title: UEFA Euro 2008 Final

text: Spain took the lead after 33 minutes when Torres latched onto a through ball from Xavi, beat Lahm on the edge of the penalty area, and then clipped the ball over the advancing Lehmann into the left-hand corner of the goal. "BBC Sport" Caroline Cheese credited Torres with "a real striker's instinct" in scoring the goal, with what she had thought had been "a half-chance, if that". They almost doubled their lead two minutes later, when Iniesta crossed the ball to Silva in the German penalty area who had time and space to line up a shot. He instead attempted to take the ball on the volley, and sliced it high and wide. Ballack had to leave the field for few minutes after sustaining a bloody injury to his eye in a collision with Senna, then received a yellow card along with Casillas for an argument following a tussle between Ballack, Iniesta and Puyol. Spain broke up the field once more in a move involving Senna, Silva, Xavi and then Iniesta, but Arne Friedrich blocked the attack and the half ended with Spain leading .


title: UEFA Euro 2008 Final

text: Germany took off Lahm at half time, bringing on Marcell Jansen, who took up the same position that Lahm had played. The opening minutes of the second half panned out as the first half had, Germany having most of the possession but constructing few attacking moves. Xavi had the first shot of the half, which went wide. The referee gave a corner, from which Silva had another shot but it was also wide of the goal. Torres ran at goal a minute later, latching onto another through ball from Xavi, but Lehmann was able to claim the ball. "BBC Sport" John Motson commented ten minutes into the half that Spain were "playing in the same controlling way they did in the first half", giving the opinion that Germany would "have to shuffle things around soon". Manager Joachim Löw made a change shortly afterwards, bringing Kevin Kurányi on for Hitzlsperger. Ramos sent a cross into the Germany penalty area on 58 minutes, which went right across the face of the goal, but nobody was able to connect with it. Then, a minute later, Germany almost equalised as Jansen capitalised on a mistake by Puyol to cross for Schweinsteiger. Schweinsteiger passed to Ballack, who volleyed towards goal, but it narrowly missed. Germany continued attacking, first through Ballack, whose cross for Kurányi was intercepted by Casillas, and then through Schweinsteiger, who fired a powerful shot which deflected wide off his team-mate Klose.


title: UEFA Euro 2008 Final

text: Spain took off Fàbregas, described by Murray as having had "a quiet game", on 62 minutes, bringing Xabi Alonso on in his place. Podolski and Silva had a heated argument shortly afterwards, following a tackle by the latter; Ballack also became involved, but the referee did not book any of the players. Silva was taken off by Spanish manager Luis Aragonés shortly afterwards, replaced by Santi Cazorla. A Spanish free kick on 67 minutes was aimed towards Ramos, who headed towards goal, where it was tipped behind by Lehmann. Iniesta's shot from the resulting corner, hit from the edge of the German penalty area, was cleared off the goal-line by Torsten Frings with his knees. Iniesta fired in another shot one minute later, which Lehmann did not catch cleanly, necessitating a clearance by Friedrich. Germany had an attack on 71 minutes through a free kick into the Spanish penalty area, but Casillas was able to punch it to safety.


title: UEFA Euro 2008 Final

text: Torres was booked for a clash of heads with Mertesacker on 73 minutes, after which he had two runs at the German goal. The first went too close to Lehmann, while the second, aimed at Alonso, was intercepted by Jansen. Germany then made another change 12 minutes before the end, in a bid to find an equaliser, Mario Gómez coming on for Klose. Spain also made a substitution, bringing Güiza on for Torres. Immediately after coming on, Güiza chased a long pass forward, which Lehmann came out of his penalty area to intercept. The German goalkeeper took the ball on his chest before kicking it clear, but the Spanish players claimed he had controlled it with his hand. Replays showed that the ball had hit Lehmann's arm in front of his chest, but Murray said that "it would have been a very harsh call" if the referee had penalised him. Güiza was involved in another attack a minute later, taking a pass from Cazorla and heading it on to Senna in front of an open goal. He was narrowly unable to connect with it, though. Both Cheese and Murray likened Senna's miss to a similar missed chance by England's Paul Gascoigne in the semi-final of Euro 1996. Germany had one more chance, with the ball bouncing uncontrolled in the Spanish penalty area, but it ended when the referee penalised them for a foul. The game finished 1–0 to Spain, who thus secured their second European Championship.


title: UEFA Euro 2008 Final

text: After the trophy presentation and during Schweinsteiger's interview, the Spain team performed a conga line back and forward behind him in the . Aragonés left his post as Spanish manager after the final, and was succeeded by Vicente del Bosque. He described himself as "full of emotion" after the game, and he praised his players: "We have put together a group that plays well, that keeps the ball and mixes their passes very well and that is difficult to stop. We work hard together, those that play more and those that play slightly less, and we've managed to get there". Löw offered congratulations to Spain, saying that they were "technically excellent" and had deserved to win the match. He expressed satisfaction with Germany's performances and optimism for the future, saying "this defeat is going to be an incentive to work hard over the next two years in a number of areas and to improve". Xavi attributed the win to Aragonés, saying that he "took a gamble on the little guys; putting players like Iniesta, Cazorla, Fàbregas, Silva and Villa in the team. Perhaps that's a word used too often in football but the truth is that the football we played to win in 2008 was beautiful; not just the attacking side of things but how we were set up on the pitch." Torres was named as the man of the match.


title: UEFA Euro 2008 Final

text: Spain's victory marked the start of a period of dominance for the team, and the first of three successive victories in major tournaments, including the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and then the retention of their European title at Euro 2012. Analysts attributed their success in part to a style of play called tiki-taka, which had been introduced by Aragonés and was continued by Del Bosque. This style prioritises short passing, maintaining possession for long periods and patience. The tiki-taka style was also adopted by Pep Guardiola with Spanish club Barcelona, who achieved success in domestic and European competition in the same period. After the 2012 victory, McNulty wrote that the team were contenders for the greatest national team of all time. Citing their "ultimate combination of silk and steel", with the "Barcelona 'carousel' of Xavi and Andres Iniesta augmented by Real Madrid's Xabi Alonso in midfield", McNulty opined that "it would have to be a very powerful argument against Spain" being the greatest. Author Jonathan O'Brien opined that the victory marked "Spain's spectacular metamorphosis from underachieving weaklings to the best team in Europe. They exuded flair, pace, a killer instinct – and a rough edge". Germany reached the semi-finals of the 2010 and 2012 tournaments under Löw, before eventually being successful with a win at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.


title: Kaalapani

text: Kaalapani () is a 1996 Indian Malayalam-language epic historical drama film co-written and directed by Priyadarshan. Set in 1915, the film focuses on the lives of Indian independence activists incarcerated in the Cellular Jail (or "Kālā Pānī") in Andaman and Nicobar Islands during the British Raj. The ensemble cast includes Mohanlal, Prabhu, Tabu, Amrish Puri, Nedumudi Venu, Sreenivasan, Tinnu Anand, Annu Kapoor, Alex Draper, Sankaradi, and Vineeth. The film was produced by Mohanlal for Pranavam Arts in association with R. Mohan's Shogun Films.


title: Kaalapani

text: The film is about the lives of prisoners in British India who are brought to Kālā Pānī. The name "Kalapani" is derived from the mode of imprisonment in British India. Ilaiyaraaja composed the music, the cinematography was by Santosh Sivan, and the editing by N. Gopalakrishnan. The film introduced Dolby Stereo into Malayalam cinema. It was made on a budget of 2.50 crore, making it the costliest Malayalam film made until then.


title: Kaalapani

text: "Kaalapani" was released on 6 April 1996 in 450 theaters worldwide, which was the largest release for any Indian film until then. The film is now regarded as one of the classics in Malayalam cinema. Originally made in Malayalam, the film was dubbed and released in Hindi as "Saza-E-Kala Pani", Tamil as "Siraichalai", and in Telugu as "Kaala Pani". Amitabh Bachchan bought the Hindi dubbing rights, besides narrating the prologue for the Hindi version. The film won four National Film Awards, including the awards for Best Art Direction (Sabu Cyril), Best Special Effects (S. T. Venky), and Best Cinematography (Santosh Sivan). The movie also won seven Kerala State Film Awards.


title: Kaalapani

text: In 1965, G. S. Sethu (Vineeth) of the Indian Army goes to Ross Island, Kaalapani to find the whereabouts of his aunt Parvathi's (Tabu) husband Govardhan Menon (Mohanlal), who has been sent to jail in 1916 during the period of British rule. In an old room containing record of prisoners held at the jail, Sethu comes across Govardhan's records and learns his story.


title: Kaalapani

text: Govardhan, a doctor and Indian nationalist, is wrongly accused of bombing a train carrying 55 people, including British officials. On his wedding day with Parvathi, he is deported to a cellular jail at Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. There, hundreds of Indian prisoners are incarcerated in the cellular jail, including leading participants of the independence movement.


title: Kaalapani

text: David Berry (Alex Draper) is a sadistic jailor who is of Irish descent, while Len Hutton (John Kolvenbach) is a kindhearted English doctor. Savarkar (Annu Kapoor) is incarcerated and tries his best to keep the spirit of the prisoners going despite unbelievable torture.


title: Kaalapani

text: Parvathi keeps waiting for Govardhan to come back. Due to Len's efforts, the government decides to investigate the matter of the torture meted out to the prisoners. 14 people are ordered to be released. One of them is Mukundan (Prabhu), Govardhan's friend. David and the jail warden Mirza Khan (Amrish Puri) hatch a plan to incite a prison riot and shoot down 13 prisoners while they are escaping. Mukundan refuses to escape and is taken on the pretext of meeting the Chief Commissioner, and is shot and killed. Seeing Mukundan's dead body, Govardhan throws down David from one of the towers and kills Mirza Khan by strangling him. Govardhan is hanged to death.


title: Kaalapani

text: All this is shown in intermittent flashbacks. Sethu, after knowing Govardhan has already been hanged to death 45 years ago, decides to not tell the truth to his aunt as her wait of 50 years would have been in vain. The film ends with Sethu lying to her that he met Govardhan and talked to him about her, indicating she will never come to know about Govardhan's death and will keep waiting for him for the rest of her life.


title: Kaalapani

text: Director Priyadarshan co-wrote the screenplay with screenwriter, T. Damodaran. The basis for the story were existing accounts of life in cellular jail, particularly excerpts from biographies of political leaders of the Indian Independence Movement. Most of these excerpts covered the ruthless routine of prisoners in jail, under the command of Jailer David Barry, Major James Pattinson Walker and Petty officer Mirza Khan.


title: Kaalapani

text: While the Pre-World War I ports were recreated on the Andaman Islands, several huge sets were built on a 1.5 acres space in Murugalaya Studio, Chennai to replicate the Cellular Jail. In Madras, the sets of Cellular Jail cost about Rs 12 lakh to build on 1.5 acres at the Murugalaya Studio. Apparently, director Priyadarshan was adamant and determined to be faithful to the details of the era. He says: "The Andamans had not seen a horse in 20 years. We had to carry four horses there at a cost of about Rs 3 lakh. When the filming was over, we presented them to the Andamans administration." Prior to the making of the film, Prabhu had broken his knee and during his recovery phase, put on considerable weight. In order to accommodate his physique into the script, Priyadarshan altered the character to make him eat constantly in the film.


title: Kaalapani

text: The budget of the film, , was much larger than the average 1 crore for a Malayalam film at the time. The shooting was completed in 72 days at Andaman and Nicobar Islands, several parts of Kerala and Chennai. Post production took more than four months to complete. Composer Ilaiyaraaja completed his symphonic score in 16 days; audiographer Deepan Chatterji completed the sound design and mix in 90 days. This is the first Malayalam film to recorded in Dolby Stereo.


title: Kaalapani

text: The film is shot in the Malayalam language. However, numerous portions contain dialogues in Hindi, English, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, and German.


title: Kaalapani

text: The music was composed and conducted by Ilaiyaraaja. K. S. Chithra was the only female singer in all the versions, while male singers kept changing from version to version.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport ( "Maṭār Sharm El Sheikh El Dawli") is an international airport located in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. It is the third-busiest airport in Egypt after Cairo International Airport and Hurghada International Airport. The airport was previously known as Ophira International Airport.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: The airport was opened on 14 May 1968 as an Israeli Air Force base. After the signing of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty in 1979 and subsequent Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, it was reopened as a civilian airport.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: The largest regular aircraft using the airport was a Transaero Airlines-operated Boeing 747-400. These flights transiting from Moscow ended when Transaero ceased operations in October 2015. As of December 2022, Red Wings Airlines operates the current largest regular aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, transiting from Moscow Domodedovo Airport.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: In 2008, the Egyptian Airports Holding Company (EAHC) announced plans to build a third new terminal at the airport. In July 2009 the Egyptian Holding Company for Airports and Air Navigation (EHCAAN) signed a contract with Spanish construction designers Pointec for the third terminal. The terminal was planned to double the airport's capacity from 7.5 to 15 million passengers per year. The project's primary costs were estimated at $420 million. The design phase was due to be completed by early 2010. International contractors then were invited for an open tender to construct the terminal, which was scheduled to be completely constructed by 2015. By September 2016 construction had not commenced.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: On October 31, 2015, Metrojet Flight 9268, en route from Sharm El Sheikh to St. Petersburg, Russia, crashed in the Sinai Peninsula between Nekhel and Housna, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian tourists. The jihadist group ISIL, at war with Russian forces in nearby Syria, quickly claimed responsibility for the crash, which was believed by western governments to be the result of a terrorist bombing. Russian investigators confirmed in mid-November that the flight was bombed; the investigation is still ongoing. Following these events, many countries ordered all flights to Sharm El Sheikh suspended until further notice.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: In November 2015, passenger numbers significantly decreased due to the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268 on 31 October 2015. This led to airlines cancelling flights from the airport and operating rescue flights for stranded passengers. Governments from Russia and European countries such as the United Kingdom banned airlines from operating to the airport, citing safety concerns that were highlighted following the crash. The Government of the United Kingdom, HM Government advised against all travel to and from Sharm El Sheikh.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: In January 2018, it was announced that EgyptAir Express would open a base at the airport for its incoming fleet of Airbus A220s. This would increase the amount of destinations served by the airline at the airport with the possibility of operating to cities in Italy, Germany, Morocco and India non-stop.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: On 1 November 2019 TUI AG, parent company of TUI Airways and TUI UK announced a resumption of flights to the airport, starting in February 2020.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: On 9 August 2021, Rossiya Airlines operated the first flight between Russia and Sharm El Sheikh for the first time in 5 years since the banning of the flights between the resort and Russia, due to the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: On 23 May 2007, the airport's second terminal, the new Terminal 1, was inaugurated with a capacity for 5 million passengers per year. The two-level, terminal features 40 check-in counters and is designed to cater to a large number of international and chartered flights. It has two domestic and six international gates, all of which exit to remote stands. The terminal comprises three building components: two circular-shaped halls fused together by a wedge-shaped intermediate space dubbed 'the boat'. This serves as a passenger transit hub housing passport control, duty-free, and VIP areas as well as cafes/restaurants. The halls, in stark textural contrast to the solid mass of 'the boat', feature airy, billowing tent-like roofs inspired by the indigenous Bedouin culture.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: Although known as Terminal 2, this is actually the airport's original terminal building. The building underwent a complete modernisation programme in 2004 and has a passenger handling capacity of 2.5 million passengers per year. Since the inauguration of Terminal 1 in 2007 most airlines have shifted operations to the new building.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: In December 2016 Egyptian Airports Company announced plans to extend Terminal 2. EAC plans to expand the terminal and increase its capacity by two million passengers per year, thus taking the total capacity of the airport to 9.5 million. This also includes the construction of a new runway and 40 new airsides.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: In November 2019, it was announced part of the expansion of Terminal 2 had been completed increasing the airports annual capacity, from 7 million, to 9 million a year. The plan aims to increase the capacity to 20 million passengers per annum as the number of tourists visiting the resort city is rising, during winter in particular. For now, the number of gates was raised to 12 from 8. The total cost of development works in the airport has reached LE 800 million so far.


title: Sharm El Sheikh International Airport

text: Terminal 3 was proposed in 2008 to increase the airport's passenger handling capacity by 10 million. The airport would be expected to cater to 18 million passengers annually by 2025. The new terminal and runway were planned to be constructed adjacent to the el Salam road. Terminal three and its contact stands would occupy an area of about 183,000m² featuring a departure hall and an arrival hall, serving both international and domestic passengers. The terminal three was to face a new airfield to the north of the existing airport. Its origami shaped roof folds provide shades over the departure area, protect the facades from direct sunlight and provide natural lighting throughout the building. Taxiways and aprons were also to be constructed as part of the project. Other associated infrastructure were to include an electrical or mechanical plant, sheds for security services, a mosque, a car parking area and a wastewater treatment facility. The wastewater from the new building was to be connected to the existing sewer system and would be treated before being conveyed for the purpose of irrigation.


title: Affordance

text: Affordance is what the environment offers the individual. American psychologist James J. Gibson coined the term in his 1966 book, "The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems", and it occurs in many of his earlier essays. However, his best-known definition is taken from his seminal 1979 book, "The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception":


title: Affordance

text: The word is used in a variety of fields: perceptual psychology, cognitive psychology, environmental psychology, criminology, industrial design, human–computer interaction (HCI), interaction design, user-centered design, communication studies, instructional design, science, technology and society (STS), sports science and artificial intelligence.


title: Affordance

text: Gibson developed the concept of affordance over many years, culminating in his final book, "The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception" in 1979. He defined an affordance as what the environment provides or furnishes the animal. Notably, Gibson compares an affordance with an ecological niche emphasizing the way niches characterize how an animal lives in its environment.


title: Affordance

text: The key to understanding affordance is that it is relational and characterizes the suitability of the environment to the observer, and so, depends on their current intentions and their capabilities. For instance, a set of steps which rises four feet high does not afford climbing to the crawling infant, yet might provide rest to a tired adult or the opportunity to move to another floor for an adult who wished to reach an alternative destination. This notion of intention/needs is critical to an understanding of affordance, as it explains how the same aspect of the environment can provide different affordances to different people, and even to the same individual at another point in time. As Gibson puts it, “Needs control the perception of affordances (selective attention) and also initiate acts.”


title: Affordance

text: Affordances were further studied by Eleanor J. Gibson, wife of James J. Gibson, who created her theory of perceptual learning around this concept. Her book, "An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development", explores affordances further.


title: Affordance

text: Gibson's is the prevalent definition in cognitive psychology. According to Gibson, humans tend to alter and modify their environment so as to change its affordances to better suit them. On his view, humans change the environment to make it easier to live in (even if making it harder for other animals to live in it): to keep warm, to see at night, to rear children, and to move around. This tendency to change the environment is natural to humans, and Gibson argues that it is a mistake to treat the social world apart from the material world or the tools apart from the natural environment. He points out that manufacturing was originally done by hand as a kind of manipulation. Gibson argues that learning to perceive an affordance is an essential part of socialization.


title: Affordance

text: The theory of affordances introduces a "value-rich ecological object". Affordances cannot be described within the value-neutral language of physics, but rather introduces notions of benefits and injuries to someone. An affordance captures this beneficial/injurious aspect of objects and relates them to the animal for whom they are well/ill-suited. During childhood development, a child learns to perceive not only the affordances for the self, but also how those same objects furnish similar affordances to another. A child can be introduced to the conventional meaning of an object by manipulating which objects command attention and demonstrating how to use the object through performing its central function. By learning how to use an artifact, a child “enters into the shared practices of society” as when they learn to use a toilet or brush their teeth. And so, by learning the affordances, or conventional meaning of an artifact, children learn the artifact's social world and further, become a member of that world.


title: Affordance

text: Anderson, Yamagishi and Karavia (2002) found that merely looking at an object primes the human brain to perform the action the object affords.


title: Affordance

text: In 1988, Donald Norman appropriated the term "affordances" in the context of Human–Computer Interaction to refer to just those action possibilities that are readily perceivable by an actor. This new definition of "action possibilities" has now become synonymous with Gibson's work, although Gibson himself never made any reference to action possibilities in any of his writing. Through Norman's book "The Design of Everyday Things", this interpretation was popularized within the fields of HCI, interaction design, and user-centered design. It makes the concept dependent not only on the physical capabilities of an actor, but also on their goals, beliefs, and past experiences. If an actor steps into a room containing an armchair and a softball, Gibson's original definition of affordances allows that the actor may throw the chair and sit on the ball, because this is objectively possible. Norman's definition of (perceived) affordances captures the likelihood that the actor will sit on the armchair and throw the softball. Effectively, Norman's affordances "suggest" how an object may be interacted with. For example, the size, shape, and weight of a softball make it perfect for throwing by humans, and it matches their past experience with similar objects. The focus on perceived affordances is much more pertinent to practical design problems , which may explain its widespread adoption.


title: Affordance

text: Norman later explained that this restriction of the term's meaning had been unintended, and in his 2013 update of "The Design of Everyday Things", he added the concept "signifiers". In the digital age, designers were learning how to indicate what actions were possible on a smartphone's touchscreen, which didn't have the physical properties that Norman intended to describe when he used the word "affordances".


title: Affordance

text: However, the definition from his original book has been widely adopted in HCI and interaction design, and both meanings are now commonly used in these fields.


title: Affordance

text: Following Norman's adaptation of the concept, "affordance" has seen a further shift in meaning where it is used as an uncountable noun, referring to the easy discoverability of an object or system's action possibilities, as in "this button has good affordance". This in turn has given rise to use of the verb "afford" – from which Gibson's original term was derived – that is not consistent with its dictionary definition (to provide or make available): designers and those in the field of HCI often use "afford" as meaning "to suggest" or "to invite".


title: Affordance

text: The different interpretations of affordances, although closely related, can be a source of confusion in writing and conversation if the intended meaning is not made explicit and if the word is not used consistently. Even authoritative textbooks can be inconsistent in their use of the term.


title: Affordance

text: When affordances are used to describe information and communications technology (ICT) an analogy is created with everyday objects with their attendant features and functions. Yet, ICT's features and functions derive from the product classifications of its developers and designers. This approach emphasizes an artifact’s convention to be wholly located in how it was designed to be used. In contrast, affordance theory draws attention to the fit of the technology to the activity of the user and so lends itself to studying how ICTs may be appropriated by users or even misused. One meta-analysis reviewed the evidence from a number of surveys about the extent to which the Internet is transforming or enhancing community. The studies showed that the internet is used for connectivity locally as well as globally, although the nature of its use varies in different countries. It found that internet use is adding on to other forms of communication, rather than replacing them.


title: Affordance

text: This means that, when affordances are perceptible, they offer a direct link between perception and action, and, when affordances are hidden or false, they can lead to mistakes and misunderstandings.


title: Affordance

text: Problems in robotics indicate that affordance is not only a theoretical concept from psychology. In object grasping and manipulation, robots need to learn the affordance of objects in the environment, i.e., to learn from visual perception and experience (a) whether objects can be manipulated, (b) to learn how to grasp an object, and (c) to learn how to manipulate objects to reach a particular goal. As an example, the hammer can be grasped, in principle, with many hand poses and approach strategies, but there is a limited set of effective contact points and their associated optimal grip for performing the goal.


title: Affordance

text: Affordances have now become a part of social media and are embedded in the design to keep users engaged on the platform for longer periods of time. These strategies have been utilized because increasing engagement generates more profit for media companies.


title: Affordance

text: For example, Instagram is designed for users to post and present their identity through pictures. Its affordance would be that a user is limited to communication limited to pictures, captions, hashtags, likes, comments and tagging. TikTok on the other hand allows a user to create short video content . One of the features "duet" allows users to communicate with each other by responding directly to another user's content which is a feature not available on Instagram. However Instagram affords users more characters in their caption compared to TikTok. Therefore users are more inclined to use Instagram for written and visual communication and more inclined to use TikTok for visual and audio communication.


title: Affordance

text: Based on Gibson’s conceptualization of affordances as both the good and bad that the environment offers animals, affordances in language learning are both the opportunities and challenges that learners perceive of their environment when learning a language. Affordances, which are both learning opportunities or inhibitions, arise from the semiotic budget of the learning environment, which allows language to evolve. Positive affordances, or learning opportunities, are only effective in developing learner's language when they perceive and actively interact with their surroundings. Negative affordances, on the other hand, are crucial in exposing the learners’ weaknesses for teachers, and the learners themselves, to address their moment-to-moment needs in their learning process.


title: Ohio's 13th congressional district

text: The 13th congressional district of Ohio is represented by Representative Tim Ryan. Due to reapportionment following the 2010 United States Census, Ohio lost its 17th and 18th congressional districts, necessitating redrawing of district lines. Following the 2012 elections, the 13th district changed to take in much of the territory in the former 17th district, including the city of Youngstown and areas east of Akron.


title: Ohio's 13th congressional district

text: It was one of several districts challenged in a 2018 lawsuit seeking to overturn Ohio's congressional map as an unconstitutional gerrymander. According to the lawsuit, the 13th resembles a "jigsaw puzzle piece" that reaches out to grab the portion of Akron not taken in by the Cleveland-based 11th district.


title: Ohio's 13th congressional district

text: From 2003 to 2013, the district ran from Lorain to include part of Akron, also taking in the suburban areas in between.


title: Ohio's 13th congressional district

text: In the 2020 redistricting cycle, Ohio lost its 16th congressional district and this district was redrawn to include all of Summit County and parts of Stark and Portage County including Canton, North Canton and parts of Massillon, while Youngstown was removed from the district.


title: Ohio's 13th congressional district

text: Under its current lines, the 13th district is usually strongly Democratic, although Republicans have carried it in statewide races.


title: Graveyard of empires

text: The graveyard of empires is a sobriquet often associated with Afghanistan. It originates from the numerous historical examples of foreign powers that have attempted to invade or occupy the region now known as Afghanistan, only to fall short of their political or military objectives and to suffer great loss in the process. Furthermore, all foreign armies that have invaded Afghanistan have conducted a full military withdrawal by the end of the conflict. Alternatively, the term has been applied to Mesopotamia. Elsewhere, a very similar phrase, "the graveyard of nations and empires," has been used in a figurative sense to describe the Old Testament's Book of Isaiah. It is unclear who coined the phrase, and its historical accuracy has been disputed.


title: Graveyard of empires

text: During the history of Afghanistan, several great powers have attempted to invade Afghanistan without maintaining a stable, permanent rule. Modern examples included the British Empire during the First, Second, and Third Anglo-Afghan Wars (1839–1842, 1878–1880, 1919); the Soviet Union in the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989); and the United States in the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021). Some have attributed ancient and medieval empires to the narrative, including the Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. The difficulty in invading Afghanistan was attributed to the prevalence of fortress-like qalats, the deserts, the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, its severe winter and its enduring clan loyalties, various empires fighting each other while attempting to conquer Afghanistan, and outside neighboring countries support such as Pakistan, where foreign invaders were unable or not permitted to cross into such nations to destroy their enemy sanctuaries.


title: Graveyard of empires

text: The anthropologist Thomas Barfield has noted that the narrative of Afghanistan as an unconquerable nation has been used by Afghanistan itself to deter invaders. In October 2001, during the United States invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban founder and leader Mohammed Omar Mujahid threatened the United States with the same fate as the British Empire and the Soviet Union. US President Joe Biden referred to the sobriquet while he delivered a public statement after the 2021 fall of Kabul as evidence that no further commitment of American military presence would consolidate the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan against the Taliban.


title: Graveyard of empires

text: "The New York Times" foreign correspondent Rod Nordland has stated that "in truth, no great empires perished solely because of Afghanistan." Joint Services Command and Staff College lecturer Patrick Porter called the attribution "a false extrapolation from something that is true - that there is tactical and strategic difficulty."


title: Graveyard of empires

text: The British Empire was not destroyed after the Third Anglo-Afghan War, and the collapse of the British Empire was more commonly attributed to World War II. While the Soviet–Afghan War was a major factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the opposition in Afghanistan was only possible with foreign aid, primarily from the United States. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that the Soviet Union would have collapsed regardless of the campaign. Nonetheless, the narrative allowed for argument from analogy and the thesis of "history repeating itself," which proved accepted amongst authors and political experts.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: The AMA Supercross Championship (commercially known as Monster Energy AMA Supercross) is an American motorcycle racing series. Founded by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) in 1974, the AMA Supercross Championship races are held from January through early May. Supercross is a variant of motocross which involves off-road motorcycles on a constructed dirt track consisting of steep jumps and obstacles; the tracks are usually constructed inside a sports stadium. The easy accessibility and comfort of these stadium venues helped supercross surpass off-road motocross as a spectator attraction in the United States by the late 1970s.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: From 1974 until 2002 and again from 2008 until 2021, the series was the World Championship of the sport. After losing this status, and with respect to the MXGP holding that discipline's worldwide title, the series, along with the AMA Motocross Championship, will form the SuperMotocross World Championship from 2023.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: The first motocross race held on a race track inside a stadium took place on August 28, 1948, at Buffalo Stadium in the Paris suburb of Montrouge. As the popularity of motocross surged in the United States in the late 1960s, Bill France added a professional motocross race to the 1971 Daytona Beach Bike Week schedule. The 1972 race was held at Daytona International Speedway on a constructed track on the grass surface between the main grandstand and the pit lane. Jimmy Weinert won the 250 class and Mark Blackwell was the winner of the 500 class.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: The event that paved the way for constructed, stadium-based motocross events was a 1972 race held in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, promoted by Mike Goodwin and Terry Tiernan, then-president of the AMA, and won by 16-year-old Marty Tripes. It was billed as the "Super Bowl of Motocross" which led to the coining of the term "Supercross." The Super Bowl of Motocross II held the following year was an even greater success and, eventually evolved into the AMA Supercross championship held in stadiums across the United States and Canada.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: Originally, each of the AMA Supercross races were promoted by different promoters, most notably Mike Goodwin in the West, Pace Motorsports in the Midwest and Southwest, Super Sports in the East, and Daytona International Speedway, which promotes its own race. In the 1980s, Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group (MTEG) took over the West region. In the 1990s, MTEG went bankrupt and Super Sports sold its business to Pace, which became the primary AMA Supercross promoter (with Daytona continuing to be the one holdout). In 1998, Pace was bought by SFX Entertainment, which was bought in turn by Clear Channel in 2000. The live events division of Clear Channel was split off as Live Nation in 2005, and the motorsports division was sold to Feld Entertainment in 2008, which currently promotes the championship except for the Daytona round, which is promoted by NASCAR Holdings (the owner of the circuit).


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: While growing consistently since the '70s, the modern Supercross schedule since 1985 has become further compacted. The schedule would run from February to November, with both the "outdoor" (Motocross) and "indoor" (Supercross) schedules coinciding with each other during the year.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: By 1986, the schedule was compacted to a January to June schedule, and in 1998, the series adopted its present format, starting in early January and ending in early May, with races weekly except for Easter weekend (a traditional off-week for motorsport in the United States). In 2000, the present calendar was adopted with the season starting in the Los Angeles area on the Saturday after the first Thursday of January (between January 3–9) and ending with an early May race in Las Vegas, after which the AMA Motocross Championship "outdoor season" begins.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: The American Motorcyclist Association awards three Supercross Championships each year. They are the 450cc (was known as 250cc two-stroke), and both an East and West division on the 250cc (was 125cc two-stroke). Supercross racing classifications are governed by the displacement of the motorcycle's engine. They were based on two-stroke engines until 2006, when four-stroke engines replaced two-stroke engines. From 2007 until 2012, a formula nomenclature similar to IndyCar was used, with the 450cc class known as Supercross and 250cc as Supercross Lites. Starting in 2013, the AMA and Feld Motor Sports returned to the traditional nomenclature, based on four-stroke engines: 450cc (known as "MX1" in Europe), and 250cc (also known as "MX2"). The 450cc Champion has always been generally considered to be the most prestigious.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: Since 2011, the final race of the season, known as the Monster Energy Cup for sponsorship reasons, is held at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas. A US $1 million purse is available to the rider who wins all three featured races. Ryan Villopoto won the purse at the inaugural event in 2011, as did Marvin Musquin in the 2017 edition, and Eli Tomac in the 2018 race.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: The AMA series begins in early January and continues until early-May. It consists of 17 rounds in the 450cc Class, and 9 rounds in 250cc West Class and 9 rounds in the 250cc East Class, held in football and baseball stadiums across the US.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: Beginning with Anaheim 1 in 2022, the series holds three of its first six races at Angel Stadium before it heads eastwards. The series concludes in Salt Lake City in early May. The East-West Shootouts in 2022 will be in Atlanta and the final Salt Lake round. The series also holds a race in Daytona during Daytona Bike Week.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: Each meet is structured similarly to Short track motor racing with two heat races and a consolation race in each class. In both classes, each heat race is five minutes plus one lap. Each heat features 20 riders (one may have 21 riders depending on qualifying results), with the top nine advancing to the feature. The other 22 riders are relegated to the consolation race, known as the Last Chance Qualifier, which is three minutes plus one lap, with the top four advancing to the final.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: In the 450cc class, the highest placed competitor in points, provided he is in the top ten in national points, and has yet to qualify after either heat race or consolation race, will receive a provisional for the feature race. The feature race is 15 minutes plus one lap in the 250cc class, and 20 minutes plus one lap for the 450cc class, with 26 championship points for the race win. At 3 races per year a three race format is use. The rules are similar to the Monster Energy Cup individual scoring will determine the overall race winner.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: For the season-ending East-West Shootout at Las Vegas for the 250cc class starting in May 2011, each region's top 20 will race in the non-championship event for a 15-minute heat race. Standard rules apply, with the feature race being 10 laps. In 2016, the East-West Shootout became a points-paying round where both regions' champions would be decided in the same feature. Starting in 2018, the combined East-West Shootout will also be held in the middle of the season, at the Indianapolis round.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: Starting with the 2012 Season, riders who are in first place in the Series' Points Lead will use the red plate to race in the Series.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: If at any point during the Heat Races, LCQs or the Feature Races, that the race is red-flagged within less than 3 laps, the race will be a complete restart. However, if the race is red-flagged with more than 3 laps completed but less than 90% of the total race distance and after a minimum of a 10-minute delay, the race will be a staggered restart with riders lined up from the previous lap they went.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: The sport of Supercross is best described as motocross racing that takes place within the confines of a sports stadium. The tracks are typically shorter in length than a standard motocross track. They feature a combination of man-made obstacles such as whoop sections (where riders skim along the tops of multiple bumps), rhythm sections (irregular series of jumps with a variety of combination options), and triple jumps (three jumps in a row that riders normally clear in a single leap of 70 feet or more). Many of the turns have banked berms, but some are flat. It takes roughly five hundred truckloads of dirt to make up a supercross track. Soil conditions can be hard-packed, soft, muddy, sandy, rutted, or any combination thereof.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: In 2022, there are four broadcast partners from the NBC family of networks: NBC, CNBC, USA and Peacock.


title: AMA Supercross Championship

text: Between 2008 and 2021 the AMA Supercross Championship was also designated an FIM World Championship. Lost FIM World Championship status in 2022 due to a rebooted world championship.


title: Dual linear program

text: The dual of a given linear program (LP) is another LP that is derived from the original (the primal) LP in the following schematic way:


title: Dual linear program

text: The weak duality theorem states that the objective value of the dual LP at any feasible solution is always a bound on the objective of the primal LP at any feasible solution (upper or lower bound, depending on whether it is a maximization or minimization problem). In fact, this bounding property holds for the optimal values of the dual and primal LPs.


title: Dual linear program

text: The strong duality theorem states that, moreover, if the primal has an optimal solution then the dual has an optimal solution too, "and the two optima are equal".


title: Dual linear program

text: These theorems belong to a larger class of duality theorems in optimization. The strong duality theorem is one of the cases in which the duality gap (the gap between the optimum of the primal and the optimum of the dual) is 0.


title: Dual linear program

text: Suppose we have the linear program: Maximize cx subject to "A"x ≤ b, x ≥ 0.We would like to construct an upper bound on the solution. So we create a linear combination of the constraints, with positive coefficients, such that the coefficients of x in the constraints are at least c. This linear combination gives us an upper bound on the objective. The variables y of the dual LP are the coefficients of this linear combination. The dual LP tries to find such coefficients that "minimize" the resulting upper bound. This gives the following LP:Minimize by subject to "A"y ≥ c, y ≥ 0 This LP is called the "dual of" the original LP.


title: Dual linear program

text: In general, given a primal LP, the following algorithm can be used to construct its dual LP. The primal LP is defined by:


title: Dual linear program

text: If all constraints have the same sign, it is possible to present the above recipe in a shorter way using matrices and vectors. The following table shows the relation between various kinds of primals and duals.


title: Dual linear program

text: Below, suppose the primal LP is "maximize cx subject to [constraints]" and the dual LP is "minimize by subject to [constraints]".


title: Dual linear program

text: The weak duality theorem says that, for each feasible solution x of the primal and each feasible solution y of the dual: cx ≤ by. In other words, the objective value in each feasible solution of the dual is an upper-bound on the objective value of the primal, and objective value in each feasible solution of the primal is a lower-bound on the objective value of the dual. Here is a proof for the primal LP "Maximize cx subject to "A"x ≤ b, x ≥ 0":


title: Dual linear program

text: Weak duality implies:max cx ≤ min byIn particular, if the primal is unbounded (from above) then the dual has no feasible solution, and if the dual is unbounded (from below) then the primal has no feasible solution.


title: Dual linear program

text: The strong duality theorem says that if one of the two problems has an optimal solution, so does the other one and that the bounds given by the weak duality theorem are tight, i.e.:max cx = min byThe strong duality theorem is harder to prove; the proofs usually use the weak duality theorem as a sub-routine.


title: Dual linear program

text: One proof uses the simplex algorithm and relies on the proof that, with the suitable pivot rule, it provides a correct solution. The proof establishes that, once the simplex algorithm finishes with a solution to the primal LP, it is possible to read from the final tableau, a solution to the dual LP. So, by running the simplex algorithm, we obtain solutions to both the primal and the dual simultaneously.


title: Dual linear program

text: 1. The weak duality theorem implies that finding a "single" feasible solution is as hard as finding an "optimal" feasible solution. Suppose we have an oracle that, given an LP, finds an arbitrary feasible solution (if one exists). Given the LP "Maximize cx subject to "Ax ≤ b, x ≥ 0", we can construct another LP by combining this LP with its dual. The combined LP has both x and y as variables:Maximize 1 subject to "Ax ≤ b, "A"y ≥ c, cx ≥ by, x ≥ 0, y ≥ 0If the combined LP has a feasible solution (x,y), then by weak duality, cx = by. So x must be a maximal solution of the primal LP and y must be a minimal solution of the dual LP. If the combined LP has no feasible solution, then the primal LP has no feasible solution either.


title: Dual linear program

text: 2. The strong duality theorem provides a "good characterization" of the optimal value of an LP in that it allows us to easily prove that some value "t" is the optimum of some LP. The proof proceeds in two steps:


title: Dual linear program

text: It is easy to see that the maximum of the primal LP is attained when "x" is minimized to its lower bound (0) and "x" is maximized to its upper bound under the constraint (7/6). The maximum is 4 · 7/6 = 14/3.


title: Dual linear program

text: Similarly, the minimum of the dual LP is attained when "y" is minimized to its lower bound under the constraints: the first constraint gives a lower bound of 3/5 while the second constraint gives a stricter lower bound of 4/6, so the actual lower bound is 4/6 and the minimum is 7 · 4/6 = 14/3.


title: Dual linear program

text: In accordance with the strong duality theorem, the maximum of the primal equals the minimum of the dual.


title: Dual linear program

text: We use this example to illustrate the proof of the weak duality theorem. Suppose that, in the primal LP, we want to get an upper bound on the objective formula_30. We can use the constraint multiplied by some coefficient, say formula_31. For any formula_31 we get: formula_33. Now, if formula_34and formula_35, then formula_36, so formula_37. Hence, the objective of the dual LP is an upper bound on the objective of the primal LP.


title: Dual linear program

text: Consider a farmer who may grow wheat and barley with the set provision of some "L" land, "F" fertilizer and "P" pesticide.


title: Dual linear program

text: To grow one unit of wheat, one unit of land, formula_38 units of fertilizer and formula_39 units of pesticide must be used. Similarly, to grow one unit of barley, one unit of land, formula_40 units of fertilizer and formula_41 units of pesticide must be used.


title: Dual linear program

text: The primal problem would be the farmer deciding how much wheat (formula_42) and barley (formula_43) to grow if their sell prices are formula_44 and formula_45 per unit.


title: Dual linear program

text: For the dual problem assume that "y" unit prices for each of these means of production (inputs) are set by a planning board. The planning board's job is to minimize the total cost of procuring the set amounts of inputs while providing the farmer with a floor on the unit price of each of his crops (outputs), "S" for wheat and "S" for barley. This corresponds to the following LP:


title: Dual linear program

text: The primal problem deals with physical quantities. With all inputs available in limited quantities, and assuming the unit prices of all outputs is known, what quantities of outputs to produce so as to maximize total revenue? The dual problem deals with economic values. With floor guarantees on all output unit prices, and assuming the available quantity of all inputs is known, what input unit pricing scheme to set so as to minimize total expenditure?


title: Dual linear program

text: To each variable in the primal space corresponds an inequality to satisfy in the dual space, both indexed by output type. To each inequality to satisfy in the primal space corresponds a variable in the dual space, both indexed by input type.


title: Dual linear program

text: The coefficients that bound the inequalities in the primal space are used to compute the objective in the dual space, input quantities in this example. The coefficients used to compute the objective in the primal space bound the inequalities in the dual space, output unit prices in this example.


title: Dual linear program

text: Both the primal and the dual problems make use of the same matrix. In the primal space, this matrix expresses the consumption of physical quantities of inputs necessary to produce set quantities of outputs. In the dual space, it expresses the creation of the economic values associated with the outputs from set input unit prices.


title: Dual linear program

text: Since each inequality can be replaced by an equality and a slack variable, this means each primal variable corresponds to a dual slack variable, and each dual variable corresponds to a primal slack variable. This relation allows us to speak about complementary slackness.


title: Dual linear program

text: The max-flow min-cut theorem is a special case of the strong duality theorem: flow-maximization is the primal LP, and cut-minimization is the dual LP. See Max-flow min-cut theorem#Linear program formulation.


title: Dual linear program

text: Other graph-related theorems can be proved using the strong duality theorem, in particular, Konig's theorem.


title: Dual linear program

text: Sometimes, one may find it more intuitive to obtain the dual program without looking at the program matrix. Consider the following linear program:


title: Dual linear program

text: We have "m" + "n" conditions and all variables are non-negative. We shall define "m" + "n" dual variables: y and s. We get:


title: Dual linear program

text: Since this is a minimization problem, we would like to obtain a dual program that is a lower bound of the primal. In other words, we would like the sum of all right hand side of the constraints to be the maximal under the condition that for each primal variable the sum of its coefficients do not exceed its coefficient in the linear function. For example, x appears in "n" + 1 constraints. If we sum its constraints' coefficients we get "a"y + "a"y + ... + "a"y + "f"s. This sum must be at most c. As a result, we get:


title: Dual linear program

text: Note that we assume in our calculations steps that the program is in standard form. However, any linear program may be transformed to standard form and it is therefore not a limiting factor.


title: Dual linear program

text: The duality theorem has an economic interpretation. If we interpret the primal LP as a classical "resource allocation" problem, its dual LP can be interpreted as a "resource valuation" problem. See also Shadow price.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: Largo di Torre Argentina is a square in Rome, Italy, with four Roman Republican temples and the remains of Pompey's Theatre. It is in the ancient Campus Martius.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: The name of the square comes from the "Torre Argentina", which takes its name from the city of Strasbourg whose Latin name was "Argentoratum". In 1503, the Papal Master of Ceremonies Johannes Burckardt, who came from Strasbourg and was known as "Argentinus", built in "via del Sudario" a palace (now at number 44), called "Casa del Burcardo", to which the tower is annexed.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Curia of Pompey, and the spot where he is believed to have been assassinated is in the square.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: After Italian unification, it was decided to reconstruct part of Rome (1909), demolishing the zone of Torre Argentina. However, during the demolition work in 1927, the colossal head and arms of a marble statue were discovered. The archaeological investigation brought to light the presence of a "holy area", dating to the Republican era, with four temples and part of Pompey's Theatre.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: In 2019, Rome's mayor Virginia Raggi announced that walkways would be installed in the site allowing the general public to tour the ruins for the first time.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: The four temples, originally designated by the letters "A", "B", "C", and "D", front onto a paved street, which was reconstructed in the imperial era, after the fire of AD 80. The area was delineated to the North by the "Hecatostylum" (one-hundred columns porch) and the Baths of Agrippa, and to the South by the buildings related to the Circus Flaminius, to the East by the great porched square of "Porticus Minucia Frumentaria", and to the West by the Theatre of Pompey.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: "Temple A" was built in the 3rd century BC, and is probably the "Temple of Juturna" built by Gaius Lutatius Catulus after his victory against the Carthaginians in 241 BC. It was later rebuilt as a church, the apse of which is still present.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: "Temple B", a circular temple "(tholos)" with six columns remaining, was built by Quintus Lutatius Catulus in 101 BC in fulfillment of his vow at the Battle of Vercellae. The temple "(aedes)" was devoted to "Fortuna Huiusce Diei", "the Fortune of This Day." The colossal statue found during excavations and now kept in the Centrale Montemartini of the Capitoline Museums was the statue of the goddess herself. Only the head, the arms, and the legs were made of marble: the other parts, covered by the dress, were of other materials, probably a wooden frame. This is known as an acrolithic statue.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: "Temple C" is the most ancient of the four, dating back to 4th or 3rd century BC, and was probably devoted to "Feronia" the ancient Italic goddess of fertility. After the fire of AD 80, this temple was restored, and the white and black mosaic of the inner temple cella dates back to this restoration.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: "Temple D" is the largest of the four, dates back to the 2nd century BC with Late Republican restorations, and was devoted to "Lares Permarini" (Lares who protect sailors), but only a small part of it has been excavated (a street covers the most of it). It was vowed by the praetor, Lucius Aemilius Regillus, while engaged in a naval battle with the fleet of Antiochus the Great in 190 BC, and dedicated by M. Aemilius Lepidus, when censor, on 22 December, 179. On the doors of the temple was a dedicatory inscription in Saturnian metre. It is recorded as standing "in porticu Minucia" and therefore its exact site depends on that of the porticus.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: The Teatro Argentina is an 18th-century opera house and theatre located in the square. The premieres of many notable operas took place there. They include Gioachino Rossini's "The Barber of Seville" in 1816 and Giuseppe Verdi's "I due Foscari" in 1844 and "La battaglia di Legnano" in 1849.


title: Largo di Torre Argentina

text: The Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary is located in Temple D of the Largo di Torre Argentina. The cat shelter was founded in 1993 and offers sterilization and adoption programs that house an estimated 350 cats. The shelter operates as a no-kill shelter under Law no. 281, enacted by the Italian Parliament in 1991. These laws introduced: (i) the cats’ rights to live free and safe, (ii) institutionalization of cat caretakers. The shelter remains active, despite archaeologists' protests to dismantle the shelter in favor of protecting the excavation.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (; 29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), usually cited as A. J. Ayer, was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books "Language, Truth, and Logic" (1936) and "The Problem of Knowledge" (1956).


title: A. J. Ayer

text: He was educated at Eton College and the University of Oxford, after which he studied the philosophy of logical positivism at the University of Vienna. From 1933 to 1940 he lectured on philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: He was Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London from 1946 until 1959, after which he returned to Oxford to become Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1951 to 1952 and knighted in 1970. He was known for his advocacy of humanism, and was the second president of the British Humanist Association (now known as Humanists UK).


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Professor A. J. Ayer was president of the Homosexual Law Reform Society for a time; he remarked that "as a notorious heterosexual I could never be accused of feathering my own nest."


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Ayer was born in St John's Wood, in north west London, to Jules Louis Cyprien Ayer and Reine (née Citroen), wealthy parents from continental Europe. His mother was from the Dutch-Jewish family who founded the Citroën car company in France; his father was a Swiss Calvinist financier who worked for the Rothschild family, including for their bank and as secretary to Alfred Rothschild.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Ayer was educated at Ascham St Vincent's School, a former boarding preparatory school for boys in the seaside town of Eastbourne in Sussex, in which he started boarding at the comparatively early age of seven for reasons to do with the First World War, and Eton College, where he was a King's Scholar. It was at Eton that Ayer first became known for his characteristic bravado and precocity. Although primarily interested in furthering his intellectual pursuits, he was very keen on sports, particularly rugby, and reputedly played the Eton Wall Game very well. In the final examinations at Eton, Ayer came second in his year, and first in classics. In his final year, as a member of Eton's senior council, he unsuccessfully campaigned for the abolition of corporal punishment at the school. He won a classics scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford. He graduated with a BA with first-class honours.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: After graduation from Oxford, Ayer spent a year in Vienna, returned to England and published his first book, "Language, Truth and Logic" in 1936. The first exposition in English of logical positivism as newly developed by the Vienna Circle, this made Ayer at age 26 the 'enfant terrible' of British philosophy. As a newly famous intellectual, Ayer played a prominent role in the Oxford by-election campaign of 1938. Ayer campaigned first for the Labour candidate Patrick Gordon Walker, and then for the joint Labour-Liberal "Independent Progressive" candidate Sandie Lindsay who ran on an anti-appeasement platform against the Conservative candidate, Quintin Hogg who ran as the appeasement candidate. The by-election when it was held on 27 October 1938 was quite close with Hogg winning a narrow victory over Lindsay.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: In the Second World War he served as an officer in the Welsh Guards, chiefly in intelligence (Special Operations Executive (SOE) and MI6). Ayer was commissioned second lieutenant into the Welsh Guards from Officer Cadet Training Unit on 21 September 1940.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: After the war, he briefly returned to the University of Oxford where he became a fellow and Dean of Wadham College. He thereafter taught philosophy at London University from 1946 until 1959, when he also started to appear on radio and television. He was an extrovert and social mixer who liked dancing and attending the clubs in London and New York. He was also obsessed with sport: he had played rugby for Eton, and was a noted cricketer and a keen supporter of Tottenham Hotspur football team, where he was for many years a season ticket holder. For an academic, Ayer was an unusually well-connected figure in his time, with close links to 'high society' and the establishment. Presiding over Oxford high-tables, he is often described as charming, but at times he could also be intimidating.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Ayer was married four times to three women. His first marriage was from 1932–1941 to (Grace Isabel) Renée (d. 1980), with whom he had a son - alleged to be in fact the son of Ayer's friend and colleague, philosopher Stuart Hampshire - and a daughter. Renée subsequently married Stuart Hampshire. In 1960 he married Alberta Constance (Dee) Wells, with whom he had one son. Ayer's marriage to Wells was dissolved in 1983 and that same year he married Vanessa Salmon, former wife of politician Nigel Lawson. She died in 1985 and in 1989 he remarried Dee Wells, who survived him. Ayer also had a daughter with Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham Westbrook.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: In 1950, Ayer attended the founding meeting of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in West Berlin, though he later stated that he only went because of the offer of a "free trip". Ayer gave a speech on why he felt that John Stuart Mill's classic liberal conceptions of liberty and freedom were still valid for the 20th century. Together with the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, Ayer fought against Arthur Koestler and Franz Borkenau, arguing that the latter two were far too dogmatic and extreme in their anti-communism, and were in fact proposing illiberal measures in the defense of liberty. Adding to the tension was the location in West Berlin, together with the fact that the Korean War began on 25 June 1950, the fourth day of the congress, giving a feeling that the world was on the brink of war.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: From 1959 to his retirement in 1978, Sir Alfred held the Wykeham Chair, Professor of Logic at Oxford. He was knighted in 1970. After his retirement, Ayer taught or lectured several times in the United States, including serving as a visiting professor at Bard College in the fall of 1987. At a party that same year held by fashion designer Fernando Sanchez, Ayer, then 77, confronted Mike Tyson who was forcing himself upon the (then) little-known model Naomi Campbell. When Ayer demanded that Tyson stop, the boxer reportedly asked, "Do you know who the fuck I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world," to which Ayer replied, "And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest that we talk about this like rational men". Ayer and Tyson then began to talk, allowing Campbell to slip out. Ayer was also involved in politics being involved in anti-Vietnam War activism, supporting the Labour Party (and then later the Social Democratic Party), Chairman of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination in Sport, and president of the Homosexual Law Reform Society.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: In 1988, a year before his death, Ayer wrote an article entitled, "What I saw when I was dead", describing an unusual near-death experience. Of the experience, Ayer first said that it "slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death ... will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be." However, a few weeks later he revised this, saying "what I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief".


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Ayer died on 27 June 1989. From 1980 to 1989 Ayer lived at 51 York Street, Marylebone, where a memorial plaque was unveiled on 19 November 1995.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: In "Language, Truth and Logic" (1936), Ayer presents the verification principle as the only valid basis for philosophy. Unless logical or empirical verification is possible, statements like "God exists" or "charity is good" are not true or untrue but meaningless, and may thus be excluded or ignored. Religious language in particular was unverifiable and as such literally nonsense. He also criticises C. A. Mace's opinion that metaphysics is a form of intellectual poetry. The stance that a belief in "God" denotes no verifiable hypothesis is sometimes referred to as igtheism (for example, by Paul Kurtz). In later years Ayer reiterated that he did not believe in God and began to refer to himself as an atheist. He followed in the footsteps of Bertrand Russell by debating with the Jesuit scholar Frederick Copleston on the topic of religion.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: He focuses on propositions of the first class—moral judgments—saying that those of the second class belong to science, those of the third are mere commands, and those of the fourth (which are considered in normative ethics as opposed to meta-ethics) are too concrete for ethical philosophy.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Ayer argues that moral judgments cannot be translated into non-ethical, empirical terms and thus cannot be verified; in this he agrees with ethical intuitionists. But he differs from intuitionists by discarding appeals to intuition of non-empirical moral truths as "worthless" since the intuition of one person often contradicts that of another. Instead, Ayer concludes that ethical concepts are "mere pseudo-concepts":


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Between 1945 and 1947, together with Russell and George Orwell, he contributed a series of articles to "Polemic", a short-lived British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" edited by the ex-Communist Humphrey Slater.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Ayer was closely associated with the British humanist movement. He was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association from 1947 until his death. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963. In 1965, he became the first president of the Agnostics' Adoption Society and in the same year succeeded Julian Huxley as president of the British Humanist Association, a post he held until 1970. In 1968 he edited "The Humanist Outlook", a collection of essays on the meaning of humanism. In addition he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Ayer is best known for popularising the verification principle, in particular through his presentation of it in "Language, Truth, and Logic" (1936). The principle was at the time at the heart of the debates of the so-called Vienna Circle which Ayer visited as a young guest. Others, including the leading light of the circle, Moritz Schlick, were already offering their own papers on the issue. Ayer's own formulation was that a sentence can be meaningful only if it has verifiable empirical import; otherwise, it is either "analytical" if tautologous or "metaphysical" (i.e. meaningless, or "literally senseless"). He started to work on the book at the age of 23 and it was published when he was 26. Ayer's philosophical ideas were deeply influenced by those of the Vienna Circle and David Hume. His clear, vibrant and polemical exposition of them makes "Language, Truth and Logic" essential reading on the tenets of logical empiricism; the book is regarded as a classic of 20th century analytic philosophy, and is widely read in philosophy courses around the world. In it, Ayer also proposed that the distinction between a conscious man and an unconscious machine resolves itself into a distinction between "different types of perceptible behaviour", an argument that anticipates the Turing test published in 1950 to test a machine's capability to demonstrate intelligence.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Ayer wrote two books on the philosopher Bertrand Russell, "Russell and Moore: The Analytic Heritage" (1971) and "Russell" (1972). He also wrote an introductory book on the philosophy of David Hume and a short biography of Voltaire.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Ayer was a strong critic of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. As a logical positivist Ayer was in conflict with Heidegger's proposed vast, overarching theories regarding existence. These he felt were completely unverifiable through empirical demonstration and logical analysis, and this sort of philosophy an unfortunate strain in modern thought. He considered Heidegger to be the worst example of such philosophy, which Ayer believed to be entirely useless. In "Philosophy in the Twentieth Century" (1982) Ayer accuses Heidegger of "surprising ignorance" or "unscrupulous distortion" and "what can fairly be described as charlatanism."


title: A. J. Ayer

text: In 1972–1973 Ayer gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews, later published as "The Central Questions of Philosophy". In the preface to the book, he defends his selection to hold the lectureship on the basis that Lord Gifford wished to promote "natural theology", in the widest sense of that term", and that non-believers are allowed to give the lectures if they are "able reverent men, true thinkers, sincere lovers of and earnest inquirers after truth". He still believed in the viewpoint he shared with the logical positivists: that large parts of what was traditionally called "philosophy"including the whole of metaphysics, theology and aestheticswere not matters that could be judged as being true or false and that it was thus meaningless to discuss them.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: In "The Concept of a Person and Other Essays" (1963), Ayer heavily criticized Wittgenstein's private language argument.


title: A. J. Ayer

text: Ayer's sense-data theory in "Foundations of Empirical Knowledge" was famously criticised by fellow Oxonian J. L. Austin in "Sense and Sensibilia", a landmark 1950s' work of common language philosophy. Ayer responded to this in the essay "Has Austin Refuted the Sense-datum Theory?", which can be found in his "Metaphysics and Common Sense" (1969).


title: A. J. Ayer

text: <nowiki>*</nowiki>For more complete publication details see "The Philosophical Works of A. J. Ayer" (1979) and (1992).


title: Ratchagan

text: Ratchagan () is a 1997 Indian Tamil-language romantic action film written, produced by K. T. Kunjumon, and directed by Praveen Gandhi. It stars Nagarjuna and Sushmita Sen, alongside Raghuvaran, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, Vadivelu and Girish Karnad in supporting roles. The film released on 30 October 1997. It was the most expensive Indian film at the time of release. Notably, this marks the first and last Tamil debut of Sushmita Sen and remains the only Tamil film she has acted.


title: Ratchagan

text: Ajay (Nagarjuna) is an unemployed youth who always gets into trouble because of his temper. He gets heated up when he encounters anyone committing a crime; he takes the law into his own hands, beats them up, and then gives them some free advice. Ajay's father Padmanabhan (S. P. Balasubrahmanyam), who works for an insurance firm, is very unhappy with his son's attitude, and tries his best to change his attitude through a meditation expert, but fails in this matter as the expert suggests that Ajay's anguish is reasonable. Ajay meets Sonia (Sushmita Sen) through his father, and she falls in love with him. What Sonia likes about Ajay is his temper and anger when he encounters anything, which is against the law. Sonia gets Padmanabhan's help to get Ajay to love her. Still, Ajay is not interested in her and seriously rejects her at first; but he later changes his mind after going through some unusual situations, and love blossoms between them.


title: Ratchagan

text: Sonia's father, Sriram (Girish Karnad), is an industrialist who owns the Daewoo automotive manufacturing facility. He has no objection to his daughter's relationship with Ajay, but has one condition: Ajay must become employed in his factory, control his temper for three months, and not get into any fight whatsoever, even if he encounters a crime happening in front of his eyes. If Ajay cannot do this, he will not be allowed to marry Sonia. With a heavy heart, Ajay agrees to the condition; Sonia's love for Ajay deepens, and Sriram offers Ajay a job in his factory. Sriram has his problems with his factory in a loss; ten of his workers are working with his rival and younger stepbrother Gnaneswar (Raghuvaran), and they hamper the progress of his factory with frequent, pre-planned mishaps. This leads to the factory's property loss.


title: Ratchagan

text: Gnaneswar is the son of Sriram's stepmother, who gets deceived by Sriram and loses his share of his father's common business empire. Further, in unusual circumstances, Gnaneswar spends some years in jail and returns with a planned conspiracy and vengeance on his stepbrother, Sriram. Gnaneswar is now trying to put Sriram out of business, so his ten men create havoc in the factory by killing old "workers" and raging against new workers. So, when Ajay comes to work in Sriram's factory, these ten men do the same to Ajay. Ajay keeps cool, trying to keep his promise to Sriram. But Sriram hopes otherwise; he wants Ajay to break the promise and beat up the ten men and throw them out of the factory. At the same time, Sriram hopes the imminent marriage between Ajay and Sonia will be canceled since he does not want his daughter to marry an angry street fighter like Ajay. So, Sriram keeps hoping Ajay will somehow burst out. Gnaneswar's men damage an important machine to make the international Korean experts attend to the problem. The plan is to kill those Korean experts so that it would become an international issue and Sriram's company would be locked out permanently, but Ajay saves those experts, and Sriram publicizes this to create a fight between Gnaneswar's men and Ajay, but it happens otherwise that Ajay still keeps cool despite them beating him black and blue, and Sriram's hopes are devastated. As the last trigger, Sriram uses his father's name in publicizing the issue in the factory to the media so that Gnaneswar's men may think that it was Ajay's father who brought this to the media. As expected by Sriram, those ten men brutally murder Ajay's father for this.


title: Ratchagan

text: After this, Ajay becomes furious and breaks his promise and banishes the ten men from the factory. But Gnaneswar holds Ajay and blackmails Sonia that he would kill Ajay unless Sonia kills herself by destroying Sriram's factory by bombarding it with a truck armed with a powerful Russian explosive. In the climax, Gnaneswar kills Sriram by throwing him off the helicopter; Gnaneswar gets killed when his helicopter hits the mountains; Sonia gets saved and unites with Ajay.


title: Ratchagan

text: The film was launched in January 1996, but filming only commenced the following year, in January 1997. Despite signing on established crew including A. R. Rahman along with Miss Universe pageant winner Sushmita Sen and Nagarjuna an Andhra star, producer Kunjumon signed debutant Praveen Gandhi to be the director. The producer revealed that in the direction, he saw "a young man who is very talented and full of ideas who was willing to work hard." The period in between was spent with pre-production works with art director Thotta Tharani constructing a huge set in Mahabalipuram with an elaborate bungalow and swimming pool as a part of the heroine's home, as well as a huge five star hotel where the villains lived and a landing area for helicopters. To shoot the helicopter scene, another helicopter with the cameraman flew above the helicopter with the villain in it.


title: Ratchagan

text: Furthermore, Tharani created 8 sets for the song "Love Attack", with Nagarjuna and Sushmita dancing alongside 50 other dancers. The song "Mercury Pookkal Model Nilakkal" was picturised in the midst of many small aeroplanes in Bangalore. The film was shot all over India, including locations in Manali, Mumbai, Goa, Ooty, Rajasthan and Delhi, with Kunjumon making a claim during filming stages that the film would become India's most costly production. However, this record was broken when Shankar's "Jeans" released the very next year. Nagarjuna's voice was dubbed by actor Suresh.


title: Ratchagan

text: The film was initially slated to be released on 31 July 1997, but the strikes in the Tamil film industry delayed such plans. The film was released in Tamil Nadu, along with the Telugu dubbed version in Andhra Pradesh on 30 October 1997 to mixed reviews.


title: Ratchagan

text: The soundtrack featured eight songs and a theme song composed by A. R. Rahman. The lyrics were written by Vairamuthu and Vaali. Hindi company, Sony music T-Series, bought the music rights of the film in 1997.


title: Castizo

text: Castizo is a racial category used in 18th-century Colonial Mexico to refer to people who were three-quarters Spanish by descent and one-quarter Amerindian. The feminine form of the word is "castiza". In the early 21st century, the term "castizo" has also come to mean mixed-race people with light skin, in comparison to "mulattos", "pardos", and "coyotes", who would be mixed-race people with darker skin.


title: Castizo

text: The category was widely recognized by the 18th century in colonial Mexico and was a standard category portrayed in eighteenth-century casta paintings.


title: Castizo

text: In the taxonomic chart accompanying a work on casta paintings, "castizo" is given as "uncertain origin". It appears in 1543 with the meaning "class, condition, social position" ("calidad, clase o condición").


title: Castizo

text: The term "castizo" applied to the offspring of a union of a Spaniard and a "mestiza" (offspring of a Spaniard and an Indian woman); that is, someone who is of three-quarters Spanish and one-quarter Amerindian ancestry. During this era, various other terms ("mestizo", "cuarterón de indio", etc.) were also used.


title: Castizo

text: Most scholars do not view the racial labels and hierarchical ordering as a rigid or official "system of castes," since there was considerable fluidity in the designations. Individuals might be classified or identify themselves with different categories at different points in their lives. Sometimes different labels were used simultaneously in the same documentation. "Castizo" was a category used in colonial Mexico.


title: Castizo

text: Marriage licenses required a declaration of racial status for each partner. The category "castizo" "was widely recognized by the eighteenth century; castizos still did not appear in great numbers [in parish documentation] even though they were widely distributed throughout New Spain." In colonial censuses, officials sought to keep track of certain categories, particularly where a person could claim to be a Spaniard. "In the [colonial Mexican] censuses of white/mestizo households, provisions were made to keep accurate records of castizos. The flexibility of having three categories (mestizo, castizo, and español) provided census takers a broader framework within which to capture differences of phenotype — presumably in hopes of closely regulating entry into the coveted español caste." Some were classified as "castizos" rather than "españoles", but "their castizo status allowed them to maintain social elevation with the broader mestizo mainstream."


title: Castizo

text: An eighteenth-century visitor to colonial Mexico published the following observation about race mixture between Spaniards and Amerindians:


title: Castizo

text: "If the mixed-blood is the offspring of a Spaniard and an Indian, the stigma [of race mixture] disappears at the third step in descent because it is held as systematic that a Spaniard and an Indian produce a mestizo; a mestizo and a Spaniard, a castizo; and a castizo and a Spaniard, a Spaniard. [Note: This person is 7/8 Spanish by ancestry]. The admixture of Indian blood should not indeed be regarded as a blemish, since the provisions of law give the Indian all that he could wish for, and Philip II granted to mestizos the privilege of becoming priests. On this consideration is based the common estimation of descent from a union of Indian and European or creole Spaniard."


title: Naomi Battrick

text: She was born in Kettering Northamptonshire and her first television appearance was in a guest role on "The Bill" as Miranda Roscoe, following which she won the part of 15-year-old band member Toyah Swann in the 2009 CBBC show "My Almost Famous Family", for which she is predominantly known, starring alongside Dominique Moore and Rakie Ayola. It revolved around a family band who were part of a chat show. The series ended in November 2009. Following this, Battrick made guest and recurring appearances on television shows including "Casualty" and as Grace Jacobs in "Doctors", for which she is also predominantly known. She has also appeared in films, including the 2012 thriller film "Blood" as Miriam Fairburn. In January 2014, she joined the cast of BBC One school drama "Waterloo Road" where she appeared as the new girl Gabriella Wark, and in 2015 signed on for the third season of "Crossing Lines" as ICC Agent Ellie Delfont-Bogard. Since 2017 she appears in the Sky One drama "Jamestown" as Jocelyn Woodbryg, Mrs., later Widow, Samuel Castell.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The politics of Finland take place within the framework of a parliamentary representative democracy. Finland is a republic whose head of state is President Sauli Niinistö, who leads the nation's foreign policy and is the supreme commander of the Finnish Defence Forces. Finland's head of government is Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who leads the nation's executive branch, called the Finnish Government. Legislative power is vested in the Parliament of Finland (, ), and the Government has limited rights to amend or extend legislation. Because the Constitution of Finland vests power to both the President and Government, the President has veto power over parliamentary decisions, although this power can be overruled by a majority vote in the Parliament.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The judiciary is independent of the executive and legislative branches. The judiciary consists of two systems: regular courts and administrative courts. The judiciary's two systems are headed by the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court, respectively. Administrative courts process cases in which official decisions are contested. There is no constitutional court in Finland – the constitutionality of a law can be contested only as applied to an individual court case.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The citizens of Finland enjoy many individual and political freedoms, and suffrage is universal at age 18; Finnish women became the first in the world to have unrestricted rights both to vote and to run for public office.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The country's population is ethnically homogeneous with no sizable immigrant population. Few tensions exist between the Finnish-speaking majority and the Swedish-speaking minority, although in certain circles there is an unending debate about the status of the Swedish language.


title: Politics of Finland

text: Finland's labor agreements are based on collective bargaining. Bargaining is highly centralized and often the government participates to coordinate fiscal policy. Finland has universal validity of collective labour agreements and often, but not always, the trade unions, employers, and the Government reach a national income policy agreement. Significant Finnish trade unions include SAK, STTK, AKAVA, and EK.


title: Politics of Finland

text: A Finnish political identity and distinctively Finnish politics first developed under the Russian rule in the country from 1809 to 1917. During the era Finland had an autonomous position within the Russian Empire with its own legislative powers. However, all bills had to be signed into law by the Russian Emperor who was the Grand Duke of Finland. Also, military power was firmly in Russian hands. Previously Finland had been a part of Sweden and did not have any political institutions of its own, rather people of Finnish ethnicity participated in Swedish politics.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The Finnish Senate issued a declaration of independence on 6 December 1917, after Russia's second revolution in October 1917. The Council of People's Commissars of Soviet Russia, chaired by Lenin, recognized Finland's independence on 31 December 1917, and soon after that many other states followed.


title: Politics of Finland

text: On 28 January 1918 a civil war broke out that ended in the victory of German-backed Whites against Bolsheviks-backed Reds. In the same year, the volunteers made some armed expeditions into Soviet Russia, including Karelia, and also Estonia. The Finnish Civil War was part of the First World War. The war was fought between the Finnish Senate, i.e. the forces led by the government, and the Finnish People's Delegation, from 27 January to 16 May 1918. The Senate forces were called Whites and the People's Delegation forces Reds.


title: Politics of Finland

text: During the Second World War, Finland fought three wars: the Winter War, the Continuation War and the Lapland War.


title: Politics of Finland

text: According to the ceasefire agreement, in addition to the territorial losses following the Winter War, Finland had to hand over Petsamo and lease Porkkala as a base for 50 years. War reparations were set at USD 300 million. The terms of the ceasefire agreement were finally confirmed in the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty.


title: Politics of Finland

text: At the beginning of 1973, Kekkonen was exceptionally elected president without elections or candidates, which today is considered by some to be the nadir of Finnish democracy and marked the beginning of the final era for Kekkonen.


title: Politics of Finland

text: In 1982, Mauno Koivisto was elected president, promising to reduce the president's power and increase the prime minister's powers.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The convergence of Finland and the European Community began in the autumn of 1989 with the decision to join the European Economic Area (EEA).


title: Politics of Finland

text: Following a positive vote in Parliament, Finland's application for EC membership was submitted on 18 March 1992, and membership negotiations began on 1 February 1993 at the same time as with Sweden and Austria.


title: Politics of Finland

text: Finland joined the European Union in 1995. In 2002, the euro replaced the markka as Finland's official currency.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The current version of the constitution of Finland was written on 1 March 2000. The first iteration of the constitution was adopted on 17 July 1919. The original comprised four constitutional laws and several amendments, which the latter replaced.


title: Politics of Finland

text: According to the constitution, the legislative powers are exercised by the Parliament, the governmental powers are exercised by the President of the Republic and the Government, and the judicial powers are exercised by government-independent courts of law. The Supreme Court may request legislation that interprets or modifies existing laws. Judges are appointed by the President.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The constitution of Finland and its place in the judicial system are unusual in that there is no constitutional court and the Supreme Court does not have the explicit right to declare a law unconstitutional. In principle, the constitutionality of laws in Finland is verified by a simple vote by Parliament (see "parliamentary sovereignty"). However, the Parliament's Constitutional Law Committee reviews any doubtful bills and recommends changes, if needed. In practice, the Constitutional Law Committee fulfils the duties of a constitutional court. A Finnish peculiarity is the possibility of making exceptions to the constitution in ordinary laws that are enacted in the same procedure as constitutional amendments. An example of such a law is the State of Preparedness Act, which gives the Government certain exceptional powers in cases of national emergency. As these powers, which correspond to US executive orders, affect constitutional basic rights, the law was enacted in the same manner as a constitutional amendment. However, it can be repealed in the same manner as an ordinary law. In addition to preview by the Constitutional Law Committee, all Finnish courts are obligated to give precedence to the constitution when there is an obvious conflict between the constitution and a regular law. Such a case is, however, very rare.


title: Politics of Finland

text: Some matters are decided by the President of Finland, the Head of State, in plenary meetings with the government, echoing the constitutional history of a privy council. The President is otherwise not present in the government, but decides on issues such as personal appointments and pardons on the advice of the relevant minister. In the ministries, matters of secondary importance are decided by individual ministers, advised by the minister's State Secretary. The Prime Minister and the other ministers in the government are responsible for their actions in office to the Parliament.


title: Politics of Finland

text: Finland has a parliamentary system, even if the President of Finland is formally responsible for foreign policy. Most executive power lies in the cabinet (the Finnish Government) headed by the prime minister. Responsibility for forming the cabinet out of several political parties and negotiating its platform is granted to the leader of the party gaining largest support in the elections for the parliament. This person also becomes prime minister of the cabinet. Any minister and the cabinet as a whole, however, must have continuing trust of the parliament and may be voted out, resign or be replaced. The Government is made up of the prime minister and the ministers for the various departments of the central government as well as an "ex officio" member, the Chancellor of Justice.


title: Politics of Finland

text: In the official usage, the "cabinet" ("valtioneuvosto") are the ministers including the prime minister and the Chancellor of Justice, while the "government" ("hallitus") is the cabinet presided by the president. In the popular usage, "hallitus" (with the president) may also refer to "valtioneuvosto" (without the president).


title: Politics of Finland

text: Though Finland has a primarily parliamentary system, the President has some notable powers. The foreign policy is led by the President in co-operation with the government, and the same applies to matters concerning national security. The main executive power lies in the cabinet, which is headed by the Prime Minister. Before the 2000 constitutional rewrite, the President enjoyed more governing power.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The Government is made up of the Prime Minister and other ministers for the various ministries of the central government as well as an "ex officio" member, the Chancellor of Justice. Ministers are not obliged to be members of Parliament and need not be formally identified with any political party.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The Government produces most of the material that the Parliament deals with, such as proposals for new laws or legislative reforms, and the annual budget. The ministers each direct their ministries with relative independence. The current cabinet has 19 ministers in 12 ministries. The number of ministers can be decided by the Government.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The head of government is the Prime Minister, currently Sanna Marin. The Prime Minister designate is subject to election by the Parliament and subsequent appointment by the President of Finland. All the ministers shall be Finnish citizens, known to be honest and competent.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The ministries function as administrative and political experts and prepare Government decisions within their mandates. They also represent their relevant administrative sectors in domestic and international cooperation.


title: Politics of Finland

text: New laws are drafted in ministries. There is a tradition of substantial ministerial independence in law drafting. The drafts are then reviewed by government and parliament before enactment. The final legislative power is vested in Parliament, in conjunction with the President of the Republic, according to the Finnish Constitution.


title: Politics of Finland

text: There are 12 ministries in Finland. As the government tends to have more ministers than ministries, some ministries, such as the Ministry of Finance, are associated with multiple ministers.


title: Politics of Finland

text: The 200-member unicameral Parliament of Finland ("Eduskunta" (Finnish), "Riksdag" (Swedish)) is the supreme legislative authority in Finland. The parliament may alter the Constitution of Finland, bring about the resignation of the Government, and override presidential vetoes. Its acts are not subject to judicial review. Legislation may be initiated by the Government, or one of the members of Parliament, who are elected for a four-year term on the basis of proportional representation through open list multi-member districts. Persons 18 or older, except military personnel on active duty and a few high judicial officials, are eligible for election. The regular parliamentary term is four years; however, the president may dissolve the eduskunta and order new elections at the request of the prime minister and after consulting the speaker of parliament.