title: Vocational education

text: "There is also a perception, deriving from centuries of social stratification and selectivity in the status and provision of different kinds of education in England, that vocational education is inevitably more narrowly utilitarian, less influential and less important than its more academic cousin: advanced ('A') levels. This divide between the sectors of 'vocational' and 'higher' education, in many ways peculiarly English, is also reflected in higher education institutions and occupations (regarding academic credentials and some related provisions). These academic-vocational divisions in the 'English model', together with negative social and political perceptions, have to some extent stymied the debate regarding the significance and relevance of vocational education provision to learning, work and the economy" (Loo and Jameson, 2017, p. 1). The authors suggest that the divisions between further and higher education sectors in England be reconsidered. They (Loo and Jameson, 2017) call for an opening up of new pathways of "occupation-related" provisions that offer greater parity, progression and enhanced social mobility in vocational education across the academic levels of England's educational provision.


title: Vocational education

text: Loo (2018) uses the term, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) by UNESCO (2012) as in the section below, to offer a more rational term than "vocational" in England, and to reach out to like-minded users in the global educational community. He offers insights into the study of the pedagogy of teachers of work-related programmes. Especially, he investigates the complex issue of how teachers use their know-how in their delivery of work-related programmes. This complexity surrounds the need for these deliverers to have the disciplinary and wider elements relating to knowledge of the relevant work practices, which involves the learning of the type of know-how and its application in their work practices. The combination of these work know-how (e.g. knowledge, experiences, dispositions and values) are then used to enable them to deliver to the learners. These pedagogic activities rely on different types of knowledge and experiences – pedagogic and work-related.


title: Vocational education

text: The theoretical framework uses, initially, a dual professionalism concept to review the literature sources of knowledge concerning the occupational pedagogy of teachers. From a pedagogic delineation of knowledge, teaching knowledge may include knowledge of the relevant disciplines (Becher 1994; Bernstein 1996; Smeby 1996) such as psychology and sociology (e.g. learning theories) for the education field. Teaching knowledge may be explicit or tacit (Shulman 1987; Polanyi 1966; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Verloop et al. 2001; Loughran et al. 2003; Collins 2010), and may include a teacher's wider life experiences (Clandinin 1985) and occupational or work-related practices (Loo 2012).


title: Vocational education

text: Knowledge concerning occupational practices (i.e. non-teaching) also requires a base of disciplinary or theoretical know-how that may be explicit and a process of application to specific work contexts and the environment it operates in (Bernstein 1996; Loo 2012). This occupational knowledge base also includes knowledge of procedures, skills (e.g. interpersonal and intrapersonal ones which are usually tacit), techniques, transversal abilities, project management abilities, personal capabilities and occupational capacity/awareness (Eraut 2004; Winch 2014). This knowledge base is a wider spectrum than a pedagogic one.


title: Vocational education

text: These two forms of knowledge – pedagogic and occupational – may be applied through the processes of recontextualization (Bernstein 1996; van Oers 1998; Barnett 2006, Evans et al. 2010, Loo 2012, 2014). The knowledge forms can be changed through selecting, relocating and refocusing aspects when used in another setting. In particular, the recontextualization processes regarding content (relating to specifications of a programme), pedagogic (relating to teaching activities), occupational (relating to working activities), and work (relating to the systems and processes that are specific to a workplace or organisation). From the initial teaching and occupational dimensions, the final modified know-how of Occupational Pedagogic Knowledge or Occupational Teachers' Capacities is formed via content recontextualization, pedagogic recontextualization, occupational recontextualization, and integrated applied recontextualization (IAR). There are also relevant concepts that offer insights to the application of teaching and occupational know-how. These include knowledgeable practice (Evans 2016), practice architecture (Kemmis and Green 2013), and Systems 1 and 2 (Kahneman 2012). For a detailed description of the theoretical framework, please refer to Chapter 4 in Teachers and Teaching in Vocational and Professional Education (Loo, 2018). The conceptual framework of the occupational pedagogy of teachers is illustrated on page 50 (Loo 2018).


title: Vocational education

text: The analysed empirical data is discussed in the separate sections of TVET, higher and professional education courses, five case studies of fashion and textiles, airline industry, dental hygiene, clinical training in emergency medicine and doctors, and a comparison chapter. These chapters offer critical understandings of how pedagogic and occupational know-how are acquired and applied in highly contextualized pedagogic and occupational contexts culminating in the use of teaching strategies/approaches in teaching sessions.


title: Vocational education

text: 2. occupational pathways are more direct for work-related provisions at higher academic levels than those at the TVET level


title: Vocational education

text: 3. two strands of practices exist at the outset: teaching and occupational where "basic" disciplinary or theoretical knowledge is used to provide occupational relevance to pedagogic and work-related areas


title: Vocational education

text: 4. IAR process provides a critical understanding of how the modified teaching, occupational and work capacities are combined to inform the application of appropriate teaching strategies to specific pedagogic settings


title: Vocational education

text: 5. users acquire the occupational capacities over the course duration, and they include abilities, capabilities, dispositions, experiences, judgement, knowledge, protocols, skill sets and techniques


title: Vocational education

text: 6. deliverers require the relevant occupational experiences to teach on work-related programmes, and continuous professional development is needed for deliverers to maintain their ongoing professionalism in the two practice strands of teaching and work


title: Vocational education

text: Finally, this investigation has implications for teachers, managers and policymakers of occupational courses. For teachers, these include insights of the sources and types of knowledge that are acquired, recontextualized and applied for teaching and working in the related occupational areas. Managers need to empathise with the deliverers and support their professional needs, and policymakers need to acknowledge the complexities of teaching in occupational programmes and that the curriculum, professional staff and institution are adequately supported (Loo 2018).


title: Billy Joel discography

text: This is the discography of American singer-songwriter Billy Joel. He released 13 studio albums, six live albums, 18 compilation albums, 10 video albums, 61 singles, three promotional singles and 45 music videos. Throughout his career, he has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists in history. According to Recording Industry Association of America, Joel has sold 85 million certified albums in the United States, making him the 4th best-selling solo artist of all time (behind Garth Brooks, Elvis Presley & Michael Jackson). "Billboard" ranked him as the 9th Greatest male soloist of all time (19th overall).


title: Billy Joel discography

text: His compilation album "Greatest Hits – Volume I & Volume II" is the 2nd best-selling album by a solo artist in "RIAA" history, achieving 23× Platinum certification in the US (behind "Thriller" by Michael Jackson). "The Stranger" remains his best-selling studio album release, achieving 10× Platinum (Diamond status) in the US as well.


title: The Last Waltz

text: The Last Waltz was a concert by the Canadian-American rock group The Band, held on American Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. "The Last Waltz" was advertised as The Band's "farewell concert appearance", and the concert had The Band joined by more than a dozen special guests, including their previous employers Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan, as well as Paul Butterfield, Bobby Charles, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, and Neil Young. The musical director for the concert was The Band's original record producer, John Simon.


title: The Last Waltz

text: The concert was produced and managed by Bill Graham and was filmed by director Martin Scorsese, who made it into a documentary of the same title, released in 1978. Jonathan Taplin, who was The Band's tour manager from 1969 to 1972 and later produced Scorsese's film "Mean Streets", suggested that Scorsese would be the ideal director for the project, and introduced Robbie Robertson and Scorsese. Taplin served as executive producer. The film features concert performances, intermittent song renditions shot on a studio soundstage, and interviews by Scorsese with members of The Band. The soundtrack and DVD were later released.


title: The Last Waltz

text: "The Last Waltz" is hailed as one of the greatest documentary concert films ever made. In 2019, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: The Last Waltz

text: Beginning with a title card saying, "This film should be played loud!" the concert documentary covers The Band's influences and career. The group consisted of Rick Danko on bass, violin, and vocals, Levon Helm on drums, mandolin, and vocals, Garth Hudson on keyboards, saxophone and accordion, songwriter Richard Manuel on keyboards, drums, percussion and vocals, and guitarist-songwriter Robbie Robertson on vocals.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Various other artists perform with The Band: Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Dr. John, Neil Diamond, and Eric Clapton. Genres covered include blues, rock and roll, New Orleans R&B, Tin Pan Alley pop, folk, and rock. Further genres are explored in segments filmed later on a sound stage with Emmylou Harris (country) and the Staple Singers (soul and gospel).


title: The Last Waltz

text: The film begins with The Band performing the last song of the evening, their cover version of the Marvin Gaye hit "Don't Do It", as an encore. The film then flashes back to the beginning of the concert, and follows it more or less chronologically. The Band is backed by a large horn section and performs many of its hit songs, including "Up on Cripple Creek", "Stage Fright", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".


title: The Last Waltz

text: The live songs are interspersed with studio segments and interviews conducted by director Martin Scorsese in which the Band's members reminisce about the group's history. Robertson talks about Hudson joining the band on the condition that the other members pay him $10 a week each for music lessons. The classically trained Hudson could then tell his parents that he was a music teacher instead of merely a rock-and-roll musician. Robertson also describes the surreal experience of playing in a burnt-out nightclub owned by Jack Ruby.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Manuel recalls that some of the early names for The Band included "The Honkies", and "The Crackers". Because they were simply referred to as "the band" by Dylan and their friends and neighbors in Woodstock, New York, they figured that was just what they would call themselves.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Danko is seen giving Scorsese a tour of The Band's Shangri-La studio, and he plays a recording of "Sip the Wine", a track from his then-forthcoming 1977 solo album "Rick Danko".


title: The Last Waltz

text: A recurring theme brought up in the interviews with Robertson is that the concert marks an end of an era for The Band, that after 16 years on the road, the time had come for a change. "That's what "The Last Waltz" is - 16 years on the road. The numbers start to scare you," Robertson tells Scorsese. "I mean, I couldn't live with 20 years on the road. I don't think I could even discuss it."


title: The Last Waltz

text: The idea for a farewell concert came about early in 1976 after Richard Manuel was seriously injured in a boating accident. Robbie Robertson then began giving thought to leaving the road, envisioning The Band becoming a studio-only band, similar to the Beatles' decision to stop playing live shows in 1966. He was also concerned about the negative effects of being on the road too long:


title: The Last Waltz

text: Though the other band members did not agree with Robertson's decision, the concert was set at Bill Graham's Winterland Ballroom, where The Band had made its debut as a group in 1969. Originally, The Band was to perform on its own, but then the notion of inviting Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan was hatched and the guest list grew to include other performers. Robertson wanted to invite people who had been a strong influence on their music, people who represented various music styles, including New Orleans rock and roll, English blues, and Chicago blues. When he called Bill Graham, he said he wanted the concert to be a kind of celebration, the end of a chapter.


title: The Last Waltz

text: With only six weeks before the planned date, Robertson called director Martin Scorsese, whom he knew loved rock music and had worked at the Woodstock Festival, to see if he would direct it as a concert documentary. When he mentioned some of the performers they had lined up, Scorsese reacted quickly: ""Van Morrison?" Are you "kidding?" I "have" to do it. I don't have a choice." The group promoted the concert by appearing on the October 30 episode of "Saturday Night Live", where host Buck Henry introduced them by saying they were about to disband on Thanksgiving. They went into a set of "Life Is a Carnival", "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", and "Stage Fright" and closed out the episode with a cover of "Georgia on My Mind" with Manuel on lead vocals.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Promoted and organized by Bill Graham, whose home turf was Winterland and who had a long association with The Band, the concert was an elaborate affair, with over 300 workers. Starting at 5:00 pm, the audience of 5,000 was served turkey dinners. There was ballroom dancing, with music by the Berkeley Promenade Orchestra. Poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Lenore Kandel, Diane di Prima, Michael McClure, Robert Duncan, and Freewheelin' Frank gave readings.


title: The Last Waltz

text: The Band started its concert at around 9:00 pm, opening with "Up on Cripple Creek". This was followed by eleven more of The Band's most popular songs, including "The Shape I'm In", "This Wheel's on Fire", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". They were backed by a large horn section with charts arranged by Allen Toussaint and other musicians.


title: The Last Waltz

text: They were then joined by a succession of guest artists, starting with Ronnie Hawkins. As the Hawks, The Band served as Hawkins' backing band in the early 1960s. Dr. John took a seat at the piano for his signature song, "Such a Night". He then switched to guitar and joined Bobby Charles on "Down South in New Orleans".


title: The Last Waltz

text: A blues set was next with harmonica player Paul Butterfield, Muddy Waters, pianist Pinetop Perkins, and Eric Clapton. As Clapton was taking his first solo on "Further on Up the Road", his guitar strap came loose and Robertson picked up the solo without missing a beat.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Neil Young followed, singing "Helpless" with backing vocals by Joni Mitchell, who remained off stage. According to Robertson's commentary on "The Last Waltz" DVD, this was so her later appearance in the show would have more of an impact. Mitchell came on after Young and sang three songs, two with the backing of Dr. John on congas.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Neil Diamond was next, introducing his "Dry Your Eyes" by saying, "I'm only gonna do one song, but I'm gonna do it good." Robertson had produced Diamond's album "Beautiful Noise" the same year and co-wrote "Dry Your Eyes", which during the concert he hailed as a "great song".


title: The Last Waltz

text: Van Morrison then performed two songs, a special arrangement of "Tura Lura Lural (That's an Irish Lullaby)" as a duet with Richard Manuel and his own show-stopper, "Caravan".


title: The Last Waltz

text: Canadians Young and Mitchell were then invited back out to help the Band perform "Acadian Driftwood", an ode to the Acadians of Canadian history. The Band then performed a short set of some more of its songs before Bob Dylan came on stage to lead his former backing band through four songs.


title: The Last Waltz

text: The Band and all its guests, with the addition of Ringo Starr on drums and Ronnie Wood on guitar, then sang "I Shall Be Released" as a closing number. Dylan, who wrote the song, and Manuel, whose falsetto rendition had made the song famous on "Music from Big Pink", shared lead vocals, although Manuel cannot be clearly seen in the film and switched between his normal and falsetto voices between verses.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Two loose jam sessions then formed. "Jam #1" featured the Band minus Richard Manuel playing with Neil Young, Ronnie Wood, and Eric Clapton on guitar, Dr. John on piano, Paul Butterfield on harmonica, and Ringo Starr on drums. It was followed by "Jam #2" with the same personnel minus Robertson and Danko. Stephen Stills, who showed up late, took a guitar solo and Carl Radle joined on bass.


title: The Last Waltz

text: The Band then came out at around 2:15 am to perform an encore, "Don't Do It". It was the last time the group performed under the name "The Band" with its classic lineup. The five joined on stage at a Rick Danko concert in 1978. The Band reformed without Robertson in 1980 and headlined at The Roxy in Los Angeles with Scottish group Blue supporting, guests were Dr. John and Joe Cocker. Rick Danko later performed at various Los Angeles venues along with Blue, and at his invitation, they recorded their "LA Sessions" album at Shangri-La Studios.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Robertson initially wanted to record the concert on 16 mm film. He recruited Martin Scorsese to direct based on his use of music in "Mean Streets". Under Scorsese, the film grew into a full-scale studio production with seven 35 mm cameras.


title: The Last Waltz

text: The cameras were operated by several cinematographers, including Michael Chapman ("Raging Bull"), Vilmos Zsigmond ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind"), and László Kovács ("Easy Rider", "Five Easy Pieces"). The stage and lighting were designed by Boris Leven, who had been the production designer on such musical films as "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music". With Bill Graham's assistance, the set from the San Francisco Opera's production of "La traviata" was rented as a backdrop for the stage. Crystal chandeliers were also hung over the stage.


title: The Last Waltz

text: John Simon, who ran the rehearsals for the show, would give Scorsese details as to who sang what and who soloed when for each song. Scorsese meticulously storyboarded the songs, setting up lighting and camera cues to fit the lyrics of the songs. But despite his planning, in the rigors of the live concert setting, with the loud rock music and the hours spent filming the show, there were unscripted film reloads and camera malfunctions. It was not possible for all songs to be covered. At one point, all the cameras, except László Kovács', were shut down for a scheduled film reload as Muddy Waters was to perform "Mannish Boy". Kovács, frustrated by Scorsese's constant instructions, had removed his headset earlier in the evening and had not heard the orders to stop filming. As Scorsese frantically tried to get other cameras up, Kovács was already rolling and able to capture the iconic song by the blues legend. "It was just luck," Scorsese recalled in the DVD documentary, "The Last Waltz Revisited".


title: The Last Waltz

text: Notably omitted from the film is Stephen Stills, who only performed in a jam session. Also omitted were performances by poets Lenore Kandel, Robert Duncan, Freewheelin' Frank Reynolds, Emmett Grogan, Diane DiPrima and Sweet William. Both jam sessions were omitted from the film entirely.


title: The Last Waltz

text: While Bob Dylan had agreed to perform at the concert, which was being filmed, he decided during the intermission that he did not want his own performance filmed after all. He feared it might detract from his film "Renaldo and Clara", which he directed during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour, which ended months earlier. However, Warner Bros. had agreed to finance "Last Waltz" only if Dylan would appear in it.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Levon Helm said that Scorsese "went nuts" upon hearing that Dylan changed his mind, while "Robbie became totally pale." More than a million dollars would have been lost without Dylan's performance in the film, said Helm. Jonathan Taplin, the Band's manager and producer of the film, was also beside himself, knowing that he had no influence over Dylan. He, along with Robertson and Scorsese, then went to Graham: "Bill, you're going to have to go and talk to Bob." They knew that Graham had worked with Dylan before, such as during Graham's SNACK Benefit Concert a year earlier. They wanted Graham to explain to Dylan how dire the situation was, said Helm.


title: The Last Waltz

text: As Graham walked toward Dylan's dressing room, he tried to reassure them, "Don't worry, I'm gonna make it happen." As they waited, there were frantic backstage negotiations between Graham and Dylan, recalls Helm:


title: The Last Waltz

text: Robertson also assured Dylan that the concert film's release would be delayed until after his film. Taplin later said that "Bill did the greatest thing that night. In a sense, he really saved the day for us."


title: The Last Waltz

text: At one point during Dylan's performance, Robertson states that Lou Kemp, a close friend of Dylan, said "We're not filming this." And Bill just said, "Get out of here, or I'll kill you." Graham told him "This is "history", don't mess with it!" Kemp backed off. To add to the confusion, Scorsese said that when Dylan got on stage, the sound was so loud he did not know what to shoot: "Fortunately, we got our cues right and we shot the two songs that were used in the film."


title: The Last Waltz

text: According to Kemp, "More or less, Bob got his way. I think they shot a little more than he wanted but they didn't shoot as much as "they" wanted. As it ended up, everybody came out whole. Robertson was also satisfied:


title: The Last Waltz

text: Scorsese has said that during this period, he was using cocaine heavily. Drugs were present in large quantities during the concert. A smudge of cocaine on Neil Young's nose was obscured in post-production.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Following the concert, Scorsese filmed for several days on an MGM studio soundstage, with the Band, the Staple Singers and Emmylou Harris. The Band's performance of "The Weight" with the Staple Singers was included in the film instead of the concert version. The Band and Harris performed "Evangeline", which was also included in the film. Interviews with group members were conducted by Scorsese at the Band's Shangri-La Studio in Malibu, California. Additionally, Robertson composed "The Last Waltz Suite", parts of which were used as a film score. Finally, according to musical director John Simon, during post-production, the live recording was altered to clean up "playing mistakes, out-of-tune singing, bad horn-balance in the remote truck. Only Levon's part was retained in its entirety."


title: The Last Waltz

text: Due to Scorsese's commitments on "New York, New York" and another documentary, "", the film's release was delayed until 1978.


title: The Last Waltz

text: During the editing process, Scorsese and Robertson became friends, and frequently collaborated on further projects, with Robertson acting as music producer and consultant on "Raging Bull", "The King of Comedy", "The Color of Money", "Casino", "Gangs of New York", "The Departed" and "Shutter Island".


title: The Last Waltz

text: The film has been hailed critically, listed among the greatest concert films. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 98% based on 50 reviews, with an average rating of 8.50/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Among one of, if not the best rock movie ever made, The Last Waltz is a revealing, electrifying view of the classic band at their height." "Chicago Tribune" film critic Michael Wilmington calls it "the greatest rock concert movie ever made – and maybe the best rock movie, period". Terry Lawson of the "Detroit Free Press" comments that "This is one of the great movie experiences." "Total Film" considers it "the greatest concert film ever shot". Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" gave it a negative review, stating that it "articulates so little of the end-of-an-era feeling it hints at ... that it's impossible to view the "Last Waltz" as anything but an also-ran." However, "The New York Times" in 2003 placed the film on its "Best 1000 Movies Ever" list, while "Rolling Stone" called it the "Greatest Concert Movie of All Time".


title: The Last Waltz

text: Music critic Robert Christgau gives the soundtrack a "B+", saying "the movie improves when you can't see it." He praises the blues numbers by Muddy Waters and Paul Butterfield, the horn arrangements by Allen Toussaint, and the "blistering if messy" guitar duet by Robertson and Eric Clapton. Film critic Roger Ebert awarded the film three stars out of a possible four, noting that although "the film is such a revealing document of a time", it also suggested the musicians had reached the end of their careers.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Levon Helm, in his 1993 autobiography "This Wheel's on Fire", expresses serious reservations about Scorsese's handling of the film, claiming that Scorsese and Robertson (who produced the film) conspired to make the Band look like Robertson's sidemen. He states that Robertson, who is depicted singing powerful backing vocals, was actually singing into a microphone that was turned off throughout most of the concert (a typical practice during their live performances).


title: The Last Waltz

text: Helm was also dissatisfied with Manuel and Hudson's minimal screen time and the fact most of the band members never received any money for the various home videos, DVDs and soundtracks released by Warner Bros. after the project.


title: The Last Waltz

text: Robertson said he was relieved when the concert ended, as he was constantly worried that something would go wrong, as it did when Dylan suddenly backed out of being filmed. To all the people involved, he said "Thank God we got through it." He recalls that all the cameramen were hugging one another, feeling they had succeeded in capturing a unique rock concert on film.


title: The Last Waltz

text: He also thanked Graham for producing the concert at Winterland, where the Band had its debut in 1969:


title: The Last Waltz

text: For the concert's 25th anniversary in 2002, the film was remastered and a new theatrical print was made for a limited release to promote the release of the DVD and four-CD box set of the film soundtrack. It opened in San Francisco's Castro Theatre, with the release later expanded to 15 theaters.


title: The Last Waltz

text: The DVD features a commentary track by Robertson and Scorsese, a featurette, "Revisiting The Last Waltz", and a gallery of images from the concert, the studio filming and the film premiere. A bonus scene is footage of "Jam #2", which is cut short because they had run out of replacement sound synchronizers for the cameras after ten hours of continuous filming.


title: The Last Waltz

text: The original 2002 DVD release was packaged as a "special edition". In addition to the extra features on the disc, the Amaray case came in a foil-embossed cardboard sleeve, and inside was an eight-page booklet, featuring a five-page essay by Robertson entitled "The End of a Musical Journey". Also included was a US$5 rebate coupon for the four-CD box set. In 2005, the DVD was re-issued with different artwork and stripped of the outer foil packaging, inner booklet and coupon; the disc's contents remained unchanged.


title: The Last Waltz

text: In 2006, "The Last Waltz" was among the first eight titles released in Sony's high definition Blu-ray format. The soundtracks on the Blu-ray release consist of an uncompressed 5.1 Linear PCM track, a very high fidelity format, and a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 track.


title: The Last Waltz

text: On March 29, 2022, The Criterion Collection released a new 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by Scorsese, with Dolby Vision HDR and a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, supervised and approved by Robertson.


title: The Last Waltz

text: The original soundtrack album was a three-LP album released on April 16, 1978 (later as a two-disc CD). It has many songs not in the film, including "Down South in New Orleans" with Bobby Charles and Dr. John on guitar, "Tura Lura Lural (That's an Irish Lullaby)" by Van Morrison, "Life is a Carnival" by the Band, and "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" by Bob Dylan. John Casado designed the packaging and logotype trademark.


title: The Last Waltz

text: In 2002, a four-CD box set was released, as was a DVD-Audio edition. Robbie Robertson produced the album, remastering all the songs. The set includes 16 previously unreleased songs from the concert, as well as takes from rehearsals. Among the additions are Louis Jordan's "Caldonia" by Muddy Waters, the concert version of "The Weight", "Jam #1" and "Jam #2" in their entirety, and extended sets with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.


title: The Last Waltz

text: The soundtrack recordings underwent post-concert production featuring heavy use of overdubbing and re-sequencing. Bootleg collectors have circulated an original line recording of the concert as a more accurate and complete document of the event. It includes songs not available in the film or the official album releases, including "Georgia on My Mind", "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)", the complete "Chest Fever" and the live version of "Evangeline".


title: Refraction

text: In physics, refraction is the redirection of a wave as it passes from one medium to another. The redirection can be caused by the wave's change in speed or by a change in the medium. Refraction of light is the most commonly observed phenomenon, but other waves such as sound waves and water waves also experience refraction. How much a wave is refracted is determined by the change in wave speed and the initial direction of wave propagation relative to the direction of change in speed.


title: Refraction

text: For light, refraction follows Snell's law, which states that, for a given pair of media, the ratio of the sines of the angle of incidence "θ" and angle of refraction "θ" is equal to the ratio of phase velocities ("v" / "v") in the two media, or equivalently, to the refractive indices ("n" / "n") of the two media.


title: Refraction

text: Optical prisms and lenses use refraction to redirect light, as does the human eye. The refractive index of materials varies with the wavelength of light, and thus the angle of the refraction also varies correspondingly. This is called dispersion and causes prisms and rainbows to divide white light into its constituent spectral colors.


title: Refraction

text: Refraction of light can be seen in many places in our everyday life. It makes objects under a water surface appear closer than they really are. It is what optical lenses are based on, allowing for instruments such as glasses, cameras, binoculars, microscopes, and the human eye. Refraction is also responsible for some natural optical phenomena including rainbows and mirages.


title: Refraction

text: A correct explanation of refraction involves two separate parts, both a result of the wave nature of light.


title: Refraction

text: As described above, the speed of light is slower in a medium other than vacuum. This slowing applies to any medium such as air, water, or glass, and is responsible for phenomena such as refraction. When light leaves the medium and returns to a vacuum, and ignoring any effects of gravity, its speed returns to the usual speed of light in a vacuum, "c".


title: Refraction

text: Common explanations for this slowing, based upon the idea of light scattering from, or being absorbed and re-emitted by atoms, are both incorrect. Explanations like these would cause a "blurring" effect in the resulting light, as it would no longer be travelling in just one direction. But this effect is not seen in nature.


title: Refraction

text: A correct explanation rests on light's nature as an electromagnetic wave. Because light is an oscillating electrical/magnetic wave, light traveling in a medium causes the electrically charged electrons of the material to also oscillate. (The material's protons also oscillate but as they are around 2000 times more massive, their movement and therefore their effect, is far smaller). A moving electrical charge emits electromagnetic waves of its own. The electromagnetic waves emitted by the oscillating electrons, interact with the electromagnetic waves that make up the original light, similar to water waves on a pond, a process known as constructive interference. When two waves interfere in this way, the resulting "combined" wave may have wave packets that pass an observer at a slower rate. The light has effectively been slowed. When the light leaves the material, this interaction with electrons no longer happens, and therefore the wave packet rate (and therefore its speed) return to normal.


title: Refraction

text: Consider a wave going from one material to another where its speed is slower as in the figure. If it reaches the interface between the materials at an angle one side of the wave will reach the second material first, and therefore slow down earlier. With one side of the wave going slower the whole wave will pivot towards that side. This is why a wave will bend away from the surface or toward the normal when going into a slower material. In the opposite case of a wave reaching a material where the speed is higher, one side of the wave will speed up and the wave will pivot away from that side.


title: Refraction

text: Another way of understanding the same thing is to consider the change in wavelength at the interface. When the wave goes from one material to another where the wave has a different speed "v", the frequency "f" of the wave will stay the same, but the distance between wavefronts or wavelength "λ"="v"/"f" will change. If the speed is decreased, such as in the figure to the right, the wavelength will also decrease. With an angle between the wave fronts and the interface and change in distance between the wave fronts the angle must change over the interface to keep the wave fronts intact. From these considerations the relationship between the angle of incidence "θ", angle of transmission "θ" and the wave speeds "v" and "v" in the two materials can be derived. This is the law of refraction or Snell's law and can be written as


title: Refraction

text: The phenomenon of refraction can in a more fundamental way be derived from the 2 or 3-dimensional wave equation. The boundary condition at the interface will then require the tangential component of the wave vector to be identical on the two sides of the interface. Since the magnitude of the wave vector depend on the wave speed this requires a change in direction of the wave vector.


title: Refraction

text: The relevant wave speed in the discussion above is the phase velocity of the wave. This is typically close to the group velocity which can be seen as the truer speed of a wave, but when they differ it is important to use the phase velocity in all calculations relating to refraction.


title: Refraction

text: A wave traveling perpendicular to a boundary, i.e. having its wavefronts parallel to the boundary, will not change direction even if the speed of the wave changes.


title: Refraction

text: For light, the refractive index "n" of a material is more often used than the wave phase speed "v" in the material. They are, however, directly related through the speed of light in vacuum "c" as


title: Refraction

text: Refraction occurs when light goes through a water surface since water has a refractive index of 1.33 and air has a refractive index of about 1. Looking at a straight object, such as a pencil in the figure here, which is placed at a slant, partially in the water, the object appears to bend at the water's surface. This is due to the bending of light rays as they move from the water to the air. Once the rays reach the eye, the eye traces them back as straight lines (lines of sight). The lines of sight (shown as dashed lines) intersect at a higher position than where the actual rays originated. This causes the pencil to appear higher and the water to appear shallower than it really is.


title: Refraction

text: The depth that the water appears to be when viewed from above is known as the "apparent depth". This is an important consideration for spearfishing from the surface because it will make the target fish appear to be in a different place, and the fisher must aim lower to catch the fish. Conversely, an object above the water has a higher "apparent height" when viewed from below the water. The opposite correction must be made by an archer fish.


title: Refraction

text: For small angles of incidence (measured from the normal, when sin θ is approximately the same as tan θ), the ratio of apparent to real depth is the ratio of the refractive indexes of air to that of water. But, as the angle of incidence approaches 90, the apparent depth approaches zero, albeit reflection increases, which limits observation at high angles of incidence. Conversely, the apparent height approaches infinity as the angle of incidence (from below) increases, but even earlier, as the angle of total internal reflection is approached, albeit the image also fades from view as this limit is approached.


title: Refraction

text: Refraction is also responsible for rainbows and for the splitting of white light into a rainbow-spectrum as it passes through a glass prism. Glass has a higher refractive index than air. When a beam of white light passes from air into a material having an index of refraction that varies with frequency, a phenomenon known as dispersion occurs, in which different coloured components of the white light are refracted at different angles, i.e., they bend by different amounts at the interface, so that they become separated. The different colors correspond to different frequencies.


title: Refraction

text: The refractive index of air depends on the air density and thus vary with air temperature and pressure. Since the pressure is lower at higher altitudes, the refractive index is also lower, causing light rays to refract towards the earth surface when traveling long distances through the atmosphere. This shifts the apparent positions of stars slightly when they are close to the horizon and makes the sun visible before it geometrically rises above the horizon during a sunrise.


title: Refraction

text: Temperature variations in the air can also cause refraction of light. This can be seen as a heat haze when hot and cold air is mixed e.g. over a fire, in engine exhaust, or when opening a window on a cold day. This makes objects viewed through the mixed air appear to shimmer or move around randomly as the hot and cold air moves. This effect is also visible from normal variations in air temperature during a sunny day when using high magnification telephoto lenses and is often limiting the image quality in these cases.


title: Refraction

text: Air temperature variations close to the surface can give rise to other optical phenomena, such as mirages and Fata Morgana. Most commonly, air heated by a hot road on a sunny day deflects light approaching at a shallow angle towards a viewer. This makes the road appear reflecting, giving an illusion of water covering the road.


title: Refraction

text: In medicine, particularly optometry, ophthalmology and orthoptics, "refraction" (also known as "refractometry") is a clinical test in which a phoropter may be used by the appropriate eye care professional to determine the eye's refractive error and the best corrective lenses to be prescribed. A series of test lenses in graded optical powers or focal lengths are presented to determine which provides the sharpest, clearest vision.


title: Refraction

text: Water waves travel slower in shallower water. This can be used to demonstrate refraction in ripple tanks and also explains why waves on a shoreline tend to strike the shore close to a perpendicular angle. As the waves travel from deep water into shallower water near the shore, they are refracted from their original direction of travel to an angle more normal to the shoreline.


title: Refraction

text: In underwater acoustics, refraction is the bending or curving of a sound ray that results when the ray passes through a sound speed gradient from a region of one sound speed to a region of a different speed. The amount of ray bending is dependent on the amount of difference between sound speeds, that is, the variation in temperature, salinity, and pressure of the water.


title: Refraction

text: Similar acoustics effects are also found in the Earth's atmosphere. The phenomenon of refraction of sound in the atmosphere has been known for centuries; however, beginning in the early 1970s, widespread analysis of this effect came into vogue through the designing of urban highways and noise barriers to address the meteorological effects of bending of sound rays in the lower atmosphere.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: Shaft is a 2019 American action comedy film directed by Tim Story and written by Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow. The film stars Samuel L. Jackson, Jessie T. Usher, Regina Hall, and Richard Roundtree. It is the fifth film in the "Shaft" series and a direct sequel to the 2000 film with the same title.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: The film was released theatrically in the United States on June 14, 2019, by Warner Bros. Pictures, and digitally in global markets on June 28, 2019, by Netflix. It received mixed reviews from critics and underperformed at the box office.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: In 1989, NYPD Detective John Shaft, his wife Maya, and their infant son JJ Shaft survive an assassination attempt by drug lord Pierro "Gordito" Carrera. Concerned that Shaft's lifestyle will put them in danger, Maya moves upstate, divorces Shaft, and raises JJ on her own.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: Twenty-five years later, Shaft has quit the NYPD to become a private investigator and JJ is a rookie FBI analyst and cybersecurity expert with a degree from MIT. After Karim, his childhood friend and ex-United States Army soldier, is said to have died because of a heroin overdose, JJ concludes he must have been murdered. JJ travels to Harlem to investigate Manuel, the drug dealer who sold the heroin that Karim allegedly bought, but is violently ejected from his property. While being treated for a minor injury in the hospital by doctor Sasha, JJ's other childhood friend and his unrequited crush, he shows her Karim's toxicology report. She notes that the amount of heroin in Karim's system would have killed him long before he could have taken that much by himself, suggesting that he was indeed murdered. With no other recourse, JJ turns to his father for aid. Shaft agrees to help after realizing that JJ's case may lead him to Gordito.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: The two begin investigating together, but JJ's progressive white collar outlook on life clashes with Shaft's old-school street ways. After confronting Manuel, the Shafts investigate "Brothers Watching Brothers", the drug rehab clinic Karim helped founded with fellow ex-soldiers Cutworth, Williams and Dominguez. There they learn that Karim stopped going to rehab in favor of attending services at a mosque currently under suspicion by the FBI for terrorism.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: Sasha accompanies JJ and Shaft to investigate the mosque, where they are removed from the premises after the imam notices JJ's FBI badge. After Shaft convinces JJ and Sasha to plan a dinner together, the two Shafts investigate a convenience store owned by a woman named Bennie Rodriguez who donated $500,000 to the mosque. Maya calls JJ to inform him that she is coming to New York City to meet a man for dinner; she is overheard and later followed by Shaft. The Shafts, each at separate restaurants, survive assassination attempts orchestrated by Bennie. Maya forces Shaft to kick JJ out of the investigation for his own safety.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: JJ turns over the evidence they have gathered to the FBI, who arrest the mosque's imam. However, the media accuses the FBI of islamophobia, and JJ's boss Vietti fires him. JJ returns to Shaft and overhears a conversation about Gordito, leading him to believe that his father was stringing him along the entire time. While Shaft visits and reconciles with Maya, JJ and Sasha track down Bennie to an abandoned warehouse and learn that "Brothers Watching Brothers" is a front for a drug smuggling ring; Karim was killed by Cutworth when he threatened to blow the whistle on their operation. JJ gets discovered by the smugglers; Sasha is kidnapped while JJ is rescued by Shaft.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: Shaft introduces JJ to his grandfather, John Shaft Sr, where they acquire more firepower, and Shaft Sr decides to accompany them in an assault on Gordito's penthouse. The Shafts kill the drug smugglers while JJ has an intense fight with Cutworth and kills him, avenging Karim's death. He rescues Sasha before being confronted at gunpoint by Gordito. Gordito attempts to shoot JJ to spite Shaft, but Shaft takes the bullet and shoots Gordito, causing him to crash through a window and fall to his death, before collapsing himself.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: In the aftermath, Shaft recovers in hospital with Maya's support. At the insistence of Shaft Sr, JJ and Sasha kiss, and finally begin a relationship. Vietti soon offers JJ a promotion to field agent, but JJ turns it down, and joins his father and grandfather in their PI business. At the end, the three generations of Shafts walk away together.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: Isaach de Bankolé portrays Pierro "Gordito" Carrera, a drug lord. Avan Jogia portrays Karim Hassan, J.J.'s male best friend, a recovering addict helping fellow returning soldiers. Joey Mekyten portrays a young Karim. Luna Lauren Vélez portrays Bennie Rodriguez, Gordito's money launderer.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: On February 18, 2015, it was announced that New Line Cinema had acquired the rights to the "Shaft" franchise, featuring detective character John Shaft, and would develop a new film within the series, along with producer John Davis of Davis Entertainment. On July 28, 2015, it was reported that Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow would write the script for the new film, which would also be produced by Ira Napoliello, and on January 20, 2017, the studio hired Tim Story to direct. On August 18, 2017, Jessie T. Usher was cast to play the film's new lead, the son of Samuel L. Jackson's John Shaft II from the 2000 film, while Richard Roundtree and Jackson were set to reprise their previous franchise roles.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: In October 2017, Netflix signed a deal with New Line Cinema to cover more than half of the film's $30 million budget in exchange for the rights, which allowed Netflix to release the film on its platform outside of the United States two weeks after the theatrical release in the U.S.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: Filming began in February 2018, and wrapped up production in the early part of the year. The cast went back to re-shoot a few scenes in Atlanta in August 2018.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: "Shaft" was theatrically released in the United States on June 14, 2019, by Warner Bros. Netflix released it internationally on June 28, 2019.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: In the United States and Canada, "Shaft" was released alongside "", as well as the wide expansion of "Late Night", and was initially projected to gross $17–20 million from 2,950 theaters in its opening weekend. However, after the film made $2.7 million on its first day, including $600,000 from Thursday night previews, projections were lowered to $7 million. The film went on to debut to $8.3 million, finishing sixth at the box office. It grossed $3.6 million in its second weekend, dropping 60% to 11th.


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads: "Decades removed from the original, this multi-generational "Shaft" struggles to keep its characters interesting -- or anything other than uncomfortably outdated." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an average 4 out of 5 stars and a 51% "definite recommend."


title: Shaft (2019 film)

text: Writing for "The A.V. Club", Ignatiy Vishnevetsky gave the film a C, writing, "With its groaner jokes and TV-pilot production values, the new film makes the last attempt at updating the character to contemporary action-hero tastes (in 2000's "Shaft", directed by John Singleton) look downright old-school. And its identity crises go a lot deeper than the title it confusingly shares with two earlier films."


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: Zee Entertainment Enterprises (formerly Zee Telefilms) is an Indian media conglomerate owned by Essel Group. Headquartered in Mumbai, it has interests in television, print, internet, film, businesses related to mobile contents, and operates 45 channels worldwide.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: The company was launched on 15 December 1991 as Zee Telefilms, a brand name that was retained until 2006.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: Zee Telefilms launched a Nickelodeon-branded programming block in 1999 as part of a distribution deal between Viacom International and Zee Telefilms. It was replaced by a new Cartoon Network block in 2002.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In 2002, the company acquired a majority stake (51%) in ETC Networks. In 2003, they planned to purchase Rajshri for ₹50 crore. With the deal, Zee would have access to all of Rajshri's films, but the plan fell later on.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In 2006, they acquired Integrated Subscriber Management Services Limited, and in November 2006, it acquired a 50% stake in Taj television, owner of TEN Sports. On that same year, the company was rebranded as Zee Entertainment Enterprises.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In 2008, Zee Networks launched Zee Motion Pictures and Zee Limelight (now Zee Studios) for the development, production, distribution and marketing of mainstream films in Indian languages, including Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali and Marathi. Some of Zee Studios's productions include , Natsamrat, Sairat and Rustom.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: As Zee Telefilms, the company formed part of BSE Sensex from 2000 to 2005. The news and regional entertainment channel business was spun off into a separate company in 2006 as Zee News.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In May 2011, Star Den entered into a 50/50 joint venture with Zee Turner and Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) to distribute and market all channels owned by the company and ZEEL, their respective affiliated channels and other third-party channels in India, Nepal and Bhutan.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In 2015, Zee acquired Sarthak TV, an Odia-language pay-television channel. One year later, on 28 July 2016, it launched Zee One, aimed at the German market. A Polish version of the channel was launched in 2017.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In 2017, the company acquired the majority stake of the Reliance Broadcast Network. It also planned to acquire 9X Media in October 2017 for the cost of 160 crore, however the plan fell through in March 2018.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: A partially-owned subsidiary, Diligent Media Corporation, is a publisher of Indian daily newspapers and websites. DMC is a joint venture between Zee and the Dainik Bhaskar Group.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In 2018, Zee launched Zee Theatre, which offers a collection of recorded theatre plays also called teleplay- produced in India and internationally.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In February 2019, media reported that Essel Group was in talks to sell their shares from the Zee Entertainment Enterprises to save from the debt.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: Sony, Comcast-Atairos, a firm lead by American cable giant Comcast were shortlisted for the bid. However, they were competing with technology giant Apple and Reliance Industries among others.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: Top Sony officials including Mike Hopkins, chairman of Sony Pictures Television, and Tony Vinciquerra, chairman of Sony Pictures, had visited Subhash Chandra and his family at his residence shortly after Chandra announced his intent to sell half of the promoter holding in Zee Entertainment Enterprises to a global strategic investor.On April 2 reports said that some other promoters were willing to sell their shares worth 332 crore.On April 3 media reported Sony and Zee Entertainment Enterprises deal off amid valuation differences which opened the door for Comcast-Atairos.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In September 2021, it was reported that Invesco Developing Markets Funds and OFI Global China Fund LLC, who jointly holds 17.88% stake, wanted Punit Goenka (also son of founder) to step-down as MD and CEO. It was also reported that Essel Group owns a sum of 3.99% minority stake.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: On 22 September 2021, the company announced its intent to merge with Sony Pictures Networks India. Sony Pictures will hold a majority stake in the proposed merged entity, which will be headed by Zee's Punit Goenka. In December 2021, the merger was approved by the two companies' boards. Sony will hold a stake close to 51% in the company, with Zee controlling the remaining stake.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: On 11 September 2021, Invesco asked Zee management to call an "extraordinary general meeting" (EGM) of shareholders to consider its demands. One of main demand was removal of Punit Goenka, son of the Zee Network founder. However Zee board rejects demand from Invesco to convene extraordinary general meeting. Invesco Developing Market Funds Moves to National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and Bombay High Court seeking mandatory order for Zee Enterprises Entertainment Limited (ZEEL) to call the extraordinary general meeting (EGM) that the shareholder has been demanding.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: OFI Global China Fund, who also moved the NCLT along with Invesco, remarked at the hearing that the meeting that Zee Entertainment board had conducted on October 1 was just a legal formality and that it's a classic case of Forum shopping.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: On 11 October 2021 Invesco write an open letter to the other share holders saying they are disappointed that the leadership of Zee has resorted to a reckless public relations campaign in response to the overwhelming demand from shareholders for leadership changes at Zee network. also they implemented that they tried to merge Zee with some other Indian company on early 2021 but Zee board rejected it.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: Zee Board replied to Invesco's open letter saying they didn't care about the company, and Invesco is not motivated by concerns related to any corporate governance issue but "by the events that transpired during February–April 2021 pointing Invesco purposed deal with Reliance Industries.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) said it proposed to merge all its media properties with Zee Entertainment at fair valuations during discussions in February and March 2021 that US investment firm Invesco helped arrange with managing director and member of the founding family of the media and entertainment company.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In 21 October, Bombay High Court asks Zee board to call EGM as demanded by shareholder Invesco, and Counsel appearing for Zee Entertainment said the company will inform the date of the EGM by the morning of October 22.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In 22 October, Zee replied to court that the board can’t give nod to something that will turn out to be illegal. so HC postponed hearing of the Zee-Invesco matter to October 26.and in October 26 Bombay High Court has restrained Invesco from taking any action in furtherance of their requisition notice (to call an EGM).


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In 7 December, Invesco heading towards a resolution expected to back the merger deal with Sony as long as the Goenka family does not get any preferential equity.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In 22 December, Board of Zee signed definitive agreements with Sony after received approval from its board of directors


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: Sonu Nigam alleged that he was banned by the Zee Music Company after he tweeted in support of politician Dr. Kumar Vishwas.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: In February 2016, Zee Entertainment Enterprise Ltd (ZEEL) forayed into video-on-demand with the launch of its OTT platform OZEE.


title: Zee Entertainment Enterprises

text: On 14 February 2018, this service rebranded as ZEE5. Since its relaunch as ZEE5, it streams all content from its television network and also movies and original series. ZEE5 claimed 57 million monthly active users in December 2019.


title: Shera Danese

text: Danese was born Sherry Lynn Kaminski in Hartsdale, New York. She was the 1970 Miss Pennsylvania World. In 1974, Kaminski legally changed her name to Sherry Lynn Danese, later adopting Shera as her first name.


title: Shera Danese

text: Her acting career began in 1975 playing the part of Kitty in an episode of the TV series "Medical Story" (credited as Sherry Danese). She subsequently guest-starred in other TV series during the 1970s, with appearances in "One Day at a Time", "Serpico", "Baretta", "Three's Company", "Kojak", "Family", "Hart to Hart", "Starsky and Hutch" and "Charlie's Angels".


title: Shera Danese

text: In one of her few movie roles, Danese starred with Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay in "Risky Business" (1983), playing a prostitute named Vicki. In 2005, she appeared alongside her husband Peter Falk in the movie "Checking Out".


title: Shera Danese

text: Danese had major supporting roles in six episodes of the TV series "Columbo", appearing alongside her husband Peter Falk, (who played detective Columbo) in "Fade in to Murder" (1976), "Murder Under Glass" (1978), "Murder, a Self Portrait" (1989), "Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star" (1991), "Undercover" (1994) and "A Trace of Murder" (1997). Although she played the killer only once, Danese has the distinction of having appeared in more episodes of the series than any other actress.


title: Shera Danese

text: Danese met Peter Falk on the set of the movie "Mikey and Nicky" and became his second wife on December 7, 1977. They were married for 33 years until Falk's death on June 23, 2011 at age 83 from complications of Alzheimer's disease and pneumonia. She is mentioned on his headstone: "I'm not here. I'm home with Shera".


title: Shera Danese

text: Danese was Falk's conservator, and, allegedly, according to his daughter Catherine, prevented some of his family members from visiting him, did not notify them of major changes in his condition, and did not notify them of his death and funeral arrangements. Catherine later encouraged the passage of legislation, called Peter Falk's Law, that provides guidelines that guardians and conservators for an incapacitated person must comply with regarding visitation rights and notice of death. As of 2016 more than ten states had enacted such laws.


title: Ninjutsu

text: , sometimes used interchangeably with the modern term , is the martial art strategy and tactics of unconventional warfare, guerrilla warfare and espionage purportedly practised by the ninja. "Ninjutsu" was a separate discipline in some traditional Japanese schools, which integrated study of more conventional martial arts ("taijutsu") along with "shurikenjutsu", "kenjutsu", "sōjutsu", "bōjutsu" and others.


title: Ninjutsu

text: While there is an international martial arts organization representing several modern styles of "ninjutsu", the historical lineage of these styles is disputed. Some schools claim to be the only legitimate heir of the art, but "ninjutsu" is not centralized like modernized martial arts such as judo or karate. Togakure-ryū claims to be the oldest recorded form of ninjutsu, and claims to have survived past the 16th century.


title: Ninjutsu

text: Spying in Japan dates as far back as Prince Shōtoku (572–622). According to Shōninki, the first open usage of "ninjutsu" during a military campaign was in the Genpei War, when Minamoto no Kuro Yoshitsune chose warriors to serve as "shinobi" during a battle. This manuscript goes on to say that during the Kenmu era, Kusunoki Masashige frequently used "ninjutsu". According to footnotes in this manuscript, the Genpei War lasted from 1180 to 1185, and the Kenmu Restoration occurred between 1333 and 1336. "Ninjutsu" was developed by the samurai of the Nanboku-cho period, and further refined by groups of samurai mainly from Kōka and the Iga Province of Japan in later periods.


title: Ninjutsu

text: Throughout history, the "shinobi" were assassins, scouts, and spies who were hired mostly by territorial lords known as "daimyō". Despite being able to assassinate in stealth, the primary role was as spies and scouts. "Shinobi" are mainly noted for their use of stealth and deception. They would use this to avoid direct confrontation if possible, which enabled them to escape large groups of opposition.


title: Ninjutsu

text: Many different schools ("ryū") have taught their unique versions of "ninjutsu". An example of these is the Togakure-ryū, which claims to have been developed after a defeated samurai warrior called Daisuke Togakure escaped to the region of Iga. He later came in contact with the warrior-monk Kain Doshi, who taught him a new way of viewing life and the means of survival ("ninjutsu").


title: Ninjutsu

text: "Ninjutsu" was developed as a collection of fundamental survivalist techniques in the warring state of feudal Japan. The "ninja" used their art to ensure their survival in a time of violent political turmoil. "Ninjutsu" included methods of gathering information and techniques of non-detection, avoidance, and misdirection. "Ninjutsu" involved training in disguise, escape, concealment, archery, and medicine. Skills relating to espionage and assassination were highly useful to warring factions in feudal Japan. At some point, the skills of espionage became known collectively as "ninjutsu", and the people who specialized in these tasks were called "shinobi no mono".


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: Shandong (17; ) is a Chinese aircraft carrier that was launched on 26 April 2017 for the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) of the People's Republic of China. It is the country's first domestically built aircraft carrier and second in PLAN service after the completion and commissioning of , from which it is derived. "Shandong"s class was initially suspected to be designated Type 001A (as "Liaoning" received the designation Type 001) but was revealed to be Type 002 at its commissioning ceremony. The class received the NATO reporting name "Kuznetsov Mod." ("modified").


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: "Shandong" was constructed by the Dalian Shipbuilding Industry, part of the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, in Dalian, Liaoning province, China. According to the state Xinhua News Agency, manufacture began in November 2013 and laid down the keel for its hull in a dry dock beginning in March 2015.


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: The Chinese government did not publicly confirm the ship's existence until construction was well underway. Satellite imagery for the defense analysis industry showed the aircraft carrier in the early stages of hull assembly by March 2015. Public photos of a hull with military characteristics at the Dalian shipyard surfaced on the internet the next month. In October 2015, the first definitive signs of the vessel's role appeared when construction of a hangar deck began on the hull. In December 2015, a Chinese defense ministry spokesman confirmed that the ship was an aircraft carrier, stating that the design and construction work was under way.


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: In May 2016, the ski-jump takeoff ramp was noted to be close to installation. The ship's island superstructure was fabricated in two parts: the nine-deck forward half, containing the bridge and main mast, was installed by September of that year; the aft half, with the funnel and air intakes, was installed in the weeks that followed. By the end of 2016, the ship was substantially structurally complete.


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: Following the launch, the carrier was fitted-out and underwent early tests of the propulsion system. The dockside system trials began after the out-fitting was completed in November 2017.


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: At the time of its launch, the ship was not expected to be delivered to PLAN until 2020; however, successful early tests put the project ahead of schedule and media reports indicated that it could enter the navy fleet in 2019. While its predecessor CNS has been used largely as a training ship since it entered active service in 2012, the Type 002 is expected to be used in regular military operational service.


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: The first sea trial of the carrier took place in May 2018 in the Bohai Sea. This was followed by eight more trials through November 2019 for a total of about 19 months before the carrier was commissioned. The ninth and final sea trial, which commenced from 14 November 2019, was conducted simultaneously with a training exercise in South China Sea. The dates and durations of the sea trials are as follow:


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: The arresting gear was installed on 11 September 2018 after the second sea trial. This was immediately followed by flight tests of the J-15, Z-18 and Z-9 on 14 September 2018. J-15D, the electronic warfare (EW) version of the aircraft, was also spotted on deck on 9 October 2018.


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: The carrier was commissioned on 17 December 2019 at Sanya, Hainan by Central Military Commission chairman Xi Jinping and was officially named "Shandong". After commissioning, according to Chinese media "Shandong" reached in October 2020 initial operating capability (IOC) or basic standards for deployment, which its predecessor "Liaoning" only attained six years after commissioning, in 2018. Lai Yijun, a senior captain who previously commanded PLAN frigate "Lianyungang", was the captain of "Shandong" at commissioning.


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: The aircraft carrier's design is largely based on China's first carrier , which was itself built from the partially-complete hull of the Soviet "Varyag". It retains the ski-jump takeoff, which limits its air wing to helicopters and Shenyang J-15 fighter jets of the People's Liberation Army Navy Air Force, and the ship is powered by conventional oil-fired boilers driving eight steam turbines derived from the Soviet-designed examples installed on "Liaoning". It measures about long, with a displacement of about 55,000 tonnes (66,000–70,000 loaded).


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: The "Shandong" is a significant improvement over the Soviet-built "Liaoning". For example, the "Shandong" carrier's ski-jump has an angle of 12.0° instead of the 14.0° on the "Liaoning". This is an ideal angle for launching the Shenyang J-15 fighter. Together with the enlarged hangar, the island which has been made smaller by 10%, and extended on sponsons in the aft-starboard quarter, allowing the "Shandong" to in theory carry up to 48 aircraft, compared to the "Liaoning's" 36. The island includes a second glazed deck which permits the bridge and flight control areas to be separate, creating greater operational efficiency. It also features a faceted upper area of four active electronically scanned arrays (AESAs) for the improved Type 346A S-band radar (Type 346 radar).


title: Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong

text: "Shandong", like its predecessor, uses the simpler "short take-off but arrested recovery" (STOBAR) launch and recovery system.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Queer as Folk is a serial drama television series that ran from December 3, 2000, to August 7, 2005. The series was produced for Showtime by Cowlip Productions, Tony Jonas Productions, Temple Street Productions, and Showtime Networks, in association with Crowe Entertainment. It was developed and written by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman, who were the showrunners and also the executive producers along with Tony Jonas, former president of Warner Bros. Television.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: It is based on the British series of the same title created by Russell T Davies. Although it was set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, much of the series was actually shot in Toronto and employed various Canadian directors known for their independent film work (including Bruce McDonald, David Wellington, Kelly Makin, John Greyson, Jeremy Podeswa and Michael DeCarlo) as well as Australian director Russell Mulcahy, who directed the pilot episode. Additional writers in the later seasons included Michael MacLennan, Efrem Seeger, Brad Fraser, Del Shores, and Shawn Postoff.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: The series follows the lives of five gay men living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Brian (Gale Harold), Justin (Randy Harrison), Michael (Hal Sparks), Emmett (Peter Paige), and Ted (Scott Lowell); a lesbian couple, Lindsay (Thea Gill) and Melanie (Michelle Clunie); and Michael's mother Debbie (Sharon Gless) and his uncle Vic (Jack Wetherall). Another main character, Ben (Robert Gant), was added in the second season.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Brian Kinney: a veritable sex-machine. At 29 years old, he is living life for the now. He is his own man and believes in having sex for the sheer joy of doing it. While he and Justin have an on-and-off-again relationship, Justin is the only one of his sexual encounters that Brian finds himself falling in love with and the only one he continues to have sex with after the first night.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Justin loses his virginity to Brian at the age of seventeen and falls in love with him. He runs away from home after coming out of the closet, primarily because his father is not accepting of his sexuality. Nicknamed "Sunshine" by Debbie because of his bright smile and cheery disposition, Justin is queer-bashed at the end of Season 1, resulting in Brian taking him in during Season 2. A talented artist, Justin briefly contemplates attending business school to appease his father but ultimately decides to attend art school to become a visual artist. He and Brian further their relationship over the five seasons, which eventually ends in a marriage proposal. Justin says yes, but Brian tells him to go to New York to pursue his art because he would be more successful there than he would be in Pittsburgh.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Brian's best friend since adolescence, Michael secretly harbors feelings for him. He enjoys reading comic books, particularly Captain Astro adventures. He starts the series as a manager at a Kmart-like department store, the Big Q, but eventually follows his dream of opening a comic book store. From Season 2, he and Justin create the comic book "Rage", based on Brian as the character Rage, Justin as JT (Justin Taylor), who is Rage's lover/sidekick, and Michael as Zephyr, Rage's best friend/sidekick. After a somewhat stormy relationship with older Dr. David Cameron during season 1, Michael finds himself in a long-term relationship with Ben Bruckner, an HIV-positive college professor, beginning in season 2; Michael and Ben eventually marry near the end of season 4.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Originally from Hazlehurst, Mississippi, Emmett is the most flamboyant of the group. He goes through several jobs, including shopkeeper at a clothing store called "Torso", porn star, naked maid, party planner, and correspondent for a local news station as well as several relationships during the course of the series.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: An accountant with low self-esteem who envies Brian's lavish lifestyle, Ted is constantly rejected by men at gay clubs around Pittsburgh and eventually struggles with an addiction to crystal meth. He is a few years older than Michael, Brian, and Emmett. He has a relationship in Season 3 with Emmett as well as an on-again-off-again relationship with Blake.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Brian's close friend since college who becomes the mother of his child Gus, Lindsay works as an art teacher but takes time off to care for her son. Lindsay's WASP parents are ashamed of her bisexuality and of her same-sex relationship with Melanie.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Lindsay's Jewish partner who works as a lawyer. Melanie dislikes Brian, partially because Lindsay is very affectionate towards him, but she becomes friendlier towards him in later seasons. She carries her and Lindsay's second child, Jenny Rebecca, whose biological father is Michael.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: A college professor who becomes Michael's long-term partner from Season 2 on, Ben also lives with HIV. Michael's mother, Debbie, at first disapproves of their relationship because she fears that her son will become infected, but eventually she realizes that Michael loves Ben and so she accepts him.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: An active PFLAG member, Debbie is fiercely proud of her son Michael's homosexuality, to the extent of making him embarrassed about it. She treats all the boys as her own family, especially Justin, who briefly lives with her after he runs away from home. She is also one of the people who see past Brian's cockiness for what he really is. She works at the Liberty Diner, and at home she takes care of her ill brother Vic.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: To help Debbie pay the bills, Vic starts working as a chef at her diner. He also works as a caterer for Emmett's event planning business. Not long after an altercation with Debbie in Season 4, he dies of AIDS complications.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Michael's boyfriend during Season 1. After falling off a ladder, Michael has therapy with David, a chiropractor. Their relationship evolves quickly, and in a few months Michael moves in with David and meets his son. There is friction between David and Brian since David is jealous of Brian's relationship with Michael.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Hunter is an HIV-positive teenage hustler who meets Ben and Michael while standing outside their apartment. Ben feels sorry for Hunter and takes him in. Eventually, he and Michael adopt him. Hunter initially has an unrequited crush on Brian but later falls in love with a girl named Callie Leeson.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Jennifer is Justin's mother and works as a real estate agent. After having difficulty with her son's coming out, with Debbie's help she embraces the fact that her son is gay, joining PFLAG. After divorcing Craig Taylor, she dates a younger man named Tucker (Lucas Bryant) in season 5, much to Justin's disapproval.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Debbie's boyfriend. He meets Debbie while working on a case involving the murder of a young gay man named Jason Kemp. He is slightly homophobic when Debbie first meets him, but she teaches him to be more accepting of homosexuals. He asks Debbie to marry him and she accepts, but she later decides that she cannot marry Horvath as long as Michael cannot legally marry. Instead, the couple decides to live together in a common-law relationship.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Bully from Justin's school. Justin gives him a hand job early in the series, but he is then revealed to be homophobic. After assaulting Justin with a baseball bat, he is charged with assault and battery and sentenced to community service and probation. He is later shown working in construction, not expressing remorse for his actions until Justin, at Cody's urging, forces him at gunpoint to apologize. Justin plays into Chris's homophobia by claiming that Chris will not report them to the police for fear that people would know he was almost killed by "a couple of sissy fags".


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Brian's assistant. Quits Vangard to follow Brian when he starts his own firm, Kinnetic. Charming enough to dazzle clients and firm enough to handle Brian.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: A crystal meth addict at the time he meets Ted at Babylon. His relationship with Ted ends quickly after Ted finds out that Blake is still hooked on drugs. In Season 4, he is sober and is Ted's counselor at a rehab clinic. They finally reunite in the series finale.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Justin's best friend since high school and the first person Justin comes out to (not counting Brian or Michael). She asks Justin to take her virginity, since he has experience, and as a result falls in love with him. He quickly turns her down, but they remain friends. Later, they move in together as roommates.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Melanie's college girlfriend and best friend. She's a biker and, although Lindsay is rather hostile towards her, soon warms up to her. Later on in season 2, Leda helps rejuvenate Melanie's and Lindsay's sex life when it experiences a drought by having a threesome with them but soon grows further attached.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Music student at PIFA who romances Justin. Feeling neglected by Brian, Justin leaves him for Ethan. It is a short-lived relationship, however, as Ethan cheats on Justin with a fan. Justin leaves Ethan, who had vowed to be faithful, and reunites with Brian, since Justin had never expected Brian to be faithful.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: A star quarterback who, although engaged, is a closeted homosexual. He has an affair with Emmett and later leaves his wife to be with him, although they do not stay together. Drew comes out to the media with a controversial on-air kiss with Emmett.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: A mayoral candidate with Brian as head of his ad campaign. Stockwell is a homophobic police officer who abuses his authority. Initially, Brian helps with the campaign, but at a certain point he decides to sabotage the campaign with Justin's help, as Stockwell is closing the gay nightclubs. Brian launches a smear campaign, and as a result Stockwell loses the election and is indicted.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Brian's senior partner at the advertising agency. He buys Ryder's from the previous owner and christens it Vangard, firing every single ad exec but Brian—who proves himself indispensable by going after and signing up the Brown Athletics account that Vance had been after for years. Brian becomes a partner after this and continues to be until the Stockwell smear campaign in season 3, which results in his getting fired.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: A renowned artist who is notoriously difficult to deal with. He is instantly attracted to Lindsay and pursues her even though she is a lesbian. After his Pittsburgh art exhibit (which Lindsay organized), Lindsay gives in and they have a brief tryst at the gallery.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Worked with Michael at the Big Q. She had strong feelings for him and was devastated to find out that he was gay but eventually remained his friend. After Michael left the Big Q to start his comic book store, Tracey made several appearances, including when Ted interviews for the store's assistant bookkeeper position in season 3.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Hunter's high school friend and at one point his girlfriend. When she finds out that he has two fathers and is HIV positive, she is surprisingly not worried. Her parents embarrass Hunter at a swim meet when he hits his head in the pool and begins to bleed. When Callie rushes to the pool to help him, her father shouts that he "has AIDS". The entire room hears, and soon the entire school knows. Callie remains a friend of Hunter and appears occasionally through the remainder of the series.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Deb's replacement after she quits the diner so that she and Carl may spend more time together. Loretta applies for the job with no prior experience but convinces Deb to hire her when she tells Deb that she was kicked out of her house by her abusive husband because he caught her making out with her best friend, a woman. After Loretta works at the diner for a couple of weeks, her husband comes to take her home. When she refuses, he tries to drag her out, but Deb comes to the rescue, threatening him with a baseball bat. Afterward, Loretta and Deb become friends, but things go awry when Loretta kisses Deb while they are out for drinks. Deb eventually lets Loretta down gently, and Loretta decides to leave town, saying that she loves Deb too much to be anywhere near her.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: The first episode finds the four friends ending a night at Babylon, a popular gay club. Brian picks up and has sex with Justin, who falls in love with him and eventually becomes more than a one-night stand. Brian also becomes a father that night, bearing a son with Lindsay through artificial insemination.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Michael's seemingly unrequited love for Brian fuels the story, which he occasionally narrates in voice-over. Justin's coming out and the budding relationship with Brian has unexpected effects on Brian and Michael's lives, much to Michael's dismay, as Justin is only 17 years old. Justin confides in his straight high-school friend Daphne while struggling to deal with homophobic classmates and his dismayed, divorcing parents, Craig and Jennifer. Later in the second season, Justin and Michael co-create the sexually explicit underground comic "Rage", featuring a "Gay Crusader" superhero based on Brian.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Brian's son Gus, being raised by Lindsay and Melanie, becomes the focus of several episodes, as issues of parental rights come to the fore. Ted is Melanie's accountant who once harbored a long-standing crush on Michael. He and Emmett begin as best friends but briefly become lovers later in the series. Their relationship ends as Ted, unemployed and with a criminal record earned from running a legitimate porn website that was targeted by a chief of police running for mayor, becomes addicted to crystal meth.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: In the fourth season, Brian, who has lost his job by assisting Justin in opposing an anti-gay political client, starts his own agency. He also discovers he has testicular cancer and hides his treatment from his friends. Michael marries Ben Bruckner, an HIV-positive college professor, and the couple adopts a teenage son, James "Hunter" Montgomery, who is also HIV-positive as a result of his experiences as a young hustler.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Ted's affair with a handsome crystal meth addict, Blake Wyzecki, sets the pattern for Ted's later tragic but ultimately redeeming experiences with drug addiction.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Melanie and Lindsay's relationship, while on the surface seeming to be stable, is actually quite tumultuous. Each cheats on the other at various points in the series; both partake in a threesome shortly after they marry but are separated for much of the fourth and fifth seasons. Melanie is impregnated by Michael (through artificial insemination, as Lindsay was) in the third season, and thus best friends Brian and Michael become co-fathers to Lindsay and Melanie's children.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Melanie gives birth to a girl, Jenny Rebecca, over whom Melanie, Lindsay, and Michael have a brief legal custody battle following the women's transitory breakup. Brian's new advertising agency, "Kinnetik", becomes highly successful, through a combination of Brian's customer loyalty and his edgier advertising. As a result, Brian is able to purchase "Club Babylon" from its bankrupt owner.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: In the fifth and final season the boys have become men, and the series, perhaps more comfortable in its role in gay entertainment, tackles political issues head-on and with much more fervor.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: A political campaign called "Proposition 14" is depicted during much of the final season as a looming threat to the main characters. This proposition, like so many real-life recent legislative moves that have affected many U.S. states, threatens to outlaw same-sex marriage, adoption, and other family civil rights. The many ways in which such a proposition would affect the characters are depicted in nearly every episode.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Debbie, Justin, Jennifer, Daphne, Emmett, Ted, Michael, Ben, Lindsay, Melanie, and the children stand up and fight against this proposition via active canvassing, political contributions, and other democratic processes, but they are met with staunch opposition, discrimination, outright hatred, and political setbacks.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: The show climaxes near the end of the series when a benefit to support opposition to Proposition 14 hosted at Brian's club "Babylon" (after repeated relocations of the benefit owing to discrimination) is attacked by a bomb that initially kills four people (and eventually another three) and injures 67.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: This horrible event sets the bittersweet tone for the final three episodes, in which Brian, frightened by this third possible loss of Justin, finally declares his love for him. The two even plan to marry, but Justin's artistic abilities get noticed by a New York art critic and the two decide, for the time being at least, in favor of a more realistic approach to a stormy relationship that nevertheless works for their characters. Melanie and Lindsay, realizing they have more in common than not, resume their relationship but relocate to Canada to "raise [their children] in an environment where they will not be called names, singled out for discrimination, or ever have to fear for their life."


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Emmett becomes a Queer-Eye type TV presenter but is later fired when professional football player Drew Boyd kisses him on the news to signify his coming out. Ted confronts his midlife crisis head-on and finally reunites with Blake. Hunter returns and the Novotny-Bruckner family perseveres.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: The series came full circle with the final scenes staged in the restored Babylon nightclub. In the final scene, Brian dances to Heather Small's "Proud," a song that accompanied a pivotal scene between Brian and Michael in the very first episode of the series. It ends with a final narration by Michael:


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: The American version of "Queer as Folk" quickly became the number one show on the Showtime roster. The network's initial marketing of the show was primarily targeted at gay male (and to some extent, lesbian) audiences, yet a sizable segment of the viewership turned out to be heterosexual women.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Groundbreaking scenes abounded in "Queer as Folk" beginning with the first episode, which depicts the first sex scene between two men shown on American television (including mutual masturbation, anal sex, and rimming), though not as graphically as the scene in the UK version that it was based on.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Despite the frank portrayals of drug use and casual sex in the gay club scene, the expected right-wing uproar (aside from some token opposition) never materialized. Cowen and Lipman, however, admitted in 2015 that they were surprised by a backlash from some quarters of the LGBT community, fearing negative implications that may result from the show.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Controversial storylines explored in "Queer as Folk" have included the following: coming out, same-sex marriage, ex-gay ministries, recreational drug use and abuse (cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, GHB, ketamine, cannabis); gay adoption, artificial insemination, vigilantism, autoerotic asphyxiation, gay-bashing, safe sex, HIV/AIDS, casual sex, cruising, "the baths," serodiscordancy in relationships, underage prostitution, actively gay Catholic priests, discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation, the internet pornography industry, and bug chasers (HIV-negative individuals who actively seek to become HIV-positive).


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: The series at times made humorous references to its image in the gay community. A few episodes featured the show-within-a-show "Gay as Blazes", a cheesy, dull, badly acted, and abundantly politically correct drama which Brian particularly disagreed with, and which was eventually canceled.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Acting as one of the pioneering dramas depicting gay characters from a complex perspective, alternative media, and platforms within Asia had also adopted the drama. In the case of South Korea itself, the Queer film festivals (first labeled as a "scandal" in 1998) were slowly accepted and even popularised across South Korean society. "Queer as Folk" played a significant role when it was screened during the festival in 2000, providing a narrative for an alternative lifestyle, especially with respect to the LGBT community.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: The actors' real-life sexual orientation has been the subject of speculation from the public. In a 2015 "Queer as Folk" reunion, actors Gale Harold and Scott Lowell said they refused to discuss their own sexuality in the press, at least during the show's first season, in an effort to lessen distractions, which was corroborated by Lipman, who went on to say that during the show's first season, even he did not know their real-life sexuality.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: In an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live" on April 24, 2002, show host Larry King described Randy Harrison and Peter Paige as gay, and Michelle Clunie, Robert Gant, Thea Gill, Gale Harold, Scott Lowell, and Hal Sparks as straight.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Three months after the interview on "Larry King Live", Gant came out as gay in an article on "The Advocate".


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: In 2004, Gill, married to director Brian Richmond at the time, came out as a bisexual in an interview with "Windy City Times".


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Meanwhile, Sharon Gless's life as a woman married to a man was already well known by the time "Queer as Folk" was in production, having married Barney Rosenzweig in 1991. She has been described as a straight woman.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: In the years since "Queer as Folk" ended, Harold, Harrison, Lowell, Paige and Sparks have openly discussed their sexual orientation in gay publications.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: The series was set in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is depicted with a good deal of creative license; one example is the numerous references made to the Susquehanna River, which flows in the eastern and central parts of Pennsylvania whereas Pittsburgh is in the west. Pittsburgh was chosen as the closest parallel to the UK series' industrial setting of Manchester, England. However, since Pittsburgh does not have a large gay district like San Francisco or New York City, almost all of the Liberty Avenue scenes were filmed in and around the Church and Wellesley area of Toronto, which is that city's gay village. In fact, not a single shot of the real Liberty Avenue was ever used in the series. Toronto was chosen as the production center of the series because of its lower cost of production and established mature television and film industry. And, as it happens, Toronto's gay village had the look the producers needed to bring their vision of Liberty Avenue alive.


title: Queer as Folk (American TV series)

text: Woody's, the central bar in this fantasy Pittsburgh, is the name of a leading gay bar in Toronto, whose real exterior was shot with only minor disguise. (In a Season 4 episode in which several characters traveled to Toronto, the real Woody's was dubbed "Moosie's".) Babylon was also the name of a real gay bar in Toronto, which was open during the show's run but subsequently closed, although the real establishment was a sitdown martini bar; the dance club scenes in the series were actually filmed at a different Toronto nightclub, Fly.


title: NP-hardness

text: In computational complexity theory, NP-hardness (non-deterministic polynomial-time hardness) is the defining property of a class of problems that are informally "at least as hard as the hardest problems in NP". A simple example of an NP-hard problem is the subset sum problem.


title: NP-hardness

text: A more precise specification is: a problem "H" is NP-hard when every problem "L" in NP can be reduced in polynomial time to "H"; that is, assuming a solution for "H" takes 1 unit time, "H"s solution can be used to solve "L" in polynomial time. As a consequence, finding a polynomial time algorithm to solve any NP-hard problem would give polynomial time algorithms for all the problems in NP. As it is suspected that P≠NP, it is unlikely that such an algorithm exists.


title: NP-hardness

text: It is suspected that there are no polynomial-time algorithms for NP-hard problems, but that has not been proven. Moreover, the class P, in which all problems can be solved in polynomial time, is contained in the NP class.


title: NP-hardness

text: A decision problem "H" is NP-hard when for every problem "L" in NP, there is a polynomial-time many-one reduction from "L" to "H".


title: NP-hardness

text: An equivalent definition is to require that every problem "L" in NP can be solved in polynomial time by an oracle machine with an oracle for "H". Informally, an algorithm can be thought of that calls such an oracle machine as a subroutine for solving "H" and solves "L" in polynomial time if the subroutine call takes only one step to compute.


title: NP-hardness

text: Another definition is to require that there be a polynomial-time reduction from an NP-complete problem "G" to "H". As any problem "L" in NP reduces in polynomial time to "G", "L" reduces in turn to "H" in polynomial time so this new definition implies the previous one. Awkwardly, it does not restrict the class NP-hard to decision problems, and it also includes search problems or optimization problems.


title: NP-hardness

text: Some NP-hard optimization problems can be polynomial-time approximated up to some constant approximation ratio (in particular, those in APX) or even up to any approximation ratio (those in PTAS or FPTAS).


title: NP-hardness

text: An example of an NP-hard problem is the decision subset sum problem: given a set of integers, does any non-empty subset of them add up to zero? That is a decision problem and happens to be NP-complete. Another example of an NP-hard problem is the optimization problem of finding the least-cost cyclic route through all nodes of a weighted graph. This is commonly known as the travelling salesman problem.