title: MBTA Commuter Rail

text: In June 2022, the MBTA indicated plans to purchase battery electric multiple units, with catenary for charging on part of the network. This is intended to reduce the amount of catenary installation required, avoid reconstructions of overhead bridges, and avoid poor existing power grids on some branch lines. Plans call for electric service on the Providence/Stoughton Line and Fairmount line by 2028–29, followed by the Newburyport/Rockport Line in 2031; all lines would be electrified by 2050. Pilot electric service between Boston and Providence would be possible after the late 2023 introduction of the Avelia Liberty freed up ACS-64 locomotives for use. Funding for electrification of the Framingham/Worcester Line was included in a 2022 state bond bill. Transit advocates have expressed concern that a hybrid service plan remains unproven for regional rail applications and could be more expensive to operate than full-build electrification; others have criticized that the MBTA's cost and construction projections for system-wide catenary installation were overestimated in comparison to similar project costs in Europe and North America.


title: MBTA Commuter Rail

text: No direct connection exists between the two downtown commuter rail terminals; passengers must use the MBTA subway or other modes to transfer between the two halves of the system. (For non-revenue transfers of equipment, the MBTA and Amtrak use the Grand Junction Branch.) The proposed North–South Rail Link would add a new rail tunnel under downtown Boston to allow through-running service, with new underground stations at South Station, North Station, and possibly a new Central Station. A feasibility study was conducted in 2018.


title: MBTA Commuter Rail

text: The South Coast Rail project is under construction to extend service to the South Coast cities of Taunton, Fall River, and New Bedford, which were last served by commuter service in 1958. A full planning process was held from 1990 until its suspension in 2002. Planning restarted in 2007, with environmental documentation completed in August 2013. Plans were modified into two phases in 2017 due to an increase in costs. Phase I is under construction to run diesel service beginning in 2023 as an extension of the Middleborough/Lakeville Line via the Middleboro Secondary. Phase II, planned for 2030, would extend the Stoughton Branch of the Providence/Stoughton Line over a reactivated line with electric service.


title: MBTA Commuter Rail

text: Several other extensions of existing lines and restoration of service to disused lines have been studied in the past:


title: MBTA Commuter Rail

text: Several station renovations for accessibility, expanded service, and/or repairs are under construction or planned:


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp is a role-playing video game with board game elements, developed and published by Spike Chunsoft for the Nintendo Switch in late 2021, with Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, and Windows versions released in 2022. The game, a spin-off installment in the "Danganronpa" visual novel series, is an expanded version of two side-modes from "" (2017), and was released digitally as a standalone game and physically through the game compilation "Danganronpa Decadence", as a part of celebrations for the 10th anniversary of the "Danganronpa" series.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: The game is set on the tropical resort known as Jabberwock Island, and follows a group of 62 students and related persons as they search for hope over the course of a 50-day-long summer test program. The game, directed by Shun Sasaki, was released in November 2021 in Japan and a month later in the west. Upon launch, "Ultimate Summer Camp" was met with mixed reception from critics, who mainly criticized the gameplay loop and inclusion of microtransactions, while appreciating how the game could potentially be enjoyed by "Danganronpa" fans for its character interactions and fan service.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: "Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp" is an expanded version of the Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Despair Dungeon: Monokuma's Test role-playing post-game side modes from "". In "Ultimate Summer Camp" Development mode, players level-up different "Danganronpa" characters in a square-divided board game-like setting, which is traversed over the course of 50 turns, with each turn representing an in-game day. The board has a total of six different islands, which are unlocked through defeating the prior island's boss, with later islands allowing players to more easily develop their character. The squares, or tiles, are divided into different types, which'll have unique results, including giving players statistic increases or items, among other effects. To more easily traverse the board, players can take the use of cards, which are obtained through "Card Squares" and allow players to move a certain amount of squares. Cards can also have different effects, such as giving the playing character a temporary statistic increase.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: Throughout the development mode, players encounter enemies, defeating which will award them with experience points, as well as "Jabbercoins", the game's currency, which can be used at shops to buy equipment or other items. The combat system in "Ultimate Summer Camp" is similar to that of other turn-based role-playing games: players can perform both normal and special/elemental attacks, with special attacks taking up skill points, limiting the number of times they can be used. Special attacks are unlocked through the use of "Talent Fragments", which can be obtained via stepping on certain squares or by viewing certain scenes. Each character also has an "Awaken" bar, which effects the power of attacks if used. If a battle is lost, players are sent back to the beginning of the board.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: In the game's dungeon crawler-styled Battle mode, players form teams of up to four using their developed characters to fight floors of enemies in a 200-story tall "Tower of Despair". Each 10th floor in the mode features a boss, defeating which will give players access to the next 10 floors. Clearing certain floors in the Battle mode will give players perks in the Development mode, allowing for faster progression.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: The game features a total of 62 different playable characters, all with four different rarity types, in addition to 9 "Hype Cards" each, which will give enhancements to the respective character if unlocked. Characters are unlocked through three different kinds of luck-based "gashapon" vending machines, using special coins that can be acquired in the Battle mode or by completing certain milestones and achievements. Players can also unlock characters via microtransactions in the Nintendo Switch eShop.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: The game begins with Komaru Naegi, who has been invited to a test program hosted by the prestigious Hope's Peak Academy high school for soon-to-be graduates, as well as preschoolers of the Hope's Peak Elementary, some students from the school's reserve course, and certain family members of the students, the last of which applying to Komaru. After all participants introduce each other inside the academy, the hosts of the program is revealed to be a quintet of anthropomorphic bear cubs and the children of series mascot Monokuma, named the . The Monokubs reveal that the test program is intended to cultivate the talents of the participants, and that it will take place in a virtual recreation of the popular resort, Jabberwock Island.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: After everyone has been successfully transported to the virtual Jabberwock Island, the Monokubs explains that if the students want to leave the island, they must first unlock everyone's "Hope Fragments", acquired through a participant finding their true hope and potential. Furthermore, the Monokubs demonstrate how they have full control over the world with magical wands by summoning a beach house. This leads to the mischievous and cynical Monokuma, who was also invited to the program, to steal one of the wands and summon a hoard of enemies. Together, the participants manage to defeat some of the monsters, finding out in the process that their bodies have been powered-up for the virtual world. Although the Monokubs manage to get the wand back from Monokuma, the island is still overrun by monsters, which the participants are tasked with defeating over the course of the summer. In the following months, as the characters go about their daily life, they learn that the Monokubs, too, have Hope Fragments, meaning that the characters have to assist them in finding hope as well.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: Once all Hope Fragments had been acquired, the Monokubs hold a graduation ceremony, though it is interrupted by the students of Hope's Peak Elementary, who, together with one of the Monokubs, betrays the rest of the group and attempts to prolong the training camp. One of the preschoolers, Monaca Towa, uses a special megaphone to destroy the Monokubs, hoping to get their wands. Monokuma ends up getting the wands instead, and using them, he resets the entire simulation, destroying all the Hope Fragments in the process, and attempts to force the participants into a mutual killing game after erasing select memories. One participant, Makoto Naegi, somehow maintains his memory, and begins to formulate a plan to stop Monokuma using Monaca's megaphone. Makoto ends up facing off against Monokuma at the central island, although Makoto loses, and has his memory erased. Makoto is then saved by the other participants, who were able to regain their memories after hearing Monokuma's conversation with Makoto. Together, they manage to defeat Monokuma and reacquire their Hope Fragments. With this, the participants are able to successfully return to the real world, ending the program, as well as their time at Hope's Peak.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: "Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp" was developed by the Japanese development company Spike Chunsoft, as a way to celebrate the "Danganronpa" series' 10th anniversary. The game was directed by Shun Sasaki, who had previously also served as the director for "Danganronpa V3", with music done by series composer Masafumi Takada and writing by the same people who made the "Free Time" interactions in "V3". The game's art was directed by Akira Ohyama, although Rui Komatsuzaki, the "Danganronpa" character designer, illustrated the game's promotional art. The art of the game's Hype Cards was done in collaboration with several guest artists. For the game, all included characters had to be given new sprites with swimsuits, a process which Sasaki described as lengthy and, in some cases, difficult.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: The plan to port the "Danganronpa" series to the Nintendo Switch was first conceptualized around the same time as the mobile releases for "" and "" in 2020. According to Sasaki, he had wanted to create an all-star styled "Danganronpa" game, and felt that expanding upon the extra modes from "Danganronpa V3" would fit that theme the best. The game was decided to take place at the fictitious tropical resort Jabberwock Island, the same setting as the second game, as "Ultimate Summer Camp" aims to make players enjoy the world of "Danganronpa", which Sasaki felt was better accomplished by a tropical island, because of it being a more familiar location to players, as compared to other "Danganronpa" settings. Early in development, the game featured a fully 2D art style, although this was later changed to instead use pre-rendered 3D assets, which allowed pixel art to be more easily blended with the boards.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: During development, Spike Chunsoft spent much time attempting to balance the gameplay between the game's different modes. One part of the balancing was making it so that different characters and their rarities didn't affect core gameplay too much, since what characters players unlock heavily relies on luck. According to Sasaki, the balancing was not finished until much later in development, as it was improved bit by bit as new features were implemented. The game's microtransactions were supposedly added as a means to prevent frustration from players who were unable to get their preferred characters.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: The game was first announced by Spike Chunsoft in a Nintendo Direct presentation in July 2021, along with the compilation game "Danganronpa Decadence", consisting of the "Danganronpa" trilogy, as well as "Ultimate Summer Camp". Both games later released on November 4, 2021, in Japan and Taiwan, with a North American and European release following on December 3. A physical collector's edition of "Decadence" was also released, and was published by Spike Chunsoft in Japan and North America, and by Numskull Games in Europe. Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, and Windows versions were released on July 21, 2022.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: "Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp" was met with mixed thoughts from critics, with review aggregation site Metacritic calculating a normalized rating of 54/100, based upon 9 reviews.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: The game's core gameplay and loop has been criticized by reviewers for being repetitive, as well as how grinding quickly becomes necessary for players to progress. Stuart Gipp of "Nintendo Life" described the game as a "total grindfest", commenting that the gameplay of the Development mode hardly changes with new playthroughs, ultimately concluding that the game repeats itself too much. Alana Hagues, writing for "RPGFan", criticized the game for being luck-based, using getting the correct cards or landing on the more beneficial squares as examples. In a review for Anime News Network, Lauren Orsini expressed how she had hoped for more unique content within the game, but still generally enjoyed how the game could be played for a long time before completion.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: Critics have been more positive to the interactions between characters, and have written that the game could be more enjoyable for "Danganronpa" fans, as compared to newcomers of the series. Biagio Etna, reviewing the game for "IGN Italy", wrote that he found it "undoubtedly pleasant" to see characters from the different entries interact, but criticized the presence of characters from the spin-off game "", as the game was not included in the "Danganronpa Decadence" collection. at "Famitsu" expressed that, due to the game's premise relying on players knowing of the characters, it could potentially be hard to enjoy for non-fans of the series. In an impressions article for "Destructoid", Eric van Allen referred to the game as being focused on fan service, and wrote that, while some of it is "really good", it ended up falling victim to the gameplay, which he felt was lacking.


title: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp

text: The game's use of microtransactions has been a key point of disliking in reviews. Gipp condemned the existence of in-game purchases, and voiced further disapproval on the matter due to the game not being free-to-play. Hagues wrote that "something about [the] system rubbed [her] the wrong way", but still felt that directly purchasing characters was more favorable than buying coins for use in the vending machines. "Electronic Gaming Monthly" Mollie Patterson, in a review of "Danganronpa Decadence", took a more neutral stance towards the microtransactions, writing that she never felt the need to take use of them.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: Astrakhan Oblast (, "Astrakhanskaya oblast", , "Astrakhan oblysy") is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast) located in southern Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Astrakhan. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 1,010,073.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: Astrakhan is traversed by the northeasterly line of equal latitude and longitude. Its southern border is the Caspian Sea, eastern is Kazakhstan (Atyrau Region and West Kazakhstan Region), northern is Volgograd Oblast, and western is Kalmykia.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: Astrakhan region is the homeland of the Buzhans, one of several Slavic tribes from which modern Russians evolved.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: They lived in Southern Russia and inhabited the area around the Buzan river. Buzan oblast was created on December 27, 1943, on parts of the territories of the abolished Kalmyk ASSR and Astrakhan Okrug of Stalingrad Oblast. Starting from the 16th century, Indians had moved to the region causing the region to be under Indian influence.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: August–December 1942, the Germans reached the edge of the Astrakhansky Oblast and crossed the edges into the Region, the Abwehr from 1942 to 1943 and Nazi Army stragglers, 1941–44.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: From October 8, 1980 to October 27, 1984, and under the leadership of Nikolai Baibakov, the USSR held fifteen deep underground nuclear tests for Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy at the site "Vega" in the Ryn Desert in the east of the oblast less than 50 km from downtown Astrakhan to create reservoirs for natural gas storage. Because of the detonation depth (975 to 1,100 meters) and relatively low yield (3.2 to 13.5 kilotons), no radiation was released to the environment. These blasts had lower yields than the Project "Sapphire" blasts, which were 40 km south-southwest of Orenburg, to reduce any possible seismic destruction to nearby towns in the Volga delta including Astrakhan. At that time, the natural gas fields near Astrakhan, which are at a depth of 3900 to 4,100 meters, could contain as much as 6 trillion cubic meters, which is an amount similar to Urengoy. In 2017, the Astrakhanskoye field, which is an area of 100 km by 40 km in the middle of the Astrakhan arch and is 60 km northeast of Astrakhan, is the ninth largest in Russia and the largest in European Russia with an estimated gas in place of . The deposit is operated by Gazprom Dobycha Astrakhan which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Gazprom. The field produces large amounts of sulfur, too.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: On 30 October 1997, Astrakhan, alongside Kirov, Murmansk, Ulyanovsk, and Yaroslavl signed a power-sharing agreement with the government of Russia, granting it autonomy. The agreement would be abolished on 21 December 2001.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: During the Soviet period, the high authority in the oblast was shared between three persons: The first secretary of the Astrakhan CPSU Committee (who in reality had the biggest authority), the chairman of the oblast Soviet (legislative power), and the Chairman of the oblast Executive Committee (executive power). Since 1991, CPSU lost all the power, and the head of the Oblast administration, and eventually the governor was appointed/elected alongside elected regional parliament.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: The Charter of Astrakhan Oblast is the fundamental law of the region. The Legislative Assembly of Astrakhan Oblast is the province's standing legislative (representative) body. The Legislative Assembly exercises its authority by passing laws, resolutions, and other legal acts and by supervising the implementation and observance of the laws and other legal acts passed by it. The highest executive body is the Oblast Administration, which includes territorial executive bodies such as district administrations, committees, and commissions that facilitate development and run the day to day matters of the province. The Oblast administration supports the activities of the Governor who is the highest official and acts as guarantor of the observance of the oblast Charter in accordance with the Constitution of Russia.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: 2009 – 1.77 | 2010 – 1.76 | 2011 – 1.78 | 2012 – 1.93 | 2013 – 1.91 | 2014 – 1.97 | 2015 – 1.97 | 2016 – 1.93(e)


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: The local group of Russian varieties is known as Astrakhan Russian and refers to several dialects spoken in and around the Astrakhan Oblast.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: According to a 2012 survey which interviewed 56,900 people 46% of the population of Astrakhan Oblast adheres to the Russian Orthodox Church, 4% are Orthodox Christian believers who do not belong to any church or are members of other (non-Russian) Orthodox churches, 2% are unaffiliated generic Christians, 14% are Muslims, and 2% of the population adheres to the Slavic native faith (Rodnovery) or other folk religions of the region. In addition, 16% of the population declares to be spiritual but not religious, 6% is atheist, and 10% follows other religions or did not give an answer to the question.


title: Astrakhan Oblast

text: Smaller religious communities not represented in the poll cited above but present in the region include Hindus, Jews and Buddhists, each having one temple in Astrakhan Oblast.


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: In probability theory, Hoeffding's inequality provides an upper bound on the probability that the sum of bounded independent random variables deviates from its expected value by more than a certain amount. Hoeffding's inequality was proven by Wassily Hoeffding in 1963.


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: Hoeffding's inequality is a special case of the Azuma–Hoeffding inequality and McDiarmid's inequality. It is similar to the Chernoff bound, but tends to be less sharp, in particular when the variance of the random variables is small. It is similar to, but incomparable with, one of Bernstein's inequalities.


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: Let be independent random variables such that formula_1 almost surely. Consider the sum of these random variables,


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: Note that the inequalities also hold when the have been obtained using sampling without replacement; in this case the random variables are not independent anymore. A proof of this statement can be found in Hoeffding's paper. For slightly better bounds in the case of sampling without replacement, see for instance the paper by .


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: Suppose formula_4 and formula_5 for all "i". This can occur when "X" are independent Bernoulli random variables, though they need not be identically distributed. Then we get the inequality


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: for all formula_7. This is a version of the additive Chernoff bound which is more general, since it allows for random variables that take values between zero and one, but also weaker, since the Chernoff bound gives a better tail bound when the random variables have small variance.


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: The proof of Hoeffding's inequality can be generalized to any sub-Gaussian distribution. In fact, the main lemma used in the proof, Hoeffding's lemma, implies that bounded random variables are sub-Gaussian. A random variable is called sub-Gaussian, if


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: Then let be zero-mean independent sub-Gaussian random variables, the general version of the Hoeffding's inequality states that:


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: The proof of Hoeffding's inequality follows similarly to concentration inequalities like Chernoff bounds. The main difference is the use of Hoeffding's Lemma:


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: Using this lemma, we can prove Hoeffding's inequality. As in the theorem statement, suppose are independent random variables such that formula_13 almost surely for all "i", and let formula_14.


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: This upper bound is the best for the value of minimizing the value inside the exponential. This can be done easily by optimizing a quadratic, giving


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: Hoeffding's inequality can be used to derive confidence intervals. We consider a coin that shows heads with probability and tails with probability . We toss the coin times, generating samples formula_18 (which are i.i.d Bernoulli random variables). The expected number of times the coin comes up heads is . Furthermore, the probability that the coin comes up heads at least times can be exactly quantified by the following expression:


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: When for some , Hoeffding's inequality bounds this probability by a term that is exponentially small in :


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: Since this bound holds on both sides of the mean, Hoeffding's inequality implies that the number of heads that we see is concentrated around its mean, with exponentially small tail.


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: Thinking of formula_22 as the "observed" mean, this probability can be interpreted as the level of significance formula_23 (probability of making an error) for a confidence interval around formula_24 of size 2:


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: Therefore, we require at least formula_27 samples to acquire a formula_28-confidence interval formula_29.


title: Hoeffding's inequality

text: Hence, the cost of acquiring the confidence interval is sublinear in terms of confidence level and quadratic in terms of precision. Note that there are more efficient methods of estimating a confidence interval.


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: The Princess Switch: Switched Again is a 2020 American Christmas romantic comedy film directed by Mike Rohl. As the second instalment in The Princess Switch trilogy, it stars Vanessa Hudgens, Sam Palladio, Suanne Braun, and Nick Sagar. The story follows Margaret Delacourt, the Duchess of Montenaro, who suddenly inherits the throne to her home country of Montenaro. As her Christmas coronation approaches, she and Stacy switch places once again so Margaret can fix her relationship with Stacy's friend Kevin. Unbeknownst to both women, a third look-alike, Margaret's evil cousin Lady Fiona, disguises herself as Margaret in a scheme to steal the throne.


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: The film is produced by Brad Krevoy and was released on Netflix on November 19, 2020 and received mixed reviews from critics.


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: Set two years after the end of the first film, Stacy is now the Princess of Belgravia, while Margaret is preparing to ascend to the throne of Montenaro following the death of the king and the decision of his son Howard to abdicate. Nervous about taking on the responsibilities of ruling a nation, Margaret has ended her relationship with Kevin, who is now running his own bakery with Olivia in Chicago.


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: Stacy makes a surprise visit to Chicago on her way to the coronation and finds Kevin miserable since the breakup. When Olivia reveals she never mailed in the RSVP to the coronation, Stacy persuades him to reconsider and travel with her and Prince Edward, even though the couple has their own relationship problems as Stacy has increasingly neglected Edward while she focuses on her duties as Princess.


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: Upon arriving, Kevin reunites with Margaret and helps her, Prince Edward, Stacy, and Olivia decorate her palace for Christmas. Margaret also feels depressed about how things ended with her and Kevin. At an evening event, they dance, only to be interrupted by Lady Fiona Pembroke, Margaret's cousin. Unbeknownst to anyone, Fiona has spent nearly all of her family's small fortune and has resorted to using her servants Reggie and Mindy to rob the guests at the party. Back at the decrepit Pembroke estate, Fiona suddenly has an idea to assume Margaret's identity, get crowned as queen, and loot the royal treasury, setting her up for life. Reggie and Mindy are enthusiastic and help Fiona dye her hair and copy Margaret's makeup while studying the queen's upcoming schedule.


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: Back at the palace, Margaret admits that she's been too busy with royal affairs to spend time with Kevin. Complicating matters further is Count Antonio Rossi, her chief of staff, who woos Margaret and plants seeds of doubt in Kevin's mind that he could ever be a good match for a future queen. Stacy decides the only way to fix things is for her and Margaret to switch identities again so she and Kevin can have the afternoon to themselves while Stacy takes care of Margaret's schedule. The switch takes place, with Olivia staying behind to distract Edward while Margaret and Kevin go to a local Christmas park. There, Kevin expresses his doubts about being Margaret's equal and she convinces him that such concerns are irrelevant as long as they love each other.


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: Reggie and Mindy abduct Stacy, thinking she's Margaret, and lock her up in Pembroke Manor. Fiona steps in just as Margaret returns and realizing that the woman she's speaking to isn't Stacy, Margaret explains the truth to Prince Edward and they rescue Stacy from Reggie and Mindy, who are arrested and reveal Fiona's plan. Meanwhile, Antonio deduces the truth on his own as Fiona forgot to cover up a tattoo on her finger. He tells her that he will move up the coronation and help her escape the country if she agrees to divide the treasury with him, as he also needs money. Just as the coronation is about to take place, Margaret and Stacy arrive and expose Fiona and Antonio. The latter is arrested while the former admits her deception and reveals that Kevin is on his way to the airport with Olivia after she told him she didn't want to be with him anymore.


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: They stop Kevin just as he is about to board a plane, and he and Margaret get married on the spot officiated by a nearby priest. Stacy and Edward reaffirm their love for each other as she promises to make more time for them, and he promises not to smother her with attention. Margaret is crowned Queen of Montenaro with Stacy, Edward, Olivia, and Fiona (escorted by police) cheering her on.


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of .


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: For "Variety" Dennis Harvey opines, "'Switched Again' isn't really about suspense, romantic troubles or even identity swapping. Instead, what it's selling is Yuletide." Terming the look of the film as a 'high-caloric treat', Harvey praised the production designer Pat Campbell, cinematographer Fernando Arguelles Fernandez, and the costumes by Johnetta Boone and Francisco Rodriguez-Weil. Harvey feels that the [switching] story is weak in certain places but the Christmas decorations will, "satisfy viewers’ itch for confectionary-looking Christmas fluff".


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: Helen T. Verongos of "The New York Times" found the movie to be an "appealing" Christmas film, saying that it was "syrupy, and no, beyond its central gimmick, there is little substance to be found. But the same could be said for many a beloved romance film or holiday movie".


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: Alex Abad-Santos of "Vox" was called it "a perfectly harmless way to burn 90 minutes, during which you won't worry about the awful things happening in real life. It's inoffensively fine — the conflict is never too high-stakes, and the happy ending is happy enough." Sarah El-Mahmoud of Cinemablend.com praised the film's atmosphere, but ultimately described it as "safe" and "generic".


title: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

text: In November 2020, Netflix confirmed that a third film in the series, "", had been ordered. The film premiered on Netflix on November 18, 2021.


title: British Standard Pipe

text: British Standard Pipe (BSP) is a set of technical standards for screw threads that has been adopted internationally for interconnecting and sealing pipes and fittings by mating an external (male) thread with an internal (female) thread. It has been adopted as standard in plumbing and pipe fitting, except in North America, where NPT and related threads are used.


title: British Standard Pipe

text: At least 41 thread sizes have been defined, ranging from ⁄ to 18, although of these only 15 are included in ISO 7 and 24 in ISO 228. The size number was originally based on the "inner" diameter (measured in inches) of a steel tube for which the thread was intended, but contemporary pipes tend to use thinner walls to save material, and thus have an inner diameter larger than this nominal size. In the modern standard metric version, it is simply a size number, where listed diameter size is the major outer diameter of the external thread. For a taper thread, it is the diameter at the "gauge length" (plus/minus one thread pitch) from the small end of the thread. The taper is 1:16, meaning that for each 16 units of measurement increase in the distance from the end, the diameter increases by 1 unit of measurement.


title: British Standard Pipe

text: The terminology for the use of "G" and "R" originated from Germany ("G" for "gas", as it was originally designed for use on gas pipes; "R" for "rohr", meaning "pipe".)


title: British Standard Pipe

text: The standard ISO 7 - Pipe threads where pressure-tight joints are made on the threads consists of the following parts:


title: British Standard Pipe

text: The standard ISO 228 - Pipe threads where pressure-tight joints are not made on the threads consists of the following parts:


title: Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department

text: Throughout Japan, there are both evil secret organizations that seek to conquer the world, and superheroes who rise up to challenge them. One such evil organization, Agastia, operates out of a base hidden underneath a front company headquartered somewhere in Tokyo. Agastia's attempts to conquer the world are often thwarted by the superhero Divine Swordsman Blader. This story focuses on Miss Kuroitsu, an assistant in Agastia's Monster Development Department, responsible for creating a monster powerful enough to defeat Blader once and for all. However, this organization operates like any large corporation, as Kuroitsu and her Department are forced to fight for resources and funding with other Departments in the organization, make proposals to the board to justify their costs, or deal with their leader's whims forcing them to redo their designs at the last minute.


text: "Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department" is written and illustrated by Hiroaki Mizusaki. A one-shot was first published on Flex Comix's "Comic Meteor" website on April 17, 2019. A full serialization began on the same platform on October 7, 2020.


text: In July 2021, an anime adaptation was announced by Flex Comix. It was later revealed to be a television series produced by Quad and directed by Hisashi Saitō, with Katsuhiko Takayama overseeing the series' scripts, Kazuya Morimae designing the characters, and manzo composing the music. It aired from January 9 to April 3, 2022, on ABC and TV Asahi's programming block. AXXX1S performed the opening theme song "Special force," while Maybe Me performed the ending theme songs "Aimai Identity" and "Destiny." Crunchyroll licensed the series outside of Asia. Medialink licensed the series in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Oceania minus Australia and New Zealand.


title: Rack railway

text: A rack railway (also rack-and-pinion railway, cog railway, or cogwheel railway) is a steep grade railway with a toothed rack rail, usually between the running rails. The trains are fitted with one or more cog wheels or pinions that mesh with this rack rail. This allows the trains to operate on steep grades above 10%, which is the maximum for friction-based rail. Most rack railways are mountain railways, although a few are transit railways or tramways built to overcome a steep gradient in an urban environment.


title: Rack railway

text: The first cog railway was the Middleton Railway between Middleton and Leeds in West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom, where the first commercially successful steam locomotive, "Salamanca", ran in 1812. This used a rack and pinion system designed and patented in 1811 by John Blenkinsop.


title: Rack railway

text: The first mountain cog railway was the Mount Washington Cog Railway in the U.S. state of New Hampshire, which carried its first fare-paying passengers in 1868. The track was completed to reach the summit of Mount Washington in 1869. The first mountain rack railway in continental Europe was the Vitznau-Rigi-Bahn on Mount Rigi in Switzerland, which opened in 1871. Both lines are still running.


title: Rack railway

text: A number of different designs of rack rail and matching cog wheel have been developed over the years. With the exception of some early Morgan and Blenkinsop rack installations, rack systems place the rack rail halfway between the running rails, mounted on the same sleepers or ties as the running rails.


title: Rack railway

text: John Blenkinsop thought that the friction would be too low from metal wheels on metal rails even on level ground, so he built his steam locomotives for the Middleton Railway in 1812 with a 20-tooth, diameter cog wheel (pinion) on the left side that engaged in rack teeth (two teeth per foot) on the outer side of the rail, the metal "fishbelly" edge rail with its side rack being cast all in one piece, in lengths. Blenkinsop's system remained in use for 25 years on the Middleton Railway, but it became a curiosity because simple friction was found to be sufficient for railroads operating on level ground.


title: Rack railway

text: The Fell mountain railway system, developed in the 1860s, is not strictly speaking a rack railway, since there are no cogs with teeth. Rather, this system uses a smooth raised centre rail between the two running rails on steep sections of lines that is gripped on both sides to improve friction. Trains are propelled by wheels or braked by shoes pressed horizontally onto the centre rail, as well as by means of the normal running wheels.


title: Rack railway

text: The first successful rack railway in the United States was the Mount Washington Cog Railway, developed by Sylvester Marsh. Marsh was issued a U.S. patent for the general idea of a rack railway in September 1861, and in January 1867 for a practical rack where the rack teeth take the form of rollers arranged like the rungs of a ladder between two L-shaped wrought-iron rails. The first public trial of the Marsh rack on Mount Washington was made on August 29, 1866, when only one quarter of a mile (402 meters) of track had been completed. The Mount Washington railway opened to the public on August 14, 1868. The pinion wheels on the locomotives have deep teeth that ensure that at least two teeth are engaged with the rack at all times; this measure helps reduce the possibility of the pinions riding up and out of the rack.


title: Rack railway

text: The Riggenbach rack system was invented by Niklaus Riggenbach working at about the same time as, but independently from Marsh. Riggenbach was granted a French patent in 1863 based on a working model which he used to interest potential Swiss backers. During this time, the Swiss Consul to the United States visited Marsh's Mount Washington Cog Railway and reported back with enthusiasm to the Swiss government. Eager to boost tourism in Switzerland, the government commissioned Riggenbach to build a rack railway up Mount Rigi. Following the construction of a prototype locomotive and test track in a quarry near Bern, the opened on 22 May 1871.


title: Rack railway

text: The Riggenbach system is similar in design to the Marsh system. It uses a ladder rack, formed of steel plates or channels connected by round or square rods at regular intervals. The Riggenbach system suffers from the problem that its fixed ladder rack is more complex and expensive to build than the other systems.


title: Rack railway

text: Following the success of the Vitznau-Rigi-Bahn, Riggenbach established the "Maschinenfabrik der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Bergbahnen" (IGB) – a company that produced rack locomotives to his design.


title: Rack railway

text: The Abt system was devised by Carl Roman Abt, a Swiss locomotive engineer. Abt worked for Riggenbach at his works in Olten and later at his IGB rack locomotive company. In 1885, he founded his own civil engineering company.


title: Rack railway

text: During the early 1880s, Abt worked to devise an improved rack system that overcame the limitations of the Riggenbach system. In particular, the Riggenbach rack was expensive to manufacture and maintain and the switches were complex. In 1882, Abt designed a new rack using solid bars with vertical teeth machined into them. Two or three of these bars are mounted centrally between the rails, with the teeth rotationally offset. The use of multiple bars with offset teeth ensures that the pinions on the locomotive driving wheels are constantly engaged with the rack. The Abt system is cheaper to build than the Riggenbach because it requires a lower weight of rack over a given length. However the Riggenbach system exhibits greater wear resistance than the Abt.


title: Rack railway

text: The first use of the Abt system was on the Harzbahn in Germany, which opened in 1885. The Abt system was also used for the construction of the Snowdon Mountain Railway in Wales from 1894 to 1896.


title: Rack railway

text: The pinion wheels can be mounted on the same axle as the rail wheels, or driven separately. The steam locomotives on the West Coast Wilderness Railway have separate cylinders driving the pinion wheel, as do the "X"-class locomotives on the Nilgiri Mountain Railway.


title: Rack railway

text: The Augdio rack system was invented by Tommaso Agudio. It's only long lived application was on the Sassi–Superga tramway which opened in 1884. It used a vertical rack with cog wheels on each side of the central rack. Its unique feature, however, was that the 'locomotive' was propelled by means of an endless cable driven from an engine house at the foot of the incline. Despite its considerable mechanical complexity, it appears that the line worked until 1934.


title: Rack railway

text: The Locher rack system, invented by Eduard Locher, has gear teeth cut in the sides rather than the top of the rail, engaged by two cog wheels on the locomotive. This system allows use on steeper grades than the other systems, whose teeth could jump out of the rack. It is used on the Pilatus Railway.


title: Rack railway

text: Locher set out to design a rack system that could be used on gradients as steep as 1 in 2 (50%). The Abt system — the most common rack system in Switzerland at the time — was limited to a maximum gradient of 1 in 4 (25%). Locher showed that on steeper grade, the Abt system was prone to the driving pinion over-riding the rack, causing potentially catastrophic derailments, as predicted by Dr. Abt. To overcome this problem and allow a rack line up the steep sides of Mt. Pilatus, Locher developed a rack system where the rack is a flat bar with symmetrical, horizontal teeth. Horizontal pinions with flanges below the rack engage the centrally-mounted bar, both driving the locomotive and keeping it centered on the track.


title: Rack railway

text: This system provides very stable attachment to the track, also protecting the car from toppling over even under the most severe crosswinds. Such gears are also capable of leading the car, so even flanges on running wheels are optional. The biggest shortcoming of the system is that the standard railway switch is not usable, and a transfer table or other complex device must be used where branching of the track is needed.


title: Rack railway

text: Following tests, the Locher system was deployed on the Pilatus Railway, which opened in 1889. No other public railway uses the Locher system, although some European coal mines use a similar system on steeply graded underground lines.


title: Rack railway

text: The Strub rack system was invented by Emil Strub in 1896. It uses a rolled flat-bottom rail with rack teeth machined into the head approximately apart. Safety jaws fitted to the locomotive engage with the underside of the head to prevent derailments and serve as a brake. Strub's U.S. patent, granted in 1898, also includes details of how the rack rail is integrated with the mechanism of a turnout.


title: Rack railway

text: In 1900, E. C. Morgan of Chicago received a patent on a rack railway system that was mechanically similar to the Riggenbach rack, but where the rack was also used as a third rail to power the electric locomotive. Morgan went on to develop heavier locomotives and with J. H. Morgan, turnouts for this system. In 1904, he patented a simplified but compatible rack, where the teeth on the engine pinions engaged square holes punched in a bar-shaped center rail. J. H. Morgan patented several alternative turnout designs for use with this rack system. Curiously, Morgan recommended an off-center rack in order to allow clear passage for pedestrians and animals walking along the tracks. Some photos of early Morgan installations show this. A simplified rack mounting system could be used when the Morgan rack was not used for third-rail power and the Morgan rack offered interesting possibilities for street railways. The Morgan rack was good for grades of up to 16 percent.


title: Rack railway

text: The Goodman Equipment Company began marketing the Morgan system for mine railways, and it saw widespread use, particularly where steep grades were encountered underground. By 1907, Goodman had offices in Cardiff, Wales, to serve the British market. Between 1903 and 1909, the McKell Coal and Coke company in Raleigh County, West Virginia, installed of Morgan rack/third-rail track in its mines. Between 1905 and 1906, the Mammoth Vein Coal Company installed of powered rack in two of its mines in Everist, Iowa, with a maximum grade of 16%. The Donohoe Coke Co. of Greenwald, Pennsylvania had of Goodman rack in its mine in 1906. The Morgan system saw limited use on one common carrier railroad in the United States, the Chicago Tunnel Company, a narrow gauge freight carrier that had one steep grade in the line up to their surface disposal station on the Chicago lakefront.


title: Rack railway

text: The Lamella system (also known as the Von Roll system) was developed by the Von Roll company after the rolled steel rails used in the Strub system became unavailable. It is formed from a single blade cut in a similar shape to the Abt system, but typically wider than a single Abt bar. The Lamella rack can be used by locomotives designed for use on the Riggenbach or the Strub systems, so long as the safety-jaws that were a feature of the original Strub system are not used. Some railways use racks from multiple systems; for example, the St. Gallen Gais Appenzell Railway in Switzerland has sections of Riggenbach, Strub and Lamella rack.


title: Rack railway

text: As well as the rack system used, lines using rack systems fall into one of two categories depending on whether the rack rail is continuous or not. Lines where the rack rail is continuous, and the cog-drive is used throughout, are described as pure-rack lines. Other lines, which use the cog drive only on the steepest sections and elsewhere operate as a regular railway, are described as rack-and-adhesion lines.


title: Rack railway

text: On rack-and-adhesion lines, trains are equipped with propulsion and braking systems capable of acting both through the running rail wheels and the cog wheels, depending on whether the rack rail is present or not. Rack-and-adhesion lines also need to use a system for smoothing the transition from friction to rack traction, with a spring-mounted rack section to bring the pinion teeth gradually into engagement. This was invented by Roman Abt, who also invented the Abt rack system.


title: Rack railway

text: On pure-rack lines, the train's running rail wheels are only used to carry the train and do not contribute to propulsion or braking, which is exclusively done through the cog wheels. Pure-rack lines have no need of transitioning systems, as the cog wheels remain engaged with the rack rail at all times, but all track, including sidings and depots, must be equipped with rack rail irrespective of gradient.


title: Rack railway

text: Rack railway switches are as varied as rack railway technologies, for optional rack lines such as the Zentralbahn in Switzerland and the West Coast Wilderness Railway in Tasmania it is convenient to only use switches on sections flat enough for adhesion (for example, on a pass summit). Other systems which rely on the rack for driving (with the conventional rail wheels undriven) such as the Dolderbahn in Zurich, Štrbské Pleso in Slovakia and the Schynige Platte rack railway instead must switch the rack rail. The Dolderbahn switch works by bending all three rails, an operation that is performed every trip as the two trains pass in the middle.


title: Rack railway

text: The geometry of the rack system has a large impact on the construction of turnouts. If the rack is elevated above the running rails, there is no need to interrupt the running rails to allow passage of the driving pinions of the engines. Strub explicitly documented this in his U.S. patent. Strub used a complex set of bell-cranks and push-rods linking the throw-rod for the points to the two throw-rods for the moving rack sections. One break in the rack was required to select between the two routes, and a second break was required where the rack rails cross the running rails. Turnouts for the Morgan Rack system were similar, with the rack elevated above the running rails. Most of the Morgan turnout patents included movable rack sections to avoid breaks in the rack, but because all Morgan locomotives had two linked drive pinions, there was no need for a continuous rack. So long as the breaks in the rack were shorter than the distance between the drive pinions on the locomotive, the rack rail could be interrupted wherever there was need to cross over a running rail.


title: Rack railway

text: Turnouts are far more complex when the rack is at or below the level of the running rails. Marsh's first rack patent shows such an arrangement, and the original Mount Washington Cog Railway he built had no turnouts. It was not until 1941 that a turnout was constructed on this line. There were more turnouts built for the line but all were hand operated. In 2003, a new automatic hydraulic turnout was developed and built at the base as a prototype. With the success of the new turnout, more new automatic hydraulic turnouts were built to replace the hand-operated ones. The new turnouts installed on the Mount Washington line in 2007 are essentially transfer tables. The Locher rack also requires transfer tables.


title: Rack railway

text: Originally almost all cog railways were powered by steam locomotives. The steam locomotive needs to be extensively modified to work effectively in this environment. Unlike a Diesel locomotive or electric locomotive, the steam locomotive only works when its powerplant (the boiler, in this case) is fairly level. The locomotive boiler requires water to cover the boiler tubes and firebox sheets at all times, particularly the crown sheet, the metal top of the firebox. If this is not covered with water, the heat of the fire will soften it enough to give way under the boiler pressure, leading to a catastrophic failure.


title: Rack railway

text: On rack systems with extreme gradients, the boiler, cab and general superstructure of the locomotive are tilted forward relative to the wheels so that they are more or less horizontal when on the steeply graded track. These locomotives often cannot function on level track, and so the entire line, including maintenance shops, must be laid on a gradient. This is one of the reasons why rack railways were among the first to be electrified and most of today's rack railways are electrically powered. In some cases, a vertical boiler can be used that is less sensitive for the track gradient.


title: Rack railway

text: On a rack-only railroad, locomotives are always downward of their passenger cars for safety reasons: the locomotive is fitted with powerful brakes, often including hooks or clamps that grip the rack rail solidly. Some locomotives are fitted with automatic brakes that apply if the speed gets too high, preventing runaways. Often there is no coupler between locomotive and train since gravity will always push the passenger car down against the locomotive. Electrically powered vehicles often have electromagnetic track brakes as well.


title: Rack railway

text: The maximum speed of trains operating on a cog railway is very low, generally from depending on gradient and propulsion method. Because the Skitube has gentler gradients than typical, its speeds are higher than typical.


title: Rack railway

text: The Culdee Fell Railway is a fictional cog railway on the Island of Sodor in "The Railway Series" by Rev. W. Awdry. Its operation, locomotives and history are based on those of the Snowdon Mountain Railway. It is featured in the book "Mountain Engines". The Strbské Pleso rack railway in Slovakia is featured in "The Bounty" by Janet Evanovich and Steve Hamilton.


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: Robert Golden Armstrong Jr. (April 7, 1917 – July 27, 2012) was an American character actor and playwright. A veteran performer who appeared in dozens of Westerns during his 40-year career, he may be best remembered for his work with director Sam Peckinpah.


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: Armstrong was born in Pleasant Grove, Alabama, and was reared on a small farm near Birmingham. He came from a family of fundamentalist Christians, and his mother wanted him to be a pastor. After graduating from Hueytown High School in 1935, Armstrong initially enrolled at Howard College, now Samford University in Homewood, Alabama, where he became interested in acting, and then transferred to the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. While there, he began acting on stage with the Carolina Playmakers. Upon graduating, he attended the Actors Studio.


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: Armstrong wanted to write, rather than act, and said in 1966, "I struggled so hard to be a serious writer." As a student at UNC he wrote a three-act play that was produced. By 1966, he had written "nine full-length plays, four unpublished novels, and 50 unpublished poems."


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: On Broadway, Armstrong portrayed Dr. Baugh and Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1955), Sheriff Talbott in "Orpheus Descending" (1957), and Captain Keller in "The Miracle Worker" (1959). He also began writing his own plays, which were performed off-Broadway.


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: Armstrong's first film appearance was in the 1954 film "Garden of Eden"; however, it was television where he first earned a name for himself. He guest-starred in virtually every television western series produced in the 1950s and 1960s, including "Have Gun - Will Travel", "The Californians", "Jefferson Drum", "The Tall Man", "Riverboat", "The Rifleman", "Zane Grey Theater", "", "The Westerner", "The Big Valley", "Bonanza", "Maverick" (as Louise Fletcher's character's father in the episode which drew the series' largest single viewership, "The Saga of Waco Williams"), "Gunsmoke" (S7E10 as hard nosed Union soldier Capt. Benter”), "Rawhide", "Wagon Train", and "Bat Masterson".


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: On March 3, 1959, Armstrong was cast as the corrupt and cowardly Lou Stoner, a leading candidate for a territorial governorship in the episode "The Giant Killer" of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series "Sugarfoot", with Will Hutchins in the title role.


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: On November 22, 1960, in the episode "License to Kill" of NBC's "Laramie", Armstrong plays Sam Jarrad, a former bounty hunter and a sheriff in Colorado, who comes to Laramie, Wyoming, with a warrant for Jess Harper, played by series co-star Robert Fuller.


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: In 1960 Armstrong appeared as Angus Emmett on "Cheyenne" in the episode titled "Alabi for the Scalped Man." Early in 1961, Armstrong was cast in the title guest-starring role of Nathanael Grimm in "The Return of Mr. Grimm" of the ABC/WB western series "Cheyenne", starring Clint Walker.


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: Armstrong appeared on "The Twilight Zone", in the episode "Nothing in the Dark" along with Robert Redford. He appeared in three episodes of "Perry Mason", twice in the role of the defendant. In 1958, he appeared in the episode "The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde" as character Matthew Bartlett. In 1959, he played character Harry Bright in "The Case of the Petulant Partner," then in 1962 he played John Gregory in "The Case of the Stand-in Sister." Armstrong also appeared on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "The Everglades", "The Andy Griffith Show", "The Fugitive", "Daniel Boone", "T.H.E. Cat", "Hawaii Five-O", "Starsky and Hutch", "The Dukes of Hazzard", "Dynasty", and in the miniseries "War and Remembrance". Armstrong had a recurring role in the second season of "Millennium" as a reclusive visionary known only as the Old Man. In the late 1980s, he played the demonic recurring character "Uncle Lewis Vendredi" in the Canadian horror series "".


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: While working on "The Westerner" in 1960, Armstrong met the up-and-coming writer/director Sam Peckinpah. The two men immediately struck up a friendship. Peckinpah recognized Armstrong's inner turmoil regarding the religious beliefs of his family and utilized that to brilliant effect in his films. Armstrong would almost always play a slightly unhinged fundamentalist Christian in Peckinpah's films, usually wielding a Bible in one hand and a shotgun in the other. This character archetype appeared in "Ride the High Country" (1962), "Major Dundee" (1965), and perhaps most memorably in "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (1973). However, Armstrong also appeared in "The Ballad of Cable Hogue" (1970), playing a more likeable character.


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: Even outside of Peckinpah's work, Armstrong became a tier-one character actor in his own right, appearing in dozens of films over his career, playing both villains and sympathetic characters. Some of his more memorable roles outside of Peckinpah's films include a sympathetic rancher in "El Dorado" (1966), Cap'n Dan in "The Great White Hope" (1970), outlaw Clell Miller in "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" (1972), a bumbling outlaw in "My Name is Nobody" (1973), a secret Satanic cultist sheriff in "Race with the Devil" (1975), "The Car" (1977), as well as "Children of the Corn" (1984), "Red Headed Stranger" (1986) with Willie Nelson, and as General Phillips in "Predator" (1987). He appeared in several of Warren Beatty's films, including "Heaven Can Wait" (1978), "Reds" (1981), and as the character Pruneface in "Dick Tracy" (1990).


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: He semi-retired from films and television in the late 1990s, but he continued to be active in off-Broadway theater in New York and Los Angeles, until finally retiring from acting in 2005 because of near-blindness due to cataracts.


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: In 1991, Armstrong gained critical praise for his portrayal of the title character in the music video for "Enter Sandman" from heavy metal band Metallica.


title: R. G. Armstrong

text: Armstrong was married three times: his first wife was Ann Neale, with whom he had four children; he was then married to Susan Guthrie until 1976; he was married to his third wife, Mary Craven, until her death in 2003. Armstrong died of natural causes at the age of 95 on July 27, 2012, at his home in Studio City, California.


title: Jean Marais

text: Jean-Alfred Villain-Marais (11 December 1913 – 8 November 1998), known professionally as Jean Marais (), was a French actor, film director, theatre director, painter, sculptor, visual artist, writer and photographer. He performed in over 100 films and was the muse and lover of acclaimed director Jean Cocteau. In 1996, he was awarded the French Legion of Honor for his contributions to French Cinema.


title: Jean Marais

text: A native of Cherbourg, France, Marais was a son of Alfred Emmanuel Victor Paul Villain-Marais and his wife, the former Aline Marie Louise Vassord.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais' first role was an uncredited bit in "Song of the Streets" (1933) and he was in "Etienne" (1933). Filmmaker Marcel L'Herbier put him in "The Sparrowhawk" (1933) with Charles Boyer; "The Scandal" (1934), with Gaby Morlay; "Happiness" (1934) again with Boyer, "The Venturer" (1934) with Victor Francen; "The New Men" (1934) with Harry Baur; and "Nights of Fire" (1937) with Morlay and Francen.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marcel Carné gave Marais a small role in "Bizarre, Bizarre" (1937) and the actor was in "Abused Confidence" (1937) by Henri Decoin; "The Patriot" (1938), a biopic of Paul I of Russia with Baur, directed by Maurice Tourneur; and "Remontons les Champs-Élysées" (1938) directed by Sacha Guitry.


title: Jean Marais

text: These were small roles. Marais also appeared on stage. He was in a 1937 stage production of "Oedipe" directed by Charles Dullin, where he was seen by Jean Cocteau. Marais impressed Cocteau, who cast the actor in his play "Les Chevaliers de la table ronde".


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais appeared in Cocteau's play "Les Parents terribles" (1938), supposedly based on Marais' home life, which was a great success.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais had bigger film parts in "The Pavilion Burns" (1941) directed by Jacques de Baroncelli, and "The Four Poster" (1942) directed by Roland Tual.


title: Jean Marais

text: On stage he appeared in "La Machine à ecrire" (1941) by Cocteau and he directed and designed Racine's "Britannicus" (1941). He performed briefly with the Comédie-Française, then left acting for a time for fight in Alsace with the Free French Forces, winning the Croix de Guerre.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais' first film as leading man was "L'Éternel retour" (1943), a re-telling of Tristan and Isolde set in 1940s France, written by Jean Cocteau. It was directed by Jean Delannoy and co-starred Madeleine Sologne. It was popular and made him a star.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais was the male lead in "Voyage Without Hope" (1943) with Simone Renant directed by Christian-Jaque.


title: Jean Marais

text: Christian-Jaque also directed Marais in "Carmen" (1944) with Viviane Romance. This was one of the most popular films in France when it was released.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais' next films were "The Royalists" (1947), a historical adventure film directed by Henri Calef from a novel by Balzac; and "Ruy Blas" (1948) with Danielle Darrieux, from a play by Victor Hugo and script by Cocteau, directed by Pierre Billon.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais' second film with Cocteau as director was "The Eagle with Two Heads" (1948) with Edwige Feuillère. He did "To the Eyes of Memory" (1948) with Michele Morgan for director Jean Delannoy, a big commercial success, then "Les Parents Terribles" (1949) for Cocteau again.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais was reunited with Delannoy for "The Secret of Mayerling" (1949), about the Mayerling incident. He did "Orpheus" (1950) with Cocteau, which was soon regarded as a classic.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais and Morgan were in "The Glass Castle" (1950) directed by René Clément. Marais did two films for Yves Allegret: "Miracles Only Happen Once" (1951) with Alida Valli and "Leathernose" (1952).


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais was in "L'appel du destin" (1953) for Georges Lacombe; "The Lovers of Midnight" (1953) for Roger Richebé; "Voice of Silence" (1953), an Italian film from G. W. Pabst; "Inside a Girls' Dormitory" (1953); "Julietta" (1953) for Marc Allegret with Dany Robin and Jeanne Moreau; the all-star "Boum sur Paris" (1953); and "The Faith Healer" (1954).


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais starred in a version of "The Count of Monte Cristo" (1954) that was hugely popular. He then made some all-star Guitry films, "Royal Affairs in Versailles" (1954), "Napoleon" (1955) (playing Charles Tristan, marquis de Montholon) and "If Paris Were Told to Us" (1956); "School for Love" (1955) for Allegret, with a young Brigitte Bardot, a box office flop; "Kiss of Fire" (1956) for Robert Darène; and "The Whole Town Accuses" (1956).


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais did "Elena and Her Men" (1956) with Ingrid Bergman and Mel Ferrer for Jean Renoir. He followed it with "Typhoon Over Nagasaki" (1957) with Darrieux; "S.O.S. Noronha" (1957); "White Nights" (1957) for Luchino Visconti, with Maria Schell and Marcello Mastroianni; "Girl in His Pocket" (1958); "King on Horseback" (1958); "Every Day Has Its Secret" (1958); and the all-star "Life Together" (1958).


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais starred in the swashbuckler "Le Bossu" (1959), appearing alongside Bourvil and directed by André Hunebelle which was a mammoth hit launched a new stage of his career. He was reunited with Cocteau for "Testament of Orpheus" (1960). He played Lazare Carnot in the all-star "The Battle of Austerlitz" (1960), then was reunited with Bourvil and Hunebelle in another swashbuckler, "Captain Blood" (1960).


title: Jean Marais

text: He did "Princess of Cleves" (1961) for Delannoy with Marina Vlady based on a script by Cocteau. It was back to swashbuckling with "Captain Fracasse" (1961) for director Pierre Gaspard-Huit, and "Blood on His Sword" (1961) for Hunebelle.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais had a supporting role in "Napoléon II, l'aiglon" (1962) then did some films in Italy: "Romulus and the Sabines" (1962) with Roger Moore, and "Pontius Pilate" (1962), where Marais played the title role alongside Jeanne Crain and Basil Rathbone.


title: Jean Marais

text: He was reunited with Hunebelle for "The Mysteries of Paris" (1962), then did "The Iron Mask" (1962) for Decoin.


title: Jean Marais

text: The success of the James Bond films saw Marais cast in an espionage movie, "The Reluctant Spy" (1963) for director Jean-Charles Dudrumet. He did a comedy, "Friend of the Family" (1964), then had a huge box office success with "Fantomas" (1964), playing the villain and hero, under the direction of Hunebelle.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais did "Ivory Coast Adventure" (1965) directed by Christian-Jaque; "Killer Spy" (1965), directed by Georges Lampin; a sequel to "The Reluctant Spy"; and "Operation Double Cross" (1965), a spy film; then a "Fantomas" sequel, "Fantomas Unleashed" (1965).


title: Jean Marais

text: He played Simon Templar in "The Saint Lies in Wait" (1966) for Christian-Jaque, and a French general in "Seven Guys and a Gal" (1967), directed by Bernard Borderie. "Fantomas vs. Scotland Yard" (1967) was the third and final Fantomas, with Hunebelle.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais went on to appear in "Le Paria" (1969); "Renaud et Armide" (1969), based on a play by Cocteau; and "Le jouet criminel" (1969), a short.


title: Jean Marais

text: After 1970, Marais preferred concentrating on his stage work, and his movie performances became fewer.


title: Jean Marais

text: His film credits included "La provocation" (1970); "Donkey Skin" (1970) with Catherine Deneuve, directed by Jacques Demy; and "Robert Macaire" (1971) for French TV.


title: Jean Marais

text: He was in the miniseries "Karatekas and co" (1973) and "Joseph Balsamo" (1973), and did the TV movies "Vaincre à Olympie" (1977) and "Les Parents terribles" (1980), based on the play by Cocteau.


title: Jean Marais

text: He directed stage productions of "Le bel indifférent" (1975) and "Les Parents terribles". He took the latter to London in 1978.


title: Jean Marais

text: His later work included "Emmenez-moi au théâtre"; "Parking" (1985) directed by Demy; "Lien de parenté" (1986); "Les enfants du naufrageur" (1992); "Dis Papa, raconte-moi là-bas" (1993); "Les Misérables" (1995 film), directed by Claude Lelouch; and "Stealing Beauty" (1996), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.


title: Jean Marais

text: He performed on stage until his 80s, also working as a sculptor. His sculpture "Le passe muraille" ("The Walker Through Walls") can be seen in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris.


title: Jean Marais

text: In 1985, he was the head of the jury at the 35th Berlin International Film Festival. He was featured in the 1995 documentary "Screening at the Majestic", which is included on the 2003 DVD release of the restored print of "Beauty and the Beast". Marais appears on the cover sleeve of The Smiths single "This Charming Man".


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais was Jean Cocteau's lover from 1937 to 1947, his muse and longtime friend. After Cocteau's death, Marais wrote a memoir of Cocteau, "L'Inconcevable Jean Cocteau", attributing authorship to "Cocteau-Marais". He also wrote an autobiography, "Histoires de ma vie", published in 1975. From 1948 until 1959, his companion was the American dancer George Reich. He is rumored to have been among the lovers of Umberto II of Italy.


title: Jean Marais

text: In spite of being mainly homosexual, in 1942 Marais met and had a two-year liaison with actress Mila Parély, with whom he later performed in Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast". They remained lifelong friends, and since 1976 Parély managed Marais' pottery shop in Paris.


title: Jean Marais

text: In the early 1960s, Marais adopted a young man, Serge Ayala, who eventually took the name Serge Villain-Marais. This adopted son, who became a singer and an actor, committed suicide in 2012 at age 69 after an inheritance litigation and bouts of loneliness and depression.


title: Jean Marais

text: Marais died from cardiovascular disease in Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes in 1998. He is interred in the Village cemetery at Vallauris, near Antibes.


title: Jean Marais

text: The character Tragicomix, in the comic book "Asterix the Legionary" of 1967, has his characteristics based on Jean Marais.


title: Jean Marais

text: In 1983, a still shot of him from Jean Cocteau's 1950 film "Orphée" was featured on the cover of The Smiths' "This Charming Man".


title: Cruller

text: A cruller () is a deep-fried pastry like a doughnut popular in Europe and North America often made from a rectangle of dough with a cut made in the middle that allows it to be pulled over and through itself, producing twists in the sides of the pastry. The cruller has been described as resembling "a small, braided torpedo". Some other cruller styles are made of a denser dough somewhat like that of a cake doughnut formed in a small loaf or stick shape, but not always twisted. Crullers may be topped with powdered sugar (sometimes mixed with cinnamon) or icing.


title: Cruller

text: A French cruller is a fluted, ring-shaped doughnut made from choux pastry with a light airy texture. The German is very similar, while the Dutch and Belgian is baked instead of being fried.


title: Cruller

text: The name "cruller" comes from the early 19th-century Dutch , from 'to curl'. In northern Germany they are known as ('deer horns'). They are traditionally baked on New Year's Eve as a family project, with the kids doing the labor-intensive shaping and the grown-ups handling the deep fat frying. In Danish they are known as "klejner" and in Swedish as "klenäter", both names deriving from Low German. In Scandinavia, these types of crullers are common at Christmas. In the US, various shapes of pastries are known as "crullers". Some forms of those crullers are what is traditionally eaten in Germany and some other European countries on Shrove Tuesday, to use up fat before Lent.


title: Cruller

text: The term "Chinese cruller" is occasionally applied to the youtiao (), a similar-looking fried dough food eaten in East and Southeast Asia. The term cruller is also associated with the mahua (). Mahua is a type of twisted fried dough much denser and sweeter than youtiao.


title: Cruller

text: The "Aberdeen crulla" is a traditional Scottish pastry made in the same way as the rectangular, plaited cruller of New England. It is first attested in Edinburgh in 1829 and is thought to copied from the 'cruller' of the United States according to the Scottish National Dictionary (1931–1976). Distinct from this, the "yum-yum" is a commonly available treat in Scotland, which resembles a straightened French cruller coated in thin glacé icing.


title: Cruller

text: In 1909, a US author published her belief that crullers were invented in the New World in 1617 by Sebastian Croll; according to her, this was due to the perceived similarity of the names.


title: Cruller

text: In Germany, "Spritzkuchen" are said to have originated in Eberswalde as part of carnival celebrations that take place before Lent. In past times supplies of animal fats had to be used up before Lent so they would not spoil and go to waste and "Spritzkuchen" was one of the dishes created to meet this need.


title: Cruller

text: Crullers are most commonly found in Canada, New England, the Mid-Atlantic and North Central states of the United States, but are also common in California. The German origin is probably why traditional crullers can be found more easily in the Midwest, where many German immigrants settled. Some family-owned bakeries still call them "krullers."


title: Cruller

text: In 2003, the Dunkin' Donuts chain of doughnut shops stopped carrying traditional crullers, claiming that the hand-shaped rectangular treats were too labor-intensive, and couldn't be simulated with new machines for mixing doughnut batter. The company still sells "French crullers" which can be formed by a kind of extruding nozzle.


title: Cruller

text: Tim Hortons, and Honey Dew Donuts still sell the Cruller doughnut. Krispy Kreme sell a similar doughnut the company refers to as a cruller, but in reality it is just a molded/formed cake (or Old Fashioned) doughnut. In place of the traditional cruller, Dunkin' Donuts now sells several variations of a substitute product it calls a "cake stick" which is a simplified, machine-made rectangular version of the elaborately twisted, hand-made variety. In the southeastern U.S., French crullers are a fresh-baked everyday bakery item at Publix grocery stores.


title: DIA (group)

text: DIA (; ; shortened from DIAMOND and backronym for Do It Amazing) is a South Korean girl group formed by MBK Entertainment. The group is currently composed of six members: Eunice, Jueun, Huihyeon, Yebin, Chaeyeon and Eunchae. DIA officially debuted on September 14, 2015, with their lead single "Somehow" from debut album "Do It Amazing.


title: DIA (group)

text: Seunghee left the group in April 2016 to focus on acting. Eunjin decided to leave the group In May 2018 to focus on her health. Jenny also left the group in July 2019 for health issues. Somyi departed the group in January 2022 after deciding to terminate her exclusive contract. The group is currently on indefinite hiatus to focus on their solo activities.


title: DIA (group)

text: In February 2015, MBK Entertainment announced its plans to debut a new girl group. Originally, the company had decided to have possible candidates for their new group compete on a reality survival program. On February 10, Kim Dani was confirmed to be joining the project and announced the program's name "T-ara's Little Sister Girl Group". In June, MBK Entertainment announced that they had cancelled their plans for a survival program, and decided to select the members internally. The final three members, Yebin, Eunice, and Jenny were revealed and the group was set to debut in August under the name DIA. MBK announced a line-up with six members: Eunice, Huihyeon (originally under the stage name Cathy), Jenny, Yebin, Eunjin, and Chaeyeon. Seunghee was added to the line-up before the group's debut. On September 14, 2015, DIA ultimately released their self-titled debut studio album, "Do It Amazing".


title: DIA (group)

text: Eunchae (introduced with her real name Chaewon) joined as a new member in March 2016, and in April, Seunghee was confirmed to have left the group. DIA's first mini-album "Happy Ending" was released on June 14, 2016, along with the music video for lead single "On the Road" on the same day.


title: DIA (group)

text: In September 2016, the group released a Harry Potter-themed album titled "Spell", with "Mr. Potter" as the lead single. DIA was subsequently separated into two "A" and "B" subgroups, named BinChaenHyunSeuS and L.U.B, releasing songs separately.


title: DIA (group)

text: On April 6, the group released a pre-release single titled "You Are My Flower", which featured trot singers Kim Yeon-ja and Hong Jin-young. DIA's reality show subsequently began airing on April 9 on the TV network Onstyle, days after two new members, Jueun and Somyi, were announced. On April 19, the group's second studio album "YOLO" was released. The album contained fourteen tracks, with the lead single titled "Will You Go Out with Me?". "YOLO" also included several tracks composed by the members themselves and featured various artists such as rapper DinDin and former I.O.I member Kim Chung-ha.


title: DIA (group)

text: DIA's third mini-album titled "Love Generation" was later released on August 22, 2017. The album contains twelve tracks, with the lead single titled "Can't Stop". On October 12, a repackaged edition of "Love Generation", titled "Present", was released. It contained the songs from the former, along with four new songs with the title track "Good Night".


title: DIA (group)

text: On May 7, 2018, Eunjin announced her departure from the group, citing health problems. On June 9, 2018, it was reported that DIA would make a comeback on July 5, 2018. It had been previously announced that the group were to come back in April with a track produced by Shinsadong Tiger. On the day of the album's purported release, MBK Entertainment released an official statement announcing and apologizing for its postponement saying it was to be released on July 18, but that did not happen, with the company claiming the postponements were to ensure high-quality material. DIA ultimately released on their fourth EP "Summer Ade" on August 9, 2018, with the title track "Woo Woo". On August 14, the group received their first music show win on SBS MTV's "The Show".


title: DIA (group)

text: Initially, it was reported that DIA would make a comeback on November 7, 2018, with a "Bo Peep Bo Peep 2.0" produced by Shinsadong Tiger. However, nothing materialized. On February 20, MBK Entertainment confirmed both DIA's comeback and the single would be produced by Shinsadong Tiger and marks their first release as seven members without Jenny due to a knee injury. On March 19, 2019, DIA released their fifth EP titled "Newtro" alongside its title track "Woowa", after previous reports of a release on March 28 and 21. On July 6, 2019, MBK Entertainment confirmed that Jenny left the group due to health problems with her knee.


title: DIA (group)

text: On May 25, 2020, it was revealed that DIA would make a comeback with their sixth EP "Flower 4 Seasons" on June 10, marked their first release under PocketDol Studio. It was confirmed that the group will promote with five members as a unit without Chaeyeon & Somyi.


title: DIA (group)

text: On November 12, 2020, it was announced that the group would be making a comeback in January 2021, though it never materialized.


title: DIA (group)

text: On May 11, 2022, it was announced that DIA will be releasing their final album in August, before the group's contract ends in September. It was later confirmed that the group is preparing for a comeback in August. It would be the last album before the end of the contract, and there were discussions regarding Chaeyeon's participation in the album.


title: DIA (group)

text: On September 6, 2022, it was announced that DIA will be releasing their final single "Rooting for You" on September 15. Later that day, the release of the single was moved forward to 14 September to coincide with the 7th anniversary of the group's debut. The group was initially scheduled to perform on music programs, but were canceled after member Chaeyeon got injured. Yebin highlighted that despite DIA's contracts expiring, the group would not be disbanding and they would still be a group to promote and release albums together in the near future, albeit the members being under different agencies.


title: Scribe

text: A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing.


title: Scribe

text: The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its prominence and status with the advent of the printing press. The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other texts as well as secretarial and administrative duties such as the taking of dictation and keeping of business, judicial, and historical records for kings, nobles, temples, and cities. The profession has developed into public servants, journalists, accountants, bookkeepers, typists, and lawyers. In societies with low literacy rates, street-corner letter-writers (and readers) may still be found providing scribe service.


title: Scribe

text: One of the most important professionals in ancient Egypt was a person educated in the arts of writing (both hieroglyphics and hieratic scripts, as well as the demotic script from the second half of the first millennium BCE, which was mainly used as shorthand and for commerce) and arithmetic. Sons of scribes were brought up in the same scribal tradition, sent to school, and inherited their fathers' positions upon entering the civil service.


title: Scribe

text: Much of what is known about ancient Egypt is due to the activities of its scribes and the officials. Monumental buildings were erected under their supervision, administrative and economic activities were documented by them, and stories from Egypt's lower classes and foreign lands survive due to scribes putting them in writing.


title: Scribe

text: Scribes were considered part of the royal court, were not conscripted into the army, did not have to pay taxes, and were exempt from the heavy manual labor required of the lower classes (corvée labor). The scribal profession worked with painters and artisans who decorated reliefs and other building works with scenes, personages, or hieroglyphic text.


title: Scribe

text: Thoth was the god credited with the invention of writing by the ancient Egyptians. He was the scribe of the gods who held knowledge of scientific and moral laws.


title: Scribe

text: In addition to accountancy and governmental politicking, the scribal professions branched out into literature. The first stories were probably creation stories and religious texts. Other genres evolved, such as wisdom literature, which were collections of the philosophical sayings from wise men. These contain the earliest recordings of societal thought and exploration of ideas in some length and detail.


title: Scribe

text: In Mesopotamia during the middle to late 3rd millennium BCE, the Sumerians originated some of this literature in the form of a series of debates. Among the list of Sumerian disputations is the "Debate between bird and fish." Other Sumerian examples include the "Debate between Summer and Winter" where Winter wins, and disputes between the cattle and grain, the tree and the reed, silver and copper, the pickaxe and the plough, and the millstone and the gul-gul stone.


title: Scribe

text: An Ancient Egyptian version is "The Dispute between a man and his Ba", which comes from the Middle Kingdom period.


title: Scribe

text: The written word can be traced back as far as 1400 BCE in ancient China. It was originally used for divination, with characters etched onto turtle shells to interpret cracks caused by exposure to heat. By the sixth century BCE, scribes were producing books called "jiance or jiandu," . These books were made from bamboo strips, each containing a single column of script, bound together with hemp, silk, or leather. Paper, the scribal tool China is known for originating, was likely invented by an imperial eunuch named Cai Lun in 105 CE. The invention of paper later allowed for the invention of wood block printing, where paper was rubbed onto an inked slab to copy the characters. Despite this invention, calligraphy remained a prized skill due to the belief that: "...the best way to absorb the contents of a book was to copy it by hand," .


title: Scribe

text: Chinese scribes played an instrumental role in the imperial government's civil service. During the Tang dynasty, private collections of Confucian classics began to grow. Young men hoping to join the civil service would need to pass an exam based on Confucian doctrine, and these collections, which became known as "academy libraries" were places of study. Within this merit system, owning books was a sign of status. Despite the later importance of Confucian manuscripts, they were initially heavily resisted by the Qin dynasty. Though their accounts are likely exaggerated, later scholars describe a period of book burning and scholarly suppression. This exaggeration likely stems from Han dynasty historians being steeped in Confucianism as state orthodoxy.


title: Scribe

text: Similarly to the west, religious texts, particularly Buddhist, were transcribed in monasteries and hidden "...during times of persecution..." . In fact, the earliest print book found was a copy of the Diamond Sutra from 868 CE, which was found in a walled-in cave called Dunhuang.


title: Scribe

text: As professionals, scribes would undergo three years of training before becoming novices. The title "scribe" was inherited from father to son. Early in their careers, they would work with local and regional governments and did not enjoy an official rank. A young scribe needed to hone their writing skills before specializing in an area like public administration or law. Archeological evidence even points to scribes being buried with marks of their trade such as brushes "...administrative, legal, divinatory, mathematical, and medicinal texts.." thus showing a personal understanding of the importance of their profession


title: Scribe

text: The Triptaka, Buddhist texts, emerged at the beginning of the first century. Buddhist texts were treasured and sacred throughout Asia and were written in different languages. Buddhist scribes believed that, “The act of copying them could bring a scribe closer to perfection and earn him merit.”


title: Scribe

text: Scribes of ancient Israel were a literate minority in an oral based-culture. Some of them belonged to the priestly class, other scribes were the record-keepers and letter-writers in the royal palaces and administrative centers, affiliated with the ancient equivalent of professional guilds.


title: Scribe

text: There were no scribal schools in Israel during the early part of the Iron Age (1200–800 B.C.E.). Between the 13th and 8th centuries B.C.E., the Hebrew alphabetic system had not been developed. Only after the appearance of the Kingdom of Israel, Finkelstein points to the reign of Omri, did the scribal schools begin to develop, reaching their culmination in the time of Jeroboam II, under Mesopotamian influence. The eventual standardization of the Hebrew writing system between the eighth and sixth centuries B.C.E. would presumably have given rise to codified rules and principles of language that scribes would then have learned. The education of scribes in ancient Israel was supported by the state, although some scribal arts could have been taught within a small number of families.


title: Scribe

text: The Jewish scribes used the following rules and procedures while creating copies of the Torah and eventually other books in the Hebrew Bible.


title: Scribe

text: Sofers (Jewish scribes) are among the few scribes that still do their trade by hand, writing on parchment. Renowned calligraphers, they produce the Hebrew Torah scrolls and other holy texts.


title: Scribe

text: Until 1948, the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible dated back to CE 895. In 1947, a shepherd boy discovered some scrolls dated between 100 BCE and CE 100, inside a cave west of the Dead Sea. Over the next decade, more scrolls were found in caves and the discoveries became known collectively as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Every book in the Hebrew Bible was represented except the Esther. Numerous copies of each book were discovered, including 25 copies of the book of Deuteronomy.


title: Scribe

text: While there were other items found among the Dead Sea Scrolls not currently in the Hebrew Bible, and many variations and errors occurred when they were copied, the texts, on the whole, testify to the accuracy of the scribes. The Dead Sea Scrolls are currently the best route of comparison to the accuracy and consistency of translation for the Hebrew Bible because they are the oldest out of any biblical text currently known.


title: Scribe

text: Priests who took over the leadership of the Jewish community preserved and edited biblical literature. Biblical literature became a tool that legitimated and furthered the priests' political and religious authority.


title: Scribe

text: Corrections by the scribes (Tiqqun soferim) refers to changes that were made in the original wording of the Hebrew Bible during the second temple period, perhaps sometime between 450 and 350 BCE. One of the most prominent men at this time was Ezra the scribe. He also hired scribes to work for him, in order to write down and revise the oral tradition. After Ezra and the scribes had completed the writing, Ezra gathered the Jews who had returned from exile, all of whom belonged to Kohanim families. Ezra read them an unfamiliar version of the Torah. This version was different from the Torah of their fathers. Ezra did not write a new bible. Through the genius of his ‘editing', he presented the religion in a new light.


title: Scribe

text: In the Middle Ages, every book was made by hand. Specially trained monks, or scribes, had to carefully cut sheets of parchment, make the ink, write the script, bind the pages, and create a cover to protect the script. This was all accomplished in a monastic writing room called a scriptorium which was kept very quiet so scribes could maintain concentration. A large scriptorium may have up to 40 scribes working. Scribes woke to morning bells before dawn and worked until the evening bells, with a lunch break in between. They worked every day except for the Sabbath. The primary purpose of these scribes was to promote the ideas of the Christian Church, so they mostly copied classical and religious works. The scribes were required to copy works in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew whether or not they understood the language. These re-creations were often written in calligraphy and featured rich illustrations, making the process incredibly time-consuming. Scribes had to be familiar with the writing technology as well. They had to make sure that the lines were straight and the letters were the same size in each book that they copied. It typically took a scribe fifteen months to copy a Bible. Such books were written on parchment or vellum made from treated hides of sheep, goats, or calves. These hides were often from the monastery's own animals as monasteries were self-sufficient in raising animals, growing crops, and brewing beer. The overall process was too extensive and costly for books to become widespread during this period. Although scribes were only able to work in daylight, due to the expense of candles and the rather poor lighting they provided, monastic scribes were still able to produce three to four pages of work per day. The average scribe could copy two books per year. They were expected to make at least one mistake per page. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, copying became more of a specialized activity and was increasingly performed by specialists. To meet expanding demand, the "pecia" system was introduced, in which different parts of the same text were assigned to hired copiers working both in and out of the monasteries.


title: Scribe

text: Women also played a role as scribes in Anglo-Saxon England, as religious women in convents and schools were literate. Excavations at medieval convents have uncovered styli, indicating that writing and copying were done at those locations. Also, female pronouns are used in prayers in manuscripts from the late 8th century, suggesting that the manuscripts were originally written by and for female scribes.


title: Scribe

text: Most of the evidence for female scribes in the early middle ages in Rome is epigraphic. There have been eleven Latin inscriptions uncovered from Rome that identify women as scribes. In these inscriptions we meet with Hapate who was known as a shorthand writer of Greek and lived until the age of 25.  Corinna who was known as a storeroom clerk and scribe. Three were identified as literary assistants; Tyche, Herma, and Plaetoriae. There were also four women who have been identified by the title of "libraria. Libraria" is a term that not only indicates clerk or secretary but more specifically literary copyist. These women were Magia, Pyrrhe, Vergilia Euphrosyne and a freed woman who remains nameless in the inscription. To the inscriptions and literary references we can add one final piece of Roman-period evidence for female scribes: an early-2nd-century marble relief from Rome that preserves an illustration of a female scribe. The woman is seated on a chair and appears to be writing on some kind of a tablet, she is facing the butcher who is chopping meat at a table.


title: Scribe

text: In the 12th century within a Benedictine monastery at Wessobrunn, Bavaria there lived a female scribe named Diemut. She lived within the monastery as recluse and professional scribe. Two medieval book lists exist that have named Diemut as having written more than forty books. Fourteen of Diemut's books are in existence today. Included in these are four volumes of a six volume set of Pope Gregory the Great's "Moralia in Job", two volumes of a three-volume Bible, and an illuminated copy of the Gospels. It has been discovered that Diemut was a scribe for as long as five decades. She collaborated with other scribes in the production of other books. Since the Wessobrunn monastery enforced its strict claustration it is presumed that these other scribes were also women. Diemut was credited with writing so many volumes that she single-handedly stocked the Wessobrunn's library. Her dedication to book production for the benefit of the Wessobrunn monks and nuns eventually led to her being recognized as a local saint. At the Benedictine monastery within Admont, Austria it was discovered that some of the nuns had written verse and prose in both Latin and German. They delivered their own sermons, took dictation on wax tablets, and copied and illuminated manuscripts. They also taught Latin grammar and biblical interpretation at the school. By the end of the 12th century they owned so many books that they needed someone to oversee their scriptorium and library. Two female scribes have been identified within the Admont Monastery; Sisters Irmingart and Regilind.


title: Scribe

text: There are several hundred women scribes that have been identified in Germany. These women worked within German women's convent from the thirteenth to the early 16th century. Most of these women can only be identified by their names or initials, by their label as "scriptrix", "soror", "scrittorix", "scriba" or by the colophon (scribal identification which appears at the end of a manuscript). Some of the women scribes can be found through convent documents such as obituaries, payment records, book inventories, and narrative biographies of the individual nuns found in convent chronicles and sister books. These women are united by their contributions to the libraries of women's convents. Many of them remain unknown and unacknowledged but they served the intellectual endeavor of preserving, transmitting and on occasion creating texts. The books they left their legacies within were usually given to the sister of the convent and were dedicated to the abbess, or given or sold to the surrounding community. There are two obituaries that have been found that date back to the 16th century, both of the obituaries describe the women who died as a "scriba". In an obituary found from a monastery in Rulle, describes Christina Von Haltren as having written many other books.


title: Scribe

text: Women's monasteries were different from men's in the period from the 13th to the 16th century. They would shift their order depending on their abbess. If a new abbess would be appointed then the order would change their identity. Every time a monastery would shift their order they would need to replace, correct and sometimes rewrite their texts. Many books survived from this period. Approximately 4,000 manuscripts have been discovered from women's convents from late medieval Germany. Women scribes served as the business women of the convent. They produced a large amount of archival and business materials, they recorded the information of the convent in the form of chronicles and obituaries. They were responsible for producing the rules, statutes and constitution of the order. They also copied a large amount of prayer books and other devotional manuscripts. Many of these scribes were discovered by their colophon.


title: Scribe

text: Despite women being barred from transcribing Torah scrolls for ritual use, a few Jewish women between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries are known to have copied other Hebrew manuscripts. They learned the craft from male scribes they were related to, and were unusual because women were not typically taught Hebrew. Knowledge of these women scribes comes from their colophon signatures.


title: Scribe

text: The scribe was a common job in medieval European towns during the 10th and 11th centuries. Many were employed at scriptoria owned by local schoolmasters or lords. These scribes worked under deadlines to complete commissioned works such as historic chronicles or poetry. Due to parchment being costly, scribes often created a draft of their work first on a wax or chalk tablet.


title: Aga Khan Palace

text: The palace was an act of charity by the spiritual leader of the Nizari Ismaili Muslims, who wanted to help the poor in the neighbouring areas of Pune, who were drastically hit by famine by offering them work.