title: Music theory

text: A series of chords is called a chord progression. Although any chord may in principle be followed by any other chord, certain patterns of chords have been accepted as establishing key in common-practice harmony. To describe this, chords are numbered, using Roman numerals (upward from the key-note), per their diatonic function. Common ways of notating or representing chords in western music other than conventional staff notation include Roman numerals, figured bass (much used in the Baroque era), chord letters (sometimes used in modern musicology), and various systems of chord charts typically found in the lead sheets used in popular music to lay out the sequence of chords so that the musician may play accompaniment chords or improvise a solo.


title: Music theory

text: In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches (tones, notes), or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic line, or the "horizontal" aspect. Counterpoint, which refers to the interweaving of melodic lines, and polyphony, which refers to the relationship of separate independent voices, is thus sometimes distinguished from harmony.


title: Music theory

text: In popular and jazz harmony, chords are named by their root plus various terms and characters indicating their qualities. For example, a lead sheet may indicate chords such as C major, D minor, and G dominant seventh. In many types of music, notably Baroque, Romantic, modern, and jazz, chords are often augmented with "tensions". A tension is an additional chord member that creates a relatively dissonant interval in relation to the bass. It is part of a chord, but is not one of the chord tones (1 3 5 7). Typically, in the classical common practice period a dissonant chord (chord with tension) "resolves" to a consonant chord. Harmonization usually sounds pleasant to the ear when there is a balance between the consonant and dissonant sounds. In simple words, that occurs when there is a balance between "tense" and "relaxed" moments.


title: Music theory

text: Timbre, sometimes called "color", or "tone color," is the principal phenomenon that allows us to distinguish one instrument from another when both play at the same pitch and volume, a quality of a voice or instrument often described in terms like bright, dull, shrill, etc. It is of considerable interest in music theory, especially because it is one component of music that has as yet, no standardized nomenclature. It has been called "... the psychoacoustician's multidimensional waste-basket category for everything that cannot be labeled pitch or loudness," but can be accurately described and analyzed by Fourier analysis and other methods because it results from the combination of all sound frequencies, attack and release envelopes, and other qualities that a tone comprises.


title: Music theory

text: Timbre is principally determined by two things: (1) the relative balance of overtones produced by a given instrument due its construction (e.g. shape, material), and (2) the envelope of the sound (including changes in the overtone structure over time). Timbre varies widely between different instruments, voices, and to lesser degree, between instruments of the same type due to variations in their construction, and significantly, the performer's technique. The timbre of most instruments can be changed by employing different techniques while playing. For example, the timbre of a trumpet changes when a mute is inserted into the bell, the player changes their embouchure, or volume.


title: Music theory

text: A voice can change its timbre by the way the performer manipulates their vocal apparatus, (e.g. the shape of the vocal cavity or mouth). Musical notation frequently specifies alteration in timbre by changes in sounding technique, volume, accent, and other means. These are indicated variously by symbolic and verbal instruction. For example, the word "dolce" (sweetly) indicates a non-specific, but commonly understood soft and "sweet" timbre. "Sul tasto" instructs a string player to bow near or over the fingerboard to produce a less brilliant sound. "Cuivre" instructs a brass player to produce a forced and stridently brassy sound. Accent symbols like "marcato" (^) and dynamic indications ("pp") can also indicate changes in timbre.


title: Music theory

text: In music, "dynamics" normally refers to variations of intensity or volume, as may be measured by physicists and audio engineers in decibels or phons. In music notation, however, dynamics are not treated as absolute values, but as relative ones. Because they are usually measured subjectively, there are factors besides amplitude that affect the performance or perception of intensity, such as timbre, vibrato, and articulation.


title: Music theory

text: The conventional indications of dynamics are abbreviations for Italian words like "forte" (f) for loud and "piano" (p) for soft. These two basic notations are modified by indications including "mezzo piano" (mp) for moderately soft (literally "half soft") and "mezzo forte" (mf) for moderately loud, "sforzando" or "sforzato" (sfz) for a surging or "pushed" attack, or "fortepiano" (fp) for a loud attack with a sudden decrease to a soft level. The full span of these markings usually range from a nearly inaudible "pianissississimo" (pppp) to a loud-as-possible "fortissississimo" (ffff).


title: Music theory

text: Greater extremes of pppppp and fffff and nuances such as p+ or "più piano" are sometimes found. Other systems of indicating volume are also used in both notation and analysis: dB (decibels), numerical scales, colored or different sized notes, words in languages other than Italian, and symbols such as those for progressively increasing volume ("crescendo") or decreasing volume ("diminuendo" or "decrescendo"), often called "hairpins" when indicated with diverging or converging lines as shown in the graphic above.


title: Music theory

text: Articulation is the way the performer sounds notes. For example, "staccato" is the shortening of duration compared to the written note value, "legato" performs the notes in a smoothly joined sequence with no separation. Articulation is often described rather than quantified, therefore there is room to interpret how to execute precisely each articulation.


title: Music theory

text: For example, "staccato" is often referred to as "separated" or "detached" rather than having a defined or numbered amount by which to reduce the notated duration. Violin players use a variety of techniques to perform different qualities of "staccato." The manner in which a performer decides to execute a given articulation is usually based on the context of the piece or phrase, but many articulation symbols and verbal instructions depend on the instrument and musical period (e.g. viol, wind; classical, baroque; etc.).


title: Music theory

text: There is a set of articulations that most instruments and voices perform in common. They are—from long to short: "legato" (smooth, connected); "tenuto" (pressed or played to full notated duration); "marcato" (accented and detached); "staccato" ("separated", "detached"); "martelé" (heavily accented or "hammered"). Many of these can be combined to create certain "in-between" articulations. For example, "portato" is the combination of "tenuto" and "staccato". Some instruments have unique methods by which to produce sounds, such as "spicatto" for bowed strings, where the bow bounces off the string.


title: Music theory

text: In music, texture is how the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition, thus determining the overall quality of the sound in a piece. Texture is often described in regard to the density, or thickness, and range, or width, between lowest and highest pitches, in relative terms as well as more specifically distinguished according to the number of voices, or parts, and the relationship between these voices. For example, a thick texture contains many "layers" of instruments. One of these layers could be a string section, or another brass.


title: Music theory

text: The thickness also is affected by the number and the richness of the instruments playing the piece. The thickness varies from light to thick. A lightly textured piece will have light, sparse scoring. A thickly or heavily textured piece will be scored for many instruments. A piece's texture may be affected by the number and character of parts playing at once, the timbre of the instruments or voices playing these parts and the harmony, tempo, and rhythms used. The types categorized by number and relationship of parts are analyzed and determined through the labeling of primary textural elements: primary melody, secondary melody, parallel supporting melody, static support, harmonic support, rhythmic support, and harmonic and rhythmic support.


title: Music theory

text: Common types included monophonic texture (a single melodic voice, such as a piece for solo soprano or solo flute), biphonic texture (two melodic voices, such as a duo for bassoon and flute in which the bassoon plays a drone note and the flute plays the melody), polyphonic texture and homophonic texture (chords accompanying a melody).


title: Music theory

text: The term musical form (or musical architecture) refers to the overall structure or plan of a piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections. In the tenth edition of "The Oxford Companion to Music", Percy Scholes defines musical form as "a series of strategies designed to find a successful mean between the opposite extremes of unrelieved repetition and unrelieved alteration." According to Richard Middleton, musical form is "the shape or structure of the work." He describes it through difference: the distance moved from a repeat; the latter being the smallest difference. Difference is quantitative and qualitative: "how far", and "of what type", different. In many cases, form depends on statement and restatement, unity and variety, and contrast and connection.


title: Music theory

text: Musical expression is the art of playing or singing music with emotional communication. The elements of music that comprise expression include dynamic indications, such as forte or piano, phrasing, differing qualities of timbre and articulation, color, intensity, energy and excitement. All of these devices can be incorporated by the performer. A performer aims to elicit responses of sympathetic feeling in the audience, and to excite, calm or otherwise sway the audience's physical and emotional responses. Musical expression is sometimes thought to be produced by a combination of other parameters, and sometimes described as a transcendent quality that is more than the sum of measurable quantities such as pitch or duration.


title: Music theory

text: Expression on instruments can be closely related to the role of the breath in singing, and the voice's natural ability to express feelings, sentiment and deep emotions. Whether these can somehow be categorized is perhaps the realm of academics, who view expression as an element of musical performance that embodies a consistently recognizable emotion, ideally causing a sympathetic emotional response in its listeners. The emotional content of musical expression is distinct from the emotional content of specific sounds (e.g., a startlingly-loud 'bang') and of learned associations (e.g., a national anthem), but can rarely be completely separated from its context.


title: Music theory

text: Musical notation is the written or symbolized representation of music. This is most often achieved by the use of commonly understood graphic symbols and written verbal instructions and their abbreviations. There are many systems of music notation from different cultures and different ages. Traditional Western notation evolved during the Middle Ages and remains an area of experimentation and innovation.In the 2000s, computer file formats have become important as well. Spoken language and hand signs are also used to symbolically represent music, primarily in teaching.


title: Music theory

text: In standard Western music notation, tones are represented graphically by symbols (notes) placed on a staff or staves, the vertical axis corresponding to pitch and the horizontal axis corresponding to time. Note head shapes, stems, flags, ties and dots are used to indicate duration. Additional symbols indicate keys, dynamics, accents, rests, etc. Verbal instructions from the conductor are often used to indicate tempo, technique, and other aspects.


title: Music theory

text: In Western music, a range of different music notation systems are used. In Western Classical music, conductors use printed scores that show all of the instruments' parts and orchestra members read parts with their musical lines written out. In popular styles of music, much less of the music may be notated. A rock band may go into a recording session with just a handwritten chord chart indicating the song's chord progression using chord names (e.g., C major, D minor, G7, etc.). All of the chord voicings, rhythms and accompaniment figures are improvised by the band members.


title: Music theory

text: The scholarly study of music theory in the twentieth century has a number of different subfields, each of which takes a different perspective on what are the primary phenomenon of interest and the most useful methods for investigation.


title: Music theory

text: Musical analysis is the attempt to answer the question "how does this music work?" The method employed to answer this question, and indeed exactly what is meant by the question, differs from analyst to analyst, and according to the purpose of the analysis. According to Ian Bent, "analysis, as a pursuit in its own right, came to be established only in the late 19th century; its emergence as an approach and method can be traced back to the 1750s. However, it existed as a scholarly tool, albeit an auxiliary one, from the Middle Ages onwards." Adolf Bernhard Marx was influential in formalising concepts about composition and music understanding towards the second half of the 19th century. The principle of analysis has been variously criticized, especially by composers, such as Edgard Varèse's claim that, "to explain by means of [analysis] is to decompose, to mutilate the spirit of a work".


title: Music theory

text: Schenkerian analysis is a method of musical analysis of tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935). The goal of a Schenkerian analysis is to interpret the underlying structure of a tonal work and to help reading the score according to that structure. The theory's basic tenets can be viewed as a way of defining tonality in music. A Schenkerian analysis of a passage of music shows hierarchical relationships among its pitches, and draws conclusions about the structure of the passage from this hierarchy. The analysis makes use of a specialized symbolic form of musical notation that Schenker devised to demonstrate various techniques of elaboration. The most fundamental concept of Schenker's theory of tonality may be that of "tonal space". The intervals between the notes of the tonic triad form a "tonal space" that is filled with passing and neighbour notes, producing new triads and new tonal spaces, open for further elaborations until the surface of the work (the score) is reached.


title: Music theory

text: Although Schenker himself usually presents his analyses in the generative direction, starting from the fundamental structure ("Ursatz") to reach the score, the practice of Schenkerian analysis more often is reductive, starting from the score and showing how it can be reduced to its fundamental structure. The graph of the "Ursatz" is arrhythmic, as is a strict-counterpoint cantus firmus exercise. Even at intermediate levels of the reduction, rhythmic notation (open and closed noteheads, beams and flags) shows not rhythm but the hierarchical relationships between the pitch-events. Schenkerian analysis is "subjective". There is no mechanical procedure involved and the analysis reflects the musical intuitions of the analyst. The analysis represents a way of hearing (and reading) a piece of music.


title: Music theory

text: Transformational theory is a branch of music theory developed by David Lewin in the 1980s, and formally introduced in his 1987 work, "Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations". The theory, which models musical transformations as elements of a mathematical group, can be used to analyze both tonal and atonal music. The goal of transformational theory is to change the focus from musical objects—such as the "C major chord" or "G major chord"—to relations between objects. Thus, instead of saying that a C major chord is followed by G major, a transformational theorist might say that the first chord has been "transformed" into the second by the "Dominant operation." (Symbolically, one might write "Dominant(C major) = G major.") While traditional musical set theory focuses on the makeup of musical objects, transformational theory focuses on the intervals or types of musical motion that can occur. According to Lewin's description of this change in emphasis, "[The transformational] attitude does not ask for some observed measure of extension between reified 'points'; rather it asks: 'If I am "at" s and wish to get to t, what characteristic "gesture" should I perform in order to arrive there?'"


title: Music theory

text: Music psychology or the psychology of music may be regarded as a branch of both psychology and musicology. It aims to explain and understand musical behavior and experience, including the processes through which music is perceived, created, responded to, and incorporated into everyday life. Modern music psychology is primarily empirical; its knowledge tends to advance on the basis of interpretations of data collected by systematic observation of and interaction with human participants. Music psychology is a field of research with practical relevance for many areas, including music performance, composition, education, criticism, and therapy, as well as investigations of human aptitude, skill, intelligence, creativity, and social behavior.


title: Music theory

text: Music psychology can shed light on non-psychological aspects of musicology and musical practice. For example, it contributes to music theory through investigations of the perception and computational modelling of musical structures such as melody, harmony, tonality, rhythm, meter, and form. Research in music history can benefit from systematic study of the history of musical syntax, or from psychological analyses of composers and compositions in relation to perceptual, affective, and social responses to their music. Ethnomusicology can benefit from psychological approaches to the study of music cognition in different cultures.


title: Music theory

text: A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from "musical form" and "musical style", although in practice these terms are sometimes used interchangeably.


title: Music theory

text: Music can be divided into different genres in many different ways. The artistic nature of music means that these classifications are often subjective and controversial, and some genres may overlap. There are even varying academic definitions of the term "genre "itself. In his book "Form in Tonal Music", Douglass M. Green distinguishes between genre and form. He lists madrigal, motet, canzona, ricercar, and dance as examples of genres from the Renaissance period. To further clarify the meaning of "genre", Green writes, "Beethoven's Op. 61 and Mendelssohn's Op. 64 are identical in genre—both are violin concertos—but different in form. However, Mozart's Rondo for Piano, K. 511, and the "Agnus Dei" from his Mass, K. 317 are quite different in genre but happen to be similar in form." Some, like Peter van der Merwe, treat the terms "genre" and "style" as the same, saying that "genre" should be defined as pieces of music that came from the same style or "basic musical language."


title: Music theory

text: Others, such as Allan F. Moore, state that "genre" and "style" are two separate terms, and that secondary characteristics such as subject matter can also differentiate between genres. A music genre or subgenre may also be defined by the musical techniques, the style, the cultural context, and the content and spirit of the themes. Geographical origin is sometimes used to identify a music genre, though a single geographical category will often include a wide variety of subgenres. Timothy Laurie argues that "since the early 1980s, genre has graduated from being a subset of popular music studies to being an almost ubiquitous framework for constituting and evaluating musical research objects".


title: Music theory

text: Musical technique is the ability of instrumental and vocal musicians to exert optimal control of their instruments or vocal cords to produce precise musical effects. Improving technique generally entails practicing exercises that improve muscular sensitivity and agility. To improve technique, musicians often practice fundamental patterns of notes such as the natural, minor, major, and chromatic scales, minor and major triads, dominant and diminished sevenths, formula patterns and arpeggios. For example, triads and sevenths teach how to play chords with accuracy and speed. Scales teach how to move quickly and gracefully from one note to another (usually by step). Arpeggios teach how to play broken chords over larger intervals. Many of these components of music are found in compositions, for example, a scale is a very common element of classical and romantic era compositions.


title: Music theory

text: Heinrich Schenker argued that musical technique's "most striking and distinctive characteristic" is repetition. Works known as études (meaning "study") are also frequently used for the improvement of technique.


title: Music theory

text: Music theorists sometimes use mathematics to understand music, and although music has no axiomatic foundation in modern mathematics, mathematics is "the basis of sound" and sound itself "in its musical aspects... exhibits a remarkable array of number properties", simply because nature itself "is amazingly mathematical". The attempt to structure and communicate new ways of composing and hearing music has led to musical applications of set theory, abstract algebra and number theory. Some composers have incorporated the golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers into their work. There is a long history of examining the relationships between music and mathematics. Though ancient Chinese, Egyptians and Mesopotamians are known to have studied the mathematical principles of sound, the Pythagoreans (in particular Philolaus and Archytas) of ancient Greece were the first researchers known to have investigated the expression of musical scales in terms of numerical ratios.


title: Music theory

text: In the modern era, musical set theory uses the language of mathematical set theory in an elementary way to organize musical objects and describe their relationships. To analyze the structure of a piece of (typically atonal) music using musical set theory, one usually starts with a set of tones, which could form motives or chords. By applying simple operations such as transposition and inversion, one can discover deep structures in the music. Operations such as transposition and inversion are called isometries because they preserve the intervals between tones in a set. Expanding on the methods of musical set theory, some theorists have used abstract algebra to analyze music. For example, the pitch classes in an equally tempered octave form an abelian group with 12 elements. It is possible to describe just intonation in terms of a free abelian group.


title: Music theory

text: In music theory, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of post-tonal thinking. Twelve-tone technique orders the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, forming a row or series and providing a unifying basis for a composition's melody, harmony, structural progressions, and variations. Other types of serialism also work with sets, collections of objects, but not necessarily with fixed-order series, and extend the technique to other musical dimensions (often called "parameters"), such as duration, dynamics, and timbre. The idea of serialism is also applied in various ways in the visual arts, design, and architecture


title: Music theory

text: "Integral serialism" or "total serialism" is the use of series for aspects such as duration, dynamics, and register as well as pitch. Other terms, used especially in Europe to distinguish post-World War II serial music from twelve-tone music and its American extensions, are "general serialism" and "multiple serialism".


title: Music theory

text: Musical set theory provides concepts for categorizing musical objects and describing their relationships. Many of the notions were first elaborated by Howard Hanson (1960) in connection with tonal music, and then mostly developed in connection with atonal music by theorists such as Allen Forte (1973), drawing on the work in twelve-tone theory of Milton Babbitt. The concepts of set theory are very general and can be applied to tonal and atonal styles in any equally tempered tuning system, and to some extent more generally than that.


title: Music theory

text: One branch of musical set theory deals with collections (sets and permutations) of pitches and pitch classes (pitch-class set theory), which may be ordered or unordered, and can be related by musical operations such as transposition, inversion, and complementation. The methods of musical set theory are sometimes applied to the analysis of rhythm as well.


title: Music theory

text: Music semiology (semiotics) is the study of signs as they pertain to music on a variety of levels. Following Roman Jakobson, Kofi Agawu adopts the idea of musical semiosis being introversive or extroversive—that is, musical signs within a text and without. "Topics," or various musical conventions (such as horn calls, dance forms, and styles), have been treated suggestively by Agawu, among others. The notion of gesture is beginning to play a large role in musico-semiotic enquiry.


title: Music theory

text: Writers on music semiology include Kofi Agawu (on topical theory, Heinrich Schenker, Robert Hatten (on topic, gesture), Raymond Monelle (on topic, musical meaning), Jean-Jacques Nattiez (on introversive taxonomic analysis and ethnomusicological applications), Anthony Newcomb (on narrativity), and Eero Tarasti (generally considered the founder of musical semiotics).


title: Music theory

text: Roland Barthes, himself a semiotician and skilled amateur pianist, wrote about music in "Image-Music-Text," "The Responsibilities of Form," and "Eiffel Tower," though he did not consider music to be a semiotic system.


title: Music theory

text: Signs, meanings in music, happen essentially through the connotations of sounds, and through the social construction, appropriation and amplification of certain meanings associated with these connotations. The work of Philip Tagg ("Ten Little Tunes", "Fernando the Flute", "Music's Meanings") provides one of the most complete and systematic analysis of the relation between musical structures and connotations in western and especially popular, television and film music. The work of Leonard B. Meyer in "Style and Music" theorizes the relationship between ideologies and musical structures and the phenomena of style change, and focuses on romanticism as a case study.


title: Music theory

text: Music theory in the practical sense has been a part of education at conservatories and music schools for centuries, but the status music theory currently has within academic institutions is relatively recent. In the 1970s, few universities had dedicated music theory programs, many music theorists had been trained as composers or historians, and there was a belief among theorists that the teaching of music theory was inadequate and that the subject was not properly recognised as a scholarly discipline in its own right. A growing number of scholars began promoting the idea that music theory should be taught by theorists, rather than composers, performers or music historians. This led to the founding of the Society for Music Theory in the United States in 1977. In Europe, the French "Société d'Analyse musicale" was founded in 1985. It called the First European Conference of Music Analysis for 1989, which resulted in the foundation of the "Société belge d'Analyse musicale" in Belgium and the "Gruppo analisi e teoria musicale" in Italy the same year, the "Society for Music Analysis" in the UK in 1991, the "Vereniging voor Muziektheorie" in the Netherlands in 1999 and the "Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie" in Germany in 2000. They were later followed by the Russian Society for Music Theory in 2013, the Polish Society for Music Analysis in 2015 and the "Sociedad de Análisis y Teoría Musical" in Spain in 2020, and others are in construction. These societies coordinate the publication of music theory scholarship and support the professional development of music theory researchers.


title: Music theory

text: As part of their initial training, music theorists will typically complete a B.Mus or a B.A. in music (or a related field) and in many cases an M.A. in music theory. Some individuals apply directly from a bachelor's degree to a PhD, and in these cases, they may not receive an M.A. In the 2010s, given the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of university graduate programs, some applicants for music theory PhD programs may have academic training both in music and outside of music (e.g., a student may apply with a B.Mus and a Masters in Music Composition or Philosophy of Music).


title: Music theory

text: Most music theorists work as instructors, lecturers or professors in colleges, universities or conservatories. The job market for tenure-track professor positions is very competitive: with an average of around 25 tenure-track positions advertised per year in the past decade, 80–100 PhD graduates are produced each year (according to the Survey of Earned Doctorates) who compete not only with each other for those positions but with job seekers that received PhD's in previous years who are still searching for a tenure-track job. Applicants must hold a completed PhD or the equivalent degree (or expect to receive one within a year of being hired—called an "ABD", for "All But Dissertation" stage) and (for more senior positions) have a strong record of publishing in peer-reviewed journals. Some PhD-holding music theorists are only able to find insecure positions as sessional lecturers. The job tasks of a music theorist are the same as those of a professor in any other humanities discipline: teaching undergraduate and/or graduate classes in this area of specialization and, in many cases some general courses (such as Music appreciation or Introduction to Music Theory), conducting research in this area of expertise, publishing research articles in peer-reviewed journals, authoring book chapters, books or textbooks, traveling to conferences to present papers and learn about research in the field, and, if the program includes a graduate school, supervising M.A. and PhD students and giving them guidance on the preparation of their theses and dissertations. Some music theory professors may take on senior administrative positions in their institution, such as Dean or Chair of the School of Music.


title: Hatchet (novel)

text: Hatchet is a 1986 Newbery Honor-winning young-adult wilderness survival novel written by American writer Gary Paulsen. It is the first novel of five in the "Hatchet" series. Other novels in the series include "The River" (1991), "Brian's Winter" (1996), "Brian's Return" (1999) and "Brian's Hunt" (2003).


title: Hatchet (novel)

text: Brian Robeson is a thirteen-year-old son of divorced parents. As he travels from Hampton, New York on a single-engine Cessna bush plane to visit his father in the oil fields in Northern Canada for the summer, the pilot suffers a massive heart attack and dies. Brian tries to land the plane but ends up crash-landing into a lake in the forest. He must learn to survive on his own with nothing but his a windbreaker and a hatchet—a gift his mother gave him shortly before his plane departed.


title: Hatchet (novel)

text: Throughout the summer, Brian learns how to survive in the vast wilderness with only his hatchet and a windbreaker. He discovers how to make fire with the hatchet and eats whatever food he can find, such as rabbits, birds, turtle eggs, fish, berries, and fruit. He deals with various threats of nature, including mosquitoes, a porcupine, bear, wolf, skunk, moose, and even a tornado. Over time, Brian develops his survival skills and becomes a fine woodsman. He crafts a bow, arrows, and a fishing spear to aid in his hunting. He also fashions a shelter out of the underside of a rock overhang. During his time alone, Brian struggles with memories of home and the bittersweet memory of his mother, whom Brian had caught cheating on his father before their divorce.


title: Hatchet (novel)

text: When a sudden tornado hits the area, it draws the tail of the plane toward the shore of the lake. This triggers his thoughts that there may be a survival pack of some sort on the plane. Brian makes a raft from a few broken-off treetops to get to the plane. When Brian is cutting his way into the tail of the plane, he drops his hatchet in the lake and dives in to get it. Once inside the plane, Brian finds a survival pack that includes additional food, an emergency transmitter, and a .22 AR-7 rifle. Back on shore, Brian activates the transmitter, but not knowing how to use it, he thinks it is broken and throws it aside. However, his distress call is heard by a passing airplane, and he is rescued. Brian spends the remainder of the summer with his father but does not disclose his mother's affair.


title: Hatchet (novel)

text: Paulsen continued the story of Brian Robeson with four more novels, beginning with "The River" in 1991.


title: Hatchet (novel)

text: "Hatchet" was a recipient of the 1988 Newbery Honor. In 2012 it was ranked number 23 on a list of the top 100 children's novels published by "School Library Journal".


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Indo-Guyanese or Indian-Guyanese, are people of Indian origin who are Guyanese nationals tracing their ancestry to India and the wider subcontinent. They are the descendants of indentured servants and settlers who migrated from India beginning in 1838 during the time of the British Raj.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Most of the Indian settlers who arrived to then British Guiana were from North India, specifically Bihar and the Northern Awadh region of the Hindi Belt. However a significant minority came from South India through the port of Madras. Among the immigrants, there were also labourers from other parts of South Asia. The vast majority of Indians came as contract labourers during the 19th century, spurred on by political upheaval, the ramifications of the Mutiny of 1857 and famine. Others arrived as merchants, landowners and farmers pushed out by many of the same factors.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Indo-Guyanese are the largest ethnic group in Guyana identified by the official census, about 40% of the population in 2012. There is also a large Indo-Guyanese diaspora in countries such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Indian immigration to the British West Indies was triggered by Great Britain's decision in the 1830s to outlaw the enslavement of labour brought from Africa. Newly emancipated Africans were suddenly able to choose where to live and what to do, which led sugar plantation owners to look elsewhere. After recruiting from other countries, colonial recruitment turned to British India.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: The indentured labour system became the replacement system for slavery in British Guiana. Persisting for 75 years, this system of indentured servitude presented its own forms of injustices, creating conflict with Indian nationalists, who finally pushed for its cessation in 1917. One major distinction between slavery and the indentured immigrant experience was that the indentured labourers from India had agreed to immigration, signing contracts that bound them to a plantation for five years, while earning a small, fixed daily wage. After five additional years working in Guiana (for a total of 10 years), they would then be entitled to either receive passage back to India or to stay in Guiana and receive land and money to start their own businesses.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: 396 Indian immigrants arrived from Calcutta in 1838, but a reported total of over 230,000 indentured labourers arrived from India over the ensuing 80 years.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: For its first 25 years, indentured recruits were drawn largely from small towns in and around Calcutta, but people were recruited from as far as Sri Lanka. Other groups of recruits spoke the Tamil and Telugu of South India.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: The backbone of all recruiting operations were professional recruiters, assisted by paid local agents called "Arkatis" in North India and "Maistris" in South India. Intimidation, coercion, and deception were common, as were illegal practices, such as kidnapping and forced detention. An example of deception related to labourers who signed to immigrate to Surinam; recruiters would pronounce the country as "Sri-Ram," which then would become the names of two Hindu deities with complex but very positive connotations.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: In addition to having to deal with lack of freedoms, intense heat, and brutal working conditions, these indentured servants were largely met with hostility from the newly-freed African population, whose opportunity to earn a living was undercut by the very low wages paid to the Indian immigrants.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: On 5 May 1988, a bronze sculpture of the "Whitby" who brought the first labourers to British Guiana was presented to the people of Guyana by the Indian government. It is located in the Guyana National Park in Georgetown.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: On 5 May 2019, the Indian Immigration Monument was unveiled by president David A. Granger. It is located in Palmyra near the Berbice Bridge. The compound near the monument has a visitor's gallery, several fountains and a playground.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Indian settlers retained their traditions. But the process of cultural adaptation has made the culture of the modern Indo-Guyanese more Westernized, than that of their immigrant ancestors.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Between 1838 and 1917 over 500 ship voyages with 238,960 indentured Indian immigrants came to Guyana; while just 75,236 of them or their children returned. The vast majority came from the north or north-central regions of India with a wide range of castes represented.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: The most popular dialect spoken was Bhojpuri (spoken in east Uttar Pradesh and west Bihar), followed by Awadhi (spoken in central Uttar Pradesh). 52% of the immigrants came from districts that are now part of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh; 23% from districts that are now part of Bihar and Jharkhand state; 6% were from pre-partitioned Bengal; 8% from what is today Tamil Nadu state (through Chennai); 6% from Western India Maharastra, Gujarat, Rajasthan (through Bombay); 3 percent of what is Central India; 1 percent of what is Odisha and the remaining 1% from the rest of India.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: (85.8% of all the Indian Immigrants to Guyana left the port of Calcutta in eastern India, 8.2% from the port of Madras in southern India), and 6% from Western India.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: The majority of immigrants came from lower agricultural castes; artisan castes; cultivator castes (kurmi); grazier castes (ahir); landholding castes (thakur), and priestly castes (brahmin). There were also significant numbers of Muslims and outcasts.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: The Indian immigrants made an enduring cultural imprint on Guyana. Since the Indians came from functioning societies and economies in their homeland, once their labor contracts expired they were able to resume their original occupations and recreate near-typical traditional Indian village life in their adopted homeland.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Indo-Guyanese Hindus continue to observe holidays such as Diwali, Phagwah, Maha Shivratri, Hanuman Jayanti, Ram Navami, Navratri, Vijayadashami, Krishna Janmashtami, Radhastami, Saraswati Jayanti, Raksha Bandhan, Guru Purnima, Ganesh Chaturthi, Kalbhairo Jayanti, Kartik Snan, Vivaha Panchami, Mesha Sankranti, Makar Sankranti, Tulsi Vivah, and Gita Jayanti among others, while Indo-Guyanese Muslims observe the fast in the month of Ramadan as well as observing Eid ul-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, Hosay, Shab-e-barat, Mawlid, and the Islamic New Year. Indo-Guyanese Christians celebrate holidays such as New Year's, Christmas, Easter, All Saints' Day and the Feast of Corpus Christi, among others and depending on their denomination. Through colonial influence, celebrating holidays such as Diwali, Phagwah, Eid ul-Fitr, Hosay, New Year's, Christmas, and Easter, is common regardless of religious beliefs. In Guyana, Indian Arrival Day is celebrated on May 5 commemorating the first arrival of indentured servants from India to the country, on 5 May 1838. On this day, the workers arrived to work in sugar plantations. Indo-Guyanese also celebrate Guyanese national holidays such as Independence Day and Republic Day.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: There is no "preferential marriages between kin" among Indo-Guyanese, nor much significance tied to marriage outside of ones religion or caste compared to other Indian diasporic groups. The duty of parents to provide the wedding for their children demonstrated "respectability and prestige" and while children generally had some say in who they married, they looked to their parents to "arrange for the rituals and meet the necessary expenses." The wedding of the first child is generally the largest and most opulent, becoming reduced and more economized for subsequent children. Parents may exaggerate the expenses put into these weddings, which are mainly on "clothes, food and drink", and dowry depending on the family and era. Weddings are qualified by the number of people fed, and a basic meal of roti, rice and a vegetable curry is considered the bare minimum.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Among Hindus and Muslims, arranged, comparatively early marriages were common in rural areas until the modern period (early 1960s) but are rare now. Middle-class Indians had greater freedom in choosing a spouse, especially if the woman was a professional. As in most parts of the western world marriage now occurs later, and the family unit is smaller than in the past. Indo Guyanese families are patriarchal with an extended system, where family members assist each other, like many other groups in Guyana. For individuals who are Hindu, wedding ceremonies are now performed with the bride and groom dressed in traditional Indian clothing, as an expression of their culture. If it can be afforded there is usually a Hindu wedding ceremony and also a western or "regular" wedding reception, or a small Hindu ceremony and a much larger "reception" so friends from the larger community can attend.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: With the blending of cultures in the Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean dishes became one of the dominant notes throughout most of the English Caribbean, with dishes such as curry, roti and dhal bhat (dhal and rice). Indo-Guyanese snacks include sal sev (also called chicken foot due to appearance, although there is no actual meat in it), gantia, plantain chips, roasted nuts, and fried channa. Appetizers and street foods include boil and fried or curried channa as well as bara, wrap roti, pholourie, and potato or cassava/egg ball which are served with a chutney or sour. The rotis that Indo-Guyanese typically eat are paratha, dhalpuri, sada roti, dosti roti, aloo roti, and puri. Murgatani (multani) and rasam are popular soups in Guyana of South Indian origin. Dosa (dosay or chota) is a filled crepe that is eaten by Indo-Guyanese and is of South Indian origin as well.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: The main dishes at Hindu wedding, festivals, and prayer services are known as "seven curry" and consist of seven vegetarian curries: aloo and channa curry, eddoes (aruwi) curry, mango curry, baigan/balanjay curry, katahar curry, pumpkin or kohra (fried or curried), and bhaji (made with young malabar spinach, moringa, spinach or spiny amaranth leaves) served with dhal bhat (dhal and rice) or karhi and rice. Seven curry is also served with paratha or dhalpuri roti. Individual curries of seven curry are also consumed on a daily basis by Indo-Guyanese as a main dish. Meat and seafood based main dishes include chicken, duck, goat, lamb, fish (especially hassa, gilbaka, banga mary, butterfish, houri, haimara, cuffum, cuirass, lukanani, patwa, pakoo, red snapper, as well as tinned salmon, tuna, and sardine), shrimp, crab, lobster, pork (except Muslims and some Hindus) and beef (except Hindus) curry or bunjal (a type of dried curry). Fried chicken, fish, and shrimp are also eaten as a main dish along with dhal and rice. Khichri is also a popular quick dish that was seen as a staple in the days of indentureship. In Guyana, among the Indo-Guyanese people, it is popular to eat curried or fried vegetables such as okra, eddoe, breadnut, lablab beans, pumpkin, bitter melon, drumstick, long beans, calabash, potato, chickpeas, and eggplant. Roti or dhal bhat is always served along with any curry or fried dish.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Chokhas are also a popular breakfast and lunch dish among the Indo-Guyanese and prepared by roasting vegetables that are skinned after roasting, and then garlic, onions, and peppers are "chaunkay-ed" or tempered in oil and added to the mashed roasted vegetable and salt is added after. Popular chokhas include baigan/balanjay (eggplant), tomatoes, and coconut. Chokhas are usually served with sada roti. Fish and shrimp are also used to make chokha.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Desserts include gulab jamun, mohanbhog (parsad), gurma (gurumba), ladoo, mithai, jalebi, gulgula, doodhpitty, barfi, pera, gujiya (goja), sirnie, vermicelli (sawine), and kheer (sweet rice).


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Indo-Guyanese have also adopted other dishes from other cultural groups such as stews, pepperpot, ground provisions, bake and saltfish, sardines and bread, fried chicken, metemgee, chicken soup, cook-up rice, chow mein, lo mein, fried rice, pepper shrimp, and chicken in de' ruff. Guyanese breads, pastries, cakes, and frozen treats are also popular among Indo-Guyanese, such as patties, pine tart, butterflap, tennis roll, fried bake, cassava bread, plait bread, cheese roll, black bean (chiney) cake, cassava or pumpkin pone, salara, coconut drops, black cake, lime cookies, custard, fudge, snow cone, ice cream, and custard block (ice block).


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Bollywood movies and songs have had an impact upon the Guyanese pop culture since the early 1950s. Many Bollywood stars have visited and performed in Guyana like megastars Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla, and Preity Zinta, also very popular singers such as Sonu Nigam, Asha Bhosle, Alka Yagnik, Shreya Ghoshal, Udit Narayan, Sunidhi Chauhan, Kumar Sanu, Hari Om Sharan, and Anup Jalota have had very successful shows in Guyana. In 1980, Lata Mangeshkar was greeted with crowds of fans and was presented with the key of the city of Georgetown, Guyana on her visit. Indian soap operas and dance and music shows have recently grown in popularity in Guyana due to channels such as Zee TV, StarPlus, Sony Entertainment Television, and Colors TV. The most popular genres of music among Indo-Guyanese people include chutney, chutney soca, baithak gana, bhajan, Bollywood, Indian classical music, Indian folk music, and soca. Popular local Indo-Caribbean singers include Sundar Popo, Terry Gajraj, Ramdew Chaitoe, Dropati, Ravi Bissambhar, Rakesh Yankaran, Rikki Jai, Drupatee Ramgoonai, and Babla & Kanchan. Indian instrumental influence can be seen in Guyana through the use of the tabla, harmonium, dholak, dhantal, manjira, khartal, and tassa drums.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Indo-Guyanese literature includes novels, poetry, plays and other forms written by people born or strongly-affiliated with Guyana, who are descendants of indentured Indian servants. As a former British colony, English language and style had an enduring impact on the writings from Guyana, which are done in English language and utilizing Guyanese Creole. Notable writers include Joseph Ruhomon and Shana Yardan.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: Ever since India gained its independence, many labourers of Indian origin in British Guiana and other Caribbean colonies like Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica wanted to be returned to India with their visions tinted with the ideal of being part of a newly independent Indian republic, even those who had lived in the Caribbean for over 60 years and had grandchildren. Only the government in British Guiana acquiesced and chartered a ship to bring the returnees back to India.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: On September 4, 1955, about 243 passengers boarded the M.V. Resurgent and left Georgetown for Calcutta. Since their arrival in India, many felt that it was a mistake to return as India has changed drastically since they left and many could not afford the journey back to the colonies. Those who could however went back to British Guiana or moved to other British colonies such as Trinidad and Tobago, Mauritius, Fiji, Malta and other British Caribbean territories.


title: Indo-Guyanese

text: The Indo-Guyanese who remained in India settled in villages and in cities like Prayagraj, Varanasi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Basti, Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, Ballia, Chhapra, Faizabad, Patna, Chennai and Kolkata. In addition, many Indo-Guyanese Hindus returned to India due to the spiritual importance of the Ganges River and other Hindu pilgrimage sites at the later stages of their lives.


title: Keflavík International Airport

text: Keflavík Airport ( ) , also known as Reykjavík–Keflavík Airport, is the largest airport in Iceland and the country's main hub for international transportation. The airport is west of Keflavík and southwest of Reykjavík. The airport has three runways, two of which are in use, and the airport area is about . Most international journeys to or from Iceland pass through this airport.


title: Keflavík International Airport

text: The main carrier at Keflavík is Icelandair, which has the airport as its main hub. The airport is only used for international flights; all domestic flights use the much smaller Reykjavík Airport, which lies from Reykjavík's city centre. Keflavík Airport is operated by Isavia, a government enterprise.


title: Keflavík International Airport

text: Originally, the airport was built by the United States military during World War II, as a replacement for a small British landing strip at Garður to the north. It consisted of two separate two-runway airfields, built simultaneously just 4 km apart. "Patterson Field" in the south-east opened in 1942 despite being partly incomplete. It was named after a young pilot who died in Iceland. "Meeks Field" to the north-west opened on 23 March 1943. It was named after another young pilot, George Meeks, who died on the Reykjavík airfield. Patterson Field was closed after the war, but Meeks Field and the adjoining structures were returned to Iceland's control and were renamed Naval Air Station Keflavik, for the nearby town of Keflavík. In 1951, the U.S. military returned to the airport under a defence agreement between Iceland and the U.S. signed on 5 May 1951.


title: Keflavík International Airport

text: With the reestablishment of the military air base at Keflavík during the 1950s, the air terminal found itself in the middle of a secure military zone. Travelers had to pass through military check points to reach their flights, until 1987, when the civilian terminal was relocated.


title: Keflavík International Airport

text: The presence of foreign military forces in Iceland under the NATO-sponsored Iceland–U.S. Defense Agreement of 1951 was controversial in Iceland, which had no indigenous military forces other than the Icelandic Coast Guard. During the 1960s and 1970s, rallies were held to protest the U.S. military presence in Iceland (and in particular at Keflavík), and every year protesters walked the road from Reykjavík to Keflavík and chanted "Ísland úr NATO, herinn burt" (literally: Iceland out of NATO, the military away). The protests were not effective. One of the participants was Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, who later became the first female President of Iceland.


title: Keflavík International Airport

text: The two and runways were large enough to support NASA's Space Shuttle as well as the Antonov An-225. On 29 June 1999, Concorde G-BOAA flew from Heathrow Airport to Reykjavík (Keflavik airport). The Concorde had been there earlier. The airport is also an important emergency landing runway for large aircraft in transatlantic operation in the ETOPS system, which requires aircraft to always have less than a certain flight time from a suitable landing site. The United States military base closed down in 2006.


title: Keflavík International Airport

text: The terminal is named after Leif Erikson who was the first European to arrive in North America (, "Leif Erikson Air Terminal"). It was opened in April 1987 and separated the airport's civil traffic from the military base. It was later extended with the opening of the South Building in 2001 (not a separate terminal) to comply with the requirements of the Schengen Agreement. The North Building was later enlarged and finished in 2007. The terminal has duty-free stores in the departure and arrival lounges. In 2016, the current terminal was expanded. The expansion added 7 gates. There are also plans to add a third runway.


title: Keflavík International Airport

text: Although the population of Iceland is only about 350,000, there are scheduled flights to and from numerous locations across North America and Europe. The largest carrier operating out of Keflavik is Icelandair. WOW air was the second largest Icelandic carrier and the second largest at Keflavík, following its acquisition of Iceland Express on 23 October 2012, until it ceased operations on 28 March 2019. The airport only handles international flights; domestic flights are operated from Reykjavík's domestic airport.


title: Keflavík International Airport

text: Transport between the airport and downtown Reykjavik is a journey on Route 41. Buses are operated by Airport Express, Flybus, and Strætó bs to Reykjavík. Taxis are available outside the terminal. Rental cars are available from various companies.


title: Keflavík International Airport

text: A 49 km long railway, the first in Iceland, is planned to link the airport to Reykjavik in order to relieve one of the country's busiest roads. The railway will accommodate high-speed trains of up to 250 km/h, which will enable the distance to be travelled within just 18 minutes. As of October 2016, construction was to begin in 2020. As of 2019, plans were still active but had not come much further than in 2016.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The Eurasian magpie or common magpie (Pica pica) is a resident breeding bird throughout the northern part of the Eurasian continent. It is one of several birds in the crow family (corvids) designated magpies, and belongs to the Holarctic radiation of "monochrome" magpies. In Europe, "magpie" is used by English speakers as a synonym for the Eurasian magpie: the only other magpie in Europe is the Iberian magpie ("Cyanopica cooki"), which is limited to the Iberian Peninsula.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The Eurasian magpie is one of the most intelligent birds, and it is believed to be one of the most intelligent of all non-human animals. The expansion of its nidopallium is approximately the same in its relative size as the brain of chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans. It is the only bird known to pass the mirror test, along with very few other non-avian species.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The magpie was described and illustrated by Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner in his "Historiae animalium" of 1555. In 1758 Linnaeus included the species in the 10th edition of his "Systema Naturae" under the binomial name "Corvus pica". The magpie was moved to a separate genus "Pica" by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. "Pica" is the Classical Latin word for this magpie.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The Eurasian magpie is almost identical in appearance to the North American black-billed magpie ("Pica hudsonia") and at one time the two species were considered to be conspecific. In 2000, the American Ornithologists' Union decided to treat the black-billed magpie as a separate species based on studies of the vocalization and behaviour that indicated that the black-billed magpie was closer to the yellow-billed magpie ("Pica nuttalli") than to the Eurasian magpie.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The gradual clinal variation over the large geographic range and the intergradation of the different subspecies means that the geographical limits, and acceptance of the various subspecies, vary between authorities. The International Ornithological Congress recognises six subspecies (a seventh, "P. p. hemileucoptera", is included in "P. p. bactriana"):


title: Eurasian magpie

text: An analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences published in 2003 confirmed that the black-billed magpie and the yellow-billed magpie were closely related to each other. The study also found that magpies in Korea (described as "P. p. serica") are as different from the nominate subspecies as they are to the North American magpie species. These results imply that the species "Pica pica" is not monophyletic. A more recent study using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA found that magpies in eastern and northeastern China are genetically very similar to each other, but differ from those in northwestern China and Spain.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: Magpies were originally known as simply "pies". This is hypothesized to derive from a Proto-Indo-European root *(s)peyk- meaning "pointed", in reference to the beak or perhaps the tail (cf. woodpecker). The prefix "mag" dates from the 16th century and comes from the short form of the given name Margaret, which was once used to mean women in general (as Joe or Jack is used for men today); the pie's call was considered to sound like the idle chattering of a woman, and so it came to be called the "Mag pie". "Pie" as a term for the bird dates to the 13th century, and the word "pied", first recorded in 1552, became applied to other birds that resembled the magpie in having black-and-white plumage.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The adult male of the nominate subspecies, "P. p. pica", is in length, of which more than half is the tail. The wingspan is . The head, neck and breast are glossy black with a metallic green and violet sheen; the belly and scapulars (shoulder feathers) are pure white; the wings are black glossed with green or purple, and the primaries have white inner webs, conspicuous when the wing is open. The graduated tail is black, glossed with green and reddish purple. The legs and bill are black; the iris is dark brown. The plumage of the sexes is similar but females are slightly smaller. The tail feathers of both sexes are quite long, about 12–28 cm long. Males of the nominate subspecies weigh while females weigh . The young resemble the adults, but are at first without much of the gloss on the sooty plumage. The young have the malar region pink, and somewhat clear eyes. The tail is much shorter than the adults.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The subspecies differ in their size, the amount of white on their plumage and the colour of the gloss on their black feathers. The Asian subspecies "P. p. bactriana" has more extensive white on the primaries and a prominent white rump.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: Adults undergo an annual complete moult after breeding. Moult begins in June or July and ends in September or October. The primary flight feathers are replaced over a period of three months. Juvenile birds undergo a partial moult beginning about one month later than the adult birds in which their body feathers are replaced but not those of the wings or the tail.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: Eurasian magpies have a well-known call. It is a choking chatter "chac-chac" or a repetitive "chac-chac-chac-chac". The young also emit the previous call, although they also emit an acute call similar to a "Uik Uik", which may resemble the barking of a small dog. Both adults and young can emit a kind of hiss barely noticeable from afar.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The range of the magpie extends across temperate Eurasia from Portugal, Spain and Ireland in the west to the Kamchatka Peninsula.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The preferred habit is open countryside with scattered trees and magpies are normally absent from treeless areas and dense forests. They sometimes breed at high densities in suburban settings such as parks and gardens. They can often be found close to the centre of cities.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: Magpies are normally sedentary and spend winters close to their nesting territories but birds living near the northern limit of their range in Sweden, Finland and Russia can move south in harsh weather.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: Some magpies breed after their first year, while others remain in the non-breeding flocks and first breed in their second year. They are monogamous, and the pairs often remain together from one breeding season to the next. They generally occupy the same territory on successive years.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: Mating takes place in spring. In the courtship display, males rapidly raise and depress their head feathers, uplift, open and close their tails like fans, and call in soft tones quite distinct from their usual chatter. The loose feathers of the flanks are brought over the primaries, and the shoulder patch is spread so the white is conspicuous, presumably to attract females. Short buoyant flights and chases follow.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: Magpies prefer tall trees for their bulky nest, firmly attaching them to a central fork in the upper branches. A framework of the sticks is cemented with earth and clay, and a lining of the same is covered with fine roots. Above is a stout though loosely built dome of prickly branches with a single well-concealed entrance. These huge nests are conspicuous when the leaves fall. Where trees are scarce, though even in well-wooded country, nests are at times built in bushes and hedgerows.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: In Europe, clutches are typically laid in April, and usually contain five or six eggs, but clutches with as few as three and as many as ten have been recorded. The eggs are laid in early morning, usually at daily intervals. On average, the eggs of the nominate species measure and weigh . Small for the size of the bird, they are typically pale blue-green, with close specks and spots of olive brown, but show much variation in ground and marking.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The eggs are incubated for 21–22 days by the female, who is fed on the nest by the male. The chicks are altricial, hatching nearly naked with closed eyes. They are brooded by the female for the first 5–10 days and fed by both parents. Initially the parents eat the faecal sacs of the nestlings, but as the chicks grow larger, they defecate on the edge of the nest. The nestlings open their eyes 7 to 8 days after hatching. Their body feathers start to appear after around 8 days and the primary wing feathers after 10 days. For several days before they are ready to leave the nest, the chicks clamber around the nearby branches. They fledge at around 27 days. The parents then continue to feed the chicks for several more weeks. They also protect the chicks from predators, as their ability to fly is poor, making them vulnerable. On average, only 3 or 4 chicks survive to fledge successfully. Some nests are lost to predators, but an important factor causing nestling mortality is starvation. Magpie eggs hatch asynchronously, and if the parents have difficulty finding sufficient food, the last chicks to hatch are unlikely to survive. Only a single brood is reared, unless disaster overtakes the first clutch.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: A study conducted near Sheffield in Britain, using birds with coloured rings on their legs, found that only 22% of fledglings survived their first year. For subsequent years, the survival rate for the adult birds was 69%, implying that for those birds that survive the first year, the average total lifespan was 3.7 years. The maximum age recorded for a magpie is 21 years and 8 months for a bird from near Coventry in England that was ringed in 1925 and shot in 1947.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The magpie is omnivorous, eating young birds and eggs, small mammals, insects, scraps and carrion, acorns, grain, and other vegetable substances.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The Eurasian magpie is believed to be not only among the most intelligent of birds, but also among the most intelligent of all animals. Along with the western jackdaw, the Eurasian magpie's nidopallium is approximately the same relative size as those in chimpanzees and humans and significantly larger than the gibbons. Like other corvids, such as ravens and crows, their total brain-to-body mass ratio is equal to most great apes and cetaceans. A 2004 review suggests that the intelligence of the corvid family to which the Eurasian magpie belongs is equivalent to that of the great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans) in terms of social cognition, causal reasoning, flexibility, imagination and prospection.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: Magpies have been observed engaging in elaborate social rituals, possibly including the expression of grief. Mirror self-recognition has been demonstrated in European magpies, making them one of only a few species to possess this capability. The cognitive abilities of the Eurasian magpie are regarded as evidence that intelligence evolved independently in both corvids and primates. This is indicated by tool use, an ability to hide and store food across seasons, episodic memory, and using their own experience to predict the behavior of conspecifics. Another behaviour exhibiting intelligence is cutting their food in correctly sized proportions for the size of their young. In captivity, magpies have been observed counting up to get food, imitating human voices, and regularly using tools to clean their own cages. In the wild, they organise themselves into gangs and use complex strategies hunting other birds and when confronted by predators.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: The Eurasian magpie has an extremely large range. The European population is estimated to be between 7.5 and 19 million breeding pairs. Allowing for the birds breeding in other continents, the total population is estimated to be between 46 and 228 million individuals. The population trend in Europe has been stable since 1980. There is no evidence of any serious overall decline in numbers, so the species is classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being of Least Concern.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: In Europe, magpies have been historically demonized by humans, mainly as a result of superstition and myth. The bird has found itself in this situation mainly by association, says Steve Roud: "Large black birds, like crows and ravens, are viewed as evil in British folklore and white birds are viewed as good". In European folklore, the magpie is associated with a number of superstitions surrounding its reputation as an omen of ill fortune. In the 19th century book, "A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar", a proverb concerning magpies is recited: "A single magpie in spring, foul weather will bring". The book further explains that this superstition arises from the habits of pairs of magpies to forage together only when the weather is fine. In Scotland, a magpie near the window of the house is said to foretell death. An English tradition holds that a single magpie be greeted with a salutation in order to ward off the bad luck it may bring. A greeting might take the form of saying the words 'Good morning, Mr Magpie, how are Mrs Magpie and all the other little magpies?'


title: Eurasian magpie

text: In Britain and Ireland, a widespread traditional rhyme, "One for Sorrow", records the myth (it is not clear whether it has been seriously believed) that seeing magpies predicts the future, depending on how many are seen. There are many regional variations on the rhyme, which means that it is impossible to give a definitive version.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: In Italian, British and French folklore, magpies are believed to have a penchant for picking up shiny items, particularly precious stones or metal objects. Rossini's opera "La gazza ladra" and "The Adventures of Tintin" comic "The Castafiore Emerald" are based on this theme. However, one recent research study has cast doubt on the veracity of this belief. In Bulgarian, Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Slovak and Swedish folklore the magpie is seen as a thief. In Hungary there is an old saying that if the magpie "csörög" (~ "ring", call), guest comes to the house. Perhaps because the magpie loved to sit on the trees in front of the village houses and signaled when a man was approaching.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: In Sweden, it is further associated with witchcraft. In Norway, a magpie is considered cunning and thievish, but also the bird of hulder, the underground people.


title: Eurasian magpie

text: Magpies have been attacked for their role as predators, which includes eating other birds' eggs and their young. However, one study has disputed the view that they affect total song-bird populations, finding "no evidence of any effects of [magpie] predator species on songbird population growth rates. We therefore had no indication that predators had a general effect on songbird population growth rates". Another study has claimed that songbird populations increased in places where magpie populations were high and that they do not have a negative impact on the total song-bird population.


title: Longsword

text: A longsword (also spelled as long sword or long-sword) is a type of European sword characterized as having a cruciform hilt with a grip for primarily two-handed use (around ), a straight double-edged blade of around , and weighing approximately .


title: Longsword

text: The "longsword" type exists in a morphological continuum with the medieval knightly sword and the Renaissance-era Zweihänder. It was prevalent during the late medieval and Renaissance periods (approximately 1350 to 1550), with early and late use reaching into the 12th and 17th centuries.


title: Longsword

text: The longsword has many names in the English language, which, aside from variant spellings, include terms such as "bastard sword" and "hand-and-a-half sword." Of these, "bastard sword" is the oldest, its use being contemporaneous with the weapon's heyday.


title: Longsword

text: The French "" and the English "bastard sword" originate in the 15th or 16th century, originally in the general sense of "irregular sword, sword of uncertain origin", but by the mid-16th century could refer to exceptionally large swords.


title: Longsword

text: The "Masters of Defence" competition organised by Henry VIII in July 1540 listed "two handed sword" and "bastard sword" as two separate items.


title: Longsword

text: It is uncertain whether the same term could still be used to other types of smaller swords, but antiquarian usage in the 19th century established the use of "bastard sword" as referring unambiguously to these large swords.


title: Longsword

text: this name was given because the balance of the sword made it usable in one hand, as well as two. During the first half of the 20th century, the term "bastard sword" was also used regularly to refer to this type of sword, while "long sword" (or "long-sword"), if used at all, referred to the rapier (in the context of Renaissance or Early Modern fencing).


title: Longsword

text: Contemporary use of "long-sword" or "longsword" only resurfaced in the 2000s in the context of reconstruction of the German school of fencing, translating the German "". Prior to this the term "long sword" merely referred to any sword with a long blade; 'long' being simply an adjective rather than a classification.


title: Longsword

text: Historical (15th to 16th century) terms for this type of sword included Spanish ', ', or ', Italian ' or ', Portuguese ' and Middle French '. The Scottish Gaelic ' means "great sword"; anglicised as "claymore," it came to refer to a large Scottish type of longsword with a V–shaped crossguard.


title: Longsword

text: Historical terminology overlaps with that applied to the Zweihänder sword in the 16th century: French ', Spanish ', or Portuguese ' may also be used more narrowly to refer to these large swords. The French ' may also refer to a medieval single-handed sword optimized for thrusting.


title: Longsword

text: The German ' ("long sword") in 15th and 16th-century manuals does not denote a type of weapon, but the technique of fencing with both hands at the hilt, contrasting with ' ("short sword") used of fencing with the same weapon, but with one hand gripping the blade (also known as a half-sword).


title: Longsword

text: The longsword is characterized not so much by a longer blade, but by a longer grip, which indicates a weapon designed for two-handed use. Swords with exceptionally long hilts are found throughout the High Middle Ages. For example, there is a longsword in The Glasgow Art and History Museum, Labelled XIIIa. 5, which scholars have dated back to between 1100 and 1200 due to the hilt style and specific taper, but swords like this remain incredibly rare, and are not representative of an identifiable trend before the late 13th or early 14th century.


title: Longsword

text: The longsword as a late medieval type of sword emerges in the 14th century, as a military steel weapon of the earlier phase of the Hundred Years' War. It remains identifiable as a type during the period of about 1350 to 1550.


title: Longsword

text: It remained in use as a weapon of war intended for wielders wearing full plate armour either on foot or on horseback, throughout the late medieval period.


title: Longsword

text: From the late 15th century, however, it is also attested as being worn and used by unarmoured soldiers or mercenaries.


title: Longsword

text: Use of the two-handed Great Sword or "Schlachtschwert" by infantry (as opposed to their use as a weapon of mounted and fully armoured knights) seems to have originated with the Swiss in the 14th century.


title: Longsword

text: By the 16th century, its military use was mostly obsolete, culminating in the brief period where the oversized Zweihänder were wielded by the German "Landsknechte" during the early to mid 16th century. By the second half of the 16th century, it persisted mostly as a weapon for sportive competition ("Schulfechten"), and possibly in knightly duels.


title: Longsword

text: Distinct "bastard sword" hilt types developed during the first half of the 16th century. Ewart Oakeshott distinguishes twelve different types. These all seem to have originated in Bavaria and in Switzerland. By the late 16th century, early forms of the developed-hilt appear on this type of sword.


title: Longsword

text: Beginning about 1520, the Swiss sabre ("schnepf") in Switzerland began to replace the straight longsword, inheriting its hilt types, and the longsword had fallen out of use in Switzerland by 1550.


title: Longsword

text: In southern Germany, it persisted into the 1560s, but its use also declined during the second half of the 16th century.


title: Longsword

text: There are two late examples of longswords kept in the Swiss National Museum, both with vertically grooved pommels and elaborately decorated with silver inlay, and both belonging to Swiss noblemen in French service during the late 16th and early 17th century, Gugelberg von Moos and Rudolf von Schauenstein.


title: Longsword

text: The longsword, greatsword and bastard-sword were also made in Spain, appearing relatively late, known as the ', the ' and ' or ' respectively.


title: Longsword

text: The swords grouped as "longswords" for the purposes of this article are united by their being intended for two-handed use. In terms of blade typology, they do not form a single category. In the Oakeshott typology of blade morphology, "longswords" figure as a range of sub-types of the corresponding single-handed sword types.


title: Longsword

text: The expression ' ("fencing with the long sword") in the German school of fencing denotes the style of fencing which uses both hands at the hilt; ' ("fencing with the short sword") is used in half-sword fighting, with one hand gripping the blade.


title: Longsword

text: Codified systems of fighting with the longsword existed from the later 14th century, with a variety of styles and teachers each providing a slightly different take on the art. Hans Talhoffer, a mid-15th-century German fightmaster, is probably the most prominent, using a wide variety of moves, most resulting in wrestling. The longsword was a quick, effective, and versatile weapon capable of deadly thrusts, slices, and cuts. The blade was generally used with both hands on the hilt, one resting close to or on the pommel. The weapon may be held with one hand during disarmament or grappling techniques.


title: Longsword

text: In a depiction of a duel, individuals may be seen wielding sharply pointed longswords in one hand, leaving the other hand open to manipulate the large dueling shield.


title: Longsword

text: Another variation of use comes from the use of armour. Half-swording was a manner of using both hands, one on the hilt and one on the blade, to better control the weapon in thrusts and jabs. This versatility was unique, as multiple works hold that the longsword provided the foundations for learning a variety of other weapons including spears, staves, and polearms. Use of the longsword in attack was not limited only to use of the blade, however, as several Fechtbücher explain and depict use of the pommel and cross as offensive weapons. The cross has been shown to be used as a hook for tripping or knocking an opponent off balance. Some manuals even depict the cross as a hammer.


title: Longsword

text: What is known of combat with the longsword comes from artistic depictions of battle from manuscripts and the Fechtbücher of Medieval and Renaissance Masters. Therein the basics of combat were described and, in some cases, depicted. The German school of swordsmanship includes the earliest known longsword Fechtbuch, a manual from approximately 1389, known as GNM 3227a. This manual, unfortunately for modern scholars, was written in obscure verse. It was through students of Liechtenauer, like Sigmund Ringeck, who transcribed the work into more understandable prose that the system became notably more codified and understandable. Others provided similar work, some with a wide array of images to accompany the text.


title: Longsword

text: The Italian school of swordsmanship was the other primary school of longsword use. The 1410 manuscript by Fiore dei Liberi presents a variety of uses for the longsword. Like the German manuals, the weapon is most commonly depicted and taught with both hands on the hilt. However, a section on one-handed use is among the volume and demonstrates the techniques and advantages, such as sudden additional reach, of single-handed longsword play. The manual also presents half-sword techniques as an integral part of armoured combat.


title: Longsword

text: Both schools declined in the late 16th century, with the later Italian masters forgoing the longsword and focusing primarily on rapier fencing. The last known German manual to include longsword teaching was that of Jakob Sutor, published in 1612. In Italy, "", or longsword, instruction lingered on despite the popularity of the rapier, at least into the mid-17th century (Alfieri's "Lo Spadone" of 1653), with a late treatise of the "two handed sword" by one Giuseppe Colombani, a dentist in Venice dating to 1711. A tradition of teaching based on this has survived in contemporary French and Italian stick fighting.


title: Longsword

text: "" ("blosz fechten") or "bare fighting" is the technique of fighting without significant protective armour such as plate or mail.


title: Longsword

text: The lack of significant torso and limb protection leads to the use of a large amount of cutting and slicing techniques in addition to thrusts. These techniques could be nearly instantly fatal or incapacitating, as a thrust to the skull, heart, or major blood vessel would cause massive trauma. Similarly, strong strikes could cut through skin and bone, effectively amputating limbs. The hands and forearms are a frequent target of some cuts and slices in a defensive or offensive manoeuvre, serving both to disable an opponent and align the swordsman and his weapon for the next attack.


title: Longsword

text: ', or "armoured fighting" (German ', or ", literally "fighting in armour on foot"), depicts fighting in full plate armour.


title: Longsword

text: The increased defensive capability of a man clad in full plate armour caused the use of the sword to be drastically changed. While slashing attacks were still moderately effective against infantry wearing half-plate armour, cutting and slicing attacks against an opponent wearing plate armour were almost entirely ineffective in providing any sort of slashing wound as the sword simply could not cut through the steel, although a combatant could aim for the chinks in a suit of armour, sometimes to great effect. Instead, the energy of the cut becomes essentially pure concussive energy. The later hardened plate armours, complete with ridges and roping, posed a threat against the careless attacker. It is considered possible for strong blows of the sword against plate armour to damage the blade of the sword, potentially rendering it much less effective at cutting and producing only a concussive effect against the armoured opponent.


title: Longsword

text: To overcome this problem, swords began to be used primarily for thrusting. The weapon was used in the half-sword, with one or both hands on the blade. This increased the accuracy and strength of thrusts and provided more leverage for " or "wrestling at/with the sword". Also, the hand on the blade increases its rigidity which is advantageous when thrusting. This technique combines the use of the sword with wrestling, providing opportunities to trip, disarm, break, or throw an opponent and place them in a less offensively and defensively capable position. During half-swording, the entirety of the sword works as a weapon, including the pommel and crossguard. One example how a sword can be used this way is to thrust the tip of the crossguard at the opponent's head right after parrying a stroke. Another technique would be the Mordstreich (lit. "murder stroke"), where the weapon is held by the blade (hilt, pommel and crossguard serving as an improvised hammer head) and swung, taking advantage of the balance being close to the hilt to increase the concussive effect (see the fighter on the right of the Codex Wallerstein picture).


title: Allison Stokke

text: Allison Rebecca Stokke Fowler (born March 22, 1989) is an American track and field athlete and fitness model. She broke a number of American records for high school pole vaulting. Images of her at age seventeen were widely shared on the Internet, resulting in her becoming an internet phenomenon.


title: Allison Stokke

text: Stokke continued to pole vault, attending University of California, Berkeley, and competing for their California Golden Bears collegiate track team. She competed at two NCAA Division I Championships, achieving All-American honors at the 2011 NCAA Indoor Championships, and earned regional level all-academic honors through her combined athletic and academic performances. She attempted to make the American Olympic team at the 2012 United States Olympic Trials but failed to record a height. She continued vaulting at national level meetings up to 2017.


title: Allison Stokke

text: After college, she became a professional vaulter and sports model for Nike and Athleta, among others.


title: Allison Stokke

text: Born to Allan and Cindy Stokke in Newport Beach, California, Stokke grew up in a sporting family – her older brother David was a national level youth gymnast. After trying gymnastics, she took up pole vaulting while attending Newport Harbor High School and soon became one of the country's best young vaulters. She won the age 15/16 United States title in 2004 with a championship record of .


title: Allison Stokke

text: She broke the American record for a high school freshman with a vault of in 2004 and then set a new high school sophomore record with in 2005. Her vaults were also the best ever achieved by an American aged fifteen and sixteen. Despite breaking her leg while in high school, she managed to win twice at the CIF California State Meet. In her senior year of high school, she ranked second in the national high school rankings with a new best of . She finished eighth at the national junior championships that year.


title: Allison Stokke

text: Images of Stokke competing in New York in early 2007 were taken by a journalist for a Californian track and field website and placed online. In May, the image was then re-posted by With Leather, a sports blog with a large male fanbase, remarking on the attractiveness of seventeen-year-old Stokke under the heading "Pole Vaulting is Sexy, Barely Legal". The photographer threatened to sue site owner Matt Ufford if he did not remove the image, but the article had already received significant attention and been posted at dozens of other websites. A tribute website to Stokke soon emerged with several images of her competing in the pole vault and, after these images spread via social media, Internet fan groups attracted thousands of followers. Within several weeks, her photos had become such an Internet phenomenon that they generated comment pieces nationally from "The Washington Post", "Los Angeles Times" and "The New York Times", and internationally from British broadcasters at the BBC, Australian daily "The Sydney Morning Herald", and the German weekly "Der Spiegel", in addition to more than one million search engine results. CBS also gave television coverage, using her story to highlight the dangers of the internet being used to publicly sexualize young people.


title: Allison Stokke

text: Stokke initially tried to control the situation herself, but after being bombarded with emails and requests for photo shoots, she sought a media consultant to handle her new-found fame. She gave an interview on pole vaulting technique which was uploaded to YouTube, and it received over 100,000 views, but comments and discussion on the internet largely remained in relation to her looks. Her father, a lawyer, began to review online material to identify illegal behavior or stalkers. Reflecting on her situation, Stokke told "The Washington Post" "even if none of it is illegal, it just all feels really demeaning. I worked so hard for pole vaulting and all this other stuff, and it's almost like that doesn't matter. Nobody sees that. Nobody really sees me." "Der Spiegel" noted that Stokke had become a "sex symbol against her will". The attention affected her psychologically: she said that she found the leering "creepy and a little scary" and now took care to lock doors behind her.


title: Allison Stokke

text: It was noted by the "Los Angeles Times", among others, that Stokke did not seek or endorse such attention. In their book "Technology, Power and Culture in the Network Society", Brett Hutchins and David Rowe linked Stokke's case with that of American soccer players Alex Morgan and Hope Solo, female athletes who were fetishized and saw their public image framed sexually, in a way that the authors said de-emphasized their sporting achievements. Regarding Stokke, they also observed that social media comments were frequently insulting in nature and that the commenters blamed the sexualization process on the women themselves. Others drew parallels with Brandi Chastain's celebration of winning the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup Final in her sports bra, where women's sporting moments were overshadowed by discussions of their appearance.


title: Allison Stokke

text: After Stokke rose to fame, many more photographers began to attend the track and field competitions in which she took part, and her internet fame persisted over the following years. She continued to study and earned an athletic scholarship, studying sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. In her first year of competition for the California Golden Bears collegiate track team she broke the school record for a freshman athlete both indoors and outdoors with a vault of . She competed at the Pac-10 Conference and Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) regional meets that season.


title: Allison Stokke

text: Stokke had more success in her second year at college, scaling in Sacramento, California, under the close observation of Cal coach and former five-time All-American at UCLA, Scott Slover. She finished eighth at the Pac-10 Championships, seventh at the MPSF Indoor Championships, debuted at the NCAA Women's Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships, ranking 19th with her best effort of . She focused on her studies in her third year at Berkeley and received conference all-academic honors at Pac-10 and MPSF level, as well as getting an academic honorable mention by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. In her last year of collegiate vaulting, she did not improve her best, finishing eighth at the Pac-10 Championships and missing qualification for the NCAA Championships by two places at the regionals. However, in 2011 Stokke did place eighth at the NCAA Indoor Championships held at Texas A&M, clearing 4.10 m (13-05.25) on her first attempt, which secured All-American status.


title: Allison Stokke

text: After finishing her degree, she continued to pole vault, although she did not rank highly among American athletes. A new lifetime best of came in the 2012 season as she aimed for the 2012 London Olympics. However, she did not perform well at the 2012 United States Olympic Trials, as one of 12 competitors who failed to clear the opening height of . Her performances declined thereafter, with a best of 4.20 m in 2013 and 3.95 m in 2014. Her 2015 best of (achieved in a third-place finish at the National Pole Vault Summit) was an improvement but still ranked her outside of the top 30 American women that year.


title: Allison Stokke

text: She became a sportswear model, appearing in campaigns for Nike, Inc. and Athleta in 2015, and Uniqlo in 2016. She also began to work with GoPro, delivering a series of videos of her vaulting heights with the camera attached to her pole to demonstrate the inner working of the sport and advertise the action camera equipment. By 2016, these videos have received in excess of six million views on YouTube.


title: Allison Stokke

text: Despite not placing highly on the national rankings, Stokke continued to compete regularly in national-level meetings. Her 2016 best was eighth at the Chula Vista OTC High Performance Meet with a height of 4.15 m and she improved the following year to 4.27 m for third at the 2017 Austin Longhorn Invitational.


title: Allison Stokke

text: Stokke started dating American professional golfer Rickie Fowler in 2017. They became engaged in June 2018, and were married in October 2019. The couple has a daughter.


title: Homelessness

text: Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and adequate housing. People can be categorized as homeless if they are:


title: Homelessness

text: The rights of people experiencing homelessness also varies from country to country. United States government homeless enumeration studies also include people who sleep in a public or private place, which is not designed for use as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings. Homelessness and poverty are interrelated. There is no methodological consensus on counting homeless people and identifying their needs; therefore, in most cities, only estimated homeless populations are known.


title: Homelessness

text: In 2005, an estimated 100 million people worldwide were homeless, and as many as one billion people (one in 6.5 at the time) live as squatters, refugees, or in temporary shelter, all lacking adequate housing.


title: Homelessness

text: In 2004, the United Nations sector of Economic and Social Affairs defined a homeless household as those households without a shelter that would fall within the scope of living quarters due to a lack of a steady income. They carry their few possessions with them, sleeping in the streets, in doorways or on piers, or in another space, on a more or less random basis.


title: Homelessness

text: In 2009, at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Conference of European Statisticians (CES), held in Geneva, Switzerland, the Group of Experts on Population and Housing Censuses defined homelessness as:


title: Homelessness

text: Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 10 December 1948 by the UN General Assembly, contains this text regarding housing and quality of living:


title: Homelessness

text: The ETHOS Typology of Homelessness and Housing Exclusion was developed as a means of improving understanding and measurement of homelessness in Europe, and to provide a common "language" for transnational exchanges on homelessness. The ETHOS approach confirms that homelessness is a process (rather than a static phenomenon) that affects many vulnerable households at different points in their lives.


title: Homelessness

text: The typology was launched in 2005 and is used for different purposes: as a framework for debate, for data collection purposes, for policy purposes, monitoring purposes, and in the media. This typology is an open exercise that makes abstraction of existing legal definitions in the EU member states. It exists in 25 language versions, the translations being provided mainly by volunteer translators.


title: Homelessness

text: Despite all the international agreements and efforts, many countries and individuals in power do not consider housing as a human right. Former US President, Jimmy Carter, addressed this issue in a 2017 interview. He said, “A lot of people don't look at housing as a human right, but it is.” His view contrasts with many American, especially those in power, that do not believe this right is inline with the US constitution.


title: Homelessness

text: Recent homeless enumeration survey documentation utilizes the term "unsheltered homeless". The common colloquial term "street people" does not fully encompass all unsheltered people, in that many such persons do not spend their time in urban street environments. Many shun such locales, because homeless people in urban environments may face the risk of being robbed or assaulted. Some people convert unoccupied or abandoned buildings ("squatting"), or inhabit mountainous areas or, more often, lowland meadows, creek banks, and beaches. Many jurisdictions have developed programs to provide short-term emergency shelter during particularly cold spells, often in churches or other institutional properties. These are referred to as warming centers, and are credited by their advocates as lifesaving.


title: Homelessness

text: Following the Peasants' Revolt, English constables were authorized under 1383 English Poor Laws statute to collar vagabonds and force them to show support; if they could not, the penalty was gaol. Vagabonds could be sentenced to the stocks for three days and nights; in 1530, whipping was added. The presumption was that vagabonds were unlicensed beggars. In 1547, a bill was passed that subjected vagrants to some of the more extreme provisions of the criminal law, namely two years servitude and branding with a "V" as the penalty for the first offense and death for the second. Large numbers of vagabonds were among the convicts transported to the American colonies in the 18th century. During the 16th century in England, the state first tried to give housing to vagrants instead of punishing them, by introducing bridewells to take vagrants and train them for a profession. In the 17th and 18th centuries, these were replaced by workhouses but these were intended to discourage too much reliance on state help.


title: Homelessness

text: In the Antebellum South, the availability of slave labor made it difficult for poor white people to find work. To prevent poor white people from cooperating with enslaved black people, slaveowners policed poor whites with vagrancy laws.


title: Homelessness

text: After the American Civil War, a large number of homeless men formed part of a counterculture known as "hobohemia" all over the United States. In smaller towns, hobos temporarily lived near train tracks and hopped onto trains to various destinations.


title: Homelessness

text: The growing movement toward social concern sparked the development of rescue missions, such as the U.S. first rescue mission, the New York City Rescue Mission, founded in 1872 by Jerry and Maria McAuley.


title: Homelessness

text: The Great Depression of the 1930s caused a devastating epidemic of poverty, hunger, and homelessness in the United States. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took over the presidency from Herbert Hoover in 1933, he passed the New Deal, which greatly expanded social welfare, including providing funds to build public housing. This marked the end of the Great Depression.