Causes.

There are several causes of vignetting. Sidney F. Ray distinguishes the following types:  A fourth cause is unique to digital imaging:  A fifth cause is unique to analog imaging:

Mechanical vignetting.

Mechanical vignetting occurs when light beams emanating from object points located off-axis are partially blocked by external objects such as thick or stacked filters, secondary lenses, and improper lens hoods. This has the effect of changing the entrance pupil shape as a function of angle (resulting in the path of light being partially blocked). Darkening can be gradual or abrupt – the smaller the aperture, the more abrupt the vignetting as a function of angle.  When some points on an image receives no light at all due to mechanical vignetting (the paths of light to these image points is completely blocked), then this results in a restriction of the field of view (FOV) – parts of the image are then completely black.

Optical vignetting.

This type of vignetting is caused by the physical dimensions of a multiple element lens. Rear elements are shaded by elements in front of them, which reduces the effective lens opening for off-axis incident light. The result is a gradual decrease in light intensity towards the image periphery. Optical vignetting is sensitive to the lens aperture and can often be cured by a reduction in aperture of 2–3 stops. (An "increase" in the F-number.)

Natural vignetting.

Unlike the previous types, natural vignetting (also known as natural illumination falloff) is not due to the blocking of light rays. The falloff is approximated by the cos or "cosine fourth" law of illumination falloff. Here, the light falloff is proportional to the fourth power of the cosine of the angle at which the light impinges on the film or sensor array. Wideangle rangefinder designs and the lens designs used in compact cameras are particularly prone to natural vignetting. Telephoto lenses, retrofocus wideangle lenses used on SLR cameras, and telecentric designs in general are less troubled by natural vignetting. A gradual grey filter or postprocessing techniques may be used to compensate for natural vignetting, as it cannot be cured by stopping down the lens. Some modern lenses are specifically designed so that the light strikes the image parallel or nearly so, eliminating or greatly reducing vignetting.

Pixel vignetting.

Pixel vignetting only affects digital cameras and is caused by angle-dependence of the digital sensors. Light incident on the sensor at normal incident produces a stronger signal than light hitting it at an oblique angle. Most digital cameras use built-in image processing to compensate for optical vignetting and pixel vignetting when converting raw sensor data to standard image formats such as JPEG or TIFF. The use of offset microlenses over the image sensor can also reduce the effect of pixel vignetting.

Post-shoot.

For artistic effect, vignetting is sometimes applied to an otherwise un-vignetted photograph and can be achieved by burning the outer edges of the photograph (with film stock) or using digital imaging techniques, such as masking darkened edges. The Lens Correction filter in Photoshop can also achieve the same effect.  In digital imaging, this technique is used to create a low fidelity (photography) appearance in the picture.

In photography and optics, vignetting (; ) is a reduction of an image's brightness or saturation toward the periphery compared to the image center. The word "vignette", from the same root as "vine", originally referred to a decorative border in a book. Later, the word came to be used for a photographic portrait that is clear at the center and fades off toward the edges. A similar effect is visible in photographs of projected images or videos off a projection screen, resulting in a so-called "hotspot" effect.

Vinětace je vada optických soustav, projevující se nižším jasem na okrajích zobrazovaného obrazu. Nejčastěji je tato vada zmiňována v souvislosti s objektivy optických přístrojů.


Principles.

Levels of analysis.

A central tenet of cognitive science is that a complete understanding of the mind/brain cannot be attained by studying only a single level. An example would be the problem of remembering a phone number and recalling it later. One approach to understanding this process would be to study behavior through direct observation, or naturalistic observation. A person could be presented with a phone number and be asked to recall it after some delay of time; then the accuracy of the response could be measured. Another approach to measure cognitive ability would be to study the firings of individual neurons while a person is trying to remember the phone number. Neither of these experiments on its own would fully explain how the process of remembering a phone number works. Even if the technology to map out every neuron in the brain in real-time were available and it were known when each neuron fired it would still be impossible to know how a particular firing of neurons translates into the observed behavior. Thus an understanding of how these two levels relate to each other is imperative. "The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience" says “the new sciences of the mind need to enlarge their horizon to encompass both lived human experience and the possibilities for transformation inherent in human experience.” This can be provided by a functional level account of the process. Studying a particular phenomenon from multiple levels creates a better understanding of the processes that occur in the brain to give rise to a particular behavior. Marr gave a famous description of three levels of analysis:

Interdisciplinary nature.

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field with contributors from various fields, including psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy of mind, computer science, anthropology and biology. Cognitive scientists work collectively in hope of understanding the mind and its interactions with the surrounding world much like other sciences do. The field regards itself as compatible with the physical sciences and uses the scientific method as well as simulation or modeling, often comparing the output of models with aspects of human cognition. Similarly to the field of psychology, there is some doubt whether there is a unified cognitive science, which have led some researchers to prefer 'cognitive sciences' in plural.  Many, but not all, who consider themselves cognitive scientists hold a functionalist view of the mind—the view that mental states and processes should be explained by their function — what they do. According to the multiple realizability account of functionalism, even non-human systems such as robots and computers can be ascribed as having cognition.

"Cognitive" science: the term.

The term "cognitive" in "cognitive science" is used for "any kind of mental operation or structure that can be studied in precise terms" (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). This conceptualization is very broad, and should not be confused with how "cognitive" is used in some traditions of analytic philosophy, where "cognitive" has to do only with formal rules and truth conditional semantics.  The earliest entries for the word ""cognitive"" in the OED take it to mean roughly ""pertaining to the action or process of knowing"". The first entry, from 1586, shows the word was at one time used in the context of discussions of Platonic theories of knowledge. Most in cognitive science, however, presumably do not believe their field is the study of anything as certain as the knowledge sought by Plato.

Scope.

Cognitive science is a large field, and covers a wide array of topics on cognition. However, it should be recognized that cognitive science has not always been equally concerned with every topic that might bear relevance to the nature and operation of minds. Among philosophers, classical cognitivists have largely de-emphasized or avoided social and cultural factors, emotion, consciousness, animal cognition, and comparative and evolutionary psychologies. However, with the decline of behaviorism, internal states such as affects and emotions, as well as awareness and covert attention became approachable again. For example, situated and embodied cognition theories take into account the current state of the environment as well as the role of the body in cognition. With the newfound emphasis on information processing, observable behavior was no longer the hallmark of psychological theory, but the modeling or recording of mental states.  Below are some of the main topics that cognitive science is concerned with. This is not an exhaustive list. See List of cognitive science topics for a list of various aspects of the field.

Artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence (AI) involves the study of cognitive phenomena in machines. One of the practical goals of AI is to implement aspects of human intelligence in computers. Computers are also widely used as a tool with which to study cognitive phenomena. Computational modeling uses simulations to study how human intelligence may be structured. (See.)  There is some debate in the field as to whether the mind is best viewed as a huge array of small but individually feeble elements (i.e. neurons), or as a collection of higher-level structures such as symbols, schemes, plans, and rules. The former view uses connectionism to study the mind, whereas the latter emphasizes symbolic computations. One way to view the issue is whether it is possible to accurately simulate a human brain on a computer without accurately simulating the neurons that make up the human brain.

Attention.

Attention is the selection of important information. The human mind is bombarded with millions of stimuli and it must have a way of deciding which of this information to process. Attention is sometimes seen as a spotlight, meaning one can only shine the light on a particular set of information. Experiments that support this metaphor include the dichotic listening task (Cherry, 1957) and studies of inattentional blindness (Mack and Rock, 1998). In the dichotic listening task, subjects are bombarded with two different messages, one in each ear, and told to focus on only one of the messages. At the end of the experiment, when asked about the content of the unattended message, subjects cannot report it.

Knowledge and processing of language.

The ability to learn and understand language is an extremely complex process. Language is acquired within the first few years of life, and all humans under normal circumstances are able to acquire language proficiently. A major driving force in the theoretical linguistic field is discovering the nature that language must have in the abstract in order to be learned in such a fashion. Some of the driving research questions in studying how the brain itself processes language include: (1) To what extent is linguistic knowledge innate or learned?, (2) Why is it more difficult for adults to acquire a second-language than it is for infants to acquire their first-language?, and (3) How are humans able to understand novel sentences?  The study of language processing ranges from the investigation of the sound patterns of speech to the meaning of words and whole sentences. Linguistics often divides language processing into orthography, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Many aspects of language can be studied from each of these components and from their interaction.  The study of language processing in "cognitive science" is closely tied to the field of linguistics. Linguistics was traditionally studied as a part of the humanities, including studies of history, art and literature. In the last fifty years or so, more and more researchers have studied knowledge and use of language as a cognitive phenomenon, the main problems being how knowledge of language can be acquired and used, and what precisely it consists of. Linguists have found that, while humans form sentences in ways apparently governed by very complex systems, they are remarkably unaware of the rules that govern their own speech. Thus linguists must resort to indirect methods to determine what those rules might be, if indeed rules as such exist. In any event, if speech is indeed governed by rules, they appear to be opaque to any conscious consideration.

Learning and development.

Learning and development are the processes by which we acquire knowledge and information over time. Infants are born with little or no knowledge (depending on how knowledge is defined), yet they rapidly acquire the ability to use language, walk, and recognize people and objects. Research in learning and development aims to explain the mechanisms by which these processes might take place.  A major question in the study of cognitive development is the extent to which certain abilities are innate or learned. This is often framed in terms of the nature and nurture debate. The nativist view emphasizes that certain features are innate to an organism and are determined by its genetic endowment. The empiricist view, on the other hand, emphasizes that certain abilities are learned from the environment. Although clearly both genetic and environmental input is needed for a child to develop normally, considerable debate remains about "how" genetic information might guide cognitive development. In the area of language acquisition, for example, some (such as Steven Pinker) have argued that specific information containing universal grammatical rules must be contained in the genes, whereas others (such as Jeffrey Elman and colleagues in Rethinking Innateness) have argued that Pinker's claims are biologically unrealistic. They argue that genes determine the architecture of a learning system, but that specific "facts" about how grammar works can only be learned as a result of experience.

Memory.

Memory allows us to store information for later retrieval. Memory is often thought of as consisting of both a long-term and short-term store. Long-term memory allows us to store information over prolonged periods (days, weeks, years). We do not yet know the practical limit of long-term memory capacity. Short-term memory allows us to store information over short time scales (seconds or minutes).  Memory is also often grouped into declarative and procedural forms. Declarative memory—grouped into subsets of semantic and episodic forms of memory—refers to our memory for facts and specific knowledge, specific meanings, and specific experiences (e.g. "Who was the first president of the U.S.A.?", or "What did I eat for breakfast four days ago?"). Procedural memory allows us to remember actions and motor sequences (e.g. how to ride a bicycle) and is often dubbed implicit knowledge or memory.  Cognitive scientists study memory just as psychologists do, but tend to focus more on how memory bears on cognitive processes, and the interrelationship between cognition and memory. One example of this could be, what mental processes does a person go through to retrieve a long-lost memory? Or, what differentiates between the cognitive process of recognition (seeing hints of something before remembering it, or memory in context) and recall (retrieving a memory, as in "fill-in-the-blank")?

Perception and action.

Perception is the ability to take in information via the senses, and process it in some way. Vision and hearing are two dominant senses that allow us to perceive the environment. Some questions in the study of visual perception, for example, include: (1) How are we able to recognize objects?, (2) Why do we perceive a continuous visual environment, even though we only see small bits of it at any one time? One tool for studying visual perception is by looking at how people process optical illusions. The image on the right of a Necker cube is an example of a bistable percept, that is, the cube can be interpreted as being oriented in two different directions.  The study of haptic (tactile), olfactory, and gustatory stimuli also fall into the domain of perception.  Action is taken to refer to the output of a system. In humans, this is accomplished through motor responses. Spatial planning and movement, speech production, and complex motor movements are all aspects of action.

Consciousness.

Consciousness is the awareness whether something is an external object or something within oneself. This helps the mind having the ability to experience or to feel a sense of self.

Research methods.

Many different methodologies are used to study cognitive science. As the field is highly interdisciplinary, research often cuts across multiple areas of study, drawing on research methods from psychology, neuroscience, computer science and systems theory.

Behavioral experiments.

In order to have a description of what constitutes intelligent behavior, one must study behavior itself. This type of research is closely tied to that in cognitive psychology and psychophysics. By measuring behavioral responses to different stimuli, one can understand something about how those stimuli are processed. Lewandowski & Strohmetz (2009) reviewed a collection of innovative uses of behavioral measurement in psychology including behavioral traces, behavioral observations, and behavioral choice. Behavioral traces are pieces of evidence that indicate behavior occurred, but the actor is not present (e.g., litter in a parking lot or readings on an electric meter). Behavioral observations involve the direct witnessing of the actor engaging in the behavior (e.g., watching how close a person sits next to another person). Behavioral choices are when a person selects between two or more options (e.g., voting behavior, choice of a punishment for another participant).

Brain imaging.

Brain imaging involves analyzing activity within the brain while performing various tasks. This allows us to link behavior and brain function to help understand how information is processed. Different types of imaging techniques vary in their temporal (time-based) and spatial (location-based) resolution. Brain imaging is often used in cognitive neuroscience.

Computational modeling.

Computational models require a mathematically and logically formal representation of a problem. Computer models are used in the simulation and experimental verification of different specific and general properties of intelligence. Computational modeling can help us understand the functional organization of a particular cognitive phenomenon. Approaches to cognitive modeling can be categorized as: (1) symbolic, on abstract mental functions of an intelligent mind by means of symbols; (2) subsymbolic, on the neural and associative properties of the human brain; and (3) across the symbolic–subsymbolic border, including hybrid.  All the above approaches tend to be generalized to the form of integrated computational models of a synthetic/abstract intelligence, in order to be applied to the explanation and improvement of individual and social/organizational decision-making and reasoning.

Neurobiological methods.

Research methods borrowed directly from neuroscience and neuropsychology can also help us to understand aspects of intelligence. These methods allow us to understand how intelligent behavior is implemented in a physical system.

Key findings.

Cognitive science has given rise to models of human cognitive bias and risk perception, and has been influential in the development of behavioral finance, part of economics. It has also given rise to a new theory of the philosophy of mathematics, and many theories of artificial intelligence, persuasion and coercion. It has made its presence known in the philosophy of language and epistemology as well as constituting a substantial wing of modern linguistics. Fields of cognitive science have been influential in understanding the brain's particular functional systems (and functional deficits) ranging from speech production to auditory processing and visual perception. It has made progress in understanding how damage to particular areas of the brain affect cognition, and it has helped to uncover the root causes and results of specific dysfunction, such as dyslexia, anopia, and hemispatial neglect.

History.

The cognitive sciences began as an intellectual movement in the 1950s, called the cognitive revolution. Cognitive science has a prehistory traceable back to ancient Greek philosophical texts (see Plato's "Meno" and Aristotle's "De Anima"); and includes writers such as Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Benedict de Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, Pierre Cabanis, Leibniz and John Locke. However, although these early writers contributed greatly to the philosophical discovery of mind and this would ultimately lead to the development of psychology, they were working with an entirely different set of tools and core concepts than those of the cognitive scientist.  The modern culture of cognitive science can be traced back to the early cyberneticists in the 1930s and 1940s, such as Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, who sought to understand the organizing principles of the mind. McCulloch and Pitts developed the first variants of what are now known as artificial neural networks, models of computation inspired by the structure of biological neural networks.  Another precursor was the early development of the theory of computation and the digital computer in the 1940s and 1950s. Kurt Gödel, Alonzo Church, Alan Turing, and John von Neumann were instrumental in these developments. The modern computer, or Von Neumann machine, would play a central role in cognitive science, both as a metaphor for the mind, and as a tool for investigation.  The first instance of cognitive science experiments being done at an academic institution took place at MIT Sloan School of Management, established by J.C.R. Licklider working within the psychology department and conducting experiments using computer memory as models for human cognition.  In 1959, Noam Chomsky published a scathing review of B. F. Skinner's book "Verbal Behavior". At the time, Skinner's behaviorist paradigm dominated the field of psychology within the United States. Most psychologists focused on functional relations between stimulus and response, without positing internal representations. Chomsky argued that in order to explain language, we needed a theory like generative grammar, which not only attributed internal representations but characterized their underlying order.  The term "cognitive science" was coined by Christopher Longuet-Higgins in his 1973 commentary on the Lighthill report, which concerned the then-current state of Artificial Intelligence research. In the same decade, the journal "Cognitive Science" and the Cognitive Science Society were founded. The founding meeting of the Cognitive Science Society was held at the University of California, San Diego in 1979, which resulted in cognitive science becoming an internationally visible enterprise. In 1972, Hampshire College started the first undergraduate education program in Cognitive Science, led by Neil Stillings. In 1982, with assistance from Professor Stillings, Vassar College became the first institution in the world to grant an undergraduate degree in Cognitive Science. In 1986, the first Cognitive Science Department in the world was founded at the University of California, San Diego.  In the 1970s and early 1980s, as access to computers increased, artificial intelligence research expanded. Researchers such as Marvin Minsky would write computer programs in languages such as LISP to attempt to formally characterize the steps that human beings went through, for instance, in making decisions and solving problems, in the hope of better understanding human thought, and also in the hope of creating artificial minds. This approach is known as "symbolic AI".  Eventually the limits of the symbolic AI research program became apparent. For instance, it seemed to be unrealistic to comprehensively list human knowledge in a form usable by a symbolic computer program. The late 80s and 90s saw the rise of neural networks and connectionism as a research paradigm. Under this point of view, often attributed to James McClelland and David Rumelhart, the mind could be characterized as a set of complex associations, represented as a layered network. Critics argue that there are some phenomena which are better captured by symbolic models, and that connectionist models are often so complex as to have little explanatory power. Recently symbolic and connectionist models have been combined, making it possible to take advantage of both forms of explanation. While both connectionism and symbolic approaches have proven useful for testing various hypotheses and exploring approaches to understanding aspects of cognition and lower level brain functions, neither are biologically realistic and therefore, both suffer from a lack of neuroscientific plausibility. Connectionism has proven useful for exploring computationally how cognition emerges in development and occurs in the human brain, and has provided alternatives to strictly domain-specific / domain general approaches. For example, scientists such as Jeff Elman, Liz Bates, and Annette Karmiloff-Smith have posited that networks in the brain emerge from the dynamic interaction between them and environmental input.

Notable researchers.

Some of the more recognized names in cognitive science are usually either the most controversial or the most cited. Within philosophy, some familiar names include Daniel Dennett, who writes from a computational systems perspective, John Searle, known for his controversial Chinese room argument, and Jerry Fodor, who advocates functionalism.  Others include David Chalmers, who advocates Dualism and is also known for articulating the hard problem of consciousness, and Douglas Hofstadter, famous for writing "Gödel, Escher, Bach", which questions the nature of words and thought.  In the realm of linguistics, Noam Chomsky and George Lakoff have been influential (both have also become notable as political commentators). In artificial intelligence, Marvin Minsky, Herbert A. Simon, and Allen Newell are prominent.  Popular names in the discipline of psychology include George A. Miller, James McClelland, Philip Johnson-Laird, and Steven Pinker. Anthropologists Dan Sperber, Edwin Hutchins, and Scott Atran, have been involved in collaborative projects with cognitive and social psychologists, political scientists and evolutionary biologists in attempts to develop general theories of culture formation, religion, and political association.  Computational theories (with models and simulations) have also been developed, by the likes of David Rumelhart, James McClelland, Philip Johnson-Laird, and so on.  Other contributions have been made by Marvin Minsky and Noam Chomsky.

Namings.

Epistemics is a term coined in 1969 by the University of Edinburgh with the foundation of its School of Epistemics. Epistemics is to be distinguished from epistemology in that epistemology is the philosophical theory of knowledge, whereas epistemics signifies the scientific study of knowledge.  Christopher Longuet-Higgins has defined it as "the construction of formal models of the processes (perceptual, intellectual, and linguistic) by which knowledge and understanding are achieved and communicated. In his 1978 essay "Epistemics: The Regulative Theory of Cognition", Alvin J. Goldman claims to have coined the term "epistemics" to describe a reorientation of epistemology. Goldman maintains that his epistemics is continuous with traditional epistemology and the new term is only to avoid opposition. Epistemics, in Goldman's version, differs only slightly from traditional epistemology in its alliance with the psychology of cognition; epistemics stresses the detailed study of mental processes and information-processing mechanisms that lead to knowledge or beliefs.  In the mid-1980s, the School of Epistemics was renamed as The Centre for Cognitive Science (CCS). In 1998, CCS was incorporated into the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics.

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology. The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision to logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization.One of the fundamental concepts of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."

Kognitivní věda (z latinského "cognoscere" = poznávat) se zabývá interdisciplinárním výzkumem mysli a jejích procesů. Zahrnuje disciplíny jako je psychologie, umělá inteligence, lingvistika, neurověda, antropologie či filosofie.


Early life.

David Koresh was born Vernon Wayne Howell on August 17, 1959, in Houston, Texas, to a 14-year-old single mother, Bonnie Sue Clark (1944–2009) and father Bobby Wayne Howell (1939–2008). Before Koresh was born, his father met another teenage girl and abandoned Bonnie Sue. Koresh never met his father, and his mother began cohabitating with a violent alcoholic. In 1963, Koresh's mother left with her boyfriend and placed her four-year-old son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Earline Clark. His mother returned when he was seven, after her marriage to a carpenter named Roy Haldeman. Bonnie Sue and Haldeman had a son together named Roger, who was born in 1966.  Koresh described his early childhood as lonely. Due to his poor study skills and dyslexia, he was put in special education classes and nicknamed "Vernie" by his fellow students. Koresh dropped out of Garland High School in his junior year.  When he was 19 years old, Koresh had a legal (at the time) sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl who became pregnant. He claimed to have become a born-again Christian in the Southern Baptist Church and soon joined his mother's church, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. There Koresh became infatuated with the pastor's daughter and, while praying for guidance, he opened his eyes and allegedly found the Bible open at Isaiah 34:16, stating that "none should want for her mate"; convinced this was a sign from God, Koresh approached the pastor and told him that God wanted him to have his daughter for a wife. The pastor threw him out, and when he continued to persist with his pursuit of the daughter, he was expelled from the congregation.  In 1981, Koresh moved to Waco, Texas, where he joined the Branch Davidians (not to be confused with the original Davidian Seventh-Day Adventist Church). Benjamin Roden, who died in 1978, originated the Branch group in 1955 with new teachings that were not connected with the original Davidians. Koresh played guitar and sang in church services at the Mount Carmel Center, the sect's headquarters outside Waco.

Ascent to leadership of the Branch Davidians.

In 1983, Koresh began claiming the gift of prophecy. It is speculated by David Thibodeau in his 1999 book, "A Place Called Waco", that he had a sexual relationship with Lois Roden, the widow of Benjamin Roden and leader of the cult, who was then in her late sixties. Koresh eventually began to claim that God had chosen him to father a child with Lois, who would be the Chosen One. In 1983, Lois allowed Koresh to begin teaching his own message, called "The Serpent's Root," which caused controversy in the group. Lois's son George Roden intended to be the cult's next leader and considered Koresh an interloper.  When Koresh announced that God had instructed him to marry Rachel Jones (who then added Koresh to her name), there was a period of calm at the Mount Carmel Center, but it proved only temporary. In the ensuing power struggle, George Roden claimed to have the support of the majority of the cult, forcing Koresh and his group off the property at gunpoint. Koresh and around 25 followers set up camp at Palestine, Texas, from Waco, where they lived under rough conditions in buses and tents for the next two years. During this time, Koresh undertook recruitment of new followers in California, the United Kingdom, Israel, and Australia. That same year he traveled to Israel, where he claimed he had a vision that he was the modern-day Cyrus.  The founder of the Davidian movement, Victor Houteff, wanted to be God's implement and establish the Davidic kingdom in Palestine. Koresh also wanted to be God's tool and set up the Davidic kingdom in Jerusalem. At least until 1990, he believed the place of his martyrdom might be in Israel, but by 1991 he was convinced that his martyrdom would be in the U.S. Instead of Israel, he said the prophecies of Daniel would be fulfilled in Waco and that the Mount Carmel Center was the Davidic kingdom.  After being exiled to the Palestine camp, Koresh and his followers eked out a primitive existence. When Lois died in 1986, the exiled Branch Davidians wondered if they would ever be able to return to the Mount Carmel Center. But despite the displacement, "Koresh now enjoyed the loyalty of the majority of the [Branch Davidian] community". By late 1987, Roden's support was in steep decline. To regain it, he challenged Koresh to a contest to raise the dead, going so far as to exhume a corpse to demonstrate his spiritual supremacy. Koresh went to authorities to file charges against Roden for illegally exhuming a corpse, but was told he would have to show proof (such as a photograph of the corpse).  Koresh seized the opportunity to seek criminal prosecution of Roden by returning to the Mount Carmel Center with seven armed followers, allegedly attempting to get photographic proof of the exhumation. Koresh's group was discovered by Roden and a gunfight broke out. When the sheriff arrived, Roden had already suffered a minor gunshot wound and was pinned down behind a tree. As a result of the incident, Koresh and his followers were charged with attempted murder. At the trial, Koresh explained that he went to the Mount Carmel Center to uncover evidence of criminal disturbance of a corpse by Roden. Koresh's followers were acquitted, and in Koresh's case a mistrial was declared.  In 1989, Roden murdered Wayman Dale Adair with an axe blow to the skull after Adair stated his belief that he (Adair) was the true messiah. Roden was judged insane and confined to a psychiatric hospital at Big Spring, Texas. Since Roden owed thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes on the Mount Carmel Center, Koresh and his followers were able to raise the money and reclaim the property. Roden continued to harass the Koresh faction by filing legal papers while imprisoned. When Koresh and his followers reclaimed the Mount Carmel Center, they discovered that tenants who had rented from Roden had left behind a meth lab, which Koresh reported to the local police department and asked to have removed.

Name change.

Vernon Howell filed a petition in California State Superior Court in Pomona on May 15, 1990, to legally change his name "for publicity and business purposes" to David Koresh. On August 28, 1990, Judge Robert Martinez granted the petition.  Koresh is the Biblical name of Cyrus the Great (کوروش, Kurosh), a Persian king who is named a messiah for freeing Jews during the Babylonian Captivity. His first name, David, symbolized a lineage directly to the biblical King David, from whom the new messiah would descend. By taking the name of David Koresh, he was "professing himself to be the spiritual descendant of King David, a messianic figure carrying out a divinely commissioned errand."

Allegations of child abuse and statutory rape.

Koresh was alleged to have been involved in multiple incidents of physical and sexual abuse of children. His doctrine of the House of David did lead to "marriages" with both married and single women in the Branch Davidians. This doctrine was based on a purported revelation that involved the procreation of 24 children by chosen women in the community. These 24 children were to serve as the ruling elders over the millennium after the return of Christ. These women purportedly chosen through this doctrine included at least one underage girl, Michelle Jones, who was the younger sister of Koresh's legal wife Rachel and the daughter of lifelong Branch Davidians Perry and Mary Belle Jones.  A six-month investigation of sexual abuse allegations by the Texas Child Protection Services in 1992 failed to turn up any evidence, possibly because the Branch Davidians concealed the spiritual marriage of Koresh to Michelle, assigning a surrogate husband (David Thibodeau) to the girl for the sake of appearances. Regarding the allegations of physical abuse, the evidence is less certain. In one widely reported incident, ex-members claimed that Koresh became irritated with the cries of his son Cyrus and spanked the child severely for several minutes on three consecutive visits to the child's bedroom. In a second report, a man involved in a custody battle visited the Mount Carmel Center and claimed to have seen the beating of a young boy with a stick.  Finally, the FBI's justification for forcing an end to the 51-day standoff was predicated on the charge that Koresh was abusing children inside the Mount Carmel Center. There were allegations that he had fathered children with underage girls in the Branch Davidians. In the hours which followed the deadly conflagration, Attorney General Janet Reno told reporters that, "We had specific information that babies were being beaten." However, FBI Director William Sessions publicly denied the charge and told reporters that they had no such information about child abuse inside the Mount Carmel Center. A careful examination of the other child abuse charges found the evidence to be weak and ambiguous, casting doubt on the allegations.  The allegations of child abuse largely stem from detractors and ex-members. The 1993 Justice Department report cites allegations of child sexual and physical abuse. Legal scholars point out that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) had no legal jurisdiction in the matter of child protection and it appears that these accounts were inserted by the ATF to inflame the case against Koresh. For example, the account of former Branch Davidian Jeannine Bunds is reproduced in an ATF affidavit. She claimed that Koresh had fathered at least fifteen children with various women and girls and that she had personally delivered seven of these infants. Bunds also claims that Koresh would annul all marriages of couples who joined the group and had exclusive sexual access to the women and girls.  In his book, James Tabor states that on a videotape which was sent out of the compound during the siege, Koresh acknowledged that he had fathered more than twelve children by several "wives". On March 3, 1993, during negotiations to secure the release of the remaining children, Koresh advised hostage negotiators that: "My children are different than those others,” referring to his direct lineage versus those children who he had previously released.

Raid and siege by federal authorities.

The Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, when the ATF raided Mount Carmel Center. The ensuing gun battle resulted in the deaths of four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians. Shortly after the initial raid, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team took command of the federal operation, because the FBI has jurisdiction over incidents involving the deaths of federal agents. The negotiating team established contact with Koresh inside the compound. Communication over the next fifty-one days included telephone exchanges with various FBI negotiators.  Koresh himself had been seriously injured by a gunshot. As the standoff continued, he and his closest male associates negotiated delays, so that he could possibly write religious documents which he said he needed to complete before his surrender. Koresh's conversations with the negotiators were dense and they also included biblical imagery. The FBI negotiators treated the situation as a hostage crisis.  The siege of the Mount Carmel Center ended on April 19, 1993, when U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno approved recommendations of FBI officials to proceed with a final advance in which the Branch Davidians would be removed from the Mount Carmel Center by force. In an attempt to flush Koresh out of the stronghold, the FBI resorted to pumping CS gas into the compound with the aid of a M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle which was equipped with a battering ram. In the course of the advance, the Mount Carmel Center caught fire under circumstances that are still disputed today. Barricaded inside the building, 79 Branch Davidians perished in the ensuing blaze; 21 of these victims were children under the age of 16.<ref name="Frontline/PBS"></ref>  According to the FBI, Steve Schneider, Koresh's right-hand man, who "probably realized that he was dealing with a fraud," shot and killed Koresh and then committed suicide with the same gun. A second account gave a totally different story: Koresh, then 33, died of a gunshot wound to the head during the course of the fire. No one knows who killed him or if he killed himself. The medical examiner reported that although federal law enforcement personnel fired no shots that day, twenty people, including five children under the age of 14, had been shot, and a three-year-old had been stabbed in the chest.

Aftermath.

Koresh is buried at Memorial Park Cemetery, Tyler, Texas in the "Last Supper" section. Several of his albums were released, including "Voice of Fire", in 1994. In 2004, Koresh's 1968 Chevrolet Camaro, which had been damaged during the raid, sold for $37,000 at auction. It is now owned by "Ghost Adventures" host Zak Bagans.  Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols cited the Waco Siege as their motivation for the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995, which was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the Waco assault.  Four documentary films have been made about the siege, including different versions of "", "Waco: A New Revelation", "", and "". In 2018, BBC Radio 5 live created a radio podcast titled "End of Days" which was about the death and life of Koresh, his involvement in the Waco Siege and the recruitment of people who lived in Nottingham, Manchester and London into the Branch Davidians. The Court TV (now TruTV) television series "Mugshots" released an episode about Koresh.  Koresh is portrayed by Taylor Kitsch in the 2018 miniseries "Waco". He was also one of the sources of inspiration used to create the fictional cult leader Joseph Seed in the 2018 action-adventure video game "Far Cry 5".

David Koresh (; born Vernon Wayne Howell; August 17, 1959 – April 19, 1993) was an American cult leader and musician who played a central role in the Waco siege of 1993. As the head of the Branch Davidians sect, an offshoot of the Davidian Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Koresh claimed to be its final prophet.

David Koresh, narozený jako Vernon Wayne Howell (17. srpna 1959 Houston – 19. dubna 1993 Waco), byl vedoucím mužem náboženského hnutí Davidánů.


Education and career.

Bromley received his B.A. in sociology (1963) from Colby College. He then obtained his M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1971) from Duke University.  He began his professional teaching career at the University of Virginia, where he taught from 1968 to 1974. He then taught at the University of Texas at Austin (1976–1980), and University of Hartford (1980–1983). Since 1983 he has held his professorial post at the University of Virginia and also at Virginia Commonwealth University.  His primary area of teaching and research is sociology of religion, with a specialization in religious movements especially new religious movements. He was also director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Hartford and chairman of Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Virginia.  From 1992-1995, Bromley was the editor of the "Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion", published by the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and was between 1991 and 2003 one of the editors of Religion and the Social Order, an annual serial published by the Association for the Sociology of Religion.  Regarding the definition of new religious movements, Bromley distinguishes them from other religious groups based on the concept of "alignment" with both dominant social institutions and dominant cultural patterns in a given society. While dominant religious groups are aligned with both, sectarian religious groups reject the dominant social institutions but at the same time accept at least some of the dominant cultural patterns. New religious movements reject both dominant social institutions and cultural patterns, and are in turn rejected by mainline institutions and cultural agencies as cults. For instance, according to Bromley the Amish are a sectarian religious group rather than a new religious movement because they operate outside the dominant institutions of modern society, yet accept key elements of the dominant Christian cultural pattern.  Bromley has written about the rise of an anti-cult movement in the 1970s and 1980s, and the accompanying controversies involving allegations of brainwashing and deprogramming. He defined the anti-cult movement in 1981 as the amalgam of groups who embrace the brainwashing theory.  Bromley has also written about apostasy, cults and religions. His theory of apostasy is based on the notion of allegiance. In its dealings with the larger society, Bromley argues, religious groups can be either allegiant, contestant, or subversive of mainline values and institutions. Those who leave allegiant groups are "defectors", and the allegiant groups, protected by their popularity, may dismiss them as "problem individuals". Groups perceived by the society as "subversive" have "apostates", who claim that the movements they have left are dangerous or criminal, and are taken seriously by mainline institutions and media. Somewhere in the middle are "whistleblowers", who expose negative features not previously well-known of contestant (and sometimes also of allegiant) religious groups.  Within the academic study of new religious movements, Bromley has been described as somewhat sympathetic of groups labeled as cults, such as by Canadian sociologist Stephen A. Kent, who objected to Bromley's definition of ex-members of cults as "apostates" as leading to disregarding the value of the information they can supply. According to Kent ex-members sometimes provide better information about these movements than the NRM Studies scholars.  Bromley has expressed opposition to the claims of brainwashing and the practice of deprogramming. Bromley compared these social conflicts to witch-hunts of the late Middle Ages, and has claimed that civil liberties guaranteeing religious freedom were threatened. He has criticized the tactics of anti-cultists and their claims over brainwashing in several books and articles coauthored with Anson Shupe, such as "Strange Gods", "Moonies in America", and "The New Vigilantes".

Faculty positions.

"Source"  World Religions and Spirituality Project, a database of new religious movements operated by Dr. Bromley with contributions from other experts in the field.

David G. Bromley (born 1941) is a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. He has written extensively about cults, new religious movements, apostasy, and the anti-cult movement.

David G. Bromley je profesor sociologie na americké univerzitě ve Virginii. Většina jeho publikací se věnuje tématu kultů, nových náboženských hnutí a antikultovních hnutí. Roku 1963 obdržel titul B.A. ze sociologie na Colby College a poté pokračoval ve studiích na Duke University, které doktorským titulem. Na Virginské univerzitě působí od roku 1983.


History.

The trophy is named in honour of James E. Norris, owner of the National Hockey League's Detroit Red Wings from 1932 to 1952. The trophy was first awarded at the conclusion of the 1953–54 NHL season.  Bobby Orr of the Boston Bruins won the award for a record eight consecutive seasons (1968–75). Doug Harvey and Nicklas Lidstrom won the award seven times, and Ray Bourque won it five times (Bourque was in the top 3 vote getters for the trophy a further 10 times). The Boston Bruins have had the most Norris Trophies winners with 14; the Montreal Canadiens have had the second most with 12.  Only two players have won both the Norris and Hart Memorial Trophy for the league Most Valuable Player in the same season: Bobby Orr, who won both trophies in the 1969–70, 1970–71 and 1971–72 seasons, and Chris Pronger, who won the Hart and Norris in the 1999–2000 NHL season. As of 2019, no defensemen has won the Hart Trophy without also winning the Norris Trophy, since its inception in 1953–54.  Six defensemen won the Hart Trophy as the league's most valuable player before the Norris Trophy's establishment: Herb Gardiner, Eddie Shore (four times), Albert "Babe" Siebert, Ebbie Goodfellow, Tommy Anderson and Babe Pratt.  Save for Randy Carlyle and Doug Wilson, every Norris winner eligible to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame has been.  Members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association vote at the end of the regular season, and each individual voter ranks their top five candidates on a 10–7–5–3–1 point(s) system. Three finalists are named and the trophy is awarded at the NHL awards ceremony after the conclusion of the playoffs.

The James Norris Memorial Trophy, or simply the Norris Trophy, is awarded annually to the National Hockey League's top "defense player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position". It is named after James E. Norris, the longtime owner of the Detroit Red Wings. The James Norris Memorial Trophy has been awarded 61 times to 26 different players since its beginnings in 1953–54. At the end of each season, members of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association vote to determine the player who was the best defenseman during the regular season.

James Memorial Trophy je v kanadsko-americké NHL udělováno od roku 1953 nejlepšímu obránci. Tuto trofej získávají obránci podle počtu hlasů od členů Asociace profesionálních hokejových novinářů (Professional Hockey Writers Association).


Early life.

Reich was born in New York City to the Broadway lyricist June Sillman and Leonard Reich. When he was one year old, his parents divorced, and Reich divided his time between New York and California. He is the half-brother of writer Jonathan Carroll. He was given piano lessons as a child and describes growing up with the "middle-class favorites", having no exposure to music written before 1750 or after 1900. At the age of 14 he began to study music in earnest, after hearing music from the Baroque period and earlier, as well as music of the 20th century. Reich studied drums with Roland Kohloff in order to play jazz. While attending Cornell University, he minored in music and graduated in 1957 with a B.A. in Philosophy. Reich's B.A. thesis was on Ludwig Wittgenstein; later he would set texts by that philosopher to music in "Proverb" (1995) and "You Are (variations)" (2006).  For a year following graduation, Reich studied composition privately with Hall Overton before he enrolled at Juilliard to work with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti (1958–1961). Subsequently, he attended Mills College in Oakland, California, where he studied with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud (1961–1963) and earned a master's degree in composition. At Mills, Reich composed "Melodica" for melodica and tape, which appeared in 1986 on the three-LP release "Music from Mills".  Reich worked with the San Francisco Tape Music Center along with Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, Morton Subotnick, Phil Lesh and Terry Riley. He was involved with the premiere of Riley's "In C" and suggested the use of the eighth note pulse, which is now standard in performance of the piece.

Career.

1960s.

Reich's early forays into composition involved experimentation with twelve-tone composition, but he found the rhythmic aspects of the number twelve more interesting than the pitch aspects. Reich also composed film soundtracks for "Plastic Haircut" (1963), "Oh Dem Watermelons" (1965), and "Thick Pucker" (1965), three films by Robert Nelson. The soundtrack of "Plastic Haircut", composed in 1963, was a short tape collage, possibly Reich's first. The "Watermelons" soundtrack used two 19th-century minstrel tunes as its basis, and used repeated phrasing together in a large five-part canon. The music for "Thick Pucker" arose from street recordings Reich made walking around San Francisco with Nelson, who filmed in black and white 16mm. This film no longer survives. A fourth film from 1965, about 25 minutes long and tentatively entitled "Thick Pucker II", was assembled by Nelson from outtakes of that shoot and more of the raw audio Reich had recorded. Nelson was not happy with the resulting film and never showed it.  Reich was influenced by fellow minimalist Terry Riley, whose work "In C" combines simple musical patterns, offset in time, to create a slowly shifting, cohesive whole. Reich adopted this approach to compose his first major work, "It's Gonna Rain". Composed in 1965, the piece used a fragment of a sermon about the end of the world given by a black Pentecostal street-preacher known as Brother Walter. Reich built on his early tape work, transferring the last three words of the fragment, "it's gonna rain!", to multiple tape loops which gradually move out of phase with one another.  The 13-minute "Come Out" (1966) uses similarly manipulated recordings of a single spoken line given by Daniel Hamm, one of the falsely accused Harlem Six, who was severely injured by police. The survivor, who had been beaten, punctured a bruise on his own body to convince police about his beating. The spoken line includes the phrase "to let the bruise’s blood come out to show them." Reich rerecorded the fragment "come out to show them" on two channels, which are initially played in unison. They quickly slip out of sync; gradually the discrepancy widens and becomes a reverberation. The two voices then split into four, looped continuously, then eight, and continues splitting until the actual words are unintelligible, leaving the listener with only the speech's rhythmic and tonal patterns.  "Melodica" (1966) takes the phase looping idea of his previous works and applies it to instrumental music. Steve Reich took a simple melody, which he played on a melodica, then recorded it. He then sets the melody to two separate channels, and slowly moves them out of phase, creating an intricate interlocking melody. This piece is very similar to "Come Out" in rhythmic structure, and are an example of how one rhythmic process can be realized in different sounds to create two different pieces of music. Reich was inspired to compose this piece from a dream he had on May 22, 1966, and put the piece together in one day. "Melodica" was the last piece Reich composed solely for tape, and he considers it his transition from tape music to instrumental music.  Reich's first attempt at translating this phasing technique from recorded tape to live performance was the 1967 "Piano Phase", for two pianos. In "Piano Phase" the performers repeat a rapid twelve-note melodic figure, initially in unison. As one player keeps tempo with robotic precision, the other speeds up very slightly until the two parts line up again, but one sixteenth note apart. The second player then resumes the previous tempo. This cycle of speeding up and then locking in continues throughout the piece; the cycle comes full circle three times, the second and third cycles using shorter versions of the initial figure. "Violin Phase", also written in 1967, is built on these same lines. "Piano Phase" and "Violin Phase" both premiered in a series of concerts given in New York art galleries.  A similar, lesser known example of this so-called process music is "Pendulum Music" (1968), which consists of the sound of several microphones swinging over the loudspeakers to which they are attached, producing feedback as they do so. "Pendulum Music" has never been recorded by Reich himself, but was introduced to rock audiences by Sonic Youth in the late 1990s.  Reich also tried to create the phasing effect in a piece "that would need no instrument beyond the human body". He found that the idea of phasing was inappropriate for the simple ways he was experimenting to make sound. Instead, he composed "Clapping Music" (1972), in which the players do not phase in and out with each other, but instead one performer keeps one line of a 12-eighth-note-long (12-quaver-long) phrase and the other performer shifts by one eighth note beat every 12 bars, until both performers are back in unison 144 bars later.  The 1967 prototype piece "Slow Motion Sound" was not performed although Chris Hughes performed it 27 years later as "Slow Motion Blackbird" on his Reich-influenced 1994 album "Shift". It introduced the idea of slowing down a recorded sound until many times its original length without changing pitch or timbre, which Reich applied to "Four Organs" (1970), which deals specifically with augmentation. The piece has maracas playing a fast eighth note pulse, while the four organs stress certain eighth notes using an 11th chord. This work therefore dealt with repetition and subtle rhythmic change. It is unique in the context of Reich's other pieces in being linear as opposed to cyclic like his earlier works – the superficially similar "Phase Patterns", also for four organs but without maracas, is (as the name suggests) a phase piece similar to others composed during the period. "Four Organs" was performed as part of a Boston Symphony Orchestra program, and was Reich's first composition to be performed in a large traditional setting.

1970s.

In 1970, Reich embarked on a five-week trip to study music in Ghana, during which he learned from the master drummer Gideon Alorwoyie. Reich also studied Balinese gamelan in Seattle in 1973 and 1974. From his African experience, as well as A. M. Jones's "Studies in African Music" about the music of the Ewe people, Reich drew inspiration for his 90-minute piece "Drumming", which he composed shortly after his return. Composed for a nine-piece percussion ensemble with female voices and piccolo, "Drumming" marked the beginning of a new stage in his career, for around this time he formed his ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians, and increasingly concentrated on composition and performance with them. Steve Reich and Musicians, which was to be the sole ensemble to interpret his works for many years, still remains active with many of its original members.  After "Drumming", Reich moved on from the "phase shifting" technique that he had pioneered, and began writing more elaborate pieces. He investigated other musical processes such as augmentation (the temporal lengthening of phrases and melodic fragments). It was during this period that he wrote works such as "Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ" (1973) and "Six Pianos" (1973).  In 1974, Reich began writing "Music for 18 Musicians". This piece involved many new ideas, although it also hearkened back to earlier pieces. It is based on a cycle of eleven chords introduced at the beginning (called "Pulses"), followed by a small section of music based on each chord ("Sections I-XI"), and finally a return to the original cycle ("Pulses"). This was Reich's first attempt at writing for larger ensembles. The increased number of performers resulted in more scope for psychoacoustic effects, which fascinated Reich, and he noted that he would like to "explore this idea further". Reich remarked that this one work contained more harmonic movement in the first five minutes than any other work he had written. Steve Reich and Musicians made the premier recording of this work on ECM Records.  Reich explored these ideas further in his frequently recorded pieces "Music for a Large Ensemble" (1978) and "Octet" (1979). In these two works, Reich experimented with "the human breath as the measure of musical duration... the chords played by the trumpets are written to take one comfortable breath to perform". Human voices are part of the musical palette in "Music for a Large Ensemble" but the wordless vocal parts simply form part of the texture (as they do in "Drumming"). With "Octet" and his first orchestral piece "Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards" (also 1979), Reich's music showed the influence of Biblical cantillation, which he had studied in Israel since the summer of 1977. After this, the human voice singing a text would play an increasingly important role in Reich's music.  In 1974 Reich published the book "Writings About Music", containing essays on his philosophy, aesthetics, and musical projects written between 1963 and 1974. An updated and much more extensive collection, "Writings On Music (1965–2000)", was published in 2002.

1980s.

Reich's work took on a darker character in the 1980s with the introduction of historical themes as well as themes from his Jewish heritage. "Tehillim" (1981), Hebrew for "psalms", is the first of Reich's works to draw explicitly on his Jewish background. The work is in four parts, and is scored for an ensemble of four women's voices (one high soprano, two lyric sopranos and one alto), piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, two clarinets, six percussion (playing small tuned tambourines without jingles, clapping, maracas, marimba, vibraphone and crotales), two electronic organs, two violins, viola, cello and double bass, with amplified voices, strings, and winds. A setting of texts from Psalms 19:2–5 (19:1–4 in Christian translations), 34:13–15 (34:12–14), 18:26–27 (18:25–26), and 150:4–6, "Tehillim" is a departure from Reich's other work in its formal structure; the setting of texts several lines long rather than the fragments used in previous works makes melody a substantive element. Use of formal counterpoint and functional harmony also contrasts with the loosely structured minimalist works written previously. "Different Trains" (1988), for string quartet and tape, uses recorded speech, as in his earlier works, but this time as a melodic rather than a rhythmic element. In "Different Trains", Reich compares and contrasts his childhood memories of his train journeys between New York and California in 1939–1941 with the very different trains being used to transport contemporaneous European children to their deaths under Nazi rule. The Kronos Quartet recording of "Different Trains" was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in 1990. The composition was described by Richard Taruskin as "the only adequate musical response—one of the few adequate artistic responses in any medium—to the Holocaust", and he credited the piece with earning Reich a place among the great composers of the 20th century.

1990s.

In 1993, Reich collaborated with his wife, the video artist Beryl Korot, on an opera, "The Cave", which explores the roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam through the words of Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans, echoed musically by the ensemble. The work, for percussion, voices, and strings, is a musical documentary, named for the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, where a mosque now stands and Abraham is said to have been buried.  Reich and Korot collaborated on the opera "Three Tales", which concerns the "Hindenburg" disaster, the testing of nuclear weapons on Bikini Atoll, and other more modern concerns, specifically Dolly the sheep, cloning, and the technological singularity.  Reich used sampling techniques for pieces like "Three Tales" and "City Life" from 1994. Reich returned to composing purely instrumental works for the concert hall, starting with "Triple Quartet" in 1998 written for the Kronos Quartet that can either be performed by string quartet and tape, three string quartets or 36-piece string orchestra. According to Reich, the piece is influenced by Bartók's and Alfred Schnittke's string quartets, and Michael Gordon's "Yo Shakespeare".

2000s.

The instrumental series for the concert hall continued with "Dance Patterns" (2002), "Cello Counterpoint" (2003), and sequence of works centered around Variations: "You Are (Variations)" (2004), a work which looks back to the vocal writing of works like "Tehillim" or "The Desert Music", "Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings" in 2005, for the London Sinfonietta and "Daniel Variations" (2006).  in 2002 Reich was invited by Walter Fink to the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival, as the 12th composer featured.  In an interview with "The Guardian", Reich stated that he continued to follow this direction with his piece "Double Sextet" (2007), which was commissioned by eighth blackbird, an American ensemble consisting of the instrumental quintet (flute, clarinet, violin or viola, cello and piano) of Schoenberg's piece "Pierrot Lunaire" (1912) plus percussion. Reich states that he was thinking about Stravinsky's "Agon" (1957) as a model for the instrumental writing.  December 2010 Nonesuch Records and Indaba Music held a community remix contest in which over 250 submissions were received, and Steve Reich and Christian Carey judged the finals. Reich spoke in a related BBC interview that once he composed a piece he would not alter it again himself; "When it's done, it's done," he said. On the other hand, he acknowledged that remixes have an old tradition e.g. famous religious music pieces where melodies were further developed into new songs.

2010s.

Reich premiered a piece, "WTC 9/11", written for String Quartet and Tape (a similar instrumentation to that of "Different Trains") in March 2011. It was performed by the Kronos Quartet, at Duke University, North Carolina, US.  On March 5, 2013, the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Brad Lubman, at the Royal Festival Hall in London gave the world premiere of "Radio Rewrite" for ensemble with 11 players, inspired by the music of Radiohead. The programme also included "Double Sextet" for ensemble with 12 players, "Clapping Music", for two people and four hands featuring Reich himself alongside percussionist Colin Currie, "Electric Counterpoint", with electric guitar by Mats Bergstrom accompanied by a layered soundtrack, as well as two of Reich's small ensemble pieces, one for acoustic instruments, the other for electric instruments and tape.  "Music for Ensemble and Orchestra" was premiered on November 4, 2018 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Susanna Mälkki at Walt Disney Concert Hall, marking Reich's return to writing for orchestra after an interval of more than thirty years.

Awards.

In 2005, Reich was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal.  Reich was awarded with the Praemium Imperiale Award in Music in October 2006.  On January 25, 2007, Reich was named 2007 recipient of the Polar Music Prize with jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins.  On April 20, 2009, Reich was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music, recognizing "Double Sextet", first performed in Richmond March 26, 2008. The citation called it "a major work that displays an ability to channel an initial burst of energy into a large-scale musical event, built with masterful control and consistently intriguing to the ear".  In May 2011 Steve Reich received an honorary doctorate from the New England Conservatory of Music.  In 2012, Steve Reich received the Gold Medal in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  In 2013 Reich received the US$400,000 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in contemporary music for bringing a new conception of music, based on the use of realist elements from the realm of daily life and others drawn from the traditional music of Africa and Asia.  In September 2014, Reich was awarded the "Leone d'Oro" (Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Music) from the Venice Biennale.  In March 2016, Reich was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Royal College of Music in London.

Influence.

The American composer and critic Kyle Gann has said that Reich "may... be considered, by general acclamation, America's greatest living composer". Reich's style of composition has influenced many other composers and musical groups, including John Adams, the progressive rock band King Crimson, the new-age guitarist Michael Hedges, the art-pop and electronic musician Brian Eno, the experimental art/music group The Residents, the electronic group Underworld, the composers associated with the Bang on a Can festival (including David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe), and numerous indie rock musicians including songwriters Sufjan Stevens and Matthew Healy of the 1975, and instrumental ensembles Tortoise, The Mercury Program (themselves influenced by Tortoise), and Godspeed You! Black Emperor (who titled an unreleased song "Steve Reich").  John Adams commented, "He didn't reinvent the wheel so much as he showed us a new way to ride." He has also influenced visual artists such as Bruce Nauman, and many notable choreographers have made dances to his music, Eliot Feld, Jiří Kylián, Douglas Lee and Jerome Robbins among others; he has expressed particular admiration of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's work set to his pieces.  In featuring a sample of Reich's "Electric Counterpoint" (1987) the British ambient techno act the Orb exposed a new generation of listeners to the composer's music with its 1990 production "Little Fluffy Clouds". In 1999 the album "Reich Remixed" featured "re-mixes" of a number of Reich's works by various electronic dance-music producers, such as DJ Spooky, Kurtis Mantronik, Ken Ishii, and Coldcut among others.  Reich's "Cello Counterpoint" (2003) was the inspiration for a series of commissions for solo cello with pre-recorded cellos made by Ashley Bathgate in 2017 including new works by Emily Cooley and Alex Weiser.  Reich often cites Pérotin, J. S. Bach, Debussy, Bartók, and Stravinsky as composers whom he admires and who greatly influenced him when he was young. Jazz is a major part of the formation of Reich's musical style, and two of the earliest influences on his work were vocalists Ella Fitzgerald and Alfred Deller, whose emphasis on the artistic capabilities of the voice alone with little vibrato or other alteration was an inspiration to his earliest works. John Coltrane's style, which Reich has described as "playing a lot of notes to very few harmonies", also had an impact; of particular interest was the album "Africa/Brass", which "was basically a half-an-hour in F." Reich's influence from jazz includes its roots, also, from the West African music he studied in his readings and visit to Ghana. Other important influences are Kenny Clarke and Miles Davis, and visual artist friends such as Sol LeWitt and Richard Serra. Reich has also stated that he admires the music of the band Radiohead, which led to his composition "Radio Rewrite".

Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s.

President's Trophy "(prezidentská trofej)" je nejmladší z klubových trofejí NHL, jejímž vítězem se od roku 1986 stává vždy nejlepší klub základní části. Proto je také výčet dosavadních vítězů ze všech kolektivních trofejí nejkratší.


Gameplay.

The player frees a series of towns by fighting monsters in traditional dungeon crawl battles. Destroying monster lairs in the dungeons causes a soul belonging to a former town occupant to be liberated and reincarnated. This is often a human, but it could be anything from a dolphin to a talking tulip. As souls are freed, the town is reconstructed around the people. The new town occupants give the player advice and items. When the player defeats the boss monster imprisoning the soul of the head of each town, the area is cleared and the player can continue. After the hero frees the first six villages, he is granted access to the "World of Evil", where the final villain awaits.

Plot.

Setting and story.

The Master sends one of his heavenly divine companions in the form of a human warrior to the Freil Empire, where the evil spirit Deathtoll has destroyed all villages and incarcerated the souls of all living creatures in his monster lairs, leaving the world empty. The warrior must defeat the monsters and liberate the inhabitants from the lairs, gradually repopulating the kingdom.  The Hero (Blazer) is the protagonist, a divine angel, deity or lesser-deity, or avatar, sent by The Master to restore the world's creatures to life. Skilled with a sword and possessing the ability to speak with any living thing and be understood, he battles the hordes of Deathtoll with the assistance of his Soul helpers. In "Illusion of Gaia", he is referred to as "Blazer" by the hidden boss, Solid Arm ("Soul Blazer"s Metal Mantis).  The warrior travels throughout the kingdom, defeating monsters in each of six regions to gather six magic stones, each a different color, in order to open the path to Deathtoll, who now resides in the World of Evil. The warrior must also find three sacred artifacts to call upon the power of the phoenix to defeat Deathtoll.  On the way, the warrior falls in love with Lisa, the daughter of a brilliant inventor named Dr. Leo. The warrior learns that the world's devastation came about after King Magridd imprisoned Dr. Leo and forced him to make a machine to contact Deathtoll. After being summoned, Deathtoll offered the king a gold piece for each soul from his kingdom, and under the counsel of his wife, Magridd agreed, but was eventually imprisoned himself. Dr. Leo is still in Magridd Castle's prison after the warrior frees him, and Leo later sacrifices his life to kill the queen, who still wanted to bargain with Deathtoll.  After reaching the World of Evil and defeating Deathtoll, the warrior is returned to Heaven. However, one year later, the Master realizes that the warrior misses his life as a human, and agrees to send him back to the Freil Empire, but under the condition that the hero would not have any memory of his past. The hero wakes up in Grass Valley, where Lisa recognizes him. Though he does not remember her, they leave together and renew their friendship.

Development and release.

Game journalists often consider "Soul Blazer" to be an unofficial trilogy with the games "Illusion of Gaia", "Terranigma".  "Soul Blazer" was released on January 31, 1992 in Japan, on November 27, 1992 in North America, and on January 27, 1994 in Europe.  The soundtrack of the game was composed by Yukihide Takekawa. It was published in Japan by the record label Apollon on February 21, 1992.  The game has never been re-released in any form.

Reception.

Quintet reported that "Soul Blazer" sold 200,000 copies in Japan, 70,000 copies in North America, and 25,000 copies in Europe, adding up to 295,000 cartridges sold worldwide.  Upon release, "Famitsu" magazine's four reviewers scored the game 32 out of 40. "Game Informer" magazine reviewed the game in 1992, with its three reviewers scoring it 8.5, 8.75 and 8.5 out of 10. In its first issue, "GameFan"s two reviewers scored it 95% and 92%. "Electronic Gaming Monthly"s four reviewers scored it 8, 9, 8 and 8 out of 10, and gave it the Editor's Choice Gold award. They compared it favorably with "", with one of the reviewers stating that "Soul Blazer" "is equally as challenging, and actually more fun to play." "Dragon" gave the game 3 out of 5 stars.  M! Games gave it 78

Soul Blazer, released in Japan as, is a video game for the Super NES developed by Quintet and published by Enix. "Soul Blazer" was scored by Yukihide Takekawa. It was released in 1992 in Japan and North America, but not released in Europe until 1994.

Soul Blazer (v Japonsku známá jako ソウルブレイダー Sōru Bureidā) je akční RPG hra pro Super Nintendo Entertainment System vydaná v roce 1992 (resp. 1994 v Evropě) firmou Enix jako první hra v sérii Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia a Terranigma.


History.

A family tree of Chōsokabe clan.  The clan claims descent from Qin Shi Huang (d. 210 BCE), the first emperor of a unified China.  The clan is associated with Tosa Province in modern-day Kōchi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. Chōsokabe Motochika, who unified Shikoku, was the twenty-first daimyō (or head) of the clan.  In their early history of the Sengoku period, Chōsokabe Kunichika's father Kanetsugu, was killed by the Motoyama clan in 1508. Therefore, Kunichika was raised by the aristocrat Ichijō Husaie of the Ichijō clan in Tosa Province. Later, towards the end of his life, Kunichika took revenge on the Motoyama clan and destroyed them with the help of the Ichijō in 1560. Kunichika would go on to have children, including his heir and the future Daimyo of the Chōsokabe, Motochika, who would go on to unify Shikoku.  First, the Ichijō family was overthrown by Motochika in 1574. Later, he gained control of the rest of Tosa due to his victories at the Battle of Watarigawa in 1575. He then also destroyed the Kono and the Soga clan. Over the ensuing decade, he extended his power to all of Shikoku in 1583. However, in 1585, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (Oda Nobunaga's successor) invaded that island with a force of 100,000 men, led by Ukita Hideie, Kobayakawa Takakage, Kikkawa Motonaga, Toyotomi Hidenaga, and Toyotomi Hidetsugu. Motochika surrendered, and forfeited Awa, Sanuki, and Iyo Provinces; Hideyoshi permitted him to retain Tosa.  Under Hideyoshi, Motochika and his son Chōsokabe Nobuchika participated in the invasion of neighboring Kyūshū, in which Nobuchika died. In 1590, Motochika led a naval fleet in the Siege of Odawara, and also fought in the Japanese invasions of Korea along with Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1592.  After Motochika died in 1599 at age 61, the next clan leader was his son Chōsokabe Morichika. He led the clan forces in support of the Toyotomi at the Battle of Sekigahara. After 1600, the Chōsokabe were removed as daimyo of Tosa.  After the Siege of Osaka in 1615, Morichika was executed and the clan was ended as a political and military force.  Among the retainers to the clan were Kōsokabe Chikayasu, Tani Tadasumi, Hisatake Chikanao, Yoshida Takayori, Yoshida Shigetoshi, Yoshida Masashige.  Shirō Sōkabe, the 19th century missionary, was a descendant of the Chōsokabe clan.

Popular culture.

The Chōsokabe are a playable faction in "".

, also known as, was a Japanese samurai kin group. Over time, they were known for serving the Hosokawa clan, then the Miyoshi clan and then the Ichijo clan.

Klan Čósokabe (: 長宗我部氏, "Čósokabe-udži") byl japonský samurajský klan zaujímající významné postavení během období Sengoku. Klan sídlil v provincii Tosa. Klan je také známý pod jménem Čósokame (長曾我部). Motočika Čósokabe, 21. hlava klanu, dokázal v 16. století sjednotit pod svou vládou ostrov Šikoku. Jeho syn Moričika byl po Obléhání Ósaky 11. května 1615 spolu se svými syny sťat a poté se klan propadl do nevýznamnosti.


Properties.

Paraffin wax is mostly found as a white, odorless, tasteless, waxy solid, with a typical melting point between about, and a density of around 900 kg/m. It is insoluble in water, but soluble in ether, benzene, and certain esters. Paraffin is unaffected by most common chemical reagents but burns readily. Its heat of combustion is 42 MJ/kg.  Paraffin wax is an excellent electrical insulator, with a resistivity of between 10 and 10 ohm metre. This is better than nearly all other materials except some plastics (notably Teflon). It is an effective neutron moderator and was used in James Chadwick's 1932 experiments to identify the neutron.  Paraffin wax is an excellent material for storing heat, with a specific heat capacity of 2.14–2.9 J g K (joules per gram kelvin) and a heat of fusion of 200–220 J g. Paraffin wax phase-change cooling coupled with retractable radiators was used to cool the electronics of the Lunar Roving Vehicle during the manned missions to the Moon in the early 1970s. Wax expands considerably when it melts and this allows its use in wax element thermostats for industrial, domestic and, particularly, automobile purposes.

History.

Paraffin wax was first created in 1830 by the German chemist Karl von Reichenbach when he tried to develop the means to efficiently separate and refine the waxy substances naturally occurring in petroleum. Paraffin represented a major advance in the candlemaking industry because it burned more cleanly and reliably and was cheaper to manufacture than any other candle fuel. Paraffin wax initially suffered from a low melting point; however, this shortcoming was later remedied by the addition of harder stearic acid. The production of paraffin wax enjoyed a boom in the early 20th century as a result of the growth of the meatpacking and oil industries which created paraffin and stearic acid as byproducts.

Manufacturing.

The feedstock for paraffin is slack wax, which is a mixture of oil and wax, a byproduct from the refining of lubricating oil.  The first step in making paraffin wax is to remove the oil (de-oiling or de-waxing) from the slack wax. The oil is separated by crystallization. Most commonly, the slack wax is heated, mixed with one or more solvents such as a ketone and then cooled. As it cools, wax crystallizes out of the solution, leaving only oil. This mixture is filtered into two streams: solid (wax plus some solvent) and liquid (oil and solvent). After the solvent is recovered by distillation, the resulting products are called "product wax" (or "press wax") and "foots oil". The lower the percentage of oil in the wax, the more refined it is considered (semi-refined versus fully refined). The product wax may be further processed to remove colors and odors. The wax may finally be blended together to give certain desired properties such as melt point and penetration. Paraffin wax is sold in either liquid or solid form.

Applications.

In industrial applications, it is often useful to modify the crystal properties of the paraffin wax, typically by adding branching to the existing carbon backbone chain. The modification is usually done with additives, such as EVA copolymers, microcrystalline wax, or forms of polyethylene. The branched properties result in a modified paraffin with a higher viscosity, smaller crystalline structure, and modified functional properties. Pure paraffin wax is rarely used for carving original models for casting metal and other materials in the lost wax process, as it is relatively brittle at room temperature and presents the risks of chipping and breakage when worked. Soft and pliable waxes, like beeswax, may be preferred for such sculpture, but "investment casting waxes," often paraffin-based, are expressly formulated for the purpose.  In a histology or pathology laboratory, paraffin wax is used to impregnate tissue prior to sectioning thin samples of tissue. Water is removed from the tissue through ascending strengths of alcohol (75% to absolute) and the tissue is cleared in an organic solvent such as xylene. The tissue is then placed in paraffin wax for a number of hours and then set in a mold with wax to cool and solidify; sections are then cut on a microtome.

Occupational safety.

People can be exposed to paraffin in the workplace by breathing it in, skin contact, and eye contact. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit (REL) for paraffin wax fume exposure of 2 mg/m over an 8-hour workday.

Paraffin wax (or petroleum wax) is a soft colorless solid derived from petroleum, coal or shale oil that consists of a mixture of hydrocarbon molecules containing between twenty and forty carbon atoms. It is solid at room temperature and begins to melt above approximately, and its boiling point is above. Common applications for paraffin wax include lubrication, electrical insulation, and candles;

Parafín (též parafin) je bílá, v surovém stavu spíše nažloutlá až nahnědlá, amorfní směs vyšších nasycených alifatických uhlovodíků (alkanů). Je bez chuti a zápachu, ve vodě nerozpustný.


Gameplay.

"Strife"'s gameplay is standard for the first-person shooter genre; the action is observed from the protagonist's viewpoint, and most of the game involves combat with the Order's infantry and war robots. The main character begins with just a dagger, but more powerful weapons, such as a crossbow or a flamethrower can be found throughout the game. The protagonist also has an inventory where he can keep items for later use, such as first aid kits for healing, protective armor, or gold coins.  The game contains numerous friendly or neutral characters with whom the player can converse or trade. These characters often assign the player character missions, thus advancing the plot. If the player fires a weapon while not in a combat situation, it usually sets off an alarm and makes the guards attack the protagonist; however, certain weapons – the dagger and poisonous crossbow bolts – allow attacking enemies stealthily without activating the alarm.  Unlike most other first-person shooters of the time, "Strife" does not follow a linear series of levels. Instead, the town of Tarnhill acts as a central hub from which the player can travel back and forth between various areas, which stay the same as they were when the player left them.  The player character has two numerical attributes, accuracy and stamina, which can be improved at certain points in the game. The first attribute increases the accuracy of ranged weapons, while the latter increases the maximum amount of health.

Plot.

The game is set some time after a catastrophic comet impact, which brought a deadly virus onto the planet. The resulting plague caused deaths of millions of people, while other victims were mutated and began hearing the voice of a malevolent deity. They formed an organization called "The Order" and enslaved the rest of the populace. However, a rag-tag resistance movement, called "The Front", is trying to topple The Order's reign.  The unnamed protagonist of the game is a wandering mercenary, captured by Order troops near the town of Tarnhill. After killing the guards and escaping, he comes in contact with a man named Rowan, who makes him an offer to join the Front. The protagonist receives a communication device through which he can remain in contact with a female member of the Front, codenamed Blackbird. From then on, Blackbird provides assistance and commentary throughout the game. The protagonist heads to the Front's base, where the rebel leader, Macil, sends him on a number of missions in order to weaken the Order. After several acts of sabotage, the Front proceeds to assault the Order's castle; the protagonist, accompanying them in the attack, finds and kills a major member of the Order called "The Programmer". He loses consciousness upon touching the weapon that the Programmer had been using.  The mercenary wakes up in the castle, now taken over by the Front. Macil explains that the Programmer's weapon is one of the five fragments of the "Sigil", a powerful weapon worshipped by the Order. He orders the protagonist to find the remaining four. To this end, the mercenary visits a knowledgeable being called "The Oracle", who reveals that the next fragment is being held by another of the Order's leaders, The Bishop. After killing the Bishop and acquiring the second fragment, the protagonist returns to the Oracle only to be told that the third fragment is being held by Macil himself; the Oracle claims that Macil is a traitor who has been using the protagonist as a pawn in his scheme. At this point, the player must make a decision: either disbelieve the Oracle and kill it, or trust the Oracle and kill Macil. The choice has bearing on the rest of the plot.  Assuming the player trusts Macil and kills the Oracle - acquiring the third fragment - he receives another task from Macil: to deactivate a factory, built on the comet's impact site, where the Order is turning captured people into "bio-mechanical soldiers." Upon completing his mission, the protagonist learns that Macil has gone insane; he returns to the base and attempts to speak to Macil, who declares in his madness that he wishes to free the "one god", then attacks the protagonist. Upon killing Macil, the protagonist receives the fourth Sigil fragment. He then returns to the factory, where lies the laboratory of the Loremaster, another of the Order's leaders. After killing Loremaster and thus acquiring the final Sigil piece, he proceeds to use the weapon to unlock a door leading to the comet's impact site. Inside, he finds an extraterrestrial spaceship. Within the ship waits an alien being known as "The Entity"; it is the one responsible for creating the Order and taking over the minds of mutated people. The mercenary kills it with the Sigil; its death means the end of the Order. He then finally meets Blackbird face to face. She tells him that his victory allowed mankind to create a vaccine for the virus, then kisses him.  The plot takes a different direction if the player decides to trust the Oracle and immediately kill Macil. Once he does so (claiming Macil's Sigil piece in the process), the Oracle dispatches him to the Loremaster's laboratory. Having killed the Loremaster and obtained the fourth fragment of the Sigil, the protagonist returns to the Oracle, who then reveals that it was using him all along in a bid to acquire the complete Sigil, use it to free the "one god", and attain eternal life. The mercenary kills the Oracle and, with all five fragments of the Sigil now in his possession, heads to the alien ship. There he encounters the Entity; however, the being speaks with Blackbird's voice, and implies that it was manipulating the protagonist throughout the game in order to regain freedom and take over the planet. After killing the Entity, the ending sequence is shown, this time less optimistic: the cure for the virus has not been invented and mankind's future is uncertain.

Development.

"Strife" was originally being developed by Cygnus Studios, the creators of "", for id Software. Cygnus Studios was already working on another first-person shooter game, "The Second Sword", utilizing the older ShadowCaster game engine by id Software. However, id Software asked Cygnus Studios to create a game based on the Doom engine and requested that the studio be relocated to Texas from Chicago while they were still developing "Raptor" so that they would be able to develop the new title for id Software. The studio agreed and after relocating, the studio no longer wanted to work on "The Second Sword" and the title was dropped in favor of working on "Strife".  Cygnus Studios worked on "Strife" for a few months following "Raptor" being finished. However, soon internal conflicts arose and employees mutinied against Scott Host, the original founder of Cygnus Studios, and he re-located back to Chicago and "Strife" was essentially cancelled. The mutineers then founded Rogue Entertainment and resumed development on "Strife". The shareware version was released on February 23, 1996, while the full version was released on May 31, 1996. It was the last commercially released standalone PC game to utilize the id Tech 1 engine from id Software.

Community support.

After the game's official support ended, game engine recreations of "Strife" were created by Doom source port developers through reverse engineering. Notably authors were Jānis Legzdiņš (author of the Doom source port Vavoom), Randy Heit (author of ZDoom), Samuel Villarreal (author of "SvStrife"), and James Haley (author with Samuel Villareal of Chocolate Strife). Except for the last, these allow for high resolution graphics modes, better mouselook, and expanded modding capabilities.  "Strife" was ported to the Commodore Amiga in 2013.

Digital re-release.

In 2014 Night Dive Studios coordinated the digital re-release of Strife as "Strife: Veteran Edition" (or "The Original Strife: Veteran Edition"), after acquiring rights to the game. Because the game's source code had been lost by Rogue Entertainment, a derivative of the Chocolate Doom subproject "Chocolate Strife" was used as the game's engine, with its original programmers being contracted to do additional coding for the re-release. The source code of "Strife: Veteran Edition" was made available under GPLv2 on github.com. The enhanced version of the game was released as "Strife: Veteran Edition" by Night Dive Studios on Steam on December 12, 2014.

Reception.

"Strife" received quite positive reviews upon its release. Reviewers took note of the novel gameplay: unlike most previous first-person shooters, such as "Doom", the player must cooperate with friendly characters in "Strife", while killing everyone in sight ends badly. Some reviews praised the story, but the reviewer in "Next Generation" criticized it for being too linear and the choices being illusionary.  The voice-acting in the game was generally rated positively; in particular, the voice and personality of Blackbird was praised by some reviewers, with GameSpot's Tal Blevins describing her voice as "by far the sexiest thing to ever resonate from my computer speakers."  "Strife"'s graphics were overall rated poorly. The reviewers criticized the game for using the obsolete "Doom" engine, which they considered especially jarring when compared to more modern games such as "Duke Nukem 3D" or "Quake". However, the hand-drawn illustrations which appear during dialogues and cutscenes were generally considered to be of good quality. Some reviewers doubted the novelty of the gameplay, pointing out that similar ideas were already used in e.g. "". Another aspect of the game which drew some ire was limiting the player to a single savegame slot, especially since making a wrong decision could make the game unwinnable.  Years after its release, retrospective reviews of the game were more positive. The reviewer of jeuxvideo.com recommended "Strife" for first-person shooter fans. Two articles about the game were published on the PC Gamer website. Richard Cobbett described the game in his "Saturday Crapshoot" series; he considered "Strife" to be an underappreciated game, but believed that it had not aged well. Paul Dean likewise concluded that "Strife" did not receive the attention it deserved back in its day, and encouraged readers to play the game. Both journalists compared "Strife" to the later "Deus Ex", a more commercially successful attempt to combine the first-person shooter formula with role-playing elements.

Strife (also known as Strife: Quest for the Sigil) is a first-person shooter role-playing video game developed by Rogue Entertainment. It was released in May 1996 in North America by Velocity Inc. and in Europe by Studio 3DO. The shareware version was released on February 23, 1996, while the full version was released on May 31, 1996. It was the last commercially released standalone PC game to utilize the id Tech 1 engine from id Software. The plot takes place in a world taken over by a religious organization known as "The Order"; the protagonist, an unnamed mercenary (sometimes referred to as Strifeguy), becomes a member of the resistance movement which aims to topple the Order's oppressive rule.

Strife je akční počítačová hra vyvinutá společností Rogue Entertainment a vydaná společností Velocity, a je založená na enginu hry Doom od ID Software. Strife obsahuje prvky RPG, například umožňuje mluvit s ostatními non-player charaktery ve hře, pracovat s inventářem či jednoduše vylepšovat vlastnosti hlavního hrdiny. Hra byla v roce 2014 vydána pod názvem The Original Strife: Veteran Edition na službě Steam pro operační systémy Windows, MacOS X a Linux. Protože zdrojové kódy k původní hře byly ztraceny, byla tato verze je postavena open source enginu Chocolate Strife.