title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: "...my father's individualism and pagan ethical standards were in complete contrast to the rigidly moral conventionalism of my mother's teaching. This disequilibrium, which made my life a kind of endless disputation, is the main reason why I became an intellectual."


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir pursued post-secondary education after completing her high school years at Lycée Fenelon. After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics and philosophy in 1925, she studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique de Paris and literature/languages at the . She then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and after completing her degree in 1928, wrote her "" (roughly equivalent to an M.A. thesis) on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvicg (the topic was "Le concept chez Leibniz" ["The Concept in Leibniz"]). Her studies of political philosophy through university influenced her to start thinking of societal concerns rather than her issues.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir was raised in a strict Catholic household. In her youth, she was sent to convent schools. She was deeply religious as a child, at one point intending to become a nun. At age 14, Beauvoir questioned her faith as she saw many changes in the world after witnessing tragedies throughout her life. Consequently, she abandoned her faith in her early teens and remained an atheist for the rest of her life. To explain her atheist beliefs, Beauvoir stated, "Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself."


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: From 1929 through 1943, Beauvoir taught at the lycée level until she could support herself solely on the earnings of her writings. She taught at the (Marseille), the , and the (1936–39).


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre met during her college years. Intrigued by her determination as an educator, he intended to make their relationship romantic. However, she had no interest in doing so. During October 1929, Jean-Paul Sartre and Beauvoir became a couple. After they were confronted by her father, Sartre asked her to marry him on a provisional basis: One day while they were sitting on a bench outside the Louvre, he said, "Let's sign a two-year lease". Though Beauvoir wrote, "Marriage was impossible. I had no dowry", scholars point out that her ideal relationships described in "The Second Sex" and elsewhere bore little resemblances to the marriage standards of the day. Instead, she and Sartre entered into a lifelong "soul partnership", which was sexual but not exclusive, nor did it involve living together.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Sartre and Beauvoir always read each other's work. Debate continues about the extent to which they influenced each other in their existentialist works, such as Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" and Beauvoir's "She Came to Stay" and "Phenomenology and Intent". However, recent studies of Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Sartre, including Hegel and Leibniz. The Neo-Hegelian revival led by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite in the 1930s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit". However, Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during the war, produced an original critique of his dialectic of consciousness.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir's prominent open relationships at times overshadowed her substantial academic reputation. A scholar lecturing with her chastised their "distinguished [Harvard] audience [because] every question asked about Sartre concerned his work, while all those asked about Beauvoir concerned her personal life." Beginning in 1929, Beauvoir and Sartre were partners and remained so for 51 years, until his death in 1980. She chose never to marry and never had children. This gave her the time to advance her education and engage in political causes, write and teach, and take lovers. She lived with Claude Lanzmann from 1952 to 1959.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Perhaps her most famous lover was American author Nelson Algren. She met him in Chicago in 1947, she wrote to him across the Atlantic as "my beloved husband." Algren won the National Book Award for "The Man with the Golden Arm" in 1950, and in 1954, Beauvoir won France's most prestigious literary prize for "The Mandarins," in which Algren is the character Lewis Brogan. Algren vociferously objected to their intimacy becoming public. Years after they separated, she was buried wearing his gift of a silver ring.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: When Beauvoir visited Algren in Chicago, Art Shay took well-known nude and portrait photos of Beauvoir. Shay also wrote a play based on Algren, Beauvoir, and Sartre's triangular relationship. The play was stage read in 1999 in Chicago.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir was bisexual, and her relationships with young women were controversial. French author Bianca Lamblin (originally Bianca Bienenfeld) wrote in her book "Mémoires d'une Jeune Fille Dérangée" (published in English under the title "A Disgraceful Affair") that, while a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who was in her 30s. Lamblin had affairs with both Sartre and Beauvoir. In 1943, Beauvoir was suspended from her teaching position when she was accused of seducing her 17-year-old lycée pupil Natalie Sorokine in 1939. Sorokine's parents laid formal charges against Beauvoir for debauching a minor (the age of consent in France at the time was 15), and Beauvoir's license to teach in France was revoked, although it was subsequently reinstated.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir published her first novel "She Came to Stay" in 1943. It has been assumed that it is inspired by her and Sartre's sexual relationship with Olga Kosakiewicz and Wanda Kosakiewicz. Olga was one of her students in the Rouen secondary school where Beauvoir taught during the early 1930s. She grew fond of Olga. Sartre tried to pursue Olga but she rejected him, so he began a relationship with her sister Wanda. Upon his death, Sartre was still supporting Wanda. He also supported Olga for years, until she met and married Jacques-Laurent Bost, a lover of Beauvoir. However, the main thrust of the novel is philosophical, a scene in which to situate Beauvoir's abiding philosophical pre-occupation - the relationship between the self and the other.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: In the novel, set just before the outbreak of World War II, Beauvoir creates one character from the complex relationships of Olga and Wanda. The fictionalised versions of Beauvoir and Sartre have a ménage à trois with the young woman. The novel also delves into Beauvoir and Sartre's complex relationship and how it was affected by the ménage à trois.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: "She Came to Stay" was followed by many others, including "The Blood of Others", which explores the nature of individual responsibility, telling a love story between two young French students participating in the Resistance in World War II.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: In 1944, Beauvoir wrote her first philosophical essay, "Pyrrhus et Cinéas", a discussion on existentialist ethics. She continued her exploration of existentialism through her second essay "The Ethics of Ambiguity" (1947); it is perhaps the most accessible entry into French existentialism. In the essay, Beauvoir clears up some inconsistencies that many, Sartre included, have found in major existentialist works such as "Being and Nothingness". In "The Ethics of Ambiguity", Beauvoir confronts the existentialist dilemma of absolute freedom vs. the constraints of circumstance.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: At the end of World War II, Beauvoir and Sartre edited "Les Temps Modernes", a political journal which Sartre founded along with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others. Beauvoir used "Les Temps Modernes" to promote her own work and explore her ideas on a small scale before fashioning essays and books. Beauvoir remained an editor until her death.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: "The Second Sex", first published in 1949 in French as "Le Deuxième Sexe", turns the existentialist mantra that "existence precedes essence" into a feminist one: "One is not born but becomes a woman" (French: "On ne naît pas femme, on le devient"). With this famous phrase, Beauvoir first articulated what has come to be known as the sex-gender distinction, that is, the distinction between biological sex and the social and historical construction of gender and its attendant stereotypes. Beauvoir argues that "the fundamental source of women's oppression is its [femininity's] historical and social construction as the quintessential" Other.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir defines women as the "second sex" because women are defined as inferior to men. She pointed out that Aristotle argued women are "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities", while Thomas Aquinas referred to women as "imperfect men" and the "incidental" being. She quotes "In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the "immanence" to which they were previously resigned and reaching "transcendence", a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Chapters of "The Second Sex" were originally published in "Les Temps modernes", in June 1949. The second volume came a few months after the first in France. It was published soon after in America due to the quick translation by Howard Parshley, as prompted by Blanche Knopf, wife of publisher Alfred A. Knopf. Because Parshley had only a basic familiarity with the French language, and a minimal understanding of philosophy (he was a professor of biology at Smith College), much of Beauvoir's book was mistranslated or inappropriately cut, distorting her intended message. For years, Knopf prevented the introduction of a more accurate retranslation of Beauvoir's work, declining all proposals despite the efforts of existentialist scholars.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Only in 2009 was there a second translation, to mark the 60th anniversary of the original publication. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier produced the first integral translation in 2010, reinstating a third of the original work.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: In the chapter "Woman: Myth and Reality" of "The Second Sex", Beauvoir argued that men had made women the "Other" in society by the application of a false aura of "mystery" around them. She argued that men used this as an excuse not to understand women or their problems and not to help them, and that this stereotyping was always done in societies by the group higher in the hierarchy to the group lower in the hierarchy. She wrote that a similar kind of oppression by hierarchy also happened in other categories of identity, such as race, class, and religion, but she claimed that it was nowhere more true than with gender in which men stereotyped women and used it as an excuse to organize society into a patriarchy.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Despite her contributions to the feminist movement, especially the French women's liberation movement, and her beliefs in women's economic independence and equal education, Beauvoir was initially reluctant to call herself a feminist. However, after observing the resurgence of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Beauvoir stated she no longer believed a socialist revolution to be enough to bring about women's liberation. She publicly declared herself a feminist in 1972 in an interview with "Le Nouvel Observateur".


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: In 2018 the manuscript pages of "Le Deuxième Sexe" were published. At the time her adopted daughter, Sylvie Le Bon-Beauvoir, a philosophy professor, described her mother's writing process: Beauvoir wrote every page of her books longhand first and only after that would hire typists.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Published in 1954, "The Mandarins" won France's highest literary prize, the "Prix Goncourt". It is a roman à clef set after the end of World War II and follows the personal lives of philosophers and friends among Sartre's and Beauvoir's intimate circle, including her relationship with American writer Nelson Algren, to whom the book is dedicated.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Algren was outraged by the frank way Beauvoir described their sexual experiences in both "The Mandarins" and her autobiographies. Algren vented his outrage when reviewing American translations of Beauvoir's work. Much material bearing on this episode in Beauvoir's life, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only after her death.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir's early novel "Les Inséparables", long suppressed, was published in French in 2020 and two different English translations in 2021. Written in 1954, the book describes her first love, a classmate named Elisabeth Lacoin ("Zaza") who died before age 22, and had as a teenager a "passionate and tragic" relationship with Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty, then teaching at the same school. Disapproved by Sartre, the novel was deemed "too intimate" to be published during Beauvoir's lifetime.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir wrote popular travel diaries about time spent in the United States and China and published essays and fiction rigorously, especially throughout the 1950s and 1960s. She published several volumes of short stories, including "The Woman Destroyed", which, like some of her other later work, deals with aging.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: 1980 saw the publication of "When Things of the Spirit Come First", a set of short stories centered on and based upon women important to her earlier years. Though written long before the novel "She Came to Stay", Beauvoir did not at the time consider the stories worth publishing, allowing some forty years to pass before doing so.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Sartre and Merleau-Ponty had a longstanding feud, which led Merleau-Ponty to leave "Les Temps modernes". Beauvoir sided with Sartre and ceased to associate with Merleau-Ponty. In Beauvoir's later years, she hosted the journal's editorial meetings in her flat and contributed more than Sartre, whom she often had to force to offer his opinions.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir also wrote a four-volume autobiography, consisting of "Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter", "The Prime of Life", "Force of Circumstance" (sometimes published in two volumes in English translation: "After the War" and "Hard Times"), and "All Said and Done". In 1964 Beauvoir published a novella-length autobiography, "A Very Easy Death", covering the time she spent visiting her aging mother, who was dying of cancer. The novella brings up questions of ethical concerns with truth-telling in doctor-patient relationships.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Her 1970 long essay La Vieillesse ("The Coming of Age") is a rare instance of an intellectual meditation on the decline and solitude all humans experience if they do not die before about the age of 60.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: In the 1970s Beauvoir became active in France's women's liberation movement. She wrote and signed the Manifesto of the 343 in 1971, a manifesto that included a list of famous women who claimed to have had an abortion, then illegal in France. Some argue most of the women had not had abortions, including Beauvoir. Signatories were diverse as Catherine Deneuve, Delphine Seyrig, and Beauvoir's sister Poupette. In 1974, abortion was legalized in France.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: In a 1975 interview with Betty Friedan Beauvoir said "No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one."


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: In about 1976 Beauvoir and Sylvie Le Bon made a trip to New York City in the United States to visit Kate Millett on her farm.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: In 1981 she wrote "La Cérémonie des adieux" ("A Farewell to Sartre"), a painful account of Sartre's last years. In the opening of "Adieux", Beauvoir notes that it is the only major published work of hers which Sartre did not read before its publication.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: She contributed the piece "Feminism - Alive, Well, and in Constant Danger" to the 1984 anthology "", edited by Robin Morgan.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: After Sartre died in 1980, Beauvoir published his letters to her with edits to spare the feelings of people in their circle who were still living. After Beauvoir's death, Sartre's adopted daughter and literary heir Arlette Elkaïm would not let many of Sartre's letters be published in unedited form. Most of Sartre's letters available today have Beauvoir's edits, which include a few omissions but mostly the use of pseudonyms. Beauvoir's adopted daughter and literary heir Sylvie Le Bon, unlike Elkaïm, published Beauvoir's unedited letters to both Sartre and Algren.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Beauvoir died of pneumonia on 14 April 1986 in Paris, aged 78. She is buried next to Sartre at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. She was honored as a figure at the forefront of the struggle for women's rights around the time of her passing.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" is considered a foundational work in the history of feminism. Beauvoir had denied being feminist multiple times but ultimately admitted that she was one after "The Second Sex" became crucial in the world of feminism. The work has had a profound influence, opening the way for second-wave feminism in the United States, Canada, Australia, and around the world. Although Beauvoir has been quoted as saying "There is a certain unreasonable demand that I find a little stupid because it would enclose me, immobilize me completely in a sort of feminist concrete block." Her works on feminism have paved the way for all future feminists. The founders of the second-wave read "The Second Sex" in translation, including Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, Juliet Mitchell, Ann Oakley and Germaine Greer. All acknowledged their profound debt to Beauvoir, including visiting her in France, consulting with her at crucial moments, and dedicating works to her. Betty Friedan, whose 1963 book "The Feminine Mystique" is often regarded as the opening salvo of second-wave feminism in the United States, later said that reading "The Second Sex" in the early 1950s "led me to whatever original analysis of women's existence I have been able to contribute to the Women's movement and its unique politics. I looked to Simone de Beauvoir for a philosophical and intellectual authority."


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: At one point in the early seventies, Beauvoir also aligned herself with the French League for Women's Rights as a means to campaign and fight against sexism in French society. Beauvoir's influence goes beyond just her impact on second-wave founders, and extends to numerous aspects of feminism, including literary criticism, history, philosophy, theology, criticism of scientific discourse, and psychotherapy. When Beauvoir first became involved with the feminism movement, one of her objectives was legalizing abortion. Donna Haraway wrote that, "despite important differences, all the modern feminist meanings of gender have roots in Simone de Beauvoir's claim that 'one is not born a woman [one becomes one].'" This "most famous feminist sentence ever written" is echoed in the title of Monique Wittig's 1981 essay "One Is Not Born a Woman". Judith Butler took the concept a step further, arguing that Beauvoir's choice of the verb "to become" suggests that gender is a process, constantly being renewed in an ongoing interaction between the surrounding culture and individual choice.


title: Simone de Beauvoir

text: In Paris, Place Jean-Paul-Sartre-et-Simone-de-Beauvoir is a square where Beauvoir's legacy lives on. It is one of the few squares in Paris to be officially named after a couple. The pair lived close to the square at 42 rue Bonaparte.


title: High School Musical

text: High School Musical is a 2006 American musical television film directed by Kenny Ortega and written by Peter Barsocchini. The 63rd Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM) and first installment of the "High School Musical" film series, the film stars Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel, Alyson Reed, Corbin Bleu, and Monique Coleman. In "High School Musical", Troy Bolton (Efron), the basketball team captain, and Gabriella Montez (Hudgens), an academically-gifted transfer student, try out for the lead parts in their school musical, causing division among the school's cliques.


title: High School Musical

text: Development for the film began after Disney network executives wanted to replicate the critical and viewership success of standalone musical episodes in their television series "Even Stevens" (2000–2003) and "That's So Raven" (2003–2007). Principal photography for "High School Musical" primarily took place in Utah, with filming locations including East High School, Murray High School, and Salt Lake City. Additional filming took place in Los Angeles. The film has been described by Barsocchini and numerous critics as a modern adaptation of "Romeo & Juliet".


title: High School Musical

text: Upon its release on January 20, 2006, as part of Disney Channel’s "Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance Week" block, it became the most commercially successful DCOM ever produced. In the U.S., "High School Musical" generated 7.7 million viewers in its premiere broadcast, breaking the then-record for the highest premiere for the network. Internationally, the film also saw considerable success; as of 2019, over 225 million unique viewers were calculated as watched "High School Musical". The film received generally mixed reviews from critics, with praise for its cast and music but criticism for its sentimentality; it was more positively received by audiences. The film's soundtrack was commercially and critically successful, reaching atop the U.S. "Billboard" 200, with its lead single, "Breaking Free", reaching number four on the U.S. "Billboard" Hot 100. Two sequels, "High School Musical 2" and "", were released in August 2007 and October 2008 respectively.


title: High School Musical

text: On New Year's Eve, high school juniors Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez meet at a ski lodge party during winter break. The two are called upon to sing a duet together for karaoke ("Start of Something New"). Returning to school after the break, Troy sees Gabriella in his homeroom. She explains that she has just moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and transferred to East High School over the break. As Troy shows Gabriella around the school, drama club president Sharpay Evans assumes that Gabriella is interested in auditioning for the school musical. Wanting to eliminate the competition, Sharpay discovers Gabriella's past academic achievements, and anonymously informs scholastic decathlon captain Taylor McKessie of them, so she will recruit Gabriella for the team. Taylor and Gabriella become friends over their shared interests.


title: High School Musical

text: During a basketball practice, Troy is distracted by thoughts of Gabriella and the idea that he might enjoy singing in addition to basketball ("Get'cha Head in the Game"). Gabriella and Troy go to the musical auditions where Sharpay and her twin brother Ryan Evans perform "What I've Been Looking For". However, Troy and Gabriella are hesitant to audition. When Gabriella gains the confidence to step forward once the auditions are unofficially declared "over", Troy offers to sing with her. However, drama teacher Ms. Darbus tells them they are too late and leaves. Kelsi Nielsen, the musical's composer, drops her music sheets on the stage; Troy and Gabriella rush to help her and sing the same song together. Overhearing their performance, Ms. Darbus gives them a callback audition.


title: High School Musical

text: When the callback list gets posted, Sharpay is furious that she has competition for the lead role, while the Wildcats basketball team is shocked that Troy has auditioned. After finding out that Troy can do activities outside his clique, other students confess their secret passions and talents ("Stick to the Status Quo"). This alarms Taylor and Troy's best friend Chad Danforth. Taylor and Chad come up with a plan to divert Troy and Gabriella from singing in the musical so they can focus on their upcoming competitions.


title: High School Musical

text: In the locker room, Troy is tricked by his teammates into saying that Gabriella and the audition is not needed. Gabriella watches this via a hidden webcam that the scholastic decathlon team has set up. Upset by Troy's perceived betrayal ("When There Was Me and You"), Gabriella decides to not audition for the musical. Troy, confused by Gabriella's decision, is unable to concentrate on the game, while Gabriella is low in spirits. Realizing their mistake, Chad and the basketball team tell Troy what happened and offer to support him in the callbacks. Taylor also explains to Gabriella that she was wrong but Gabriella dismisses this, believing Troy meant what he said. That evening, Troy goes to Gabriella's house where he explains the truth and they reconcile, determined to audition for the musical.


title: High School Musical

text: Overhearing Gabriella and Troy rehearse, Sharpay asks Ms. Darbus to move the callbacks so they start at the same time as both Troy's championship game and Gabriella's scholastic decathlon competition. Kelsi overhears the conversation, and both the basketball and decathlon teams make a plan together. On the day of the competitions, Taylor and Gabriella use the school's computers to delay the championship game by hacking the power in the gym and causing a chemical reaction that forces an evacuation during the decathlon. Troy and Gabriella rush to the auditorium as Sharpay and Ryan finish their callback song ("Bop to the Top"). After Gabriella and Troy successfully perform their song "Breaking Free", Ms. Darbus gives them the lead roles, making Sharpay and Ryan understudies. Both teams win their respective competitions, and the entire school gathers in the gym to celebrate ("We're All in This Together"). Chad asks Taylor out, and Sharpay makes peace with Gabriella.


title: High School Musical

text: In a post-credits scene, Zeke Baylor paces alone in the gym, when Sharpay runs in, declaring that the cookies he had given her that she had initially rejected are "genius". She hugs him, and he says he will make her a crème brûlée. Zeke smiles in victory.


title: High School Musical

text: The soundtrack for the film was released on January 10, 2006, and debuted at number 133 on the "Billboard" 200, selling 7,469 copies in its first week. In the album's third week, for the chart dated February 11, 2006, it climbed to number ten, subsequently rose to number one on the Billboard 200 twice (on March 1 and 22) and had shipped 3.8 million copies as of December 5, 2006. Out of those copies, more than three million copies had been sold by August 2006; it was certified quadruple platinum by the RIAA.


title: High School Musical

text: Disney Channel produced a musical episode of its original sitcom "Even Stevens", which aired in 2002, and the success of the episode among the show's audience led to network executives asking series executive producers David Brookwell and Sean McNamara to also produce a musical episode of their other comedy series "That's So Raven". The success of the musical format on both "Even Stevens" and "That's So Raven" gave executives confidence in the appeal and interest of the musical genre, and led to the early development of the idea for "High School Musical". Gary Marsh, then-president of Disney Channels Worldwide, stated that "High School Musical" would not have been developed if not for the success of the "Even Stevens" musical episode.


title: High School Musical

text: Principal photography for "High School Musical" took place in Utah, with East High School and Murray High School used as locations, as well as Salt Lake City. Additional scenes were filmed in Los Angeles.


title: High School Musical

text: Upon its premiere, the film attracted 7.7 million viewers. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 65% based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10. The website's critics consensus reads: ""High School Musical" is brazenly saccharine, but it makes up for it with its memorable show tunes, eye-popping choreography, and appealing cast."


title: High School Musical

text: Common Sense Media rated the film four out of five stars. Kevin Carr gave the film a score of three out of five, saying, "The filmmakers were just trying to tell a story. Sex, drugs and violence just didn't factor into that equation." On the other hand, David Nusair gave the film a negative review with a score of 1.5/4 saying, "...it's difficult to imagine even the most die-hard fan of musicals finding anything here worth embracing." Scott Weinberg also gave the film a negative review saying, "A schmaltzy little piece of obvious fluff that's directed in truly horrendous fashion and populated by cardboard characters who spit out simplistic platitudes and breathy pop tunes."


title: High School Musical

text: The DVD went on sale on May 23, 2006, under the title, "High School Musical: Encore Edition". It created a sales record when 1.2 million copies were sold in its first six days, making it the fastest-selling television film of all time. It is, however, the second DCOM (Disney Channel Original Movie) on DVD to be certified Platinum in DVD sales, the first being "The Cheetah Girls". The "High School Musical" DVD was also released in Australia on July 12, 2006, through Walt Disney, as well as on European Region 2 on December 4, 2006, where it went on to reach number one in the UK DVD charts. It also aired on Disney Channel South Africa, the latest Disney channel at that time in the southern hemisphere. It was the top-selling DVD in Australia in August 2006. "High School Musical" also became the first Disney Channel Original Movie to be released on Region 3 DVD, when it went on sale on October 10 and December 15 in Hong Kong and Taiwan, respectively. It was released in Mexico on November 10 and in Brazil on December 6 to coincide with Christmas and the Rede Globo broadcast of the film. It was released in New Zealand on July 12, 2006, and was awarded most popular pre-teen movie in New Zealand for 2006.


title: High School Musical

text: High School Musical was the first feature-length video content from the iTunes Store in mid-March 2006. At the time, it was available as a 320x240 resolution 487MB download for $9.99 after initially being mistakenly listed for $1.99.


title: High School Musical

text: The Remix Edition, a 2-disc Special Edition, was released on December 5, 2006. The Remix DVD went on sale in France on June 20, 2007. in Germany on September 13, 2007, and in the UK on September 10, 2007. As of 2010, the film has sold eight million DVD units, earning an operating income of .


title: High School Musical

text: Despite being filmed in the 16:9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio, both the original and Remix Edition DVD releases featured a 4:3 (1.33:1) "full screen" version (though not pan and scan as the camera stays directly in the center of the image), the format of the film as shown on the Disney Channel. The widescreen, high definition version is available exclusively on Disney Blu-ray in North America and has subsequently been showing in the UK and Ireland on BBC One and BBC HD, and RTÉ One. The HD version is also available on the video section of PlayStation Store, as well as on Sony Entertainment online for the US market.


title: High School Musical

text: "High School Musical 2" is the first sequel. It debuted on August 17, 2007, on Disney Channel in the U.S., and on Family in Canada. The premiere brought in a total of 17.3 million viewers in the United States—almost 10 million more than its predecessor—making it (at the time of its airing) the highest-rated Disney Channel Movie to date and the most viewed television film to date.


title: High School Musical

text: "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" is the third installment in Disney's "High School Musical" franchise. It was released to theaters across the United States on October 24, 2008. Kenny Ortega returned as director and choreographer, as did all six primary actors.


title: High School Musical

text: "Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure" is a spin-off and direct-to-DVD film starring Ashley Tisdale. The film features Sharpay Evans trying to get a role in a Broadway show following graduation. The film was released as a Blu-ray and DVD combination pack on April 19, 2011.


title: High School Musical

text: In early 2016, Disney announced that a fourth installment of the series was "in the works", later announcing a casting call for the film, tentatively referred to as "High School Musical 4". In March 2016, details about the film's prospective principal characters were reported.


title: High School Musical

text: In 2019, Disney announced the release of their own television series based on the "High School Musical" franchise that was released on Disney+ on November 12, 2019. The series, titled "", focuses on the newly enrolled set of East High Wildcats putting together a production of "High School Musical".


title: High School Musical

text: "High School Musical: El desafio (Argentina)" is a spin-off for the Argentine market, based on the book "Battle of the Bands". The film arrived in Argentine theatres on July 17, 2008. "High School Musical: O Desafio" is a spin-off of the American film "High School Musical". The Brazilian spin-off is based on the book "Battle of the Bands". The film was released in Brazilian theatres on February 5, 2010. "Disney High School Musical China" (), also called "High School Musical China: College Dreams" is a Chinese version of the American series, released in North America on DVD under the Disney World Cinema Brand.


title: High School Musical

text: "Film Business Asia" critic Derek Elley rated the adaptation three points out of ten and called the choreography by former Madonna dancer, Ruthy Inchaustegui, and songs "bland". However, Elley picked the three songs as "half-memorable": "the ballad 'Rainy Season' () [sung by] two lead[ing characters,] the glitzy 'Perfection' () [by] the college rich-bitch[,] and [the] climatic 'I Can Fly' (), which doesn't quite succeed at being an , uplifting ballad."


title: High School Musical

text: On August 1, 2006, Playbill announced that the Stagedoor Manor summer theater camp, featured in the film "Camp", would be the first venue to produce "High School Musical" on-stage. The High School Musical: The Concert tour started on November 29, 2006, kicking off in San Diego, California. The tour continued until January 28, 2007, performing in major cities around the United States, Canada, and Latin America. The concert featured all of the original cast members except for Zac Efron, who was shooting "Hairspray". Efron was replaced by Drew Seeley (whose voice was blended with Efron's during the film). The concert featured the original songs from the film, as well as songs from Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, and Corbin Bleu.


title: High School Musical

text: "Feld Entertainment" produced global tour titled, "High School Musical: The Ice Tour" which had its world premiere in New York City on September 29, 2007. The cast included 2004 World Junior Bronze Medalist Jordan Brauninger and 2004–2005 Australian national champion Bradley Santer. The show contained elements and songs from both the original film and its sequel, "High School Musical 2" and featured a special preview of "" when the movie of the same name premiered in theatres.


title: High School Musical

text: In June 2006, Disney Press published "High School Musical: The Junior Novel", the novelization of the successful film. This novel hit number one on the "New York Times" best-selling list and remained on the list for sixteen weeks. As of August 2007, the novel has sold more than 4.5 million copies, with 1 million copies of the novel's follow-up, "High School Musical 2: The Junior Novel", being shipped to American retailers. "High School Musical 3: Senior Year: The Junior Novel" was released on September 23, 2008.


title: High School Musical

text: Shortly after the success of the original novel, Disney announced that a book series, entitled "Stories from East High", would be published in February 2007 with a new book being published every 60 days until July 2008. Disney Interactive Studios has produced 6 video games (, , , , and ) based on the "High School Musical" series, all taking the guise of music video games incorporating songs and plots from the films.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: The Cabin in the Woods is a 2011 horror comedy film directed by Drew Goddard in his directorial debut, produced by Joss Whedon, and written by Whedon and Goddard. It stars Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, and Bradley Whitford. The plot follows a group of college students who retreat to a remote forest cabin where they fall victim to a variety of monsters while technicians manipulate events from an underground facility.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: Goddard and Whedon, having worked together previously on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel", wrote the screenplay in three days, describing it as an attempt to "revitalize" the slasher film genre and as a critical satire on torture porn. The special effects, monster costumes, special makeup, and prosthetic makeup for the film were done by AFX Studio. Filming took place in Vancouver, British Columbia from March to May 2009 on an estimated budget of $30 million.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: The film was originally slated for release on February 5, 2010, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists, but was indefinitely shelved due to financial difficulties. In 2011, Lionsgate picked up the distribution rights. The film premiered in December 2011 at the Butt-Numb-A-Thon film festival in Austin, Texas and was released in the United States on April 13, 2012, grossing over $66 million worldwide. It received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its screenplay, tone, and performances.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: In an underground laboratory, engineers Gary Sitterson and Steve Hadley discuss plans for a mysterious ritual, after a similar operation in Stockholm has just ended in failure.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: American college students Dana Polk, Jules Louden, Curt Vaughan, Holden McCrea, and Marty Mikalski are spending their weekend at Curt's cousin's cabin in the forest. From the lab, Sitterson and Hadley remotely control the cabin and manipulate the students by intoxicating them with mind-altering drugs that have effects such as hindering rational thinking and increasing libido. The lab departments take bets on what kind of monster will attack the students and discuss the failures of international operations. In the cabin's cellar, the group finds bizarre objects, including the diary of Patience Buckner, a cabin resident abused by her sadistic family. Dana recites incantations from the diary and inadvertently summons the zombified Buckner family.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: Hadley releases pheromones to induce Curt and Jules to have sex outside. They are attacked by the zombies and Jules is decapitated while Curt escapes. Marty discovers concealed surveillance equipment in his room before being dragged off by a zombie. The lab workers learn that the rite in Japan has also failed, meaning that the American rite is "humanity's last hope". Curt, Holden, and Dana attempt to escape in their RV, but Sitterson triggers a tunnel collapse to block them. Curt attempts to jump a ravine on his motorcycle to seek help on the other side, but crashes into a force field and falls to his death. Holden and Dana realize that their experience is staged and controlled. As they try to escape in the RV, Holden is killed by a zombie, and Dana is attacked once the RV crashes into the lake.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: The lab employees, seeing that Dana is the only survivor, celebrate the success of the rite, but are interrupted by a phone call from "The Director", revealing that Marty is still alive. Marty saves Dana and takes her to a hidden elevator he discovered. They descend into the lab and discover a large collection of different monsters locked in cages. Dana correlates them with the objects in the cabin's cellar and realizes that the objects determine which monsters are released. Cornered by security personnel, the pair release all the monsters, which wreak havoc and slaughter the staff; Hadley is killed by a merman while Dana accidentally stabs Sitterson, who bleeds to death.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: Dana and Marty flee and discover an ancient temple, where they are confronted by The Director. She explains that worldwide annual rituals of human sacrifice are held to appease the Ancient Ones, a group of cruel subterranean deities. Each region has its own ritual, and the American ritual involves the sacrifice of five slasher film archetypes: the whore (Jules), the athlete (Curt), the scholar (Holden), the fool (Marty), and the virgin (Dana). The order of the killings is arbitrary as long as the whore dies first and the virgin dies last or survives. The Director urges Dana to kill Marty to complete the ritual and spare humanity, as all other rituals had failed that year. Dana is about to but is attacked by a werewolf, while Patience kills The Director; Marty proceeds to kill all except Dana.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: Deciding that humanity is not worth saving at the price of human sacrifices, Dana apologizes to Marty for almost killing him and the two share a joint while awaiting their fate. The temple floor collapses and a giant hand emerges from the ground, destroying the facility and the cabin as the world ends.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: An international co-production film between The United States and Canada. With a production budget of $30 million, principal photography began on March 9, 2009, in Vancouver, and concluded in May 2009. Joss Whedon co-wrote the script with "Cloverfield" screenwriter Drew Goddard, who also directed the film, marking his directorial debut. Goddard previously worked with Whedon on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" as a writer.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: Whedon described the film as an attempt to revitalize the horror genre. He called it a "loving hate letter" to the genre, continuing:


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: Concerning the sheer number of creatures to be designed and made for the film, AFX Studio's David LeRoy Anderson estimated that "close to a thousand" people were turned into one of around 60 different monster types. The task necessitated renting a much larger facility to use as a workspace, as a crew of around 60 people were recruited. The producers told them to commence work on December 15, 2008, ahead of the official January 1, 2009, start date. They only completed the work by the March 9, 2009, production date because, as Anderson stated "We had nearly seventy people at peak, but in effect we had a hundred and forty people, because everybody had at least two jobs...it was crazy, but people had an incredible time...none of us are ever going to forget it, and we're never all going to be in the same room again."


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: The underground complex, elevators, and the control room were all sets, but for several wide shots, the British Columbia Institute of Technology's Aerospace building was used. Production designer Martin Whist referred to Stanley Kubrick and commented: "It's very high-tech industrial, and it's a brand new building, never been shot in before...I wanted [the elevators] to be without any controls...to almost feel like a glamorized freight elevator...The lobby I wanted to look slightly utilitarian, contemporary and institutional...sharp and almost characterless."


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: A tie-in of the film with the video game "Left 4 Dead 2" had been planned, with the game seeing downloadable content based on the movie's settings. However, due to MGM's financial problems, the game content was cancelled, but Valve allowed the studio to use monsters from "Left 4 Dead 2" to populate the monster cells at the end of the film.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: "The Cabin in the Woods" was slated for wide release on February 5, 2010, and then delayed until January 14, 2011, so the film could be converted to 3D. However, on June 17, 2010, MGM announced that the film would be delayed indefinitely due to ongoing financial difficulties at the studio.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: On March 16, 2011, the "Los Angeles Times" reported the following: "New (MGM) chief executives Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum are seeking to sell both "Red Dawn" and the horror film "The Cabin in the Woods," the last two pictures produced under a previous regime, as they try to reshape the 87-year-old company." A distribution sale to Lionsgate was announced on April 28, 2011, with some industry news outlets reporting plans for a Halloween 2011 release. On July 20, 2011, Lionsgate announced that they had acquired the distribution rights to the film and set a release date of April 13, 2012. Goddard described the deal as "a dream," stating "there's no question that Lionsgate is the right home for "Cabin"...you look at all the films that inspired "Cabin" – most of them were released by Lionsgate in the first place!" In an interview with "Creative Screenwriting", Goddard focused on the advantages of the delayed release, saying, "Lionsgate came along and they were the best possible home for that movie. Had the bankruptcy not happened, we wouldn't have been in the right fit with the right people. Yes, it took two years longer than we wish it would've taken, but Lionsgate didn't make us change a frame and believed in what we were trying to do. If I had complained too much when MGM went bankrupt, we could have hurt ourselves. We just held firm that we believed in the movie and that we would find the right home and time, and it did. It's hard, but you have to be very patient in Hollywood."


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: A surprise early screening of the film was held at the Butt-Numb-A-Thon in December 2011, attracting highly positive reactions. The film later screened on March 9, 2012, at the South by Southwest film festival, also in Austin.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: "The Cabin in the Woods" was released on DVD and Blu-ray in North America on September 18, 2012. Both the DVD and Blu-ray feature an audio commentary by Goddard and Whedon, several featurettes, a documentary about the making of the film, and a Q&A session at the 2012 WonderCon convention.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: "The Cabin in the Woods" grossed $42.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $24.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $66.5 million, against a production budget of $30 million.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: The film opened in North America on April 13, 2012, opening with $5.5 million and went on to gross $14.7 million in its opening weekend at 2,811 theaters, finishing third at the box office. "The Cabin in the Woods" closed in theaters on July 12, 2012, with $42.0 million. In total earnings, its highest-grossing countries after North America were the United Kingdom ($8.5 million), France ($2.4 million), and Russia ($2.3 million).


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a rating of , based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads, ""The Cabin in the Woods" is an astonishing meta-feat, capable of being funny, strange, and scary — frequently all at the same time." On Metacritic, the film achieved an average score of 72 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film three out of four stars, saying that ""The Cabin in the Woods" has been constructed almost as a puzzle for horror fans to solve. Which conventions are being toyed with? Which authors and films are being referred to? Is the film itself an act of criticism?" Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, calling it "fiendishly funny". Travers praised Kristen Connolly and Fran Kranz for their performances, and wrote, "By turning splatter formula on its empty head, "Cabin" shows you can unleash a fire-breathing horror film without leaving your brain or your heart on the killing floor."


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: Jenkins and Whitford were also admired by "The A.V. Club" ("Whitford and Jenkins clearly delight in the verbose script") and by "Wired", whose reviewer (granting 9 of 10 stars) called "Cabin" "a smart sendup of horror movies and mythology...with a peculiar relish that testifies to the moviemakers' love of genre film... a smart, sarcastic and deliriously fun journey into the belly of the horror beast." He cited the "witty banter, creative twists" and "clippy, quippy dialog that lifted "Firefly" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to cult status."


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: Eric Goldman, writing for IGN, called the movie "an incredibly clever and fun take on classic horror movie tropes." "SF Gate" said, "The cliches come at an onslaught pace" in "a wonderfully conceived story that gives a bigger than life and fascinating explanation for why so many horror movie cliches exist in the first place... By the time the ride is over, director Drew Goddard and co-writers Goddard and Joss Whedon will change course three or four times, nodding and winking but never losing momentum." Of the screenplay by Goddard and Whedon, a CNN reviewer praised "these horror hipsters' acidic, postmodern designs on one of the movie industry's hoariest, least respected staples... the dialogue is always a notch or three smarter and snappier than you'd expect."


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: Keith Phipps of "The A. V. Club" addressed "...the difficult challenge of putting across a satirical film with a serious body count. "Cabin" touches on everything from "The Evil Dead" and "Friday The 13th" to the mechanized mutilations of the "Saw" series while digging deeper into the Lovecraftian roots of horror in an attempt to reveal what makes the genre work... It's an exercise in metafiction that, while providing grisly fun, never distances viewers. And it's entertaining, while asking the same question of viewers and characters alike: Why come to a place you knew all along was going to be so dark and dangerous?"


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: In a more mixed review Lisa Schwarzbaum of "Entertainment Weekly", calling herself "a wised-up viewer," gave the film a "B−" grade and said, "The movie's biggest surprise may be that the story we think we know from modern scary cinema—that horror is a fun, cosmic game, not much else—here turns out to be pretty much the whole enchilada." She shrugged off the talents of Whitford and Jenkins: "These two experienced actors provide the film's adult-level entertainment."


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: Betsy Sharkey of the "Los Angeles Times" believed that the film "is an inside joke" and also said, "The laughs [in the film] come easily, the screams not so much." David Rooney of "The Hollywood Reporter" remarked, "It's just too bad the movie is never much more than a hollow exercise in self-reflexive cleverness that's not nearly as ingenious as it seems to think."


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: A.O. Scott of "The New York Times" said, "Novelty and genre traditionalism often fight to a draw. Too much overt cleverness has a way of spoiling dumb, reliable thrills. And despite the evident ingenuity and strenuous labor that went into it, "The Cabin in the Woods" does not quite work." Scott added:


title: The Cabin in the Woods

text: On April 13, 2015, author Peter Gallagher filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in California federal court against the makers of the film. Gallagher claimed that due to the similarities between the film and his 2006 novel "The Little White Trip: A Night in the Pines", Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard had used his work without permission. The lawsuit demanded $10 million in damages. Whedon and Goddard were named as defendants, along with the production company Mutant Enemy Productions and distributor Lionsgate. The case was dismissed five months later.


title: Finance

text: Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of financial economics bridges the two).


title: Finance

text: Finance activities take place in financial systems at various scopes, thus the field can be roughly divided into personal, corporate, and public finance.


title: Finance

text: In a financial system, assets are bought, sold, or traded as financial instruments, such as currencies, loans, bonds, shares, stocks, options, futures, etc. Assets can also be banked, invested, and insured to maximize value and minimize loss. In practice, risks are always present in any financial action and entities.


title: Finance

text: A broad range of subfields within finance exist due to its wide scope. Asset, money, risk and investment management aim to maximize value and minimize volatility. Financial analysis is viability, stability, and profitability assessment of an action or entity. In some cases, theories in finance can be tested using the scientific method, covered by experimental finance.


title: Finance

text: Some fields are multidisciplinary, such as mathematical finance, financial law, financial economics, financial engineering and financial technology. These fields are the foundation of business and accounting.


title: Finance

text: The early history of finance parallels the early history of money, which is prehistoric. Ancient and medieval civilizations incorporated basic functions of finance, such as banking, trading and accounting, into their economies. In the late 19th century, the global financial system was formed.


title: Finance

text: It was in the middle of the 20th century that finance emerged as a distinct academic discipline, separate from economics. (The first academic journal, "The Journal of Finance", began publication in 1946.) The earliest doctoral programs in finance were established in the 1960s and 1970s.


title: Finance

text: As above, the financial system consists of the flows of capital that take place between individuals and households (personal finance), governments (public finance), and businesses (corporate finance).


title: Finance

text: "Finance" thus studies the process of channeling money from savers and investors to entities that need it.


title: Finance

text: Savers and investors have money available which could earn interest or dividends if put to productive use. Individuals, companies and governments must obtain money from some external source, such as loans or credit, when they lack sufficient funds to operate.


title: Finance

text: In general, an entity whose income exceeds its expenditure can lend or invest the excess, intending to earn a fair return. Correspondingly, an entity where income is less than expenditure can raise capital usually in one of two ways:


title: Finance

text: (i) by borrowing in the form of a loan (private individuals), or by selling government or corporate bonds;


title: Finance

text: (ii) by a corporation selling equity, also called stock or shares (which may take various forms: preferred stock or common stock).


title: Finance

text: The owners of both bonds and stock may be "institutional investors" financial institutions such as investment banks and pension funds – or private individuals, called "private investors" or "retail investors".


title: Finance

text: The lending is often indirect, through a financial intermediary such as a bank, or via the purchase of notes or bonds (corporate bonds, government bonds, or mutual bonds) in the bond market.


title: Finance

text: The lender receives interest, the borrower pays a higher interest than the lender receives, and the financial intermediary earns the difference for arranging the loan.


title: Finance

text: A bank aggregates the activities of many borrowers and lenders. A bank accepts deposits from lenders, on which it pays interest. The bank then lends these deposits to borrowers. Banks allow borrowers and lenders, of different sizes, to coordinate their activity.


title: Finance

text: Investing typically entails the purchase of stock, either individual securities, or via a mutual fund for example.


title: Finance

text: Stocks are usually sold by corporations to investors so as to raise required capital in the form of "equity financing", as distinct from the "debt financing" described above.


title: Finance

text: The financial intermediaries here are the investment banks. The investment banks find the initial investors and facilitate the listing of the securities, typically shares and bonds.


title: Finance

text: Additionally, they facilitate the securities exchanges, which allow their trade thereafter, as well as the various service providers which manage the performance or risk of these investments.


title: Finance

text: These latter include mutual funds, pension funds, wealth managers, and stock brokers, typically servicing retail investors (private individuals).


title: Finance

text: Inter-institutional trade and investment, and fund-management at this scale, is referred to as "wholesale finance".


title: Finance

text: Institutions here extend the products offered, with related trading, to include bespoke options, swaps, and structured products, as well as specialized financing; this "financial engineering" is inherently mathematical, and these institutions are then the major employers of "quants" (see below).


title: Finance

text: As outlined, finance comprises, broadly, the three areas of personal finance, corporate finance, and public finance.


title: Finance

text: These, in turn, overlap and employ various activities and sub-disciplines chiefly investments, risk management, and quantitative finance.


title: Finance

text: Personal finance is defined as "the mindful planning of monetary spending and saving, while also considering the possibility of future risk". Personal finance may involve paying for education, financing durable goods such as real estate and cars, buying insurance, investing, and saving for retirement.


title: Finance

text: The main areas of personal finance are considered to be income, spending, saving, investing, and protection.


title: Finance

text: The following steps, as outlined by the Financial Planning Standards Board, suggest that an individual will understand a potentially secure personal finance plan after:


title: Finance

text: Corporate finance deals with the actions that managers take to increase the value of the firm to the shareholders, the sources of funding and the capital structure of corporations, and the tools and analysis used to allocate financial resources.


title: Finance

text: While corporate finance is in principle different from managerial finance, which studies the financial management of all firms rather than corporations alone, the concepts are applicable to the financial problems of all firms,


title: Finance

text: Typically, then, "corporate finance" relates to the "long term" objective of maximizing the value of the entity's assets, its stock, and its return to shareholders, while also balancing risk and profitability. This entails three primary areas:


title: Finance

text: The latter creates the link with investment banking and securities trading, as above, in that the capital raised will generically comprise debt, i.e. corporate bonds, and equity, often listed shares.


title: Finance

text: Financial managers i.e. as distinct from corporate financiers focus more on the "short term" elements of profitability, cash flow, and "working capital management" (inventory, credit and debtors), ensuring that the firm can safely and profitably carry out its financial "and operational" objectives; i.e. that it:


title: Finance

text: Public finance describes finance as related to sovereign states, sub-national entities, and related public entities or agencies. It generally encompasses a long-term strategic perspective regarding investment decisions that affect public entities. These long-term strategic periods typically encompass five or more years. Public finance is primarily concerned with:


title: Finance

text: Central banks, such as the Federal Reserve System banks in the United States and the Bank of England in the United Kingdom, are strong players in public finance. They act as lenders of last resort as well as strong influences on monetary and credit conditions in the economy.


title: Finance

text: Development finance, which is related, concerns investment in economic development projects provided by a (quasi) governmental institution on a non-commercial basis; these projects would otherwise not be able to get financing.


title: Finance

text: A public–private partnership is primarily used for infrastructure projects: a private sector corporate provides the financing up-front, and then draws profits from taxpayers and/or users.


title: Finance

text: Investment management is the professional asset management of various securities typically shares and bonds, but also other assets, such as real estate, commodities and alternative investments in order to meet specified investment goals for the benefit of investors.


title: Finance

text: As above, investors may be institutions, such as insurance companies, pension funds, corporations, charities, educational establishments, or private investors, either directly via investment contracts or, more commonly, via collective investment schemes like mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, or REITs.


title: Finance

text: At the heart of investment management is asset allocation diversifying the exposure among these asset classes, and among individual securities within each asset class as appropriate to the client's investment policy, in turn, a function of risk profile, investment goals, and investment horizon (see Investor profile). Here:


title: Finance

text: Overlaid is the portfolio manager's investment style broadly, active vs passive , value vs growth, and small cap vs. large cap and investment strategy.


title: Finance

text: In a well-diversified portfolio, achieved investment performance will, in general, largely be a function of the asset mix selected, while the individual securities are less impactful. The specific approach or philosophy will also be significant, depending on the extent to which it is complementary with the market cycle.


title: Finance

text: A quantitative fund is managed using computer-based techniques (increasingly, machine learning) instead of human judgment. The actual trading also, is typically automated via sophisticated algorithms.


title: Finance

text: Risk management, in general, is the study of how to control risks and balance the possibility of gains; it is the process of measuring risk and then developing and implementing strategies to manage that risk.


title: Finance

text: Firstly, firm exposure to market risk is a direct result of previous capital investments and funding decisions;


title: Finance

text: while credit risk arises from the business's credit policy and is often addressed through credit insurance and provisioning.


title: Finance

text: Secondly, both disciplines share the goal of enhancing or at least preserving, the firm's economic value, and in this context overlaps also enterprise risk management, typically the domain of strategic management.


title: Finance

text: For banks and other wholesale institutions, risk management focuses on managing, and as necessary hedging, the various positions held by the institution both trading positions and long term exposures and on calculating and monitoring the resultant economic capital, and regulatory capital under Basel III.


title: Finance

text: The calculations here are mathematically sophisticated, and within the domain of quantitative finance as below.


title: Finance

text: Credit risk is inherent in the business of banking, but additionally, these institutions are exposed to counterparty credit risk.


title: Finance

text: Banks typically employ Middle office "Risk Groups" here, whereas front office risk teams provide risk "services" / "solutions" to customers.


title: Finance

text: Additional to diversification the fundamental risk mitigant here investment managers will apply various risk management techniques to their portfolios as appropriate:


title: Finance

text: these may relate to the portfolio as a whole or to individual stocks; bond portfolios are typically managed via cash flow matching or immunization.


title: Finance

text: Re derivative portfolios (and positions), "the Greeks" is a vital risk management tool it measures sensitivity to a small change in a given underlying parameter so that the portfolio can be rebalanced accordingly by including additional derivatives with offsetting characteristics.


title: Finance

text: Quantitative finance also referred to as "mathematical finance" includes those finance activities where a sophisticated mathematical model is required, and thus overlaps several of the above.


title: Finance

text: As a specialized practice area, quantitative finance comprises primarily three sub-disciplines; the underlying theory and techniques are discussed in the next section:


title: Finance

text: Financial theory is studied and developed within the disciplines of management, (financial) economics, accountancy and applied mathematics.


title: Finance

text: Abstractly, "finance" is concerned with the investment and deployment of assets and liabilities over "space and time";


title: Finance

text: i.e., it is about performing valuation and asset allocation today, based on the risk and uncertainty of future outcomes while appropriately incorporating the time value of money.


title: Finance

text: Determining the present value of these future values, "discounting", must be at the risk-appropriate discount rate, in turn, a major focus of finance-theory.


title: Finance

text: Since the debate as to whether finance is an art or a science is still open, there have been recent efforts to organize a list of unsolved problems in finance.


title: Finance

text: Managerial finance is the branch of management that concerns itself with the managerial application of finance techniques and theory, emphasizing the financial aspects of managerial decisions;


title: Finance

text: The techniques addressed and developed relate in the main to managerial accounting and corporate finance:


title: Finance

text: the former allow management to better understand, and hence act on, financial information relating to profitability and performance; the latter, as above, are about optimizing the overall financial structure, including its impact on working capital.


title: Finance

text: Academics working in this area are typically based in business school finance departments, in accounting, or in management science.


title: Finance

text: Financial economics is the branch of economics that studies the interrelation of financial variables, such as prices, interest rates and shares, as opposed to real economic variables, i.e. goods and services.


title: Finance

text: It thus centers on pricing, decision making, and risk management in the financial markets, and produces many of the commonly employed financial models. (Financial econometrics is the branch of financial economics that uses econometric techniques to parameterize the relationships suggested.)


title: Finance

text: asset pricing and corporate finance; the first being the perspective of providers of capital, i.e. investors, and the second of users of capital; respectively:


title: Finance

text: Louis Bachelier's doctoral thesis, defended in 1900, is considered to be the first scholarly work in this area.


title: Finance

text: The field is largely focused on the modeling of derivatives with much emphasis on interest rate- and credit risk modeling while other important areas include insurance mathematics and quantitative portfolio management.


title: Finance

text: Relatedly, the techniques developed are applied to pricing and hedging a wide range of asset-backed, government, and corporate-securities.


title: Finance

text: As above, in terms of practice, the field is referred to as quantitative finance and / or mathematical finance, and comprises primarily the three areas discussed.


title: Finance

text: derivatives pricing uses risk-neutral probability (or arbitrage-pricing probability), denoted by "Q";


title: Finance

text: while risk and portfolio management generally use physical (or actual or actuarial) probability, denoted by "P".


title: Finance

text: The subject has a close relationship with financial economics, which, as above, is concerned with much of the underlying theory that is involved in financial mathematics: generally, financial mathematics will derive and extend the mathematical models suggested.


title: Finance

text: Computational finance is the branch of (applied) computer science that deals with problems of practical interest in finance, and especially emphasizes the numerical methods applied here.


title: Finance

text: aims to establish different market settings and environments to experimentally observe and provide a lens through which science can analyze agents' behavior and the resulting characteristics of trading flows, information diffusion, and aggregation, price setting mechanisms, and returns processes. Researchers in experimental finance can study to what extent existing financial economics theory makes valid predictions and therefore prove them, as well as attempt to discover new principles on which such theory can be extended and be applied to future financial decisions. Research may proceed by conducting trading simulations or by establishing and studying the behavior of people in artificial, competitive, market-like settings.


title: Finance

text: Behavioral finance studies how the "psychology" of investors or managers affects financial decisions and markets


title: Finance

text: and is relevant when making a decision that can impact either negatively or positively on one of their areas. With more in-depth research into behavioral finance, it is possible to bridge what actually happens in financial markets with analysis based on financial theory.


title: Finance

text: A strand of behavioral finance has been dubbed quantitative behavioral finance, which uses mathematical and statistical methodology to understand behavioral biases in conjunction with valuation.


title: Finance

text: Quantum finance is an interdisciplinary research field, applying theories and methods developed by quantum physicists and economists in order to solve problems in finance. It is a branch of econophysics.


title: Finance

text: Finance theory is heavily based on financial instrument pricing such as stock option pricing. Many of the problems facing the finance community have no known analytical solution. As a result, numerical methods and computer simulations for solving these problems have proliferated. This research area is known as computational finance. Many computational finance problems have a high degree of computational complexity and are slow to converge to a solution on classical computers. In particular, when it comes to option pricing, there is additional complexity resulting from the need to respond to quickly changing markets. For example, in order to take advantage of inaccurately priced stock options, the computation must complete before the next change in the almost continuously changing stock market. As a result, the finance community is always looking for ways to overcome the resulting performance issues that arise when pricing options. This has led to research that applies alternative computing techniques to finance. Most commonly used quantum financial models are quantum continuous model, quantum binomial model, multi-step quantum binomial model etc.


title: Finance

text: The origin of finance can be traced to the start of civilization. The earliest historical evidence of finance is dated to around 3000 BC. Banking originated in the Babylonian empire, where temples and palaces were used as safe places for the storage of valuables. Initially, the only valuable that could be deposited was grain, but cattle and precious materials were eventually included. During the same period, the Sumerian city of Uruk in Mesopotamia supported trade by lending as well as the use of interest. In Sumerian, "interest" was "mas", which translates to "calf". In Greece and Egypt, the words used for interest, "tokos" and "ms" respectively, meant "to give birth". In these cultures, interest indicated a valuable increase, and seemed to consider it from the lender's point of view. The Code of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC) included laws governing banking operations. The Babylonians were accustomed to charging interest at the rate of 20 percent per annum.


title: Finance

text: Jews were not allowed to take interest from other Jews, but they were allowed to take interest from Gentiles, who had at that time no law forbidding them from practicing usury. As Gentiles took interest from Jews, the Torah considered it equitable that Jews should take interest from Gentiles. In Hebrew, interest is "neshek".


title: Finance

text: By 1200 BC, cowrie shells were used as a form of money in China. By 640 BC, the Lydians had started to use coin money. Lydia was the first place where permanent retail shops opened. (Herodotus mentions the use of crude coins in Lydia in an earlier date, around 687 BC.)


title: Finance

text: The use of coins as a means of representing money began in the years between 600 and 570 BCE. Cities under the Greek empire, such as Aegina (595 BCE), Athens (575 BCE), and Corinth (570 BCE), started to mint their own coins. In the Roman Republic, interest was outlawed altogether by the "Lex Genucia" reforms. Under Julius Caesar, a ceiling on interest rates of 12% was set, and later under Justinian it was lowered even further to between 4% and 8%.


title: Finance

text: It's said Belgium is the place where the first exchange happened back in approximately 1531. Since, popular exchanges such as


title: Finance

text: the London Stock Exchange (founded in 1773) and the New York Stock Exchange (founded in 1793) were created.


title: Rumble (website)

text: Rumble is an online video platform and cloud services business headquartered in Longboat Key, Florida and Toronto, Ontario. It was founded in October 2013 by Chris Pavlovski, a technology entrepreneur from Canada. The cloud services business is known for hosting Truth Social, and the video platform is popular among American right and far-right users. The platform has been described as part of "alt-tech".


title: Rumble (website)

text: Rumble was founded in 2013 by Chris Pavlovski as an alternative to YouTube for independent content creators. Pavloski founded the platform after seeing that Google was prioritizing influencers on YouTube and not small content creators. In its early years, content on Rumble largely consisted of viral videos and news from mainstream media sources as well as videos of children and animals. The platform received a large influx of viewership beginning during the COVID-19 pandemic, with monthly visitors rising from 1.6 million in 2020 to 31.9 million by 2021. In the first nine months of 2021, Rumble generated more than $6.5 million in revenue, mostly from advertisements, but was not profitable.


title: Rumble (website)

text: Rise of viewership in 2020 has been attributed to Representative Devin Nunes who accused YouTube of overly censoring his channel. Nunes began posting content on the platform with other prominent conservatives, such as Dinesh D'Souza, Dan Bongino, Sean Hannity, and Representative Jim Jordan, following soon after. On January 11, 2021, Rumble filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google over its search results, seeking damages exceeding $2 billion. Rumble alleged that Google manipulates its algorithm so as to favor Google's YouTube over Rumble in Google search results. It also alleges that this reduces its viewership and results in lower advertising revenues. As of August 2022, the case was ongoing.


title: Rumble (website)

text: Rumble received investment from venture capitalists Peter Thiel and J. D. Vance in May 2021, with that round of funding valuing Rumble at around $500 million. A month later, US President Donald Trump joined Rumble in preparation for recording his Ohio campaign rally. In October 2021, Rumble acquired Locals. On December 14, 2021, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announced that it entered a "wide-ranging technology and cloud services agreement" with Rumble in a statement which also stated that Rumble would operate part of Truth Social as well as TMTG.


title: Rumble (website)

text: In August 2022, Rumble announced plans to provide an online advertising platform known as Rumble Ads, with Truth Social as its first publisher. Rumble became a publicly traded company in September 2022, trading on NASDAQ, after merging with a special-purpose acquisition company.


title: Rumble (website)

text: Rumble promotes itself as being "immune to cancel culture". Along with four other tabs in its main interface, Rumble features "recommended channels" to follow and an "Earnings" tab in its interface. Rumble also allows its users to generate revenue from their videos. Users upload videos that are licensed to Rumble's partners, such as Yahoo! and Microsoft News, after which money made from those videos is directly deposited into the Rumble account of the user.


title: Rumble (website)

text: The platform forbids pornography, harassment, racism, antisemitism, copyright infringement, and illegal content. Rumble's policies have drawn criticism from alt-tech platforms for not allowing anti-semitism and racism.


title: Rumble (website)

text: Rumble's video platform is popular among American right, and far-right users, and has been described as part of "alt-tech" by various observers.


title: Rumble (website)

text: Using data from February 2021, researchers noted that several content creators have gained a receptive audience on Rumble after their productions have been pulled from YouTube or Facebook. They include Del Bigtree, Sherri Tenpenny, and Simone Gold. According to a June 2021 article from "Slate", "Pavlovski has recently become more outspoken in accusing Big Tech of censorship and now actively courts prominent conservatives and intellectual dark web figures to join Rumble." It also hosts Truth Social Other channels on Rumble have included America's Funniest Home Videos, Jimmy Dore, Alex Jones of InfoWars, American broadcasting company E. W. Scripps Company, Truly, Hodgetwins, cable news channels Newsmax and One America News Network (OAN), Russian state-controlled international television network RT and news agency organization Reuters. According to Reuters, Rumble is a customer of Reuters which pays to host the agency's content. In August 2021, Rumble announced deals with former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard and "The Intercept" founder Glenn Greenwald to start posting their videos to the site.


title: Rumble (website)

text: As of August 15, 2022, Rumble reported 78 million monthly active users (MAU). That month, after being banned from most other platforms for hate speech and harmful conduct, kickboxer and social media personality Andrew Tate began posting on Rumble. Tate's move coincided with a significant increase in downloads of the Rumble app.


title: Rumble (website)

text: According to an August 2022 "Reuters" article, Rumble is a better-funded and more mainstream direct competitor to video-hosting site BitChute and Odysee, as all three include misinformation and conspiracy theories, with Rumble moderating more content. Unlike BitChute and Odysee, Rumble does suppress results when searching for some keywords associated with hate speech or extremism, although the content itself is still accessible.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The San Antonio Spurs are an American professional basketball team based in San Antonio. The Spurs compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Southwest Division. The team plays its home games at AT&T Center in San Antonio.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The Spurs are one of four former American Basketball Association (ABA) teams to remain intact in the NBA after the 1976 ABA–NBA merger and are the only former ABA team to have won an NBA championship. The franchise has won NBA championships in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2014. As of the 2019–20 season, the Spurs had the highest winning percentage among active NBA franchises. As of May 2017, the Spurs had the best winning percentage of any franchise in the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada over the previous three decades. From 1999–2000 to 2016–17, the Spurs won 50 games each season, setting a record of 18 consecutive 50-win seasons. In the 2018–19 season, the Spurs matched an NBA record for most consecutive playoff appearances with 22. The team's recent success has coincided with the tenure of current head coach Gregg Popovich and with the playing careers of Spurs icons David Robinson (1989–2003) and Tim Duncan (1997–2016). Throughout the 2022 season, the Spurs will celebrate the club's 50th anniversary.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: Spurs players are active members of the San Antonio community, and many former Spurs are still active in San Antonio including David Robinson with the Carver Academy and George Gervin with the George Gervin Youth Center.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The Spurs set several NBA attendance records while playing at the Alamodome including the largest crowd ever for an NBA Finals game in 1999, and the Spurs continue to sell out the smaller AT&T Center (formerly SBC Center) on a regular basis.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: Since 2003, the team has been forced into an extended road trip for much of February since the AT&T Center hosts the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo during that month. This is informally known as the "Rodeo Road Trip". The Spurs have consistently posted winning road records during this period, including an NBA-record longest single road-trip winning streak (eight games out of nine, achieved in 2003).


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: When the Spurs have won the NBA title, the team's victory parades have been boat trips on the San Antonio River Walk.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The San Antonio Spurs started out as the Dallas Chaparrals of the original version of the American Basketball Association (ABA). Coached by player/coach Cliff Hagan, the Dallas Chaparrals were one of 11 teams to take the floor in the inaugural season of the upstart ABA. The Chaps' second season was a bit of a disappointment, as the team finished in fourth place with a mediocre 41–37 record. In the playoffs the Chaparrals quickly fell to the New Orleans Buccaneers.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The team suffered from poor attendance and general disinterest in Dallas. In fact, during the 1970–71 season, the name "Dallas" was dropped in favor of "Texas" and an attempt was made to make the team a regional one, playing games in Fort Worth, at the Tarrant County Convention Center, as well as Lubbock, at the Lubbock Municipal Coliseum, but this proved a failure and the team returned full-time to Dallas in time for the 1971–72 season, splitting their games at Moody Coliseum and Dallas Convention Center Arena.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: While the Chaparrals had been modestly successful on the court, they were sinking financially by their third season. The financial difficulties were largely caused by the ownership group's refusal to invest much money on the team. After missing the playoffs for the first time in their existence in the 1972–73 season, nearly all of the owners wanted out. The team decided to sell the team to a different city, and the Chaparrals had to choose between San Antonio and El Paso. A group of 35 San Antonio businessmen—led by Angelo Drossos, John Schaefer, and Red McCombs—worked out a "lend-lease" deal with the Dallas ownership group. Drossos and his group would lease the team for three years with an option to purchase. They were allowed to move the team to San Antonio immediately, but would return the team to Dallas if no purchase occurred by 1975.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: After the deal was signed, the team was renamed the San Antonio Gunslingers. However, before they even played a game, the name was changed to Spurs. The team's primary colors were changed from the red, white, and blue of the Chaparrals to the now-familiar black, silver and white motif of the Spurs, with the branding taking effect for the 1973–74 season. In their first game at HemisFair Arena, the Spurs lost to the San Diego Conquistadors despite attracting a crowd of 6,000 fans. A smothering defense was the team's trademark, as they held opponents to less than 100 points in an ABA-record 49 games. The early Spurs were led by ABA veteran James Silas, and the team grew stronger by acquiring Swen Nater (who would go on to win the Rookie of the Year award) and George Gervin from the Virginia Squires in January. The ABA tried to halt the Gervin deal, claiming it was detrimental to the league; however, a judge ruled in the Spurs' favor and Gervin made his Spurs debut on February 7, 1974. The Spurs finished their inaugural season under that banner with a 45–39 record, good for third place in the Western Division. In the playoffs, the team was defeated by the Indiana Pacers in seven games in the first round. San Antonio embraced the Spurs with open arms; the Spurs drew 6,303 fans per game, surpassing the Chaparrals' entire total attendance in only 18 games. Drossos, Schaefer and McCombs knew a runaway hit when they saw it. After only one year, they exercised their option to tear up the lease agreement, buy the franchise outright and keep the team in San Antonio for good.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The team quickly made themselves at home at HemisFair Arena, playing to increasingly large and raucous crowds. Despite a respectable 17–10 start during the 1974–75 season, Coach Tom Nissalke was fired as the team's ownership become tired of the Spurs' slow playing style. He was replaced by Bob Bass, who said, "It is my belief that you cannot throw a set offense at another professional team for 48 minutes. You've got to let them play some schoolyard basketball." Gervin and Silas took that style to heart, as the Spurs became an exciting fast-break team. The team finished the season with a 51–33 record and finished in second place in the West. In the playoffs, the Spurs fell to the Pacers in six games.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: Even though playoff success would elude the team before the merger, the Spurs had suddenly found themselves among the best teams in the ABA. Moreover, their gaudy attendance figures made them very attractive to the NBA, even though San Antonio, then as now, was a medium-sized market. Although San Antonio proper had over 650,000 people at the time (and has since grown to become the seventh-largest city in the United States), the surrounding suburban and rural areas have never been much larger than the city itself.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: In June 1976, the ABA–NBA merger took place, moving San Antonio's sole professional sports franchise into a new league. The Spurs, the Denver Nuggets, the Indiana Pacers and the New York Nets joined the NBA for the 1976–77 season. The Spurs and the other three ABA teams added in the merger agreed to pay the owners of two other strong ABA teams that folded instead of joining the NBA. John Y. Brown, Jr., the owner of the Kentucky Colonels, received $3 million, which he used to purchase the NBA's Buffalo Braves and later the Boston Celtics, after selling star guard Louie Dampier to the Spurs. The owners of the Spirits of St. Louis received a portion of all television profits during their NBA tenure, which amounted to approximately one-seventh of the Spurs' television profit every year. This agreement placed particular financial pressure on the Spurs and the other three surviving former ABA teams. In 2014, 38 years after the completion of the merger, the Spirits' owners reached an agreement with the NBA to end the perpetual payments and take a lump sum of $500 million instead.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: Although there was some initial skepticism in league circles regarding the potential success and talent levels of the incoming ABA teams, the Spurs would prove worthy of NBA inclusion during the 1976–77 season with a record of 44–38, good for a tie for fourth place overall in the Eastern Conference. This was done in spite of significant handicaps the NBA imposed on the incoming ABA teams, limiting their draft picks and television revenues during their early time in the merged league. They gained a new rival in the form of the Houston Rockets, who had played in Texas for five years prior to the merger.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: During the 1977–78 season, Gervin battled David Thompson of the Denver Nuggets all year long for the NBA scoring title. On the final day of the season, Thompson took the lead by scoring 73 points in an afternoon game against the Detroit Pistons. That night Gervin knew that he needed 58 points against the Jazz in New Orleans. Gervin got off to a good start by scoring 20 points in the first quarter. In the second, Gervin set a single period record with 33 points. Early on in the third period, Gervin scored his 58 points on the way to 63 capturing the scoring title. While Gervin was lighting up the scoreboard the Spurs were winning the Central Division with a 52–30 record.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: However, in the playoffs, the Spurs would be stunned in six games by the Washington Bullets despite an outstanding series from Gervin who averaged 33.2 points per game. The following season in the 1979 Conference Finals the Spurs led the series 3–1 but the Bullets came back to win the last three games and came from behind to win the seventh game 107–105 handing the Spurs a heartbreaking loss. The Spurs would have to wait another 20 years to make it to their first NBA Finals.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The Spurs would go on to capture five division titles in their first seven years in the NBA and became a perennial playoff participant. However, in the playoffs, the Spurs could never catch a break, losing to teams like the Washington Bullets, the Boston Celtics, the Houston Rockets, and the Los Angeles Lakers.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: As the 1980s progressed, the Spurs would see their shares of highs and lows. For the first few seasons of the decade, the Spurs continued their success of the 1970s with records of 52–30 in 1980–81 (in that season, the Spurs were moved to the Midwest Division of the Western Conference), 48–34 in 1981–82, and 53–29 in 1982–83.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: Despite their regular-season success, the Spurs were unable to win any NBA championships, losing in the Western Conference playoffs to the Houston Rockets in the first round of the 1981 and the Los Angeles Lakers in four games in 1982 and in six games in the 1983 Western Finals despite getting both wins at the Forum in the 1983 series. They lost every home game in both series in 1982 and 1983 vs the Lakers as Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and co. were too strong. The Spurs did not make the conference finals until 1995.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: After the 1984–85 season, Gervin, who had been the Spurs' biggest star, was traded to the Chicago Bulls in what effectively signaled the end of the era that began when the Spurs first moved to San Antonio.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The next four seasons were a dark time in Spurs' history with the team having a combined record of 115–213 from 1985–86 until 1988–89. The losing seasons and dwindling attendance often caused the Spurs to be mentioned as a potential candidate for relocation to another city.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The lone bright spot during this period was the Spurs being awarded the top pick in the 1987 NBA draft through NBA draft lottery. The Spurs used this selection on United States Naval Academy standout David Robinson. Although Robinson was drafted in 1987, the Spurs would have to wait until the 1989–90 season for Robinson to be a Spur because of his prior two-year commitment to serve in the United States Navy.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The Spurs seemingly bottomed out in 1988–89 with a record of 21–61, the worst in franchise history at the time. However, the 1989–90 season was notable for several reasons. It was the first season of full ownership for Red McCombs, who was an original investor in the team and helped solidify local ownership for the team. Additionally, the 1988–89 season featured the debut of Larry Brown as the Spurs head coach who moved to San Antonio after winning the NCAA National Championship with Kansas in 1988.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: Although there was speculation that Robinson might choose not to sign with the Spurs and to become a free agent once his Navy commitment ended, Robinson decided in the end to come to San Antonio for the 1989–90 season.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: While it was thought that Robinson's arrival would make the Spurs respectable again, no one expected what happened in his rookie season. Led by Robinson, 1989 draftee Sean Elliott from Arizona, and trade acquisition Terry Cummings from the Milwaukee Bucks, the Spurs achieved the biggest one-season turnaround in NBA history, finishing with a record of 56–26–vaulting from the worst record in franchise history to the best in franchise history. They also jumped all the way to first place in the Midwest Division, their first division title in seven years. Robinson had one of the most successful rookie seasons for a center in NBA history, finishing the season as the unanimous Rookie of the Year while averaging 24.3 points and 12.0 rebounds.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The Spurs began the 1990s with great optimism. The team became a perennial playoff presence, although unable to advance further than the second round of the NBA playoffs under Brown's tutelage. Midway through the 1991–92 season, McCombs fired Brown and replaced him with Bob Bass for the remainder of the season. Without a healthy David Robinson, the Spurs were swept out of the first round of the playoffs by the Phoenix Suns.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: McCombs made national headlines during the summer of 1992 with the hiring of former UNLV head coach Jerry Tarkanian. The Tarkanian experiment proved a flop, as the coach was fired 20 games into the 1992–93 season with the Spurs record at 9–11. After Rex Hughes filled the coaching shoes for one game, NBA veteran John Lucas was named head coach. It was Lucas' first NBA coaching assignment, although he had gained recognition in league circles for his success in helping NBA players rehab from drug abuse. The Lucas era started out successfully. His coaching propelled the team to a 39–22 finish over the rest of the regular season, and the team reached the Western Conference semi-finals.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: In 1993, local businessman Peter M. Holt and a group of 22 investors purchased the Spurs from Red McCombs for $75 million. In the 1993–94 season, the Spurs' first in the newly built Alamodome, Lucas led the team to a 55–27 record but the team suffered a loss in the first round of the playoffs, which led to the immediate firing of Lucas as head coach. Prior to the season, the Spurs traded fan-favorite Elliott to the Detroit Pistons in return for rebounding star Dennis Rodman. Elliott returned to the Spurs at the following year.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: Lucas was replaced by former Pacers coach Bob Hill for the 1994–95 season. On their first game of the season, they were defeated by the visiting Golden State Warriors despite a strong performance by David Robinson who recorded 27 points, 16 rebounds, 6 assists and 5 blocks for the Spurs. The next game, Sean Elliott recorded 23 points and David Robinson added 18 points and 19 rebounds as the Spurs got their first win of the season against the visiting New Jersey Nets.


title: San Antonio Spurs

text: The Spurs finished with the NBA's best record at 62–20, cracking the 60-win mark for the first time in franchise history. Robinson was named the league's Most Valuable Player. The Spurs reached the Western Conference Finals, but lost to the eventual NBA Champion Houston Rockets. Throughout the season, and particularly in the playoffs, there appeared to be friction developing between Rodman and several Spurs' teammates, most notably Robinson. Rodman was traded to the Chicago Bulls after the season, and helped the Bulls win three titles from 1996 to 1998.