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of the War in Heaven, it tells the story of Arcade, the guardian angel of Maurice d'Esparvieu. Bored because Bishop d'Esparvieu is sinless, Arcade begins reading the bishop's books on theology and becomes an atheist. He moves to Paris, meets a woman, falls in love, and loses his virginity causing his wings to fall off, joins the revolutionary movement of angels, and meets the Devil, who realizes that if he overthrew God, he would become just like God. Arcade realizes that replacing God with another is meaningless unless "in ourselves and in ourselves alone we attack and destroy Ialdabaoth." "Ialdabaoth," | Anatole France |
according to France, is God's secret name and means "the child who wanders." He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. He died in 1924 and is buried in the Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery near Paris. On 31 May 1922, France's entire works were put on the "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" (Prohibited Books Index) of the Catholic Church. He regarded this as a "distinction". This Index was abolished in 1966. In 1877, France married Valérie Guérin de Sauville, a granddaughter of Jean-Urbain Guérin a miniaturist who painted Louis XVI, and with whom he had a daughter, Suzanne, in 1881 (dec. 1918). France's | Anatole France |
relations with women were always turbulent, and in 1888 he began a relationship with Madame Arman de Caillavet, who conducted a celebrated literary salon of the Third Republic; the affair lasted until shortly before her death in 1910. After his divorce in 1893, he had many liaisons, notably with Mme Gagey, who committed suicide in 1911. France married again in 1920, to Emma Laprévotte. Politically, France was a socialist and an outspoken supporter of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In 1920, he gave his support to the newly founded French Communist Party. France was documented to have a brain size just | Anatole France |
three-quarters the average weight. After his death in 1924 France was the object of written attacks, including a particularly venomous one from the Nazi collaborator Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, and detractors decided he was a vulgar and derivative writer. An admirer, the English writer George Orwell, defended him however and declared that he remained very readable, and that "it is unquestionable that he was attacked partly from political motive." Anatole France ' (; born ', ; 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924) was a French poet, journalist, and successful novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered | Anatole France |
André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars. The author of "more than fifty books," at the time of his death his obituary in "The New York Times" described him as "France's greatest contemporary man of letters" and "judged the greatest French writer of this century by the literary cognoscenti." Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, | André Gide |
Gide exposes to public view the conflict and eventual reconciliation of the two sides of his personality, split apart by a straitlaced traducing of education and a narrow social moralism. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritanical constraints, and centres on his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, including owning one's sexual nature, without at the same time betraying one's values. His political activity is shaped by the same ethos, as indicated by his repudiation of | André Gide |
communism after his 1936 voyage to the USSR. Gide was born in Paris on 22 November 1869, into a middle-class Protestant family. His father was a Paris University professor of law who died in 1880. His uncle was the political economist Charles Gide. His paternal family traced its roots back to Italy, with his ancestors, the Guido's, moving to France and other western and northern European countries after converting to Protestantism during the 16th century, due to persecution. Gide was brought up in isolated conditions in Normandy and became a prolific writer at an early age, publishing his first novel, | André Gide |
"The Notebooks of André Walter" (French: "Les Cahiers d'André Walter"), in 1891, at the age of twenty-one. In 1893 and 1894, Gide travelled in Northern Africa, and it was there that he came to accept his attraction to boys. He befriended Oscar Wilde in Paris, and in 1895 Gide and Wilde met in Algiers. Wilde had the impression that he had introduced Gide to homosexuality, but, in fact, Gide had already discovered this on his own. In 1895, after his mother's death, he married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux, but the marriage remained unconsummated. In 1896, he became mayor of La | André Gide |
Roque-Baignard, a commune in Normandy. In 1901, Gide rented the property Maderia in St. Brélade's Bay and lived there while residing in Jersey. This period, 1901–07, is commonly seen as a time of apathy and turmoil for him. In 1908, Gide helped found the literary magazine "Nouvelle Revue Française" ("The New French Review"). In 1916, Marc Allégret, only 15 years old, became his lover. Marc was the son – one of five children – of Elie Allégret, who years before had been hired by Gide's mother to tutor her son in light of his weak grades in school, after which | André Gide |
he and Gide became fast friends; Allégret was best man at Gide's wedding. Gide and Marc fled to London, in retribution for which his wife burned all his correspondence – "the best part of myself," he later commented. In 1918, he met Dorothy Bussy, who was his friend for over thirty years and translated many of his works into English. In the 1920s, Gide became an inspiration for writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1923, he published a book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky; however, when he defended homosexuality in the public edition of "Corydon" (1924) he received widespread | André Gide |
condemnation. He later considered this his most important work. In 1923, he sired a daughter, Catherine, by Elisabeth van Rysselberghe, a woman who was much younger than he. He had known her for a long time, as she was the daughter of his closest female friend, Maria Monnom, the wife of his friend the Belgian neo-impressionist painter Théo van Rysselberghe. This caused the only crisis in the long-standing relationship between Allégret and Gide and damaged the relation with van Rysselberghe. This was possibly Gide's only sexual liaison with a woman, and it was brief in the extreme. Catherine became his | André Gide |
only descendant by blood. He liked to call Elisabeth "La Dame Blanche" ("The White Lady"). Elisabeth eventually left her husband to move to Paris and manage the practical aspects of Gide's life (they had adjoining apartments built for each on the rue Vavin). She worshiped him, but evidently they no longer had a sexual relationship. Gide's legal wife, Madeleine, died in 1938. Later he explored their unconsummated marriage in his memoir of Madeleine, "Et Nunc Manet in Te". In 1924, he published an autobiography, "If it Die..." (French: "Si le grain ne meurt"). In the same year, he produced the | André Gide |
first French language editions of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and "Lord Jim". After 1925, he began to campaign for more humane conditions for convicted criminals. From July 1926 to May 1927, he travelled through the French Equatorial Africa colony with his lover Marc Allégret. Gide went successively to Middle Congo (now the Republic of the Congo), Ubangi-Shari (now the Central African Republic), briefly to Chad and then to Cameroon before returning to France. He related his peregrinations in a journal called "Travels in the Congo" (French: "Voyage au Congo") and "Return from Chad" (French: "Retour du Tchad"). In this | André Gide |
published journal, he criticized the behavior of French business interests in the Congo and inspired reform. In particular, he strongly criticized the "Large Concessions" regime (French: "régime des Grandes Concessions"), "i.e.," a regime according to which part of the colony was conceded to French companies and where these companies could exploit all of the area's natural resources, in particular rubber. He related, for instance, how natives were forced to leave their village for several weeks to collect rubber in the forest, and went as far as comparing their exploitation to slavery. The book had important influence on anti-colonialism movements in | André Gide |
France and helped re-evaluate the impact of colonialism. During the 1930s, he briefly became a communist, or more precisely, a fellow traveler (he never formally joined any communist party). As a distinguished writer sympathizing with the cause of communism, he was invited to speak at Maxim Gorky's funeral and to tour the Soviet Union as a guest of the Soviet Union of Writers. He encountered censorship of his speeches and was particularly disillusioned with the state of culture under Soviet communism, breaking with his socialist friends in "Retour de L'U.R.S.S." in 1936. In the 1949 anthology "The God That Failed" | André Gide |
Gide describes his early enthusiasm: In 1930 Gide published a book about the Blanche Monnier case called "La Séquestrée de Poitiers", changing little but the names of the protagonists. Monnier was a young woman who was kept captive by her own mother for more than 25 years. In 1939, Gide became the first living author to be published in the prestigious "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade". He left France for Africa in 1942 and lived in Tunis until the end of World War II. In 1947, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in | André Gide |
which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight". He devoted much of his last years to publishing his Journal. Gide died in Paris on 19 February 1951. The Roman Catholic Church placed his works on the "Index of Forbidden Books" in 1952. Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan summed up Gide's life as a writer and an intellectual: "Gide's fame rested ultimately, of course, on his literary works. But, unlike many writers, he was no recluse: he had a need of friendship and a genius for sustaining it." But his "capacity for | André Gide |
love was not confined to his friends: it spilled over into a concern for others less fortunate than himself." André Gide's writings spanned many genres – "As a master of prose narrative, occasional dramatist and translator, literary critic, letter writer, essayist, and diarist, André Gide provided twentieth-century French literature with one of its most intriguing examples of the man of letters." But as Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan points out, "It is the fiction that lies at the summit of Gide's work." "Here, as in the "oeuvre" as a whole, what strikes one first is the variety. Here, too, we see | André Gide |
Gide's curiosity, his youthfulness, at work: a refusal to mine only one seam, to repeat successful formulas...The fiction spans the early years of Symbolism, to the "comic, more inventive, even fantastic" pieces, to the later "serious, heavily autobiographical, first-person narratives"...In France Gide was considered a great stylist in the classical sense, "with his clear, succinct, spare, deliberately, subtly phrased sentences." Gide's surviving letters run into the thousands. But it is the "Journal" that Sheridan calls "the pre-eminently Gidean mode of expression." "His first novel emerged from Gide's own journal, and many of the first-person narratives read more or less like | André Gide |
journals. In "Les faux-monnayeurs", Edouard's journal provides an alternative voice to the narrator's." "In 1946, when Pierre Herbert asked Gide which of his books he would choose if only one were to survive," Gide replied, 'I think it would be my "Journal."'" Beginning at the age of eighteen or nineteen, Gide kept a journal all of his life and when these were first made available to the public, they ran to thirteen hundred pages. "Each volume that Gide wrote was intended to challenge itself, what had preceded it, and what could conceivably follow it. This characteristic, according to Daniel Moutote | André Gide |
in his "Cahiers de André Gide" essay, is what makes Gide's work 'essentially modern': the 'perpetual renewal of the values by which one lives.'" Gide wrote in his "Journal" in 1930: "The only drama that really interests me and that I should always be willing to depict anew, is the debate of the individual with whatever keeps him from being authentic, with whatever is opposed to his integrity, to his integration. Most often the obstacle is within him. And all the rest is merely accidental." As a whole, "The works of André Gide reveal his passionate revolt against the restraints | André Gide |
and conventions inherited from 19th-century France. He sought to uncover the authentic self beneath its contradictory masks." In his journal, Gide distinguishes between adult-attracted "sodomites" and boy-loving "pederasts", categorizing himself as the latter. In the company of Oscar Wilde, he had several sexual encounters with young boys abroad. Gide's novel "Corydon", which he considered his most important work, erects a defense of pederasty. Notes Sources André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in | André Gide |
Algorithms for calculating variance Algorithms for calculating variance play a major role in computational statistics. A key difficulty in the design of good algorithms for this problem is that formulas for the variance may involve sums of squares, which can lead to numerical instability as well as to arithmetic overflow when dealing with large values. A formula for calculating the variance of an entire population of size "N" is: Using Bessel's correction to calculate an unbiased estimate of the population variance from a finite sample of "n" observations, the formula is: Therefore, a naive algorithm to calculate the estimated variance | Algorithms for calculating variance |
is given by the following: This algorithm can easily be adapted to compute the variance of a finite population: simply divide by "N" instead of "n" − 1 on the last line. Because and can be very similar numbers, cancellation can lead to the precision of the result to be much less than the inherent precision of the floating-point arithmetic used to perform the computation. Thus this algorithm should not be used in practice, and several alternate, numerically stable, algorithms have been proposed. This is particularly bad if the standard deviation is small relative to the mean. However, the algorithm | Algorithms for calculating variance |
can be improved by adopting the method of the assumed mean. We can use a property of the variance to avoid the catastrophic cancellation in this formula, namely the variance is invariant with respect to changes in a location parameter with formula_4 any constant, which leads to the new formula the closer formula_4 is to the mean value the more accurate the result will be, but just choosing a value inside the samples range will guarantee the desired stability. If the values formula_7 are small then there are no problems with the sum of its squares, on the contrary, if | Algorithms for calculating variance |
they are large it necessarily means that the variance is large as well. In any case the second term in the formula is always smaller than the first one therefore no cancellation may occur. If we take just the first sample as formula_4 the algorithm can be written in Python programming language as this formula facilitates as well the incremental computation, that can be expressed as An alternative approach, using a different formula for the variance, first computes the sample mean, and then computes the sum of the squares of the differences from the mean, where s is the standard | Algorithms for calculating variance |
deviation. This is given by the following pseudocode: This algorithm is numerically stable if "n" is small. However, the results of both of these simple algorithms ("Naïve" and "Two-pass") can depend inordinately on the ordering of the data and can give poor results for very large data sets due to repeated roundoff error in the accumulation of the sums. Techniques such as compensated summation can be used to combat this error to a degree. It is often useful to be able to compute the variance in a single pass, inspecting each value formula_11 only once; for example, when the data | Algorithms for calculating variance |
are being collected without enough storage to keep all the values, or when costs of memory access dominate those of computation. For such an online algorithm, a recurrence relation is required between quantities from which the required statistics can be calculated in a numerically stable fashion. The following formulas can be used to update the mean and (estimated) variance of the sequence, for an additional element "x". Here, denotes the sample mean of the first "n" samples ("x", ..., "x"), "s" their sample variance, and "σ" their population variance. These formulas suffer from numerical instability, as they repeatedly subtract a | Algorithms for calculating variance |
small number from a big number which scales with "n". A better quantity for updating is the sum of squares of differences from the current mean, formula_15, here denoted formula_16: This algorithm was found by Welford, and it has been thoroughly analyzed. It is also common to denote formula_20 and formula_21. An example Python implementation for Welford's algorithm is given below. This algorithm is much less prone to loss of precision due to catastrophic cancellation, but might not be as efficient because of the division operation inside the loop. For a particularly robust two-pass algorithm for computing the variance, one | Algorithms for calculating variance |
can first compute and subtract an estimate of the mean, and then use this algorithm on the residuals. The parallel algorithm below illustrates how to merge multiple sets of statistics calculated online. The algorithm can be extended to handle unequal sample weights, replacing the simple counter "n" with the sum of weights seen so far. West (1979) suggests this incremental algorithm: Chan et al. note that the above "On-line" algorithm is a special case of an algorithm that works for any partition of the sample formula_22 into sets formula_23, formula_24: This may be useful when, for example, multiple processing units | Algorithms for calculating variance |
may be assigned to discrete parts of the input. Chan's method for estimating the mean is numerically unstable when formula_28 and both are large, because the numerical error in formula_29 is not scaled down in the way that it is in the formula_30 case. In such cases, prefer formula_31. def parallel_variance(avg_a, count_a, var_a, avg_b, count_b, var_b): Assume that all floating point operations use standard IEEE 754 double-precision arithmetic. Consider the sample (4, 7, 13, 16) from an infinite population. Based on this sample, the estimated population mean is 10, and the unbiased estimate of population variance is 30. Both the | Algorithms for calculating variance |
naïve algorithm and two-pass algorithm compute these values correctly. Next consider the sample (, , , ), which gives rise to the same estimated variance as the first sample. The two-pass algorithm computes this variance estimate correctly, but the naïve algorithm returns 29.333333333333332 instead of 30. While this loss of precision may be tolerable and viewed as a minor flaw of the naïve algorithm, further increasing the offset makes the error catastrophic. Consider the sample (, , , ). Again the estimated population variance of 30 is computed correctly by the two-pass algorithm, but the naïve algorithm now computes it | Algorithms for calculating variance |
as −170.66666666666666. This is a serious problem with naïve algorithm and is due to catastrophic cancellation in the subtraction of two similar numbers at the final stage of the algorithm. Terriberry extends Chan's formulae to calculating the third and fourth central moments, needed for example when estimating skewness and kurtosis: Here the formula_34 are again the sums of powers of differences from the mean formula_35, giving For the incremental case (i.e., formula_38), this simplifies to: By preserving the value formula_44, only one division operation is needed and the higher-order statistics can thus be calculated for little incremental cost. An example | Algorithms for calculating variance |
of the online algorithm for kurtosis implemented as described is: Pébaÿ further extends these results to arbitrary-order central moments, for the incremental and the pairwise cases, and subsequently Pébaÿ et al. for weighted and compound moments. One can also find there similar formulas for covariance. Choi and Sweetman offer two alternative methods to compute the skewness and kurtosis, each of which can save substantial computer memory requirements and CPU time in certain applications. The first approach is to compute the statistical moments by separating the data into bins and then computing the moments from the geometry of the resulting histogram, | Algorithms for calculating variance |
which effectively becomes a one-pass algorithm for higher moments. One benefit is that the statistical moment calculations can be carried out to arbitrary accuracy such that the computations can be tuned to the precision of, e.g., the data storage format or the original measurement hardware. A relative histogram of a random variable can be constructed in the conventional way: the range of potential values is divided into bins and the number of occurrences within each bin are counted and plotted such that the area of each rectangle equals the portion of the sample values within that bin: where formula_46 and | Algorithms for calculating variance |
formula_47 represent the frequency and the relative frequency at bin formula_48 and formula_49 is the total area of the histogram. After this normalization, the formula_50 raw moments and central moments of formula_51 can be calculated from the relative histogram: where the superscript formula_54 indicates the moments are calculated from the histogram. For constant bin width formula_55 these two expressions can be simplified using formula_56: The second approach from Choi and Sweetman is an analytical methodology to combine statistical moments from individual segments of a time-history such that the resulting overall moments are those of the complete time-history. This methodology could | Algorithms for calculating variance |
be used for parallel computation of statistical moments with subsequent combination of those moments, or for combination of statistical moments computed at sequential times. If formula_59 sets of statistical moments are known: formula_60 for formula_61, then each formula_62 can be expressed in terms of the equivalent formula_50 raw moments: where formula_65 is generally taken to be the duration of the formula_66 time-history, or the number of points if formula_67 is constant. The benefit of expressing the statistical moments in terms of formula_68 is that the formula_59 sets can be combined by addition, and there is no upper limit on the | Algorithms for calculating variance |
value of formula_59. where the subscript formula_72 represents the concatenated time-history or combined formula_68. These combined values of formula_68 can then be inversely transformed into raw moments representing the complete concatenated time-history Known relationships between the raw moments (formula_76) and the central moments (formula_77) are then used to compute the central moments of the concatenated time-history. Finally, the statistical moments of the concatenated history are computed from the central moments: Very similar algorithms can be used to compute the covariance. The naïve algorithm is: For the algorithm above, one could use the following Python code: As for the variance, the | Algorithms for calculating variance |
covariance of two random variables is also shift-invariant, so given any two constant values formula_80 and formula_81 it can be written: and again choosing a value inside the range of values will stabilize the formula against catastrophic cancellation as well as make it more robust against big sums. Taking the first value of each data set, the algorithm can be written as: The two-pass algorithm first computes the sample means, and then the covariance: The two-pass algorithm may be written as: A slightly more accurate compensated version performs the full naive algorithm on the residuals. The final sums formula_86 and | Algorithms for calculating variance |
formula_87 "should" be zero, but the second pass compensates for any small error. A stable one-pass algorithm exists, similar to the online algorithm for computing the variance, that computes co-moment formula_88: The apparent asymmetry in that last equation is due to the fact that formula_90, so both update terms are equal to formula_91. Even greater accuracy can be achieved by first computing the means, then using the stable one-pass algorithm on the residuals. Thus we can compute the covariance as We can also make a small modification to compute the weighted covariance: Likewise, there is a formula for combining the | Algorithms for calculating variance |
covariances of two sets that can be used to parallelize the computation: A version of the weighted online algorithm that does batched updated also exists : let formula_94 denote the weights, we can write The covariance can then be computed as Algorithms for calculating variance Algorithms for calculating variance play a major role in computational statistics. A key difficulty in the design of good algorithms for this problem is that formulas for the variance may involve sums of squares, which can lead to numerical instability as well as to arithmetic overflow when dealing with large values. A formula for calculating | Algorithms for calculating variance |
Almond The almond ("Prunus dulcis", syn. "Prunus amygdalus") is a species of tree native to Mediterranean climate regions of the Middle East, from Syria and Turkey to India and Pakistan, although it has been introduced elsewhere. Almond is also the name of the edible and widely cultivated seed of this tree. Within the genus "Prunus", it is classified with the peach in the subgenus "Amygdalus", distinguished from the other subgenera by corrugations on the shell (endocarp) surrounding the seed. The fruit of the almond is a drupe, consisting of an outer hull and a hard shell with the seed, which | Almond |
is not a true nut, inside. Shelling almonds refers to removing the shell to reveal the seed. Almonds are sold shelled or unshelled. Blanched almonds are shelled almonds that have been treated with hot water to soften the seedcoat, which is then removed to reveal the white embryo. The almond is a deciduous tree, growing in height, with a trunk of up to in diameter. The young twigs are green at first, becoming purplish where exposed to sunlight, then grey in their second year. The leaves are long, with a serrated margin and a petiole. The flowers are white to | Almond |
pale pink, diameter with five petals, produced singly or in pairs and appearing before the leaves in early spring. Almond grows best in Mediterranean climates with warm, dry summers and mild, wet winters. The optimal temperature for their growth is between and the tree buds have a chilling requirement of 300 to 600 hours below to break dormancy. Almonds begin bearing an economic crop in the third year after planting. Trees reach full bearing five to six years after planting. The fruit matures in the autumn, 7–8 months after flowering. The almond fruit measures long. In botanical terms, it is | Almond |
not a nut but a drupe. The outer covering or exocarp, fleshy in other members of "Prunus" such as the plum and cherry, is instead a thick, leathery, grey-green coat (with a downy exterior), called the hull. Inside the hull is a reticulated, hard, woody shell (like the outside of a peach pit) called the endocarp. Inside the shell is the edible seed, commonly called a nut. Generally, one seed is present, but occasionally two occur. After the fruit matures, the hull splits and separates from the shell, and an abscission layer forms between the stem and the fruit so | Almond |
that the fruit can fall from the tree. The almond is native to the Mediterranean climate region of the Middle East, from Syria and Turkey eastward to Pakistan and India. It was spread by humans in ancient times along the shores of the Mediterranean into northern Africa and southern Europe, and more recently transported to other parts of the world, notably California, United States. The wild form of domesticated almond grows in parts of the Levant. Selection of the sweet type from the many bitter types in the wild marked the beginning of almond domestication. It is unclear as to | Almond |
which wild ancestor of the almond created the domesticated species. The species "Prunus fenzliana" may be the most likely wild ancestor of the almond in part because it is native of Armenia and western Azerbaijan where it was apparently domesticated. Wild almond species were grown by early farmers, "at first unintentionally in the garbage heaps, and later intentionally in their orchards". Almonds were one of the earliest domesticated fruit trees due to "the ability of the grower to raise attractive almonds from seed. Thus, in spite of the fact that this plant does not lend itself to propagation from suckers | Almond |
or from cuttings, it could have been domesticated even before the introduction of grafting". Domesticated almonds appear in the Early Bronze Age (3000–2000 BC) such as the archaeological sites of Numeria (Jordan), or possibly earlier. Another well-known archaeological example of the almond is the fruit found in Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt (c. 1325 BC), probably imported from the Levant. Of the European countries that the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh reported as cultivating almonds, Germany is the northernmost, though the domesticated form can be found as far north as Iceland. The word "almond" comes from Old French "almande" or "alemande", Late | Almond |
Latin *"amandula", derived through a form "amygdala" from the Greek ἀμυγδάλη ("amygdálē") (cf. amygdala), an almond. The "al-" in English, for the "a-" used in other languages may be due a confusion with the Arabic article "al", the word having first dropped the "a-" as in the Italian form "mandorla"; the British pronunciation "ah-mond" and the modern Catalan "ametlla" and modern French "amande" show a form of the word closer to the original. Other related names of almond include "mandel" or "knackmandel" (German), "mandorlo" (Italian for the tree), "mandorla" (Italian for the fruit), "amêndoa" (Portuguese), and "almendra" (Spanish). The adjective | Almond |
"amygdaloid" (literally "like an almond") is used to describe objects which are roughly almond-shaped, particularly a shape which is part way between a triangle and an ellipse. See, for example, the brain structure amygdala, which uses a direct borrowing of the Greek term "amygdalē". The pollination of California's almonds is the largest annual managed pollination event in the world, with close to one million hives (nearly half of all beehives in the US) being trucked in February to the almond groves. Much of the pollination is managed by pollination brokers, who contract with migratory beekeepers from at least 49 states | Almond |
for the event. This business has been heavily affected by colony collapse disorder, causing nationwide shortages of honey bees and increasing the price of insect pollination. To partially protect almond growers from the rising cost of insect pollination, researchers at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have developed a new line of self-pollinating almond trees. Self-pollinating almond trees, such as the 'Tuono', have been around for a while, but their harvest is not as desirable as the insect-pollinated California 'Nonpareil' almond tree. The 'Nonpareil' tree produces large, smooth almonds and offers 60–65% edible kernel per nut. The Tuono has thicker, hairier | Almond |
shells and offers only 32% of edible kernel per nut, but having a thick shell has advantages. The Tuono's shell protects the nut from threatening pests such as the navel orangeworm. ARS researchers have managed to crossbreed the pest-resistant Tuono tree with the 'Nonpareil, resulting in hybridized cultivars of almond trees that are self-pollinated and maintain a high nut quality. The new, self-pollinating hybrids possess quality skin color, flavor, and oil content, and reduce almond growers' dependency on insect pollination. Almond trees can be attacked by an array of damaging organisms, including insects, fungal pathogens, plant viruses, and bacteria. In | Almond |
2016, world production of almonds was 3.2 million tonnes, with United States providing 63% of the total. As other leading producers, Spain, Iran, and Morocco combined contributed 14% of the world total (table). In the United States, production is concentrated in California where and six different almond varieties were under cultivation in 2017, with a yield of of shelled almonds. California production is marked by a period of intense pollination during late winter by rented commercial bees transported by truck across the United States to almond groves, requiring more than half of the total US honeybee population. The value of | Almond |
total US exports of shelled almonds in 2016 was $3.2 billion. Spain has diverse commercial cultivars of almonds grown in Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, Andalusia, and Aragón regions, and the Balearic Islands. Production in 2016 declined 2% nationally compared to 2015 production data. Australia is the largest almond production region in the Southern Hemisphere. Most of the almond orchards are located along the Murray River corridor in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. The seeds of "Prunus dulcis" var. "dulcis" are predominantly sweet but some individual trees produce seeds that are somewhat more bitter. The genetic basis for bitterness involves | Almond |
a single gene, the bitter flavor furthermore being recessive, both aspects making this trait easier to domesticate. The fruits from "Prunus dulcis" var. "amara" are always bitter, as are the kernels from other species of genus "Prunus", such as peach and cherry (although to a lesser extent). The bitter almond is slightly broader and shorter than the sweet almond and contains about 50% of the fixed oil that occurs in sweet almonds. It also contains the enzyme emulsin which, in the presence of water, acts on the two soluble glucosides amygdalin and prunasin yielding glucose, cyanide and the essential oil | Almond |
of bitter almonds, which is nearly pure benzaldehyde, the chemical causing the bitter flavor. Bitter almonds may yield 4–9 mg of hydrogen cyanide per almond and contain 42 times higher amounts of cyanide than the trace levels found in sweet almonds. The origin of cyanide content in bitter almonds is via the enzymatic hydrolysis of amygdalin. Extract of bitter almond was once used medicinally but even in small doses, effects are severe or lethal, especially in children; the cyanide must be removed before consumption. The acute oral lethal dose of cyanide for adult humans is reported to be of body | Almond |
weight (approximately 50 bitter almonds), whereas for children, consuming 5–10 bitter almonds may be fatal. All commercially grown almonds sold as food in the United States are sweet cultivars. The US Food and Drug Administration reported in 2010 that some fractions of imported sweet almonds were contaminated with bitter almonds. Eating such almonds could result in vertigo and other typical bitter almond (cyanide) poisoning effects. While the almond is often eaten on its own, raw or toasted, it is also a component of various dishes. Almonds are available in many forms, such as whole, sliced (flaked, slivered), and as flour. | Almond |
Almond pieces around 2–3 mm in size, called "nibs", are used for special purposes such as decoration. Almonds yield almond oil and can also be made into almond butter or almond milk. These products can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes. Along with other nuts, almonds can be sprinkled over breakfasts and desserts, particularly "muesli" or ice cream-based dishes. Almonds are used in marzipan, nougat, many pastries (including "jesuites"), cookies (including French" macarons", macaroons), and cakes (including financiers), "noghl", and other sweets and desserts. They are also used to make almond butter, a spread similar to peanut butter, | Almond |
popular with peanut allergy sufferers and for its naturally sweeter taste. The young, developing fruit of the almond tree can be eaten whole (green almonds) when they are still green and fleshy on the outside and the inner shell has not yet hardened. The fruit is somewhat sour, but is a popular snack in parts of the Middle East, eaten dipped in salt to balance the sour taste. Also in the Middle East they are often eaten with dates. They are available only from mid-April to mid-June in the Northern Hemisphere; pickling or brining extends the fruit's shelf life. Almond | Almond |
cookies, Chinese almond biscuits, and Italian "ricciarelli" are made with almonds. The 'Marcona' almond cultivar is recognizably different from other almonds and is marketed by name. The kernel is short, round, relatively sweet, and delicate in texture. Its origin is unknown and has been grown in Spain for a long time; the tree is very productive, and the shell of the nut is very hard. 'Marcona' almonds are traditionally served after being lightly fried in oil, and are used by Spanish confectioners to prepare a sweet called "turrón". Certain natural food stores sell "bitter almonds" or "apricot kernels" labeled as | Almond |
such, requiring significant caution by consumers for how to prepare and eat these products. Almonds can be processed into a milk substitute called almond milk; the nut's soft texture, mild flavor, and light coloring (when skinned) make for an efficient analog to dairy, and a soy-free choice for lactose intolerant people and vegans. Raw, blanched, and lightly toasted almonds work well for different production techniques, some of which are similar to that of soymilk and some of which use no heat, resulting in "raw milk" (see raw foodism). Almond flour or ground almond meal combined with sugar or honey as | Almond |
marzipan is often used as a gluten-free alternative to wheat flour in cooking and baking. Almonds contain polyphenols in their skins consisting of flavonols, flavan-3-ols, hydroxybenzoic acids and flavanones analogous to those of certain fruits and vegetables. These phenolic compounds and almond skin prebiotic dietary fiber have commercial interest as food additives or dietary supplements. Historically, almond syrup was an emulsion of sweet and bitter almonds, usually made with barley syrup (orgeat syrup) or in a syrup of orange flower water and sugar, often flavored with a synthetic aroma of almonds. Due to the cyanide found in bitter almonds, modern | Almond |
syrups generally are produced only from sweet almonds. Such syrup products do not contain significant levels of hydrocyanic acid, so are generally considered safe for human consumption. Almonds are 4% water, 22% carbohydrates, 21% protein, and 50% fat (table). In a 100 gram reference amount, almonds supply 579 calories. The almond is a nutritionally dense food (table), providing a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of the B vitamins riboflavin and niacin, vitamin E, and the essential minerals calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc. Almonds are a moderate source (10–19% DV) of the B | Almond |
vitamins thiamine, vitamin B, and folate, choline, and the essential mineral potassium. They also contain substantial dietary fiber, the monounsaturated fat, oleic acid, and the polyunsaturated fat, linoleic acid. Typical of nuts and seeds, almonds are a source of phytosterols such as beta-sitosterol, stigmasterol, campesterol, sitostanol, and campestanol. Almonds may cause allergy or intolerance. Cross-reactivity is common with peach allergens (lipid transfer proteins) and tree nut allergens. Symptoms range from local signs and symptoms (e.g., oral allergy syndrome, contact urticaria) to systemic signs and symptoms including anaphylaxis (e.g., urticaria, angioedema, gastrointestinal and respiratory symptoms). Almonds are a rich source of | Almond |
oil, with 50% of kernel dry mass as fat (whole almond nutrition table). In relation to total dry mass of the kernel, almond oil contains 32% monounsaturated oleic acid (an omega-9 fatty acid), 13% linoleic acid (a polyunsaturated omega-6 essential fatty acid), and 10% saturated fatty acid (mainly as palmitic acid, USDA link in table). Linolenic acid, a polyunsaturated omega-3 fat, is not present (table). Almond oil is a rich source of vitamin E, providing 261% of the Daily Value per 100 ml (table). When almond oil is analyzed separately and expressed per 100 grams as a reference mass, the | Almond |
oil provides 884 calories, 8 grams of saturated fat (81% of which is palmitic acid), 70 grams of oleic acid, and 17 grams of linoleic acid (oil table). "Oleum amygdalae", the fixed oil, is prepared from either sweet or bitter almonds, and is a glyceryl oleate with a slight odour and a nutty taste. It is almost insoluble in alcohol but readily soluble in chloroform or ether. Almond oil is obtained from the dried kernel of almonds. Almonds are susceptible to aflatoxin-producing molds. Aflatoxins are potent carcinogenic chemicals produced by molds such as "Aspergillus flavus" and "Aspergillus parasiticus". The mold | Almond |
contamination may occur from soil, previously infested almonds, and almond pests such as navel-orange worm. High levels of mold growth typically appear as gray to black filament like growth. It is unsafe to eat mold infected tree nuts. Some countries have strict limits on allowable levels of aflatoxin contamination of almonds and require adequate testing before the nuts can be marketed to their citizens. The European Union, for example, introduced a requirement since 2007 that all almond shipments to EU be tested for aflatoxin. If aflatoxin does not meet the strict safety regulations, the entire consignment may be reprocessed to | Almond |
eliminate the aflatoxin or it must be destroyed. The USDA approved a proposal by the Almond Board of California to pasteurize almonds sold to the public, after tracing cases of salmonellosis to almonds. The almond pasteurization program became mandatory for California companies in 2007. Raw, untreated California almonds have not been available in the U.S. since then. California almonds labeled "raw" must be steam-pasteurized or chemically treated with propylene oxide (PPO). This does not apply to imported almonds or almonds sold from the grower directly to the consumer in small quantities. The treatment also is not required for raw almonds | Almond |
sold for export outside of North America. The Almond Board of California states: “PPO residue dissipates after treatment.” The U.S. EPA has reported: “Propylene oxide has been detected in fumigated food products; consumption of contaminated food is another possible route of exposure.” PPO is classified as Group 2B ("possibly carcinogenic to humans"). The USDA-approved marketing order was challenged in court by organic farmers organized by the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group. According to the Cornucopia Institute, this almond marketing order has imposed significant financial burdens on small-scale and organic growers and damaged domestic almond markets. A federal | Almond |
judge dismissed the lawsuit in the spring of 2009 on procedural grounds. In August 2010, a federal appeals court ruled that the farmers have a right to appeal the USDA regulation. In March 2013, the court vacated the suit on the basis that the objections should have been raised in 2007 when the regulation was first proposed. The almond is highly revered in some cultures. The tree originated in the Middle East, and is mentioned numerous times in the Bible. In the Hebrew Bible, the almond was a symbol of watchfulness and promise due to its early flowering. In the | Almond |
Bible the almond is mentioned ten times, beginning with Book of Genesis 43:11, where it is described as "among the best of fruits". In Numbers 17 Levi is chosen from the other tribes of Israel by Aaron's rod, which brought forth almond flowers. According to tradition, the rod of Aaron bore sweet almonds on one side and bitter on the other; if the Israelites followed the Lord, the sweet almonds would be ripe and edible, but if they were to forsake the path of the Lord, the bitter almonds would predominate. The almond blossom supplied a model for the menorah | Almond |
which stood in the Holy Temple, "Three cups, shaped like almond blossoms, were on one branch, with a knob and a flower; and three cups, shaped like almond blossoms, were on the other...on the candlestick itself were four cups, shaped like almond blossoms, with its knobs and flowers" (Exodus 25:33–34; 37:19–20). Similarly, Christian symbolism often uses almond branches as a symbol of the Virgin Birth of Jesus; paintings and icons often include almond-shaped haloes encircling the Christ Child and as a symbol of Mary. The word "Luz", which appears in Genesis 30:37, sometimes translated as "hazel", may actually be derived | Almond |
from the Aramaic name for almond (Luz), and is translated as such in some Bible versions such as the NIV. The Arabic name for almond is لوز "lauz" or "lūz". In some parts of the Levant and North Africa it is pronounced "loz", which is very close to its Aramaic origin. La entrada de la flor is an event celebrated on 1 February in Torrent, Spain, in which the clavarios and members of the Confrerie of the Mother of God deliver a branch of the first-blooming almond-tree to the Virgin. Almond The almond ("Prunus dulcis", syn. "Prunus amygdalus") is a | Almond |
Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda This article is about the demographic features of the population of Antigua and Barbuda, including population density, ethnicity, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. According to the 2011 census the estimated resident population of Antigua and Barbuda was 86,295. The estimated population of is (). Structure of the population (27.05.2011) (Census) : The population of Antigua and Barbuda, is predominantly black (91.0%) or mixed (4.4%). 1.9% of the population is white and 0.7% East Indian. There is also a small Amerindian population: 177 in 1991 and 214 in 2001 (0.3% of the total | Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda |
population). The remaining 1.6% of the population includes people from the Middle East (0.6%) and Chinese (0.2%). The 2001 census disclosed that 19,425, or 30 per cent of the total population of Antigua and Barbuda, reported their place of birth as a foreign country. Over 15,000 of these persons were from other Caribbean states, representing 80 of the total foreign born. The main countries of origin were Guyana, Dominica and Jamaica. Approximately 4,500 or 23 per cent of all foreign born came from Guyana, 3,300 or 17 per cent came from Dominica and 2,800 or 14 per cent came from | Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda |
Jamaica. The largest single group from a country outside the region came from the United States. Of the total of 1,715 persons, nine per cent of the foreign born, came from the United States while three per cent and one per cent came from the United Kingdom and Canada, respectively. Many of these are the children of Antiguans and Barbudans who had emigrated to these countries, mainly during the 1980s, and subsequently returned. The following demographic statistics are from The World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda This article is about the demographic features of the population | Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda The politics of Antigua and Barbuda takes place in a framework of a unitary parliamentary representative democratic monarchy, wherein the Sovereign of Antigua and Barbuda is the head of state, appointing a Governor-General to act as vice-regal representative in the nation. A Prime Minister is appointed by the Governor-General as the head of government, and of a multi-party system; the Prime Minister advises the Governor-General on the appointment of a Council of Ministers. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of the Parliament. | Politics of Antigua and Barbuda |
The bicameral Parliament consists of the Senate (seventeen-member body appointed by the Governor General) and the House of Representatives (seventeen seats; members are elected by proportional representation to serve five-year terms). Antigua and Barbuda has a long history of free elections, three of which have resulted in peaceful changes of government. Since the 1951 general election, the party system has been dominated by the Antigua Labour Party (ALP), for a long time was dominated by the Bird family, particularly Prime Ministers Vere and Lester Bird. The opposition claimed to be disadvantaged by the ALP's longstanding monopoly on patronage and its | Politics of Antigua and Barbuda |
control of the media, especially in the 1999 general election. The most recent elections to the House of Representatives were held on 12 June 2014. The Antigua Labour Party government was elected with fourteen seats. The United Progressive Party has three seats in the House of Representatives. Constitutional safeguards include freedom of speech, press, worship, movement, and association. Antigua and Barbuda is a member of the eastern Caribbean court system. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Jurisprudence is based on English common law. As head of state, Queen Elizabeth II is represented in Antigua and Barbuda | Politics of Antigua and Barbuda |
by a governor general who acts on the advice of the prime minister and the cabinet. Antigua and Barbuda elects on national level a legislature. Parliament has two chambers. The House of Representatives has 19 members, 17 members elected for a five-year term in single-seat constituencies, 2 ex-officio member (President and Speaker). The Senate has 17 appointed members. The prime minister is the leader of the majority party in the House and conducts affairs of state with the cabinet. The prime minister and the cabinet are responsible to the Parliament. Elections must be held at least every five years but | Politics of Antigua and Barbuda |
may be called by the prime minister at any time. There are special legislative provisions to account for Barbuda's low population relative to that of Antigua. Barbuda is guaranteed one member of the House of Representatives and two members of the Senate. In addition, there is a Barbuda Council to govern the internal affairs of the island. 6 parishes and 2 dependencies*; Barbuda*, Redonda*, Saint George, Saint John, Saint Mary, Saint Paul, Saint Peter, Saint Philip Antigua and Barbuda is a member of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. This court is headquartered in Saint Lucia, but at least one judge | Politics of Antigua and Barbuda |
of the Supreme Court resides in Antigua and Barbuda, and presides over the High Court of Justice. The current High Court judges are Jennifer Remy and Keith Thom. Antigua is also a member of the Caribbean Court of Justice, although it has not yet acceded to Part III of the 2001 Agreement Establishing a Caribbean Court of Justice. Its supreme appellate court therefore remains the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Indeed, of the signatories to the Agreement, as of December 2010, only Barbados has replaced appeals to Her Majesty in Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice. In | Politics of Antigua and Barbuda |
addition to the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, Antigua and Barbuda has a Magistrates' Court, which deals with lesser civil and criminal cases. Antigua Trades and Labor Union or ATLU [William ROBINSON]; People's Democratic Movement or PDM [Hugh MARSHALL] ACP Countries, ALBA, Caricom, Caribbean Development Bank, CELAC, Commonwealth of Nations, ECLAC, FAO, Group of 77, IBRD, ICAO, International Criminal Court, ICFTU, ICRM, IFAD, International Finance Corporation, IFRCS, International Labour Organization, International Monetary Fund, International Maritime Organization, Intelsat (nonsignatory user), Interpol, IOC, ITU, Non-Aligned Movement (observer), Organization of American States, OECS, OPANAL, United Nations, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UPU, WCL, World Federation of Trade | Politics of Antigua and Barbuda |
Unions, WHO, WMO, WTrO Politics of Antigua and Barbuda The politics of Antigua and Barbuda takes place in a framework of a unitary parliamentary representative democratic monarchy, wherein the Sovereign of Antigua and Barbuda is the head of state, appointing a Governor-General to act as vice-regal representative in the nation. A Prime Minister is appointed by the Governor-General as the head of government, and of a multi-party system; the Prime Minister advises the Governor-General on the appointment of a Council of Ministers. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two | Politics of Antigua and Barbuda |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda This article is about communications systems in Antigua and Barbuda. Telephones – main lines in use: 37,500 (2006) Telephones – mobile cellular: 110,200 (2006) (APUA PCS, Cable & Wireless, Digicel) Telephone system: <br>"domestic:" good automatic telephone system <br>"international:" 3 fiber optic submarine cables (2 to Saint Kitts and 1 to Guadeloupe); satellite earth station – 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean) Radio broadcast stations: AM 4, FM 6, shortwave 0 (2002) Radios: 36,000 (1997) Television broadcast stations: 2 (1997) Televisions: 31,000 (1997) Internet Service Providers (ISPs): Cable & Wireless, Antigua Computer Technologies (ACT), Antigua Public Utilities Authority | Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda |
(APUA INET) Internet hosts: 2,215 (2008) Internet users: 60,000 (2007) Country codes: AG Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda This article is about communications systems in Antigua and Barbuda. Telephones – main lines in use: 37,500 (2006) Telephones – mobile cellular: 110,200 (2006) (APUA PCS, Cable & Wireless, Digicel) Telephone system: <br>"domestic:" good automatic telephone system <br>"international:" 3 fiber optic submarine cables (2 to Saint Kitts and 1 to Guadeloupe); satellite earth station – 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean) Radio broadcast stations: AM 4, FM 6, shortwave 0 (2002) Radios: 36,000 (1997) Television broadcast stations: 2 (1997) Televisions: 31,000 (1997) Internet Service | Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda |
Royal Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force The Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force is the armed forces of Antigua and Barbuda. The ABDF has responsibility for several different roles: internal security, prevention of drug smuggling, the protection and support of fishing rights, prevention of marine pollution, search and rescue, ceremonial duties, assistance to government programs, provision of relief during natural disasters, assistance in the maintenance of essential services, and support of the police in maintaining law and order. The ABDF is one of the world's smallest militaries, consisting of 245 people. It is much better equipped for fulfilling its civil roles | Royal Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force |
as opposed to providing a deterrence against would-be aggressors or in defending the nation during a war. The ABDF consists of four major units: Royal Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force The Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force is the armed forces of Antigua and Barbuda. The ABDF has responsibility for several different roles: internal security, prevention of drug smuggling, the protection and support of fishing rights, prevention of marine pollution, search and rescue, ceremonial duties, assistance to government programs, provision of relief during natural disasters, assistance in the maintenance of essential services, and support of the police in maintaining law and | Royal Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force |
Antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-Semitism or anti-semitism) is hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is generally considered to be a form of racism. It has also been characterized as a political ideology which serves as an organizing principle and unites disparate groups which are opposed to liberalism. Antisemitism may be manifested in many ways, ranging from expressions of hatred of or discrimination against individual Jews to organized pogroms by mobs, state police, or even military attacks on entire Jewish communities. Although the term did not come into common | Antisemitism |
usage until the 19th century, it is now also applied to historic anti-Jewish incidents. Notable instances of persecution include the Rhineland massacres preceding the First Crusade in 1096, the Edict of Expulsion from England in 1290, the massacres of Spanish Jews in 1391, the persecutions of the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, the Cossack massacres in Ukraine from 1648 to 1657, various anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire between 1821 and 1906, the 1894–1906 Dreyfus affair in France, the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe during World War II, Soviet anti-Jewish policies, and Arab and Muslim involvement in the | Antisemitism |
Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries. The root word "" gives the false impression that antisemitism is directed against all Semitic people, "e.g.", including Arabs and Assyrians. The compound word "antisemite" was popularized in Germany in 1879 as a scientific-sounding term for "Judenhass" ("Jew-hatred"), and this has been its common use since then. The origin of "antisemitic" terminologies is found in the responses of Moritz Steinschneider to the views of Ernest Renan. As Alex Bein writes: "The compound anti-Semitism appears to have been used first by Steinschneider, who challenged Renan on account of his 'anti-Semitic prejudices' [i.e., his derogation | Antisemitism |
of the "Semites" as a race]." Avner Falk similarly writes: 'The German word "antisemitisch" was first used in 1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907) in the phrase "antisemitische Vorurteile" (antisemitic prejudices). Steinschneider used this phrase to characterise the French philosopher Ernest Renan's false ideas about how "Semitic races" were inferior to "Aryan races"'. Pseudoscientific theories concerning race, civilization, and "progress" had become quite widespread in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, especially as Prussian nationalistic historian Heinrich von Treitschke did much to promote this form of racism. He coined the phrase "the Jews are | Antisemitism |
our misfortune" which would later be widely used by Nazis. According to Avner Falk, Treitschke uses the term "Semitic" almost synonymously with "Jewish", in contrast to Renan's use of it to refer to a whole range of peoples, based generally on linguistic criteria. According to Jonathan M. Hess, the term was originally used by its authors to "stress the radical difference between their own 'antisemitism' and earlier forms of antagonism toward Jews and Judaism." In 1879 German journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pamphlet, "Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum. Vom nicht confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet" ("The Victory of the | Antisemitism |
Jewish Spirit over the Germanic Spirit. Observed from a non-religious perspective") in which he used the word "Semitismus" interchangeably with the word "Judentum" to denote both "Jewry" (the Jews as a collective) and "jewishness" (the quality of being Jewish, or the Jewish spirit). This use of "" was followed by a coining of "" which was used to indicate opposition to the Jews as a people and opposition to the Jewish spirit, which Marr interpreted as infiltrating German culture. His next pamphlet, "Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum" ("The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over | Antisemitism |
the Jewish Spirit", 1880), presents a development of Marr's ideas further and may present the first published use of the German word " Antisemitismus", "antisemitism". The pamphlet became very popular, and in the same year he founded the "Antisemiten-Liga" (League of Antisemites), apparently named to follow the "Anti-Kanzler-Liga" (Anti-Chancellor League). The league was the first German organization committed specifically to combating the alleged threat to Germany and German culture posed by the Jews and their influence, and advocating their forced removal from the country. So far as can be ascertained, the word was first widely printed in 1881, when Marr | Antisemitism |
published "Zwanglose Antisemitische Hefte", and Wilhelm Scherer used the term "Antisemiten" in the January issue of "Neue Freie Presse". The Jewish Encyclopedia reports, "In February 1881, a correspondent of the "Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums" speaks of 'Anti-Semitism' as a designation which recently came into use ("Allg. Zeit. d. Jud." 1881, p. 138). On 19 July 1882, the editor says, 'This quite recent Anti-Semitism is hardly three years old.'" The related term "philosemitism" was coined around 1885. From the outset the term anti-Semitism bore special racial connotations and meant specifically prejudice against Jews. The term is confusing, for in modern usage | Antisemitism |
'Semitic' designates a language group, not a race. In this sense, the term is a misnomer, since there are many speakers of Semitic languages (e.g. Arabs, Ethiopians, and Assyrians) who are not the objects of anti-Semitic prejudices, while there are many Jews who do not speak Hebrew, a Semitic language. Though 'antisemitism' has been used to describe prejudice against people who speak other Semitic languages, the validity of such usage has been questioned. The term may be spelled with or without a hyphen (antisemitism or anti-Semitism). Some scholars favor the unhyphenated form because, "If you use the hyphenated form, you | Antisemitism |
consider the words 'Semitism', 'Semite', 'Semitic' as meaningful" whereas "in antisemitic parlance, 'Semites' really stands for Jews, just that." For example, Emil Fackenheim supported the unhyphenated spelling, in order to "[dispel] the notion that there is an entity 'Semitism' which 'anti-Semitism' opposes." Others endorsing an unhyphenated term for the same reason include Padraic O'Hare, professor of Religious and Theological Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations at Merrimack College; Yehuda Bauer, professor of Holocaust studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and James Carroll, historian and novelist. According | Antisemitism |
to Carroll, who first cites O'Hare and Bauer on "the existence of something called 'Semitism'", "the hyphenated word thus reflects the bipolarity that is at the heart of the problem of antisemitism". Objections to the usage of the term, such as the obsolete nature of the term Semitic as a racial term, have been raised since at least the 1930s. Though the general definition of antisemitism is hostility or prejudice against Jews, and, according to Olaf Blaschke, has become an "umbrella term for negative stereotypes about Jews", a number of authorities have developed more formal definitions. Holocaust scholar and City | Antisemitism |
University of New York professor Helen Fein defines it as "a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or state violence—which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews." Elaborating on Fein's definition, Dietz Bering of the University of Cologne writes that, to antisemites, "Jews are not only partially but totally bad by nature, that is, their bad traits are incorrigible. Because of this | Antisemitism |