text: In several states that did not recognize same-sex marriages–notably Oklahoma, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas–National Guard officials initially refused to comply with Department of Defense directives to allow the same-sex spouses National Guard members in their states to enroll in federal benefit programs, instead requiring such members to travel to federal facilities to do so. Guard officials in Oklahoma enrolled some same-sex couples until September 5, 2013, when Governor Mary Fallin ordered an end to the practice. Defense Secretary Hagel on October 31 said he would insist on compliance.


title: Sexual orientation in the United States military

text: On November 6, Fallin announced that Oklahoma guard members could have benefits requests for same-sex spouses processed at federal facilities. On November 20, after DoD officials objected to that plan, Fallin ordered that all married couples would be required to have benefits requests processed at those facilities. On November 26, Texas agreed to conform with DoD policy stating that state workers would be considered federal workers while enrolling same-sex couples for benefits. Louisiana adopted a policy like that of Texas on December 3, as did Georgia, and Mississippi the same week. On December 12, Secretary of Defense Hagel announced that all state national guard units were in compliance, though three of them–Oklahoma, Florida and South Carolina–allowed all guard members to apply for ID cards and benefits only at federal facilities. Some other states chose to place their state employees on federal status for the sake of processing such applications.


text: The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 enacted in December 2013 repealed the ban on consensual sodomy found in Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.


text: The 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision in "Obergefell v. Hodges" legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, providing a means for same-sex military spouses to normalize immigration and benefits status.


text: In September 2021, on the 10th anniversary of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, President Joe Biden announced that the Veterans Administration would start providing benefits for servicemembers who received other-than-honorable discharges (before DADT was enacted and while it was in effect) because of their sexual orientation.


text: In 2014, the U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is providing healthcare services for approximately one million gay and lesbian veterans. With the repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, more gay and lesbian veterans will be seeking medical care. However, as noted by Sherman and her coauthors, there are many concerns regarding the healthcare needs of the gay and lesbian veterans, and many veterans do not feel that they have adequate and equitable healthcare services from the VHA. The researchers assert that veterans who are missing quality healthcare are less likely to maintain good health and positive well-being.


text: In their article, Sherman and her coauthors explain that in the past, most of the gay and lesbian veterans were uncomfortable in disclosing their sexual orientations or identities because they were afraid that this information could lead to their discharge from the military. With the repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, gays and lesbians are assured that their sexual orientations will not be used against them. Nonetheless, because of their previous experiences in the military, many gay and lesbian veterans are still worried that this information may jeopardize their future careers and prospects. Because of societal stereotypes and stigmas, they are also worried that they may be denied medical service, lose their benefits, or receive inferior services.


text: Sherman and her coauthors conducted a study on the communications between the gay and lesbian veterans with their VHA providers and the experiences regarding their healthcare services. Most of them report dissatisfaction with their medical treatment. Many veterans state that they do not receive the necessary support from VHA medical providers. Moreover, they claim that their healthcare providers are not receptive to their medical needs, and they have never been asked about their sexual orientation. Most of the veterans report that they do not feel at ease with their healthcare providers. The results of the study also show that some gay and lesbian veterans are disinclined to seek medical treatment from the VHA, and some of them are having trouble in finding equitable healthcare services. Based on the study, there are some inherent problems in the healthcare provisions for the gay and lesbian veterans.


text: Similarly, another 2011 report states that lesbians often decline routine medical tests. Gay men are not as likely to seek medical treatment when compared with heterosexual men. Hence, some medical conditions and disorders may not be treated in a timely manner.


text: However, Sherman and her co-authors point out that the missing patient-centered communication can affect the quality of medical treatment. Sexual orientation and identity can have implications for the physical and mental health of the patient.


text: According to the authors, since sexual identity and orientation is a contentious issue, many healthcare workers are not comfortable in approaching this topic. But if the physicians initiate the conversation, it is more likely that the veterans will provide this information. Based on their data, if the gay and lesbian veterans can divulge information about their personal medical history, values, and preferences, they may experience higher levels of patient satisfaction. It is also more likely for them to receive appropriate preventive care and diagnostic screenings for their unique health risks, such as sexually transmitted diseases. Moreover, comprehensive medical records can provide a multitude of information useful not only for medical treatments but also for evaluations, such as the fitness of the veterans for duty.


text: To alleviate the concerns from the gay and lesbian veterans about discrimination and to address healthcare disparities, in 2013, the VHA has introduced some policy changes. For instance, the VHA has established the Office of Health Equity to oversee the gay and lesbian healthcare needs and to reduce the inequities in their healthcare provisions.


text: These new developments mark a milestone in expanding the role of the government in improving healthcare provisions for the gay and lesbian veterans. The VHA is instituting policies that focus on individualized care. They require healthcare providers to care for gay and lesbian patients in the same respectful and sensitive manner as other patients. Another policy is to redefine the meaning of "family" and allow the gay and lesbian veterans to decide who is regarded as part of their family. As of 2014, there are many discrepancies regarding this information. The information found on medical records is often inaccurate and may not clearly indicate the choice of the veterans. The VHA has also launched educational and training programs so that healthcare providers will have a better understanding of the psychological and social distresses of the gay and lesbian veterans.


text: Since the gay and lesbian veterans are not asked to disclose information about their sexual orientation on medical forms, the healthcare providers are often unaware of this information when they consider medical treatment options. In response to these concerns, the Institute of Medicine suggested that patients disclose such information on medical records. The information will be confidential and only used to assess health. The VHA is striving to prevent this information from being shared with other organizations. Sharpe and Uchendu suggest the option of incorporating open-ended questions to encourage the veterans to supply additional written information.


text: Healthcare services for gay and lesbian veterans are not adequate. The main purpose of the first steps of the VHA is to create a cordial culture and a welcoming environment for the gay and lesbian veterans. Fostering a better relationship among the healthcare providers and the patients and encouraging the patients to provide more personal information can improve healthcare outcomes for the gay and lesbian veterans.


title: Bardhaman

text: Bardhaman (, ) is a city and a municipality in the state of West Bengal, India. It is the headquarters of Purba Bardhaman district, having become a district capital during the period of British rule. Burdwan, an alternative name for the city, has remained in use since then.


title: Bardhaman

text: The history of Burdwan is known from about 5000 BC (the Mesolithic or Late Stone Age). The origin of this name dates back to the sixth century BCE and is ascribed to Vardhamāna or Mahāvīra (599-527 BCE), the 24th Tīrthāṅkara of Jainism, who spent some time in Astikagrama, according to the Jain scripture of Kalpa Sūtra. This place was renamed as "Vardhamana" in his honour.


title: Bardhaman

text: During the period of Jahangir this place was named Badh-e-dewan (district capital). The city owes its historical importance to being the headquarters of the Maharajas of Burdwan, the premier noblemen of lower Bengal, whose rent-roll was upwards of 300,000. Bardhaman Raj was founded in 1657 by Sangam Rai, of a Hindu Khatri family of Kotli in Lahore, Punjab, whose descendants served in turn the Mughal Emperors and the British government. The East Indian Railway from Howrah was opened in 1855. The great prosperity of the raj was due to the excellent management of Maharaja Mahtab Chand (died 1879), whose loyalty to the government especially during the "Hul" (Santhal rebellion) of 1855-56 and the Indian rebellion of 1857 was rewarded with the grant of a coat of arms in 1868 and the right to a personal salute of 13 guns in 1877. Maharaja Bijaychand Mahtab (born 1881), who succeeded his adoptive father in 1888, earned great distinction by the courage with which he risked his life to save that of Sir Andrew Fraser, the lieutenant-governor of Bengal, on the occasion of the attempt to assassinate him made by freedom fighters of Bengal on 7 November 1908.


title: Bardhaman

text: Mahtab Chand Bahadur and later Bijoy Chand Mahtab struggled their best to make this region culturally, economically and ecologically healthier. The chief educational institution was the Burdwan Raj College, which was entirely supported out of the maharaja's estate. Sadhak Kamalakanta as composer of devotional songs and Kashiram Das as a poet and translator of the great Mahabharata were possibly the best products of such an endeavour. Pratap Chandra Roy was the publisher of the first translation in the world to translate Mahabharata in English (1883–1896). The society at large also continued to gain the fruits. We find, among others, the great rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam and Kala-azar-famed U. N. Brahmachari as the relatively recent illustrious sons of this soil. Batukeshwar Dutt an Indian revolutionary and independence fighter in the early 1900s was born on 18 November 1910 in a village Oari in Burdwan district. He is best known for having exploded a few bombs, along with Bhagat Singh, in the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi on 8 April 1929. The city became an important centre of North-Indian classical music as well.


title: Bardhaman

text: The region has an average elevation of 40 metres (131 ft). The city is situated 1100 km from New Delhi and a little less than 100 km north-west of Kolkata on the Grand Trunk Road (National Highway 19) and Eastern Railway. The chief rivers are the Damodar and the Banka.


title: Bardhaman

text: The first epigraphic reference to the name of this place occurs in a sixth-century AD copper plate found in Mallasarul village under Galsi Police Station. Archeological evidences suggest that this region, forming a major part of Radh Bengal, could be traced even back to 4000 BCE.


title: Bardhaman

text: Burdwan police station has jurisdiction over Bardhaman municipal area and Burdwan I and Burdwan II CD Blocks. The area covered is 192.15 km. There are out posts at Barabazar, Muradpur, Keshabganj, Nutanganj and Birhata.


title: Bardhaman

text: Women police station Burdwan has jurisdiction over Bardhaman municipal area and Burdwan I and Burdwan II CD Blocks. The area covered is 192.15 km.


title: Bardhaman

text: In the 2011 census, Bardhaman Urban Agglomeration had a population of 347,016, out of which 177,055 were males and 169,961 were females. 25,069 people were between the ages of 0–6 years. Effective literacy rate for the 7+ population was 88.62%.


title: Bardhaman

text: Burdwan has a multi-cultural heritage. The deuls (temples of rekha type) found here are reminiscent of Bengali Hindu architecture. The old temples bear signs of Hinduism, mostly belonging to the Sakta and Vaishnava followers.


title: Bardhaman

text: The Kankaleswari Kali is also located in the city of Burdwan. Burdwan experienced and survived numerous violent conflicts, mainly due to Mughal, Pashtun and Maratha invaders. The city of Bardhaman was visited by notables of the Delhi Sultanate from Raja Todarmal to Daud Karnani, from Sher Afghan and Kutub-ud-din to Ajimuswan to the future Mughal emperor Shah Jahan while he was still a rebel. Bardhaman also has a number of Bengali Christians, and although they are a minority, there are many churches in the city.


title: Bardhaman

text: The University of Burdwan was formally inaugurated on 15 June 1960 by Sukumar Sen, its first Vice-chancellor. It was after the abolition of the Zamindari system in the fifties that Uday Chand Mahtab, the last representative of the Burdwan Raj, left almost his entire property in Burdwan to the state government. This, coupled with the initiative of the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Bidhan Chandra Roy, facilitated the establishment of this university. Presently, the administrative works are mostly done at the Rajbati (the palace of Barddhamana Maharaja) campus; on the other hand, academic activities centre on the Golapbag campus. With social responsibilities in mind, the university actively patronised the construction of a science centre and the Meghnad Saha Planetarium.


title: Envelope

text: An envelope is a common packaging item, usually made of thin, flat material. It is designed to contain a flat object, such as a letter or card.


title: Envelope

text: Traditional envelopes are made from sheets of paper cut to one of three shapes: a rhombus, a short-arm cross or a kite. These shapes allow the envelope structure to be made by folding the sheet sides around a central rectangular area. In this manner, a rectangle-faced enclosure is formed with an arrangement of four flaps on the reverse side.


title: Envelope

text: A folding sequence such that the last flap closed is on a short side is referred to in commercial envelope manufacture as a pocket – a format frequently employed in the packaging of small quantities of seeds. Although in principle the flaps can be held in place by securing the topmost flap at a single point (for example with a wax seal), generally they are pasted or gummed together at the overlaps. They are most commonly used for enclosing and sending mail (letters) through a prepaid-postage postal system.


title: Envelope

text: Window envelopes have a hole cut in the front side that allows the paper within to be seen. They are generally arranged so that the receiving address printed on the letter is visible, saving duplication of the address on the envelope itself. The window is normally covered with a transparent or translucent film to protect the letter inside, as was first designed by Americus F. Callahan in 1901 and patented the following year. In some cases, shortages of materials or the need to economize resulted in envelopes that had no film covering the window. One innovative process, invented in Europe about 1905, involved using hot oil to saturate the area of the envelope where the address would appear. The treated area became sufficiently translucent for the address to be readable. there is no international standard for window envelopes, but some countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom, have national standards.


title: Envelope

text: An aerogram is related to a letter sheet, both being designed to have writing on the inside to minimize the weight. Any handmade envelope is effectively a letter sheet because prior to the folding stage it offers the opportunity for writing a message on that area of the sheet that after folding becomes the inside of the face of the envelope. For document security, the letter sheet can be sealed with wax. Another secure form of letter sheet is a locked letter, that is formed by cutting and folding the sheet in an elaborate way that prevents the letter from being opened without creating obvious damage to the letter/envelope.


title: Envelope

text: The "envelope" used to launch the Penny Post component of the British postal reforms of 1840 by Sir Rowland Hill and the invention of the postage stamp, was a lozenge-shaped lettersheet known as a Mulready. If desired, a separate letter could be enclosed with postage remaining at one penny provided the combined weight did not exceed half an ounce (14 grams). This was a legacy of the previous system of calculating postage, which partly depended on the number of sheets of paper used.


title: Envelope

text: During the U.S. Civil War those in the Confederate States Army occasionally used envelopes made from wallpaper, due to financial hardship.


title: Envelope

text: A "return envelope" is a pre-addressed, smaller envelope included as the contents of a larger envelope and can be used for courtesy reply mail, metered reply mail, or freepost (business reply mail). Some envelopes are designed to be reused as the return envelope, saving the expense of including a return envelope in the contents of the original envelope. The direct mail industry makes extensive use of return envelopes as a response mechanism.


title: Envelope

text: Up until 1840, all envelopes were handmade, each being individually cut to the appropriate shape out of an individual rectangular sheet. In that year George Wilson in the United Kingdom patented the method of tessellating (tiling) a number of envelope patterns across and down a large sheet, thereby reducing the overall amount of waste produced per envelope when they were cut out. In 1845 Edwin Hill and Warren de la Rue obtained a patent for a steam-driven machine that not only cut out the envelope shapes but creased and folded them as well. (Mechanised gumming had yet to be devised.) The convenience of the sheets ready cut to shape popularized the use of machine-made envelopes, and the economic significance of the factories that had produced handmade envelopes gradually diminished.


title: Envelope

text: As envelopes are made of paper, they are intrinsically amenable to embellishment with additional graphics and text over and above the necessary postal markings. This is a feature that the direct mail industry has long taken advantage of—and more recently the Mail Art movement. Custom printed envelopes has also become an increasingly popular marketing method for small business.


title: Envelope

text: International standard ISO 269 (withdrawn in 2009 without replacement) defined several standard envelope sizes, which are designed for use with ISO 216 standard paper sizes:


title: Envelope

text: The designations such as "A2" do not correspond to ISO paper sizes. Sometimes, North American paper jobbers and printers will insert a hyphen to distinguish from ISO sizes, thus: A-2.


title: Envelope

text: Japanese traditional rectangular ("kakukei") and long ("chōkei") envelopes open on the short side, while Western-style ("youkei") envelopes open on the long side.


title: Envelope

text: The first known envelope was nothing like the paper envelope of today. It can be dated back to around 3500 to 3200 BC in the ancient Middle East. Hollow clay spheres were molded around financial tokens and used in private transactions. The two people who discovered these first envelopes were Jacques de Morgan, in 1901, and Roland de Mecquenem, in 1907.


title: Envelope

text: Paper envelopes were developed in China, where paper was invented by 2nd century BC. Paper envelopes, known as "chih poh", were used to store gifts of money. In the Southern Song dynasty, the Chinese imperial court used paper envelopes to distribute monetary gifts to government officials.


title: Envelope

text: In Western history, from the time flexible writing material became more readily available in the 13th century until the mid-19th century, correspondence was typically secured by a process of letter folding and sealing which sometimes employed elaborate letterlocking techniques to indicate tampering or prove authenticity. Some of these techniques, which could involve stitching or wax seals, were also employed to secure hand-made envelopes.


title: Envelope

text: Prior to 1840, handmade envelopes were all that were available for use, both commercial and domestic. In 1840 George Wilson of London was granted a patent for an envelope-cutting machine (patent: "an improved paper-cutting machine"), but the envelopes still needed to be hand folded. There is a picture of the front and backside of an envelope stamped in 1841 here on this page. It seems to be machine cut. In 1845, Edwin Hill and Warren De La Rue were granted a British patent for the first envelope-folding machine.


title: Envelope

text: The "envelopes" produced by the Hill/De La Rue machine were not like those used today. They were flat diamond, lozenge (or rhombus)-shaped sheets or "blanks" that had been precut to shape before being fed to the machine for creasing and made ready for folding to form a rectangular enclosure. The edges of the overlapping flaps treated with a paste or adhesive and the method of securing the envelope or wrapper was a user choice. The symmetrical flap arrangement meant that it could be held together with a single wax seal at the apex of the topmost flap. (That the flaps of an envelope can be held together by applying a seal at a single point is a classic design feature of an envelope.)


title: Envelope

text: Nearly 50 years passed before a commercially successful machine for producing pre-gummed envelopes, like those in use today, appeared.


title: Envelope

text: The origin of the use of the diamond shape for envelopes is debated. However, as an alternative to simply wrapping a sheet of paper around a folded letter or an invitation and sealing the edges, it is a tidy and ostensibly paper-efficient way of producing a rectangular-faced envelope. Where the claim to be paper-efficient fails is a consequence of paper manufacturers normally making paper available in rectangular sheets, because the largest size of envelope that can be realised by cutting out a diamond or any other shape which yields an envelope with symmetrical flaps is smaller than the largest that can be made from that sheet simply by folding.


title: Envelope

text: The folded diamond-shaped sheet (or "blank") was in use at the beginning of the 19th century as a novelty wrapper for invitations and letters among the proportion of the population that had the time to sit and cut them out and were affluent enough not to bother about the waste offcuts. Their use first became widespread in the UK when the British government took monopoly control of postal services and tasked Rowland Hill with its introduction. The new service was launched in May 1840 with a postage-paid machine-printed illustrated (or pictorial) version of the wrapper and the much-celebrated first adhesive postage stamp, the Penny Black, for the production of which the Jacob Perkins printing process was used to deter counterfeiting and forgery. The wrappers were printed and sold as a sheet of 12, with cutting the purchaser's task. Known as Mulready stationery, because the illustration was created by the respected artist William Mulready, the envelopes were withdrawn when the illustration was ridiculed and lampooned. Nevertheless, the public apparently saw the convenience of the wrappers being available ready-shaped, and it must have been obvious that with the stamp available totally plain versions of the wrapper could be produced and postage prepaid by purchasing a stamp and affixing it to the wrapper once folded and secured. In this way although the postage-prepaid printed pictorial version died ignominiously, the diamond-shaped wrapper acquired de facto official status and became readily available to the public notwithstanding the time taken to cut them out and the waste generated. With the issuing of the stamps and the operation and control of the service (which is a communications medium) in government hands the British model spread around the world and the diamond-shaped wrapper went with it.


title: Envelope

text: Hill also installed his brother Edwin as The Controller of Stamps, and it was he with his partner Warren De La Rue who patented the machine for mass-producing the diamond-shaped sheets for conversion to envelopes in 1845. Today, envelope-making machine manufacture is a long- and well-established international industry, and blanks are produced with a short-arm-cross shape and a kite shape as well as diamond shape. (The short-arm-cross style is mostly encountered in "pocket" envelopes i.e. envelopes with the closing flap on a short side. The more common style, with the closing flap on a long side, are sometimes referred to as "standard" or "wallet" style for purposes of differentiation.)


title: Envelope

text: The most famous paper-making machine was the Fourdrinier machine. The process involves taking processed pulp stock and converting it to a continuous web which is gathered as a reel. Subsequently, the reel is guillotined edge to edge to create a large number of properly rectangular sheets because ever since the invention of Gutenberg's press paper has been closely associated with printing.


title: Envelope

text: To this day, all other mechanical printing and duplicating equipments devised in the meantime, including the typewriter (which was used up to the 1990s for addressing envelopes), have been primarily designed to process rectangular sheets. Hence the large sheets are in turn guillotined down to the sizes of rectangular sheet commonly used in the commercial printing industry, and nowadays to the sizes commonly used as feed-stock in office-grade computer printers, copiers and duplicators (mainly ISO, A4 and US Letter).


title: Envelope

text: Using any mechanical printing equipment to print on envelopes, which although rectangular, are in fact folded sheets with differing thicknesses across their surfaces, calls for skill and attention on the part of the operator. In commercial printing the task of printing on machine-made envelopes is referred to as "overprinting" and is usually confined to the front of the envelope. If printing is required on all four flaps as well as the front, the process is referred to as "printing on the flat". Eye-catching illustrated envelopes or pictorial envelopes, the origins of which as an artistic genre can be attributed to the Mulready stationery – and which was printed in this way – are used extensively for direct mail. In this respect, direct mail envelopes have a shared history with propaganda envelopes (or "covers") as they are called by philatelists.


title: Envelope

text: In 1998, the U.S. Postal Service became the first postal authority to approve a system of printing digital stamps. With this innovative alternative to an adhesive-backed postage stamp, businesses could more easily produce envelopes in-house, address them, and customize them with advertising information on the face.


title: Envelope

text: The fortunes of the commercial envelope manufacturing industry and the postal service go hand in hand, and both link to the printing industry and the mechanized envelope processing industry producing equipment such as franking and addressing machines. Technological developments affecting one ricochet through the others: addressing machines print addresses, postage stamps are a print product, franking machines imprint a frank on an envelope. If fewer envelopes are required; fewer stamps are required; fewer franking machines are required and fewer addressing machines are required. For example, the advent of information-based indicia (IBI) (commonly referred to as digitally-encoded electronic stamps or digital indicia) by the US Postal Service in 1998 caused widespread consternation in the franking machine industry, as their machines were rendered obsolete, and resulted in a flurry of lawsuits involving Pitney Bowes among others. The advent of e-mail in the late 1990s appeared to offer a substantial threat to the postal service. By 2008 letter-post service operators were reporting significantly smaller volumes of letter-post, specifically stamped envelopes, which they attributed mainly to e-mail. Although a corresponding reduction in the volume of envelopes required would have been expected, no such decrease was reported as widely as the reduction in letter-post volumes.


title: Envelope

text: A windowed envelope is an envelope with a plastic or glassine window in it. The plastic in these envelopes creates problems in paper recycling.


title: Envelope

text: Security envelopes have special tamper-resistant and tamper-evident features. They are used for high value products and documents as well as for evidence for legal proceedings.


title: Envelope

text: Some security envelopes have a patterned tint printed on the inside, which makes it difficult to read the contents. Various patterns exist.


title: Envelope

text: Some envelopes are available for full-size documents or for other items. Some carriers have large mailing envelopes for their express services. Other similar envelopes are available at stationery supply locations.


title: Envelope

text: These mailers usually have an opening on an end with a flap that can be attached by gummed adhesive, integral pressure-sensitive adhesive, adhesive tape, or security tape.


title: Envelope

text: Shipping envelopes can have padding to provide stiffness and some degree of cushioning. The padding can be ground newsprint, plastic foam sheets, or bubble packing.


title: Envelope

text: Various U.S. Federal Government offices use Standard Form (SF) 65 Government Messenger Envelopes for inter-office mail delivery. These envelopes are typically light brown in color and un-sealed with string-tied closure method and an array of holes throughout both sides such that it is somewhat visible what the envelope contains. Other colloquial names for this envelope include "Holey Joe" and "Shotgun" envelope due to the holey nature of the envelope. Address method is unique in that these envelopes are re-usable and the previous address is crossed out thoroughly and the new addressee (name, building, room, and mailstop) is written in the next available box. Although still in use, SF-65 is no longer listed on the United States Office of Personnel Management website list of standard forms.


title: Sylvana Tomaselli

text: Sylvana Palma Windsor, Countess of Saint Andrews ("née" Tomaselli, previously Jones; born 28 May 1957) is a Canadian-born academic and historian. By virtue of marriage she is a member of the House of Windsor and is related to the British royal family as the wife of George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews, elder son of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent. A historian and lecturer at the University of Cambridge, she is usually known professionally as Dr. Sylvana Tomaselli.


title: Sylvana Tomaselli

text: Tomaselli was born on 28 May 1957 at Placentia, Newfoundland, daughter of Maximilian Karl Tomaselli (formerly of Salzburg) by his wife Josiane "née" Preschez. Sylvana belongs to the Tomaselli family, an old and noble family that has risen to prominent positions in both Italy and Austria; she belongs to the Austrian branch of this family. She was educated in Canada and England.


title: Sylvana Tomaselli

text: She married firstly, on 25 December 1977 at Vancouver, John Paul Jones, son of Captain Geoffrey Jones of Barbados, but they divorced in 1981 without children.


title: Sylvana Tomaselli

text: She married secondly, on 9 January 1988 at Leith in Scotland, George, Earl of St Andrews, and they have three children:


title: Sylvana Tomaselli

text: Lady St Andrews' Catholicism no longer precludes her husband's succession the throne. Two of her children, Edward (2003) and Marina (2008), were received into the Roman Catholic Church, thereby surrendering their places in the line of succession to the thrones of the Commonwealth realms, although Lord and Lady St Andrews' younger daughter, Amelia, is still in remainder to the British Crown.


title: Sylvana Tomaselli

text: Tomaselli, who has received BA (UBC), MA (York, Ontario) and MA (Cantab) degrees, became a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge in 2004. She specialises in French and British political theory in the 18th century, especially the history of womanhood, and has written about John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. She is the translator of Book II of the Seminar of Jacques Lacan, "The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis". She teaches the three History of Political Theory Papers and is an affiliated Lecturer of the Faculties of History as well as of Social and Political Sciences.


title: Sylvana Tomaselli

text: She is a founding member of the European Centre for the Philosophy of Gender, Siegen, Germany, and is currently Director of Studies in History and Social & Political Sciences at St John's College in the University of Cambridge, and a tutor for postgraduates.


title: Trevor Fehrman

text: Trevor Gregory Fehrman (born July 14, 1981) is an American actor and writer best known for his portrayal of Elias in the 2006 comedy film, "Clerks II".


title: Trevor Fehrman

text: Trevor is most widely known for his role in the film "Clerks II" in which he plays Elias Grover, Dante and Randal's new co-worker at the Mooby's fast food chain. Fehrman also appeared in "Now You Know", which was written, directed and also featured Clerks II co-star Jeff Anderson. Kevin Smith brought Fehrman back to reprise his role in "Clerks III". He also played Handsome Davis, a teen student who cheats his way through high school in "Cheats".


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: Ivan Ricardo Neves Abreu Cavaleiro (born 18 October 1993) is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays for Süper Lig club Alanyaspor on loan from club Fulham. Mainly a winger, he can also play as a forward.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: A product of Benfica's youth system, he was part of the club's domestic treble in the 2013–14 season. After one-year spells with Deportivo La Coruña (Spain) and Monaco he went on to spend most of his career in England with Wolverhampton Wanderers and Fulham, signing with the former in 2016.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: Cavaleiro earned 63 caps for Portugal at youth level all categories comprised, scoring 13 goals. He made his senior international debut in 2014.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: Born in Vila Franca de Xira, Lisbon District, Cavaleiro played youth football for five clubs, notably representing S.L. Benfica from ages 13–18, a loan spell notwithstanding. He made his senior debut in the 2012–13 season, playing his first Segunda Liga match with the reserves on 11 August 2012 against S.C. Braga B. The following weekend he scored his first goal(s) as a professional, grabbing a brace in a 4–2 away win over C.D. Feirense, and added another two before the end of the month in a 6–0 home rout of C.F. Os Belenenses; he finished his first year with 38 appearances and 12 goals, helping his team to the seventh position.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: Cavaleiro started his second season with Benfica B in fashion, netting seven times in ten matches and earning the "Second Division Player of the Month" award for August/September. He made his official debut for the main squad on 19 October 2013, playing the full 90 minutes against CD Cinfães in the third round in the Taça de Portugal and assisting Ola John for the game's only goal. He appeared in his maiden match in the UEFA Champions League four days later, playing the second half of a 1–1 home draw with Olympiacos F.C. in the group stage.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: On 15 January 2014, Cavaleiro scored his first competitive goal for Benfica, the last in a 2–0 win against Leixões S.C. in the campaign's Taça da Liga. On 7 August, he was loaned to Deportivo de La Coruña of the Spanish La Liga for one year, making his debut on the first matchday and opening the scoring in a 2–1 defeat at Granada CF.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: On 10 July 2015, Cavaleiro joined AS Monaco FC on a permanent deal until 2020, for a transfer fee rumoured to be €15 million. He made his debut on the 28th, starting in a 3–1 away win over BSC Young Boys in the third qualifying round of the Champions League, and scored his first goal in the second leg, opening a 4–0 victory at the Stade Louis II.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: On 31 August 2016, Cavaleiro moved to English Championship side Wolverhampton Wanderers on a five-year deal (with the option of an additional year) for an undisclosed fee, reported to be a new club-record sum of £7 million. He made his debut on 10 September in a 1–1 home draw to Burton Albion, and scored his first goal for the club 14 days later in a 3–1 win against Brentford also at Molineux Stadium.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: Cavaleiro was voted the Professional Footballers' Association Fans' Championship Player of the Month for November 2017, after netting four times in as many games. The previous month, he had provided five assists to keep his team clear at the top of the table; he finished the season with nine goals from 42 appearances, adding 12 decisive passes and achieving promotion to the Premier League as champion.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: Cavaleiro's first match in the English top division occurred on 29 September 2018, and he scored once in the 2–0 home victory over Southampton with his very first touch of the ball after coming on as a substitute in place of compatriot Diogo Jota.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: Cavaleiro signed for Fulham on 13 July 2019 on a season-long loan, with the option to make the move permanent afterwards. On 21 August, he put on a player of the match performance in the 4–0 home win against Millwall, scoring twice and providing one assist.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: On 7 January 2020, Cavaleiro agreed to a permanent four-and-a-half-year contract. In the 2021–22 campaign, as the club returned to the top tier as champions, he dealt with several injury problems.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: Cavaleiro was named in the Portugal under-19 squad at the 2012 UEFA European Championship, playing the last match of the group stage against Greece. A year later, he represented the under-20 team at the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup; he appeared in four games as a substitute in Turkey, in an eventual round-of-16 exit.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: Cavaleiro made his debut for the under-21s on 14 August 2013, netting a hat-trick in a 5–2 friendly win against Switzerland. On 27 June 2015, he scored Portugal's third goal in a 5–0 rout of Germany in the semi-finals of the European Championship in Czech Republic; he was named in the Team of the Tournament, in an eventual runner-up finish.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: On 28 February 2014, Cavaleiro received his first callup to the Portugal senior side, for a friendly with Cameroon on 5 March. He started and played 70 minutes in the 5–1 victory in Leiria.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: Cavaleiro was selected by Angola manager Pedro Gonçalves for 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers against Egypt and Libya on 2 and 7 September 2021, respectively. He was not included in the final squad, however.


title: Ivan Cavaleiro

text: Cavaleiro's father, Lindo, was crowned Angolan youth champion for Atlético Petróleos de Luanda, whilst his uncle Monhé excelled as a midfielder for Progresso Associação do Sambizanga.


title: Asepsis

text: Asepsis is the state of being free from disease-causing micro-organisms (such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses, pathogenic fungi, and parasites). There are two categories of asepsis: medical and surgical. The modern day notion of asepsis is derived from the older antiseptic techniques, a shift initiated by different individuals in the 19th century who introduced practices such as the sterilizing of surgical tools and the wearing of surgical gloves during operations. The goal of asepsis is to eliminate infection, not to achieve sterility. Ideally, a surgical field is sterile, meaning it is free of all biological contaminants (e.g. fungi, bacteria, viruses), not just those that can cause disease, putrefaction, or fermentation. Even in an aseptic state, a condition of sterile inflammation may develop. The term often refers to those practices used to promote or induce asepsis in an operative field of surgery or medicine to prevent infection.


title: Asepsis

text: The modern concept of asepsis evolved in the 19th century through multiple individuals. Ignaz Semmelweis showed that hand washing prior to delivery reduced puerperal fever. Despite this, many hospitals continued to practice surgery in unsanitary conditions, with some surgeons taking pride in their bloodstained operating gowns. It was not until after reading of the findings by Louis Pasteur that Joseph Lister introduced the use of carbolic acid as an antiseptic, and in doing so, reduced surgical infection rates. Lawson Tait shifted the movement then from antisepsis to asepsis, instilling practices such as a strict no-talking policy within his operating room and drastically limiting the number of people to come in contact with a patient's wound. Ernst von Bergmann also introduced the autoclave, a device used for the practice of the sterilization of surgical instruments.


title: Asepsis

text: But, everything from operating room uniforms to gloves was pioneered by William Halsted. Preceding modern-day scrubs attire, Halsted implemented a no street clothes policy in his operating room, opting to wear a completely white, sterile uniform consisting of a duck suit, tennis shoes, and skullcap. This helped to prevent the introduction of infections into open wounds. Additionally, Halsted would sterilize the operation site with alcohol, iodine and other disinfectants and use drapes to cover all areas except for the site. In his department at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he enforced an extreme hand washing ritual consisting of soaking in harmfully strong chemicals like permanganate and mercury bichloride solution as well as scrubbing with stiff brushes. The damage to a surgical nurse's hands compelled him to create the earliest form of the surgical gloves with the Goodyear Rubber Company. These gloves became a part of the aseptic surgery standard when Dr. Joseph Colt Bloodgood and several others began wearing them for that particular purpose.


title: Asepsis

text: The line between antisepsis and asepsis is interpreted differently, depending on context and time. In the past, antiseptic operations occurred in people's homes or in operating theaters before a large crowd. Procedures for implementing antisepsis varied among physicians and experienced constant changes. Until the late 19th century, physicians rejected the connection between Louis Pasteur's germ theory that bacteria caused diseases and antiseptic techniques. At the end of the 19th century, Joseph Lister and his followers expanded the term "antisepsis" and coined "asepsis," with the justification that Lister had initially "suggested excluding septic agents from the wound from the start." Generally, however, asepsis is seen as a continuation of antisepsis since many of the values are the same, such as a "germ-free environment around the wound or patient," and techniques pioneered under both names are used in conjunction today.


title: Asepsis

text: Asepsis refers to any procedure that is performed under sterile conditions. This includes medical and laboratory techniques (such as with bacterial cultures). There are two types of asepsis – medical and surgical. Medical or clean asepsis reduces the number of organisms and prevents their spread; surgical or sterile asepsis includes procedures to eliminate micro-organisms from an area and is practiced by surgical technologists and nurses. Ultimately, though, successful usage of aseptic operations depends on a combination of preparatory actions. For example, sterile equipment and fluids are used during invasive medical and nursing procedures. The largest manifestation of such aseptic techniques is in hospital operating theaters, where the aim is to keep patients free from hospital micro-organisms.


title: Asepsis

text: While all members of the surgical team should demonstrate good aseptic technique, it is the role of the scrub nurse or surgical technologist to set up and maintain the sterile field. To prevent cross-contamination of patients, instruments are sterilized through autoclaving or by using disposable equipment; suture material or xenografts also need to be sterilized beforehand. Basic aseptic procedures includes hand washing, donning protective gloves, masks and gowns, and sterilizing equipment and linens. Medical aseptic techniques also includes curbing the spread of infectious diseases through quarantine, specifically isolation procedures based on the mode of disease transmission. Within contact, droplet and airborne isolation methods, two different procedures emerge: strict isolation vs. reverse isolation. Strict isolation quarantines patients to prevent them from infecting others, while reverse isolation prevents vulnerable patients from becoming infected.


title: Asepsis

text: In aseptic conditions, a "chronic low-level inflammation" known as sterile inflammation may develop as a result of trauma, stress, or environmental factors. As in infections caused by pathogens or microbes, the immune response is regulated by host receptors. Tissue damage resulting from non-infectious means are caused by DAMPs molecules released after injury or cell death has occurred, which are able to stimulate inflammation response. Diseases associated with sterile inflammation include Alzheimer's disease, atherosclerosis, as well as cancer tumor growth due to "immune cell infiltration." Additionally, aseptic tissue damage may arise from corticosteroid injections, which are drugs used to treat musculoskeletal conditions such as carpal tunnel and osteoarthritis, though this tends to result from improper aseptic technique.


title: Asepsis

text: Despite efforts to preserve asepsis during surgery, there still persists a 1-3% chance of a surgical site infection (SSI). Infections are categorized as superficial incisional, deep incisional, or organ; the first type are confined to the skin, the second to muscles and nearby tissues, and the third to organs not anatomically close to the operation site. The exact modes of infection depend on the types of surgery, but the most common bacteria that are responsible for SSIs are Staphylococcus aureus, coagulase-negative staphylococci, Escherichia coli, and Enterococcus spp. The CDC emphasizes the importance of both antiseptic and aseptic approaches in avoiding SSIs, especially since Staphylococcus aureus, among other bacteria, are able to evolve drug-resistant strains that can be difficult to treat. In 2017, nearly 20,000 patients in the United States died from Staphylococcus aureus in comparison to the 16,350 from diagnosed HIV.


title: Minyan

text: In Judaism, a minyan ( "mīnyān" , lit. (noun) "count, number"; pl. "mīnyānīm" ) is the quorum of ten Jewish adults required for certain religious obligations. In more traditional streams of Judaism, only males 13 and older may constitute a minyan; in more liberal (non-Orthodox) streams women are also counted.


title: Minyan

text: The most common activity requiring a "minyan" is public prayer. Accordingly, the term "minyan" in contemporary Judaism has taken on the secondary meaning of referring to a prayer service.


title: Minyan

text: The source for the requirement of "minyan" is recorded in the Talmud. The word "minyan" itself comes from the Hebrew root meaning to count or to number. The word is related to the Aramaic word "mene", numbered, appearing in the writing on the wall in .


title: Minyan

text: The Babylonian Talmud (Megillah 23b) derives the requirement of a "minyan" of ten shomer Shabbat for Kiddush Hashem and "Devarim she-Bikdusha", "matters of sanctity", by combining three scriptural verses using the rule of :


title: Minyan

text: The term "congregation" is also used in another verse that describes the ten spies who brought back a negative report of the Land of Israel:


title: Minyan

text: From this combination, the Talmud concludes that "sanctification" should occur in the "midst" of a "congregation" of ten.


title: Minyan

text: Since the term "congregation" in the later verse refers to the ten spies, so too in the former verse: "You shall be holy" refers to a "congregation" of ten.


title: Minyan

text: The second source is based on the term "children of Israel" which appears in the following two verses:


title: Minyan

text: Just as the "children of Israel" in the later verse refers to the ten sons of Jacob who descended to Egypt to obtain food during the famine, so too the former verse refers to sanctification among the “children of Israel” in the presence of ten.


title: Minyan

text: Some rituals require a minyan; the presence of a rabbi (a teacher, not a priest) is not essential—it is said that "nine rabbis do not constitute a minyan, but ten cobblers can".


title: Minyan

text: While the required quorum for most activities requiring a quorum is usually ten, it is not always so. For example, the Passover sacrifice or Korban "Pesach" (from the days of the Temple in Jerusalem) must be offered before a quorum of 30. (It must be performed in front of "kahal adat yisrael", the assembly of the congregation of Israel. Ten are needed for the assembly, ten for the congregation, and ten for Israel.) According to some Talmudic authorities, women counted in the quorum of 30 for offering the "Korban Pesach" (e.g. Rav, Rav Kahana, "Pesachim" 79b).


title: Minyan

text: It was the firm belief of the sages that wherever ten Israelites are assembled, either for worship or for the study of the Law, the Divine Presence dwells among them. In rabbinical literature, those who meet for study or prayer in smaller groups, even one who meditates or prays alone, are to be praised. However, the stress is put upon the merits and sacredness of the "minyan" of ten. The codifiers, such as Maimonides, his annotators, and the author of the Shulkhan Arukh, have unitedly given strength to this sentiment, and have thus, for more than a thousand years, made the daily attendance at public worship, morning and evening, to be conducted with a quorum of ten.


title: Minyan

text: There is a disagreement between the medieval commentators on whether prayer with a "minyan" is preferable or obligatory. Rashi is of the view that an individual is obligated to pray with a "minyan", while Nahmanides holds that only if ten adult males are present are they obliged to recite their prayer together, but an individual is not required to seek out a "minyan".


title: Minyan

text: Rashi and the Tosafot are both of the opinion that one is required to travel the distance of 4 "mil" to pray with a minyan (contemporary authorities differ as to whether this is a distance or a time that it would have taken to travel this distance and with modern technology one would need to travel a lot further). The Mishnah Berurah writes that one who is sitting at home must travel up to one "mil".


title: Minyan

text: There is much discussion in rabbinic literature on the matter of who is eligible to be counted in a "minyan". Some discussions revolve around whether or not a "minyan" should consist of individuals who are obligated in performance of that particular precept. Some authorities deduce who may constitute a "minyan" by drawing on the verses which are brought as the basis for minyan and their implication. For example, the verse, ""How long shall I bear with this evil congregation which murmur against me?"" is referring to the ten spies, a congregation comprising Jewish adult males. It is understood from this that a minyan must likewise comprise ten Jewish adult males. Other classical sources base their rulings on discussions brought in the Talmud. Contemporary rabbinical authorities deal with a plethora of questions relating to qualification for "minyan".


title: Minyan

text: Before a boy turns thirteen, he is considered a minor in Jewish law and is not obligated in the performance of religious precepts. However, if a child is over six years of age and has adequate comprehension of the significance of the precepts, his status may change. His inclusion in "minyan" is thus subject of Talmudic dispute. Based on the Talmudic passage in Berachot, Rabbeinu Tam states that a minor can act as the tenth person and according to the Baal Ha-Maor, up to four minors would be permitted. Rosh explains that those who permit the inclusion of a minor maintain that it is the Divine Presence which actually constitutes the tenth member, thereby validating the "minyan". (This may explain why some of these authorities require that the minor represent this fact by holding a chumash.) However the majority of poskim follow the conclusion of the Ri who holds that a minor can never be counted in a "minyan" under any circumstances. This is the stance taken by the Shulchan Aruch, who, although acknowledging some authorities do permit the inclusion of an astute six-year-old, writes that consensus rejects this view and only males over the age of thirteen may constitute a "minyan". However, in extraordinary circumstances some are lenient and permit a minor over six years old holding a chumash or Sefer Torah to complete a "minyan". Rabbi Moshe Feinstein says that we can rely on this because most of the laws of Minyan are Rabbinical in nature, so one can conclude that when dealing with a Biblical law of Minyan (such as Sanctifying God's name in public) one would not be able to count a child.


title: Minyan

text: Although the issue of whether women are permitted to make up a "minyan" has been noted in early works, the matter has only come to the fore in the past few decades, a reaction to an enhanced role of women in modern society and to the demand for their inclusion in all areas of religious life.


title: Minyan

text: The Talmud itself does not directly address the question of whether women may count as part of a minyan for devarim shebkdusha. Since the Talmud uses the same "gezerah shavah" for Kiddush Hashem as it uses for "devarim shebkdusha", one may expect the laws for those two cases to be the same. Many authorities are of the opinion that women are included in the "minyan" for Kiddush Hashem and Hillul Hashem. However, traditional codifiers generally do not include women in the "minyan" for "devarim shebkdusha".


title: Minyan

text: The Talmud (Arakhin 3a) relates that women are required to recite "zimmun" of three participants, and Berakhot 45 says that women may recite the zimmun. However, the majority of scholars are of the opinion that ten women may not recite the additional form of "zimun be-Shem", which is obligatory when ten men are present. The few authorities who do permit ten women to use the "zimmun be-Shem" formulation explain that the necessity for ten in this case is unique and cannot be compared to other instances requiring "minyan". Only Rabbeinu Simcha among these authorities mentions the possibility of one woman's joining with nine men to form a "minyan" for prayer. This isolated opinion is rejected by the codifiers. There are a number of cases, including reading of the megillah, where a limited number of authorities count women towards the minyan. However, in these cases the reason why women are counted is not because they constitute a "congregation," but rather because a public audience is required.


title: Minyan

text: A possible reason why it is men who were obligated to form a congregation in order to convene the Divine Presence is that women were individually considered sufficiently holy and did not require the combination of a group and special prayers to achieve added holiness deficient in men. Due to the righteousness of the women in the wilderness, they did not suffer the same deadly fate as their male counterparts, and despite the spies’ negative report about the holy land, wished to enter it.


title: Minyan

text: Others point to the sociological reality that women were traditionally expected to care for the house and children. The Jewish tradition did not require women to leave their social role to engage in public prayer.


title: Minyan

text: In 1845, rabbis attending the Frankfort Synod of the emerging Reform Judaism declared that women count in a minyan, a formalization of a customary Reform practice dating back to 1811.


title: Minyan

text: In 1973, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of Conservative Judaism voted to count men and women equally as members of a minyan. In 2002, the Committee adapted a responsum by Rabbi David Fine which provides an official religious-law foundation for women counting in a "minyan" and explains the current Conservative approach to the role of women in prayer. This responsum holds that, although Jewish women do not traditionally have the same obligations as men, Conservative women have, as a collective whole, voluntarily undertaken them. Because of this collective undertaking, the Fine responsum holds that Conservative women are eligible to serve as agents and decision-makers for others. The responsum also holds that traditionally-minded communities and individual women can opt out without being regarded by the Conservative movement as sinning. By adopting this responsum, the CJLS found itself in a position to provide a considered Jewish-law justification for its egalitarian practices, without having to rely on potentially unconvincing arguments, undermine the religious importance of community and clergy, ask individual women intrusive questions, repudiate the "halakhic" tradition, or label women following traditional practices as sinners.


title: Minyan

text: The question of whether a sinner can be counted for a "minyan" has become much more pertinent in recent generations, where a general malaise in religious observance among the majority of Jews has occurred. The Shulchan Aruch states that though a person may be a notorious and habitual sinner and has even committed a capital offense unless a person has been placed under a religious ban due to his sinful behavior, he is counted among the ten. The source provided for this sentiment is from the incident with Achan who, despite having been put to death for his transgression, was still referred to as a Jew. However, the Pri Megadim explains that this is only true if he sins for self-satisfaction, but if a person sins to spite God or has openly severed their connection with the Jewish people by professing a hostile creed or by publicly desecrating the Shabbat, such a person is prohibited from constituting a minyan. Nevertheless, many contemporary authorities have been driven to adopt a lenient view in the face of widespread public non-observance of the Shabbat, on the presumption that it does not indicate a deliberate denial of faith, but is rather a result of ignorance and succumbing to the pressure of social and economic conditions.


title: Minyan

text: Even though Tosafot deduce from the Talmud in Sukkah 38b that wherever the verse states “children of Israel” it comes to exclude a proselyte unless there is specific clause for inclusion, here with regard to "minyan" the sources state that there is no reasoning to exclude a full-fledged proselyte. Since such a person is permitted to act as a prayer leader, obviously they can count towards a "minyan".


title: Minyan

text: As long as a person is of sufficient intelligence, he can be included in the "minyan", even if he is unable to respond to the prayers which make the presence of ten a necessity. According to some sources, this is because as long as ten are gathered the Divine Presence descends and it is feasible to pronounce a "Dvar she'bekedusha". This includes someone who is in the middle of his prayers but is precluded from responding to the hazzan’s incantations and someone who is mute but can hear the prayers. (Someone who is deaf but has the ability and knows when to respond can also be included.) There is however a dispute regarding someone who is asleep or intoxicated. Such a person has sufficient intelligence, but at present can neither hear or respond. Ideally he should be woken to the extent that he is dozing, but in extraneous circumstances where it impossible to arouse him, it is permitted to include the maximum of one sleeping person in the "minyan". In the case of a drunkard, the accepted view is that even if he has not reached the “drunkenness of Lot”, he still cannot be included. A minimum of six of those gathered in the minyan have a duty to listen attentively and respond appropriately to the additional prayers and that at least nine are required to respond for the repetition of the "Amidah".


title: Minyan

text: It is not just the status of the individual which dictates eligibility; the physical arrangement of the "minyan" is also a factor. Maimonides delineates the confines which are placed on the arrangement of the people making up a "minyan". Ideally all the members of the minyan should be gathered in one room. However, if they are within hearing distance of one another, it is permitted for the ten to be distributed in two adjoining rooms. Later authorities limit the extent of this opinion and rule that even if there is an opening between the two rooms, the two groups are still considered separate entities. Only in unusual circumstances is it permitted, as long as some of the men in each room can see each other.


title: Minyan

text: Over the last decade or so, some very liberal Modern Orthodox communities have formed an attempt to combine commitment to traditional Jewish law with a push for increased participation and recognition of the role of women. While many are simply referred to as independent minyanim, the term used by the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance for those groups that consider themselves part of the Modern Orthodox community is partnership minyan. Many of these groups have adopted the custom initially instituted by Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem to wait for a "ten-and-ten minyan", made up of ten men and ten women.


title: Minyan

text: Shira Hadasha has based many of its decisions on the writings of rabbis like Mendel Shapiro and Daniel Sperber. Some also use the Guide for the Halakhic Minyan, a compendium of halakhic sources supporting increased participation by women in services, as a basis for discussions of practices like the ten-and-ten minyan.


title: La Monte Young

text: La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best known for his exploration of sustained tones, beginning with his 1958 composition "Trio for Strings." His compositions have called into question the nature and definition of music, most prominently in the text scores of his "Compositions 1960". While few of his recordings remain in print, his work has inspired prominent musicians across various genres, including avant-garde, rock, and ambient music.


title: La Monte Young

text: Young played jazz saxophone and studied composition in California during the 1950s, and subsequently moved to New York in 1960, where he was a central figure in the downtown music and Fluxus art scenes. He then became known for his pioneering work in drone music (originally called "dream music") with his Theatre of Eternal Music collective, alongside collaborators such as Tony Conrad, John Cale, and his wife, the multimedia artist Marian Zazeela.


title: La Monte Young

text: Since 1962, he has worked extensively with Zazeela, with whom he developed the "Dream House" sound and light environment. In 1964, he began work on his unfinished improvisatory composition "The Well-Tuned Piano", iterations of which he has performed throughout subsequent decades. Beginning in 1970, he and Zazeela studied under Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath. In 2002, Young and Zazeela formed the Just Alap Raga Ensemble with their disciple Jung Hee Choi.


title: La Monte Young

text: Young was born in a log cabin in Bern, Idaho. As a child he was influenced by the droning sounds of the environment, such as blowing wind and electrical transformers. During his childhood, Young's family moved several times before settling in Los Angeles, as his father searched for work. He was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He graduated from John Marshall High School. Young began his music studies at Los Angeles City College, and transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he received a BA in 1958. In the jazz milieu of Los Angeles, Young played with notable musicians including Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Billy Higgins, and Eric Dolphy. He undertook additional studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1958 to 1960. In 1959 he attended the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music under Karlheinz Stockhausen, and in 1960 relocated to New York in order to study electronic music with Richard Maxfield at the New School for Social Research. His compositions during this period were influenced by Anton Webern, Gregorian chant, Indian classical music, Japanese Gagaku, and Indonesian gamelan music.


title: La Monte Young

text: A number of Young's early works use the twelve-tone technique, which he studied under Leonard Stein at Los Angeles City College. (Stein had served as an assistant to Arnold Schoenberg when Schoenberg, the inventor of the twelve-tone method, taught at UCLA.) Young also studied composition with Robert Stevenson at UCLA and with Seymore Shifrin at UC Berkeley. In 1958, he developed the "Trio for Strings", originally scored for violin, viola, and cello, which would presage his work in proceeding years. The Trio for Strings has been described as an "origin point for minimalism." When Young visited Darmstadt in 1959, he encountered the music and writings of John Cage. There he also met Cage's collaborator, pianist David Tudor, who subsequently gave premières of some of Young's works. At Tudor's suggestion, Young engaged in a correspondence with Cage. Within a few months Young was presenting some of Cage's music on the West Coast. In turn, Cage and Tudor included some of Young's works in performances throughout the U.S. and Europe. Influenced by Cage, Young at this time took a turn toward the conceptual, using principles of indeterminacy in his compositions and incorporating non-traditional sounds, noises, and actions.


title: La Monte Young

text: Young moved to New York in 1960 and quickly developed an artistic relationship with Fluxus founder George Maciunas (who designed the book "An Anthology of Chance Operations", which was edited by Young) and other members of the nascent Fluxus movement. Young curated and organized a series of concert-performances at the top floor loft of Yoko Ono at 112 Chambers Street in December of 1960 involving visual artists, musicians, dancers and composers — mixing music, visual art and performance together. During this period, Young created short, haiku-like, conceptual but dreamlike scores-texts that have become associated with Fluxus. For example, Young's "Compositions 1960" includes a number of unusual actions: some of them un-performable, and so an early form of poetic conceptual art. Most examine a certain presupposition about the nature of music and art by carrying absurd Dada-like concepts to an extreme. One, "Composition 1960 #10 to Bob Morris" instructs: "draw a straight line and follow it" (a directive which he has said has guided his life and work since). Another instructs the performer to build a fire. Another states that "this piece is a little whirlpool out in the middle of the ocean." Another says the performer should release a butterfly into the room. Yet another challenges the performer to push a piano through a wall. "Composition 1960 #7" proved especially pertinent to his future endeavors: it consisted of a B, an F#, a perfect fifth, and the instruction: "To be held for a long time."


title: La Monte Young

text: In 1962 Young wrote "The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer". One of "The Four Dreams of China", the piece is based on four pitches, which he later gave as the frequency ratios: 36-35-32-24 (G, C, +C#, D), and limits as to which may be combined with any other. Most of his pieces after this point are based on select pitches, played continuously, and a group of long held pitches to be improvised upon. For "The Four Dreams of China" Young began to plan "Dream House", a light and sound installation conceived as a "work that would be played continuously and ultimately exist as a 'living organism with a life and tradition of its own,'" where musicians would live and create music twenty-four hours a day. He formed the music collective Theatre of Eternal Music to realize "Dream House" and other pieces. The group initially included calligrapher and light artist Marian Zazeela (who married Young in 1963), Angus MacLise, and Billy Name. In 1964 the ensemble comprised Young and Zazeela, John Cale and Tony Conrad (a former Harvard mathematics major), and sometimes Terry Riley (voices). Since 1966 the group has seen many permutations and has included Garrett List, Jon Hassell, Alex Dea, and many others, including members of the 60s groups.


title: La Monte Young

text: On September 25, 1965, the Fluxus FluxOrchestra was conducted La Monte Young at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City with a program, designed by George Maciunas, folded into paper airplanes and launched during the evening into the audience.


title: La Monte Young

text: Young and Zazeela's first continuous electronic sound environment was created in their loft on Church Street, New York City, in September 1966 with sine wave generators and light sources designed to produce a continuous installation of floating sculptures and color sources, and a series of slides entitled "Ornamental Lightyears Tracery". This "Dream House" environment was maintained almost continuously from September 1966 to January 1970, being turned off only to listen to "other music" and to study the contrast between extended periods in it and periods of silence. Young and Zazeela worked, sang and lived in it and studied the effects on themselves and visitors. Performances were often extreme in length, conceived by Young as having no beginning and no end, existing before and after any particular performance. In their daily lives, too, Young and Zazeela practiced an extended sleep-waking schedule—with "days" longer than twenty-four hours.


title: La Monte Young

text: Beginning in 1970 interests in Asian classical music and a wish to be able to find the intervals he had been using in his work led Young to pursue studies with pandit Pran Nath. Fellow students included Zazeela, composers Terry Riley, Michael Harrison, Yoshi Wada, Henry Flynt and Catherine Christer Hennix.


title: La Monte Young

text: Young considers "The Well-Tuned Piano"—a permuting composition of themes and improvisations for just-intuned solo piano—to be his masterpiece. Young gave the world premiere of "The Well-Tuned Piano" in Rome in 1974, ten years after the creation of the piece. Previously, Young had presented it as a recorded work. In 1975, Young premiered it in New York with eleven live performances during the months of April and May. As of October 25, 1981, the date of the Gramavision recording of "The Well-Tuned Piano", Young had performed the piece 55 times. In 1987, Young performed the piece again as part of a larger concert series that included many more of his works. This performance, on May 10, 1987, was videotaped and released on DVD in 2000 on Young's label, "Just Dreams". Performances have exceeded six hours in length, and so far have only been documented several times. It is strongly influenced by mathematical composition as well as Hindustani classical music practice.


title: La Monte Young

text: Since the 1970s, Young and Zazeela have realized a long series of semi-permanent "Dream House" installations, which combine Young's just-intuned sine waves in elaborate, symmetrical configurations and Zazeela's quasi-calligraphic light sculptures. In July 1970 a model short-term "Dream House" was displayed to the public at the gallery Friedrich & Dahlem in Munich, Germany. Later, model "Dream House" environments were presented in various locations of Europe and the United States. In 1974, the two released "Dream House 78' 17"". From January through April 19, 2009, "Dream House" was installed in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York as part of "The Third Mind" exhibition. A "Dream House" installation exists today at the MELA Foundation on 275 Church Street, New York above the couple's loft, and is open to the public.


title: La Monte Young

text: In 2002, Young, along with Marian Zazeela and senior disciple Jung Hee Choi, founded the Just Alap Raga Ensemble. This ensemble, performing Indian classical music of the Kirana gharana, merges the traditions of Western and Hindustani classical music, with Young applying his own compositional approach to traditional raga performance, form, and technique.


title: La Monte Young

text: Young's first musical influence came in early childhood in Bern. He relates that "the very first sound that I recall hearing was the sound of wind blowing under the eaves and around the log extensions at the corners of the log cabin". Continuous sounds—human-made as well as natural—fascinated him as a child. He described himself as fascinated from a young age by droning sounds, such as "the sound of the wind blowing", the "60 cycle per second drone [of] step-down transformers on telephone poles", the tanpura drone and the alap of Indian classical music, "certain static aspects of serialism, as in the Webern slow movement of the Symphony Opus 21", and Japanese gagaku "which has sustained tones in it in the instruments such as the Sho". The four pitches he later named the "Dream chord", on which he based many of his mature works, came from his early age appreciation of the continuous sound made by the telephone poles in Bern.


title: La Monte Young

text: Jazz is one of his main influences and until 1956 he planned to devote his career to it. At first, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh influenced his alto saxophone playing style, and later John Coltrane shaped Young's use of the sopranino saxophone. Jazz was, together with Indian music, an important influence on the use of improvisation in his works after 1962. La Monte Young discovered Indian music in 1957 on the campus of UCLA. He cites Ali Akbar Khan (sarod) and Chatur Lal (tabla) as particularly significant. The discovery of the tambura, which he learned to play with Pandit Pran Nath, was a decisive influence in his interest in long sustained sounds. Young also acknowledges the influence of Japanese music, especially Gagaku, and Pygmy music.


title: La Monte Young

text: La Monte Young discovered classical music rather late, thanks to his teachers at university. He cites Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Pérotin, Léonin, Claude Debussy and Organum musical style as important influences, but what made the biggest impact on his compositions was the serialism of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern.


title: La Monte Young

text: Young was also keen to pursue his musical endeavors with the help of psychedelics. Cannabis, LSD and peyote played an important part in Young's life from mid-1950s onwards, when he was introduced to them by Terry Jennings and Billy Higgins. He said that "everybody [he] knew and worked with was very much into drugs as a creative tool as well as a consciousness-expanding tool". This was the case with the musicians of the Theatre of Eternal Music, with whom he "got high for every concert: the whole group". He considers that the cannabis experience helped him open up to where he went with "Trio for Strings", though sometimes it proved a disadvantage when performing anything which required keeping track of the number of elapsed bars. He commented on the subject:


title: La Monte Young

text: Young's use of long tones and exceptionally high volume has been extremely influential within Young's group of associates: Tony Conrad, Jon Hassell, Rhys Chatham, Michael Harrison, Henry Flynt, Ben Neill, Charles Curtis, and Catherine Christer Hennix. It has also been notably influential on John Cale's contribution to The Velvet Underground's sound; Cale has been quoted as saying "LaMonte <nowiki>[Young]</nowiki> was perhaps the best part of my education and my introduction to musical discipline."


title: La Monte Young

text: His work has inspired prominent musicians across various genres, including fellow minimalist composer Terry Riley, experimental rock groups the Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth, and ambient music pioneer Brian Eno. Eno calls him "the daddy of us all". In 1981, Eno referred to "X for Henry Flynt" by saying, "It really is a cornerstone of everything I've done since."


title: La Monte Young

text: Andy Warhol attended the 1962 première of the static composition by La Monte Young called "Trio for Strings". Uwe Husslein cites film-maker Jonas Mekas, who accompanied Warhol to the "Trio" premiere, claiming that Warhol's static films were directly inspired by the performance. In 1963 Young had joined Warhol's musical group The Druds, a short-lived avant-garde noise music band, but finding it ridiculous, quit after the second rehearsal. In 1964 Young provided a loud minimalist drone soundtrack to Warhol's static films "Kiss", "Eat", "Haircut", and "Sleep" when shown as small TV-sized projections at the entrance lobby to the third New York Film Festival held at Lincoln Center.


title: La Monte Young

text: Lou Reed's 1975 album "Metal Machine Music" states "Drone cognizance and harmonic possibilities vis a vis Lamont Young's Dream Music (sic)" among its "Specifications".


title: La Monte Young

text: The album "" by the band Spacemen 3 is influenced by La Monte Young's concept of "Dream Music", evidenced by their inclusion of his notes on the jacket. In 2018, Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3, along with Etienne Jaumet of Zombie Zombie and Indian dhrupad singer Céline Wadier, released "Infinite Music: A Tribute to La Monte Young".


title: La Monte Young

text: According to Seth Colter Walls, writing in "The Guardian," while Young has released very little recorded material, with much of it currently out of print, he has had an "outsized influence on other artists."


title: Hugues de Payens

text: Hugues de Payens or Payns (9 February 1070 – 24 May 1136) was the co-founder and first Grand Master of the Knights Templar. In association with Bernard of Clairvaux, he created the "Latin Rule", the code of behavior for the Order.


title: Hugues de Payens

text: The majority of the primary sources of information for his life are presented in Latin or the medieval French language. In French his name usually appears as "Hugues de Payens" or "Payns" (). His earliest certain appearance in documents is under the part-Latin, part-French name "Hugo de Peans" (1120–1125; details below). Later Latin sources call him "Hugo de Paganis". In English works he often appears as "Hugh de Payns", in Italian sometimes as "Ugo de' Pagani'.


title: Hugues de Payens

text: There is no known early biography of Hugues de Payens in existence, nor do later writers cite such a biography. None of the sources on his later career give details of his early life. Information is therefore scanty and uncertain; embellishments depend partly on documents that may not refer to the same individual, partly on histories written decades or even centuries after his death.


title: Hugues de Payens

text: The earliest source that details a geographical origin for the later Grand Master is the Old French translation of William of Tyre's "History of Events Beyond the Sea". The Latin text calls him simply "Hugo de Paganis", but the French translation, dated to c. 1200, describes him as "Hues de Paiens delez Troies" ("Hugh of Payens near Troyes"), a reference to the village of Payns, about 10 km from Troyes, in Champagne (eastern France).


title: Hugues de Payens

text: In early documents of that region "Hugo de Pedano, Montiniaci dominus" is mentioned as a witness to a donation by Count Hugh of Champagne in a document of 1085–90, indicating that the man was at least sixteen by this date—a legal adult and thus able to bear witness to legal documents—and so born no later than 1070. The same name appears on a number of other charters up to 1113 also relating to Count Hugh of Champagne, suggesting that "Hugo de Pedano" or "Hugo dominus de Peanz" was a member of the Count's court. By the year 1113 he was married to Elizabeth de Chappes, who bore him at least one child, Thibaud, later abbot of the Abbaye de la Colombe|la Colombe at Sens. The documents span Hugues' lifetime and the disposition of his property after his death.


title: Hugues de Payens

text: The one belated statement that the founder of the Knights Templars came from "Payns near Troyes" has some circumstantial confirmation. Bernard of Clairvaux, who favoured the Order and helped to compose its "Latin Rule", also had the support of Hugh of Champagne. The "Latin Rule" of the Order was confirmed at the Council of Troyes in 1129. A Templar commandery was eventually built at Payns. Some scholars have however looked for Hugues' origins elsewhere. There was an early claim that he came from the Vivarais (the district of Viviers in the modern "département" of Ardèche). Hugues has also been identified with Hug de Pinós, third son of Galceran I, lord of Pinós in Catalonia; however, Galceran married only in 1090, far too late a date for him to be the father of the founder of the Knights Templars.


title: Hugues de Payens

text: There is also a claim that Hugues de Payens or "Ugo de' Pagani" came from Nocera de' Pagani in Campania, southern Italy. Reference to Nocera as his birthplace is found at least as early as Baedeker's "Southern Italy" (1869) and is also found in the Old Catholic Encyclopedia. Two more recent writers say that the theory is supported by a letter that Hugues wrote from Palestine in 1103, in which he talked of writing to "my father in Nocera" to tell him of the death of his cousin Alessandro.


title: Hugues de Payens

text: Hugh, Count of Champagne made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1104–07 and visited Jerusalem for a second time in 1114–16. It is probable that he was accompanied by Hugues de Payens, who remained there after the Count returned to France as there is a charter with "Hugonis de Peans" in the witness list from Jerusalem in 1120 and again in 1123. In 1125 his name appears again as a witness to a donation, this time accompanied by the title "magister militum Templi" ("Master of the Knights of the Temple"). He most likely obtained approval for the Order from King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem at the Council of Nablus in 1120.


title: Hugues de Payens

text: One early chronicler, Simon de St. Bertin, implies that the Knights Templar originated earlier, before the death of Godfrey of Bouillon in 1100: "While he [Godfrey] was reigning magnificently, some had decided not to return to the shadows of the world after suffering such dangers for God's sake. On the advice of the princes of God's army they vowed themselves to God's Temple under this rule: they would renounce the world, give up personal goods, free themselves to pursue purity, and lead a communal life wearing a poor habit, only using arms to defend the land against the attacks of the insurgent pagans when necessity demanded."


title: Hugues de Payens

text: Later chroniclers write that Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem (whose reign began in 1118) with eight knights, two of whom were brothers and all of whom were his relatives by either blood or marriage, in order to form the Order of the Knights Templar. The other knights were Godfrey de Saint-Omer, Payen de Montdidier, Archambaud de St. Amand, André de Montbard, Geoffrey Bison, and two men recorded only by the names of Rossal and Gondamer. Baldwin approved the foundation of the Order and entrusted the Temple of Jerusalem to its care.


title: Hugues de Payens

text: Count Hugh of Champagne himself joined the Knights Templar on his third visit to the Holy Land in 1125.


title: Hugues de Payens

text: As Grand Master, Hugues de Payens led the Order for almost twenty years until his death, helping to establish the Order's foundations as an important and influential military and financial institution. On his visit to England and Scotland in 1128, he raised men and money for the Order, and also founded their first House in London and another near Edinburgh at Balantrodoch, now known as Temple, Midlothian. The "Latin Rule" laying down the way of life of the Order, attributed to Hugues de Payens and Bernard of Clairvaux, was confirmed in 1129 at the Council of Troyes over which Pope Honorius II presided.


title: Hugues de Payens

text: Hugues de Payens died in 1136. The circumstances and date of his death are not recorded in any chronicle, though the Templars commemorated him every year on 24 May, and it's presumed he died of old age. The 16th century historian Marco Antonio Guarini claimed that Hugues was buried in the Church of San Giacomo at Ferrara. He was succeeded as Grand Master by Robert de Craon.


title: Hugues de Payens

text: It has recently been claimed that the wife of Hugues de Payens was Catherine St. Clair within the context of the alternative history of Rosslyn.


title: Crack the Skye

text: Crack the Skye is the fourth studio album by American heavy metal band Mastodon, released on March 24, 2009, through Reprise, Sire and Relapse Records. The album debuted at number 11 on the "Billboard" 200, selling 41,000 copies in its first week. In Australia, the album debuted at number 19. It had sold 200,000 copies in the US as of September 2010, making it one of their highest-selling albums to date.


title: Crack the Skye

text: According to an interview on the DVD "The Making of Crack the Skye", this album represents the element of aether, which is represented by the souls and spirits of all things, a theme closely related to the context of the album. Because the elements of fire, water and earth have already been represented by the band's first three albums "Remission", "Leviathan", "Blood Mountain" and the band's seventh album "Emperor of Sand", respectively, the element of air is the only classical element which has yet to be represented by a Mastodon album, as their follow-up studio albums "The Hunter" and "Once More 'Round the Sun" do not represent an element, nor are they concept albums.


title: Crack the Skye

text: "Crack the Skye" is the first studio album to feature drummer Brann Dailor as the band's third lead vocalist.


title: Crack the Skye

text: Drummer Brann Dailor described the album as more "focused" than its predecessor, "Blood Mountain": "Maybe there was a deeper heart to this record that needed more exploring ... We got more involved with feeling the vibe of the record and everything feels more creepy and spaced out and something special is going on." During the composition of the record, Brent Hinds listened to "In the Court of the Crimson King" by King Crimson every day as inspiration, while Dailor and Troy Sanders listened to Pink Floyd's "Animals".


title: Crack the Skye

text: Vocalist/bassist Troy Sanders said in an interview with Stereogum, ""Crack the Skye" is a departure from everything we've previously recorded in the sense that we kinda strapped on our aeroshells and departed from Earth for a while, and then captained to the ethereal element of the universe and kind of slept on the roof of the world for a while to get a perspective on this record. ... Basically we're exploring the ethereal world. We're dissecting the dark matter that dominates the universe, in a nutshell."


title: Crack the Skye

text: When asked in multiple interviews Dailor said the record would tell a story dealing variously with the art aesthetics of Tsarist Russia, astral travel, out of body experiences and Stephen Hawking's theories on wormholes.


title: Crack the Skye

text: Dailor has also said that "Crack the Skye" is meant as a homage to his sister, Skye Dailor, who committed suicide at age 14.


title: Crack the Skye

text: Paul Romano, who had done all of Mastodon's album artwork to that point, created the art for "Crack the Skye". The piece features various ethereal images tied in closely with the overall concept of the record. "Crack the Skye" was released in two editions: the standard and limited edition. The latter has an elaborate packaging with a tunnel book that, when looked through, reveals three-dimensional-like imagery. A "hidden" picture of Brann Dailor's sister, Skye, can be seen on both sides of the tunnel book as well.


title: Crack the Skye

text: "Crack the Skye" has been released as standard CD version and CD/DVD version, which included a bonus DVD with a documentary and a track commentary. Furthermore, standard single-disc LP and limited-edition 2xLP were released. A "super-deluxe" CD/DVD version that includes a tunnel book and a lithograph of the album art sold out during pre-orders, and a "Royal Edition" with a CD of the instrumental versions of the songs and an entirely new black-and-gold artwork was released on December 15, 2009.


title: Crack the Skye

text: The initial critical response from music critics to "Crack the Skye" was very positive. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received a score of 82, based on 29 reviews, indicating "Universal Acclaim".


title: Crack the Skye

text: Amongst the positive reviews received from critics was "Total Guitar" Nick Cracknell who awarded the album a 5/5 rating, describing it as "even more ambitious in scope and sound than 2006's "Blood Mountain". Embracing elements of prog and country, but above all classic rock, Hinds and Kelliher literally add new dimensions to the band's ever-expanding sound." "Decibel", who named "Blood Mountain" as their number 1 album of 2006, gave Crack the Skye a 7/10 rating as reviewer Joe Gross responded that ""Crack" is clearly designed as a grower, not a shower, the sound of a band that grew tired of people not responding to their ground game, so they put the ball in the air. Who knows when it will come down?" "Clash" review was particularly glowing in its praise for the album, saying "no metal release of 2009 is likely to be as important as "Crack the Skye"." The review praised the album's expansive sound and emotion, and finished by claiming that the album is "surely destined to become the stuff of legend". Reviewer Nate Chinen of "The New York Times" noted the album's "ambitious vision and vivid execution". The "New Yorker" pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones lists it as one of his favorite albums of the year on his personal blog and, in an article for "The New Yorker", called "Crack the Skye" a "deeply entertaining album".


title: Crack the Skye

text: "Crack the Skye" was named amongst the most well received albums of 2009 by numerous music publications. "Classic Rock" magazine placed it a No. 3 of its Top Albums of 2009, while "Kerrang!" place it at No. 4 in its Top Albums of 2009. "Time" magazine placed "Crack the Skye" at No. 3 on its Top 10 Albums of 2009 list, and "Rock Sound" named it their Album of the Year for 2009. In addition, "Spin" magazine listed it as the 17th best album of the year. Rhapsody called it the 7th best album of 2009. The album was also voted the No. 1 Album of 2009 by "Metal Hammer" critics and contributors. In 2014, TeamRock put "Crack the Skye" at No. 57 on their Top 100 Greatest Prog Albums of All Time list, commenting: "Mastodon's 2009 album has the blood and thunder from previous releases, but takes everything to a new musical level. A restive and sophisticated piece of work from the prog heavyweights". The album was honored with a 2009 Metal Storm Award for Best Alternative Metal Album.


title: Lupara

text: Lupara () is an Italian word used to refer to a sawed-off shotgun of the break-open type. It is traditionally associated with Cosa Nostra, the Italian organized crime group dominant in Sicily for their use of it in vendettas, defense — such as its use against Benito Mussolini's army when he decided to break up the Sicilian mafioso network—and hunting.


title: Lupara

text: The shortened barrel (or barrels) of a lupara lend themselves to easier handling in wooded areas, or to easier concealment and indoor deployment in urban areas. The absence of choke and the shortened barrel contribute to a wider spread of shot than that of a choked full-length gun.


title: Lupara

text: The word "lupara" means literally "for the wolf", reflecting its traditional use in wolf hunting. The word achieved wider recognition through Mario Puzo's bestselling novel "The Godfather" in which the lupara is used extensively by the mafia in Sicily, including Michael Corleone's bodyguards in Sicily, Calo and Fabrizio.


title: Lupara

text: Lupara can indicate also the type of ammunition fired by this gun, usually #3 or #4 buck. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, in his novel "The Leopard (Il Gattopardo)", writes: "...they found him dead...with twelve bullets in his back"—"...lo hanno trovato morto...con dodici lupare nella schiena". ("Lupare" is the plural of "lupara", so the phrase means "twelve buckshots of lupara").


title: Lupara

text: From the word "lupara" comes the Italian expression "lupara bianca" (white lupara), a term especially used by journalists to refer to a mafia-style slaying in which the victim's body is deliberately destroyed or hidden.


title: Lupara

text: An early example of criminal use of the weapon in the United States was the assassination of the New Orleans chief of police, David Hennessy, in October 1890. After Chief Hennessy was shot in an ambush, four luparas were found at the murder scene. The murder punctuated a rivalry between gangs of Sicilian fruit company stevedores whose contracts did not fall under the auspices of the local longshoreman's union. A pile of sawn-off shotguns was displayed after the murder, including a homemade gun with a folding iron stock, and another with a hook on its stock to brace against the arm when firing one-armed. Anti-Italian provocation, following the failed prosecution of a group of suspected men, resulted in a mob assault on the New Orleans Parish Prison and the subsequent lynching of eleven Italian prisoners.


title: Mindaugas

text: Mindaugas (, , , , , c. 1203–1263) is the first known Grand Duke of Lithuania and the only crowned King of Lithuania. Little is known of his origins, early life, or rise to power; he is mentioned in a 1219 treaty as an elder duke, and in 1236 as the leader of all the Lithuanians. The contemporary and modern sources discussing his ascent mention strategic marriages along with banishment or murder of his rivals. He extended his domain into regions southeast of Lithuania proper during the 1230s and 1240s. In 1250 or 1251, during the course of internal power struggles, he was baptised as a Roman Catholic; this action enabled him to establish an alliance with the Livonian Order, a long-standing antagonist of the Lithuanians. During the summer of 1253 he was crowned King of Lithuania, ruling between 300,000 and 400,000 subjects.


title: Mindaugas

text: While Mindaugas's ten-year reign as king was marked by many state-building accomplishments, his conflicts with relatives and other dukes continued. The western part of Lithuania — Samogitia — strongly resisted the alliance's rule. His gains in the southeast were challenged by the Tatars. He broke peace with the Livonian Order in 1261, possibly renouncing Christianity, and was assassinated in 1263 by his nephew Treniota and another rival, Duke Daumantas of Pskov. His three immediate successors were assassinated as well. The disorder was not resolved until Traidenis gained the title of Grand Duke c. 1270.


title: Mindaugas

text: Although his reputation was unsettled during the following centuries and his descendants were not notable, he gained standing during the 19th and 20th centuries. Mindaugas was the only King of Lithuania; while most of the Lithuanian Grand Dukes from Jogaila onward also reigned as Kings of Poland, the titles remained separate. Now generally considered the founder of the Lithuanian state, he is also now credited with stopping the advance of the Tatars towards the Baltic Sea, establishing international recognition of Lithuania, and turning it towards Western civilization. In the 1990s the historian Edvardas Gudavičius published research supporting an exact coronation date – 6 July 1253. This day is now an official national holiday in Lithuania, Statehood Day.


title: Mindaugas

text: Contemporary written sources about Mindaugas are very scarce. Much what is known about his reign is obtained from the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle and the Hypatian Codex. Both of these chronicles were produced by enemies of Lithuania and thus have anti-Lithuanian bias, particularly the Hypatian Codex. They are also incomplete: both of them lack dates and locations even for the most important events. For example, the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle devoted 125 poetry lines to Mindaugas's coronation, but failed to mention either the date or the location. Other important sources are the papal bulls regarding baptism and coronation of Mindaugas. The Lithuanians did not produce any surviving records themselves, except for a series of acts granting lands to the Livonian Order, but their authenticity is disputed. Due to lack of sources, some important questions regarding Mindaugas and his reign cannot be answered.