but was soon forced to take up arms against him, dying at the Battle of Muret on 12 September 1213. Montfort would willingly have used James as a means of extending his own power had not the Aragonese appealed to Pope Innocent III, who insisted that Montfort surrender him. James was handed over to the papal legate Peter of Benevento at Carcassonne in May or June 1214.


title: James I of Aragon

text: James was then sent to Monzón, where he was entrusted to the care of Guillem de Montredó, the head of the Knights Templar in Aragon and Provence; the regency meanwhile fell to his great-uncle Sancho, Count of Roussillon, and his son, the king's cousin, Nuño. The kingdom was given over to confusion until, in 1217, the Templars and some of the more loyal nobles brought the young king to Zaragoza.


title: James I of Aragon

text: In 1221, he was married to Eleanor, daughter of Alfonso VIII of Castile. The next six years of his reign were full of rebellions on the part of the nobles. By the Peace of Alcalá of 31 March 1227, the nobles and the king came to terms.


title: James I of Aragon

text: In 1228, James faced the sternest opposition yet from a vassal. Guerau IV de Cabrera occupied the County of Urgell in opposition to Aurembiax, the heiress of Ermengol VIII, who had died without sons in 1208. Although Aurembiax's mother, Elvira, had made herself a protégée of James's father, upon her death in 1220 Guerau occupied the county and displaced Aurembiax, claiming that a woman could not inherit.


title: James I of Aragon

text: James intervened on behalf of Aurembiax, to whom he owed protection. He bought Guerau off and allowed Aurembiax to reclaim her territory, which she did at Lleida, probably also becoming one of James' earliest mistresses. She surrendered Lleida to James and agreed to hold Urgell in fief for him. On her death in 1231, James exchanged the Balearic Islands for Urgell with her widower, Peter of Portugal.


title: James I of Aragon

text: From 1230 to 1232, James negotiated with Sancho VII of Navarre, who desired his help against his nephew and closest living male relative, Theobald IV of Champagne. James and Sancho negotiated a treaty whereby James would inherit Navarre on the old Sancho's death, but when this occurred in 1234, the Navarrese nobles elevated Theobald to the throne instead, and James disputed it. Pope Gregory IX was required to intervene. In the end, James accepted Theobald's succession.


title: James I of Aragon

text: James endeavoured to form a state straddling the Pyrenees in order to counterbalance the power of France north of the river Loire. As with the much earlier Visigothic attempt, this policy was victim to physical, cultural, and political obstacles. As in the case of Navarre, he declined to launch into perilous adventures. By the Treaty of Corbeil, signed in May 1258, he ended his conflict with Louis IX of France, securing the renunciation of any French claims to sovereignty over Catalonia, including the County of Barcelona.


title: James I of Aragon

text: After his false start at uniting Aragon with the Kingdom of Navarre through a scheme of mutual adoption, James turned to the south and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. On 5 September 1229, the troops from Aragon, consisting of 155 ships, 1,500 horsemen and 15,000 soldiers, set sail from Tarragona, Salou, and Cambrils, in southern Catalonia, to conquer Majorca from Abu Yahya, the semi-independent Almohad governor of the island. Although a group of Aragonese knights took part in the campaign because of their obligations to the king, the conquest of Majorca was mainly a Catalan undertaking, and Catalans would later make up the majority of Majorca's settlers. James conquered Majorca on 31 December 1229, and Menorca (1232) and Ibiza (1235) were later acquired during the reconquest.


title: James I of Aragon

text: Valencia capitulated to Aragonese rule on 28 September 1238, following an extensive campaign that included the Siege of Burriana and the decisive Battle of the Puig, where the Aragonese commander, Bernat Guillem I d'Entença, who was also the king's cousin, died from wounds received in action.


title: James I of Aragon

text: During his remaining two decades after Corbeil, James warred with the Moors in Murcia, on behalf of his son-in-law Alfonso X of Castile. On 26 March 1244, the two monarchs signed the Treaty of Almizra to establish their zones of expansion into Andalusia so as to prevent squabbling between them. Specifically, it defined the borders of the newly created Kingdom of Valencia. James signed it on that date, but Alfonso did not affirm it until much later. According to the treaty, all lands south of a line from Biar to Villajoyosa through Busot were reserved for Castile.


title: James I of Aragon

text: Abaqa, the "Khan of Tartary" (actually the Ilkhan), corresponded with James in early 1267, inviting him to join forces with the Mongols and go on crusade. James sent an ambassador to Abaqa in the person of Jayme Alaric de Perpignan, who returned with a Mongol embassy in 1269. Pope Clement IV tried to dissuade James from crusading, regarding his moral character as sub-par, and Alfonso X did the same. Nonetheless, James, who was then campaigning in Murcia, made peace with Muhammad I, the Sultan of Granada, and set about collecting funds for a crusade. After organising the government for his absence and assembling a fleet at Barcelona in September 1269, he was ready to sail east. The troubadour Olivier lo Templier composed a song praising the voyage and hoping for its success. A storm, however, drove him off course, and he landed at Aigues-Mortes. According to the continuator of William of Tyre, he returned via Montpellier "por l'amor de sa dame Berenguiere" ("for the love of his lady Berengaria") and abandoned any further effort at a crusade.


title: James I of Aragon

text: James's sons Pedro Fernández and Fernán Sánchez, who had been given command of part of the fleet, did continue on their way to Acre, where they arrived in December. They found that Baibars, the Mameluke Sultan of Egypt, had broken his truce with the Kingdom of Jerusalem and was making a demonstration of his military power in front of Acre. During the demonstration, Egyptian troops hidden in the bushes ambushed a returning Frankish force that had been in Galilee. James's sons, initially eager for a fight, changed their minds after this spectacle and returned home via Sicily, where Fernán Sánchez was knighted by Charles of Anjou.


title: James I of Aragon

text: James built and consecrated the Cathedral of Lleida, which was constructed in a style transitional between Romanesque and Gothic with little influence from Moorish styles.


title: James I of Aragon

text: James was a patron of the University of Montpellier, which owed much of its development to his impetus. He also founded a "studium" at Valencia in 1245 and received privileges for it from Pope Innocent IV, but it did not develop as splendidly. In 1263, James presided over a debate in Barcelona between the Jewish rabbi Nahmanides and Pablo Christiani, a prominent "converso".


title: James I of Aragon

text: James was the first great sponsor and patron of vernacular Catalan literature. Indeed, he may himself be called "the first of the Catalan prose writers." James wrote or dictated at various stages a chronicle of his own life in Catalan, "Llibre dels fets", the first autobiography by a Christian king. As well as being a fine example of autobiography, the "Book of Deeds" expresses concepts of the power and purpose of monarchy, examples of loyalty and treachery in the feudal order, and medieval military tactics. More controversially, some historians have looked at these writings as a source of Catalan identity, separate from that of Occitania and Rome.


title: James I of Aragon

text: James also wrote the "Libre de la Saviesa" or "Book of Wisdom." The book contains proverbs from various authors, reaching from the time of King Solomon to nearly his own time with Albertus Magnus. It even contains maxims from the medieval Arab philosophers and from the "Apophthegmata Philosophorum" of Honein ben Ishak, which was probably translated at Barcelona during his reign. A Hebrew translator by the name of Jehuda was employed at James's court during this period.


title: James I of Aragon

text: Though James was himself a prose writer and sponsored mostly prose works, he had an appreciation of verse. In consequence of the Albigensian Crusade, many troubadours were forced to flee southern France and many found refuge in Aragon. Notwithstanding his early patronage of poetry, by the influence of his confessor Ramon de Penyafort, James brought the Inquisition into his realm in 1233 to prevent any vernacular translation of the Bible.


title: James I of Aragon

text: The favour James showed his illegitimate offspring led to protest from the nobles, and to conflicts between his legitimate and illegitimate sons. When one of the latter, Fernán Sánchez, who had behaved with gross ingratitude and treason toward his father, was slain by the legitimate son Peter, the old king recorded his grim satisfaction.


title: James I of Aragon

text: In his will, James divided his states between his sons by Yolanda of Hungary: the aforementioned Peter received the Hispanic possessions on the mainland and James received the Kingdom of Majorca, which included the Balearic Islands, the counties of Roussillon and Cerdanya, and the Lordship of Montpellier. The division inevitably produced fratricidal conflicts. In 1276, the king fell very ill at Alzira and resigned his crown, intending to retire to the monastery of Poblet, but he died at Valencia on 27 July.


title: James I of Aragon

text: His mummified body was later exhumed in 1856, when the monastery was under repair. A photograph of the king was taken. The photograph of the head of the mummy clearly shows the wound in the left eyebrow that the king himself explained in a passage from his Llibre dels fets (Book of Deeds):


title: James I of Aragon

text: As I was coming with the men, I happened to turn my head towards the town in order to look at the Saracens, who had come out in great force, when a cross-bowman shot at me, and hit me beside the sun-hood, and the shot struck me on the head, the bolt lighting near the forehead. It was God's will it did not pass through the head, but the point of the arrow went half through it. In anger I struck the arrow so with my hand that I broke it: the blood came out down my face; I wiped it off with a mantle of "sendal" I had, and went away laughing, that the army might not take alarm.


title: James I of Aragon

text: James first married, in 1221, Eleanor, daughter of Alfonso VIII of Castile and Eleanor of England. Though he later had the marriage annulled, his one son by her was declared legitimate:


title: James I of Aragon

text: In 1235, James remarried to Yolanda, daughter of Andrew II of Hungary by his second wife Yolande de Courtenay. She bore him numerous children:


title: James I of Aragon

text: James married thirdly Teresa Gil de Vidaure, but only by a private document, and left her when (as he claimed) she developed leprosy.


title: James I of Aragon

text: The children in the third marriage were recognised in his last will as being in the line of succession to the throne, should the senior lines fail.


title: James I of Aragon

text: James also had several lovers, both during and after his marriages, and a few bore him illegitimate sons.


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: In international politics, the term gunboat diplomacy refers to the pursuit of foreign policy objectives with the aid of conspicuous displays of naval power, implying or constituting a direct threat of warfare should terms not be agreeable to the superior force.


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: The term "gunboat diplomacy" comes from the nineteenth-century period of imperialism, when Western powersfrom Europe and the United Stateswould intimidate other, less powerful entities into granting concessions through a demonstration of Western superior military capabilities, usually represented by their naval assets. A coastal country negotiating with a Western power would notice that a warship or fleet of ships had appeared off its coast. The mere sight of such power almost always had a considerable effect, and it was rarely necessary for such boats to use other measures, such as demonstrations of firepower.


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: A notable example of gunboat diplomacy, the Don Pacifico affair in 1850, saw the British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston dispatch a squadron of the Royal Navy to blockade the Greek port of Piraeus in retaliation for the assault of a British subject, David Pacifico, in Athens, and the subsequent failure of the government of King Otto to compensate the Gibraltar-born (and therefore British) Pacifico.


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: The effectiveness of such simple demonstrations of a nation's projection of force capabilities meant that nations with naval power and command of the sea could establish military bases (for example, Diego Garcia, 1940s onwards)


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: and arrange economically advantageous relationships around the world. Aside from military conquest, gunboat diplomacy was the dominant way to establish new trade relationships, colonial outposts, and expansion of empire.


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: Peoples lacking the resources or technological innovations available to Western empires found that their own peaceable relationships were readily dismantled in the face of such pressures, and some therefore came to depend on the imperialist nations for access to raw materials or overseas markets.


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: Diplomat and naval thinker James Cable spelled out the nature of gunboat diplomacy in a series of works published between 1971 and 1993. In these, he defined the phenomenon as "the use or threat of limited naval force, otherwise than as an act of war, in order to secure advantage or to avert loss, either in the furtherance of an international dispute or else against foreign nationals within the territory or the jurisdiction of their own state." He further broke down the concept into four key areas:


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: The term "gunboat" may imply naval power-projection - land-based equivalents may include military mobilisation (as in Europe in the northern-hemisphere summer of 1914), the massing of threatening bodies of troops near international borders (as practised by the German Reich in central Europe in the 1940s), or appropriately-timed and -situated military manoeuvres ("exercises").


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: Gunboat diplomacy contrasts with the views held prior to the 18th century and influenced by Hugo Grotius, who in "De jure belli ac pacis" (1625) circumscribed the right to resort to force with what he described as "temperamenta".


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: Gunboat diplomacy is distinct from "defence diplomacy", which is understood to be the peaceful application of resources from across the spectrum of defence to achieve positive outcomes in the development of bilateral and multilateral relationships. "Military diplomacy" is a sub-set of this, tending to refer only to the role of military attachés and their associated activity. Defence diplomacy does not include military operations, but subsumes such other defence activity as international personnel exchanges, ship and aircraft visits, high-level engagement (e.g., ministers and senior defence personnel), training and exercises, security-sector reform, and bilateral military talks.


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: Gunboat diplomacy is considered a form of hegemony. As the United States became a military power in the first decade of the 20th century, the Rooseveltian version of gunboat diplomacy, Big Stick Diplomacy, was partially superseded by dollar diplomacy: replacing the big stick with the "juicy carrot" of American private investment. However, during Woodrow Wilson's presidency, conventional gunboat diplomacy did occur, most notably in the case of the U.S. Army's occupation of Veracruz in 1914, during the Mexican Revolution.


title: Gunboat diplomacy

text: Gunboat diplomacy in the post-Cold War world is still largely based on naval forces, owing to the U.S. Navy's overwhelming sea power. U.S. administrations have frequently changed the disposition of their major naval fleets to influence opinion in foreign capitals. More urgent diplomatic points were made by the Clinton administration in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s (in alliance with the Blair administration) and elsewhere, using sea-launched Tomahawk missiles, and E-3 AWACS airborne surveillance aircraft in a more passive display of military presence. Henry Kissinger, during his tenure as United States Secretary of State, summed up the concept as thus: "An aircraft carrier is 100,000 tons of diplomacy."


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: "Hills Like White Elephants" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. It was first published in August 1927, in the literary magazine "transition", then later in the 1927 short story collection "Men Without Women". Later the story was adapted for film in 2002. "Hills Like White Elephants" is a short 38-minute film; British actor Greg Wise played The American.


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: The story focuses on a conversation between an American man and a young woman, described as a "girl," at a Spanish train station while waiting for a train to Madrid. The girl compares the nearby hills to white elephants. The pair indirectly discuss an "operation" that the man wants the girl to have, which is implied to be an abortion.


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: While there is little context or background information about the characters, several scholars have analyzed how the setting influences the story. The expatriate atmosphere is "a motivating factor in character action," writes Jeffrey Herlihy in "In Paris or Paname: Hemingway’s Expatriate Nationalism". Setting the piece in Spain "dramatizes the peripatetic subject" and allows the man to discuss abortion outside the "restraints from the behavioral prescriptions of his place of origin." This use of a foreign setting makes Spain not merely a background but "a catalyst of textual irony" in the story.


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: Readers must come to their own conclusions based on the dialogue. This has led to varying interpretations of the story. One point of debate is whether or not the woman decides to get an abortion. Critics like Stanley Renner assert that the details in the story imply that the woman decides to keep the baby: "The logic of the story's design enjoins the conclusion that she smiles brightly at the waitress's announcement of the train because she is no longer headed in the direction of having the abortion that she has contemplated only with intense distress". Other critics conclude that the woman ultimately decides to get an abortion. Furthermore, most critics acknowledge that the story has several possible interpretations: "The two organizing questions of the narrative—will they have the abortion or the baby? Will they break up or stay together?—imply four possible outcomes: 1) they will have the abortion and break up; 2) they will have the abortion and stay together; 3) they will have the baby and break up; and 4) they will have the baby and stay together". There are many essays written which argue for all of these possibilities and more. There is no universal consensus because of the nature of the story; the reader is simply not given much information.


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: The description of the valley of Ebro, in the opening paragraph, is often seen as having deeper meanings: "It has long been recognized that the two sides of the valley of the Ebro represent two ways of life, one a sterile perpetuation of the aimless hedonism the couple have been pursuing, the other a participation in life in its full natural sense." Critics also point to the various positions of the characters, with relation to the train tracks and the valley, to show a wide variety of possible symbolic interpretations.


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: Doris Lanier writes about the significance of absinthe (which the girl is reminded of when they drink anisette) in the story. Lanier explains the drink "was alluring not only because of its narcotic effects but also because of its reputation as an aphrodisiac." Lanier asserts that every detail in "Hills Like White Elephants" is intentionally placed by Hemingway, and that the absinthe could have several possible connotations. She postulates that "the addictive quality of the drink…is meant to emphasize the addictive nature of the couple's lifestyle…It is an empty, meaningless existence that revolves around traveling, sex, drinking, looking at things, and having pointless conversations about these things". Another possible interpretation of the absinthe relates to its appeal and effects. Like the man and woman's relationship, it is alluring at first, but "it becomes a destroyer of the child, who is aborted; a destroyer of the girl, who endures the physical and emotional pain of aborting the child she wants; and a destroyer of the couple's relationship". It is important to note that this interpretation assumes the couple have the abortion and end their relationship, as well as that the young woman wants to continue the pregnancy; none of these are certain, due to the ambiguity of the story.


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: The title "Hills Like White Elephants" is a symbol within Hemingway's short story that requires analysis to depict its meaning and relevance to the story as well. Repetition of words and phrases is a common trait found within Hemingway's short story, a habit that is not done without cause. This was done in an attempt to emphasize importance on certain matters, such as he does with the title of the story. Within the story, Hemingway makes "two references to the whiteness of the hills and four to them as white elephants". The most common belief as to the meaning of this reference has to do with color comparisons used throughout the story. In correlation with the drink "absinthe" as mentioned above, there is believed to be a contrast of joy and sorrow between the black licorice of the alcoholic drink and the whiteness of the hills. This can also be contrasted with the comparison between the white hills and the dry, brown countryside that represents the same joy and sorrow as the former. However, the true meaning of the title does not become fully known until the topic of getting an abortion is revealed between the couple, as the man states, it's an "awfully simple question... not really an operation at all... just to let the air in". It is then understood that the use of the term "white elephants" may in fact be a reference to the white elephant sale. It's a sale put together through the donation of unwanted gifts, making the reader believe that this may be correlating with the act of getting an abortion. It could also mean the literal translation of elephant in the room meaning something painfully obvious that is not to be spoken about or referenced. "Elephant in the room" is a term used mainly by couples having a relationship crisis or difficulty including break-ups, divorce, cheating, marriage, adoption, or abortion. This is viewed differently between the couple. The child is seen "as simply a white elephant to the man" to be rid of, whereas the woman only sees it as this due to the father's views.


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: The final reference to the hills is when the girl contemplates her decision of getting an abortion through the following line, "it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you'll like it?" This is to provide an immediate understanding of the white elephant reference when we learn that the story's conflict revolves around an unwanted pregnancy is associated with the ubiquitous white elephant sale. These sales raise money that is worthwhile cause for people to donate unwanted objects. This is shown in "Hills Like White Elephants" as to the man, the girl is a white elephant with the child.


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: Another important symbol in the story is the bamboo curtain. Many interpretations see the curtain as a barrier between Jig and the American. Literally, the curtain is a barrier between the American and the girl while he drinks in the bar among other "reasonable people" while the girl sits outside. Figuratively, the beaded curtain separates Jig, a sensitive girl who notices and touches the beads from the American who only acknowledges the drink advertisement and pays no more attention to the curtain than the hills.


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: David Gilmour points out that the bead curtain has an even more specific symbolism. When Jig takes hold of two strands, the American believes that she views them as a rosary, giving a clue to Jig being Catholic. Gilmour goes on to state that any leap to thinking of Spain, Catholicism, and the abortion as connected ideas is a stretch and if Jig were praying, she would most likely be praying to turn back time so that she may not be entangled with the American. This belief is supported when she states, while holding the two strands, that she wants things to be as they were before. In contrast, Gary Elliott writes that the beaded curtain and its similarity to a rosary lends insight to the girl’s reluctance to go through with the abortion and is almost certainly indicative of her Catholic background. He goes on to say that while the curtain is a physical barrier between the two, it is really her religion, symbolized by the beads, that separates them.


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: The girl looked at the bead curtain. "They've painted something on it," she said. "What does it say?"


title: Hills Like White Elephants

text: The reader must interpret their dialogue and body language to infer their backgrounds and their attitudes with respect to the situation at hand, and their attitudes toward one another. From the outset of the story, the contentious nature of the couple's conversation indicates resentment and unease. Some critics have written that the dialogue is a distillation of the contrasts between stereotypical male and female relationship roles: in the excerpt above, for instance, the woman draws the comparison with white elephants, but the hyper-rational male immediately denies it, dissolving the bit of poetry into objective realism with "I've never seen one." By saying, "No, you wouldn't have" she implies he hadn't had a child before, or hadn't allowed birth in the past. She also asks his permission to order a drink. Throughout the story, the woman is distant; the American is rational. There may be more serious problems with the relationship than the purely circumstantial. Though the immediate problem is the unwanted pregnancy, the experience has revealed that the relationship is a shallow one. While most critics have espoused relatively straightforward interpretations of the dialogue, a few have argued for alternate scenarios.