title: Last.fm

text: On 24 March 2009, Last.fm announced a change in free stream listening policy. According to the blog post "[...] In the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, nothing will change. In all other countries, listening to Last.fm Radio will soon require a subscription of €3.00 per month." The change went into effect on 22 April 2009. The announcement led to a wave of disappointment among users, resulting in users stopping submission of their data, refusing to change signatures/avatars and even deleting their accounts.


title: Last.fm

text: On 11 September 2009, CBS Radio announced that Last.fm programming would be available in four major market FM stations for the first time on their HD Radio multicasts. This includes KCBS-HD2 in Los Angeles; KITS-HD3 in San Francisco; WWFS-HD2 in New York City; and WXRT-HD3 in Chicago. The programming, which consisted mostly of music aggregated by Last.fm's user-generated weekly music charts as well as live performances and interviews from the Last.fm studios in New York City, debuted on 5 October.


title: Last.fm

text: On 12 April 2010, Last.fm announced that they would be removing the option to preview entire tracks, instead redirecting to sites such as the free Hype Machine and pay-to-listen MOG for this purpose. This provoked a large negative reaction from some in the Last.fm user community who perceived the removal as hindering the ability of lesser-known and unsigned artists to gain exposure for their music and general enjoyment of the site. A new "Play direct from artist" feature was introduced soon after, which allowed artists to select individual tracks for users to be able to stream in full.


title: Last.fm

text: The ability to listen to custom radio stations ("personal tag radio", "loved tracks radio") was withdrawn on 17 November 2010. This change provoked an angry response among users. Last.fm stated that the move was for licensing reasons. The change meant that a tag radio stream would include all music tagged as such, not just that tagged by each individual user, effectively widening the number of tracks that might be streamed under any one tag set.


title: Last.fm

text: In March 2012, Last.fm was breached by hackers and more than 43 million user accounts were compromised. The full extent of the hack, and its connection to similar attacks against Tumblr, LinkedIn and Myspace in the same time frame, were not confirmed until August 2016. The passwords were encrypted using an outdated, unsalted MD5 hash. Last.fm made users aware of the attack in June 2012.


title: Last.fm

text: On 14 February 2012, Last.fm announced that a new beta desktop client had been launched for public testing. The new scrobbler was released for all users on 15 January 2013.


title: Last.fm

text: On 12 July 2012, Last.fm announced a new website redesign was also open to public beta and would rely on feedback from testing users. The site redesign went live for all users on 2 August 2012. While well received by technology websites, some of the site's users reacted negatively to the changes on the website's forum.


title: Last.fm

text: On 19 June 2012, Last.fm launched Last.fm Originals, a new website featuring exclusive performances and interviews from various musical artists.


title: Last.fm

text: On 13 December 2012, it was announced that Last.fm would discontinue radio service after January 2013 to subscribers in all countries except the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil. Additionally, radio in the desktop client would require a subscription in the US, UK and Germany, although the website radio would remain free in those countries.


title: Last.fm

text: In January 2014, the website announced on-demand integration with Spotify and a new YouTube-powered radio player. Upon the introduction of the YouTube player, the standard radio service became a subscriber-only feature.


title: Last.fm

text: On 26 March 2014, Last.fm announced they would be discontinuing their streaming radio service on 28 April 2014. In a statement, the site said the decision was made in order to "focus on improving scrobbling and recommendations".


title: Last.fm

text: On 15 April 2015, Last.fm released a subscriber-exclusive beta of a new website redesign. Digital Spy described user reactions on the site's forums during the week of the redesign as "universally negative".


title: Last.fm

text: In 2016, Music Manager was discontinued and music uploaded to the site by musicians and record labels became inaccessible; post-Spotify integration they could still be played and downloaded where the option was given, but following the change artists themselves were unable to access their songs in the Last.fm catalogue.


title: Last.fm

text: In 2004, the company received the first round of angel money, from Peter Gardner, an investment banker who was introduced to the founders as early as 2002. A second round was led by Stefan Glaenzer (joined by Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman), who bought into Michael Breidenbruecker's shares as well. In 2006 the company received the first round of venture capital funding from European investors Index Ventures, whose General Partners Neil Rimer and Danny Rimer also joined Last.fm's board of directors, consisting of Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Stefan Glaenzer (chair).


title: Last.fm

text: The free user account includes access to all the main features listed below. Registered Users are also able to send and receive private messages.


title: Last.fm

text: The newly launched last fm pro user account adds additional features to the free tier, most notable being the ability to change username and early access to new features.


title: Last.fm

text: A Last.fm user can build a musical profile using any or all of several methods: by listening to their personal music collection on a music player application on a computer or an iPod with an Audioscrobbler plugin, or by listening to the Last.fm Internet radio service, either with the Last.fm client, or with the embedded player. All songs played are added to a log from which personal top artist/track bar charts and musical recommendations are calculated. This automatic track logging is called scrobbling.


title: Last.fm

text: Last.fm automatically generates a profile page for every user which includes basic information such as their user name, avatar, date of registration and the total number of tracks played. There is also a Shoutbox for public messages. Profile pages are visible to all, together with a list of top artists and tracks, and the 10 most recently played tracks (can be expanded). Each user's profile has a 'Taste-o-Meter' which gives a rating of how compatible the user's music taste is.


title: Last.fm

text: Last.fm features a personal recommendations page that is only visible to the user concerned and lists suggested new music and events, all tailored to the user's own preferences. Recommendations are calculated using a collaborative filtering algorithm so users can browse and hear previews of a list of artists not listed on their own profiles but which appear on those of others with similar musical tastes.


title: Last.fm

text: Once an artist has had a track or tracks "scrobbled" by at least one user, Last.fm automatically generates a main artist page. This page shows details of the total number of plays, the total number of listeners, the most popular weekly and overall tracks, the top weekly listeners, a list of similar artists, most popular tags and a shoutbox for messages. There are also links to events, additional album and individual track pages and similar artists radio. Official music videos and other videos imported from YouTube may also be viewed on the relevant artist and track pages.


title: Last.fm

text: Users may add relevant biographical details and other information to any artist's main page in the form of a wiki. Edits are regularly moderated to prevent vandalism. A photograph of the artist may also be added. If more than one is submitted, the most popular one is chosen by public vote. User submitted content is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License and GNU Free Documentation License.


title: Last.fm

text: Last.fm currently cannot disambiguate artists with the same name; a single artist profile is shared between valid artists with the same name. Also Last.fm and its users currently do not differentiate between the Composer and the Artist of music which serves for confusion in classical music genres.


title: Last.fm

text: One particular feature of Last.fm is the semi-automatic weekly generation and archiving of detailed personal music charts and statistics which are created as part of its profile building. Users have several different charts available, including Top Artists, Top Tracks, and Top Albums. Each of these charts is based on the actual number of people listening to the track, album or artist recorded either through an Audioscrobbler plugin or the Last.fm radio stream.


title: Last.fm

text: Additionally, charts are available for the top tracks by each artist in the Last.fm system as well as the top tracks for individual albums (when the tagging information of the audio file is available). Artist profiles also keep track of a short list of Top Fans, which is calculated by a formula meant to portray the importance of an artist in a fan's own profile, balancing out users who play hundreds of tracks overall versus those who play only a few.


title: Last.fm

text: As the information generated is largely compiled from the ID3 data from audio files "scrobbled" from users' own computers, and which may be incorrect or misspelled, there are many errors in the listings. Tracks with ambiguous punctuation are especially prone to separate listings, which can dilute the apparent popularity of a track. Artists or bands with the same name are not always differentiated. The system attempts to translate some different artist tags to a single artist profile, and has recently attempted to harmonise track names.


title: Last.fm

text: Last.fm generates weekly "global" charts of the top 400 artists and tracks listened to by all Last.fm users.


title: Last.fm

text: The result is notably different from traditional commercial music charts provided by the UK Top 40, "Billboard", Soundscan and others, which are based on radio plays or sales. Last.fm charts are less volatile and a new album's release may be reflected in play data for many months or years after it drops out of commercial charts. For example, The Beatles have consistently been a top-five band at Last.fm, reflecting the continued popularity of the band's music irrespective of current album sales. Significant events, such as the release of a highly anticipated album or the death of an artist can have a large impact on the charts.


title: Last.fm

text: The Global Tag Chart shows the 100 most popular tags that have been used to describe artists, albums, and tracks. This is based on the total number of times the tag has been applied by Last.fm users since the tagging system was first introduced and does not necessarily reflect the number of users currently listening to any of the related "global tag radio" stations.


title: Last.fm

text: Last.fm previously offered customized virtual "radio stations" consisting of uninterrupted audio streams of individual tracks selected from the music files in the music library. This service was discontinued 28 April 2014.


title: Last.fm

text: Stations can be based on the user's personal profile, the user's "musical neighbours", or the user's "friends". Tags also have radio stations if enough music has the same tag. Radio stations can also be created on the fly, and each artist page allows selection of a "similar artists" or "artist fan" radio station. As of May 2009, Last.fm introduced Visual Radio, an improved version of Last.fm radio. This brought features such as an artist slideshow and combo stations, which allows for listening to stations consisting of common similar artists of up to either 3 artists or 3 tags.


title: Last.fm

text: Under the terms of the station's "radio" license, listeners may not select specific tracks (except as previews), or choose the order in which they are played, although any of the tracks played may be skipped or banned completely. The appropriate royalties are paid to the copyright holders of all streamed audio tracks according to the law in the UK. The radio stream uses an MP3 stream encoded at 128 kbit/s 44.1 kHz, which may be played using the in-page Flash player or the downloaded Last.fm client, but other community-supported players are available as well as a proxy which allows using a media player of choice.


title: Last.fm

text: On 24 March 2009, Last.fm announced that Last.fm Radio would require a subscription of €3.00 per month for users living outside the US, the UK, and Germany. This change was to take effect on 30 March, but was postponed until 22 April. The decision resulted in over 1,000 comments, most of them negative, on the Last.fm blog.


title: Last.fm

text: Streaming and radio services were discontinued by Last.fm on 28 April 2014, in order to "focus on its core product, the scrobbling experience". However, the website continues to generate recommendations based on a user's existing library.


title: Last.fm

text: An "in-page" player is provided automatically for all listeners with HTML5-enabled browser or Adobe Flash installed on their computers. However, it is necessary to download and install the Last.fm client if a user also wishes information about played tracks from their own digital music collection to be included in their personal music profile.


title: Last.fm

text: Prior to August 2005, Last.fm generated an open stream that could be played in the user's music player of choice, with a browser-based player control panel. This proved difficult to support and has been officially discontinued. The Last.fm client is currently the only officially supported music player for playing customized Last.fm radio streams on desktop computers. The current version combines the functions of the music player with the plugin that transmits all track data to the Last.fm server, and effectively replaces the separate Last.fm Player and the standalone track submission plugins. It is also free software licensed under the GNU General Public License and available for Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems.


title: Last.fm

text: The player allows the user to enter the name of any artist or tag, which then gives a choice of a number of similar artist stations, or similar global tag stations. Alternatively, Recommendation radio or any of the user's personal radio stations may be played without the necessity to visit the website.


title: Last.fm

text: The player displays the name of the station and track currently playing, the song artist, title and track length as well as album details, the artist's photo and biographical details, album cover art when available, lists of similar artists and the most popular tags and top fans. There are several buttons, allowing the user to "love", "skip", or "ban" a song. The "love" button adds the song to the user's "loved tracks" list; the "ban" button ensures that the song will not be played again. Both features affect the user's profile. The "skip" button does not. Other buttons allow the user to tag or recommend the currently playing track. Other features offered by the application are: minor editing of the user's profile including removing recently played artists and songs from the loved, banned, or previously played track lists; lists of friends and neighbours, lists of tags and a list of previously played radio stations. Users can also open their full Last.fm profile page directly from the player.


title: Last.fm

text: The client also enables the user to install player plugins, these integrate with various standalone media players to allow the submission of tracks played in those programs.


title: Last.fm

text: In the latest version of the Last.fm Player application, the user can select to use an external player. When this is done, the Last.fm Player provides the user with a local URL, through which the Last.fm music stream is proxied. Users can then open the URL in their preferred media player.


title: Last.fm

text: A new version of the desktop client, which had been in beta since early 2012, was released on 15 January 2013. This version disabled the radio function for free users. To access that feature, a paid subscription is necessary.


title: Last.fm

text: Last.fm has also developed client software for mobile phones running the iPhone OS, BlackBerry OS and the Android OS. Last.fm has only released these apps in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, claiming for four years that they are negotiating licenses for making the streaming available in other countries.


title: Last.fm

text: Last.fm remained out of service for more than 22 hours on 10 June 2014. It was amongst the longest outages the company has faced. The company, however, remained in contact with visitors using a status page.


title: Last.fm

text: In addition to Last.fm automatically tracking music played via Last.fm's radio, users can also contribute (scrobble) listening data to their Last.fm profile from other streaming sites or by tracking music played locally on their own personal devices. Scrobbling is possible with music stored and played locally via software on devices such as PCs, mobile phones, tablets, and standalone (hardware) media players. Indeed, these were the only methods of scrobbling listening data both before and after the existence of the Last.fm radio service. Certain sites and media players have the ability to upload (scrobble) listening data built-in, for others users must download and install a plugin for their music player, which will automatically submit the artist and title of the song after either half the song or the first four minutes have played, whichever comes first. When the track is shorter than 30 seconds (31 seconds in iTunes) or the track lacks metadata (ID3, CDDB, etc.), the track is not submitted. To accommodate dial-up users or those listening to music while offline, caching of the data and submitting it in bulk is also possible.


title: Last.fm

text: As of March 2008, the website has added a section titled "Build" where third-party applications can be submitted for review, and then posted to the page.


title: Last.fm

text: Last.fm partnered up with the SXSW festival by creating an application embedded in the corresponding group page that filters the various artists at the festival by a user's listening statistics, and then uses Last.fm's recommendation service to also suggest other performing artists that said user has not listened to.


title: Airstrike

text: An airstrike, air strike or air raid is an offensive operation carried out by aircraft. Air strikes are delivered from aircraft such as blimps, balloons, fighters, heavy bombers, ground attack aircraft, attack helicopters and drones. The official definition includes all sorts of targets, including enemy air targets, but in popular usage the term is usually narrowed to a tactical (small-scale) attack on a ground or naval objective as opposed to a larger, more general attack such as carpet bombing. Weapons used in an airstrike can range from direct-fire aircraft-mounted cannons and machine guns, rockets and air-to-surface missiles, to various types of aerial bombs, glide bombs, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and even directed-energy weapons such as laser weapons.


title: Airstrike

text: In close air support, air strikes are usually controlled by trained observers on the ground for coordination with ground troops and intelligence in a manner derived from artillery tactics.


title: Airstrike

text: On November 1, 1911, Italian aviator Second Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti dropped four bombs on two Turkish-held bases in Libya, carrying out the world's first air strike as part of the Italo-Turkish War. The use of air strikes was extended in World War I. For example, at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915, the British dropped bombs on German rail communications. The first large scale air raid occurred later in 1915, when London was bombed by 15 German Zeppelin dirigibles at night. Since everyone was asleep, a loud warning system made sense.


title: Airstrike

text: However, it was not until World War II that the Oxford English Dictionary first records usage of the term "air strike", which remained two separate words for some time thereafter. The Second World War also saw the first development of precision-guided munitions, which were fielded successfully by the Germans, and contributed to the modern sense of air "strike", a precision targeted attack as opposed to a strafing run or area bombing. The importance of precision targeting cannot be overstated: by some statistics, over a hundred raids were necessary to destroy a point target in World War 2; by the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. Air Force was able to release to media precise footage of television- or radar-guided bombs directly hitting the target without significant collateral damage (using, for example, the LANTIRN pod). Paul Fussell noted in his seminal work The Great War and Modern Memory the popular 20th century tendency to assume an errant bomb hitting a church, for example, was completely deliberate and reflective of the inherent evil of the enemy; over time, expectations for reduced collateral damage have increased to the point that developed countries engaging in war against less technologically advanced countries approach near-zero in terms of such damage.


title: Airstrike

text: In the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s, British and Commonwealth Avro Lincoln heavy bombers, de Havilland Vampire fighter jets, Supermarine Spitfires, Bristol Brigands, de Havilland Mosquitos, and a host of other British aircraft were used in Malaya in operations against guerillas. However, the humid climate played havoc with the Mosquito's wooden airframe, and they were soon deployed elsewhere. This period also marked the last combat deployment of British Spitfires.


title: Airstrike

text: During the Vietnam War, airstrikes and their doctrine were adjusted to fit the jets, like the North American F-100 Super Sabre, Republic F-105 Thunderchief, Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, and McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, which were entering the U.S.A.F. and U.S.N. inventory. These aircraft could fly faster, carry more ordnance, and defend themselves better than the F-4U Corsair and North American P-51 Mustang fighters that fought during the Korean War, albeit at the cost of the R&D of the aircraft itself, the weapons, and, most important to the man on the ground, fuel and loiter time, though this situation was slightly alleviated with the introduction of aircraft like the Cessna A-37 Dragonfly, LTV A-7 Corsair II, and Lockheed AC-130 gunships.


title: Airstrike

text: Today, airstrike terminology has extended to the concept of the strike aircraft, what earlier generations of military aviators referred to as light bombers or attack aircraft. With the near-complete air supremacy enjoyed by developed nations in undeveloped regions, fighter jets can often be modified to add strike capability in a manner less practicable in earlier generations, e.g. McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle.


title: Airstrike

text: Airstrikes can be carried out for strategic purposes outside of general warfare. Operation Opera was a single eight-ship Israeli airstrike against the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor, criticized by world opinion but not leading to a general outbreak of war. Such an example of the preventive strike has created new questions for international law.


title: Airstrike

text: Airstrikes, including airstrikes by drones, were extensively used during the Gulf War, War on Terror, War in Afghanistan, Iraq War, First Libyan Civil War, Syrian Civil War, Iraqi Civil War (2014–2017), Yemeni Civil War (2015–present) and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Airstrike

text: Airstrike campaigns often cause the deaths of non-combatants, including civilians. International law apply the principles of "military necessity", "distinction", and "proportionality". These principles emphasize that an attack must be directed towards a legitimate military target and the harm caused to non-combatant targets must be proportional to the advantage gained by such attack.


title: John E. Sununu

text: John Edward Sununu (born September 10, 1964) is an American politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives and United States Senator from New Hampshire. Sununu was the youngest member of the Senate for his entire six-year term. He is the only Salvadoran American ever elected to the U.S. Congress. He is the son of former New Hampshire Governor and former White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu. In 2008, Sununu lost his re-election bid to former governor Jeanne Shaheen. His younger brother, Chris Sununu, has been the Governor of New Hampshire since January 2017.


title: John E. Sununu

text: Sununu, one of eight siblings, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Nancy (née Hayes) and former Governor of New Hampshire and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.


title: John E. Sununu

text: His father's paternal ancestors came to the United States from the Middle East around the start of the 20th century, while his paternal grandmother was an immigrant from El Salvador, born to a prominent Salvadoran family of Lebanese, Hispanic and Greek descent who were Greek Orthodox Christians. His father's paternal ancestry is Lebanese and Greek, both from the Greek Orthodox communities in Jerusalem. Despite the family's emigration from Jerusalem, some members of the family were from Beirut. His father's maternal ancestry was Greek and Hispanic. His father, John, was born in Havana, Cuba. His paternal grandfather, also named John, was born in the United States, and most of the last two generations of Sununus were also born in the United States. His mother's ancestors include immigrants from Ireland, as well as Scotland and England.


title: John E. Sununu

text: Sununu earned both B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986 and 1987, respectively. He earned a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University in 1991. After graduating, he worked in the high-tech industry, at one time for the company of Dean Kamen and as a management consultant for PRTM.


title: John E. Sununu

text: In 1996, incumbent Republican U.S. Congressman Bill Zeliff decided to run for Governor of New Hampshire. Sununu narrowly defeated Democrat Joe Keefe. In 1998, he won re-election with 67% of the vote beating Democrat Peter Flood. In 2000, he won re-election defeating Democrat Martha Fuller Clark with 53% of the vote.


title: John E. Sununu

text: In 1999, New Hampshire's Christian Coalition gave "pro-family" awards to both New Hampshire Representatives, Sununu and Charles Bass, honoring the vote by both men to impeach President Bill Clinton.


title: John E. Sununu

text: On November 8, 2000, the "Boston Globe" noted Sununu's defeat of Democratic newcomer Martha Fuller Clark, noting that Sununu had "one of the House's most conservative voting records"—opposing abortion and increased minimum wages while favoring school vouchers and the death penalty. He earned a 100% rating from the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste. He has also been presented the "Spirit of Enterprise Award" by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the "Guardian of Small Business Award" by the National Federation of Independent Business, and the "Friend of the Taxpayer Award" by the Americans for Tax Reform.


title: John E. Sununu

text: He served on the House Appropriations and Budget Committees. He held subcommittee seats on the Veterans Administration-Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee, the Treasury Postal Subcommittee, and the District of Columbia Appropriations Subcommittee, and also served as a member of the Republican Policy Committee.


title: John E. Sununu

text: In 2002, Sununu ran for a United States Senate seat from New Hampshire. In the Republican primary, he defeated the Republican incumbent Bob Smith 54%–45%. In the November election, he subsequently defeated Democratic Governor Jeanne Shaheen 51%–46%. The election was marred by members of the Republican Party who organized the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal which disrupted Democratic efforts.


title: John E. Sununu

text: In a rematch, Shaheen defeated Sununu 52% to 45%. She won every county but Carroll, Belknap, and Rockingham counties. Sununu slightly outperformed Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the 2008 national election, as McCain got about 45% of the vote but did not win any counties.


title: John E. Sununu

text: According to a "Washington Post" study, Sununu voted with the Republican Party's position 84% of the time. However, he broke with his party on prominent issues, joining Democrats in filibusters of the USA PATRIOT Act and the Bush Administration's 2003 energy bill. Sununu strongly supported greater access to firearms, voting against the proposed renewal of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 2004. In 2006, he voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He strongly opposed amnesty for illegal aliens, voting against the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill in July 2007. Sununu called for a tougher federal regulator for government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and with Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), he filed a dramatic overhaul of regulation of the insurance industry. A long proponent of technology, in January 2007, Sununu called for a permanent ban on taxes of Internet connections and online sales.


title: John E. Sununu

text: The non-partisan "National Journal" gave Sununu a composite rating of 65.8% conservative and 34% liberal in 2008. Sununu was one of only three senators whose voting record received a score of 100% from the fiscally conservative Club for Growth, in both 2005 and 2006, tying for 1st place. However, his rating fell to 23rd place in 2007, and to 34th place in 2008. The Club for Growth endorsed Sununu's unsuccessful bid for re-election in February 2007 against Jeanne Shaheen (she subsequently during 2009–2012 earned Club for Growth ratings of 64th place to 100th place).


title: John E. Sununu

text: In 2007, Sununu was the lead Republican co-sponsor of the Clean Air Planning Act of 2007 which sought to address air quality and climate change by establishing a schedule to reduce harmful emissions from power plants—in particular, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides—as well as decrease carbon dioxide emissions through a cap and trade system. The legislation, which was never enacted, also addressed mercury pollution, calling for a 90% reduction in emissions of the chemical by 2015. He also supported the bipartisan Clean Energy Stimulus Act of 2008 that provides tax incentives for the development of clean and renewable energy sources. In 2006 Sununu sponsored the bipartisan New England Wilderness Act which added tens of thousand of acres of land to federally protected forests. Sununu opposed the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003, which would have also created a cap-and-trade program. His vote was criticized by the New Hampshire Democratic Party which claimed that he had acted "against reducing greenhouse gases". The "New Hampshire Union Leader" praised his decision, citing the Energy Information Agency's estimation that the legislation would cost the American economy $507 billion over 22 years.


title: John E. Sununu

text: Sununu took a few positions contrary to the Bush administration and the Republican leadership. Though he voted for the flag-burning amendment, he voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment and he opposed restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba, and was one of only two Republicans to vote in favor of terminating funds for TV Martí, which broadcasts anti-Castro programming in Cuba. He was one of a small group of Republicans to vote in favor of banning loans to China for any nuclear projects, and in September 2005 he voted to disapprove a new rule set in place by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) delisting coal and other energy sources from the Clean Air Act.


title: John E. Sununu

text: He also became well known as one of the five Republican Senators who joined Democrats in a filibuster of the USA PATRIOT Act renewal conference report, concerned about possible negative impacts the bill had on civil liberties. This caused the Republican leadership to extend the original legislation until a compromise bill was forged.


title: John E. Sununu

text: In January 2006, at a hearing in front of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on the Broadcast Flag, Sununu was one of the very few present to criticize the legislation, saying "In all cases [of previous technological advancements in the US], we didn't need to step in with a significant statutory government-regulated mandate on technology that consumers use to enjoy this material".


title: John E. Sununu

text: In October 2006, Sununu voted against a portion of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that would suspend the right of habeas corpus for non-citizen detainees. After voting in favor of the final bill, he defended his vote by telling reporters "The Constitution is not a suicide pact".


title: John E. Sununu

text: On March 14, 2007, Sununu became the first Republican senator to call for the firing of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales after a controversy over U.S. Attorney firings. Sununu cited his anger with the mismanagement by Gonzales and the lack of trustworthiness by GOP Senators towards Gonzales.


title: John E. Sununu

text: In July 2005, Sununu shaved his head to show solidarity with Senator Arlen Specter, who had lost his hair due to chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease.


title: John E. Sununu

text: In September 2008, Sununu became one of twenty senators (ten Democrats and ten Republicans) co-sponsoring a bipartisan energy bill, the New Energy Reform Act of 2008. The bill was offered as an alternative to the Democrats' energy bill, sponsored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Both bills proposed to increase offshore drilling, while promoting conservation and alternative energy. The "Gang of Twenty" bill also lets coastal states participate in decisions and in revenue about drilling in the fifty-to-one-hundred-mile range off their coasts. It also differs from the Democrats' bill in allowing drilling off Florida's west coast, a proposal both Florida's senators have protested. To quote the "Minneapolis Star Tribune", "Nearly every potentially vulnerable Senate Republican, from Norm Coleman [of Minnesota] to Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and John Sununu of New Hampshire, has signed on to the legislation."


title: John E. Sununu

text: Sununu currently sits on the Board of Managers of ConvergEx Holdings, a holding company for BNY ConvergEx Group, an affiliate of Bank of New York Mellon, which holds a 33.8% stake in BNY ConvergEx Group.


title: John E. Sununu

text: On July 7, 2010, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP announced that Sununu was joining the firm as an adjunct senior policy advisor. Akin Gump is one of the largest law firms and lobbying firms in Washington, D.C.


title: John E. Sununu

text: Sununu was appointed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to serve on the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) for the Troubled Asset Relief Program funds, whose purpose is to assess how the TARP program is working, in order to help Congress determine whether to continue injecting capital into the financial sector.


title: John E. Sununu

text: Prior to the 2014 election cycle, speculation had abounded that he would pursue a rematch against Shaheen, but in April 2013, he said that he would not run for his old seat.


title: John E. Sununu

text: Sununu married Catherine (Kitty) Halloran on July 9, 1988. They have three children: John, (Catherine) Grace, and Charlotte.


title: Studio Bind

text: , is a Japanese animation studio founded in November 2018 as a joint venture by White Fox and Egg Firm.


title: Studio Bind

text: The company was founded in November 2018 as a joint venture between animation studio White Fox and production, planning and management company Egg Firm. The first work of the studio was on the anime "Karakuri Circus" for the episodes 22 and 31, while the first work of the company as a lead animation studio is "Mushoku Tensei", which debuted in 2021.


title: Studio Bind

text: On January 31, 2021, Egg Firm CEO and "Mushoku Tensei" chief producer Nobuhiro Osawa stated that he built the new production studio for "Mushoku Tensei". In October 2019, production company Egg Firm explained their rationale for setting up a separate studio from the existing White Fox studio, stating they "needed a system that would allow us to move forward with the project in a continuous, long-term, and systematic manner" so they "will be able to concentrate more on the production of "Mushoku Tensei"." Egg Firm noted that "Studio Bind will use "Mushoku Tensei" as a launchpad for its full-scale animation production business.


title: Landmark Group

text: Landmark Group is an UAE multinational conglomerate based in Dubai, UAE headed by Micky Jagtiani, who is the founder and chairman of the company. The group is involved in retailing of apparel, footwear, consumer electronics, cosmetics & beauty products, home improvement and baby products. The group also has interests in hospitality & leisure, healthcare and mall management.


title: Landmark Group

text: Landmark Group has its presence worldwide. It can be broadly classified into retail, hospitality and healthcare.


title: Landmark Group

text: The Beat Diabetes Initiative is an awareness campaign that had over 60,000 participants across 7 countries including United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and India. in its 7th Beat Diabetes Walk


title: Ashigaru

text: Attempts were made in Japan by Emperor Tenmu (673–686) to have a conscripted national army, but this did not come about, and by the 10th century Japan instead relied on individual landowners to provide men for conflicts and wars. These horse-owning landowners were the beginnings of the samurai class and the men who worked the land for the landowners became the common foot soldiers during times of war. These foot soldiers could have long ties and loyalty to the landowners which went back many generations.


title: Ashigaru

text: Land-owning samurai, together with peasant foot soldiers, fought in many wars and conflicts including the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281. Constant warfare between the 14th and 16th centuries made the hiring of foot soldiers with no particular loyalty necessary at times. Paid only in loot, these mercenaries were not well-trained and thus could not always be depended upon in battle. These wandering foot soldiers eventually became the "ashigaru".


title: Ashigaru

text: Ashigaru were commonly armed with "naginata", "yari", "yumi" and swords. Ashigaru armour varied depending on the period, from no armour to heavily armored and could consist of conical hats called "jingasa" made from iron, copper, wood, paper, bamboo, or leather, "dō" (cuirasses), "kabuto" (helmets), "tatami zukin" (armoured hoods), "kote" (armoured sleeves), "suneate" (greaves), and "haidate" (cuisses).


title: Ashigaru

text: The warfare of the Sengoku period (15th and 16th centuries) required large quantities of armour to be produced for the ever-growing armies of ashigaru. Simple munition armour cuirasses and helmets were mass-produced including armour which could be folded or were collapsible. "Tatami" armour was made from small rectangular or hexagonal iron plates that were usually connected to each other by mail and sewn to a cloth backing.


title: Ashigaru

text: In the 16th century the ashigaru were also armed with matchlocks of the type known as "tanegashima". Small banners called "sashimono" could be worn on their backs during battle for identification.


title: Ashigaru

text: In the Ōnin War, ashigaru gained a reputation as unruly troops when they looted and burned Miyako (modern-day Kyoto). In the following Sengoku period the aspect of the battle changed from single combat to massed formations. Therefore, ashigaru became the backbone of many feudal armies and some of them rose to greater prominence.


title: Ashigaru

text: Those who were given control of ashigaru were called "ashigarugashira" (足軽頭). The most famous of them was Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who also raised many of his warrior followers to samurai status.


title: Ashigaru

text: Ashigaru formed the backbone of samurai armies in the later periods. The real change for the ashigaru began in 1543 with the introduction of matchlock firearms by the Portuguese. Almost immediately local "daimyōs" started to equip their ashigaru with the new weapon, which required little training to use proficiently, as compared with the longbow, which took many years to learn. As battles became more complex and forces larger, ashigaru were rigorously trained so that they would hold their ranks in the face of enemy fire.


title: Ashigaru

text: The advantage of the matchlock guns proved decisive to samurai warfare. This was demonstrated at the Battle of Nagashino in 1575, where carefully positioned ashigaru gunners of the Oda and Tokugawa clans thwarted the Takeda clan's repeated heavy cavalry charges against the Oda clan's defensive lines and broke the back of the Takeda war machine.


title: Ashigaru

text: After the battle, the ashigarus' role in the armies were cemented as a very powerful complement to the samurai. The advantage was used in the two invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597 against the Koreans and later the Ming-dynasty Chinese. Though the ratio of guns (matchlocks) to bows was 2:1 during the first invasion, the ratio became 4:1 in the second invasion since the guns proved highly effective.


title: Ashigaru

text: Following the rise of the Tokugawa shogunate, the conscription of ashigaru fell into disuse. Since ashigarus' change to the professional soldier was advanced after Oda Nobunaga, the ashigaru gradually separated from the farmer.


title: Ashigaru

text: When entering the Edo period, the ashigaru's position was fixed and the use of conscripts was abandoned for over two hundred years in Japan. Ashigaru were considered to be the lowest rung of the samurai class in some han (domains), but not in others.


title: Sarah Biasini

text: Sarah Magdalena Biasini (born 21 July 1977) is a French actress, the daughter of actress Romy Schneider and her second husband and former private secretary .


title: Sarah Biasini

text: Biasini studied art history at the Sorbonne in Paris and theater at the Lee Strasberg Institute in Los Angeles and the Actors Studio in New York City.


title: Sarah Biasini

text: She made her acting debut in 2004, starring in the Emmy-nominated French mini-series "", a swashbuckling adventure story loosely based on the life of the sword-wielding 17th-century opera star Julie d'Aubigny (Mlle. Maupin). In 2005, she made her stage debut in "Barefoot in the Park" () at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris.


title: Sarah Biasini

text: Biasini wrote a book called, "La beauté du ciel," which was published in January 2021. The book is based on Biasini's family and her mother.


title: Dacryphilia

text: Dacryphilia (also known as dacrylagnia) is a form of paraphilia in which one is aroused by tears or sobbing.


title: Dacryphilia

text: Not much research has been conducted on dacryphilia, and the few studies that exist have been conducted online, often with small sample sizes. One 2014 study interviewed six people with dacryphilia and three of them were also involved in BDSM. The paraphilia may also be experienced by those who do not consider themselves a dominant or submissive, and are motivated by compassion. They may be aroused when their partner cries during a movie or from the normal emotional vulnerability and strong feelings of love that may make a partner cry during intercourse.


title: Jan Francis

text: Janet Stephanie Francis (born 5 August 1947) is an English actress. She appeared as Penny Warrender in the 1980s romantic comedy "Just Good Friends".


title: Jan Francis

text: Francis was born at the former Charing Cross Hospital London. She is the eldest child of Frank Francis, a clerical officer with the Agricultural Society, and Marjorie (née Watling), an employment agent, who were married in 1944. She was brought up in Streatham and was educated at the Lady Edridge Grammar School.


title: Jan Francis

text: After training as a dancer at the Royal Ballet Senior School from which she graduated in 1965, Francis performed with the Royal Ballet Touring Company in Britain, in the rest of Europe and the United States. Francis left the Royal Ballet in September 1969 to pursue an acting career.


title: Jan Francis

text: Francis made the transfer to becoming an actress through choreography, and performed with the Cheltenham Repertory Company between 1969 and 1970. She first appeared on television in 1971, before landing BBC Television drama roles including Kschessinska in "Fall of Eagles" and Lisa Colbert in "Secret Army" (1977–78). She appeared in "Dracula" (1979) as Mina Van Helsing with Laurence Olivier as Abraham Van Helsing.


title: Jan Francis

text: She played the part of Susie Dean in Alan Plater's adaptation of the J. B. Priestley novel "The Good Companions" (1980) which was produced by Yorkshire Television. Writer John Sullivan met Francis and later created her best-known part, Penny Warrender, in the 1980s BBC sitcom "Just Good Friends".


title: Jan Francis

text: She later co-starred with Dennis Waterman as Sally Hardcastle in the 1989–1992 ITV drama series "Stay Lucky". This was followed by an appearance in "Heartbeat" in 1993, in which she played Vivienne Keen in the episode "Love Hurts.". She also played Nick's "old enough to be his mother" girlfriend in the sitcom "My Family".


title: Jan Francis

text: During the late 1980s and early 1990s, she starred in the Lloyds Bank television commercials alongside Nigel Havers and Leo McKern.


title: Jan Francis

text: In 2006, she guest starred in ITV prison drama "Bad Girls" as interior designer Catherine Earlham, who was sent to Larkhall on remand for embezzlement. The character played a key role in the exit storyline for fellow inmate Darlene Cake (Antonia Okonma). She is also a regular performer, and part of the original cast, of the touring play "Seven Deadly Sins Four Deadly Sinners".


title: Jan Francis

text: In 2009, she appeared as Julia in the second series of "Mistresses" on BBC1. In November 2009, she starred in the ITV drama "Collision". She also played a love interest for Rodney Blackstock in ITV soap opera "Emmerdale", in 2010.


title: Jan Francis

text: Francis married the actor-writer Martin Thurley in Newton Abbot on 1 August 1977; he writes using the pseudonym Thomas Ellice. They have two daughters and reside in Woodchurch, Kent.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Joey Soloway (previously Jill Soloway; born September 26, 1965) is an American television creator, showrunner, director and writer. Soloway is known for creating, writing, executive producing and directing the Amazon original series "Transparent", winning two Emmys for the show; directing and writing the film "Afternoon Delight", winning the Best Director award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival; and producing "Six Feet Under".


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway identifies as non-binary and gender non-conforming, and uses they/them pronouns. In 2020, Soloway announced a name change to Joey.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway was born to a Jewish family in Chicago, Illinois, to writer and public relations consultant Elaine Soloway, and psychiatrist Harry J. Soloway, who grew up in London. Around 2011, Harry J. Soloway came out as transgender and announced a name change to Carrie.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway's elder sister Faith Soloway is a Boston-based musician and performer, with whom Joey sometimes collaborates. Both Joey and Faith attended Lane Technical College Prep High School in Chicago. Joey Soloway graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison as a communications arts major.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway's mother was formerly a press aide to Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne and was a former communications director for School Superintendent Ruth Love. After 30 years, Soloway's parents divorced in 1990. Soloway has a stepfather named Tommy Madison.


title: Joey Soloway

text: While at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Soloway was a film and television student of JJ Murphy and participated in the creation of an undergraduate experimental narrative film entitled "Ring of Fire" as the assistant director under director Anita Katzman. After college Soloway worked as a production assistant in commercials and music videos in Chicago, as well as at Kartemquin Films on the movie "Hoop Dreams".


title: Joey Soloway

text: While in Chicago, Joey and Faith co-developed a parody of "The Brady Bunch" for live stage called "The Real Live Brady Bunch", which began their professional theatrical writing and directing endeavors. They also sold a pilot script to HBO called "Jewess Jones" about a female superhero. Also at the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago, the pair created plays "The Miss Vagina Pageant", and later, while in Los Angeles, "Not Without My Nipples".


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway's TV writing career began on shows such as "The Oblongs", "Nikki", and "The Steve Harvey Show". Soloway followed those shows by writing for four seasons on the HBO original series "Six Feet Under", ultimately serving as co-executive producer. "Six Feet Under" ran for five seasons from 2001 to 2005. Soloway received three Emmy nominations in 2002, 2003, and 2005 for Outstanding Drama Series. Soloway's short story, "Courteney Cox's Asshole", caught the attention of Alan Ball and led to the job.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway later wrote episodes of "Dirty Sexy Money", "Grey's Anatomy", and "Tell Me You Love Me" and was executive producer/showrunner for the second season of Showtime's "United States of Tara", created by Diablo Cody, as well as HBO's "How to Make It in America", created by Ian Edelman.


title: Joey Soloway

text: In August 2016, Amazon premiered a Soloway-directed pilot of "I Love Dick", based on the novel by the same name by Chris Kraus. It was later picked up for a full season, which premiered on May 12, 2017.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway created the pilot "Transparent" for Amazon.com, which became available for streaming and download on February 6, 2014, and was part of Amazon's second pilot season. Joey and Faith Soloway collaborated on "Transparent", including serving as co-writers. They were inspired by their parent who came out as transgender. The show stars Gaby Hoffmann, Jay Duplass, and Amy Landecker as siblings whose parent (played by Jeffrey Tambor) reveals she is going through a significant life transition. The pilot for "Transparent" was picked up by Amazon Studios.


title: Joey Soloway

text: As part of the making of the show, Soloway enacted a "transfirmative action program", whereby transgender applicants were hired in preference to non-transgender ones. , over 80 transgender people have worked on the show, including two transgender consultants.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway wrote Hoffmann's role on "Transparent" especially for her after seeing her performance on "Louie". "Transparent" premiered all ten episodes simultaneously in late September 2014. The show wrapped its fourth season in 2017, and concluded with a movie finale in 2019.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway received two Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series in 2014 and 2016 for "Transparent" and the show has received Emmy nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway's first film was a 13-minute short titled "Una Hora Por Favora", which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. The film stars Michaela Watkins and Wilmer Valderrama. The film tells the story of a woman (Watkins) who hires a day laborer (Valderrama) to do some work at her home, but their relationship soon goes beyond the professional.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway's debut at Sundance, "Afternoon Delight" (2013) won the Directing Award. The film follows Rachel (Kathryn Hahn), a thirty-something woman who is struggling to rekindle her relationship with her husband (Josh Radnor), and ultimately befriends an exotic dancer (Juno Temple). In an interview by IndieWire, Soloway had a personal connection to the film's central character, explaining "There's a lot of me in Rachel's journey. I've never brought a stripper home, but I've always loved reading the memoirs of strippers and sex workers. I feel like they're the war reporters for women. They go to the front lines of a very particular kind of extreme conflict and live there, then write about it so we can experience it with them."


title: Joey Soloway

text: "Afternoon Delight" played at national and international film festivals and was nominated for multiple awards, including a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Performance for Hahn and a Spirit Award for First Feature.


title: Joey Soloway

text: In June 2019, Soloway signed on to write, direct and produce the "Red Sonja" remake. However, it is reported Soloway has left the project


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway wrote the novella "Jodi K.", which was published in the collection "Three Kinds of Asking For It: Erotic Novellas", edited by Susie Bright. Soloway's memoir, "Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants: Based on a True Story", was released in hardcover in 2005, and in paperback in 2006. In 2018, Soloway published another book, "She Wants It: Desire, Power and Toppling the Patriarchy", with Ebury Press, a division of Penguin Random House.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Jewish religion and culture, sexuality, and gender are recurring themes in Soloway's show, "Transparent". According to Soloway, "The "Transparent" narrative is not, then, just or even mostly about transition and transgender. It's about big themes like familial secrets and transformation, revelation and change, all of which are rendered through the specificity and magic of television images and sounds, which create imaginative worlds."


title: Joey Soloway

text: In September 2016, Soloway gave a master class on the female gaze at the Toronto International Film Festival. The term male gaze was first coined by Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" and, just like Mulvey, Soloway gives their own definition of the Female Gaze in three parts. Part one: "reclaiming the body, using it with intention to communicate Feeling Seeing". An example of this female gaze is in the television show "I Love Dick", Soloway said in an interview at the Sundance Film Festival that, ""I Love Dick"...is a series that confronts us with the power of that feminist anger, the female gaze..." Then, part two: the gazed gaze which Soloway describes as taking the camera and using it to show how it feels to be the object of the gaze. For example, in the film "Fish Tank", Soloway says it does exactly that, "...while I was watching it, I was like this is the female gaze. She is showing us how it feels to be this girl. She is not looking at this girl" they explained. And part three: a "Socio-Political justice-demanding way of art making" and returning the gaze. The female gaze is about people reclaiming ownership over their body, deciding how it can be portrayed and, as Soloway points out, is a "conscious effort to create empathy as a political tool" thus seeking out empathy rather than objectification.


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway's writing is often about "The Heroine's Journey," which is about "repairing the divided feminine: the wife and the other woman confronting each other--mom, stripper. That I think women's journeys are really about repairing these sort of divided parts of ourselves. And this divide in our culture that I think is responsible for so much that is a problem in our culture."


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway has seven Emmy nominations and two wins. Soloway is also a member of the board of the San Francisco Film Society.


title: Joey Soloway

text: In 2015, Soloway's show "Transparent" won a Golden Globe for Best Series - Musical or Comedy. Later that same year, Soloway won a DGA Award and a Primetime Emmy Award for directing episode 1.08 ("Best New Girl") of the show. In 2016, Soloway won another Emmy for directing episode 2.09 (" Man on the Land") of "Transparent". Also in 2016, Soloway was a finalist for "The Advocate"'s Person of the Year, and was named to Oprah Winfrey's "SuperSoul 100" list of visionaries and influential leaders.


title: Joey Soloway

text: In 2011, Soloway married music supervisor Bruce Gilbert, with whom Soloway had been in a relationship since 2008. They have a son named Felix Soloway Gilbert. Soloway's older son, Isaac, is from a prior relationship with artist John Strozier. In 2015, Soloway announced their separation from Gilbert, and that Soloway was in a relationship with poet Eileen Myles, whom Soloway met through "Transparent"; their romantic relationship has since ended, and Myles and Soloway held an event at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in which they "processed [their] relationship onstage."


title: Joey Soloway

text: In Soloway’s memoir "She Wants It," Soloway discusses accepting a nonbinary identity at age 50 after filming the first two seasons of "Transparent."


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway is a strong supporter of feminism and co-founded the website Wifey.tv which is described as, "a curated video network for women" that includes content created by and for women. In an interview by "Forbes", Soloway discusses the site saying, "I really like when our content appears to contradict itself at first glance. One day we might post something about sexism or the male gaze, then the next day post something that might be seen as precisely too sexy or raunchy, but it comes from a female creator or artist so it’s relevant. We love the conversation and don’t feel as dependent on insisting on a particular point of view."


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway also co-founded the East Side Jews collective, which is funded by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. The collective "brings together 20- and 30-something Jews in Silver Lake and the surrounding neighborhoods of Los Angeles for offbeat, too-cool-for-shul events that tend to be heavy on comedy and light on Jewish ritual."


title: Joey Soloway

text: Soloway co-wrote "The Thanksgiving Paris Manifesto" with Eileen Myles in 2016, which is a feminist manifesto about the pornography industry. The manifesto was posted on topplethepatriarchy.com, a domain purchased by Myles and Soloway. The manifesto opens with, "We shouldn’t be starting with porn but we must. We support the idea of a porn industry and the idea of people making a living photographing and sharing images of sex but we don’t support an industry that exclusively distributes portrayals of almost exclusively male pleasure and climax."


title: Love Is a Battlefield

text: "Love Is a Battlefield" is a song by American singer Pat Benatar, recorded and released on September 12, 1983, as a single from Benatar's live album "Live from Earth" (1983), though the song itself was a studio recording. It was written by Holly Knight and Mike Chapman. The song was ranked at number 30 in VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Songs of the 1980s. "Love Is a Battlefield" went on to sell over a million records.


title: Love Is a Battlefield

text: Knight and Chapman wrote this song for Benatar initially as a mid tempo song. After some exploration with drum machines and the band, producer Neil Giraldo decided to make it an uptempo song. The single was Benatar's second US million-seller and is tied with "We Belong" as her highest-charting single in the United States. It topped "Billboard"'s Mainstream Rock Tracks chart for four weeks and peaked at number five on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in December 1983.


title: Love Is a Battlefield

text: It reached number one on the Australian singles chart in February 1984 and remained there for five weeks, becoming the 11th biggest-selling single of the year. In the Netherlands, the song topped the charts for four weeks; it reached number two on the 1984 year-end chart. The song was re-released in the United Kingdom in March 1985 and reached number 17. It was awarded a gold certification in Canada as well.


title: Love Is a Battlefield

text: The single was unlike most of Benatar's previous work, as it featured an electronic dance element, but guitars and drums were still present. In 1984, the song won Benatar her fourth consecutive Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.


title: Love Is a Battlefield

text: The Bob Giraldi-directed music video features Benatar playing a rebellious teenage girl running away from her home with her father (played by actor Trey Wilson) warning her, "If you leave this house now, you can just forget about coming back!" after he disowned her. Her mother looks on helplessly and her brother (played by actor Philip Cruise) watches sadly from an upper-story window. She later becomes a taxi dancer at a seedy club to get by in the city, New York. She writes to her brother, telling him about her exciting new life, while her father seems to feel guilty about being angry at her. Later in the video, she witnesses the club owner (played by actor Gary Chryst) harassing another dancer. Benatar rounds up the women and leads a rebellion against him. As the club owner is cornered by the women against his will, he tries to seduce Benatar only to have her throw a drink in his face. Angered by this, he tries once again to assault her but Benatar and the women overpower and defeat him, then storm out of the club dancing into the sunrise before bidding goodbye to one another, thanking Benatar for their escape. The women escape and strike out on their own and Benatar walks into the sunrise. The final scene shows Benatar sitting in the back of a bus headed for an unknown destination. The video was choreographed by Michael Peters, who appears briefly in the video.


title: Love Is a Battlefield

text: A special dance club remix of the song was created by Jellybean Benitez. Benitez also created an edited version of his mix specifically for the video. It differs slightly in structure and instrumentation, and aside from appearing in the video, has never been commercially released.


title: Love Is a Battlefield

text: The video was one of the first ever to feature the use of dialogue - Philip Bailey's "I Know" was the first but Benatar's got more exposure. The scenes featuring dialogue include the opening scene of Benatar stomping out of the house while being berated by her father and the scene featuring the pimp harassing the female dancer in which she shouts "Leave me alone!"


title: Love Is a Battlefield

text: The video was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Video and is included on the DVD for the film "13 Going on 30".


title: Love Is a Battlefield

text: The song was featured in the television series "Psych". In the television series "Drop Dead Diva", the song was performed by the actresses Brooke Elliott and Faith Prince. It was also featured in the 2004 film "13 Going on 30", where "love is a battlefield" is the mantra of the main character Jenna Rink, played by Jennifer Garner. The Kay Gee Remix version featuring Kay Gee and Queen Latifah, is played on the end credits of the 1998 film "Small Soldiers". The song is also featured in the last episode of season 2 of Stranger Things, prior to the Snow Bal scene. A Russian-language cover version of this song was used in the "Family Guy" season 19 episode, "Meg Goes to College", in a scene where Meg auditions her talent scholarship.


title: The Innovator's Dilemma

text: The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, first published in 1997, is the best-known work of the Harvard professor and businessman Clayton Christensen. It expands on the concept of disruptive technologies, a term he coined in a 1995 article "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave". It describes how large incumbent companies lose market share by listening to their customers and providing what appears to be the highest-value products, but new companies that serve low-value customers with poorly developed technology can improve that technology incrementally until it is good enough to quickly take market share from established business. Christensen recommends that large companies maintain small, nimble divisions that attempt to replicate this phenomenon internally to avoid being blindsided and overtaken by startup competitors.


title: The Innovator's Dilemma

text: Clayton Christensen demonstrates how successful, outstanding companies can do everything "right" and still lose their market leadership – or even fail – as new, unexpected competitors rise and take over the market. There are two key parts to this dilemma.


title: The Innovator's Dilemma

text: For this reason, the next generation product is not being built for the incumbent's customer set and this large customer set is not interested in the new innovation and keeps demanding more innovation with the incumbent product. Unfortunately this incumbent innovation is limited to the overall value of the product as it is at the later end of the S-curve. Meanwhile, the new entrant is deep into the S-curve and providing significant value to the new product. By the time the new product becomes interesting to the incumbent's customers it is too late for the incumbent to react to the new product. At this point it is too late for the incumbent to keep up with the new entrant's rate of improvement, which by then is on the near-vertical portion of its S-curve trajectory.


title: The Innovator's Dilemma

text: Through this compelling multi-industry study, Christensen introduces his seminal theory of "disruptive innovation" that has changed the way managers and CEOs around the world think about innovation.


title: The Innovator's Dilemma

text: He also argues the following strategies assist incumbents in succeeding against the disruptive technology:


title: The Innovator's Dilemma

text: Shortly after the release of the book, it received the Global Business Book Award as the best business book of the year (1997). "The Economist" also named it as one of the six most important books about business ever written".


title: The Innovator's Dilemma

text: The term disruptive technologies was first described in depth with this book by Christensen; but the term was later changed to disruptive innovation in a later book (The Innovator's Solution). A disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market and value network that will eventually disrupt an already existing market and replace an existing product.


title: The Innovator's Dilemma

text: Since the book was published, various articles have been written, both critiquing and supporting Clayton Christensen's work.


title: The Innovator's Dilemma

text: and "The Innovator's Prescription" about health care both utilize ideas from "The Innovator's Dilemma".


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: General elections were held in Angola on 24 August 2022 to elect the President and National Assembly. Incumbent president João Lourenço was eligible for one more term. The MPLA was re-elected with a reduced majority, winning 124 seats with 51% of the vote. The main opposition party, UNITA won 90 seats with 44% of the vote. The Social Renewal Party (PRS), the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and the Humanist Party of Angola (PHA) each won two seats. The elections were the closest in Angolan history between the MPLA and UNITA.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: The MPLA has been in power since Angola gained independence in 1975. It had fought a civil war with UNITA until 2002.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: The previous elections held in 2017 saw the ruling MPLA win a landslide re-election, obtaining 61% of the vote. Although the party lost 25 seats, the MPLA retained its supermajority in the National Assembly, securing 150 seats. The largest opposition party, UNITA, won only 51 seats but did gain 19 with a 26% vote total. CASA—CE won 16 seats, the PRS won two and the FNLA secured one. Following the election, UNITA accused the ruling party of engaging in electoral fraud and filed a lawsuit. However, the constitutional court dismissed UNITA's case at appeal. The long-serving head of state, José Eduardo dos Santos, did not seek re-election to the presidency and was succeeded by defence minister João Lourenço.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: The 220 members of the National Assembly are elected by two methods: 90 are elected in 18 five-seat constituencies, using the d'Hondt method, while the remaining 130 are selected by proportional representation using closed lists, allocated proportionally to the nationwide results. Voters must be at least 18 years old and not have an undischarged bankruptcy, criminal conviction, dual citizenship or have been declared insane. Candidates must be at least 35 years old.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: Each party nominates a candidate for President of Angola, who is both head of state and head of government, as the first entry on their list. The president is elected by double simultaneous vote – each vote for a party is automatically a vote for their nominee as president, who must be clearly stated on the ballot paper. The presidential candidate of the party receiving the most votes (first-past-the-post) is elected president, for the same term as the assembly. The president may serve a maximum of two terms in accordance with the 2010 constitution.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: Polling stations opened at 7 am and closed at 5 pm local time. Local observers have said the election was free. Observers from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said that the vote was peaceful, but noted a lack of local observers. The observer mission of the Community of Portugese Language Countries did not initially assess the vote as fair and free, as they claim some candidates were given more air times, party delegates did not have access to the roll at polling stations and around 2.7 million deceased were included in the roll. A European Union spokesperson stated the election was conducted peacefully, but they were aware of complaints on some shortcomings. Regional and international election monitors that were led by the African Union have declared the election process was done in an adequate manner.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: On 5 October, the main opposition parties of Angola announced that they were forming a coalition named United Patriotic Front. Adalberto Costa Júnior of UNITA was nominated as FPU's candidate to challenge president João Lourenço in the August 2022 vote, group spokesman Amandio Capoco confirmed in Luanda. Capoco described the alliance as "an alliance of Angolans eager for change". Adalberto Costa Júnior responded by announcing that he is ready to challenge João Lourenço, "our homeland is crying out for change", describing a country "stricken by despair and by impoverishment".


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: The campaign was also overshadowed by the death of former president José Eduardo dos Santos on 8 July 2022. There was an ongoing feud between the dos Santos family and incumbent president João Lourenço, in which the family accused the president of persecution and demanded a pardon for several of dos Santos children in order for the body of José Eduardo dos Santos to return to Angola for burial. As part of his anti-corruption campaign, some of the ex-presidents' supporters and members of his family have been sent to prison.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: Campaign issues included high levels of poverty and unemployment. The country's oil wealth remains mostly in the hands of a few MPLA officials. UNITA's candidate Costa Junior was popular among the youth, many of whom are unemployed.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: The MPLA received 51% of the vote, and UNITA 44%. No other party received more than 1.2%. All 90 constituency seats went to the two largest parties, with the MPLA winning 57, mostly in the central and south regions, while UNITA won 33, being strongest in the north-west. Of the nationwide seats, MPLA won 67 and UNITA 57, while the PRS, FNLA and PHA won two seats each. The vote for CASA-CE collapsed; having received 9% of the vote in the previous elections in 2017, they received just 0.8% and lost all 16 of the seats they previously held.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: The United States urged all parties to express themselves peacefully and resolve grievances in accordance with the law.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: The European Union said stakeholders should use legal remedies to address their concerns and called on the authorities to respond to them fairly and transparently.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: The Portuguese Communist Party congratulated the MPLA on the victory and stated that they have the minimum support needed to govern. They warned of "interference operations from Portugal".


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: The Left Bloc in Portugal considered the results to be a serious warning to the MPLA regime, despite obtaining the majority.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: Chega considered the elections a wasted opportunity for change and condemned the MPLA-led government for not alleviating poverty, corruption, and for the slow rates of development in Angola. They have also criticised the presence of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa at ex-president Santos' funeral.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: Namibian president and SADC chair Hage Geingob congratulated president Lorenço and the MPLA on their re-election. Geingob praised the electoral process as peaceful and "consistent with the revised SADC principles and guidelines governing democratic elections and the relevant laws of Angola".


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: UNITA rejected the results and stated it would challenge them. The party complained about a lack of transparency and results not matching their own tallies. In Angola, election results can be disputed by lodging a complaint with the National Electoral Commission, and if rejected, they can then be brought to the Constitutional Court which must rule within 72 hours.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: Lourenço pledged to continue with reforms, including privatising state assets and stopping corruption after investigating the Dos Santos family. He also promised to diversify the economy, create more jobs, modernize education and expand the healthcare system. He says that MPLA won legitimately and that the election was free, fair and transparent.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: Several vehicles were set on fire and ten people injured when MPLA supporters attacked a UNITA office on 3 September 2022.


title: 2022 Angolan general election

text: After the Constitutional Court rejected the appeal of the results, UNITA called for public protests against the MPLA.


title: Teenie Hodges

text: Mabon Lewis "Teenie" Hodges (November 16, 1945 – June 22, 2014) was an American musician known for his work as a rhythm and lead guitarist and songwriter on many of Al Green's soul hits, and those of other artists such as Ann Peebles and Syl Johnson, on Hi Records in the 1970s. His credits as a songwriter include "Take Me to the River", "Love and Happiness", "L-O-V-E (Love)", and "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)".


title: Teenie Hodges

text: Born in Germantown, Tennessee, Hodges began playing guitar at age 12 in his father's band, the Germantown Blue Dots, before joining his brothers Leroy and Charles in their group, the Impalas. He was encouraged by Memphis band leader and record producer Willie Mitchell. Mitchell used Hodges as a central component of the Hi Rhythm Section, which also included Leroy, Charles, drummer Al Jackson, Jr., and pianist Archie Turner, Mitchell's stepson. When Jackson left in 1966, Hodges recruited Howard Grimes to replace him.


title: Teenie Hodges

text: Two of his compositions "Take Me to the River" and "Love and Happiness," both co-written with Green, have been covered by numerous other international artists, including Al Jarreau, Amazing Rhythm Aces, Talking Heads, O.V. Wright, David Sanborn, Toots & the Maytals, Canned Heat, Foghat, Levon Helm, Syl Johnson, Annie Lennox, Delbert McClinton, Mitch Ryder, Tom Jones, Graham Central Station, Living Colour, blues artist Willie Cobbs, Denise LaSalle, and others. He also co-wrote several other popular hits with songwriters like Isaac Hayes, Willie Mitchell, and Al Green, including "I Take What I Want," "Oh Me, Oh My," "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)", "L-O-V-E (Love)" and "Full of Fire".


title: Teenie Hodges

text: Hodges continued to record and tour as guitarist in the Hi Rhythm Section, often with major soul acts like Syl Johnson and O.V. Wright. The Hodges brothers, with Grimes, recorded the 1976 LP "On the Loose", as Hi Rhythm, and in 1994 issued "Perfect Gentlemen". He contributed one acoustic song ('Rock Me Baby') to "Beale Street Saturday Night" released in 1979. They also recorded comeback albums with both Syl Johnson and Al Green. In 2005 Teenie Hodges recorded with Cat Power on her successful album "The Greatest". He has also recorded with Alvin "Youngblood" Hart.


title: Teenie Hodges

text: In 2012, the filmmaker Susanna Vapnek completed a short documentary on Teenie Hodges, entitled, "Mabon "Teenie" Hodges, A Portrait of a Memphis Soul Original". The film premiered at the 2013 SXSW film festival, and went on to receive the audience award at The Indie Memphis Film festival, that same year.


title: Teenie Hodges

text: In January 2014 he recorded a last time together with Charles Hodges, Leroy Hodges, Steve Potts and Mark Plati at the Royal Studios for the last album of Bobbejaan Schoepen.


title: Teenie Hodges

text: He was married three times, and had eight children: Velencia Anderson, Reginald Hodges, Sheila Hodges, Cherie Hodges, Shonte Stokes, Tabitha Gary, Inga Black, and Mabon L. Hodges II. His nephew is Canadian rapper and actor Drake.


title: Teenie Hodges

text: In March 2014, Hodges was taken to Baylor hospital in Dallas for pneumonia, following an appearance at Austin's South by Southwest music festival. He died there on June 22, 2014, from complications of emphysema. He was 68.


title: Deaf culture

text: Deaf culture is the set of social beliefs, behaviors, art, literary traditions, history, values, and shared institutions of communities that are influenced by deafness and which use sign languages as the main means of communication. When used as a cultural label especially within the culture, the word "deaf" is often written with a capital "D" and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. When used as a label for the audiological condition, it is written with a lower case "d". Carl G. Croneberg coined the term "Deaf Culture" and he was the first to discuss analogies between Deaf and hearing cultures in his appendices C/D of the 1965 Dictionary of American Sign Language.


title: Deaf culture

text: Members of the Deaf community tend to view deafness as a difference in human experience rather than a disability or disease. Many members take pride in their Deaf identity. Deaf people, in the sense of a community or culture, can then be seen as a linguistic minority, and therefore some who are a part of this community may feel misunderstood by those who don't know sign language. Another struggle that the Deaf community often faces is that educational institutions usually consist primarily of hearing people. Additionally, hearing family members may need to learn sign language in order for the deaf person to feel included and supported. Unlike some other cultures, a deaf person may join the community later in life, rather than needing to be born into it.


title: Deaf culture

text: There are several perspectives on deaf people and Deaf culture that shape their treatment and role in society. From a medical standpoint, many encourage Deaf children to undergo surgery. Especially in the past, the medical perspective discouraged the use of sign language because they believed it would distract from development of auditory and speech skills. From a social standpoint, Deaf individuals are welcomed to participate in society in the same manner as any other individual. This view discourages the idea that those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing are sick and in need of a cure. The social view also encourages making accommodations for deaf people so that they can fully participate in society. Such accommodations include the use of interpreters or improved closed captioning systems. Many feel, however, that the social view fails to recognize the unique qualities of Deaf people and Deaf culture. They believe that this perspective asks Deaf people to fit and find their own way in a predominantly hearing society, instead of recognizing their own abilities and culture. Another perspective is referred to as the cultural-linguistic view. Supporters of Deaf Culture state that this perspective appropriately recognizes Deaf people as a minority culture in the world with their own language and social norms. This standpoint is believed to promote Deaf people's right to collective space within society to pass on their language and culture to future generations.


title: Deaf culture

text: Being involved in the Deaf community and culturally identifying as Deaf has been shown to significantly contribute to positive self-esteem in Deaf individuals. The community can provide support, easy social interaction, and "refuge from the grinding frustrations of the hearing world." Conversely, Deaf individuals who are not a part of the Deaf community may not have the same support in the hearing world, resulting in lower self-esteem. Stereotypes, lack of knowledge, and negative attitudes about Deafness cause widespread discrimination. This could lead to a lower education and economic status for deaf people.


title: Deaf culture

text: The community may include hearing family members of deaf people and sign-language interpreters who identify with Deaf culture. It does not automatically include all people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. As educator and American Sign Language interpreter Anna Mindess writes, "it is not the extent of hearing loss that defines a member of the deaf community but the individual's own sense of identity and resultant actions." As with all social groups that a person chooses to belong to, a person is a member of the Deaf community if they identify as a member of the community and the community accept them as a member of the community.


title: Deaf culture

text: Deaf culture is recognized under Article 30, Paragraph 4 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which states that "Persons with disabilities shall be entitled, on an equal basis with others, to recognition and support of their specific cultural and linguistic identity, including sign languages and deaf culture."


title: Deaf culture

text: Deaf culture is as well recognized in the statement presented at the 21st International Conference on Education of the Deaf in 2010 in Vancouver, Canada, where the more than 60 countries that participated in it agreed that "Despite this 'disability mindset,' Deaf citizens positively contribute to societies that embrace diversity and creativity. They enhance their nations in areas of education, economic activity, politics, arts and literature. For Deaf people, It is an inalienable right to be acknowledged as a linguistic and cultural minority integral to every society."


title: Deaf culture

text: In Deaf culture, "sumain" refers to people who communicate with each other using their hands. Marla Berkowitz, a Certified Deaf ASL interpreter, describes it as "a coined word from two languages – Su – your; main – hands".


title: Deaf culture

text: Historically, acculturation has often occurred within schools for Deaf students and within Deaf social clubs, both of which unite deaf people into communities with which they can identify. Becoming Deaf culturally can occur at different times for different people, depending on the circumstances of one's life. A small proportion of deaf individuals acquire sign language and Deaf culture in infancy from Deaf parents, others acquire it through attendance at schools, and yet others may not be exposed to sign language and Deaf culture until college or a time after that.


title: Deaf culture

text: Although up to fifty percent of deafness has genetic causes, fewer than five percent of deaf people have a deaf parent, so Deaf communities are unusual among cultural groups in that most members do not acquire their cultural identities from parents.


title: Deaf culture

text: Educator and ASL interpreter Anna Mindess notes that there is "not just one homogeneous deaf culture". There are many distinct Deaf communities around the world, which communicate using different sign languages and exhibit different cultural norms. Deaf identity also intersects with other kinds of cultural identity. Deaf culture intersects with nationality, education, race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, and other identity markers, leading to a culture that is at once quite small and also tremendously diverse. The extent to which people identify primarily with their deaf identity rather than their membership in other intersecting cultural groups also varies. Mindess notes a 1989 study, which found that "87 percent of black deaf people polled identified with their black culture first".


title: Deaf culture

text: Deaf culture is prevalent in schools for the deaf. There are K–12 schools for the deaf throughout the world, however higher education specifically for the deaf is more limited.


title: Deaf culture

text: Abbé Charles-Michel de l'Épée opened the first school for the deaf in Paris at the deaf school. The American Thomas Gallaudet witnessed a demonstration of deaf teaching skills from Épée's successor Abbé Sicard and two of the school's deaf faculty members, Laurent Clerc and Jean Massieu; accompanied by Clerc, he returned to the United States, where in 1817 they founded American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. American Sign Language (ASL) started to evolve from primarily French Sign Language (LSF), and other outside influences.


title: Deaf culture

text: In a residential school where all the children use the same communication system (whether it is a school using sign language, Total Communication or Oralism), students will be able to interact normally with other students, without having to worry about being criticized. An argument supporting inclusion, on the other hand, exposes the student to people who are not just like them, preparing them for adult life. Through interacting, children with hearing disabilities can expose themselves to other cultures which in the future may be beneficial for them when it comes to finding jobs and living on their own in a society where their disability may put them in the minority. These are some reasons why a person may or may not want to put their child in an inclusion classroom.


title: Deaf culture

text: In comparison to the general public, deaf people have lower levels of educational achievement. Advocates in deaf education believe that an improved recognition of American Sign Language (ASL) as an official language would improve education, as well as economic status. Some argue that by improving the recognition of ASL, better access to school materials, deaf teachers, interpreters, and video-telephone communication would take place.


title: Deaf culture

text: Three colleges within the United States are often identified as the best providers of higher education for deaf people. Referred to often as the "Big Three," these include California State University at Northridge (CSUN), National Technical Institute for the Deaf (part of Rochester Institute of Technology), and Gallaudet University. Gallaudet University is the first and only liberal-arts college for deaf students in the world.


title: Deaf culture

text: Those who are deaf (by either state or federal standards) have access to a free and appropriate public education. If a child does qualify as being deaf or hard of hearing and receives an individualized education plan, the IEP team must consider "the child's language and communication needs. The IEP must include opportunities for direct communication with peers and professionals. It must also include the student's academic level, and finally must include the students full range of needs"


title: Deaf culture

text: In part, the Department of Education defines deafness as "a hearing impairment that is so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification". Hearing impairment is defined as "an impairment in hearing, whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely affects a child's educational performance but that is not included under the definition of deafness".


title: Deaf culture

text: Although the United States leads in higher education opportunities for the deaf, there are colleges across the globe. Brazil has several institutions, including Instituto Santa Tersinha and Escola para Crianças Surdas Rio Branco. China's deaf universities include Beijing Union University, Special Education College of Beijing University, and Zhongzhou University. Other notable universities for the deaf across the globe include Finland School for the Deaf in Finland, Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris in France, Berlin School for the Deaf in Germany, and Northwest Secondary School for the Deaf in South Africa.


title: Deaf culture

text: Sign language is just one part of deaf culture. Deaf identity is also constructed around specific beliefs, values and art.


title: Deaf culture

text: Members of Deaf cultures communicate via sign languages. Sign languages convey meaning through manual communication and body language instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns. This involves the simultaneous combination of hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to express a speaker's thoughts. "Sign languages are based on the idea that vision is the most useful tool a deaf person has to communicate and receive information".


title: Deaf culture

text: There are over 200 distinct sign languages in the world. These include 114 sign languages listed in the Ethnologue database and 157 more sign languages, systems, and dialects. While the United Kingdom and the United States are both predominantly English speaking, the predominant signed languages used in these countries differ markedly. Due to the origins of deaf education in the United States, American Sign Language is most closely related to French Sign Language.


title: Deaf culture

text: A cochlear implant is not to be mistaken for a hearing aid, which makes noises and sounds louder for the user to hear. Instead, cochlear implants bypass the outer ear and target the inner ear where the auditory nerve fibers are stimulated. To do this, noises and sounds are transformed into electrical energy which is translated as audio information by the nerve which is then sent to the brain. An external microphone captures outside sound, a transmitter processes these sounds and sends them to a receiver embedded under the skin in the skull, and the receiver transforms these sounds into electrical impulses which stimulate the auditory nerve.The medical model of disability can be aligned with technological advancements in cochlear implants. This is due to the fact that cochlear implants can be perceived to "cure" deafness or fix an individual's hearing, when in reality those who are Deaf may not feel a need to be cured or fixed. This idea is seen in many children's books, where improved quality of life is only seen after characters obtain cochlear implants. This idea that deafness is a physiological issue that resides only within the individual and therefore should be physiologically fixed or solved counters the teachings and beliefs within Deaf culture. Often people feel as though children should make the decision if they want a cochlear implant for themselves as opposed to someone else, like their parents or caregivers, making it for them. Although ethical, this idea poses a problem since the success rate of cochlear implants is at its highest when implanted at early childhood; in other words, when the child is not able to make rather large decisions, like this one, for themselves. These critics argue forcing cochlear implants on children should be reduced and the assumption that cochlear implants offer the best quality of life for Deaf individuals should be countered. One way of doing this would be to expose children of young ages to Deaf culture and the Deaf community early on, as well as teach them American Sign Language.


title: Deaf culture

text: Cochlear implants have been controversial around the Deaf community ever since they first were made available to the public. Those who oppose cochlear implants even refer to it as "cultural genocide," as it lessens the prevalence and importance of Deaf culture. People are against cochlear implants for a variety of reasons, including: there is value to being Deaf, being Deaf is not an illness and does not require a cure, the Deaf are not lesser than the hearing, etc. Cochlear implants also have a variety of risks associated with them, like costliness, effectiveness, and surgical requirement. Alternative solutions proposed by cochlear opponents are centered around the social model of disability, where instead of fixing the actual hearing of the individual, reform and accommodations can be made in society, education, and more to better allow the individual to be integrated into society as would any other.


title: Deaf culture

text: Alternatively, those who support cochlear implants do not necessarily oppose Deaf culture. Culture itself is not a simple concept, but rather it has high levels of complexity and power; due to this nature, culture is not to be applied narrowly to a group of individuals. The Deaf community is composed of highly diverse Deaf individuals, and to impose narrow culture onto a group full of heterogeneous members would be rather questionable. There is room for deviation and hybridization of values and beliefs in Deaf culture as society and technology evolves. Even if they are proud of their Deaf identity, many deaf individuals wish they knew what their voices sounded like, and wish they could pick up the phone and have a conversation with ease without the need for a third-party device or interpreter. So, instead of looking at cochlear implants as identity stripping, many Deaf parents of Deaf children see cochlear implants as a way to give their children more than what they have; to offer them the pleasure of being able to hear. It has also been proven that cochlear implants help to provide opportunities for success, and help individuals to feel more connected to the world. Though most Deaf individuals agree that choosing to use a cochlear implant is a difficult decision, many say that resistance to cochlear implants has decreased since 1990, the year when it was first approved for children. By building more evidence of the benefits and limitations of cochlear implants, both Deaf and hearing individuals can be properly educated on the impact of cochlear implants, and thus unrealistic expectations and controversies can be resolved.


title: Deaf culture

text: A strong tradition of poetry and storytelling exists in American Sign Language and other sign languages. Some prominent performers in the United States include Clayton Valli, Ben Bahan, Ella Mae Lentz, Manny Hernandez, C. J. Jones, Debbie Rennie, Patrick Graybill, Peter Cook, and many others. Their works are now increasingly available on video.


title: Deaf culture

text: Culturally Deaf people have also represented themselves in the dominant written languages of their nations.


title: Deaf culture

text: Deaf artists such as Betty G. Miller and Chuck Baird have produced visual artwork that conveys a Deaf worldview. Douglas Tilden was a famous Deaf sculptor who produced many different sculptures in his lifetime. Some Deaf artists belong to an art movement called De'VIA, which stands for Deaf View Image Art.


title: Deaf culture

text: Organizations such as the Deaf Professional Arts Network or D-PAN are dedicated to promoting professional development and access to the entertainment, visual and media arts fields for individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.


title: Deaf culture

text: Daily Moth was established by Alex Abenchuchan in 2017 to make the news accessible for Deaf ASL users.


title: Deaf culture

text: In the United States, the Cobbs School, a deaf school in Virginia, was established in 1815. This school lasted only one and half years due to financial setbacks. American Deaf Community recounts the story of Laurent Clerc, a deaf educator, coming to the United States from France in 1817 to help found the first permanent school for deaf children in the country now named American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. American School is the first official school for the deaf.


title: Deaf culture

text: Another well-known event is the 1880 Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf in Milan, Italy, where hearing educators voted to embrace oral education and remove sign language from the classroom. This effort resulted in pressure around the world to abandon sign language in favor of the oral approach exclusively. The intent of the oralist method was to teach deaf children to speak and lip read with limited or no use of sign language in the classroom in order to make it easier for deaf children to integrate into hearing communities, but the benefits of learning in such an environment are disputed. The Milan conference recommendations were repudiated in Hamburg a century later, and sign languages in education came back into vogue after the publication of Stokoe's linguistic analyses of ASL.