Origin.

Most accounts have said the pieces were found at Uig Bay () on the west coast of Lewis but Caldwell et al. of National Museums Scotland (NMS) consider that Mealista (), also in the parish of Uig and some further south down the coast, is a more likely place for the hoard to have been discovered.. The hoard was divided and sold in the 19th century – the British Museum (BM) holds eighty-two pieces and National Museums Scotland has the other eleven pieces.  At the British Museum it was Sir Frederic Madden, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts, who persuaded the Trustees to purchase for 80 guineas (£84) the eighty-two pieces which he had been misled into believing was the entire hoard. Madden was a palaeographer, a scholar of early vernacular literature, but he was especially intrigued by these artifacts because he was a chess enthusiast. Madden immediately set about writing a monumental research paper about the collection, Madden (1832) – one that remains informative and impressive today.  The British Museum claims the chessmen were probably made in Trondheim, the medieval capital of Norway, in the 12th century, although some scholars have suggested other Nordic countries. During that period, the Outer Hebrides, along with other major groups of Scottish islands, were ruled by Norway.  According to Alex Woolf, director of the University of St Andrews Institute for Medieval Studies, there are reasons for believing the pieces came from Trondheim:  Icelanders Gudmundur Thorarinsson and Einar Einarsson have proposed that the chessmen originated in Iceland, since only in Iceland were the bishops called that at that time, while in other countries they used a name unassociated with the church, they claimed. However, this was disputed by Woolf, who stated that the use of bishops originated in England, and by Norwegian chess historian and member of Chess History & Literature Society, Morten Lilleøren. The text that the Icelanders refer to dates to the early 14th century, while two 13th century Latin texts from other countries call the chess piece bishop, and the Lewis chessmen probably date to the 12th century. Moreover, there are many medieval chess bishops of various origins in different museums in Europe and USA. A bishop that probably predates the Lewis chessmen was in the collection of Jean-Joseph Marquet de Vasselot and was sold at Christie's in Paris in 2011 with a radiocarbon dating report stating that there is a 95% probability that the ivory dates between AD 790 and AD 990. It is thought to be English or German and carved in the 12th century. Stylistically it predates the Lewis chessmen, as its mitre is worn sideways According to the lot essay with references, the presence of the bishop among the chess pieces was a twelfth century European invention. The bishop's inclusion reflects his status in the social system of the period, especially in Scandinavia and in England where clerics played significant roles in battlefield conflicts. The Icelanders further claim that the pieces were carved by an artist known as Margret the Adroit.  Some historians believe that the Lewis chessmen were hidden (or lost) after some mishap occurred during their carriage from Norway to wealthy Norse towns on the east coast of Ireland, such as Dublin. The large number of pieces and their lack of wear may suggest that they were the stock of a trader or dealer. Along with the chess pieces, there were 14 plain round tablemen for the game of tables and one belt buckle, all made of ivory, making a total of 93 artifacts.

Description.

Almost all of the pieces in the collection are carved from walrus ivory, with a few made instead from whale teeth. The 79 chess pieces consist of eight kings, eight queens, 16 bishops, 15 knights, 13 rooks (after the 2019 discovery) and 19 pawns. The heights of the pawns range from 3.5 to 5.8 cm, while the other pieces are between 7 and 10.2 cm. Although there are 19 pawns (a complete set requires 16), they have the greatest range of sizes of all the pieces, which has suggested that the 79 chess pieces might belong to at least five sets. All the pieces are sculptures of human figures, with the exception of the pawns, which are smaller, geometric shapes. The knights are mounted on rather diminutive horses and are shown holding spears and shields. The rooks are standing soldiers or "warders" holding shields and swords; four of the rooks are shown as wild-eyed berserkers biting their shields with battle fury. Some pieces bore traces of red stain when found, possibly indicating that red and white were used to distinguish the two sides, rather than the black and white used in modern chess. Scholars have observed that to the modern eye the figural pieces, with their bulging eyes and glum expressions, have a distinct comical character. This is especially true of the single rook with a worried, sideways glance (front right of image below, next to queen) and the berserkers biting their shields, which have been called "irresistibly comic to a modern audience." It is believed, however, that the comic or sad expressions were not intended or perceived as such by the makers, who instead saw strength, ferocity or, in the case of the queens who hold their heads with a hand and seemingly pensive expression, "contemplation, repose and possibly wisdom."

Discovery.

The chessmen were discovered in early 1831 in a sand bank at the head of Camas Uig on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. There are various local stories concerning their arrival and modern discovery on Lewis.  Malcolm "Sprot" MacLeod () from the nearby township of Pennydonald discovered the trove in a small stone kist in a dune, exhibited them briefly in his byre and sold them on to Captain Roderick Ryrie. One reported detail, that it was a cow that actually unearthed the stash, is generally discounted in Uig as fabrication. After the Isle of Lewis was purchased by Sir James Matheson in 1844, Malcolm Macleod and his family were evicted and the district was transformed into sheep farms.  When the chessmen were uncovered in 1831, one knight and four warders were missing from the four sets. In June 2019 a warder piece, which had previously gone unrecognised for at least 55 years, emerged in Edinburgh, and was purchased at a Sotheby's auction for £735,000 the following month, by an undisclosed buyer.

Exhibition and ownership.

They were exhibited by Ryrie at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, on 11 April 1831. The chessmen were soon after split up, with 10 being purchased by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe and the others (67 chessmen and 14 tablemen) purchased on behalf of the British Museum in London.  Kirkpatrick Sharpe later found another bishop to take his collection up to eleven, all of which were later sold to Lord Londesborough. In 1888, they were again sold, but this time the purchaser was the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, who donated the pieces to the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh. The eleven are now on display in the National Museum of Scotland.  Of the pieces given to the British Museum, most can be found in Room 40, with the registration numbers M&ME 1831, 11–1.78–159. Others have been lent to Scottish museums and temporary exhibitions. A range of wooden or plastic replicas are popular items in the Museum shops.  The chessmen were number 5 in the list of British archaeological finds selected by experts at the British Museum for the 2003 BBC Television documentary "Our Top Ten Treasures", presented by Adam Hart-Davis. They were featured in the 2010 BBC Radio 4 series "A History of the World in 100 Objects" as number 61, in the "Status Symbols" section.  An exhibition entitled "The Lewis Chessmen: Unmasked" included chess pieces from both the National Museum of Scotland and British Museum collections, along with other relevant objects, touring Scotland in 2010–2011. The exhibition opened in Edinburgh on 21 May 2010 and proceeded to Aberdeen, Shetland, and the Museum nan Eilean in Stornoway, opening there on 15 April 2011.  An exhibition entitled "The Game of Kings: Medieval Ivory Chessmen from the Isle of Lewis" at The Cloisters in New York City included 34 of the chess pieces, all on loan from the British Museum. The exhibit ended on 22 April 2012.  On 3 April 2013, £1.8 million from the European Regional Development Fund was granted to transform Lews Castle, on the Isle of Lewis, into a Museum for the Western Isles. Around £14 million in total is to be spent on restoring and converting the property, which has been shut for almost twenty-five years. When completed the permanent displays will include six of the Lewis Chessmen.

Dispute over location.

In 2007–2008 a dispute arose regarding the most appropriate place to display the pieces. The issue first arose late in 2007 with calls from Scottish National Party (SNP) politicians in the Western Isles (notably Councillor Annie Macdonald, MSP Alasdair Allan and MP Angus MacNeil) for the return of the pieces to the place they were found. Linda Fabiani, the Scottish Minister for Europe, External Affairs and Culture, stated that "it is unacceptable that only 11 Lewis Chessmen rest at the National Museum of Scotland while the other 67 (as well as the 14 tablemen) remain in the British Museum in London."  Richard Oram, Professor of Medieval and Environmental History at the University of Stirling, agreed, arguing that there was no reason for there to be more than "a sample" of the collection in London. Both points of view have been dismissed by Margaret Hodge, the then UK Minister of State in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, writing "It's a lot of nonsense, isn't it?" The local historical society in Uig, "Comann Eachdraidh Uig", which operates a registered museum near the find site featuring detailed information about the chessmen and Norse occupation in Lewis, has indicated publicly that it has no intention of pursuing any claim to the ownership of the pieces and does not support demands for them to be sent to Edinburgh, but would welcome short-term loans.  In October 2009, 24 of the pieces from London and six from Edinburgh began a 16-month tour of various locations in Scotland. The tour was partly funded by the Scottish Government, and Mike Russell, the Minister for Culture and External Affairs, stated that the Government and the British Museum had "agreed to disagree" on their eventual fate. Bonnie Greer, the museum's deputy chairman, said that she "absolutely" believed the main collection should remain in London.

The Lewis chessmen (; ; ) or Uig chessmen, named after the island or the bay where they were found, are a group of distinctive 12th-century chess pieces, along with other game pieces, most of which are carved from walrus ivory. Discovered in 1831 on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, they may constitute some of the few complete, surviving medieval chess sets, although it is not clear if a set as originally made can be assembled from the pieces. When found, the hoard contained 93 artifacts: 78 chess pieces, 14 tablemen and one belt buckle. Today, 82 pieces are owned and usually exhibited by the British Museum in London, and the remaining 11 are at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Šachové figurky z ostrova Lewis jsou figurky nalezené roku 1831 v písčitém břehu v zátoce "Bay of Uig" na západním pobřeží skotského ostrova Lewis ve Vnějších Hebridách.


History.

The 1990 John Zorn album "Naked City" features a version of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" set over the bassline of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman".  In 1994, the experimental band Evolution Control Committee released the first modern mashup tracks on their hand-made cassette album, "Gunderphonic". These "Whipped Cream Mixes" combined a pair of Public Enemy a cappellas with instrumentals by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. First released on home-made cassettes in early 1992, it was later pressed on 7" vinyl, and distributed by Eerie Materials in the mid-1990s. The tracks gained some degree of notoriety on college radio stations in the United States.  The name Pop Will Eat Itself was taken from an "NME" feature on the band Jamie Wednesday, written by David Quantick, which proposed the theory that because popular music simply recycles good ideas continuously, the perfect pop song could be written by combining the best of those ideas into one track. Hence, Pop Will Eat Itself.  The mashup movement gained momentum again in 2001 with the release of the "2 Many DJs" album "As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2" by Soulwax's Dewaele brothers, which combined 45 different tracks; the same year a remix of Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" was also released by Freelance Hellraiser, which coupled Aguilera's vocals with the guitar track of "Hard To Explain" by New York's the Strokes, in a piece called "A Stroke of Genie-us".  Launched in San Francisco in 2003, Bootie was the first club night in the United States dedicated solely to the burgeoning art form of the bootleg mashup, and now hosts monthly parties in several cities around the globe, including Los Angeles, Paris, Boston, Munich, and New York City. The party's slogan, "Music for the A.D.D. Generation" also inspired the creation of "A.D.D", Israel's first mash-up dedicated party. The "Best of Bootie" mashup compilation series is compiled and produced each year by A Plus D, creators of the international mashup club Bootie. The compilations have been released in December every year since 2005, and are annual Internet sensations, with each album garnering over 5000GB+ of downloads.

A mashup (also mesh, mash up, mash-up, blend, or bootleg) is a creative work, usually in a form of a song, created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, usually by superimposing the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another, increasing the tempo and pitch while adding or reducing gaps to make it flow. To the extent that such works are "transformative" of original content, in the United States they may find protection from copyright claims under the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law.

Mashup (nebo také blend, mash up, mash-up či bastard pop) je hudební nahrávka, která se skládá z dvou nebo více písní spojených dohromady. Často je použita melodie z jedné písně a vokály z druhé.


Value.

The Planck length is defined as:  Solving the above will show the approximate equivalent value of this unit with respect to the metre:  where formula_3 is the speed of light in a vacuum, is the gravitational constant, and is the reduced Planck constant. The two digits enclosed by parentheses are the estimated standard error associated with the reported numerical value.  The Planck length is about 10 times the diameter of a proton. It can be defined using the radius of the hypothesized Planck particle.

History.

In 1899, Max Planck suggested that there existed some fundamental natural units for length, mass, time and energy. These he derived using dimensional analysis, using only the Newton gravitational constant, the speed of light and the "unit of action", which later became the Planck constant. The natural units he further derived became known as the "Planck length", the "Planck mass", the "Planck time" and the "Planck energy".

Visualisation.

The size of the Planck length can be visualized as follows: if a particle or dot about 0.1mm in size (which is at or near the smallest the unaided human eye can see) were magnified in size to be as large as the observable universe, then inside that universe-sized "dot", the Planck length would be roughly the size of an actual 0.1mm dot.

Theoretical significance.

The Planck length is the scale at which quantum gravitational effects are believed to begin to be apparent, where interactions require a working theory of quantum gravity to be analyzed. The Planck area is the area by which the surface of a spherical black hole increases when the black hole swallows one bit of information. To measure anything the size of Planck length, the photon momentum needs to be very large due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and so much energy in such a small space would create a tiny black hole with the diameter of its event horizon equal to a Planck length. The Planck length may represent the diameter of the smallest possible black hole.  The main role in quantum gravity will be played by the uncertainty principle formula_4, where formula_5 is the gravitational radius, formula_6 is the radial coordinate, formula_7 is the Planck length. This uncertainty principle is another form of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle between momentum and coordinate as applied to the Planck scale. Indeed, this ratio can be written as follows: formula_8, where formula_9 is the gravitational constant, formula_10 is body mass, formula_3 is the speed of light, formula_12 is the reduced Planck constant. Reducing identical constants from two sides, we get Heisenberg's uncertainty principle formula_13. The uncertainty principle formula_4 predicts the appearance of virtual black holes and wormholes (quantum foam) on the Planck scale.  -r^2(d\Omega^2+\sin^2\Omega d\varphi^2)</math> Substitute according to the uncertainty relations formula_15. We obtain It is seen that at the Planck scale formula_17 spacetime metric is bounded below by the Planck length (division by zero appears), and on this scale, there are real and virtual black holes.  The spacetime metric formula_18 fluctuates and generates a quantum foam. These fluctuations formula_19 in the macroworld and in the world of atoms are very small in comparison with formula_20 and become noticeable only on the Planck scale. Lorentz-invariance is violated at the Planck scale. The formula for the fluctuations of the gravitational potential formula_19 agrees with the Bohr-Rosenfeld uncertainty relation formula_22. Quantum fluctuations in geometry are superimposed on the large-scale slowly changing curvature predicted by the classical deterministic general relativity. Classical curvature and quantum fluctuations coexist with each other.  Any attempt to investigate the possible existence of shorter distances, by performing higher-energy collisions, would inevitably result in black hole production. Higher-energy collisions, rather than splitting matter into finer pieces, would simply produce bigger black holes. A decrease in formula_23 will result in an increase in formula_24 and vice versa.  The Planck length is sometimes misconceived as the minimum length of space-time, but this is not accepted by conventional physics, as this would require violation or modification of Lorentz symmetry. However, certain theories of loop quantum gravity do attempt to establish a minimum length on the scale of the Planck length, though not necessarily the Planck length itself, or attempt to establish the Planck length as observer-invariant, known as doubly special relativity.  The strings of string theory are modeled to be on the order of the Planck length. In theories of large extra dimensions, the Planck length has no fundamental physical significance, and quantum gravitational effects appear at other scales.

Planck length and Euclidean geometry.

The Planck length is the length at which quantum zero oscillations of the gravitational field completely distort Euclidean geometry. The gravitational field performs zero-point oscillations, and the geometry associated with it also oscillates. The ratio of the circumference to the radius varies near the Euclidean value. The smaller the scale, the greater the deviations from the Euclidean geometry. Let us estimate the order of the wavelength of zero gravitational oscillations, at which the geometry becomes completely unlike the Euclidean geometry. The degree of deviation formula_25 of geometry from Euclidean geometry in the gravitational field is determined by the ratio of the gravitational potential formula_26 and the square of the speed of light formula_3: formula_28. When formula_29, the geometry is close to Euclidean geometry; for formula_30, all similarities disappear. The energy of the oscillation of scale formula_31 is equal to formula_32 (where formula_33 is the order of the oscillation frequency). The gravitational potential created by the mass formula_10, at this length is formula_35, where formula_9 is the constant of universal gravitation. Instead of formula_10, we must substitute a mass, which, according to Einstein's formula, corresponds to the energy formula_38 (where formula_39). We get formula_40. Dividing this expression by formula_41, we obtain the value of the deviation formula_42. Equating formula_43, we find the length at which the Euclidean geometry is completely distorted. It is equal to Planck length formula_44.  As noted in Regge (1958) "for the space-time region with dimensions formula_31 the uncertainty of the Christoffel symbols formula_46 be of the order of formula_47, and the uncertainty of the metric tensor formula_48 is of the order of formula_49. If formula_31 is a macroscopic length, the quantum constraints are fantastically small and can be neglected even on atomic scales. If the value formula_31 is comparable to formula_7, then the maintenance of the former (usual) concept of space becomes more and more difficult and the influence of micro curvature becomes obvious". Conjecturally, this could imply that space-time becomes a quantum foam at the Planck scale.

In physics, the Planck length, denoted, is a unit of length that is the distance light in a perfect vaccum travels in one unit of Planck time. It is also the reduced Compton wavelength of a particle with Planck mass. It is equal to It is a base unit in the system of Planck units, developed by physicist Max Planck. The Planck length can be defined from three fundamental physical constants: the speed of light in a vacuum, the Planck constant, and the gravitational constant. It is the smallest distance about which current, experimentally corroborated, models of physics can make meaningful statements. At such small distances, the conventional laws of macro-physics no longer apply, and even relativistic physics requires special treatment.

Planckova délka je fyzikální konstanta značená formula_1. Jde současně také o jednotku délky přibližně rovné 1,6×10 metrů. Jde o základní jednotku v systému Planckových jednotek, nejčastěji užívaného systému přirozených jednotek. Planckova délka může být definována pomocí tří základních fyzikálních konstant: rychlostí světla ve vakuu, Planckovou konstantou a gravitační konstantou. Současná teorie považuje Planckovu délku za nejkratší dosažitelnou vzdálenost, o které se můžeme cokoliv dozvědět.


History.

Electric Boat.

General Dynamics traces its ancestry to John Philip Holland's Holland Torpedo Boat Company. Holland Torpedo was responsible for developing the U.S. Navy's first modern submarines which were purchased by the Navy in 1900.  In 1906 Electric Boat subcontracted submarine construction to the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts to build the submarines they had designed and won contracts for. In 1917, the name of the company was officially changed to Submarine Boat Corporation. In 1933 Electric Boat acquired ownership of a shipyard in Groton, Connecticut to build submarines. The first submarine built in Groton to be delivered to the U.S. Navy was the USS "Cuttlefish" in 1934.  Electric Boat was cash-flush but lacking in work following World War II, during which it produced 80 submarines for the Navy, with its workforce shrinking from 13,000 to 4,000 by 1946. President and chief executive officer John Jay Hopkins started looking for companies that would fit into Electric Boat's market in hopes of diversifying.

Canadair purchase.

Canadair was owned by the Canadian government and was suffering from the same post-war malaise as Electric Boat. It was up for sale, and Hopkins bought the company for $10 million in 1946. The factory alone was worth more than $22 million, according to the Canadian government's calculations, excluding the value of the remaining contracts for planes or spare parts. However, Canadair's production line and inventory systems were in disorder when Electric Boat purchased the company. Hopkins hired Canadian-born mass-production specialist H. Oliver West to take over the president's role and return Canadair to profitability. Shortly after the takeover, Canadair began delivering its new Canadair North Star (a version of the Douglas DC-4) and was able to deliver aircraft to Trans-Canada Airlines, Canadian Pacific Airlines, and British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) well in advance of their contracted delivery times.  Defense spending increased with the onset of the Cold War, and Canadair went on to win many Canadian military contracts for the Royal Canadian Air Force and became a major aerospace company. These included Canadair CT-133 Silver Star trainer, the Canadair Argus long-range maritime reconnaissance and transport aircraft, and the Canadair F-86 "Sabre". Between 1950 and 1958, 1,815 Sabres were built. Canadair also produced 200 CF-104 Starfighter supersonic fighter aircraft, a license-built version of the Lockheed F-104.  In 1976, General Dynamics sold Canadair to the Canadian Government for $38 million. Canadair was acquired by Bombardier Inc. in 1986.

General Dynamics emerges.

Aircraft production became increasingly important at Canadair, and Hopkins argued that the name "Electric Boat" was no longer appropriate—so Electric Boat was reorganized as General Dynamics on 24 April 1952.  General Dynamics purchased Convair from the Atlas Group in March 1953. The sale was approved by government oversight with the provision that GD would continue to operate out of Air Force Plant 4 in Fort Worth, Texas. This factory had been set up in order to spread out strategic aircraft production and rented to Convair during the war to produce B-24 Liberator bombers.  General Dynamics purchased Liquid Carbonic Corporation in September 1957 and controlled it as a wholly-owned subsidiary until being forced by a Federal antitrust ruling to spin it off to shareholders in January 1969. Liquid Carbonic was then bought that same month by the Houston Natural Gas Company.  Convair worked as an independent division under the General Dynamics umbrella. Over the next decade, the company introduced the F-106 Delta Dart Interceptor, the B-58 Hustler, and the Convair 880 and 990 airliners. Convair also introduced the Atlas missile platform, the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile.

Management churn.

Hopkins fell seriously ill during 1957 and was eventually replaced by Frank Pace later that year. Meanwhile, John Naish succeeded Joseph McNarney as president of Convair. Chicago industrialist Henry Crown became the company's largest shareholder and merged his Material Service Corporation with GD in 1959.  GD subsequently reorganized into Eastern Group in New York City and Western Group in San Diego, California, with the latter taking over all of the aerospace activities and dropping the Convair brand name from its aircraft in the process.  Frank Pace retired under pressure in 1962 and Roger Lewis, former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force and Pan American Airways CEO, was brought in as CEO. The company recovered, then fell back into the same struggles. In 1970, the board brought in McDonnell Douglas president Dave Lewis (no relation) as chairman and CEO, who served until retiring in 1985.

Aviation powerhouse.

During the early 1960s the company bid on the United States Air Force's Tactical Fighter, Experimental (TFX) project for a new low-level "penetrator". Robert McNamara, newly installed as the Secretary of Defense, forced a merger of the TFX with U.S. Navy plans for a new long-range "fleet defender" aircraft. In order to bid on a naval version successfully, GD partnered with Grumman, which would build a customized version for aircraft carrier duties. After four rounds of bids and changes, the GD/Grumman team finally won the contract over a Boeing submission.  The F-111 that resulted first flew in December 1964. The F-111B flew in May 1965, but the navy said that it was too heavy for use on aircraft carriers. With an unacceptable navy version, estimates for 2,400 F-111s, including exports, were sharply reduced, but GD still managed to make a $300-million profit on the project. Grumman went on to use many of the innovations of the F-111 in the highly successful F-14 Tomcat, an aircraft designed solely as a carrier-borne fighter.

Reorganization.

In May 1965, GD reorganized into 12 operating divisions based on product lines. The board decided to build all future planes in Fort Worth, ending plane production at Convair's original plant in San Diego but continuing with space and missile development there. In October 1970, Roger Lewis left and David S. Lewis from McDonnell Douglas was named CEO. Lewis required that the company headquarters move to St. Louis, Missouri, which occurred in February 1971.

F-16 success.

In 1972, GD bid on the USAF's Lightweight Fighter (LWF) project. GD and Northrop were awarded prototype contracts. GD's F-111 program was winding down, and the company desperately needed a new aircraft contract. It organized its own version of Lockheed's famed "Skunk Works", the Advanced Concepts Laboratory, and responded with a new aircraft design incorporating advanced technologies.  GD's YF-16 first flew in January 1974 and proved to have slightly better performance than the YF-17 in head-to-head testing. It entered production as the F-16 in January 1975 with an initial order of 650 and a total order of 1,388. The F-16 also won contracts worldwide, beating the F-17 in foreign competition as well. GD built an aircraft production factory in Fort Worth, Texas. F-16 orders eventually totaled more than 4,000, making it the largest and most successful program for the company, and one of the most successful western military projects since World War II.

Land Systems and Marine Systems focus.

In 1976, General Dynamics sold the struggling Canadair back to the Canadian government for $38 million. By 1984, General Dynamics had four divisions: Convair in San Diego, General Dynamics-Fort Worth, General Dynamics-Pomona, and General Dynamics-Electronics. In 1985 a further reorganization created the Space Systems Division from the Convair Space division. In 1985, GD also acquired Cessna. In 1986 the Pomona division (which mainly produced the Standard Missile and the Phalanx CIWS for the navy) was split up, creating the Valley Systems Division. Valley Systems produced the Stinger surface-to-air missile and the Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM). Both units were recombined into one entity in 1992.  Henry Crown, still GD's largest shareholder, died on 15 August 1990. Following this, the company started to rapidly divest its under-performing divisions under CEO William Anders. Cessna was re-sold to Textron in January 1992, the San Diego and Pomona missile production units to General Motors-Hughes Aerospace in May 1992, the Fort Worth aircraft production to Lockheed in March 1993 (a nearby electronics production facility was separately sold to Israeli-based Elbit Systems, marking that company's entry into the United States market), and its Space Systems Division to Martin Marietta in 1994. The remaining Convair Aircraft Structure unit was sold to McDonnell Douglas in 1994. The remains of the Convair Division were simply closed in 1996. GD's exit from the aviation world was short-lived, and in 1999 the company acquired Gulfstream Aerospace. The Pomona operation was closed shortly after its sale to Hughes Aircraft.  In 1995, General Dynamics purchased the privately held Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine, for $300 million, diversifying its shipbuilding portfolio to include U.S. Navy surface ships such as guided-missile destroyers. In 1998, the company acquired NASSCO, formerly National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, for $415 million. The San Diego shipyard produces U.S. Navy auxiliary and support ships as well as commercial ships that are eligible to be U.S.-flagged under the Jones Act.  Having divested itself of its aviation holdings, GD concentrated on land and sea products. GD purchased Chrysler's defense divisions in 1982, renaming them General Dynamics Land Systems. In 2003, it purchased the defense divisions of General Motors as well. It is now a major supplier of armored vehicles of all types, including the M1 Abrams, LAV 25, Stryker, and a wide variety of vehicles based on these chassis. Force Protection, Inc. was acquired by General Dynamics Land Systems in November 2011 for $350 million.

Recent history.

On August 19, 2008, GD agreed to pay $4 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the US Government claiming that a GD unit fraudulently billed the government for defectively manufactured parts used in US military aircraft and submarines. The US alleged that GD defectively manufactured or failed to test parts used in US military aircraft from September 2001 to August 2003, such as for the C-141 Starlifter transport plane. The GD unit involved, based in Glen Cove, New York, closed in 2004.  In 2014, the government of Canada announced it had selected the General Dynamics Land Systems subsidiary in London, Ontario, to produce Light Armoured Vehicles for Saudi Arabia as part of a $10 billion deal with the Canadian Commercial Corporation. The sale has been criticized by political opponents because of the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. In December 2018, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested Canada might scrap the deal, the company warned that doing so could lead to "billions of dollars in liability" and risk the loss of thousands of jobs. Trudeau has since said that while he is critical of Saudi conduct, he cannot simply scrap the deal because "Canada as a country of the rule of law needs to respect its contracts." On 30 January 2019, CEO Phebe Novakovic warned investors that the matter had "significantly impacted" the company's cash flow because Saudi Arabia was nearly $2 billion in arrears on its payments.  In 2018, General Dynamics acquired information technology services giant CSRA for $9.7 billion, and merged it with GDIT.  General Dynamics has been accused by groups such as Code Pink and Green America of "making money from human suffering by profiting off the migrant children held at U.S. detention camps" due to its IT services contracts with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, the government agency that operates shelters for unaccompanied children to include those separated from their families as part of the Trump administration family separation policy. The company says it has no role in constructing or operating detention centers, and that its contracts to provide training and technical services began in 2000 and have spanned across four presidential administrations. It was announced in September 2018 that the U.S. Navy awarded contracts for 10 new Arleigh Burke-class destroyers from General Dynamics Bath Iron Works and Huntington Ingalls Industries.  Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Gen. Jim Mattis re-joined the company's board of directors in August 2019. He had previously served on the board, but resigned and divested before becoming secretary of defense.

Timeline.

Electric Boat was established in 1899.

Company outline.

Business units.

As of 2019, General Dynamics consists of ten separate businesses as follows:

Combat systems.

Former General Dynamics Pomona Division Phalanx CIWS

Information Systems and Technology.

Information Systems and Technology represent 34% of the company's revenue.

Corporate governance.

Current members of the board of directors of General Dynamics are: Catherine Reynolds, Nicholas Chabraja, James Crown, William Fricks, Paul Kaminski, John Keane, Lester Lyles, Phebe Novakovic, William A. Osborn, Laura J. Schumacher and Robert Walmsley.

Financials.

General Dynamics has $30.9 billion in sales as of 2017 primarily military, but also civilian with its Gulfstream Aerospace unit and conventional shipbuilding and repair with its National Steel and Shipbuilding subsidiary.  In 2004, General Dynamics bid for the UK company Alvis plc, the leading British manufacturer of armored vehicles. In March the board of Alvis Vickers voted in favor of the £309m takeover. However at the last minute BAE Systems offered £355m for the company. This deal was finalized in June 2004.  The corporation's subsidiaries are donors to the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute.  10% of General Dynamic stock is owned by the Crown family, which includes Nancy Carrington Crown and Steven Crown. This is the family's largest single asset.

General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American aerospace and defense corporation. As of 2019, it was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the United States, and the sixth-largest in the world, by sales. The company ranked No. 92 in the 2019 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. It is headquartered in Reston, Fairfax County, Virginia.

General Dynamics je konglomerát zabývající se vojenskou výrobou a výzkumem. Dnešní podoba společnosti vznikla fúzemi s jinými firmami, odkupy konkurenčních společností a prodeji vlastních závodů. Aktivita společnosti je rozdělena do čtyř hlavních segmentů: námořní systémy, bojové systémy, informační systémy a technologie a letectví a kosmické systémy. Světově nejznámějším produktem General Dynamics je bezesporu F-16 Fighting Falcon, jehož výrobu však převzal v roce 1993 Lockheed. V současné době (leden 2009) se jedná o čtvrtou největší zbrojní společnost na světě, s čistým ziskem 2,07 miliardy dolarů ročně (za rok 2007).


Geography.

The terrain of Mato Grosso is varied and includes cliffs, canyons, and waterfalls. It is home to the Chapada dos Guimarães National Park, a unique environment of sandstone mountains that have eroded into amazingly varied terrain.  The biologically rich Pantanal, one of the world's largest wetland/prairie ecosystems, is also located within this state. Much environmental degradation has occurred to the Pantanal since the late 20th century because of development, and efforts to contain or slow it have had limited success. The Pantanal has a habitat similar to that of the Everglades in Florida in the United States, although the Pantanal is on a much larger scale.

History.

The Bororo Indians live in the Mato Grosso area. As late as 1880, soldiers patrolled lands on the outskirts of Cuiabá, Mato Grosso's capital and largest city, to protect settlers from Bororo raids.  By the end of the 19th century, although severely reduced by disease and by warfare with explorers, slave traders, prospectors, settlers, and other indigenous groups, as many as five to ten thousand Bororo continued to occupy central and eastern Mato Grosso, as well as western Goiás. The southwestern part of this state was ceded by Brazil to Bolivia in exchange for the then-Bolivian territory of Acre, according to the Treaty of Petrópolis in 1903.  This historically remote area attracted expeditions of exploration in the early 20th century that sought to find lost civilizations. A notable example was British Captain Percy Fawcett's expedition to find the Lost City of Z which he believed existed in the jungles of Brazil. Certain proponents of the Hollow Earth hypothesis speculated that the region had sites of access to the interior of the earth and its settlements.  In 1977, the state was split into two halves, and the neighboring state of Mato Grosso do Sul was created from the other part of its territory.

Demographics.

Mato Grosso had a high rate of population growth in the 20th century due to timber, ranching and agricultural development. The state as a whole has one of the lowest population densities of any Brazilian state. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), 3,441,998 people resided in the state as of 2018. The population density was 3.8 inhabitants/km.  Ethnically, the state includes a relatively high proportion of caboclos (persons of mixed European and Indian ancestry), as do other areas of interior Brazil. The last PNAD (National Research for Sample of Domiciles) census revealed the following numbers: 1,532,000 Brown (Mixed) people (50.92%); 1,179,000 White people (39.16%); 239,000 Black people (7.93%); 41,000 Amerindian people (1.37%); and 14,000 Asian people (0.45%).

Economy.

Agriculture is the largest component of the state's GDP at 40.8%, followed by the service sector at 40.2%. The industrial sector represents 19% of the GDP (2004). Mato Grosso's major exports include soybeans (83%), wood (5.6%), meats (4.8%), and cotton (3.3%) (2002).  The state's share of the Brazilian economy is 1.8% (2014).

Education.

Portuguese is the official national language and the primary language taught in schools. English and Spanish are also taught as part of the official high school curriculum.  More than 58 universities are located in the state of Mato Grosso.  Cuiabá is home to the following universities:

Culture.

The local culture is very rich due to the influences of and encounters with various cultures, such as indigenous peoples, colonial Spanish and other European settlers, Africans enslaved and transported there in the Atlantic slave trade, originally by the Portuguese, and other Europeans; and immigrants and settlers since the late 19th century. Two long periods of isolation also contributed to its development along different lines than the coastal areas of Brazil. Recent immigration has brought many urban influences to the state. Cuiabá has a rich cuisine influenced by natives. They have maintained traditional dances, craftwork and music.  Dance and music were traditionally connected to the worship of Catholic saints and their festivals, Saint Benedict (the city's patron saint) being one of the favorites.

Carnival.

The four-day period before Lent leading up to Ash Wednesday, known as Carnival, is well celebrated. As with every state in Brazil, Mato Grosso celebrates this holiday in a typical fashion - including parades, music, and dance - with wide participation.

Tourism and recreation.

Alta Floresta.

Fishing in the Teles Pires, São Benedito and Azul rivers is productive practically all year long.  With more than 570 species of catalogued birds and new species being discovered every year, the region of Alta Floresta, Cristalino and the Azul River Basin receives constant visits from ornithologists and bird watchers.

Chapada dos Guimarães.

The largest sandstone cavern in Brazil, Aroe Jari, extends nearly, and several prehistoric inscriptions can be found inside.

North Pantanal.

The Pantanal's backbone is the Paraguay River, which cuts through the region from north to south. The Miranda, Aquidauna, Taquari and Cuiabá rivers flow into the Paraguay River. From October to April, the high waters reveal outsized lakes, bays, river branches and outlets.  The Transpantaneira Highway connects the town of Poconé to Jofre Port, along the Cuiabá River bank. It is a dirt road with 126 wooden bridges, and extends for. On the way, it is possible to observe wild animals, especially alligators, capybaras and birds, among other wild animals.  SESC's Private Natural Heritage Reserve (RPPN) increases by one-third the total area of this preserved ecosystem in Mato Grosso.  Over 160 different species of birds have been observed in the Pantanal, and still many species in the area have not yet been identified.

Águas Quentes State Park.

The Águas Quentes State Park, the first protected area in Mato Grosso, is known for the healing powers of its thermal waters.

Lagoa Azul State Park.

The Gruta da Lagoa Azul State Park (Portuguese: "Parque Estadual Gruta da Lagoa Azul") is a state park in the municipality of Nobres, Mato Grosso, with an area of. Its primary attraction is a limestone cave with a pool of blue water and unusual cave formations. These have suffered from vandalism, causing the cave to be closed until measures to protect it could be implemented. The blue lagoon cave holds a pool of blue water formed from underground water of the Saloba River. The main entrance is filled in part by the water. The hall contains columns over in size and in diameter. There may be archaeological remains in the cave. The park has several other limestone caves. It is covered with deciduous forests, and is home to howler monkeys, tapirs, jaguars and macaws.

Infrastructure.

International airport.

The runway at Marechal Rondon International Airport was opened to traffic in 1956. In February 1975, Infraero took over the airport's administration and began various upgrades to meet the needs of the airport complex.  Marechal Rondon International Airport, located from the city center, started receiving international flights in 1996. It now serves more than half a million passengers a year.

Sports.

Cuiabá was one of twelve cities chosen to host the games of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which took place in Brazil.

Flag.

The state flag has similar colors to the flag of Brazil, with blue symbolizing the sky, green the vegetation, and white standing for peace. The star is yellow to symbolize the gold which attracted the first settlers. The flag was adopted by Decree No. 2 of January 31, 1890, just a few days after the adoption of the national flag. The Mato Grosso state flag was abolished by Law No. 1.046 of October 8, 1929, but reinstated by article 140 of the Constitution of the State of Mato Grosso on July 11, 1947.

Mato Grosso ( – lit. "Thick Bush") is one of the states of Brazil, the third largest by area, located in the western part of the country.

Mato Grosso je vnitrozemský brazilský spolkový stát, jenž se nachází v Středozápadním regionu Brazílie. Jeho hlavní město se jmenuje Cuiabá.


Discovery.

Until the 1990s it was unknown that dinosaurs like "Albertonykus" existed. A chain of new discoveries from Asia and South America exposed the existence of these previously unknown theropod dinosaurs. North American finds remained rare. The bones of "Albertonykus" were discovered through a coincidental association with a much larger theropod dinosaur. In 1910, paleontologist Barnum Brown and his crew found a site filled with the bones of the gigantic tyrannosaurid "Albertosaurus sarcophagus". They unearthed the remains of at least nine different specimens of "Albertosaurus" in the single site, but stopped digging after just two weeks. Renewed quarrying in the "Albertosaurus" bonebed in Dry Island Provincial Park again produced the remains of over twenty specimens of "Albertosaurus", and the quarry has yet to be fully excavated. It is not known why so many tyrannosaurs were found in one place: paleontologist Nick Longrich speculated that the site was part of a "predator trap", where food drew predators to their deaths. At the same site, over a dozen arm and leg bones belonging to an unknown species of small theropod were in 2002 excavated by a team of scientist led by Philip John Currie of the University of Alberta. The bones were then stored at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta.  In 2005 Nick Longrich, a paleontologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, happened upon the small fossils while comparing "Albertosaurus" claws to other dinosaur species. Longrich then analyzed the remains, concluding that they represented a previously unknown species. Although fragments of "Albertonykus" had been discovered before, they had never been identified as a separate species.

Description.

"Albertonykus" is the smallest known alvarezsaurid ever discovered in North America, measuring only 70 centimeters (2.5 ft) in length. Other estimates are 1.1 meters and 5 kg. Alvarezsaurs typically had slender hind legs, long rigid tails, and unusually short arms that were powerfully built to support a large claw. Although no skull bones of "Albertonykus" have been found, related animals from Mongolia show that they likely had long, slender snouts filled with tiny teeth similar to those of armadillos and anteaters. It is likely that "Albertonykus" ate insects, using its large thumb claw to tear open rotten logs to find its prey. As in other alvarezsaurs, the forelimbs of "Albertonykus" were specialized for digging, but were too short to permit burrowing. Unfortunately at this time the skeleton of "Albertonykus" is not complete, but its Mongolian relatives give us a distinct idea of what the rest of the skeleton would have looked like.  Possible prey items were evaluated and compared with the fossil record of social insects. Ants were not an important part of the ecosystem during the Cretaceous, and mound-building termites do not appear until the Eocene. This leaves the possibility that "Albertonykus" preyed on wood-nesting termites. This hypothesis was tested by examining petrified wood from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, where "Albertonykus" was found. The wood found there frequently contains borings, which resemble those of termites.

Classification.

"Albertonykus" is a member of an unusual theropod group known as the Alvarezsauridae and is one of only a few alvarezsaurid fossils that has been found outside of South America and Asia. After a phylogenetic analysis, it was shown that "Albertonykus" is the sister taxon of the Asian clade Mononykinae, which supported the hypothesis that the alvarezsaurs originated in South America, and then dispersed to Asia through North America. The unearthing of "Albertonykus" provided important information into the biology of the Alvarezsauridae.

Albertonykus (meaning "Alberta claw") is a genus of alvarezsaurid dinosaur from the Maastrichtian-age (Upper Cretaceous) rocks of the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta, Canada. It is known from forelimb and hindlimb remains from multiple individuals. All but two of the specimens come from a bonebed dominated by "Albertosaurus". This bonebed is located at the top of Unit 4 of the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, which dates to about 68.5 million years ago. "Albertonykus" is interpreted as having fed on wood-nesting termites because the forelimbs appear to be specialized for digging, but are too short for burrowing. "Albertonykus" is the earliest-known North American alvarezsaurid; isolated remains of alvarezsaurids are known from later rock units in Montana and Wyoming (USA).

Albertonykus ("dráp z Alberty") byl rod velmi malého, dravého nebo všežravého (teropodního) dinosaura z čeledi Alvarezsauridae. Žil v období svrchní křídy (geologický stupeň maastricht) na území dnešní Kanady (souvrství Horseshoe Canyon v Albertě).


Meta-ethical questions.

According to Richard Garner and Bernard Rosen, there are three kinds of meta-ethical problems, or three general questions: A question of the first type might be, "What do the words 'good', 'bad', 'right' and 'wrong' mean?" (see value theory). The second category includes questions of whether moral judgments are universal or relative, of one kind or many kinds, etc. Questions of the third kind ask, for example, how we can know if something is right or wrong, if at all. Garner and Rosen say that answers to the three basic questions "are not unrelated, and sometimes an answer to one will strongly suggest, or perhaps even entail, an answer to another."  A meta-ethical theory, unlike a normative ethical theory, does not attempt to evaluate specific choices as being better, worse, good, bad, or evil; although it may have profound implications as to the validity and meaning of normative ethical claims. An answer to any of the three example questions above would not itself be a normative ethical statement.

Moral semantics.

Moral semantics attempts to answer the first of the above questions: "What is the meaning of moral terms or judgments?" Answers may have implications for answers to the other two questions as well.

Centralism and non-centralism.

Yet another way of categorizing meta-ethical theories is to distinguish between centralist and non-centralist moral theories. The debate between centralism and non-centralism revolves around the relationship between the so-called "thin" and "thick" concepts of morality. Thin moral concepts are those such as good, bad, right, and wrong; thick moral concepts are those such as courageous, inequitable, just, or dishonest. While both sides agree that the thin concepts are more general and the thick more specific, centralists hold that the thin concepts are antecedent to the thick ones and that the latter are therefore dependent on the former. That is, centralists argue that one must understand words like "right" and "ought" before understanding words like "just" and "unkind." Non-centralism rejects this view, holding that thin and thick concepts are on par with one another and even that the thick concepts are a sufficient starting point for understanding the thin ones.  Non-centralism has been of particular importance to ethical naturalists in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as part of their argument that normativity is a non-excisable aspect of language and that there is no way of analyzing thick moral concepts into a purely descriptive element attached to a thin moral evaluation, thus undermining any fundamental division between facts and norms. Allan Gibbard, R. M. Hare, and Simon Blackburn have argued in favor of the fact/norm distinction, meanwhile, with Gibbard going so far as to argue that, even if conventional English has only mixed normative terms (that is, terms that are neither purely descriptive nor purely normative), we could develop a nominally English metalanguage that still allowed us to maintain the division between factual descriptions and normative evaluations.

Moral ontology.

Moral ontology attempts to answer the second of the above questions: "What is the nature of moral judgments?"

Moral epistemology.

Moral epistemology is the study of moral knowledge. It attempts to answer questions of the third sort above: "How may moral judgments be supported or defended?" and "Is moral knowledge possible?"  If one presupposes a cognitivist interpretation of moral sentences, morality is justified by the moralist's knowledge of moral facts, and the theories to justify moral judgements are epistemological theories.

In metaphilosophy and ethics, meta-ethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics and applied ethics.

Metaetika, nazývaná někdy též "analytická etika", je odvětví etiky, jež zkoumá povahu etických (morálních) pojmů, postojů a soudů, tj. jejich předpoklady metafyzické, epistemologické, sémantické, psychologické. Na rozdíl od tzv. normativní etiky, která se snaží odpovídat na otázky po tom, co je dobré či špatné či jak máme jednat, metaetika prověřuje možnosti samotné etiky: např. na základě čeho můžeme hovořit o něčem, jako je dobro, morálka či správnost.


Characteristics.

Horrorcore defines a style of hip hop music that focuses primarily on dark, violent, gothic, transgressive, macabre and/or horror-influenced topics that can include death, psychosis, psychological horror, mental illness, satanism, self-harm, cannibalism, mutilation, necrophilia, suicide, murder, torture, rape, drug abuse, and often supernatural or occult themes. The lyrics are often inspired by horror movies and are performed over moody, hardcore beats. According to rapper Mars, "If you take Stephen King or Wes Craven and you throw them on a rap beat, that's who I am." Horrorcore was described by "Entertainment Weekly" in 1995 as a "blend of hardcore rap and bloodthirsty metal." The lyrical content of horrorcore is sometimes described as being similar to that of death metal, and some have referred to the genre as "death rap". Horrorcore artists often feature dark imagery in their music videos and base musical elements of songs upon horror film scores.

History.

Origins.

It has been argued that Jimmy Spicer's 1980 single "Adventures of Super Rhyme" was perhaps the first example of anything that resembled horrorcore, due to the segment of the song in which Spicer recounts his experience of meeting Dracula. Following this were groups like Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and songs like Dana Dane's "Nightmares," which spun more frightening, imaginative narratives.  Since 1983, Ganxsta N.I.P. has performed horror-themed lyrics that he described as "Psycho Rap", but was not commonly considered to be horrorcore until the term came into mainstream prominence. Ganxsta N.I.P. has written lyrics for other groups, including Geto Boys who are also an influence on the early horrorcore sound.  In 1988, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince released "A Nightmare on My Street", which described an encounter with Freddy Krueger, and the Fat Boys recorded the similarly-themed "Are You Ready for Freddy" for the film "" and its soundtrack. 1987 is also the year Insane Poetry (at the time called His Majesti) released "Armed & Dangerous" & then their debut as Insane Poetry with "Twelve Strokes Till Midnight" [1988], one of the first examples of music specifically made to be horrorcore.  While Kool Keith later claimed to have "invented horrorcore", the first use of the term appeared on the group KMC's 1991 album "Three Men With the Power of Ten". Nonetheless, Kool Keith brought significant attention to horror-influenced hip hop with his lyrical content from his group the Ultramagnetic MC's and of course the 1996 release of his horror and science-fiction-influenced, absurdist, trippy, experimental album "Dr. Octagonecologyst".

Rise in the hip hop genre.

The Geto Boys' debut album, "Making Trouble", contained the dark and violent horror-influenced track "Assassins", which was cited by Joseph Bruce (Violent J of the horrorcore group Insane Clown Posse) in his book "Behind The Paint", as the first recorded horrorcore song. He said that the Geto Boys continued to pioneer the style with its second release, "Grip It! On That Other Level", with songs such as "Mind of a Lunatic" and "Trigga-Happy Nigga." The Geto Boys' 1991 album, "We Can't Be Stopped", was also influential on the horrorcore genre and contained themes of paranoia, depression, and psychological horror, especially in the track "Chuckie," and "Mind Playing Tricks on Me".  While rappers in the underground scene continued to release horrorcore music, including Big L, Insane Poetry, and Insane Clown Posse, the mid-90s brought an attempted mainstream crossover of the genre.  In 1994, according to "Icons of Hip Hop", horrorcore gained prominence in 1994 with the release of Flatlinerz' "U.S.A. (Under Satan's Authority)" and Gravediggaz' "6 Feet Deep" (released overseas as Niggamortis).  In 1995, an independent horror film called "The Fear" was released, which included a soundtrack that consisted entirely of horrorcore songs, including Insane Clown Posse's biggest radio hit, "Dead Body Man". 1995 also saw the release of Three 6 Mafia's debut album "Mystic Stylez" which touched on drug use, ritualistic sex, mass murder, torture and Satanism. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "E. 1999 Eternal" LP, furthered tales of the occult on songs such as "Mr. Ouija 2", "Mo' Murda", and "East 1999". Tension would soon rise between Bone Thugs and Three 6 over their presumed similarities in style and use of dark imagery.  In 2009, dark music themed website Fangoria named Tech N9ne's 2001 album "Anghellic" as an iconic and influential album to the genre, to the artist, and to hip-hop as a whole.  The genre is not popular with mainstream audiences as a whole; though in some cities like Detroit it is the dominant style of hip-hop and performers such as Insane Clown Posse, Eminem, and Twiztid as well as artists like Necro, from Brooklyn, have sold commercially well nationwide. Horrorcore has thrived in Internet culture and sustains an annual super show in Detroit called Wickedstock. Every Halloween since 2003, Horrorcore artists worldwide get together online and release a free compilation titled "Devilz Nite". According to the January 2004 BBC documentary "Underground USA", the subgenre "has a massive following across the US" and "is spreading to Europe". "Rolling Stone" in 2007 referred to it as a short-lived trend that generated more shlock than shock.  In 2019, experimental trio clipping. released "There Existed an Addiction to Blood", described as a "transmutation of horrorcore"

Controversy.

Some members of the law enforcement community have asserted that the horrorcore genre is dangerous and incites crime, and the genre's artists and followers have been linked to a wide variety of crime, ranging from mass murder to gang activity and drug trafficking.  In 1999, horrorcore group Insane Clown Posse was considered a potential influence on school shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. ICP responded that if the shooters had been Juggalos, they would have "gotten the whole damn school". However, Brooks Brown, the best friend of Dylan Klebold and a friend of both of the shooters, was, in fact, a Juggalo and had introduced Klebold to Insane Clown Posse's music. Horrorcore-influenced rapper Eminem also received negative publicity in the wake of the massacre and has referenced it throughout his discography.  In 2005, horrorcore fan Jeff Weise committed the Red Lake Senior High School massacre. Weise was a fan of horrorcore rappers such as Mars and Prozak.  In 2009, horrorcore rapper Syko Sam committed the Farmville murders, bludgeoning a pastor and his family to death in an apparent anti-Christian hate crime. Like Weise, he was a fan of horrorcore rapper Mars.  Juggalo gangs have caused law enforcement concern throughout the United States due to their tendency for extreme violence and have been linked to diverse crimes. Arizona Department of Public Safety Detective Michelle Vasey has expressed concern at the Juggalos high potential for violence, stating "The weapons, they prefer, obviously, hatchets... We've got battle-axes, we've got machetes, anything that can make the most violent, gruesome wound," and "Some of the homicides we're seeing with these guys are pretty nasty, gruesome, disgusting homicides, where they don't care who's around, what's around, they're just out to kill anybody." A 2017 Denver Police Department guide warned that even Juggalos who are not affiliated with a gang are prone to commit "murder, shootings, kidnapping, rape, necrophilia, cannibalism, assault, and arson" and that "such acts give a Juggalo a sense of pride and street credit amongst peers". Allegedly horrorcore-related criminal activity has, in rare cases, even branched out into ad-hoc domestic terrorism, with a Juggalo-led terrorist cell calling itself the "Black Snake Militia" attempting to raid a National Guard armory in 2012.

Horrorcore is a subgenre of hip hop music based on horror-themed and often darkly transgressive lyrical content and imagery. Its origins derived from certain hardcore hip hop and gangsta rap artists, such as the Geto Boys, which began to incorporate supernatural, occult, or psychological horror themes into their lyrics. Unlike most hardcore and gangsta rap artists, horrorcore artists often push the violent content and imagery in their lyrics beyond the realm of realistic urban violence, to the point where the violent lyrics become gruesome, ghoulish, unsettling, or slasher film- or splatter film-esque. While exaggerated violence and the supernatural are common in horrorcore, the genre also frequently presents more realistic yet still disturbing portrayals of mental illness and drug abuse. Some horrorcore artists eschew supernatural themes or exaggerated violence in favor of more subtle and dark psychological horror imagery and lyrics.

Horrorcore je hudební styl, který kombinuje rap, metal, případně rock. V textech interpreti jmenují současné problémy pomocí černého, morbidního humoru, ironie, ale i sprostých slov a tvrdého rapu. V písních se rapuje např. o vraždách, etnicko-politických záležitostech, drogách, sexu, satanismu, kanibalismu.


Characteristics.

The serpent usually has six holes, which are ordered in two groups of three. On early models, the fingerholes were keyless, like those of a recorder. However, later models added keys as on a clarinet, although they were for additional holes (out of reach of the fingers), while the original holes remained unkeyed, and are covered or uncovered directly by the player's fingers.

History.

The instrument is claimed to have been invented by Canon Edmé Guillaume in 1590 in Auxerre, France, and was first used to strengthen the sound of choirs in plainchant. This date for the invention of the serpent did not appear until 1743, in Jean Lebeuf's "Mémoires Concernant l'Histoire Ecclésiastique et Civile d’Auxerre". Herbert Heyde asserts the serpent evolved from a type of bass cornetto and was invented in Italy in the 16th century. Around the middle of the 18th century, it began to appear in military bands and orchestras, and Mozart used two serpentini in his 1771 opera Ascanio in Alba. Richard Wagner used the serpent in place of the double bassoon in his opera "Rienzi". The instrument also appears in operatic scores by Spontini and Bellini, but it was replaced in the 19th century by a fully keyed brass instrument, the ophicleide, and later on by valved bass brass instruments such as the euphonium and tuba. After that the serpent dropped off in popularity for a period of time.  Bernard Herrmann used a serpent in the scores of "White Witch Doctor" (1953) and "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1959), as did Jerry Goldsmith in his score for "Alien" (1979).  Luigi Morleo composed in 2012 "Diversità: NO LIMIT" – Concerto for Serpent and String Orchestra, World Premiere at Conservatory of Music "Nino Rota" – Monopoli (Ba) – Italy.

The serpent is a bass wind instrument, descended from the cornett, and a distant ancestor of the tuba, with a mouthpiece like a brass instrument but side holes like a woodwind. It is usually a long cone bent into a snakelike shape, hence the name. The serpent is closely related to the cornett, although it is not part of the cornett family, due to the absence of a thumb hole. It is generally made out of wood, with walnut being a particularly popular choice. The outside is covered with dark brown or black leather. Despite wooden construction and the fact that it has finger holes rather than valves, it is usually classed as a brass; the Hornbostel–Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification places it alongside trumpets.

Serpent je kontrabasový typ cinku, nejstaršího žesťového nástroje. Tento mohutný nástroj připomíná vlnícího se černého hada, odtud jeho název. Part pro serpent napsal např. Georg Friedrich Händel ve své „Vodní hudbě“. Přestože nejoblíbenější byl v baroku (užívaný pro držení basové linky), ještě v 19. století se tento nástroj poměrně běžně používal. Vyráběl se ze dřeva, přestože díky nátrubku patří mezi žestě, a pro chromatizaci tonů sloužily dírky zakrývané hráčovými prsty, podobně jako u zobcové flétny. Dělaly se serpenty do pochodu i pro hru vsedě. Na přelomu 19. a 20. století však serpent úplně vyšel z používání.


Mouthpiece design.

The mouthpiece has a large effect on instrument sound. Major effects are due to the shape of the cup, shape of the throat, and the inner rim diameter. In addition, players often choose a mouthpiece that complements their playing styles. In general, brass players who concentrate on the upper range prefer a mouthpiece with a narrow bore, and players who emphasize the lower range prefer a wider bore. The cup depth also heavily influences the tone of the brass instrument. A shallow cup will brighten the sound, which is good for trumpeters doing a solo, while the deep cups darken the sound, which is better for blending in with an orchestra.

Material.

Makers commonly construct mouthpieces from one of two types of material, with different costs, properties, and features. Metal mouthpieces can be plated with some other metal. Some of the following assertions, especially those regarding the effect of plating on tone color, are questioned by many players and specialists.

Brass.

Mouthpieces have traditionally been formed of solid brass. Due to brass often containing lead and being toxic upon contact, brass mouthpieces are usually plated with either gold or silver to protect the player from potential brass poisoning.

Plastic.

Plastic mouthpieces are usually made of Lexan plastic, and are often available in various colors. They are durable and don't dent as do metal mouthpieces. Less expensive than metal mouthpieces, players commonly use them when playing outdoors—particularly marching brass players—because their heat conductivity is far less than in a metal mouthpiece. Players who prefer metal mouthpieces generally believe plastic mouthpieces have an inferior tone quality and feel compared to metal.

Other.

Recent additions to the mouthpiece world include stainless steel, titanium, and wood. They are relatively rare, produced by few manufacturers. Some players feel stainless steel and titanium mouthpieces provide advantages over the classic brass mouthpiece, including, anecdotally, a more centered feel and sound, as stainless steel and titanium do not absorb as many vibrations as brass, they require much less care, etc.—but they are much more expensive. (Titanium mouthpieces cost up to US$400 each.)

Silver plating.

Silver plating is common on all brass mouthpieces because it is cost-effective and good in terms of tone quality. It is also moderately germicidal. Silver plating is not as comfortable or as expensive as gold, but has properties and qualities that some feel facilitate certain styles of playing. Some believe that silver plate provides a clearer, darker sound than gold and is good for styles of playing that require clarity and projection. Silver-plate is less expensive than gold, but requires more maintenance because it tarnishes easily. Slightly tarnished silver-plate can be polished back to its brightness with silver polish.

Gold plating.

Some players believe gold-plated mouthpieces on brass instruments create a fuller, richer tone that can also be somewhat darker timbre. For people allergic to the nickel found in most silver, this is the best (but not cheapest) way to play a brass instrument without discomfort. Gold does not tarnish, and subsequently requires little maintenance apart from regular washing with soap and water. The extreme price of gold, however, means that the plating is usually relatively thin and thus fragile, and can even be worn away with use.

Sizes.

Each mouthpiece company uses a different labeling system. A larger number can mean a larger "or" smaller mouthpiece depending on the company. Likewise, the letters mean different things depending on the company. Even if companies appear to share marking systems it may be that same-marked mouthpieces from different manufacturers are different, although usually the differences are relatively small; there is no universally-recognized industry standard.

The mouthpiece on brass instruments is the part of the instrument placed on the player's lips. The mouthpiece is a simple circular opening that leads, via a semi-spherical or conical cavity, to the main body of the instrument. The mouthpiece can be detached from the main instrument to practise the player's embouchure.

Nátrubek nebo také náustek je kovový nástavec žesťových hudebních nástrojů. Hráč vytváří tóny chvěním svých rtů a současně foukáním do nátrubku. Čím jsou rty napjatější, tedy čím větší je tlak vzduchu překonávajícího úzkou škvíru mezi sevřenými rty, tím vyšší tón zazní. Ke hraní nejvyšších tónů je třeba dobré techniky nátisku. Naopak tóny pod standardním rozsahem nástroje, tzv. „pedálové“, vyžadují téměř otevřená ústa.


Life and works.

He was born in Honfleur (Calvados) on 28 December 1864, and educated in Paris for law. In 1885 he began to contribute to the Parisian reviews, and his verses were published by most of the French and Belgian periodicals favorable to the symbolist writers. Having begun as a Parnassian, he retained the classical tradition, though he adopted some of the innovations of Jean Moréas and Gustave Kahn. His vaguely suggestive style shows the influence of Stéphane Mallarmé, of whom he was an assiduous disciple.  His first volume of poems, "Lendemains", appeared in 1885, and among numerous later volumes are "Poèmes anciens et romanesques" (1890), "Les Jeux rustiques et divins" (1890), "Les Médailles d'argile" (1900), "La Cité des eaux" (1903). He is also the author of a series of realistic novels and tales, among which are "La Canne de jaspe" (2nd ed., 1897), "La Double maîtresse" (5th ed., 1900), "Les Vacances d’un jeune homme sage" (1903), and "Les Amants singuliers" (1905). Régnier married Marie de Heredia, daughter of the poet José María de Heredia, and herself a novelist and poet under the pen name of Gérard d'Houville.  He was a contributor to "Le Visage de l'Italie", a 1929 book about Italy prefaced by Benito Mussolini.  "La Canne de jaspe" and "Histoires Incertaines" (1919) were translated in 2012 by Brian Stableford under the title "A Surfeit of Mirrors"  Henri de Régnier died in 1936 at age 71 and was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Henri-François-Joseph de Régnier (28 December 1864 – 23 May 1936) was a French symbolist poet, considered one of the most important of France during the early 20th century.

Henri de Régnier, plným jménem Henri-François-Joseph de Régnier, (28. prosinec 1864, Honfleur, Francie – 23. květen 1936, Paříž) byl francouzský symbolistický básník, spisovatel a kritik.


Synopsis.

Season 1.

Season 1 chronicles the period of Henry VIII's reign in which his effectiveness as king is tested by international conflicts and political intrigue in his own court. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey plays a major part, acting as Henry's trusted advisor.  In Episode 1, Wolsey persuades Henry to keep the peace with France, and the two kings meet at Calais to sign pact of friendship. The pressure of wanting a male heir compels Henry to question his marriage to Queen Katherine of Aragon. He also has a string of affairs and fathers an illegitimate son in episode 2 with his mistress Elizabeth Blount, who is also one of Queen Katherine's ladies-in-waiting.  Anne Boleyn returns from attending the French court, and she catches Henry's eye. Her father and uncle encourage her to seduce the King, though she also falls in love with Henry as the season unfolds. She refuses to become his mistress but insists that he marry her, which pushes him to use Cardinal Wolsey to take action against the Queen. The King instructs him to get papal dispensation for his divorce, on the grounds that his wife did indeed consummate her marriage to his brother Arthur. In Episode 6, Wolsey makes increasingly desperate efforts to persuade the Catholic Church to grant a royal divorce, primarily as a result of Emperor Charles V's influence over the Pope as Katherine's nephew—but this starts to weaken his position.  In episode 7, the mysterious sweating sickness arrives in England, killing both the high-born and low-born, and Henry is terrified of catching it; he secludes himself in the countryside away from court with his herbal medicines. Anne Boleyn contracts the illness but recovers. A papal envoy arrives in England to decide on the annulment. The court convenes a special session at which both Henry and Katherine initially are present, and it eventually decides in favor of Katherine. Cardinal Wolsey is stripped of his office in episode 9 and banished to York, where he pleads with the King to restore him to office. Henry chooses his loyal friend Sir Thomas More as Wolsey's successor.  In the final episode, Wolsey makes one last desperate attempt to save himself by allying himself with his former enemy Queen Katherine, but their plot is discovered and Wolsey kills himself during his internment in the Tower of London after saying a brief prayer apologizing for his sins.

Season 2.

Henry will do whatever it takes to marry Anne Boleyn, even defying Pope Paul III. He prepares to take Anne on a royal visit to France, having demanded loyalty from the English clergy. The papacy in Rome organises an assassination plot against Anne but the assassins' attempts fail.  In Episode 3 the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury annuls Henry's marriage, clearing the way for Henry to marry a by now pregnant Anne, which also increases the growing rift between England and Rome. Bishop Fisher refuses to recognise the validity of Henry's marriage — after Henry issues a decree ordering all his subjects to recognise their new Queen — and is finally joined by Sir Thomas More, who is granted permission by Henry to retire from his public office. In Episode 5, Fisher and More's refusal to sign an oath of allegiance recognising Henry's supreme authority as head of the English church eventually leads to their executions.  In Episode 6, Thomas Cromwell, who has assumed More's office as Chancellor of England, announces his plans to cleanse England of dissenters to the New Monarchy. Also, England's relationship with France is complicated by King Francis's refusal to unite their kingdoms in marriage, thus causing Henry to question his decision to have married Anne. Episode 7 sees an increasingly ill and disillusioned Katherine who has been forbidden to see her daughter, Lady Mary, and Cromwell has legislation approved by Parliament agreeing to the dissolution of first the smaller and then the larger abbeys and monasteries.  In Episode 8, Henry has Cromwell initiate overtures to the Emperor to make peace with Rome as a bulwark against a hostile France, and the King starts to pay court to Lady Jane Seymour after Anne's two miscarriages following the birth of Princess Elizabeth. It is his long-time friend, Charles Brandon who, with Cromwell, eventually alerts Henry to Anne's apparent indiscretions and her fate is sealed. She is conducted to the Tower of London and her four supposed lovers, one of whom is her own brother, are executed followed eventually by her own — delayed by some hours as a result of the French executioner's late arrival from Calais. Her devious father, who shows little remorse at the death of his son and Anne's impending death, is allowed to go free but banished from court and is shown leaving the Tower without even acknowledging his daughter waving from her cell window.  On the morning of his Queen's execution, Henry enjoys a lavish breakfast, symbolically consisting of the mate of a swan he has seen outside his window, as he looks forward to a new start and heirs with Lady Jane Seymour.

Season 3.

The third season focuses on Henry's marriages to Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, the birth of his son Prince Edward, his ruthless suppression of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the downfall of Thomas Cromwell, and the beginnings of Henry's relationship with the free-spirited Catherine Howard.  Henry happily marries his third wife but his honeymoon period is soon spoilt by a growing resentment against the Reformation in the north and east of England. The growing band of rebels disperses in Lincolnshire but gathers strength in Yorkshire, primarily because of its able leaders such as Robert Aske and Lord Darcy. The royal troops, commanded by the Duke of Suffolk, are severely outnumbered and are forced to parley, whilst on the Continent the papacy sends a newly appointed English cardinal to persuade the Spanish and French monarchs to support the English rebellion, deemed the Pilgrimage of Grace by its followers as their objective is to restore the old Catholic religious practices.  In Episode 3 Henry is determined to stop at nothing to suppress the revolt, his fears stirred by remembrances of the Cornish uprising during his father's reign. He deceitfully persuades the rebel leaders to lay down their arms and disperse their followers, promising to hold a Parliament in York to answer all their grievances, which is never convoked. A second uprising is savagely suppressed and the leaders executed as Henry, via Cromwell, instructs Suffolk to shed quantities of blood to act as an example. Jane Seymour goes into labor and produces a baby boy, but she dies soon after as a result of her protracted labors. In Episode 5, Henry retires from public view, bereft by the loss of his Queen, but finally emerges: his first act is to get the church leaders to agree on a new Protestant doctrine, one that threatens to undermine Cromwell's Reformation.  In the ensuing episodes, the King has the last remaining Plantagenet heirs, the Pole family, put to death (mother, son and grandson) as a result of Cardinal Reginald Pole's actions to undermine his rule. This creates a schism with Spain and France and, upon Cromwell's urging, Henry agrees to an alliance with the Protestant League by marrying Anne of Cleves after first dispatching the English Ambassador to Holland to negotiate terms, followed by Hans Holbein to paint her likeness. However, Cromwell's plans to bolster the Reformation are undone by Henry's dislike for Anne, whom he calls a 'Flanders mare'. He is unable to consummate his marriage and vents his frustration on his Lord Privy Seal, which is encouraged by the Duke of Suffolk in league with Edward Seymour, as both want Cromwell removed from office. With his enemies encircling him, Cromwell pleads with Anne of Cleves to submit herself to her husband, but she is powerless to deflect King Henry's antipathy towards her. Finally, Cromwell is dragged off to the Tower after being accused of being a traitor by the King's Council and, despite writing a letter begging his master's forgiveness, is gruesomely beheaded by a drunken executioner.  In the meantime, Sir Francis Bryan is instructed by the Duke of Suffolk to find a woman to rekindle Henry's jaded love interest, and the beautiful and very young Catherine Howard, a distant relation of the Duke of Norfolk, is introduced at court and, catching the King's interest, he beds her in secret and a new romance begins.

Season 4.

The fourth and final season covers Henry's ill-fated marriage to Catherine Howard and his final, more congenial, marriage to Catherine Parr. The ageing King seeks military glory by capturing Boulogne, France. In his final hours, he is troubled by the ghosts of his dead wives.  Henry marries 17 year old Catherine Howard, and, besotted by her beauty, calling her "his rose without a thorn", feels rejuvenated. Catherine starts to dally with the King's groom, Thomas Culpepper, and is encouraged by her senior lady-in-waiting, Lady Rochford — Henry's sister-in-law — who is also being bedded by Culpepper. In Episode 2, Henry invites his former wife, Anne of Cleves, to court to celebrate Christmas as he wants to reward her for keeping her word to him and for her loyalty. She, in turn, is grateful for the charity he has shown towards her. After the festivities, he is struck down once again by his leg wound — from his former jousting days — while Catherine is with Culpepper.  Feeling the need for company, Henry visits Anne of Cleves and has a liaison with her. He and Catherine embark on the royal Passage to the North to forgive the former rebels, accompanied by the Princess Mary who is popular with the King's northern subjects. It is during this period that Catherine and Culpepper consummate their relationship and Catherine is truly in love with him. In Episode 4, Henry makes friendly overtures to the French Ambassador, hoping to prevent an invasion, and Francis Dereham, Catherine's former lover when they both resided with the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, arrives at court and blackmails the Queen into making him her private secretary. Some weeks later Henry receives a secret letter about their prior sexual exploits.  In Episode 5 the King grants permission to the Earl of Hertford to investigate the Queen's infidelity. He plans to pardon her but is then informed by his Council of her affair with Culpepper — revealed by Dereham under torture — and he has all three executed, along with Lady Rochford who has gone mad in the Tower. On the scaffold, Catherine states that, although Queen of England, she would have preferred to have been Thomas Culpepper's wife. In Episode 6, Henry is courted by both Spain and Rome to form a military alliance against the French, who have allied with the Turks, and he is persuaded to form an alliance with the Emperor and invade France. Thomas Seymour introduces Catherine Parr at court and she catches the King's eye, even though married. Henry pursues her and sends Seymour over to Belgium to remove him as a love rival.  Military preparations are made and English troops lay siege to Boulogne, bombarding it with cannon as an Italian engineer digs a tunnel to blow up the castle. Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, captures a French father and daughter and falls in love with the daughter Brigitte. At home, Catherine Parr is acting as Regent in Henry's absence and uses her power to further the Protestant cause but is checked by Bishop Gardiner and his Catholic faction, supported by the Princess Mary. In Episode 8, the castle of Boulogne is overcome and the keys to the city handed over to Henry by the French mayor. Henry returns to court in triumph, leaving the Earl of Surrey in charge of the new possession.  At home, Henry is disturbed by the struggle between the Catholic and Protestant factions and Catherine alienates him through her support of the Reformation. Bishop Gardiner continues his campaign against heretics and gathers enough evidence to persuade the King to issue an arrest warrant against the Queen for heresy. In the meantime, Henry Howard, now Lieutenant General Surrey, loses a disastrous battle at Boulogne and, in an attempt to usurp power away from the new men like the Seymours and Richard Rich, he is arrested and tried for treason and executed, despite the paucity of evidence against him.  In Episode 10 an increasingly frail Henry is facing his own mortality. His mind is on the succession and he appoints Edward Seymour, the Earl of Hertford, to be Lord Protector until Prince Edward reaches his maturity. Catherine, knowing the mortal danger she is in, orders her ladies-in-waiting to destroy all their heretical books and no longer to discuss religious matters; she also submits herself to her husband and he pardons her. Charles Brandon, the King's most trustworthy friend and loyal servant, is reunited with Henry for one final meeting before he dies. As the end approaches, the ghosts of Henry's first three wives confront him over their ends and his treatment of their children. Henry orders his family to spend their Christmas at Greenwich, bidding them his final farewell and instructing the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth to care for their brother. The final scene has him approving the portrait painted for him by Hans Holbein, depicting him as a virile, youthful King.

Departures from history.

Many events in the series differ from events as they actually happened in history. The series takes liberties with character names, relationships, historical costume, physical appearance, and the timing of events. As creator Hirst said, "Showtime commissioned me to write an entertainment, a soap opera, and not history.... And we wanted people to watch it." He added that some changes were made for production considerations and some to avoid viewer confusion, so "any confusion created by the changes is outweighed by the interest the series may inspire in the period and its figures."

Reception.

The premiere of "The Tudors" on 1 April 2007, was the highest-rated Showtime series debut in three years. On 23 March 2008, "The New York Times" called "The Tudors" a "primitively sensual period drama... [that] critics could take or leave, but many viewers are eating up." A 28 March 2008 review, also by the "New York Times," reported that "despite the scorching authenticity of some performances," in particular the "star-making, breakout performance of Natalie Dormer as the defiant, courageous proto-feminist martyr Anne Boleyn" the series "fails to live up to the great long-form dramas cable television has produced" largely because "it radically reduces the era's thematic conflicts to simplistic struggles over personal and erotic power." According to the ratings site Metacritic, the show had 64% favourable reviews for the first season, 68% for the second season, 74% for the third season, and 63% for the fourth.

Ratings.

In the United States, the first-season premiere drew almost 870,000 viewers. The premiere earned a combined one million views online and via cable affiliates.

Media releases.

An original soundtrack for each season, composed by Trevor Morris, has been released by Varèse Sarabande.

Awards and nominations.

"The Tudors" was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Drama Series in 2007. Jonathan Rhys Meyers was also nominated for the Best Actor in a Television Drama Golden Globe for his role.  The series was nominated for eight Irish Film and Television Awards in 2008 and won seven, including Best Drama Series, acting awards for Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Lead Actor), Nick Dunning (Supporting Actor) and Maria Doyle Kennedy (Supporting Actress), and craft awards for Costume Design, Production Design and Hair/Makeup. Brian Kirk was also nominated for Directing, but lost to Lenny Abrahamson of "Prosperity". The series won the 2007 59th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards for Outstanding Costumes for a Series and Outstanding Main Title Theme Music. Later the series won six awards at the Irish Film and Television Awards in 2009 including Drama Series, Director, Actor in a Supporting Role, Actress in a Supporting Role, Costume Design and Make Up & Hair. In 2010 it was nominated for seven Irish Film and Television Awards, winning one in the category Best Supporting Actress in Television (Sarah Bolger).

External links.

The Tudors is a historical fiction television series set primarily in 16th-century England, created and written by Michael Hirst and produced for the American premium cable television channel Showtime. The series was a collaboration among American, British, and Canadian producers, and was filmed mostly in Ireland. It is named after the Tudor dynasty as a whole, although it is based specifically upon the reign of King Henry VIII. The series was produced by Peace Arch Entertainment for Showtime in association with Reveille Productions, Working Title Television, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and was filmed in Ireland. The first two episodes debuted on DirecTV, Time Warner Cable OnDemand, Netflix, Verizon FiOS On Demand, Internet Movie Database and on the website of the series before the official premiere on Showtime. "The Tudors" premiered on 1 April 2007; it was the highest-rated Showtime series in three years. In April 2007, the show was renewed for a second season, and in that month the BBC announced it had acquired exclusive United Kingdom broadcast rights for the series, which it started to broadcast on 5 October 2007. The CBC began broadcasting the show on 2 October 2007.

Tudorovci (v anglickém originále The Tudors) je historický televizní seriál vytvořený a sepsaný britským scenáristou Michaelem Hirstem. Seriál je zasazen do období počátku vlády anglického krále Jindřicha VIII. a jeho královské dynastie Tudorovců.