title: Crossover music

text: Besides describing music of a distinct genre that becomes broadly popular, the musical term "crossover" suggested mixed genres. "Fusion" is a more common term for this phenomenon. Examples include jazz fusion and world music. Example albums of crossover jazz plus classical music were albums of Deodato, Jean Luc Ponty and Bob James. Bob James "One" (CTI, 1974), contained the song "Feel Like Making Love", which Roberta Flack already had as a hit. Radio stations played this song and contributed to the success of album "One". The album was notable for adapting classical music to a modern-day scene, e.g. "In the Garden" was based on Pachelbel's Canon in D and "Night on Bald Mountain" was a cover of Modest Mussorgsky's composition of the same name.


title: Crossover music

text: Other examples of crossover in music are bands that play a mix of genres such as funk, rap, rock, metal and punk, for instance bands such as Urban Dance Squad, Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Suicidal Tendencies, D.R.I., Primus, Linkin Park, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down and 311.


title: Sam Vimes

text: His Grace, The Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel "Sam" Vimes is a fictional character in Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" series. Vimes is depicted in the novels as somewhere between an Inspector Morse-type 'old-school' British policeman, and a film noir-esque grizzled detective. His appearances throughout the Discworld sequence show him slowly and grudgingly rising through the ranks of both police force and society. As of his latest promotion, his full name and title is ""His Grace, His Excellency, The 1st Duke of Ankh; Commander Sir Samuel Vimes"". When serving as Ambassador for Ankh-Morpork, he is also referred to simply as ""His Excellency"", and is also nicknamed ""Blackboard Monitor Vimes"", "Vimes the Butcher/Butcher Vimes" and ""Vetinari's Terrier"" (or his "hammer", depending upon the occasion). According to his wife, Sybil, Vimes is recognised by many as Lord Vetinari's right-hand man.


title: Sam Vimes

text: He first appeared in the novel "Guards! Guards!". While no detailed description of his physical appearance shows up in any of the Discworld novels, Pratchett says in the companion work, "The Art of Discworld", that he has always imagined Vimes as a younger, slightly bulkier version of late British actor Pete Postlethwaite. Longtime collaborative artist Paul Kidby, who has worked with Pratchett on several works, portrays him instead as resembling Clint Eastwood.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes is the Commander of the City Watch, the burgeoning police force of the Discworld's largest city, Ankh-Morpork. His rise from drunk policeman to respected member of the aristocracy, and the simultaneous growth and development of the Watch under his command, have together been one of the major threads of the "Discworld" series. Born into poverty, (as a descendant of disgraced ancient Ankh-Morpork nobility), he is now a highly reluctant member of modern Ankh-Morpork nobility, having been made both a knight and a duke, as well as an ambassador. He is married to Sybil Ramkin, the richest woman in the city. They have a son, The Honourable Samuel Vimes II.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Sam Vimes was born in Cockbill Street as the son of Thomas Vimes, (son of Gwilliam Vimes) in the Rimwards part of the Shades, the poorest area of Ankh-Morpork. It is depicted as being so poor that there was little crime, though Sam was part of a street gang ("The Cockbill Street Roaring Lads") with Lupine Wonse (who later became secretary to Lord Vetinari).


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes was educated at a dame school, where he was once blackboard monitor for a whole term, before he had to drop out and concentrate on learning about life out on the streets. It is mentioned in "Jingo" that Sam Vimes' father, Thomas Vimes, had been a watchman prior to his death. His mother would go on to tell young Sam that his father was 'run down by a cart when he was crossing the street'. He privately reckons later that his father was a drunk: "Vimes had never known his father. His mum told him that the man had been run over by a cart, but Vimes suspected that if this were true at all, then it was probably a brewer's cart, which had 'run him over' a bit at a time for years". Whatever happened to him exactly, she raised the young Sam on her own. She died about twenty years after the events of "Night Watch", or about ten years prior to the "present-day" events in that novel (before Vimes' first appearance in "Guards! Guards!"), and is buried in the city's Small Gods Cemetery. In "Night Watch" Sam remembers that his mother made 'the very best' Distressed Pudding.


title: Sam Vimes

text: The Vimes family has historically been closely linked with the City Watch, with many members serving in it through its history. It has been suggested that Sam's father was a watchman in "Jingo" and he is a descendant of Suffer-Not-Injustice "Old Stoneface" Vimes, the Watch Commander who instigated the rebellion against, and subsequently beheaded, Lorenzo the Kind, the last king of the city, a sadistic torturer described as "very fond of children." As a consequence, the Vimes family was stripped of its nobility. For three centuries afterwards, the memory of "Old Stoneface" has lived on in infamy and, as his descendant, Vimes has frequently endured suspicious mutterings from the aristocracy. Vimes is implied to heavily resemble his ancestor and they share a nickname: "Old Stoneface". "The Annotated Pratchett File" notes that Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes is closely modelled on Oliver Cromwell, and that the name of his supporters, the Ironheads, is a portmanteau of Ironsides and Roundheads, Cromwell's regiment and faction, respectively.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes was sixteen when he joined the Watch. He was part of that section of the Watch which played a large role in the rebellion against Homicidal Lord Winder. It was around this time he was taught all he knew by Sergeant-At-Arms John Keel, which is where his cynical outlook on life and his firm belief in justice comes from.


title: Sam Vimes

text: In the newest stories, Keel is Vimes himself transported back in time by thirty years. As Lu-Tze explains to Vimes in "Night Watch", both pasts are true and there was a real John Keel. Vimes was transported back in time in the company of a criminal named Carcer, whom he was trying to apprehend. Carcer robbed and killed the real John Keel, and Vimes had to replace him in order for his role in history to be fulfilled.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes' age is never explicitly given, and information is not always consistent. "Night Watch" states that Vimes was sixteen years old when he joined the City Watch. It is mentioned in "Men at Arms" that Vimes has been in the Watch for 25 years, making him 41 at the time of that novel. The main events of "Night Watch", set only a few weeks after Vimes joined the Watch, are stated as occurring more than thirty years prior to the present from which Vimes came, this makes Samuel Vimes at least 46 years old at the time of the events of that book. "Thud!" gives the age of Vimes' son, (also named Sam), born during the climax of "Night Watch", as being fourteen months, which would put Vimes at a minimum of 47 or 48 years old during the events of the book. When Vimes discusses his time as a blackboard monitor, he thinks about it being "more than 45 years ago" and that he was six years old at the time, putting his age at least 51 years; this is confirmed when he refers to the new vampire officer, age given as 51, as being "not that much younger than him". It is also mentioned in "Night Watch", that at the time of the "Glorious Revolution of the Twenty-Fifth of May", both Sam Vimes and Havelock Vetinari were 16 years old, meaning that they are both the same age.


title: Sam Vimes

text: During the first 25 years of his term in the Watch, Vimes rose to Captain of the Night Watch, a position that he attained about ten years prior to the events of "Guards! Guards!", as it dwindled to a tiny stub – while the power of the Thieves' Guild grew. This insult to Vimes' sense of justice, together with his being naturally knurd (the opposite of being drunk, where one is stripped of all the illusions that make life bearable) and other events (it has been claimed he was ""brung low by a woman"", which is an interpretation of the anthropomorphisation of the city, Morporkia), led towards heavy drinking. At this time, he lived in near poverty, giving away almost all of his salary to widows and orphans of watchmen, and spending what was left on alcohol and cheap boots.


title: Sam Vimes

text: All that changed when Carrot Ironfoundersson came to the city. A human raised by dwarfs, Carrot joined the Watch and set out to help the city. Around the same time, a dragon assaulted the city, and the Watch was instrumental in its defeat. The whole series of events forced Vimes to sober-up long enough to uncover who was responsible for summoning the Dragon, after which the changes in his personal life led to him coming off of the drink and switching to smoking cigars, and occasionally, taking snuff.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes, who was about to retire following his marriage to Lady Sybil, was given the resurrected rank of Commander, putting him in charge of the Night Watch and the Day Watch. He also received a knighthood.


title: Sam Vimes

text: The Watch was given a new headquarters, Pseudopolis Yard (an allusion to the name of the headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police: Scotland Yard), by Lady Sybil Ramkin (Vimes's soon-to-be wife) after the dragon destroyed their original base at Treacle Mine Road. It had been her childhood home, and in "Thud!" it is revealed that some of her family's possessions are still stored in the attic of the building – in this instance they retrieved a copy of Methodia Rascal's Koom Valley painting, made by Sybil as a child, after the original is stolen.


title: Sam Vimes

text: As part of an equal-opportunities drive required by the Patrician, the Watch under Vimes eventually took on extra staff in the form of a werewolf, a dwarf and a troll (and later a gargoyle, a gnome, a golem, an Igor, a zombie, and a vampire). They were instrumental in foiling an attempt on the Patrician's life, and were rewarded. The Watch was rapidly revived and became increasingly important in the city.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes took a great interest in the restructuring of the Watch, placing new Watch Houses where they were needed and supervising the creation of both a Watch Academy and a forensics section. His reform of the City Watch has been so successful that by "Night Watch", Vimes-trained policemen are in high demand in cities across the Disc. They are known as "Sammies" (which is based on the British terms for police officers, "Bobbies" and, the now obsolete, "Peelers" both after Robert Peel and possibly on the earlier term "Charleys" for night watchmen, after Charles II during whose reign they were instituted), even to the people who may have never actually heard of Samuel Vimes himself. In his expanding international and diplomatic role, Vimes appreciates the fact that police officers from Sto Lat to Genua have been trained to salute him, and remain in unofficial contact across the Disc.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes is a very conflicted character. An incorruptible idealist with deep beliefs in justice and an abiding love of his city, he is also a committed cynic whose knowledge of human nature constantly reminds him how far off those ideals are. Having married into the upper classes, he still possesses an innate dislike of inherited wealth and an instinctive revulsion towards social inequality. The Patrician observes that Vimes is anti-authoritarian even though he is, himself, an authority figure, which is "practically Zen". The conflict within Vimes is between his virtuous nature ("the Watchman") and what he calls "the Beast". In "The Art of Discworld", Pratchett explains that Vimes protects himself from the Beast with the symbol of his own badge, which prevents him from becoming the criminal he despises, at least in his own mind. Although in "Guards! Guards!" Vimes is all but shocked at Vetinari's disturbingly cynical (and probably disturbingly accurate) view of the world, he in turn has been called "the most cynical bastard that ever walked under the sun" (in "I Shall Wear Midnight"). Although widely differing characters, Vimes and Vetinari can be called similar in that they both have very cynical worldviews, but fairly idealistic aims.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes has once been described as a speciesist, though this habit slowly dies away; most of his officers rationalize this bias as simply not being particularly fond of "anyone". However, he will warm up to anyone he considers a "good copper" regardless of their unusual background and has allowed the Watch to become one of the most species-blind employers in the city. Initially, Vimes is jokingly described as only fond of rural dwarfs and wizards, the former who only commit crimes underground and away from him and the later ironically sharing his respectful distaste for using magic irresponsibly. A notable exception is his explicit dislike of vampires. He explained to Lady Margolotta in "The Fifth Elephant", this is because, teetotal or not, 'a vampire will always seek to dominate a human being'.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Despite being viewed by many of the Discworld's more Machiavellian power brokers as easy to fool, Vimes is more cunning than he appears. His years of practical experience give him a foundation of hard-headed realism on which he bases much of his more idealistic beliefs. A running gag in the series is his thwarting of several attempts on his life by the Assassins' Guild, due to his knowledge of their rigid code of conduct. Thanks to the funds now available to him, through marriage, his mansion is set with numerous traps, so that the Assassins, who must always offer a sporting chance, cannot get close to him without suffering a severe mishap. Traps include roof tiles set on greased rails, sawn roof joists over the dragon pens and bear traps in the shrubbery. Vimes also personally makes sure that all of the brickwork is kept in good repair, with no convenient handholds. In addition, Vimes' office at Pseudopolis Yard has "everything that his ingenuity could devise", including sharp ornamental railings, "which are pretty, and make the house look nice, but are, above all, spiky."


title: Sam Vimes

text: Whenever he thwarts an Assassin in an attempt, he usually lets them go after taking their share of the payment for his inhumation (which he then donates to the 'Watch Widows and Orphans Fund', or to the 'Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick, Abused or Abandoned Dragons'), and subjecting them to a little humiliation. Though he finds it to be annoying, Vimes takes these continued attempts on his life as a sign that he's angering somebody, and so must be doing something right. In every book in the series, the fee for his assassination has risen until he has been removed from the Guild register, meaning that contracts on his life are no longer accepted (this was initially literal, as no assassin wanted to take the contract). Vimes was made aware of this by a young female student from the guild, who had been tasked with merely getting a glimpse of Vimes at his home (after she had fallen into one of the "eventually lethal" traps). Vimes is considering appealing the decision. In "The Fifth Elephant", Vimes managed to evade, fight off, and 'kill' part of a pack of werewolves in "the game", a werewolf tradition of chasing a human back to civilization that humans did not often win. (Angua's brother Wolfgang denies that the werewolves died, as they can only truly be killed by silver; they would just have "nasty headaches later on.") Vimes also reflects on killing a werewolf in "Night Watch" and Vetinari mentions him killing a werewolf in "Thud!". He eventually did actually kill Wolfgang (with a firework, it having been previously established that werewolves can be killed by fire as well as silver.)


title: Sam Vimes

text: While not otherwise well-traveled, in the days of "Guards! Guards!" he could tell exactly where he was anywhere within the city limits of Ankh-Morpork just by the feel of the cobbles beneath his feet, due to the thinness of his boots at the time, having walked the streets of the city for thirty years and a knowledge of the difference of the cobbles therein. When he is returned to the past in "Night Watch", he uses this ability to locate a group of monks he needs in order to return to his present. Later in the series, the expensive, good quality boots his wife persists in buying for him restrict this ability.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes' firm grasp of basic human nature, and of the Ankh-Morpork psyche in particular, led to him spending some years as a drunk, and Fred Colon postulates that this was because Vimes' body didn't produce any "natural alcohol", and he estimates that Vimes was about "two drinks below par". This meant that when he hadn't been drinking, he was beyond sober - he was "knurd". Thus he saw reality as it really was ("first sight"); stripped of all the mental illusions that most people construct in their minds to get to sleep at night ("second sight"). This horrifying state of mind caused Vimes to try to balance it out through drinking, but he would get the dosage wrong and would just end up drunk. Vimes gave up alcohol after his marriage to Sybil, and now smokes foul-smelling cigars instead. He still keeps an unopened bottle of 'Bearhugger's Whisky' in his bottom desk drawer as a 'permanent test'.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Terry Pratchett noted the following about Vimes on Usenet: "Vimes is fundamentally a person. He fears he may be a bad person because he knows what he thinks rather than just what he says and does. He chokes off all of those little reactions and impulses, but he knows what they are. So he tries to act like a good person, often in situations where the map is unclear." This, along with the Discworld habit of pushing any theory as hard as it goes, appears to have culminated in Vimes' psyche creating its own 'internal policeman' to "Guard the Guardsmen", (cf. "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"), and Vimes' own sense of justice being so strong that, in Thud!, it was even able to fend off the attempts to possess him by a 'quasi-demonic "thing" of pure vengeance'.


title: Sam Vimes

text: It has also been noted that, in personality and mental setup, Vimes bears some similarity to Granny Weatherwax. Both are effectively 'good' characters, who nevertheless both secretly fear the darkness inside themselves, and constantly strive to control the darker sides of their nature.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes often has to go to report to Lord Vetinari, although most of the time he keeps a poker-face and answers very simply to avoid Vetinari's probing questions. When given bad news, he has a tendency to, on his way out, pound his fist against a certain spot of wall near the office door. Though he sometimes has to call in a plasterer when Vimes is particularly angry, Vetinari doesn't worry about it—a sign that he intentionally angers Vimes so as to goad him into a desired action. When Vimes was temporarily relieved of command in "Men at Arms", the fact that Vimes "didn't" pound the wall led Vetinari to realize that he 'may have gone too far'.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Sometimes this darker side comes out when Vimes loses control of his anger and he effectively 'goes spare'. In "Men at Arms", he temporarily gains possession of the Gonne, a malevolent firearm which drives him to violence, but he restrains the urge to "make things right", enough to eventually let it go without seriously hurting anyone. In "Feet of Clay", Corporal Nobby Nobbs refuses the position of King of Ankh-Morpork, primarily due to the fear of incurring Vimes's general wrath and hatred of royalty.


title: Sam Vimes

text: In "Thud!", after an attempted assassination of his family, Vimes becomes furious at the 'deep-down dwarves', a problem only made worse by the presence of a dark entity of pure vengeance within his mind. Both of those factors, and a near-Death experience that forced him to miss his 6:00pm story-time with his son, culminate in him snapping and temporarily losing over to "the Beast", going insane/berserk and single-handedly storming the deep-downers responsible, all the while roaring out the lines to "Where's My Cow?"; ("...IS THAT MY COW? IT GOES, 'MOOOOO!'...") with such ferocity and madness that their personal guard come to the conclusion that "they had sworn to fight to the death, but not to "this" death," and run away. As he is about to massacre the now-defenceless deep-downers, he hesitates thanks to "the Watchman" in his head and begins to struggle with himself, which buys enough time for Sergeant Angua to arrive at the scene and force him down. He never completely loses control, and always manages to restrain himself (or have someone around to restrain him) in the end.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Revealed in the events of "Thud!", after years of night-time patrols, Vimes' mindscape is described as the city of Ankh-Morpork-itself, streets and all, in the dead of night, whilst the rains are bucketing down over your head. Whenever Vimes is angry, doors of some of the houses open (the more angry he is, the more numbers of doors will open). While the "Summoning Dark" had trespassed into his mind, needing a host in order to track down the Deep-Downer Dwarves, would try to enter through one of the doors that opened when Vimes became angry, only to be pulled away at every time. It is later revealed that the force that was preventing the "Summoning Dark" from making any progress in possessing Vimes was Vimes' own 'inner guardsman', who patrols the streets of his mind.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes is an effective and brutal hand-to-hand fighter, who specialises in "dirty fighting". He also prefers non-lethal takedowns whenever possible.


title: Sam Vimes

text: During heightened states of mind, such as when confronting his darker side and/or when near death, he is able to see Death, (this happened in "The Fifth Elephant" and "Thud!", although he was unable to do this in "Night Watch"). Death himself is unsure whether Vimes should die or not in these cases, citing "quantum" as an explanation. At one point Death notes that if Vimes is having a 'near-Death' experience, Death is also forced to have a 'near Vimes' experience (as of "Thud!" Death has started bringing books to read during these occasions).


title: Sam Vimes

text: On rare occasions, Sam Vimes has been described as completely happy, even if it's only for a brief period; such occasions include alone time with his wife, the birth of his son, and whenever a case has reached a satisfactory conclusion. At the end of the events of "Snuff", Vimes was also genuinely amazed to learn that a new book, ""Pride and Extreme Prejudice"", had been dedicated to him.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Lady Sybil Vimes (full title: Her Grace, The Duchess of Ankh, Lady Sybil Deidre Olgivanna Vimes (née Ramkin)), is Vimes's wife, whom he married at the end of "Men at Arms". First introduced in "Guards! Guards!", she is a rather imposing Wagnerian aristocrat, but also a kind-hearted and compassionate person, embodying the positive aspects of aristocrats, who are otherwise depicted unflatteringly in Ankh-Morpork's population. She is deeply-gracious lady, able to like almost anyone (even "Nobby Nobbs"). She donated a property, Pseudopolis Yard, (bought by her father), to the Watch after their original headquarters was burnt by a dragon.


title: Sam Vimes

text: She was born into the wealthiest family in Ankh-Morpork and resides in the most select part of Ankh, Scoone Avenue. As well as being an amateur soprano, she is a leading expert in swamp dragons and has a dragon pen outside her house where she breeds and cares for swamp dragons, though aside from her hobby most of her house is vaguely under-tended due to apparent lack of interest. She also supports "The Sunshine Sanctuary For Sick, Abused Or Abandoned Swamp Dragons", which is run by her friend Rosie Devant-Molei. Her hobby has left her with her natural hair singed off and she wears a wig in nearly all circumstances. Despite her high-class upbringing, she has displayed a resourcefulness (""in an outdoorsy kind of way"") that first attracted Vimes's attention.


title: Sam Vimes

text: The pattern of Sam and Sybil's marriage was set the moment he turned away from his wedding to chase an assassin who had just made an attempt on the Patrician's life. Lady Sybil is a remarkably patient woman; she spent nearly the entirety of "The Fifth Elephant" attempting to inform her increasingly distracted husband that she was pregnant with their first child. Though he finds being affectionate in public embarrassing and is divided on disliking Sybil's status as a noble, it is clear that Vimes loves his wife dearly; indeed when he was trapped in the past alone in a world he no longer recognised, the History Monks gave him a silver cigar case his wife had bought him to inspire him to continue with his mission. It is unclear if his hatred of crime and the evil of humanity is greater than his love for his wife. Sybil bears this divided loyalty with some grace; nearly every Watch novel concludes with Sam making some form of amends to his neglected wife, either a delayed honeymoon, or simply time alone with their new baby.


title: Sam Vimes

text: In spite (or perhaps "because") of her wealth, Sybil engages in certain 'housewife'-like activities such as repairing socks and preparing meals. This is mainly out of a sense of duty and tradition than actual need or skill. Sam is somewhat baffled by the overtures, but as he is already used to an imperfect lifestyle, he is generally appreciative of the sentiment.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Sybil maintains a number of close (female) social contacts from her schooldays, who, thanks to the kind of school she went to (The Quirm College for Young Ladies), are now all strategically placed in the highest levels of power across the Sto Plains and often more powerful than Ankh-Morpork Guild leaders. Vimes once conjectured that if they so conspired, they could run the world, if they don't already do so.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Sybil tries her utmost to get Sam to take some time off in almost every book, but for the most part, Sam finds an excuse to stay on the job. In "Snuff", Sybil forces Vimes to take a vacation to their countryside estate, Crundells. The character of one of her ancestors, John ""Mad Jack"" Ramkin, was inspired from real-life aristocrat John "Mad Jack" Fuller of Sussex (&/or John "Mad Jack" Mytton of Shropshire). As the aforementioned John "Mad Jack" Ramkin is also hailed as the 3rd Earl Ramkin, this reveals that the Ramkin estate is an earldom, and that Lady Sybil was already a countess (provided that the title wasn't entailed) before her husband, Sam Vimes', elevation to Duke at the end of "Jingo".


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes' involvement in preventing a pointless war with Klatch in the novel "Jingo" led to his being once more rewarded with an unwanted title, in this case, Duke of Ankh. He now finds himself in the awkward position ("practically zen" according to his boss) of continuing to despise the ruling classes of the city while actually being a member of them. In the course of his mission to Überwald as ambassador, he was disgusted to learn that he was also entitled to be addressed as "His Excellency", although he learns to wield it for practical clout, especially when perusing investigations where his status as an officer is unknown or ignored.


title: Sam Vimes

text: His role as Duke of Ankh largely involves diplomacy (his visit to Überwald in "The Fifth Elephant" for example), and his rough and ready upbringing has given him an obliquely effective approach to this field. For instance, he once threatened to personally send an opposing diplomat ""home in an ambulance"" for parading his troops near Ankh-Morpork borders, an act that caused the man to order an "immediate" withdrawal so drastic that Havelock Vetinari remarked ""they were nearly in the next country over."" Despite having competent subordinates, including Captains Carrot and Angua and Sergeant Detritus, Vimes finds it difficult to delegate, and is frustrated by the fact that the growth of the Watch has left him with less and less time for actual boots-on-the-pavement policing. In some ways he found it a relief when, in "Night Watch", he was transported back to the Ankh-Morpork of his youth, and became a sergeant-at-arms in the inefficient, paperwork-free albeit moderately corrupt Watch of that time.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Young Sam (full title: The Hon. Samuel ""Young Sam"" Vimes II) is Sam and Sybil Vimes' son and only child; he was born at the end of the events in "Night Watch", is about fourteen months old by the time of "Thud!", and at the age of six years by the time of the events of "Snuff". His birth was difficult, and Vimes paid Doctor "Mossy" Lawn a large sum of money in gratitude for saving Sybil's and the baby's lives. Lawn has since founded the Lady Sybil Free Hospital.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Since his son's birth, Vimes discovered a new cause in life: "arriving at home every day at six o' clock sharp to read "Where's My Cow?" to him, an obligation that supersedes crime, conspiracy or international negotiations—his thinking being that if he ever missed it for a good reason, he might miss it for a bad reason, and that this might apply to everything he does, such as employing less-than-ethical methods in the pursuit of crime".


title: Sam Vimes

text: In "Snuff", it is highlighted that not only can Young Sam read, but that he is quite advanced and now reads to his father. It is also shown that he is currently quite stuck on the study of poo, having read many books written by one Miss Felicity Beedle, whom he knows as ""the poo lady"", and who has also written such books as "Where's My Cow?", "The World of Poo", "Melvin and the Enormous Boil", "Geoffrey and the Magic Pillow Case" and "The Little Duckling Who Thought He Was an Elephant".


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes is, much to his own horror, becoming a politician. He remains in his soul a copper. Being a significant figure on the world stage just means he finds bigger crimes.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Terry Pratchett commented that the Vimes character made setting a story in Ankh-Morpork very difficult as it is almost impossible to create a story involving any sort of crime or politics without it rapidly becoming a Watch book.


title: Sam Vimes

text: Sam Vimes is the central character in "Guards! Guards!", "Men at Arms", "Feet of Clay", "Jingo", "The Fifth Elephant", "Night Watch", "Thud!" and "Snuff". He is a secondary character in "The Truth" and "Monstrous Regiment" and has cameos in "The Last Hero", "Going Postal", "Making Money", "Unseen Academicals", "I Shall Wear Midnight" and "Raising Steam". He has also appeared in the "City Watch Diary" and the picture book "Where's My Cow?". He is also mentioned, although not by name, in "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents".


title: Sam Vimes

text: Vimes is played by Richard Dormer in the live-action television series "The Watch", "inspired by Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' novels", rather than being a straight adaptation of specific stories.


title: Sam Vimes

text: "Guards! Guards!" was adapted for BBC Radio 5 in 1992 and starred John Wood as Vimes. "Night Watch" was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2007, with actor Philip Jackson as Vimes.


title: Sam Vimes

text: While there have been a number of amateur stage productions of the books, a professional adaptation of "Guards! Guards!" went on tour in 1998. Vimes was played by Paul Darrow, best known for his role in "Blake's 7".


title: Sam Vimes

text: Discussing Pratchett's legacy in "The Guardian", Andrew Brown wrote that Vimes "may be the most fully realised decent man in modern literature," while "the Hollywood Reporter" has described him as "Inspector Morse-meets-Humphrey Bogart-esque".


title: Sam Vimes

text: In episode 3.4 "Coda" of the TV series" Endeavour", Inspector Fred Thursday states that his old mentor was "Sergeant Vimes, Cable Street".


title: Sam Vimes

text: In 2022, the Terry Pratchett Estate authorized Jack Monroe to use the "Vimes Boots Index" as the name of a price index she devised to document inflation in prices of basic necessities. The name comes from a passage in "Men at Arms" in which Vimes muses on the expensive nature of poverty. As of 20 July 2022, this index does not exist.


title: Joan Taylor

text: Taylor was born Rose Marie Emma in Geneva, Illinois. Her father, Joseph Emma, from Sicily, was a prop man in Hollywood in the 1920s. After his daughter's birth he became the manager of the Deerpath movie theatre in Lake Forest, Illinois, where Joan was brought up. Her mother, Amelia Berky, was from Austria, and was a vaudeville singing-dancing star in the 1920s.


title: Joan Taylor

text: Taylor married Leonard Freeman, later the creator of "Hawaii Five-O", in 1953. The couple had three daughters. After her contract for "The Rifleman" ran out, she retired from acting to raise her children.


title: Joan Taylor

text: When Freeman died in January 1974, following heart surgery, Taylor began managing Leonard Freeman Productions and the business of "Hawaii Five-O" under the name Rose Freeman. She attended at least one "Hawaii Five-O" convention to talk to fans.


title: Joan Taylor

text: With her children older, she found herself writing, including co-author credit for the comedy "Fools Rush In" starring Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek. She remarried, to television producer-director Walter Grauman in 1976; the couple divorced in 1980.


title: Joan Taylor

text: Taylor's career began at the Pasadena Playhouse. She met Freeman there when both were involved with putting on "Here Comes Mr. Jordan". In the early 1950s, she was chosen by Paramount Pictures as a member of the studio's "Golden Circle", described as a "group consisting of a dozen unusually talented young actors for whom Paramount held high hopes." Her first film was "Fighting Man of the Plains", starring Randolph Scott. Her producer had also insured the 19-year-old's legs for $100,000 against injury.


title: Joan Taylor

text: Her television career consisted of guest appearances on popular shows, in only one or two episodes. However, she had a successful recurring role in eighteen episodes of "The Rifleman", starring Chuck Connors from 1960-1962.


title: Knowledge base

text: A knowledge base (KB) is a technology used to store complex structured and unstructured information used by a computer system. The initial use of the term was in connection with expert systems, which were the first knowledge-based systems.


title: Knowledge base

text: The original use of the term knowledge base was to describe one of the two sub-systems of an expert system. A knowledge-based system consists of a knowledge-base representing facts about the world and ways of reasoning about those facts to deduce new facts or highlight inconsistencies.


title: Knowledge base

text: The term "knowledge-base" was coined to distinguish this form of knowledge store from the more common and widely used term "database". During the 1970s, virtually all large management information systems stored their data in some type of hierarchical or relational database. At this point in the history of information technology, the distinction between a database and a knowledge-base was clear and unambiguous.


title: Knowledge base

text: The first knowledge-based systems had data needs that were the opposite of these database requirements. An expert system requires structured data. Not just tables with numbers and strings, but pointers to other objects that in turn have additional pointers. The ideal representation for a knowledge base is an object model (often called an ontology in artificial intelligence literature) with classes, subclasses and instances.


title: Knowledge base

text: Early expert systems also had little need for multiple users or the complexity that comes with requiring transactional properties on data. The data for the early expert systems was used to arrive at a specific answer, such as a medical diagnosis, the design of a molecule, or a response to an emergency. Once the solution to the problem was known, there was not a critical demand to store large amounts of data back to a permanent memory store. A more precise statement would be that given the technologies available, researchers compromised and did without these capabilities because they realized they were beyond what could be expected, and they could develop useful solutions to non-trivial problems without them. Even from the beginning, the more astute researchers realized the potential benefits of being able to store, analyze, and reuse knowledge. For example, see the discussion of Corporate Memory in the earliest work of the Knowledge-Based Software Assistant program by Cordell Green et al.


title: Knowledge base

text: The volume requirements were also different for a knowledge-base compared to a conventional database. The knowledge-base needed to know facts about the world. For example, to represent the statement that "All humans are mortal". A database typically could not represent this general knowledge but instead would need to store information about thousands of tables that represented information about specific humans. Representing that all humans are mortal and being able to reason about any given human that they are mortal is the work of a knowledge-base. Representing that George, Mary, Sam, Jenna, Mike... and hundreds of thousands of other customers are all humans with specific ages, sex, address, etc. is the work for a database.


title: Knowledge base

text: As expert systems moved from being prototypes to systems deployed in corporate environments the requirements for their data storage rapidly started to overlap with the standard database requirements for multiple, distributed users with support for transactions. Initially, the demand could be seen in two different but competitive markets. From the AI and Object-Oriented communities, object-oriented databases such as Versant emerged. These were systems designed from the ground up to have support for object-oriented capabilities but also to support standard database services as well. On the other hand, the large database vendors such as Oracle added capabilities to their products that provided support for knowledge-base requirements such as class-subclass relations and rules.


title: Knowledge base

text: The next evolution for the term knowledge-base was the Internet. With the rise of the Internet, documents, hypertext, and multimedia support were now critical for any corporate database. It was no longer enough to support large tables of data or relatively small objects that lived primarily in computer memory. Support for corporate web sites required persistence and transactions for documents. This created a whole new discipline known as Web Content Management.


title: Knowledge base

text: The other driver for document support was the rise of knowledge management vendors such as Lotus Notes. Knowledge Management actually predated the Internet but with the Internet there was great synergy between the two areas. Knowledge management products adopted the term "knowledge-base" to describe their repositories but the meaning had a big difference. In the case of previous knowledge-based systems, the knowledge was primarily for the use of an automated system, to reason about and draw conclusions about the world. With knowledge management products, the knowledge was primarily meant for humans, for example to serve as a repository of manuals, procedures, policies, best practices, reusable designs and code, etc. In both cases the distinctions between the uses and kinds of systems were ill-defined. As the technology scaled up it was rare to find a system that could really be cleanly classified as knowledge-based in the sense of an expert system that performed automated reasoning and knowledge-based in the sense of knowledge management that provided knowledge in the form of documents and media that could be leveraged by humans.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: A ring is a round band, usually made of metal, worn as ornamental jewelry. The term "ring" by itself always denotes jewellery worn on the finger; when worn as an ornament elsewhere, the body part is specified within the term, e.g., earrings, neck rings, arm rings, and toe rings. Rings always fit snugly around or in the part of the body they ornament, so bands worn loosely, like a bracelet, are not rings. Rings may be made of almost any hard material: wood, bone, stone, metal, glass, gemstone or plastic. They may be set with gemstones (diamond, ruby, sapphire or emerald) or with other types of stone or glass.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: Although some people wear rings as mere ornaments or as conspicuous displays of wealth, rings have symbolic functions respecting marriage, exceptional achievement, high status or authority, membership in an organization, and the like. Rings can be made to sport insignia which may be impressed on a wax seal or outfitted with a small compartment in which to conceal things. In myth, fable, and fiction, rings are often endowed with spiritual or supernatural significance.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: Rings and other types of jewelry including necklaces, bracelets, earrings, bangles and pendants have been discovered from the 3rd millennium BC Indus Valley civilization. Factories of small beads have been discovered in Lothal, India.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: Rings have been found in tombs in Ur dating back to circa 2500 BC. The Hittite civilization produced rings, including signet rings, only a few of which have been discovered. People in Old Kingdom Egypt wore a variety of rings, of which a few examples have been found, including the famous scarab design. Rings became more common during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, containing increasingly complex designs. Egyptians made not only metal rings but rings from faience, some of which were used as new year gifts. Native styles were superseded by Greek and Roman fashions during the Ptolemaic dynasty.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: Archaic Greek rings were to some extent influenced by Egyptian rings, although they tended to be less substantial and were not generally used as working signet rings. As gold was not locally available, rings made in the eastern colonies tended to be made from silver and bronze, while Etruscans used gold.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: The classical period showed a shift away from bronze to a wider adoption of silver and gold. The most typical design of the period involved a lozenge bezel mounting an intaglio device. Over time, the bezel moved towards a more circular form.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: During the early and middle imperial era (first two centuries AD), a typical Roman ring consisted of a thick hoop that tapered directly into a slightly wider bezel. An engraved oval gem would be embedded within the bezel with the top of the gem only rising slightly above the surrounding ring material. Such rings are known as Henig II and III/Guiraud 2 in formal academic parlance or simply as Roman rings to modern jewellers. In general, Roman rings became more elaborate in the third and fourth centuries AD.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: During this period, it was fashionable for several rings to be worn on each hand and each finger. Rings during this period were mostly made from copper-based alloys, silver or gold. Gems became common after 1150, along with the belief that certain gems had the power to help or protect the wearer in various ways. Engraved rings were produced using


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: Lombardic script until around 1350, when it was replaced by Gothic script. Some of the inscriptions were devotional, others romantic in nature. For romantic inscriptions, French was the language of choice. An increasing use of contracts and other documents requiring formal seals meant that signet rings became more important from the 13th century onwards.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: Each finger had a symbolic association or meaning (most of which were lost in antiquity and varied with culture) for the placement of a ring, significant to observers.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: The fourth digit or ring finger of the left hand has become the customary place to wear betrothal, engagement and wedding rings in much of the world, though in certain countries the right hand finger is used. This custom was practically established as norm during World War II.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: The use of the fourth finger of the left hand (the 'ring finger') is associated with an old belief that the left hand's ring finger is connected by a vein directly to the heart: the "vena amoris", or vein of love. This idea was in vogue in the 16th and 17th century England, when Henry Swinburne referred to it in his book about marriage. It can be traced to ancient Rome, when Aulus Gellius cited Appianus as saying that the ancient Egyptians had found a fine nerve linking the fourth finger to the heart.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: A birthstone ring and/or "birthday" stone ring is customarily worn on the first finger of the right hand and indicates respectively the month and day of the week in and on which the bearer was born.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: Amulet rings, meaningful for various purposes from protection (pentacle rings) to augmenting personal attributes (wisdom, confidence, social status etc.), are worn on various fingers, often depending on the intent of the ring's design or attributes of the stone inset. Although it has been thought that amulet rings worn on specific fingers for specific purposes enhanced their powers, most people simply wear them on any finger on which they fit.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: Thumb rings were originally worn to protect the thumb from injuries caused by the launching of arrows and are a sign of an archer.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: While the ISO standard defines ring size in terms of the inner circumference (measured in millimeters), various countries still use traditional sizing systems. Sizing beads, which functionally reduce the ring size, are small metal beads added to the inner surface of a ring to hold it in place against the finger; they have the advantage of being easily added or removed.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: After several thousand years of ring manufacture, the total number of styles produced is vast. Even cataloging the rings of a single civilization, such as the Romans, presents a major challenge. As a result, the following list should be considered to be very limited.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: Wearing a ring can in some cases be a safety concern, when the ring is made of a material stronger than the hand, fully encircles the digit, and catches onto an immovable object. This can result in serious injury (degloving), amputation, or ring avulsion. Some recommend specifically not to use a ring while operating machinery or playing sports.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: If a ring catches on rotating machinery, or the ring of a falling person catches on a stationary object, the wearer may suffer injury. For these reasons, some workplaces require employees to remove their rings temporarily while performing certain tasks or when in certain areas of a workplace. Despite the ring's symbolic appeal as a solid band around the finger, modern jewelers are sometimes known to modify rings such that, at worst, they only tear the flesh of the wearer's finger in cases like those above-mentioned. Such "breakaway" modifications have not yet achieved popularity as standard designs.


title: Ring (jewellery)

text: If the area near a ring is injured, the ring is removed immediately, before the injury starts to swell. Pulling rings off forcefully may worsen the swelling. Relaxation, elevation, icing, lubrication, and rotating the ring as if unscrewing it may help. If these methods don't work, it may be possible to remove the ring by temporarily wrapping the finger with a slick string (something like dental floss), passing the inner end of the thread under the ring, and then unwrapping it, pushing the ring ahead of the unwrapping string. Failing that, a doctor may remove it by other methods.


title: Monica Puig

text: Monica Puig Marchán (born September 27, 1993) is a Puerto Rican former professional tennis player. She is the first Puerto Rican in history to win a gold medal at the Olympics while representing Puerto Rico, having done so in 2016 at the women's singles event. She is also a Central American and Caribbean champion and Pan American silver medalist.


title: Monica Puig

text: Having turned professional in 2010, Puig won two WTA singles titles and six ITF singles titles. On 26 September 2016, she reached her career-high singles ranking of world No. 27. On 25 May 2015, she peaked at No. 210 in the doubles rankings. She retired as a professional tennis player on 13 June 2022.


title: Monica Puig

text: At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Puig won the gold medal, the ninth overall medal at the Games for Puerto Rico. With the feat, she also became the first Latin American champion in the women's singles discipline and is the only unseeded female player to win the gold medal since the reintroduction of tennis in 1988. During her career, Puig has defeated top-ten players Sara Errani, Caroline Garcia, Angelique Kerber, Garbiñe Muguruza, Aryna Sabalenka, and Caroline Wozniacki.


title: Monica Puig

text: Monica Puig Marchán was born to a Cuban American father, José Puig, and a Puerto Rican mother, Astrid Marchán. Puig stated her paternal grandparents are Catalan.


title: Monica Puig

text: In 2008, she started the season with a surprise run to the final of the Costa Rica Bowl (Grade 3) as a qualifier losing in straight sets to Eugenie Bouchard. She continued her good form, winning two out of three tournaments. Puig continued good results in small Grade-3 and-4 tournaments. In her first Grade-1 tournament in Lexington, she defeated Charlotte Calhoun before going out to Lauren Embree. She continued to participate in bigger tournaments, though not with as much success as she had in the smaller ones.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig had her breakthrough season in 2009; she started doing much better in the bigger tournaments. She reached her first Grade-1 final in Casablanca, losing to Mai Grage of Denmark. She continued playing consistently, highlights of the latter months of the year included a semifinal appearance at a Grade-B1 tournament in Tulsa, losing to Bouchard in three sets. In her next tournament, she won the doubles title.


title: Monica Puig

text: In 2010, she continued her success at a higher level. Puig started the year reaching the final of the 32nd International Casablanca Junior Cup (Grade A), falling easily to Sachie Ishizu of Japan. She then reached another final a week later at the Coffee Bowl (Grade 1) losing to An-Sophie Mestach of Belgium in straights. Puig followed that up with a semifinal appearance at a Grade-1 tournament in Barranquilla. Consistent results followed, before a huge Grade-A title at the 27th Copa Gerdau, defeating Jessica Pegula in the final. After a semifinal appearance at another Grade-A calibre tournament, she fell in the quarterfinals of the French Open. After that, she failed to advance past the quarterfinals of any of her tournaments until the US Open, where she lost to Yulia Putintseva. Puig finished the season with a flourish, falling in the quarterfinals of Osaka (Grade A), the final of Mérida (Grade 1) and the semis of Key Biscayne (Grade A), both to Lauren Davis.


title: Monica Puig

text: In July, Puig won the gold medal in women's singles at the Central American and Caribbean Games. At the Youth Olympics in Singapore, she was the second seed in the singles event but lost in the first round to Zheng Saisai of China, in straight sets.


title: Monica Puig

text: In January, Puig won the Loy Yang Traralgon International defeating Yulia Putintseva of Russia. Puig was also in the juniors event of the Australian Open. She qualified for the final but lost to Belgian An-Sophie Mestach. On February 20, Puig won the singles title in Surprise, Arizona defeating Lenka Wienerová, in straight sets.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig received a wildcard into the qualifying draw of the Indian Wells Open. She defeated Anne Keothavong in the first round but was then knocked out by Sorana Cîrstea, in three sets.


title: Monica Puig

text: In the juniors event of the French Open, she also qualified for the final but lost to Tunisian Ons Jabeur.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig won the silver medal at the Pan American Games after defeating Christina McHale of the United States to advance to the gold medal round. She lost to Irina Falconi of the United States in the final.


title: Monica Puig

text: In January 2012, Puig entered the Auckland Open, ranked 213 in the world, and won the first and second round of qualifying matches, but lost in the last round to the No. 145 in the world, Karolína Plíšková. On 16 January, she entered the Australian Open qualifying draw ranked 209, and lost in the second round to Kirsten Flipkens. At the Andrézieux-Bouthéon $25k tournament, she won two qualifying matches but lost in the first round to Magda Linette of Poland.


title: Monica Puig

text: In the following month, Puig played on the qualifying draw of two WTA Tour events, in Bogotá and Monterrey, without being able to get past the first round of the main draw. She received a wildcard to play in the Indian Wells Masters qualifying draw, but, in the second round, lost to world No. 66, Eleni Daniilidou. Her breakthrough came when she reached the final of the Poza Rica $25k tournament unseeded. The last two matches prior to the final included wins against tournament seeds No. 4 and 1, although she lost to second seed Yaroslava Shvedova.


title: Monica Puig

text: The second breakthrough of 2012 occurred when she won the first $50k tournament of her career at Joué-lès-Tours, France. Puig opened the first round by eliminating the top-seed and world ranked 87, Alexandra Panova. In the semifinals, she defeated An-Sophie Mestach, the same opponent to whom she lost in the 2011 Australian Open junior final.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig began her season at the Brisbane International. After coming through qualifying, she reached the second round where she lost to fourth seed Angelique Kerber. At the Australian Open, Puig was defeated in the first round of qualifying by Wang Qiang.


title: Monica Puig

text: In Paris at the WTA indoor event, Puig lost in the final round of qualifying to Stefanie Vögele. Seeded eighth at the $100k Midland Classic, Puig reached the semifinal where she was defeated by top seed and eventual champion, Lauren Davis.


title: Monica Puig

text: In May, she played and won her first WTA final in Strasbourg, defeating Sílvia Soler Espinosa. This success took her to her highest WTA ranking 41st.


title: Monica Puig

text: In October 2014, Puig won first place at the WTA Rising Stars Invitational in Singapore. Puig defeated Zheng Saisai in two sets. At the end of the year, she was world No. 59.


title: Monica Puig

text: In this same year, she also won the gold medal at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Veracruz, Mexico representing Puerto Rico.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig started the season strongly in Sydney. As a qualifier, she went on to defeat Magdaléna Rybáriková, Anna Karolína Schmiedlová, Samantha Stosur, and Belinda Bencic before losing in her second WTA final to Svetlana Kuznetsova.


title: Monica Puig

text: At the Australian Open, she reached the third round, defeating Magda Linette and Kristýna Plíšková before losing to the fourth seed Agnieszka Radwańska.


title: Monica Puig

text: She repeated her Australian Open success to reach the third round at the French Open, defeating Olga Govortsova and Julia Görges, before losing to the 15th seed Madison Keys.


title: Monica Puig

text: In the Eastbourne International, Puig progressed as far as to the semifinals after beating Kristina Mladenovic. She progressed on Wimbledon and faced home player Johanna Konta in the first round, in which Puig lost in two sets.


title: Monica Puig

text: At the Rio Summer Olympics, Puig won the women's singles gold medal by defeating Polona Hercog, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Garbiñe Muguruza, Laura Siegemund, Petra Kvitová, and finally Angelique Kerber. Puig became the second unseeded player to win a medal at the Olympics after Alicia Molik had won bronze in Athens and the first athlete representing Puerto Rico to win a gold medal in any sport. In Puerto Rico's Olympic history, Puig is the ninth sportsperson and the first woman to win an Olympic medal. She is the first Latin American representative to win the gold medal in singles and the second to win a medal, after Gabriela Sabatini won silver at the 1988 Summer Olympics. In November, Puig was presented the award for Best Female Athlete in Rio 2016 presented by the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC).


title: Monica Puig

text: She was not originally seeded at the US Open, but after a withdrawal of Sloane Stephens, Puig became the 32nd seed. She lost in the first round to Zheng Saisai, and also in doubles with Mariana Duque-Mariño to Nicole Gibbs and Nao Hibino, and concluded the season with a career best year-end ranking of 32.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig was unable to replicate her success throughout 2017 and fell out of the top 50 in June. By losing in three sets to Mirjana Lučić-Baroni in the first round of the US Open, she concluded her 2017 season without advancing past the second round of any Grand Slam or Premier Mandatory tournament. However, she did end the season on a high note by reaching her fourth career WTA Tour final at the Luxembourg Open.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig started the season at the Auckland Open where she lost in the first round to second seed and eventual champion, Julia Görges. At the Sydney International, she was defeated in the final round of qualifying by Kristie Ahn. Puig beat Sam Stosur in the first round of the Australian Open; she lost in the second round to Kaia Kanepi.


title: Monica Puig

text: In February, Puig competed at the Mexican Open and was defeated in the second round by qualifier Rebecca Peterson. At the Indian Wells Open, she lost in round two to 21st seed Anastasija Sevastova. Puig had a great run at the Miami Open as she stunned second seed Caroline Wozniacki in the second round. However, she was defeated in the fourth round by American qualifier Danielle Collins. Seeded fifth at the Monterrey Open, Puig reached the quarterfinals where she lost to 2012 champion Tímea Babos.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig began her clay-court season in May at the Madrid Open. She was defeated in the second round by tenth seed, two-time champion, and eventual champion Petra Kvitová. Puig retired from her qualifying match in Rome at the Italian Open to Donna Vekić due to a right hip strain. As a result of that injury, she withdrew from the Internationaux de Strasbourg and the French Open.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig returned to action in July at the Wimbledon Championships where she lost in the first round to 13th seed and eventual semifinalist, Julia Görges.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig started her 2019 season at the Auckland Open where she lost in the second round to third seed Hsieh Su-wei. In Sydney, she was defeated in the final round of qualifying by Aliaksandra Sasnovich. However, due to Naomi Osaka withdrawing from the tournament, she entered the main draw as a lucky loser. She lost in the first round to Anett Kontaveit. Ranked 54 at the Australian Open, she was eliminated in the first round by Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.


title: Monica Puig

text: Playing for Puerto Rico in the Fed Cup tie against Colombia, Puig won her match over María Fernanda Herazo. Colombia ended up winning the tie over Puerto Rico 2–1. In Acapulco, she upset sixth seed Maria Sakkari in the first round. She then retired during her second-round match against Wang Yafan due to food poisoning. At the Indian Wells Open, she was beaten in the second round by 21st seed Anett Kontaveit. At the Miami Open, she lost in the first round to Chinese wildcard Wang Xiyu.


title: Monica Puig

text: She returned to the tour in August at the Cincinnati Open and lost in the first round of qualifying to American wildcard Katie Volynets. At the US Open, she was defeated in the first round by Margarita Gasparyan.


title: Monica Puig

text: Competing at the French Open, Puig lost her first-round match to 2012 finalist and qualifier, Sara Errani.


title: Monica Puig

text: She made a comeback after two years at the Madrid Open where she lost to Danielle Collins in the first round, in straight sets.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig retired in June 2022 due to the cumulative effects of repeated injuries she sustained throughout her career.


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig has had multiple coaches in her career, including Alain De Vos (2008–2014), Ricardo Sánchez (2014–2015), Juan Todero (2015–2018), Kamau Murray and Othmane Garma (2019), Philippe DeHaes, and Diego Veronelli. In August 2020, she announced the return of Juan Todero as her coach. At the end of 2021 she announced Dorian Descloix will be her new coach


title: Monica Puig

text: Puig has played one season of World TeamTennis making her debut in 2019 with the Vegas Rollers for their inaugural season. It had been announced that Puig wanted to return to the Vegas Rollers during the 2020 WTT season.


title: Interstate 4

text: Interstate 4 (I-4) is an Interstate Highway located entirely within the U.S. state of Florida, maintained by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). Spanning along a generally southwest–northeast axis, I-4 is entirely concurrent with State Road 400 (SR 400). In the west, I-4 begins at an interchange with I-275 in Tampa. I-4 intersects with several major expressways as it traverses Central Florida, including U.S. Route 41 (US 41) in Tampa; US 301 near Riverview; I-75 near Brandon; US 98 in Lakeland; US 27 in unincorporated Davenport; US 192 in Celebration; Florida's Turnpike in Orlando; and US 17 and US 92 in multiple junctions. In the east, I-4 ends at an interchange with I-95 in Daytona Beach, while SR 400 continues for roughly another and ends at an intersection with US 1 on the city line of Daytona Beach and South Daytona.


title: Interstate 4

text: Construction on I-4 began in 1958; the first segment opened in 1959, and the entire highway was completed in 1965. The "I-4 Ultimate" project oversaw the construction of variable-toll express lanes and numerous redevelopments through the stretch of highway extending from Kirkman Road (SR 435, exit 75) in Orlando to SR 434 (exit 94) in Longwood. The project broke ground in 2015, and the express lanes opened to traffic on February 26, 2022. Previously, the median of I-4 between Tampa and Orlando was the planned route of a now-cancelled high-speed rail line. From a political standpoint, the "I-4 corridor" is a strategic region given the large number of undecided voters in a large swing state.


title: Interstate 4

text: I-4 maintains a diagonal, northeast–southwest route for much of its length, although it is signed east–west. It roughly follows the original path of the Sanford-Tampa Railroad Line built by Henry Plant in 1884.


title: Interstate 4

text: The highway starts its eastward journey at an interchange with I-275—known as "Malfunction Junction"—near Downtown Tampa and is the starting point for mile markers and exit numbers (which are mileage-based). Just east of Malfunction Junction, I-4 passes along the north side of Tampa's Ybor City district, where a mile-long connector links to the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway (SR 618) and Port Tampa Bay. I-4 continues east past the Florida State Fairgrounds towards a turbine interchange (uncommon in the U.S.) with I-75.


title: Interstate 4

text: After passing near the eastern suburbs of Hillsborough County—including Brandon and Plant City—it enters Polk County, where I-4 crosses along the north side of Lakeland. The Polk Parkway (SR 570) forms a semi-loop through Lakeland's southern suburbs and returns to I-4 at the Florida Polytechnic University campus, near Polk City; it does not serve as a bypass route for I-4 traffic. Just after the western junction with the Polk Parkway, I-4 turns from an eastward to a northeastward heading. Between SR 33 (at exit 38) and US 27, I-4 passes through the fog-prone Green Swamp, although the landscape beside the highway is mostly forest as opposed to water-logged swampland. Ten variable-message signs and dozens of cameras & vehicle detection systems monitor this stretch of mostly-rural highway as a result of several large, deadly pile-ups caused by dense fog.


title: Interstate 4

text: At mile 57, I-4 enters Osceola County and, soon thereafter, intersects the Orlando area's beltways: the incomplete Western Expressway (SR 429) on the western side and the Central Florida GreeneWay (SR 417) which rounds the eastern side before returning to I-4 in Sanford. Additionally, an exit to World Drive (signed as just "Disney World") runs north as a limited-access highway into the Walt Disney World Resort and an electric pylon in the shape of Mickey Mouse can be seen on the southwest corner of the intersection. The single GreeneWay/World Drive exit (exit 62) also marks an abrupt change from rural to suburban/urban landscape. The highway passes beside Celebration and Kissimmee on the east side and Walt Disney World Resort (not visible) on the west side.


title: Interstate 4

text: For the next , I-4 passes through the Orlando metropolitan area, where the highway forms the main north–south artery. It enters Orange County, passes through Walt Disney World Resort, and by SeaWorld Orlando & Universal Orlando—and intersects all of the area's major toll roads, including the Beachline Expressway (SR 528), Florida's Turnpike, and the East-West Expressway (SR 408). Orlando's main tourist strip—International Drive—runs parallel and no more than from I-4 between Kissimmee and Florida's Turnpike. Between Michigan St. and Kaley Ave. (about mile 81), I-4 turns due north (while still being signed east–west), heading past Downtown Orlando and its northern suburbs. A section of I-4 from west of SR 435 to east of SR 434 (miles 75–96) underwent a $2.3 billion reconstruction, and was completed on February 26, 2022. This project replaced most bridges, changed the configurations of many intersections, and adds two express toll lanes—named "I-4 Express"—in each direction (details in the I-4 Ultimate section).


title: Interstate 4

text: After passing along the west side of Downtown Orlando, I-4 continues through the city's northern suburbs—including Winter Park, Maitland, Altamonte Springs, and Sanford. Around mile 91, I-4 enters Seminole County and, soon thereafter, shifts to a northeast heading. The Seminole Expressway (SR 417), after passing around the east side of the Orlando metropolitan area, has its northern terminus (exit 101B) at I-4 in Sanford. This intersection will also connect with the Wekiva Parkway (SR 429), currently under construction, when it is completed in mid-2023, at which point a full beltway (SR 429 & SR 417; concurrent with I-4 for ) around the Orlando metro area will be available. On October 21, 2022, the first part of this connection opened to traffic, with the westbound I-4 to southbound SR 429 ramp opening to traffic, along with the section of the southbound lanes between the ramp and SR 46.


title: Interstate 4

text: North of Sanford, I-4 is carried by the St. Johns River Veterans Memorial Bridge over the St. Johns River at the mouth of Lake Monroe. Along the bridge, I-4 enters Volusia County and passes Deltona & DeLand. The segment north of SR 44 has been widened from four to six lanes. Completed in winter 2016–17, the entire length of I-4 has at least 6 lanes (3+ per direction). I-4 terminates at a junction with I-95 in Daytona Beach. SR 400 continues east into Daytona Beach to US 1.


title: Interstate 4

text: I-4 has two pairs of rest areas, one near Polk City and the other near Longwood. At each location, there are separate facilities on opposite sides of the freeway that provide services to traffic in both directions. The rest areas all provide handicapped facilities with restrooms, picnic tables, drinking water, pet exercise areas, outside night lights, telephones, vending machines, and nighttime security.


title: Interstate 4

text: FDOT closed a pair of rest areas at the Daryl Carter Parkway overpass (mile 70) near Lake Buena Vista in early 1999 and replaced them with retention ponds to serve runoff from an additional lane in each direction of I-4. Another former rest area, without any bathrooms, existed on the eastbound side near mile 127 in Volusia County.


title: Interstate 4

text: A pair of weigh stations including weigh in motion scales is present at mile 12 between Tampa and Plant City. They were opened in January 2009 to replace a pair just west of the SR 566 interchange at mile 19.


title: Interstate 4

text: I-4 was one of the first Interstate Highways to be constructed in Florida, with the first section opening between Plant City and Lakeland in 1959. By early 1960, the Howard Frankland Bridge was opened to traffic, as well as the segment from the Hillsborough Avenue/US 301 junction in Tampa to Plant City. The stretch from Lake Monroe to Lake Helen, including the original St. Johns River Bridge also opened during that period. The segment from Tampa to Orlando was complete by 1962. By the mid-1960s, several segments were already complete, including Malfunction Junction in Tampa and parts of I-4 through Orlando. The original western terminus was set at Central Avenue (County Road 150/CR 150) in St. Petersburg, though a non-Interstate extension would have continued south and west to Pasadena. Proposed I-4 was later extended southwest to the present location of I-275 exit 20, with a planned temporary end at US 19 and 13th Avenue South, and a continuation to the Sunshine Skyway was also designated as part of I-4. Construction was stalled at 9th Street North (CR 803) for several years.


title: Interstate 4

text: The entire Interstate Highway was completed by the late 1960s; however, the western terminus was truncated to Malfunction Junction in 1971 when I-75 was extended over the Frankland Bridge. Eventually, that stretch was again redesignated to become part of I-275.


title: Interstate 4

text: In maps and atlases dating to the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the Tampa–St. Petersburg section of I-4/I-275 was marked as the Tampa Expressway. The Orlando segment was marked as the Orlando Expressway. Both names have since faded from maps.


title: Interstate 4

text: Although many post-1970 interchanges along I-4 were constructed before the recent widening projects, they were designed with I-4 expansion in mind. In other words, there is enough room available to widen I-4 to up to ten lanes without extensively modifying the interchanges. Some of these interchanges include the I-75 stack (constructed in the 1980s) and several interchanges serving the Walt Disney World Resort (constructed in the late 1980s and early 1990s).


title: Interstate 4

text: In 2002, I-4, along with most of Florida's interstates, switched over from a sequential exit numbering system to a mileage-based exit numbering system.


title: Interstate 4

text: A section of I-4 between Daytona Beach and Orlando, called the "dead zone", is rumored to be haunted. In 2010, the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council (ECFRPC), using GIS technology, performed an analysis to determine if this identified zone had an increased fatality rate related to crashes. The analysis, which compared this section of I-4 to several other dangerous I-4 sections, found that, while the dead zone area did not have the highest accident or fatality rate, it did identify that the percentage of fatality to accident was significantly higher in this location. Multiple hurricanes, including three category 4 hurricanes (Donna, Charley, and Ian) have also passed over that area.


title: Interstate 4

text: The median of I-4 between Tampa and Orlando was slated to be used for the Florida High Speed Rail line between those cities. As a result of a state constitutional amendment to build a high speed rail system between its five largest cities passed by voters in 2000, construction projects on I-4 included a wide median to accommodate a high speed rail line. The high speed rail project was cancelled in 2004, but revived again in 2009. In 2010, the federal government awarded Florida over $2 billion—nearly the entire projected construction cost—to build the line, with work on the project to begin in 2011 and be completed by 2014. However, Governor Rick Scott's rejection of the funding ended the project.


title: Interstate 4

text: On January 9, 2008, 70 vehicles were involved in a large pileup on I-4 near Polk City. The pileup was caused by an unexpected thick morning fog that was mixed with a scheduled—and approved—environmental burn by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The fog drifted across I-4, mixing with the smoke, reducing visibility to near-zero conditions. Four people were killed and 38 were injured. The section of I-4 did not re-open until the next day, January 10.


title: Interstate 4

text: The I-4/I-275 interchange (Malfunction Junction) was rebuilt from 2002 to 2007, and I-4 has been widened from four to six lanes (with eight lanes in certain segments).


title: Interstate 4

text: Eastbound I-4 shifted to its new, permanent alignment between Malfunction Junction and 50th Street on August 8, 2006. The new alignment includes a right-lane ramp exit/entry at the 22nd Street/21st Street Interchange (The previous left-lane configuration was causing hazardous conditions to commuters since its opening in 2005). On August 11, 2006, a fourth lane opened on eastbound I-4 between the downtown junction and 50th Street (led in by a newly opened third lane on the eastbound I-4 ramp from northbound I-275). And, on August 18, the new westbound alignment, just west of 50th Street, opened. The newly opened lanes will improve flow throughout the interchange. The 50th Street overpass, however, would not be complete until late 2007. Also, the eastbound I-4 exit ramp to Columbus Drive/50th Street is situated to the left-hand side of the highway (as opposed to its former right-hand side exit). This exit shift went into effect in spring 2006 and is part of the new, permanent interstate configuration.


title: Interstate 4

text: In Tampa, the exit to 40th Street (SR 569), exit 2, was closed and demolished in late 2005 due to the ongoing reconstruction of I-4 and to accommodate a proposed connector highway with the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway.


title: Interstate 4

text: As Orlando grew in the 1970s and 1980s, traffic became a growing concern, especially after the construction of the original interchange with the East–West Expressway in 1973, which proved to become a principal bottleneck. The term "highway hostages" was coined in the 1980s to describe people stuck in long commutes to and from Orlando on I-4.


title: Interstate 4

text: In the early-to-mid 1990s, several interchanges near Kissimmee were constructed or upgraded to accommodate increasing traffic going to and from Walt Disney World Resort. However, I-4's main lanes were not widened in the process. Around the same time, SR 417 was extended to I-4. Improvements to the US 192 junction were completed in 2007.


title: Interstate 4

text: The St. Johns River Veterans Memorial Bridge, a two-span, six-lane replacement to the original four-lane bridge over the St. Johns River northeast of Orlando, was completed in 2004.


title: Interstate 4

text: During the early 2000s, tolled express lanes were being planned in the Orlando area as a traffic congestion relief technique for rush hour commuters. The name for them was to be Xpress 400, numbered after the state road designation for I-4. The express lanes were slated to extend from Universal Orlando, east to SR 434 in Longwood, and tolls were to be collected electronically via transponders like SunPass and Central Florida Expressway Authority's E-Pass, with prices dependent on the congestion of the eight main lanes. However, the project was effectively banned by the passage of the Federal transportation bill in 2005, introduced by U.S. Representative John Mica. The plan for tolled express lanes is now moving forward as part of the $2.3 billion I-4 Ultimate project (see ).


title: Interstate 4

text: Interim improvements to the interchange at SR 408 were completed at the end of 2008. The eastbound exit to Robinson Street (SR 526) permanently closed on April 25, 2006, to make way for construction of the new eastbound onramp from SR 408. The westbound offramp to Gore Street was permanently closed in the same project on November 2, 2008.


title: Interstate 4

text: The final four-lane segment of I-4, from SR 44 to I-95, was widened to six lanes. Completed in winter 2016–17, the whole highway is at least six lanes wide.


title: Interstate 4

text: A $2.3 billion (in year-of-expenditure dollars) project—dubbed I-4 Ultimate—is reconstructing a stretch of I-4 through Orlando from SR 435 (exit 75) east to SR 434 (exit 94). The most noticeable change is the addition of four variable-toll express lanes along this section, called I-4 Express. The toll rates maintain an average speed of . Additionally, the general-use lanes were rebuilt, 15 major interchanges were reconfigured, 53 new bridges were added, and 75 bridges were replaced. A pedestrian bridge was built over the highway near Maitland Boulevard, with a second pedestrian bridge being built over SR 435 at the intersection with both Major Boulevard and Tom Williams Way. A pedestrian tunnel was constructed under SR 436. The project also reduced the curve radius and improved line-of-sight along the notorious Fairbanks Curve south of Fairbanks Avenue, which is the most accident-prone section of I-4.


title: Interstate 4

text: FDOT proposed adding barrier-separated HOV lanes to I-4 through the Orlando metro area in the 1990s, possibly funded by tolls, but proposals for express lanes (including reversible toll lanes and HOT lanes) were blocked by politics for the next 15 years. In 2012, a legislative ban on tolls along I-4, which had been in place for seven years, ended, and FDOT began soliciting private enterprises to build and help finance the project in a public-private partnership. In February 2013, the state legislature and governor gave approval for FDOT to proceed with the public-private partnership on this section of I-4 in February 2013, and, the following year, FDOT selected I-4 Mobility Partners to design, construct, finance, maintain, and operate the project for 40 years. FDOT and I-4 Mobility Partners reached commercial and financial close, and a public-private partnership concession agreement was executed in September 2014. The final design phase began in October 2014. On February 1, 2015, FDOT turned the project over to I-4 Mobility Partners, and, on February 18, transportation officials and the governor held a groundbreaking ceremony for the project in Maitland. After seven years of construction, the express lanes opened to traffic the morning of February 26, 2022, and began tolling on March 3, 2022.


title: Interstate 4

text: I-4 Beyond the Ultimate, which includes proposed extensions of the I-4 Express toll lanes, both southwest and northeast of the I-4 Ultimate project, are being considered. In 2013, FDOT initiated a study to reevaluate previous feasibility studies, made between 1998 and 2005, in which the addition of HOV or express toll lanes were considered. The extensions cover approximately of I-4 through the Orlando metro area. Southwest of the I-4 Ultimate, the study is examining an extension through Osceola County to US 27 in Polk County. Northeast of the I-4 Ultimate, the study is examining an extension through Seminole County to SR 472 in Volusia County.


title: Interstate 4

text: In addition to these express lane extensions, many interchanges will be reconstructed as part of the project. Some of these reconstructed interchanges will be converted to diverging diamonds, which are proposed at both CR 532 (exit 58; implemented on July 10, 2022) and SR 482 (exit 74A). A brand new interchange at Daryl Carter Parkway is also proposed to be a diverging diamond.


title: Interstate 4

text: Unlike I-4 Ultimate, where the encompassed by that project were construed at once, the encompassed by I-4 Beyond the Ultimate will be constructed in phases.


title: Interstate 4

text: Express toll lanes are also being considered for I-4 in the Tampa Bay area. In January 2015, FDOT unveiled its master plan for a system of express toll lanes—dubbed "Tampa Bay Express" (TBX)—on I-4, I-75, and I-275 and began public meetings for community input. On I-4, these lanes would extend approximately from I-275 to west of the Polk Parkway (SR 570). At the junction with I-275, the initial concept alignment calls for a direct connection between the express toll lanes of both highways. Express bus lanes for regional, long-distance bus service were studied for inclusion in the plan. The I-4 corridor was considered in the bus lane study, but the resultant proposal only included installation on I-275 and I-75


title: Interstate 4

text: Connections with two new expressways are planned. The Wekiva Parkway—a segment of SR 429—will connect to SR 417 at the I-4 interchange in Sanford. When completed in 2023, it will complete the beltway around Orlando, although the southern ends of SR 429 and SR 417 do not connect and are separated by a drive along I-4. On October 21, 2022, the first part of this connection opened to traffic, with the westbound I-4 to southbound SR 429 ramp opening to traffic, along with the section of the southbound lanes between the ramp and SR 46. The Central Polk Parkway is a planned tolled expressway in eastern Polk County that will connect I-4 near Davenport with the Polk Parkway near Bartow; it is currently in the design phase, but funding for right-of-way acquisition of the initial segments is not planned until fiscal year 2019/20. Additionally, FDOT is conducting a feasibility study for a connection between I-4 and the Poinciana Parkway—a short, tolled expressway completed in 2016 between US 17/US 92 and the community of Poinciana.


title: Interstate 4

text: In 2014, FDOT began a study of the feasibility of extending the SunRail commuter train line to Daytona Beach, primarily focusing on the use of the I-4 median. The ongoing widening project from SR 44 to I-95 maintains a median wide enough to accommodate a future rail line.


title: Interstate 4

text: State Road 400 (SR 400) is an unsigned highway while running concurrently with I-4 from their shared western terminus at I-275 in Tampa through the last eastbound exit before the eastern terminus of I-4, at I-95 in Daytona Beach. SR 400 is named Beville Road beyond I-95 and continues for another to its own eastern terminus at an intersection with US 1 on the city line between Daytona Beach and South Daytona. Sections of the non-concurrent SR 400 are classified as a "scenic thoroughfare" within Daytona Beach.


title: Interstate 4

text: In the 2004 U.S. presidential election, the I-4 corridor, a commonly used term to refer to the counties in which I-4 runs through and a site of significant population growth, was a focus of political activity within the swing state of Florida. Communities along the I-4 corridor were perceived by both major political parties as having higher proportions of undecided voters as compared to more Republican- or Democratic-leaning portions of the state. It played an equally key role in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, but whereas the corridor had voted heavily for George W. Bush in 2004, which helped Bush win the state, in 2008, it swung behind Democratic candidate Barack Obama, helping Obama win Florida.


title: Interstate 4

text: Between 1996 and 2012, the I-4 corridor had voted for the statewide winner. However, in the 2016 and 2020 elections, Republican Donald Trump carried the state without winning the region. The Republicans carried the region three times while the Democrats carried the region five times in the past eight presidential elections. Republicans George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush won more votes than other candidates in 1992, 2000, and 2004, while Democrats Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden captured the region's vote total in the elections of 1996, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: Next is a 2006 satirical techno-thriller by American writer Michael Crichton. It was the fifteenth novel under his own name and his twenty-fifth overall, and the last to be published during his lifetime.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: A number of characters, including transgenic animals, try to survive in a world dominated by genetic research, corporate greed, and legal interventions.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: Frank Burnet has contracted an aggressive form of leukemia, and undergoes intensive treatment and four years of semiannual checkups. He later learned the checkups were a pretext for researching the genetic basis of his unusually successful response to treatment, and the physician's university had sold the rights to Frank's cells to BioGen, a biotechnology startup company. As the book opens Frank is suing the university for unauthorized misuse of his cells, but the trial judge rules that the cells were "waste" and that the university could dispose of them as it wished. Frank's lawyers advise that the university, as a tax-funded organization, can still claim the rights to the cells under the doctrine of eminent domain.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: Ruthless venture capitalist "Jack" Watson conspires to steal or sabotage BioGen's cultures of Frank's cells. As part of his terms for financing BioGen, Watson previously forced the company to accept his irresponsible nephew Brad Gordon as its security chief. After Brad's carelessness nearly allows one of Watson's sabotage attempts to succeed, the company takes advantage of Brad's attraction to teenage girls, and engineers his being accused and convicted of raping a minor. Watson's price for providing a defense lawyer is that Brad must contaminate BioGen's cultures. Brad's lawyer plans to claim in defense that Brad has a gene for recklessness and instructs him to engage in various high-risk activities. As a result, Brad gets into a fight with a pair of martial arts experts and is finally shot by the police.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: After Brad's sabotage, BioGen consults lawyers, who advise that under United States law they have the rights to all of Frank's cell line and thus the right to extract replacement cells, by force if necessary, from Frank or any of his descendants. When Frank goes on the run, BioGen hires bounty hunter Vasco Borden to obtain such cells, regardless of whether the donors consent. Vasco plans to snatch Frank's grandson Jamie from his school but is foiled by Jamie's mother Alex, whom he tries to seize instead. After escaping, Alex and Jamie also go on the run.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: Henry Kendall, a researcher at another biotech company, finds that his illegal introduction of human genes into a chimpanzee a few years ago while working at the NIH primate research facility unexpectedly produced a transgenic chimpanzee, who can talk and whose behavior is generally childlike but reverts to chimpanzee patterns under stress. The agency intends to destroy the chimp-boy, Dave, in order to cover up the unauthorized experiment, but Henry sneaks him out of the lab. Henry's wife Lynn strongly opposes bringing Dave into their home, but their son, also named Jamie, becomes close friends with him. Lynn becomes Dave's most determined defender and, to explain Dave's odd appearance, publishes online reports of a fictitious genetic disease. She grooms him as a senior female would groom a very young chimpanzee in the wild. Dave is sent to the same school as Jamie and gets into trouble after biting the leader of a gang of bullies who attack Jamie. The chimp-boy becomes increasingly isolated at school; academically, he is backward in some areas such as writing, while in sports, his classmates regard him as unfair competition.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: Paris-based animal behavior researcher Gail Bond finds that her two-year-old grey parrot, Gerard, into which human genes were injected while he was a chick, has been helping her son produce near-perfect homework. While she is testing Gerard's abilities, the bird becomes bored and mimics the voices and other sounds of her husband having sex in their home with another woman. After a quarrel, Gail's husband, an investment banker, gives Gerard as a "money can't buy this" present to an influential and lecherous client. The client finds Gerard an embarrassment and passes him on to another owner, and so on. Eventually, Gerard ends up in the hands of Stan Milgram, who loses patience with Gerard's loquacity while delivering the parrot to yet another owner three days' drive away and leaves the bird by the roadside. Gerard flies out off in search of more pleasant surroundings.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: After a few more narrow escapes, Alex and Jamie head for the home of Lynn, who happens to be a childhood friend. Vasco anticipates this move and tries to snatch Jamie – but abducts Lynn's son Jamie instead. Dave saves Lynn's Jamie, biting off Vasco's ear and damaging the ambulance in which Vasco planned to extract the tissue samples. However, Vasco's associate snatches Alex's son while everyone is celebrating the rescue of Lynn's. While the hunt is going on, Biogen's lawyers apply for a warrant to arrest Alex, on the grounds that she had stolen the company's property, namely her and her son's cells. She has to go straight from the fight to the courtroom, where her lawyer outplays Biogen's, and the judge adjourns to check details of the relevant laws and precedents overnight. Alex and Henry discover that Alex's son is being moved to a private clinic where the tissue samples are to be taken. As they move in to retrieve him, Gerard, now a resident of the clinic's gardens, reminds Jamie to shout for his mother, who rescues him. Vasco gives up after Dave attacks him, and Alex threatens him with a shotgun. The next day the judge rules in Alex's favor and rejects the precedents as attempts to abolish normal human feelings by decree, a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids slavery. The ruling will likely hamper research in the long run, and prevent patients from selling their tissues rather than donating them for research.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: Gerard is welcomed into Lynn's home. After he mimics telephone dial tones Lynn contacts Gail, and he is reunited with her. Press commentators praise the household as a trend-setting inter-species transgenic family, and Henry is honored by some scientific organizations.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: The book also features news reports, many about the genetics of blondes and of Neanderthals. These two themes combine into reports that Neanderthals were the first blondes, were more intelligent than Cro-Magnon humans and interbred with Cro-Magnons out of pity, and that "cavemen preferred blondes". At one point three successive reports feature a scientist's press release that Neanderthals had a gene that made them both behaviorally conservative and ecologically conservationist, an environmentalist's interpretation of that press release that modern humans need to learn from the Neanderthals lest they too become extinct, and a business columnist's interpretation that over-caution caused the Neanderthals' extinction.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: The review aggregator web site Metacritic gives "Next" a score of 48%, meaning "mixed or average reviews". "USA Today" said Crichton was "in top form". "The Independent" said that ""Next" is middling Crichton, perhaps because it lacks the simple suspense situation around which most of his books are constructed." "The London Review of Books" called it "an unintentionally hilarious emulsion of bombast and bathos", "The Washington Post" described it as "part lecture, part satire and mostly freak show", and Dave Itzkoff in "The New York Times"′s Sunday Book Review called it "a barrage of truths, half-truths and untruths".


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: Award-winning science journalist Matt Ridley, writing in "The Wall Street Journal", often could not spot the boundary between fact and fiction in the scientific aspects, although he found the almost immediate effects of the "maturity" gene implausible. He also thought that Crichton's "uncanny prescience in choosing subjects where fact will soon catch up with his fiction" was on target again, as the early hype over biotechnology has subsided and recent advances offer credible benefits.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: In "The Sunday Times" Joby Williams called the book "more a satiric polemic than the thriller we have come to expect from Crichton", and notes that there is no central character and the story is told as a collection of distinct episodes. Ridley described the plot as "a collection of short horror stories from the biotechnology industry," and "The Independent"′s view was similar. "The Washington Post" and "The A.V. Club" concluded that Crichton tried to cram too much into the book and would have preferred a storyline that focussed on Dave the chimp-boy and Gerard the talkative parrot. "Entertainment Weekly" complained that it was hard to track over 30 named characters through intersecting sub-plots. However "USA Today"′s reviewer liked the story's brisk pace and thought the interleaved plot threads came together well at the end.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: The "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"'s Karen Carlin enjoyed the novel highly and said "You realize what he's fictionalizing could be happening now, not 'Next.' And that's what makes it all so terrifying."


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: Opinions about the characters ranged from "dislikable and indistinguishable" to "deliciously vivid". "The Onion A.V. Club" thought the characters were barely developed enough to support the dialog and plot, and Ridley commented that in real life "most biotech executives are stressed and insecure people with mortgages" rather than sybaritic super-villains. However reviewers liked Gerard and Dave.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: Some reviewers welcomed the injection of humor into the book, noting the parodies of stereotypes, and Ridley regarded much of the story as a farce. However others thought most of the humor was unintentional.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: "Next" placed fourth in "Publishers Weekly"s hardback fiction bestseller list for the year 2006, and in December 2007 it reached third place in "Publishers Weekly"s weekly paperback fiction bestseller list.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: In mid-December 2006 "Next" reached ninth place in a United Kingdom hardback fiction bestseller list.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: The biotechnology industry magazine "Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News" complained about the array of stereotyped corporate villains, and described Crichton's arguments against gene patents and commercial ownership of genes as "the usual suspects". Although it hoped poor reviews would reduce the book's impact, it noted that two Congressmen introduced a bill to ban future gene patents and abolish existing ones. Writers on technology-related law suggested "Next" and Crichton's opinion article in "The New York Times" may have been partly responsible for this bill. Public interest in gene patents had previously been declining, and gene-only patent applications were becoming less frequent as the industry realized how much work is needed to turn a gene into a salable product.


title: Next (Crichton novel)

text: Michael Crowley of "The New Republic" alleged that, in retaliation for his having written a negative review of Crichton's previous novel "State of Fear", Crichton named a character with a small penis who rapes a baby after him. From page 227: "Alex Burnet was in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers." Both the real and the fictional Crowley are Washington-based political columnists who had graduated from Yale.


title: Rick DiPietro

text: Richard W. DiPietro Jr. (born September 19, 1981) is an American former professional ice hockey goaltender and current co-host of ESPN 98.7 FM's "DiPietro and Rothenberg" with Dave Rothenberg. He is also an analyst on National Hockey League (NHL) telecasts on ESPN having started the 2021–22 season.


title: Rick DiPietro

text: On June 24, 2000, DiPietro became the second goaltender in history selected first overall in an NHL Entry Draft when he was chosen by the New York Islanders. In 2006, the team signed him to a groundbreaking 15-year, $67.5 million contract, but a string of injuries beginning in 2008, which limited him to 50 NHL appearances over the next five seasons, led to a contract buyout on July 2, 2013, with eight years remaining on his contract. DiPietro retired after being released by the Charlotte Checkers of the American Hockey League (AHL) on November 26, 2013, with whom he had signed a tryout contract on October 25. Multiple hockey writers consider him to be one of the biggest draft busts in NHL history. As a result of his contract buyout, the Islanders will continue to pay DiPietro $1.5 million annually until the end of the 2028–29 season.


title: Rick DiPietro

text: As a youth, DiPietro played in the 1994 Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament with a minor ice hockey team from Beverly, Massachusetts.