title: Improvisation

text: There are also many well known university improv teams, including Theatre Strike Force at the University of Florida, Gigglepants at the University of Texas at Austin, and Erasable Inc. at the University of Maryland. Improvisation found a home at universities. The origins of the Second City was the Compass Players, an offshoot of theatre programs at the University of Chicago in the 1950s. Later, once improv had been established as an art form, improv groups sprung up on college campuses, starting in the 1980s where crowds were easy to find and teams could perform frequently. Now an improv group is a common staple of college extra curricular activities.


title: Improvisation

text: Notable pioneers in the field of improvisation, comedic or otherwise, include Mike Myers, Neil Mullarkey, Paul Merton, Stephen Fry, John Sessions, Josie Lawrence, Viola Spolin, Paul Sills, David Shepherd, Del Close, Josephine Forsberg, Gary Austin, Martin de Maat, and Keith Johnstone. Notable performers include: Paul Merton, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Robert Townsend, Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles, Ross Noble, Eddie Izzard, Tony Slattery, Mike McShane, Sandi Toksvig, Wayne Brady, Jonathan Winters, T. J. Jagodowski, Robin Williams, Conan O'Brien and David Pasquesi.


title: Improvisation

text: Dance improvisation as a choreographic tool: Improvisation is used as a choreographic tool in dance composition. Experimenting with the concepts of shape, space, time, and energy while moving without inhibition or cognitive thinking can create unique and innovative movement designs, spatial configuration, dynamics, and unpredictable rhythms. Improvisation without inhibition allows the choreographer to connect to their deepest creative self, which in turn clears the way for pure invention. This cognitive inhibition is similar to the inhibition described by Limb for musical improvisation, which can be found in the music section above.


title: Improvisation

text: Contact improvisation: a form developed in 1973, that is now practiced around the world. Contact improvisation originated from the movement studies of Steve Paxton in the 1970s and developed through the continued exploration of the Judson Dance Theater. It is a dance form based on weight sharing, partnering, playing with weight, exploring negative space and unpredictable outcomes.


title: Improvisation

text: The skills of improvisation can apply to many different abilities or forms of communication and expression across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines. For example, improvisation can make a significant contribution in music, dance, cooking, presenting a speech, sales, personal or romantic relationships, sports, flower arranging, martial arts, psychotherapy, and much more.


title: Improvisation

text: Techniques of improvisation are widely used in training for performing arts or entertainment; for example, music, theatre and dance. To ""extemporize"" or "ad lib" is basically the same as improvising. Colloquial terms such as "let's play it by the ear", "take it as it comes", and "make it up as we go along" are all used to describe "improvisation".


title: Improvisation

text: The simple act of speaking requires a good deal of improvisation because the mind is addressing its own thought and creating its unrehearsed delivery in words, sounds and gestures, forming unpredictable statements that further feed the thought process (the performer as the listener), creating an enriched process that is not unlike instantaneous composition [with a given set or repertoire of elements].


title: Improvisation

text: Where the improvisation is intended to solve a problem on a temporary basis, the "proper" solution being unavailable at the time, it may be known as a "stop-gap". This applies to the field of engineering. Another improvisational, group problem-solving technique being used in organizations of all kinds is "brainstorming", in which any and all ideas that a group member may have are permitted and encouraged to be expressed, regardless of actual practicality. As in all improvisation, the process of brainstorming opens up the minds of the people involved to new, unexpected and possibly useful ideas. The colloquial term for this is "thinking outside the box."


title: Improvisation

text: Sculpture often relies on the enlargement of a small model or maquette to create the final work in a chosen material. Where the material is "plastic" such as clay, a working structure or armature often needs to be built to allow the pre-determined design to be realized. Alan Thornhill's method for working with clay abandons the maquette, seeing it as "ultimately deadening to creativity". Without the restrictions of the armature, a clay matrix of elements allows that when recognizable forms start to emerge, they can be essentially disregarded by turning the work, allowing for infinite possibility and the chance for the unforeseen to emerge more powerfully at a later stage.


title: Improvisation

text: Moving from "adding and taking away" to purely reductive working, the architectural considerations of turning the work are eased considerably but continued removal of material through the rejection of forms deemed "too obvious" can mean one ends up with nothing. Former pupil Jon Edgar uses Thornhill's method as a creative extension to direct carving in stone and wood.


title: Improvisation

text: The director Mike Leigh uses lengthy improvisations developed over a period of weeks to build characters and story lines for his films. He starts with some sketch ideas of how he thinks things might develop but does not reveal all his intentions with the cast who discover their fate and act out their responses as their destinies are gradually revealed, including significant aspects of their lives which will not subsequently be shown onscreen. The final filming draws on dialogue and actions that have been recorded during the improvisation period.


title: Improvisation

text: Improvisational writing is an exercise that imposes limitations on a writer such as a time limit, word limit, a specific topic, or rules on what can be written. This forces the writer to work within stream of consciousness and write without judgment of the work they produce. This technique is used for a variety of reasons, such as to bypass writer's block, improve creativity, strengthen one's writing instinct and enhance one's flexibility in writing.


title: Improvisation

text: Some improvisational writing is collaborative, focusing on an almost dadaist form of collaborative fiction. This can take a variety of forms, from as basic as passing a notebook around a circle of writers with each writing a sentence, to coded environments that focus on collaborative novel-writing, like "OtherSpace".


title: Improvisation

text: Improvised weapons are often used by guerrillas, insurgents and criminals as conventional weapons may be unavailable. Such weapons vary in sophistication from simple sharpened sticks, to petrol bombs and homemade napalm, to improvised explosive devices and makeshift bomber aircraft. Weapons are also improvised by regular military organizations and formations as "stop-gap" measures when purpose-built equipment is either not on hand or is simply not yet available.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: The Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, usually called the Geneva Protocol, is a treaty prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in international armed conflicts. It was signed at Geneva on 17 June 1925 and entered into force on 8 February 1928. It was registered in "League of Nations Treaty Series" on 7 September 1929. The Geneva Protocol is a protocol to the Convention for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of War signed on the same date, and followed the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: It prohibits the use of "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices" and "bacteriological methods of warfare". This is now understood to be a general prohibition on chemical weapons and biological weapons, but has nothing to say about production, storage or transfer. Later treaties did cover these aspects – the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).


title: Geneva Protocol

text: A number of countries submitted reservations when becoming parties to the Geneva Protocol, declaring that they only regarded the non-use obligations as applying to other parties and that these obligations would cease to apply if the prohibited weapons were used against them.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: The main elements of the protocol are now considered by many to be part of customary international law.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: In the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the use of dangerous chemical agents was outlawed. In spite of this, the First World War saw large-scale chemical warfare. France used tear gas in 1914, but the first large-scale successful deployment of chemical weapons was by the German Empire in Ypres, Belgium in 1915, when chlorine gas was released as part of a German attack at the Battle of Gravenstafel. Following this, a chemical arms race began, with the United Kingdom, Russia, Austria-Hungary, the United States, and Italy joining France and Germany in the use of chemical weapons. This resulted in the development of a range of horrific chemicals affecting lungs, skin, or eyes. Some were intended to be lethal on the battlefield, like hydrogen cyanide, and efficient methods of deploying agents were invented. At least 124,000 tons were produced during the war. In 1918, about one grenade out of three was filled with dangerous chemical agents. Around 1.3 million casualties of the conflict were attributed to the use of gas and the psychological effect on troops may have had a much greater effect. As protective equipment developed, the technology to destroy such equipment also became a part of the arms race. The use of deadly poison gas was not only limited to combatants in the front but also civilians as nearby civilian towns were at risk from winds blowing the poison gases through. Civilians living in towns rarely had any warning systems about the dangers of poison gas as well as not having access to effective gas masks. The use of chemical weapons employed by both sides had inflicted an estimated 100,000-260,000 civilian casualties during the conflict. Tens of thousands or more (along with military personnel) died from scarring of the lungs, skin damage, and cerebral damage in the years after the conflict ended. In the year 1920 alone, over 40,000 civilians and 20,000 military personnel died from the chemical weapons effects.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: The Treaty of Versailles included some provisions that banned Germany from either manufacturing or importing chemical weapons. Similar treaties banned the First Austrian Republic, the Kingdom of Bulgaria, and the Kingdom of Hungary from chemical weapons, all belonging to the losing side, the Central powers. Russian bolsheviks and Britain continued the use of chemical weapons in the Russian Civil War and possibly in the Middle East in 1920.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: Three years after World War I, the Allies wanted to reaffirm the Treaty of Versailles, and in 1922 the United States introduced the Treaty relating to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare at the Washington Naval Conference. Four of the war victors, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan, gave consent for ratification, but it failed to enter into force as the French Third Republic objected to the submarine provisions of the treaty.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: At the 1925 Geneva Conference for the Supervision of the International Traffic in Arms the French suggested a protocol for non-use of poisonous gases. The Second Polish Republic suggested the addition of bacteriological weapons. It was signed on 17 June.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: Several countries have deployed or prepared chemical weapons in spite of the treaty; Spain and France did so in the Rif War in 1928, after the signing of the Protocol but prior to its taking effect, Japan used chemical weapons against Taiwan in 1930 during the Musha Incident, Italy used mustard gas against the Ethiopian Empire in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, and Japan used chemical weapons against China in the Second Sino-Japanese War.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: In the Second World War, the U.S., the UK, and Germany prepared the resources to deploy chemical weapons, stockpiling tons of them, but refrained from their use due to the balance of terror: the probability of horrific retaliation. There was an accidental release of mustard gas in Bari, Italy causing many deaths when a U.S. ship carrying CW ammunition was sunk in the harbor during an air raid. After the war, thousands of tons of shells and containers with tabun, sarin and other chemical weapons were disposed of at sea by the Allies.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: Early in the Cold War, the UK collaborated with the U.S. in the development of chemical weapons. The Soviet Union also had the facilities to produce chemical weapons but their development was kept secret.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, Iraq is known to have employed a variety of chemical weapons against Iranian forces, as well as nerve agents against Kurdish civilians, the most notorious example of which was 1988 attack on Halabja.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: Both the Syrian government and opposition forces accused each other of using chemical weapons in 2013 in Ghouta and Khan al-Assal during the Syrian civil war, though as any such use would be within Syria's own borders, rather than in warfare between state parties to the protocol, the legal situation is less certain. A 2013 United Nations report confirmed the use of sarin, but did not investigate which side used chemical weapons. In 2014, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed the use of chlorine gas in the Syrian villages of Talmanes, Al Tamanah and Kafr Zeta, but did not say which side used the gas.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: Eric Croddy, assessing the Protocol in 2005, took the view that the historic record showed it had been largely ineffectual. Specifically it did not prohibit:


title: Geneva Protocol

text: In light of these shortcomings, Jack Beard notes that "the Protocol (...) resulted in a legal framework that allowed states to conduct [biological weapons] research, develop new biological weapons, and ultimately engage in [biological weapons] arms races".


title: Geneva Protocol

text: Despite the U.S. having been a proponent of the protocol, the U.S. military and American Chemical Society lobbied against it, causing the U.S. Senate not to ratify the protocol until 1975, the same year when the United States ratified the Biological Weapons Convention.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: In 1966, United Nations General Assembly resolution 2162B called for, without any dissent, all states to strictly observe the protocol. In 1969, United Nations General Assembly resolution 2603 (XXIV) declared that the prohibition on use of chemical and biological weapons in international armed conflicts, as embodied in the protocol (though restated in a more general form), were generally recognized rules of international law. Following this, there was discussion of whether the main elements of the protocol now form part of customary international law, and now this is widely accepted to be the case.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: There have been differing interpretations over whether the protocol covers the use of harassing agents, such as adamsite and tear gas, and defoliants and herbicides, such as Agent Orange, in warfare. The 1977 Environmental Modification Convention prohibits the military use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects. Many states do not regard this as a complete ban on the use of herbicides in warfare, but it does require case-by-case consideration. The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention effectively banned riot control agents from being used as a method of warfare, though still permitting it for riot control.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: In recent times, the protocol has been interpreted to cover internal conflicts as well international ones. In 1995, an appellate chamber in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia stated that "there had undisputedly emerged a general consensus in the international community on the principle that the use of chemical weapons is also prohibited in internal armed conflicts." In 2005, the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded that customary international law includes a ban on the use of chemical weapons in internal as well as international conflicts.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: To become party to the Protocol, states must deposit an instrument with the government of France (the depositary power). Thirty-eight states originally signed the Protocol. France was the first signatory to ratify the Protocol on 10 May 1926. El Salvador, the final signatory to ratify the Protocol, did so on 26 February 2008. As of April 2021, 146 states have ratified, acceded to, or succeeded to the Protocol, most recently Colombia on 24 November 2015.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: A number of countries submitted reservations when becoming parties to the Geneva Protocol, declaring that they only regarded the non-use obligations as applying with respect to other parties to the Protocol and/or that these obligations would cease to apply with respect to any state, or its allies, which used the prohibited weapons. Several Arab states also declared that their ratification did not constitute recognition of, or diplomatic relations with, Israel, or that the provision of the Protocol were not binding with respect to Israel. Generally, reservations not only modify treaty provisions for the reserving party, but also symmetrically modify the provisions for previously ratifying parties in dealing with the reserving party. Subsequently, numerous states have withdrawn their reservations, including the former Czechoslovakia in 1990 prior to its dissolution, or the Russian reservation on biological weapons that "preserved the right to retaliate in kind if attacked" with them, which was dissolved by President Yeltsin.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: According to the Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties, states which succeed to a treaty after gaining independence from a state party "shall be considered as maintaining any reservation to that treaty which was applicable at the date of the succession of States in respect of the territory to which the succession of States relates unless, when making the notification of succession, it expresses a contrary intention or formulates a reservation which relates to the same subject matter as that reservation." While some states have explicitly either retained or renounced their reservations inherited on succession, states which have not clarified their position on their inherited reservations are listed as "implicit" reservations.


title: Geneva Protocol

text: The remaining UN member states and UN observers that have not acceded or succeeded to the Protocol are:


title: Chris Donahue (general)

text: Christopher Todd Donahue (born August 13, 1969) is a United States Army lieutenant general who has served as the commanding general of XVIII Airborne Corps since March 11, 2022. He most recently served as commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Throughout his career, Donahue served in staff and command positions for both United States Army and Special Operations units.


title: Chris Donahue (general)

text: In August 2021, Donahue gained fame as the last U.S. soldier to leave Afghanistan during America's military withdrawal from the country.


title: Chris Donahue (general)

text: Donahue is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Infantry Branch of the United States Army in 1992. His first assignment was rifle platoon leader with 2nd Infantry Division, Eighth Army in South Korea, followed by service at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and 3rd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment as company executive officer. Donahue then received assignment as rifle company commander in the 5th Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment in Camp Kobbe, Panama. In 1998 Donahue transferred to 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment as assistant operations officer, rifle company commander, and headquarters company commander. He was then assigned to Washington D.C as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 2002 Donahue volunteered for and completed a specialized selection and operator training course for assignment to the army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta, publicly known as Delta Force, at Fort Bragg. He would serve numerous leadership positions as assistant operations officer, squadron operations officer, squadron executive officer, troop commander, selection and training detachment commander, operations officer, squadron commander, deputy commander and unit commander.


title: Chris Donahue (general)

text: Donahue earned a master's degree from the Naval Command and Staff College, Naval War College and completed an Army War College Fellowship at Harvard University in 2013.


title: Chris Donahue (general)

text: Donahue's deployments include Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation New Dawn, Operation Freedom Sentinel and Operation Inherent Resolve. He planned, rehearsed and operated during classified operations in Eastern Europe, Middle East, Southwest Asia, and Africa.


title: Chris Donahue (general)

text: Donahue's most recent assignments include: Director of Operations, Joint Special Operations Command; the Commandant, United States Army Infantry School at Fort Benning; Deputy commanding General (maneuver) of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson; Deputy Director for Special Operations and Counterterrorism, J-37 Joint Staff; Commanding General, NATO Special Operations Component Command/Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan, Resolute Support Mission, 2019–2020; and the Commanding General, 82nd Airborne Division from 2020 to 2021. On August 30, 2021, he was the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan, closing at the same time Operation Allies Refuge, the 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan and the withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan.


title: Chris Donahue (general)

text: In February 2022, he was nominated for promotion to lieutenant general and assignment as commanding general of the XVIII Airborne Corps, succeeding Michael Kurilla.


title: Chris Donahue (general)

text: On the morning of September 11, 2001, Donahue, who was a captain at that time, was on Capitol Hill accompanying Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, to whom he was an aide. Myers was scheduled to meet Georgia Senator Max Cleland for a courtesy call before his Senate confirmation hearing to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Later-on, Donahue received first-hand intelligence report that a hijacked plane had hit the south tower of the World Trade Center and informed Myers of the hijacking and the current situation. At one point Donahue also lent his cell phone to Myers who used it to call General Ralph Eberhart, the Commander-in-Chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, to get further information regarding the situation. Immediately, Donahue and Myers proceeded to The Pentagon. When Myers' Lincoln Town Car had almost arrived at The Pentagon, Donahue informed Myers that he saw smoke arise from The Pentagon and at that point they learned that The Pentagon had also been hit by one of the Commercial Aircraft that was hijacked that day, later identified to be American Airlines Flight 77. They arrived at The Pentagon a few moments after the plane had hit, and immediately rendezvoused with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Myers was designated as Acting-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that time of the attack, due to the incumbent Chairman General Hugh Shelton was en-route to Europe for incoming NATO summit, and Donahue remained with him throughout the day.


title: Bad and Boujee

text: "Bad and Boujee" is a song by American hip-hop group Migos featuring vocals from American rapper Lil Uzi Vert. It was released on October 28, 2016 as the lead single from Migos' second studio album "Culture". It was released by Quality Control Music, 300 Entertainment, and Atlantic Records. The song was produced by Metro Boomin, with co-production by G Koop.


title: Bad and Boujee

text: In late December 2016, "Bad and Boujee" became an Internet phenomenon, spawning many memes with the lyrics "rain drop, drop top". This viral trend, combined with Donald Glover's shoutout at the 2017 Golden Globes, would help its commercial performance and cause the song to spike into the top ten and later peak at number one on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 for the week of January 21, 2017, making it the first number one single for both Migos and Lil Uzi Vert. The single received a nomination for Best Rap Performance at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards. The track has acquired 809 million Spotify plays as of July 2022.


title: Bad and Boujee

text: The song is written in the key of E minor at a tempo of 127 bpm. The instrumental has been described as a "boom-heavy, moody-keyboard creeper". The verses are performed by Offset, Quavo and Lil Uzi Vert, who all rap about their lifestyles of using expensive products, drugs, and being with women. Ad-libs are also heard throughout the song.


title: Bad and Boujee

text: "Complex" placed it at number 24 on its The 50 Best Songs of 2016 list, saying; "The track is lurching and confident, the kind of song that's sure of its own appeal but knows not to step outside of the pocket. It seems like an unlikely hit, but try listening just once". Pigeons & Planes ranked it at number 43 on their Best Songs of 2016 list, saying that the "track is really all about Offset". "The Fader" ranked the song at number 25 on its The 115 Best Songs of 2016 list. "Fact" named it as one of the 20 best rap and R&B tracks of 2016. "Vulture" favorably compared "Bad and Boujee" to James Brown's song "Super Bad". In 2021, it was ranked No. 451 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".


title: Bad and Boujee

text: The song reached number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100, making it the first chart-topping single for both Migos and Lil Uzi Vert. A week after its peak, it was dethroned by Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You", but retrieved its peak position the following week and stood there for two more weeks before being replaced by "Shape of You" again. It remained in the top ten of the chart for 14 consecutive weeks and was later ranked as the sixth biggest song of 2017.


title: Bad and Boujee

text: "Bad and Boujee" has also peaked at number five in Canada, making it Migos and Lil Uzi Vert's first charted single in that country. As of June 20, 2017, the song has sold 4,000,000 units in the United States. The song was certified 4× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).


title: Bad and Boujee

text: The Daps-directed music video for "Bad and Boujee" premiered via Migos' YouTube channel on October 31, 2016. It features cameo appearances from rappers Travis Scott and OG Maco.


title: Bad and Boujee

text: In an interview with Kiss FM Kenya, director Daps revealed the inspiration behind the concept of the viral music video: "The concept came about from the title really. 'Bad' is good looking so we needed pretty ladies and 'boujee' is stuck up so we needed them to play that part. I like having juxtapositions in my videos as it makes the art stand out. The contrast between these ladies dressed in high fashion but having them in regular environments grasped me. Then it was about adding in little elements after that — the doves, the noodles, Ace of Spades, silk shirts on a dirt bike." Rapper & Social Media Celebrity, Rubi Rose, also made her debut appearance as the main model during the video.


title: Bad and Boujee

text: On January 17, 2017, Migos performed the song on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!". On February 20, they performed it on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show". Migos also performed the song at 2017 BET awards.


title: Bad and Boujee

text: "Bougie", originating from bourgeois, has been a popularly referenced term within African American cultural media. Due to the mass proliferation of the song, the term 'bougie'/'boujee' quickly rose to popularity in hip hop culture and social media. Netizens also created memes with the some lines of lyrics.


title: Eline Powell

text: Eline Powell (born Eline Pauwels, 12 April 1990) is a Belgian actress best known for playing the title role on the American TV series "Siren".


title: Eline Powell

text: Powell is the daughter of Belgian pharmacologist Rudi Pauwels and clinical researcher Carine Claeys, who in 1994 were two of the co-founders of the biotech company Tibotec. She was born in Leuven and lived in Mechelen until she was fourteen years old. After a short stay in Switzerland, she moved to England, but she has Belgian citizenship and considers Belgium her home.


title: Eline Powell

text: Powell started her career in a short student film "For Elsie", where she played the role of Mila, a mobster's daughter who wants to learn the piano in one day. Her performance earned awards from the Beijing Student Film Festival and the Student Academy Awards, USA; and the film's director, David Winstone, received the Foreign Film Gold Medal at the 39th Annual Student Academy Awards in 2012.


title: Eline Powell

text: In 2014, Powell played the title role in the Italian drama film "Anita B." directed by Roberto Faenza, for which the 2014 Capri, Hollywood International Film Festival named her that year's Breakout Actress.


title: Eline Powell

text: In 2016, she appeared in two episodes of "Game of Thrones" as Bianca, a young actress plotting to murder her rival.


title: Eline Powell

text: In August 2016, Powell was cast to star in the Freeform series" Siren "playing Ryn, a feral mermaid who comes to a small coastal village in search of her sister. To prepare for the role, Powell studied legends of mermaids and sea creatures. To develop ideas for the mermaid's body language, she worked from videos of marine and other predators. For the mermaid's newly learned speech, Powell was inspired by the accent of Icelandic singer Björk. She also worked with a free diver to learn monofin techniques for underwater swimming and fast turns.


title: Eline Powell

text: Reviews of "Siren" were generally positive about Powell's performance, with "IndieWire" saying, "Powell’s ability to embody a being who is mainly a physical presence, yet fill it with wonder, fear, and menace without uttering a word, is magnetic." "The Tampa Bay Times" praised her performance as one of "Siren's biggest strengths" (the other was its Pacific Northwest setting.) "TV Guide", on the other hand, reviewing the pilot, complained that Powell "looks weird...performs the act of staring weird, as though she's trying with all her might to pop her eyeballs out of her head through sheer will."


title: Eline Powell

text: "Siren", which was the top new cable drama during spring 2018, was renewed in October for a second season, premiering on January 24, 2019.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The Yemeni Crisis began with the 2011–2012 revolution against President Abdullah Saleh, who had led Yemen for 33 years. After Saleh left office in early 2012 as part of a mediated agreement between the Yemeni government and opposition groups, the government led by Saleh's former vice president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, struggled to unite the fractious political landscape of the country and fend off threats both from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and from Houthi militants that had been waging a protracted insurgency in the north for years.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: In September 2014, the Houthi insurgency transformed into a full-blown civil war as Houthi fighters swept into the capital of Sana'a and forced Hadi to negotiate a "unity government" with other political factions. The rebels continued to apply pressure on the weakened government until, after his presidential palace and private residence came under attack from the militant group, Hadi resigned along with his ministers in January 2015.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The following month, the Houthis declared themselves in control of the Yemeni government, dissolving the Parliament, and installing an interim Revolutionary Committee led by Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a cousin of Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Hadi escaped to Aden, where he declared that he remains Yemen's legitimate president, proclaimed the country's temporary capital, and called on loyal government officials and members of the military to rally to him.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: On 27 March 2015, the BBC reported that Hadi had "fled rebel forces in the city of Aden" and subsequently "arrived in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh" as "Saudi authorities began air strikes in Yemen". Since 2017 the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) has also fought against the government.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The wave of protests known as the Arab Spring did not take long to arrive in Yemen after the Tunisian Revolution (2011–2012). Yemen was a poor country with a government widely acknowledged to be corrupt, with a large amount of weapons in private hands. By 2011, the country was already facing challenges from al Qaeda-linked militants and separatists in the south and Zaydī Shīʿa Muslim rebels in the north. Yemen had only been unified since 1990, and deep divisions persisted between the north and south.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Yemen's political instability has been compounded and partly caused by the severe ecological crisis in the country. The average Yemeni has access to only 140 cubic meters of water per year for all uses, (101 gallons per day) while the Middle Eastern average is 1000 m/yr, and the internationally defined threshold for water stress is 1700 cubic meters per year. Yemen's groundwater is the main source of water in the country but the water tables have dropped severely, leaving the country without a viable source of water. For example, in Sana'a, the water table was 30 meters below surface in the 1970s but had dropped to 1200 meters below surface by 2012. The groundwater has not been regulated by Yemen's governments.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Even before the revolution, Yemen's water situation had been described as increasingly dire by experts who worried that Yemen would be the "first country to run out of water". Agriculture in Yemen takes up about 90% of water in Yemen even though it only generates 6% of GDP - however a large portion of Yemenis are dependent on small-scale subsistence agriculture. Half of agricultural water in Yemen is used to grow khat, a narcotic that most Yemenis chew. This means that in such a water-scarce country as Yemen, where half the population is food-insecure, 45% of the water withdrawn from the ever-depleting aquifers is used to grow a crop that feeds nobody.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: This water insecurity has a direct impact on political stability. Outsiders hear most about the proxy war between factions supported by other countries, but according to the Yemeni newspaper Al-Thawra, 70% to 80% of conflicts in the country's rural regions are water-related. The country's Interior Ministry has estimated that across the country, water and land related disputes kill 4,000 people a year - more than terrorism. In Al-Jawf Governorate, a dispute over a well's placement has led to a blood feud that has continued for more than 30 years


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: In 2007, Yemen's minister of Water and Natural Resources suggested that Sana'a, the capital city, might have to be evacuated if it runs out of water. Although the government was unable to move the capital in an orderly and peaceful way, the war and political crisis have rendered Sana'a and most of Yemen into a battleground that people have been forced to flee.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Additional environmental catastrophes have battered Yemen as the war has progressed. In late 2015, two historic cyclones struck the country. The first of these, Cyclone Chapala, struck the island of Socotra before hitting the port of Mukalla on Yemen's south coast, where it caused catastrophic flash flooding. This storm, combined with the following Cyclone Megh, left enough moisture in the soil for locusts to breed. These locusts can fly 100 miles in a day and destroy any crop they encounter.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Popular protests broke out in early 2011, led by both secular and Islamist opposition groups. Longtime rebel groups like the Houthis and the Southern Movement also participated in the protests. Saleh responded with a violent crackdown, and the country nearly disintegrated into an all-out civil war as several army elements broke with the government and joined the protesters, beginning in March.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Saleh was almost killed when a bomb went off in a mosque where he and other top government officials were praying on 3 June, apparently in an assassination attempt. While his condition initially appeared grave, Saleh recovered and returned to work on 23 September after several months of medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. He left Vice President Hadi in charge during his absence. As acting president, Hadi met with the opposition and reportedly expressed openness to political reforms. However, he rejected the idea of forcing Saleh from power without the president's consent.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The Gulf Co-operation Council applied no small amount of pressure on Saleh to negotiate an end to the uprising by stepping down. Weeks after returning from Saudi Arabia, Saleh finally agreed on 23 November to resign in exchange for immunity. As part of the deal, the opposition agreed to allow Hadi to stand unopposed for the presidency in 2012.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Meanwhile, the insurgent Houthis in northern Yemen laid siege to a Salafi town in Saada Governorate, Dammaj. Fighting was worst in November and December. The Yemeni military was unable to restore order due to the crisis elsewhere in the country.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The Yemeni Revolution came to an apparently successful conclusion in 2012 for the opposition, as Saleh left office. However, unrest continued in both northern and southern Yemen.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Hadi's election on 24 February 2012 peacefully introduced a new government in Yemen, with only a small percentage of voters spoiling their ballots in the single-candidate contest. Hadi, a southerner, especially enjoyed support in former South Yemen, quieting the murmurs of separatism, although the Southern Movement boycotted the presidential election, as did the Houthis. Hadi did not give the restive Houthis any seats in his cabinet.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The conflict in Dammaj was renewed in April when fighting broke out between Houthi tribesmen and Salafi students. Both sides accused the other of breaking a truce agreement.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: National reconciliation talks were held with the participation of many separatist elements, as well as the Houthis.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Nine years after the death of Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, the Yemeni government turned over the remains of the Houthi patriarch to his family and he was buried in northern Yemen in June 2013, with a representative of the Hadi administration in attendance.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Hadi visited the United States, a key overseas ally, in July 2013. The U.S. also lifted a ban on transferring detainees from its Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba to Yemen.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia deported as many as 300,000 to 400,000 Yemeni migrant workers to their home country during 2013, causing an influx of poor, landless Yemenis into northern Yemen.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The conflict between Houthis and Salafis in Saada Governorate was renewed in October and November. Saada government officials accused Houthi fighters of attacking a Salafi mosque in Dammaj in an attempt to drive the Sunnis out, while the Houthis accused the Salafis of using the religious institute as a staging ground for foreign Sunni fighters. The government attempted to intervene to stop the fighting.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Sectarian fighting in Al Jawf Governorate lasted throughout the year. Dhamar Governorate also saw clashes between the Houthis and Salafis toward the end of the year.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: In a dramatic turn of events, the rebel Houthis took broad control of northern Yemen, including the capital of Sana'a itself, in 2014.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Clashes in Dammaj spread to the Amran Governorate by January 2014. The Houthis achieved victory in Saada when the Yemeni government brokered a deal under which Salafi fighters and their families were evacuated to the neighboring Al Hudaydah Governorate. According to reports, the Houthis then blocked government troops from fully deploying throughout the territory, in spite of a signed agreement.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Fighting in the Amran Governorate intensified during the year, with clashes between Houthis and supporters of the Islamist Islah Party eventually leading to a Houthi takeover of the entire governorate. The conflict spread to the Sana'a Governorate by July.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The Houthis began protesting against Hadi's government to demand concessions in order to resolve a years-long insurgency they had been waging against the Yemeni state in mid-2014. The uprising escalated dramatically as Houthi fighters swept into Sana'a, the capital, and effectively seized control of the city from the Yemeni military within a couple of days in September. The forces of General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmer surrendered to the Houthis after a brief fight.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president, was widely suspected of aiding the Houthis behind the scenes and helping pave the way for their takeover. Prime Minister Mohammed Basindawa resigned on 21 September as part of a deal meant to end the standoff.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The Houthis and the government agreed on 21 September to form a "unity government" within one month. However, the Houthis rejected Hadi's original choice of prime minister, Ahmad Awad bin Mubarak, and Oil Minister Khaled Bahah was appointed instead with the armed group's approval. The Houthis and the General People's Congress led by Saleh announced abruptly on 8 November that they would not participate in the unity government, claiming it was unacceptable to them. The boycott prompted sanctions against Saleh and senior Houthi leaders from the United Nations Security Council and the United States Department of the Treasury.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Yemen was riven in 2015, with the Houthis establishing a new government in Sana'a and Hadi retreating with his supporters to Aden, and later Saudi Arabia. The Arab League, led by the Saudis, began a bombing campaign and mobilization of various armed forces in the region for a possible invasion.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The Houthis stepped up their pressure on Hadi's weakened government, seizing the presidential palace and strategic military installations in Sana'a and shelling the president's private residence on 20 January. The following day, they took control of Hadi's home, stationing armed guards outside to keep him under virtual house arrest.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Hadi, Prime Minister Khaled Bahah, and the cabinet resigned the following day, saying they could not continue to work under the conditions the Houthis had imposed. The rebel group welcomed Hadi's resignation, but continued to keep him under house arrest. The news prompted four southern governorates to announce they would disregard all orders from Sana'a.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The House of Representatives was to meet on 25 January to discuss whether to accept or reject Hadi's resignation under the Yemeni constitution, but the session was cancelled after the Houthis took control of the parliament building. The United Nations stepped in to attempt a negotiated resolution to what many in Yemen regarded as a Houthi coup.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: UN negotiations were fruitless, and a Houthi ultimatum to Yemen's political factions to find a solution was not met. On 6 February, the Houthis declared themselves in total control of the Yemeni government, dissolving parliament and installing a Revolutionary Committee led by Mohammed Ali al-Houthi to lead the state in an interim capacity. The announcement sparked protests in Sana'a and other cities, especially in the south.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Reactions to the Houthi takeover were broadly negative, with the Arab League, Gulf Cooperation Council, United Nations, and United States refusing to recognise the "constitutional declaration" and several governorates rejecting the Houthis' authority. With most political parties criticising the coup, Jamal Benomar, the UN envoy to Yemen, announced a resumption of national talks over the future of Yemen on 8 February. Benomar said the Houthis had agreed to participate in the talks. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for Hadi to be reinstated as president.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The Houthis and other factions reached a tentative agreement, announced on 20 February, to keep the House of Representatives in place despite the "constitutional declaration" dissolving it two weeks prior. The agreement also stipulated that a "people's transitional council" would be established to represent southerners, women, youth, and other political minorities. The next day, Hadi traveled to Aden, where he said all Houthi-directed actions since 21 September 2014 were invalid, and condemned the coup d'état.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Fighting broke out over Aden International Airport on 19 March, with special forces loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh attempting to seize the airport before they were defeated by troops and militiamen under orders from the Hadi administration. The following day, in an apparently unrelated incident, four suicide bombers detonated themselves in Sana'a mosques packed with Houthi congregants, killing at least 142. The Sunni Islamist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's Yemen branch claimed responsibility.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Hadi declared Aden to be Yemen's temporary capital on 21 March while Sana'a remains under Houthi control. The next day, Houthi forces advanced toward Aden, capturing key parts of Yemen's third-largest city, Taiz. They consolidated their grip on much of the south and seized much of Aden itself by early April.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: On 26 March 2015, Saudi Arabia and several other countries announced that they had begun military operations in Yemen against Houthi rebels. Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates issued a statement along with Saudi Arabia saying their goal is to "repel Houthi aggression" in Yemen. Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Sudan are also members of the coalition.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: In addition to airstrikes against targets throughout Yemen, which the General People's Congress blamed for causing dozens of civilian casualties, Egyptian warships reportedly shelled a Houthi column as it advanced toward Aden on 30 March, and Saudi and Houthi forces traded artillery and rocket fire across the border between Saudi Arabia and Yemen.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The 8 October 2016 attack by the Saudi Arabian-led coalition killed at least 140 people and injured more than 600 in Sana'a. This was one of the single worst death tolls in the two-year war. Saudi Arabia and its allies accepted the internal review's finding, by the Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT), that the coalition's bombardment of this funeral ceremony was based on faulty information, i.e., that this was a gathering of armed Houthi leaders.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: A severe cholera epidemic began in Yemen during the civil war. In July 2017, the United Nations Humanitarian Relief coordinator said that over 320,000 cases had been reported. He also blamed the epidemic on the war and on international forces supporting the combatants. As of October 2017, it was already described as the worst cholera outbreak in recorded history, with over 800,000 cases.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Over one third of the three million refugees have been uprooted within Yemen between 2015 and 2020. Roughly 80% of the Yemen population, containing over 12 million children, requires humanitarian aid. As little as 7.8 million children have no connection to education as well as minimal avenues for water and sanitation. In addition to the lack of resources for children, there have also been multiple accounts of children being forced into conflict.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: Children are enticed to shoot weapons on behalf of the Houthis in exchange for monetary gain or social status as in Yemen shooting guns at a young age is normalized. Children are seen in the eyes of many militias as valuable assets or an advantage in conflict but in reality this is extremely dangerous. Yemen also has an array of treaties with the United Nations, one which specifies an agreement to the treatment of children.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: The Conventions on the Rights of the Child assembly resolution was signed November 18, 1959 and ratified on November 20, 1989. In reality, due to a lack of intervention, many Yemeni children are being neglected treatment, resources, and basic rights during this humanitarian crisis.


title: Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)

text: In April 2021, it was stated that the country is witnessing “the worst humanitarian crisis in the past 100 years”, as it is facing famine and 80% of the population of over 30 million need humanitarian aid, according to the director of Muslim Hands’ Yemen operation.


title: White ethnostate

text: A White ethnostate is a proposed type of state in which residence or citizenship would be limited to whites, and non-whites, such as Blacks, Asians, Jews, Middle Easterners and North Africans and Hispanics would be excluded from citizenship. Within the Anglosphere, the natives of their respective countries would also be excluded from citizenship, such as the natives of the United States, the natives of Canada, the natives of Australia and the natives of New Zealand.


title: White ethnostate

text: In the United States, proposals for the establishment of such a state are advanced by White supremacist and White separatist factions such as Ku Klux Klansmen and Neo-Nazis. Some of these factions claim that a certain part of the country should have a white majority and other factions claim that the entire country should have a white majority. Most white ethnostate movements envision a state which will be solely inhabited by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants and/or people who are of Northern European descent.


title: White ethnostate

text: Historical attempts to establish a white ethnostate include Apartheid-era South Africa, where the black population was pushed into areas which were known as Bantustans through various means, including deportations and racial segregation, with the aim of establishing separate states out of the resulting ethnically cleansed areas, the largest of which would be turned into a white state.


title: White ethnostate

text: Historically, as well as in modern times, the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho and a portion of Montana) has been proposed by many white supremacists as a location for the establishment of a white ethnostate. This Northwest Territorial Imperative was promoted by Richard Girnt Butler, Robert Jay Mathews, David Lane, and Harold Covington, alongside the white supremacist terrorist organization The Order, the Neo-Nazi Christian Identity organization Aryan Nations, the white power skinhead group Volksfront, and the Northwest Front, among others. The Northwest Territorial Imperative also has loose overlap with the Cascadia independence movement, which also seeks to create an independent republic between the Northwest and parts of Northern California in the United States and British Columbia in Canada. Some in the far-right use the term American Redoubt to describe a similar migration to the Northwestern United States.


title: White ethnostate

text: Other areas have been looked into as sites for a potential white ethnostate by certain groups, most notably, the South has been proposed as a white ethnostate by the self-proclaimed "Southern Nationalist" League of the South (LS), due to the region's history of secessionism and due to the fact that the region was once an independent nation which was known as the Confederate States of America (1861–1865). Another white ethnostate has been proposed by Billy Roper's Shield Wall Network (SWN), a neo-Nazi organization which is based in Mountain View, Arkansas, it seeks to establish a "white ethnostate" in the Ozark region and it is affiliated with other separatist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK); the Knights Party, located near Harrison, Arkansas; the League of the South (LS); and the National Socialist Movement (NSM), a member of the now-defunct Nationalist Front. Conversely, the Ozarks have been a "hotbed" for adherents of the Christian Identity movement, including the Church of Israel and various members of the Christian Patriot movement who have set up paramilitary training camps in order to prepare for a coming Armageddon. The defunct neo-Nazi organization Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP), led by Matthew Heimbach, also sought to establish a white ethnostate which it named "Avalon", based on the ideological principles of Nazism, various strands of European fascism such as Legionarism, British Fascism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.


title: White ethnostate

text: After the end of apartheid, some Afrikaner nationalist organizations, including Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, started to promote the idea of a "Volkstaat" that would be established in the Western Cape region.


title: White ethnostate

text: In January 2010, "Beeld", an Afrikaans newspaper, held an online survey. Out of 11,019 respondents, 56% (6,178) stated that they would move to a Volkstaat if one were created, an additional 17% (1,908) stated that they would consider moving to it and 27% (2,933) stated that they would not consider moving to it because they did not believe that it was a viable option.


title: White ethnostate

text: Historically, white nationalist laws were passed and enforced in the United States, beginning with the passage of the Naturalization Act of 1790, which only allowed whites to apply for citizenship if they had lived in the United States without breaking any laws for two years, and it only continued to recognize whites— with rare exceptions— as citizens for decades afterwards. Only after the American Civil War did laws begin to change, gradually extending citizenship rights to minority populations. Non-white foreigners as of the Johnson–Reed Act in 1924 were allowed to immigrate to America following a quota of 2% of the number of people from their country of origin who were living in America per the 1890 Census. The 1952 McCarran–Walter Act revised the former 1924 act and decreased the percentage of people who were coming to America. It also removed the ban on immigration from Asia. Discrimination in immigration was legally ended by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. In 2013, white supremacist Craig Cobb attempted to take over the small town of Leith, North Dakota, and turn it into a neo-Nazi enclave; this attempt failed due to Cobb's violent behavior towards Leith's residents, which got him arrested. The events form the basis of the documentary "Welcome to Leith".


title: White ethnostate

text: Adolf Hitler planned to create a Nordic/Aryan superstate that would rule most of Europe, dominate its geopolitical landscape and eradicate anyone who was not considered "pure" by the Nazis. Nazi Germany's objective was to turn a large part of central and eastern Europe into an "Aryan" homeland by cleansing its population through the genocide and mass deportation of non-Aryans such as Jews, Slavs (i.e. Poles, Serbs, etc.), Roma/Gypsies, and homosexuals.


title: White ethnostate

text: In 1943-1945, forces of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, with some support from the local Ukrainian population, committed genocide of around 85,000 Poles (primarily women and children) in the regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia that were at that time occupied by the military of Nazi Germany. The aim of the OUN-B and its UPA military organisation was to create a homogenuous Ukrainian ethnostate without the Polish, Russian, Jewish, and Czech minorities that inhabited those lands at the time. The UPA sometimes worked together with the Ukrainian SS under German command to carry out other massacres of Polish minorities.


title: White ethnostate

text: From 1901 until the mid-20th century, Australia maintained a series of policies, collectively nicknamed the White Australia policy, that actively restricted the immigration of non-white migrants. The policy originated after the passage of the "Immigration Restriction Act 1901", which aimed to ban non-Europeans from migrating to the country. These policies were gradually dismantled over the following years, and the "Immigration Restriction Act 1901" was repealed in 1958 and replaced by the "Migration Act 1958". The White Australia policy was definitively ended in 1973, after the Whitlam government passed legislation that made selection of migrants on the basis of race unlawful.


title: White ethnostate

text: Similar to the White Australia Policy, the "White New Zealand Policy" consisted of legislation which banned Asians and other non-Europeans from immigrating to the country. After the Second World War, a memorandum which was published by the Department of External Affairs in 1953 described the purpose of the policy in clearer terms. The laws were not relaxed until the 1970s and 1980s. The Ministry for Culture and Heritage described the policy in the following way: "Our immigration is based firmly on the principle that we are and intend to remain a country of European development. It is inevitably discriminatory against Asians – indeed against all persons who are not wholly of European race and colour. Whereas we have done much to encourage immigration from Europe, we do everything to discourage it from Asia".


title: White ethnostate

text: During the apartheid era, the South African government, led by the National Party, attempted to turn South Africa into a whites-only state by forcing millions of black people to move to areas which it called bantustans. Post-apartheid, some Afrikaner groups such as Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) and Afrikaner Volksfront have promoted the idea of a "Volkstaat", an exclusively Afrikaner homeland. The town of Orania, Northern Cape is a manifestation of the "Volkstaat" idea.


title: White ethnostate

text: In November 1965, Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, declared the independence of Southern Rhodesia in an attempt to preserve white culture by preventing black Africans from ruling the country. Southern Rhodesia became the independent nation of Rhodesia.


title: Ansible

text: An ansible is a category of fictional devices or technology capable of near-instantaneous or faster-than-light communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no delay, even between star systems. As a name for such a device, the word "ansible" first appeared in a 1966 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. Since that time, the term has been broadly used in the works of numerous science fiction authors, across a variety of settings and continuities. A related term is ultrawave.


title: Ansible

text: Ursula K. Le Guin coined the word "ansible" in her 1966 novel "Rocannon's World". The word was a contraction of "answerable", as the device would allow its users to receive answers to their messages in a reasonable amount of time, even over interstellar distances.


title: Ansible

text: The plot device of the ansible was the basis for creating a specific kind of interstellar civilizationone where communications between far-flung stars are instantaneous, but humans can only travel at relativistic speeds. Under these conditions, a full-fledged galactic empire is not possible, but there is a looser interstellar organization, in which several of Le Guin's protagonists are involved.


title: Ansible

text: Although Le Guin invented the name "ansible" for this type of device, fleshed out with specific details in her fictional works, the broader concept of instantaneous or faster-than-light communication had previously existed in science fiction. For example, similar communication functions were included in a device called an interocitor in the 1952 novel "This Island Earth" by Raymond F. Jones, and the 1955 film based on that novel, and in the "Dirac Communicator", which first appeared in James Blish's short story "Beep" (1954), which was later expanded into the novel "The Quincunx of Time" (1973). Robert A. Heinlein in "Time for the Stars" (1958) employed instantaneous telepathic communication between identical twin pairs over interstellar distances, and like Le Guin, provided a technical explanation based on a non-Einsteinian principle of simultaneity.


title: Ansible

text: Any ansible may be used to communicate through any other, by setting its coordinates to those of the receiving ansible. They have a limited bandwidth, which only allows for at most a few hundred characters of text to be communicated in any transaction of a dialog session, and are attached to a keyboard and small display to perform text messaging.


title: Ansible

text: Since Le Guin's conception of the ansible, the name of the device has been borrowed by numerous authors. While Le Guin's ansible was said to communicate "instantaneously", the name has also been adopted for devices capable of communication at finite speeds that are faster than light.


title: Ansible

text: Orson Scott Card, in his 1977 novelette and 1985 novel "Ender's Game" and its sequels, used the term "ansible" as an unofficial name for the philotic parallax instantaneous communicator, a machine capable of communicating across infinite distances with no time delay. In "Ender's Game", a character states that "somebody dredged the name "ansible" out of an old book somewhere".


title: Ansible

text: In the universe of the "Ender's Game" series, the ansible's functions involved a fictional subatomic particle, the philote. The two quarks inside a pi meson can be separated by an arbitrary distance, while remaining connected by "philotic rays". This concept is similar to quantum teleportation due to entanglement; however, in reality, quark confinement prevents quarks from being separated by any observable distance.


title: Ansible

text: Card's version of the ansible was also featured in the video game "Advent Rising", for which Card helped write the story, and in the movie "Ender's Game", which was based on the book.


title: Ansible

text: Numerous other writers have included faster-than-light communication devices in their fictional works. Notable examples include:


title: Luminance

text: Luminance is a photometric measure of the luminous intensity per unit area of light travelling in a given direction. It describes the amount of light that passes through, is emitted from, or is reflected from a particular area, and falls within a given solid angle.


title: Luminance

text: Brightness is the term for the "subjective" impression of the "objective" luminance measurement standard (see for the importance of this contrast).


title: Luminance

text: The SI unit for luminance is candela per square metre (cd/m). A non-SI term for the same unit is the nit. The unit in the Centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS) (which predated the SI system) is the stilb, which is equal to one candela per square centimetre or 10 kcd/m.


title: Luminance

text: Luminance is often used to characterize emission or reflection from flat, diffuse surfaces. Luminance levels indicate how much luminous power could be detected by the human eye looking at a particular surface from a particular angle of view. Luminance is thus an indicator of how bright the surface will appear. In this case, the solid angle of interest is the solid angle subtended by the eye's pupil.


title: Luminance

text: Luminance is used in the video industry to characterize the brightness of displays. A typical computer display emits between 50 and . The sun has a luminance of about at noon.


title: Luminance

text: Luminance is invariant in geometric optics. This means that for an ideal optical system, the luminance at the output is the same as the input luminance.


title: Luminance

text: For real, passive optical systems, the output luminance is "at most" equal to the input. As an example, if one uses a lens to form an image that is smaller than the source object, the luminous power is concentrated into a smaller area, meaning that the illuminance is higher at the image. The light at the image plane, however, fills a larger solid angle so the luminance comes out to be the same assuming there is no loss at the lens. The image can never be "brighter" than the source.


title: Luminance

text: Retinal damage can occur when the eye is exposed to high luminance. Damage can occur because of local heating of the retina. Photochemical effects can also cause damage, especially at short wavelengths.


title: Luminance

text: A luminance meter is a device used in photometry that can measure the luminance in a particular direction and with a particular solid angle. The simplest devices measure the luminance in a single direction while imaging luminance meters measure luminance in a way similar to the way a digital camera records color images.


title: Luminance

text: The luminance of a specified point of a light source, in a specified direction, is defined by the derivative


title: Luminance

text: If light travels through a lossless medium, the luminance does not change along a given light ray. As the ray crosses an arbitrary surface "S", the luminance is given by


title: Luminance

text: In the case of a perfectly diffuse reflector (also called a Lambertian reflector), the luminance is isotropic, per Lambert's cosine law. Then the relationship is simply


title: Tehsildar

text: In India and Pakistan, a Tehsildar or Mamlatdar is a tax officer accompanied by revenue inspectors. They are in charge of obtaining taxes from a tehsil with regard to land revenue. A tehsildar is also known as an executive magistrate of the relevant tehsil. The immediate subordinate of a tehsildar is known as a "naib tehsildar". This is akin to an additional deputy commissioner.


title: Tehsildar

text: The term is assumed to be of Mughal origin and is perhaps a union of the words "tehsil" and "dar". "Tehsil" is presumably an Arabic word meaning "revenue collection", and "dar" is a Persian word meaning "holder of a position". Mamlatdar is a synonymous term used in some Indian states that comes from the Hindi word "māmala" (मामला), which is derived from the Arabic "muʿāmala" (مُعَامَلَة – "conduct, dealing, handling").


title: Tehsildar

text: During British rule, a tehsildar was most likely a stipendiary officer of the government, employed to raise revenue. The position was called mamlatdar in Goa and some parts of Maharashtra. It was subsequently used by Pakistan and India following their independence from the British Empire. Tehsildar is also known as Talukdar in some states of India. In Assam, Bengal, and parts of Jharkhand, a tehsildar is known as a Mouzadar.


title: Tehsildar

text: Tehsildar are Class 1 gazetted officers in most states of India. In Uttar Pradesh, tehsildar are given powers of assistant collector Grade I. They also are given judicial power. They implement the various policies of the taluka and are subject to the district collector. Officers holding the post of tehsildar preside over matters related to land, tax, and revenue. Tehsildar were first appointed as Naib Tehsildars after successful completion of a State Service Exam (i.e. UP-PSC in Uttar Pradesh, HP-PSC in Himachal Pradesh, RPSC in Rajasthan, MP-PSC in Madhya Pradesh, BPSC in Bihar, AP-PSC in Andhra Pradesh, TSPSC in Telangana, or other equivalent exams in other states of India), or promoted from a subordinate post like Kanoongo (also known as Revenue Inspectors). In Uttar Pradesh, tehsildar are promoted from Naib Tehsildar. Later on, they get promoted to the post of sub-divisional magistrate.


title: Tehsildar

text: In Goa, the mamlatdar heads the taluka revenue office. While each taluka has a mamlatdar, there are also several joint mamlatdars and the work is distributed among them.


title: Tehsildar

text: Each state is divided into districts. The district's senior civil servant is the district collector/district magistrate, who is an officer from the IAS cadre. These districts are further subdivided into revenue subdivisions or prants (West India). Each subdivision is under the charge of an officer designated as a sub-divisional magistrate (SDM), or deputy collector, who is a member of the State Civil Service cadre. In the revenue department, the deputy collector reports to the district revenue officer (DRO), who is also called the additional district magistrate (ADM Revenue) and is the overall in-charge of the revenue department for the district. The DRO in turn reports to the district collector (also called district magistrate, or DM), who is in charge of overall management of the district across all departments. Deputy collectors are hired through State Service Selection Commissions, whereas DROs and district collectors are usually Centre Civil Services employees appointed to the state cadre.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Spiritual warfare is the Christian concept of fighting against the work of preternatural evil forces. It is based on the biblical belief in evil spirits, or demons, that are said to intervene in human affairs in various ways. Although spiritual warfare is a prominent feature of neo-charismatic churches, various other Christian denominations and groups have also adopted practices rooted in the concepts of spiritual warfare, with Christian demonology often playing a key role in these practices and beliefs, or had older traditions of such a concept unrelated to the neo-charismatic movement, such as the exorcistic prayers of the Catholic Church and the various Eastern Orthodox churches.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Prayer is one common form of "spiritual warfare" practiced amongst these Christians. Other practices may include exorcism, the laying on of hands, fasting with prayer, praise and worship, and anointing with oil.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Jewish demonology escalated with the rise of Jewish pseudepigraphic writings of the 1st Century BCE, in particular with Enochic apocrypha. Jewish apocrypha initially influenced post-New Testament writings of the early fathers, which further defined Christian demonology. Thus followed literary works such as The Didache, The Shepherd of Hermas, Ignatius's epistle to the Ephesians, and Origen's "Contra Celsum".


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Mainstream Christianity typically acknowledges a belief in the existence (or ontological existence) of demons, fallen angels, the Devil and Satan. In Christian evangelism, doctrines of demonology are influenced by interpretations of the New Testament, namely interpretations of the Gospels, in that dealing with spirits became a customary activity of Jesus' ministry. Mark the Evangelist states that "he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons" ().


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Apostle Paul has traditionally been attributed to writing the Book of Ephesians, the tenth book of the New Testament, although it is more likely the work of one of his disciples. Within 6:10-12 of Ephesians, Paul addresses spiritual warfare and how to combat spiritual attacks; "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Evangelical Christian denominations typically believe that Satan and his agents exert significant influence over the world and its power structures. They believe that a conflict exists involving territorial spirits or other hostile spirits forces, based on passages such as ("the whole world is under the control of the evil one") and , and , where Jesus refers to Satan as "the prince of this world". Other verses cited include the apostle Paul's elaboration on a hierarchy of "rulers", in , taken to be "demonic" in interpretation. They also believe that Paul's epistles focus on Jesus' victory over these powers. To this end, evangelical interpretations divide history into two eras: the "present evil age", and the "age to come", in reference to the Second coming of Jesus.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Evangelical imagery of spiritual warfare is derived from various parts of the Bible, particularly the Book of Revelation wherein the 'beasts' and 'kings of the earth' wage war against God's people () after the War in Heaven (), sparking a final battle with Satan and earthly nations against God ().


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Evangelical Christians promote the practice of exorcism, based on their understanding of Jesus statement: "If I drive out demons by the spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is upon you" at , ).


title: Spiritual warfare

text: The most notable of spiritual warfare prayers in the Catholic tradition is known as the Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Pope John Paul II stated that "'Spiritual combat'... is a secret and interior art, an invisible struggle in which monks engage every day against the temptations".


title: Spiritual warfare

text: In modern times, the views of individual Roman Catholics of spiritual warfare have tended to divide into traditional and more modern understandings of the subject. An example of a more modern view of the demonic is found in the work of the Dominican scholar Richard Woods' "The Devil".


title: Spiritual warfare

text: The traditional outlook is represented by Father Gabriele Amorth, who has written three books on his personal experiences as an exorcist for the Vatican: "An Exorcist Tells His Story", and "An Exorcist: More Stories", and An Exorcist Explains the Demonic: The Antics of Satan and His Army of Fallen Angels. Francis MacNutt, who was a priest within the Roman Catholic Charismatic Movement, has also addressed the subject of the demonic in his writings about healing.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: The practice of exorcism was also known among the first generation of teachers and pastors in the Lutheran Reformation. Johannes Bugenhagen was the pastor of the Wittenberg town church and officiated at Martin Luther's wedding. In a letter addressed to Luther and Melanchthon dated November 1530, Pomeranus recounted his experience of dealing with a young girl who showed signs of demon possession. Pomeranus' method involved counseling the girl concerning her previous baptismal vows, he invoked the name of Christ and prayed with her. (Letter reproduced in Montgomery, "Principalities and Powers").


title: Spiritual warfare

text: The Anglican-Puritan writer William Gurnall wrote a lengthy three-volume work "The Christian in Complete Armour" that was published between 1662 and 1665. In this work Gurnall stressed the place of reading Scripture, prayer and the name of Christ.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Practices of "spiritual warfare" vary throughout Christianity. The development of specific spiritual warfare techniques has also generated many discussions in the Christian missions community. Critical exchanges of views may be found in periodicals such as the "Evangelical Missions Quarterly" and in conferences sponsored by the Evangelical Missions Society. In 2000, an international collaborative attempt was made by evangelicals and charismatics in the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization to reach some common agreement about spiritual warfare. The conference gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, and yielded a consultation document as well as many technical papers published as the book "Deliver Us from Evil".


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Expositors of spiritual warfare include Jessie Penn-Lewis, who published the Pentecostal 1903 book "War on the Saints". Prolific author Pastor Win Worley began the publication of his "Hosts of Hell" series in 1976, and Kurt E. Koch published "Occult ABC" in 1973; all contain elements of the concept of spiritual warfare, if not explicitly using the expression.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: In 1991, C. Peter Wagner published "Confronting the Powers: How the New Testament Church Experienced the Power of Strategic-Level Spiritual Warfare" and edited "Territorial Spirits". In 1992, Dr. Ed Murphy wrote a modern 600 page book on the subject, "The Handbook of Spiritual Warfare", from the point of view of deliverance ministry. "Laws of Deliverance, From Proverbs", 1980, 1983, 1995, 2000, 2003, written by Marilyn A. Ellsworth, is another important Biblical work of authority, as is her book "ICBM Spiritual Warfare, God's Unbeatable Plan". Other notable expositions on spiritual warfare were written by Pastor Win Worley, Mark Bubeck, and Neil Anderson.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: In the American revival tradition among evangelicals, prominent preachers such as D. L. Moody, Billy Sunday, R. A. Torrey and Billy Graham have all affirmed their belief in the existence of the demonic and had occasions to recount some of their own spiritual warfare encounters. In the 19th century, one of the major evangelical authorities on demon possession was the missionary to China, John Livingstone Nevius.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: During the late 20th century, Evangelical writers such as Mark Bubeck and Merrill Unger presented their theological and pastoral response to demonic phenomena. The problem of demon possession and spiritual warfare became the subject of a Christian Medical Association symposium that was held in 1975. This symposium brought together a range of evangelical scholars in biblical studies, theology, psychology, anthropology, and missiology.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: One of the very significant German writers is the Lutheran Kurt E. Koch whose work has influenced much of both evangelical and charismatic thought in the late twentieth century. The impact of his ideas has been recently examined by the folklore specialist Bill Ellis.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Spiritual warfare has become a prominent feature in Pentecostal traditions. The concept is well embedded in Pentecostal history, particularly through Jessie Penn-Lewis's book "War on the Saints" arising from the Welsh Revival in the early twentieth century. However, Jessie Penn-Lewis preaches a very different kind of spiritual warfare than that preached by the third-wave Charismatic movement of today—notably C. Peter Wagner and Cindy Jacobs. Other Pentecostal and charismatic pastors include Don Basham, Derek Prince, Win Worley, Bishop Larry Gaiters, Rev. Miguel Bustillos, Dr. Marcus Haggard, and Missionary Norman Parish, who have emphasized using the power of the blood of Christ in the deliverance ministry.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Spiritual mapping refers to the 21st century Evangelical belief that all history is a battle between Satan and God. Neo-Evangelicals who follow the spiritual mapping movement perceive the world in terms of demonic activity and believe that they can use prayer and other Evangelical religious practices to counteract evil in the world.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: According to the "Christian Science Monitor", "C. Peter Wagner, head of Global Harvest Ministries in Colorado Springs, Colo., is in the vanguard of the spiritual warfare movement." In the version of spiritual warfare of Wagner and his associates and followers, "spiritual mapping" or "mapping" involves research and prayer, either to locate specific individuals who are then accused of witchcraft, or to locate individuals, groups, or locations that are thought to be victims of witchcraft or possessed by demons, against which spiritual warfare is then waged. Peter Wagner claims that this type of spiritual warfare was "virtually unknown to the majority of Christians before the 1990s". According to Wagner, the basic methodology is to use spiritual mapping to locate areas, demon-possessed persons, occult practitioners such as witches and Freemasons, or things they deem "occult idol objects" like statues of Catholic saints, which are then named and fought, using methods ranging from intensive prayer to burning with fire. "[T]hey must burn the idols… the kinds of material things that might be bringing honor to the spirits of darkness: pictures, statues, Catholic saints, Books of Mormon… [T]he witches and warlocks had surrounded the area… When the flames shot up, a woman right behind Doris [Wagner's wife] screamed and manifested a demon, which Doris immediately cast out!"


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Jehovah's Witnesses believe they are engaged in a "spiritual, theocratic warfare" against false teachings and wicked spirit forces they say try to impede them in their preaching work. Where their religious beliefs have been in conflict with national laws or other authorities—particularly in countries where their work is banned—they have advocated the use of "theocratic war strategy" to protect their interests, by hiding the truth from God's "enemies", being evasive, or withholding truthful or incriminating information. "The Watchtower" told Witnesses: "It is proper to cover over our arrangements for the work that God commands us to do. If the wolfish foes draw wrong conclusions from our maneuvers to outwit them, no harm has been done to them by the harmless sheep, innocent in their motives as doves."


title: Spiritual warfare

text: In May 2021, the Baptist Deliverance Study Group of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, a Christian denomination, issued a "warning against occult spirituality following the rise in people trying to communicate with the dead". The commission reported that "Becoming involved in activities such as Spiritualism can open up a doorway to great spiritual oppression which requires a Christian rite to set that person free."


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Spiritual warfare has also been practiced by non-Christians and in non-Christian countries. According to the Christian Broadcasting Network commentator Carl Moeller, spiritual warfare is practiced even in North Korea, a country that has been described as the most dangerous place on earth to be Christian. Non-Christian media reported on the African spiritual warrior Pastor Thomas Muthee visit to America who prayed over a 2008 presidential candidate. The Nigerian Tribune, the oldest surviving private newspaper in Nigeria, has published articles calling for the need for spiritual warfare. In the case of Haiti, American televangelist Pat Robertson and others blamed the earthquake of 2010 on demons, and called for Christians to increase spiritual warfare prayer.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Outside of Evangelicalism, many Christians explicitly reject the concept of spiritual warfare. In Germany, the Evangelic Lutheran Church and the Evangelical German Evangelical Alliance consider it to be "unbiblical", stating "The aggressive attitude and the presumption to fight against evil alongside or even instead of Christ, stands in opposition to the spirit of the gospel."


title: Spiritual warfare

text: In evangelism and worldwide Christian missions, former missionaries such as Charles Kraft and C. Peter Wagner have emphasized problems with demonic influences on the world mission fields and the need to drive demons out. Robert Guelich of Fuller Theological Seminary has questioned the extent to which spiritual warfare has shifted from its basic moorings from being a metaphor for the Christian life. He underlines how spiritual warfare has evolved into "spiritual combat" techniques for Christians to seek power over demons. Guelich argues that the writings of the Apostle Paul in the Epistle through Ephesians are focused on proclaiming the peace of God and nowhere specify any techniques for battling demons. He also finds that the novels of Frank Peretti are seriously at odds with both the gospel narratives on demons and Pauline teaching.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Missions specialists such Scott Moreau and Paul Hiebert have detected traces of animist thought encroaching on both evangelical and charismatic discourses about the demonic and spiritual warfare. Hiebert indicates that a dualist cosmology now appears in some spiritual warfare texts and it is based on the Greco-Roman mystery religions and Zoroastrian myths. However, Hiebert also chastises other evangelicals who have absorbed the modern secular outlook and have tended to downplay or even ignore the demonic. Hiebert speaks of the flaw of the excluded middle in the thinking of some evangelicals who have a cosmology of God in heaven and humans on earth, but have ignored the "middle" realm of the angelic and demonic.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Some critics have linked the rise in aggressive forms of prayer to the increasing militarization of everyday life that characterizes 20th century cultural shifts towards the widespread normalization of highly militarized discourse, particularly in the practices and rituals of religious prayer and conversion.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: The excesses of allegations made in the satanic ritual abuse phenomenon of the 1980s and 1990s have prompted critical reviews of spiritual warfare thought and practices. Some apologists in the Christian countercult movement have expressed concerns that spiritual warfare techniques seem at times to have been based on spurious stories and anecdotes without careful discernment and reflection. Some of these general concerns have been expressed by apologists like Elliot Miller (Christian Research Institute), and Bob and Gretchen Passantino in various articles published in the "Christian Research Journal". Others, such as Mike Hertenstein and Jon Trott, have called into question the claims of alleged ex-Satanists like Mike Warnke and Lauren Stratford whose stories have subsequently influenced many popular books about spiritual warfare and the occult. Bill Ellis's work, "Raising the Devil", has detected the presence of folkloric stories about the occult and demons circulating in evangelical and charismatic circles, which later become accepted as unquestioned facts.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Popular fictional portrayals of spiritual warfare are found in novels by Frank E. Peretti, "This Present Darkness" and "Piercing the Darkness", and Darrin J Mason, "Ominous". There are also many articles, books, and blog topics about this on Patheos.com.


title: Spiritual warfare

text: Revised Edition, Exorcism with the Paranormal & The Occult by Fr. Jose Francisco C. Syquia. Director, Archdiocese of Manila Office of Exorcism.


title: Hammock

text: A hammock (from Spanish , borrowed from Taíno and Arawak ) is a sling made of fabric, rope, or netting, suspended between two or more points, used for swinging, sleeping, or resting. It normally consists of one or more cloth panels, or a woven network of twine or thin rope stretched with ropes between two firm anchor points such as trees or posts. Hammocks were developed by native inhabitants of the Americas for sleeping, as well as the English. Later, they were used aboard ships by sailors to enable comfort and maximize available space, by explorers or soldiers travelling in wooded regions and eventually by parents in the early 1920s for containing babies just learning to crawl. Today they are popular around the world for relaxation; they are also used as a lightweight bed on camping trips. The hammock is often seen as a symbol of summer, leisure, relaxation and simple, easy living.


title: Hammock

text: The word "hammock" comes, via Spanish, from a Taíno culture Arawakan word meaning "stretch of cloth" from the Arawak root . The Amerindian origin of the word was often obscured in English-language sources from the late 18th century onward. Samuel Johnson claimed that it was of Saxon origin, but his etymology was soon debunked. Hamaka was meaningfully transformed into modern German "Hängematte", Swedish "Hängmatta" and Dutch "Hangmat", and calqued from Swedish into Finnish "riippumatto" (all literally "hanging mat").


title: Hammock

text: Some 19th-century authors attributed the invention of the hammock to the Athenian politician Alcibiades (d. 404 BC). This was inferred from Plutarch, who wrote that Alcibiades had his galley bed hung from ropes, but did not specifically describe it as a net or sling. Other ancient writers mention the use of hanging beds to improve sleep or health without giving details on their mode of suspension.


title: Hammock

text: The 11th-century Old English Hexateuch shows the biblical Joseph, promoted to the "second chariot" of the pharaoh (that is second in command), in a simple type of vehicle, the body of which seems to be a cloth hammock. The piece is suspended on two hooks attached to two opposite posts rising from the chassis. The hammock motif is repeated in the manuscript in a series of increasingly abstract miniatures, leaving it open to interpretation whether the artist had in mind a wheeled hammock litter or a rudimentary coach with a flexible suspension.


title: Hammock

text: The hammock reappears in unequivocal form in another medieval English source, the Luttrell Psalter (dated to c. 1330), where it has developed to a regular hanging bed. The sling now ends in two rope beckets that anticipate the rings of the naval hammock. Like the earliest known naval specimen the fabric is canvas, not the netting the Spanish later encountered in the New World. The Dutch historian of technology André Sleeswyk argues that it may have been this English type that eventually spread through the European navies despite the word "hammock" later being adopted from the Americas:


title: Hammock

text: Spanish colonists noted the use of the hammock by Native Americans, particularly in the West Indies, at the time of the Spanish conquest.


title: Hammock

text: Columbus, in the narrative of his first voyage, says: “A great many Indians in canoes came to the ship to-day for the purpose of bartering their cotton, and hamacas, or nets, in which they sleep.” He observed the widespread use of hammocks during his travels among the Taino people in the Bahamas.


title: Hammock

text: Early hammocks were woven out of tree bark, and later this material was replaced by sisal fibers because it was more abundant. One of the reasons that hammocks became popular in Central and South America was their ability to provide safety from disease transmission, insect stings, or animal bites. By suspending their beds above ground, inhabitants were better protected from snakes, biting ants, and other harmful creatures.


title: Hammock

text: Around 1590, hammocks were adopted for use in sailing ships; the Royal Navy formally adopted the sling hammock in 1597 when it ordered three hundred bolts of canvas for "hanging cabbons or beddes". Aboard ship, hammocks were regularly employed for sailors sleeping on the gun decks of warships, where limited space prevented the installation of permanent bunks. Since a slung hammock moves in concert with the motion of the vessel, the occupant is not at a risk of being thrown onto the deck (which may be 5 or 6 feet below) during swells or rough seas. Likewise, a hammock provides more comfortable sleep than a bunk or a berth while at sea since the sleeper always stays well balanced, irrespective of the motion of the vessel. Prior to the adoption of naval hammocks, sailors would often be injured or even killed as they fell off their berths or rolled on the decks on heavy seas. The sides of traditional canvas naval hammocks wrap around the sleeper like a cocoon, making an inadvertent fall virtually impossible. If suitably packed, they could also be used as emergency flotation devices.


title: Hammock

text: Many sailors in the Royal Navy, during the 1590s at least, used a spreader – a length of wood with a V cut in each end to engage the second hammock string on each side. The first string was set up more tightly than the others so that it raised a protective lip along each side to keep out drafts and prevent the sleeper being thrown out. A narrow mattress was also issued which protected the user from cold from below. In addition naval hammocks could be rolled tightly and stowed in an out of the way place or in nets along the gunwale as additional protection during battle (as was the case during the age of sail). Many sailors became so accustomed to this way of sleeping that they brought their hammocks ashore with them on leave. The naval use of hammocks continued into the 20th century. During World War II, troopships sometimes employed hammocks for both naval ratings and soldiers in order to increase available space and troop carrying capacity. Many leisure sailors even today prefer hammocks over bunks because of better comfort in sleep while on the high seas.


title: Hammock

text: Hammocks have also been employed on spacecraft in order to utilize available space when not sleeping or resting. During the Apollo program, from Apollo 12 onwards, the Lunar Module was equipped with hammocks for the commander and lunar module pilot to sleep in between moonwalks.


title: Hammock

text: In Mexico, hammocks are made in villages surrounding the capital city of the Yucatán, Mérida, and are sold throughout the world as well as locally. They were not part of Classic era Maya civilization; they were said to have arrived in the Yucatán from the Caribbean fewer than two centuries before the Spanish conquest. In addition to bark and sisal, hammocks were constructed from various materials, including palm fronds. Quality of native and modern hammocks depends greatly on the quality of the material, thread, and the number of threads used. Mayan hammocks are made on a loom and are hand woven by men, women and children. Hammocks are so symbolically and culturally important for the Yucatecans that even the most humble of homes have hammock hooks in the walls.


title: Hammock

text: El Salvador is a large producer and exporter of hammocks . The valley in which San Salvador City sits is dubbed "The Valley of the Hammocks" because the Native Americans used hammocks to "repel" constant earthquakes. Later, the colonizing Spaniards used the term as an allusion to earthquakes constantly rocking the valley like a hammock. Hammocks are a big part of Salvadoran culture and are often used for afternoon naps. It is completely socially acceptable to lie in a hammock all day in this Central American country. Hammocks swing from doorways, inside living rooms, on porches, in outdoor courtyards, and from trees, in all social classes of Salvadoran homes from the most humble rural home to the most prestigious city hotel chains. In rural El Salvador, a family home may have multiple hammocks strung across the main room, for use as seating, as beds, or as sleep-swings for infants. The municipality of "Concepcion Quezaltepeque" celebrates its traditional Hammocks Festival, where artisans produce and sell hammocks, every year between the first and second weekend of November.


title: Hammock

text: In Venezuela entire villages raised their families in hammocks. During the first part of the 20th century, many scientists, adventurers, geologists and other non-native visitors to Central and South American jungles soon adopted the Venezuelan hammock design, which gave protection against scorpions and venomous snakes such as the "fer de lance". The difficult jungle environments of South America encountered by Western explorers soon stimulated further development of the Venezuelan hammock for use in other tropical environments.


title: Hammock

text: The Venezuelan hammock's panels were always made of breathable material, necessary to prevent the onset of fungal infections caused by constant rain and high humidity. Fine-woven sandfly netting was eventually added to provide more complete protection from mosquitoes, flies, and crawling insects, especially in regions notorious for malaria or screwworm infestations. A waterproof top sheet or rainfly could be added to protect the occupant from drenching by heavy nighttime rains, along with "drip strings" – short pieces of string tied to suspension lines — to prevent rainwater running from the tree trunk down the hammock cords to the hammock itself. A breathable false cotton (later nylon) bottom panel was frequently added to these jungle hammocks, allowing air to pass through while still preventing mosquito stings to the occupant.


title: Hammock

text: The Venezuelan hammock, as modified, eventually became known as a jungle hammock. Simply by wetting the hammock suspension ropes with insecticides or insect repellent, the jungle hammock even gave protection against crawling insects with mandibles that could bite holes through the insect netting.