title: Mycoplasma

text: Renal cancer: Patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) exhibited a significantly high amount of Mycoplasma sp. compared with the healthy control group. This suggests "Mycoplasma" may play a role in the development of RCC.


title: Butternut squash

text: Butternut squash ("Cucurbita moschata"), known in Australia and New Zealand as butternut pumpkin or gramma, is a type of winter squash that grows on a vine. It has a sweet, nutty taste similar to that of a pumpkin. It has tan-yellow skin and orange fleshy pulp with a compartment of seeds in the blossom end. When ripe, it turns increasingly deep orange, and becomes sweeter and richer. It is a good source of fiber, vitamin C, magnesium, and potassium; and it is a source of vitamin A.


title: Butternut squash

text: Although botanically a fruit (specifically, a berry), butternut squash is used culinarily as a vegetable that can be roasted, sautéed, toasted, puréed for soups such as squash soup, or mashed to be used in casseroles, breads, muffins, and pies. It is part of the same squash family as ponca, waltham, pumpkin, and calabaza.


title: Butternut squash

text: The word "squash" comes from the Narragansett word "askutasquash", meaning "eaten raw or uncooked", and "butternut" from the squash's nutty flavor. Although American native peoples may have eaten some forms of squash without cooking, today most squash is eaten cooked. Native Americans believed that squash was so nutritious that they would bury their dead with it to sustain them on their final journey.


title: Butternut squash

text: Before the arrival of Europeans, "C. moschata" had been carried over all parts of North America where it could be grown, but butternut squash is a modern variety of winter squash. It was developed by Charles Legget of Stow, Massachusetts, in 1944 who crossed pumpkin and gooseneck squash varieties.


title: Butternut squash

text: Butternut squash will store for two to three months. Some varieties will keep up to six months. They are best kept at with 50 percent humidity. For the best flavor, butternut squash should be left to cure for 2 months after harvest.


title: Butternut squash

text: Raw butternut squash is 86% water, 12% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and contains negligible fat (table). A 100-gram reference amount supplies of food energy, is a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of vitamin A (67% DV) and vitamin C (25% DV), and contains moderate amounts of vitamin B, vitamin E, magnesium, and manganese, each having content of 10–12% DV.


title: Butternut squash

text: One of the most common ways to prepare butternut squash is roasting. Once roasted, it can be eaten in a variety of ways. The fruit is prepared by removing the skin, stalk, and seeds, which are not usually eaten or cooked. However, the seeds are edible, either raw or roasted, and the skin is also edible and softens when roasted. The seeds can even be roasted and pressed into an oil to create butternut squash seed oil. This oil can be used for roasting, cooking, on popcorn, or as a salad dressing.


title: Butternut squash

text: In South Africa, butternut squash is commonly used and often prepared as a soup or grilled whole. Grilled butternut is typically seasoned with nutmeg and cinnamon or stuffed (e.g., spinach and feta) before being wrapped in foil and grilled. Grilled butternut is often served as a side dish to "braais" (barbecues) and the soup as a starter dish.


title: Butternut squash

text: Butternuts were introduced commercially in New Zealand in the 1950s by brothers Arthur and David Harrison, nursery workers, and Otaki market gardeners.


title: Planning

text: Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. The evolution of forethought, the capacity to think ahead, is considered to have been a prime mover in human evolution. Planning is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior. It involves the use of logic and imagination to visualise not only a desired end result, but the steps necessary to achieve that result.


title: Planning

text: An important aspect of planning is its relationship to forecasting. Forecasting aims to predict what the future will look like, while planning imagines what the future could look like.


title: Planning

text: Planning according to established principles is a core part of many professional occupations, particularly in fields such as management and business. Once a plan has been developed it is possible to measure and assess progress, efficiency and effectiveness. As circumstances change, plans may need to be modified or even abandoned.


title: Planning

text: Planning is one of the executive functions of the brain, encompassing the neurological processes involved in the formulation, evaluation and selection of a sequence of thoughts and actions to achieve a desired goal. Various studies utilizing a combination of neuropsychological, neuropharmacological and functional neuroimaging approaches have suggested there is a positive relationship between impaired planning ability and damage to the frontal lobe.


title: Planning

text: A specific area within the mid-dorsolateral frontal cortex located in the frontal lobe has been implicated as playing an intrinsic role in both cognitive planning and associated executive traits such as working memory.


title: Planning

text: Disruption of the neural pathways, via various mechanisms such as traumatic brain injury, or the effects of neurodegenerative diseases between this area of the frontal cortex and the basal ganglia, specifically the striatum (cortico-striatal pathway), may disrupt the processes required for normal planning function.


title: Planning

text: Individuals who were born Very Low Birth Weight (<1500 grams) and Extremely Low BirthWeight (ELBW) are at greater risk for various cognitive deficits including planning ability.№


title: Planning

text: There are a variety of neuropsychological tests which can be used to measure variance of planning ability between the subject and controls.


title: Planning

text: Test participants with damage to the right anterior, and left or right posterior areas of the frontal lobes showed no impairment. The results implicating the left anterior frontal lobes involvement in solving the TOL were supported in concomitant neuroimaging studies which also showed a reduction in regional cerebral blood flow to the left pre-frontal lobe. For the number of moves, a significant negative correlation was observed for the left prefrontal area: i.e. subjects that took more time planning their moves showed greater activation in the left prefrontal area.


title: Planning

text: In organizations, planning can become a management process, concerned with defining goals for a future direction and determining on the missions and resources to achieve those targets. To meet the goals, managers may develop plans such as a business plan or a marketing plan. Planning always has a purpose. The purpose may involve the achievement of certain goals or targets: efficient use of resources, reducing risk, expanding the organisation and its assets etc.


title: Planning

text: Public policies include laws, rules, decisions, and decrees. Public policy can be defined as efforts to tackle social issues via policy-making. A policy is crafted with a specific goal in mind in order to address a societal problem that has been prioritized by the government.


title: Planning

text: Public policy planning includes environmental, land use, regional, urban and spatial planning. In many countries, the operation of a town and country planning system is often referred to as "planning" and the professionals which operate the system are known as "planners".


title: Planning

text: It is a conscious as well as sub-conscious activity. It is "an anticipatory decision making process" that helps in coping with complexities. It is deciding future course of action from amongst alternatives. It is a process that involves making and evaluating each set of interrelated decisions. It is selection of missions, objectives and "translation of knowledge into action." A planned performance brings better results compared to an unplanned one. A manager's job is planning, monitoring and controlling. Planning and goal setting are important traits of an organization. It is done at all levels of the organization. Planning includes the plan, the thought process, action, and implementation. Planning gives more power over the future. Planning is deciding in advance what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and who should do it. This bridges the gap from where the organization is to where it wants to be. The planning function involves establishing goals and arranging them in logical order. An organization that plans well achieves faster goals than one that does not plan before implementation.


title: Planning

text: Planning is not just a professional activity: it is a feature of everyday life, whether for career advancement, organising an event or even just getting through a busy day.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: The Cleveland Torso Murderer, also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, was an unidentified serial killer who was active in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, in the 1930s. The killings were characterized by the dismemberment of twelve known victims and the disposal of their remains in the impoverished neighborhood of Kingsbury Run. Most victims came from an area east of Kingsbury Run called "The Roaring Third" or "Hobo Jungle", known for its bars, gambling dens, brothels, and vagrants. Despite an investigation of the murders, which at one time was led by famed lawman Eliot Ness, then Cleveland's Public Safety Director, the murderer was never apprehended.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: The official number of murders attributed to the Cleveland Torso Murderer is twelve, although recent research has shown there could have been as many as twenty. The twelve known victims were killed between 1935 and 1938. Some investigators, including lead detective Peter Merylo, believe that there may have been thirteen or more victims in the Cleveland, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh areas between the 1920s and 1950s. Two strong candidates for addition to the initial list of those killed are the unknown victim nicknamed the "Lady of the Lake," found on August 13, 1997, and Robert Robertson, found on July 22, 1950.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: The victims of the Torso Murderer were usually drifters whose identities were never determined, although there were a few exceptions. Victims numbers 2, 3, and 8 were identified as Edward Andrassy, Florence Polillo, and possibly Rose Wallace, respectively. Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo were both identified by their fingerprints, while Rose Wallace was tentatively identified via her dental records. The victims appeared to be lower class individuals – easy prey in Depression-era Cleveland. Many were known as "working poor", who had nowhere else to live but the ramshackle Depression-era shanty towns or "Hoovervilles" in the area known as the Cleveland Flats.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: The Torso Murderer always beheaded and often dismembered the victims, occasionally severing the victim's torso in half or severing their appendages. In many cases the cause of death was the decapitation or dismemberment itself. Most of the male victims were castrated. Some victims showed evidence of chemical treatment being applied to their bodies, which caused the skin to become red, tough, and leathery. Many of the victims were found after a considerable period of time following their deaths, occasionally in excess of a year. In an era when forensic science was largely in its infancy, these factors further complicated identification, especially since the heads were often undiscovered.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: During the time of the "official" murders, Eliot Ness held the position of Public Safety Director of Cleveland, a position with authority over the police department and ancillary services, including the fire department. While Ness had little to do with the investigation, his posthumous reputation as leader of The Untouchables has made him an irresistible character in modern "torso murder" lore. Ness did contribute to the arrest and interrogation of one of the prime suspects, Dr. Francis E. Sweeney. In addition, Ness personally conducted raids into hobo shanties and eventually burned down Kingsbury Run, from which the killer took their victims. His reasoning for burning down the shanty towns was to catalog fingerprints to easily identify any new victims, and stated that it was also done to get possible victims out of the area in an attempt to stop the murders. Four days after the shantytown burning, on August 22, 1938, Ness launched an equally draconian operation of questionable legality, where he personally dispatched six two-man search teams on a large area of Cleveland, stretching from the Cuyahoga River to E. 55th Street to Prospect Avenue under the guise of conducting city fire inspections. This area of the city had long been supposed as the location of the Torso Murderer's "laboratory." Among the detectives dispatched and charged to look for signs of the Torso Murderer's activity in the area were Detectives Orley May, Emil Musil, Peter Merylo, and Martin Zalewski – men who had worked the case from the beginning and must have felt the frustrations of the case most strongly. While the search never turned up any new or incriminating information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of the Torso Murderer, the systemic search did serve to focus renewed public attention on the inadequate and unsanitary living conditions in the downtown Cleveland area. The teams uncovered hundreds of families living in hazardous fire traps without toilets or running water. The interests of social reform did ultimately come to light even if those of law enforcement did not.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: At one point in time, the killer taunted Ness by placing the remains of two victims in full view of his office in city hall. The man who Eliot Ness believed was the killer would also provoke him by sending him postcards.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: Most researchers consider there to be 12 victims, although some have counted as many as 20. Evidence suggests a woman dubbed "The Lady of the Lake" could be included. There was a second victim who was also considered to be a victim of the Torso Killer in 1950 named Robert Robertson due to the fact that his head was also cut off. Only three victims were positively identified; the other ten were six John Does and four Jane Does.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: Several noncanonical victims are commonly discussed in connection with the Torso Murderer. The first was nicknamed the "Lady of the Lake" and was found near Euclid Beach on the Lake Erie shore on September 5, 1934. Only parts of her were found and matched with parts found at another shore in Perry. She had an abdominal scar from a likely hysterectomy which was common and made it more difficult to identify her. After she was found, several people reported seeing body parts in the water, including a group of fisherman who believed to have seen a head. She was found virtually in the same spot as canonical victim number 7. Some researchers of the Torso Murderer's victims count the "Lady of the Lake" as victim number 1, or "Victim Zero". Like the Lady of the Lake, John Doe I had some kind of substance on his skin (though his skin abnormalities could possibly be due to burning) when his body was found; however, at the time the similarities were not connected. The chemical was believed to have been a substance using lime chloride. It is supposed that the killer meant to use a quickening lime to decompose the bodies quicker but mistakenly used lime that would preserve bodies instead.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: The headless body of an unidentified male was found in a boxcar in New Castle, Pennsylvania, on July 1, 1936. Three headless victims were found in boxcars near McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, on May 3, 1940. All bore similar injuries to those inflicted by the Cleveland killer. Dismembered bodies were also found in the swamps near New Castle between the years 1921 and 1934 and between 1939 and 1942. In September 1940 an article in the "New Castle News" refers to the killer as "The Murder Swamp Killer". The almost identical similarities between the victims in New Castle to those in Cleveland, Ohio, coupled with the similarities between New Castle's Murder Swamp and Cleveland's Kingsbury Run, both of which were directly connected by a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line, were enough to convince Cleveland Detective Peter Merylo that the New Castle murders were the work of the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run". Merylo was convinced the connection was the railroad that ran twice a day between the two cities; he often rode the rails undercover looking for clues to the killer's identity.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: On July 22, 1950, the body of 41-year-old Robert Robertson was found at a business at 2138 Davenport Avenue in Cleveland. Police believed he had been dead six to eight weeks and appeared to have been intentionally decapitated. His death appeared to fit the profile of other victims: He was estranged from his family, had an arrest record and a drinking problem, and was on the fringes of society. Despite widespread newspaper coverage linking the murder to the crimes in the 1930s, detectives investigating Robertson's death treated it as an isolated crime.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: In 1939 the "Torso Killer" claimed to have killed a victim in Los Angeles, California. An investigation uncovered animal bones.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: In addition to the murders in Cleveland it is also suspected that there are connected murders before and after in Sandusky and Youngstown, as well as New Castle, PA, and Selkirk, NY. If they are connected this would raise the body count, and raise more questions about travel ability. It would also create a longer timeline of murders and victims over the span of the years. In a time where most major travel was still by railway, and Cleveland being a major hub between some of these cities, it would be much more difficult to find viable suspects.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: It has also been theorized that the Cleveland Torso murder case has some connection to the Black Dahlia murder.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: Authorities interrogated around 9,100 people during the investigation to find the Torso Murderer. The case became the biggest police investigation in Cleveland history: Many were investigated and 1,000 crimes were solved from the dedicated police investigations. There were only two main suspects of the Torso Murders: Frank Dolezal and Francis E. Sweeney.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: On August 24, 1939, a Cleveland resident named Frank Dolezal, 52, a white male, who at one point lived with Polillo and also had connections to Andrassy and Wallace, was arrested as a suspect in Florence Polillo's murder; he later died in suspicious circumstances in the Cuyahoga County jail while in the custody of Cuyahoga County Sheriff Martin O'Donnell (1886–1941). Dolezal was posthumously exonerated of involvement in the Torso slayings.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: Willie Johnson was an African American male who was once a suspect. He had been identified by a witness while he was disposing of a body. He had links to two of the victims, Rose Wilson and Flo Polillo. Willie Johnson was not officially tried for the Torso Murders; however, he was tried for a different murder and was sent to the electric chair in March 1944.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: Most investigators consider the last canonical murder to have been in 1938. One suspected individual was Dr. Francis E. Sweeney, a white male. Born May 5, 1894, Sweeney was a veteran of World War I who was part of a medical unit that conducted amputations in the field. After the war, Sweeney became an alcoholic due to pathological anxiety and depression derived from his wartime experiences. Additionally, during his military service, Sweeney was gassed in combat, which resulted in nerve damage. Sweeney was later personally interviewed by Eliot Ness, who oversaw the official investigation into the killings in his capacity as Cleveland's Safety Director. Before the interrogation, Sweeney was detained, and he was found to be so intoxicated that he was held in a hotel room for 3 days until he sobered up.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: During this interrogation, Sweeney is said to have "failed to pass" two very early polygraph machine tests. Both tests were administered by polygraph expert Leonarde Keeler, who told Ness he had his man. Ness apparently felt there was little chance of obtaining a successful prosecution of the doctor, especially as he was the first cousin of one of Ness's political opponents, Congressman Martin L. Sweeney, who had hounded Ness publicly about his failure to catch the killer. After Sweeney committed himself, there were no more leads or connections that police could assign to him as a possible suspect. From his hospital confinement, Sweeney sent threatening postcards and harassed Ness and his family into the 1950s; the postcards only stopped arriving after his death. Sweeney died in a veterans' hospital in Dayton on July 9, 1964. Sweeney was a viable suspect, but the evidence was circumstantial and would have no bearing. He had an office on the street where a man named Emil Fronek said a doctor tried to drug him in 1934. Fronek's story was discounted as he could not relocate the building with police the next day. Upon finding a victim with drugs in her system and looking through buildings it was found that Sweeney did have an office next to a coroner, in the area where Fronek had suggested he had been drugged. He would practice in their morgue, a clean and easy place to kill victims and not leave a mess due to the building being used to hold the dead anyway.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: In 1997, another theory postulated that there may have been no single Butcher of Kingsbury Run—that the murders could have been committed by different people. This was based on the assumption that the autopsy results were inconclusive. First, Cuyahoga County Coroner Arthur J. Pearce may have been inconsistent in his analysis as to whether the cuts on the bodies were expert or slapdash. Second, his successor, Samuel Gerber, who began to enjoy press attention from his involvement in such cases as the Sam Sheppard murder trial, garnered a reputation for sensational theories. Therefore, the only thing known for certain was that all the murder victims were dismembered. Elliot Ness was said to have taken the killer's identity to his grave.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: Peter Merylo believed that the Torso Murderer could be a transient who was riding the rails. Most of the murders occurred within the vicinity of railroad tracks. Peter Merylo went undercover as a hobo to investigate this idea. He believed that this was the reason why there were murders in other states that were similar to the Torso Murders in Cleveland.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: The 1998–1999 comic book series "Torso" by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko was based on the killings.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: "Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: Hunting America's Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology", by Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz, was published on August 4, 2020.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: The 2001 true crime "In The Wake Of The Butcher: Cleveland's Torso Murders" by James Jessen Badal was based on the killings.


title: Cleveland Torso Murderer

text: The podcast "Mysteriocities" goes over the murders in "Episode 16: The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run" ""


title: The House with a Clock in Its Walls (film)

text: The House with a Clock in Its Walls is a 2018 American fantasy comedy film directed by Eli Roth, based on the 1973 novel of the same name by John Bellairs. It stars Jack Black, Cate Blanchett, Owen Vaccaro, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Sunny Suljic, and Kyle MacLachlan. The film follows a young boy, Lewis, who is sent to live with his uncle, Jonathan, in a creaky, old house. He soon learns it was previously inhabited by an evil warlock. Universal Pictures released the film in the United States on September 21, 2018. It was a box office success, grossing over $131 million worldwide and received mostly positive reviews from critics who largely praised the cast, but said the film did not fully live up to its potential.


text: In 1955, after his parents are killed in a car crash, ten-year-old Lewis Barnavelt moves to live with his Uncle Jonathan in New Zebedee, Michigan. All he has left of his parents is a Magic 8-Ball they had given him, and a family photograph. Upon entering his new home, he meets Jonathan's neighbor and best friend, Florence Zimmerman.


text: During the night, Lewis is puzzled when he hears a ticking sound in the walls. Lewis begins exploring the house and stumbles upon Jonathan smashing a wall with an ax. Frightened, he runs away and encounters multiple household objects coming to life. Jonathan confesses that he is a warlock and Florence is a witch. The house's previous owners were a sinister warlock named Isaac Izard, (an orphaned former friend of Jonathan's who was traumatized while fighting in WWII), and his equally wicked wife Selena. Isaac and Selena had apparently hidden a clock within the walls of the house before they died, and Jonathan has been trying to find the clock and discover its purpose. Despite Jonathan's cautions, Lewis begins teaching himself magic.


text: On his first day at his new school, Lewis meets Tarby Corrigan, who befriends him during Tarby's campaign for class president. When Tarby wins the election, he abandons Lewis.


text: Lewis's mother visits him in dreams. When he laments that Tarby does not see him as a friend, she suggests that he use a spell from a forbidden book to impress Tarby. On Halloween night, Lewis performs a necromancy spell in a cemetery, accidentally summoning the ghost of Isaac from his grave.


text: Lewis spots Isaac in the window of a house of a neighbor, Mrs. Hanchett. He "rescues" her from Isaac and brings her across the street to Jonathan's house, but before he can find Jonathan, Isaac confronts them at the front door. He reveals that Mrs. Hanchett is really Selena, who killed Mrs. Hanchett, took her place, and used her bones to make the clock's key. It was also Selena who took the form of Lewis's mother to persuade him to summon Isaac. Isaac explains that his hidden clock's blueprints came from the demon Azazel, who had given them to Isaac as he sought relief from the visions of horror he had witnessed during the war. The clock will turn back time so that humanity never existed and undo the horrors that he had witnessed. Jonathan, Florence and Lewis are chased from the house.


text: Using the Magic 8-Ball to learn the location of the clock underneath the boiler room, the three return. Florence defeats a snake guarding the room while the others pursue Isaac. The clock transforms Jonathan into a baby, except for his face which he'd shielded with cards. Lewis consults the Magic 8-Ball, which says "Say goodbye". He realizes that he has to let go of the pain of losing his parents to harness his true power. He breaks the clock by dropping the ball, which blocks the clock's gears. Then Lewis blasts Isaac and Selena with magic he channels from the clock. They fall, de-age, and are ultimately erased from existence.


text: Lewis returns to school with more confidence and gets revenge on Tarby and his friends by magically bouncing a basketball off their faces and into the basket, impressing his other classmates. He then befriends a girl named Rose Rita Pottinger, who appears to have had a crush on Lewis. At the end of the day, Jonathan and Florence are shown picking up Lewis, the three of them now live like a regular family.


text: Principal photography on the film began on October 10, 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia. One of the challenges for the visual effects team was building massive 10-foot and 14½-foot gears for the Clock Room sequence. Another challenge was designing the Jack-o'-lantern characters, which included input from Steven Spielberg on the final designs. The soundtrack was composed by Nathan Barr and was released by Waxwork Records on a double LP.


text: "The House with a Clock in Its Walls" was released by Universal Pictures on September 21, 2018. "The House with a Clock in Its Walls" was released for digital download on November 27, 2018, followed by a DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray release on December 18, 2018.


text: "The House with a Clock in its Walls" has grossed $68.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $62.9 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $131.5 million, against a production budget of $42 million.


text: In the United States and Canada, "The House with a Clock in its Walls" was released alongside "Assassination Nation", "Life Itself" and "Fahrenheit 11/9", and was projected to gross $15–20 million from 3,592 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $7.8 million on its first day, including $840,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $26.9 million, finishing first at the box office and marking the best opening of Roth's career, surpassing "Hostel" in 2006 ($19.6 million). In its second weekend the film made $12.5 million, finishing third behind newcomers "Night School" and "Smallfoot".


text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on 209 reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "An entertaining PG detour for gore maestro Eli Roth, "The House with a Clock in Its Walls" is a family-friendly blend of humor and horror with an infectious sense of fun." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of 'B+' on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars.


title: Juan Soto

text: Juan José Soto Pacheco (born October 25, 1998) is a Dominican professional baseball outfielder for the San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball (MLB). He has previously played in MLB for the Washington Nationals.


title: Juan Soto

text: Soto signed with the Nationals as an international free agent in 2015. He made his MLB debut in 2018 and was the runner-up for the NL Rookie of the Year Award. In 2019, he was a key part of the Nationals' first World Series championship. In 2020, he won the National League batting title with a .351 average. He won the Silver Slugger Award in 2020 and 2021 and was an All-Star in 2021 and 2022.


title: Juan Soto

text: Soto was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to Juan Soto, Sr. and Belkis Pacheco. He has an older sister and younger brother. His younger brother, Elian, is a third baseman and outfielder who has a verbal agreement to sign with the Nationals organization as an international free agent once he is eligible in January 2023. His father, a salesman, was a catcher in a local men's league and encouraged his son to make baseball his passion.


title: Juan Soto

text: Soto signed with the Washington Nationals as an international free agent in July 2015. He made his professional debut in 2016 with the Gulf Coast League Nationals in the rookie-level Gulf Coast League (GCL) and was named the GCL's most valuable player after hitting .368 with five home runs and 32 runs batted in (RBIs). In September 2016 he was promoted to the Auburn Doubledays of the Class A-Short Season New York-Penn League for the final few games of the 2016 season. Appearing in six games for the Doubledays, he went 9-for-21 (.429) with three doubles and an RBI. He finished the 2016 season with an overall batting average of .368, five home runs, and 32 RBIs.


title: Juan Soto

text: Promoted to play with the Hagerstown Suns of the Class A South Atlantic League in 2017, Soto got off to a hot start before injuring his ankle while sliding into home in a game on May 2 and landing on the disabled list. At the time of his injury, he was batting .360 with three home runs in 23 games with the Suns. In July 2017, "MLB Pipeline" ranked Soto the Nationals' second-best prospect and the 42nd-best among all prospects. Soto did not return to the Suns in 2017, but he had two rehabilitation stints with the Gulf Coast Nationals, one of five games in July 2017 and a second one of four games in September 2017 before injuring his hamstring and finally being shut down for the season. In those nine games with the Gulf Coast League Nationals, he went 8-for-25 (.320) with a double, a triple, and four RBIs, and finished the 2017 season with a batting average of .351, three home runs, and 18 RBIs.


title: Juan Soto

text: Soto entered 2018 as one of the minor leagues' top prospects. He started the season with the Hagerstown Suns, hitting .373 in 16 games with five home runs and 24 RBIs, before being promoted early in the season to the Potomac Nationals in the Class A-Advanced Carolina League. After 15 games with Potomac, in which he hit .371 with seven home runs and 18 RBIs, he was promoted to play with the Harrisburg Senators in the Class AA Eastern League. He had appeared in eight games for the Senators, going 10-for-31 (.323) with two doubles, two home runs, and 10 RBIs, when on May 20, 2018, the Washington Nationals called him up to the major leagues for the first time to reinforce their outfield after an injury to second baseman and outfielder Howie Kendrick.


title: Juan Soto

text: Soto made his major-league debut on May 20, 2018, becoming the youngest player in the major leagues at 19 years, 207 days, and the first player born in 1998 to appear in a major-league game. He came on as a pinch-hitter in the 8th inning of a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., and struck out swinging against right-handed relief pitcher Erik Goeddel.


title: Juan Soto

text: Soto made his first major-league start the next day, playing left field in a game against the San Diego Padres at Nationals Park, and on the first pitch of his first plate appearance of the game, got his first major-league hit, a opposite-field three-run homer off of Robbie Erlin. After rounding the bases and returning to the dugout, Soto stepped back out for a curtain call from the crowd. He became the youngest player in franchise history to hit a home run and the first teenager to homer in a major-league game since Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper did it at age 19 in 2012. "He's a special player," Harper said of Soto after the game. Soto became the youngest major league player since Ken Griffey Jr. in 1989 to be intentionally walked in a game when Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter elected to do so rather than give him an opportunity to drive in a run on May 29.


title: Juan Soto

text: In June 2018, shortly after being called up to the major leagues, "Baseball America" listed Soto as the Nationals' top prospect, overtaking fellow outfielder Víctor Robles, and the fourth-best overall prospect in baseball.


title: Juan Soto

text: Soto contributed to a notable oddity when he hit a home run against the New York Yankees on June 18, 2018. The contest began on May 15, 2018, but was suspended until June 18 due to inclement weather with the score at 3–3. Since the stoppage occurred in the fifth inning, a team would have been awarded the win if they were ahead, which implied that he had technically hit a home run before his MLB debut. To prevent confusion, it was added in sequence to his already accrued home run total as his sixth home run. He had hit three home runs in his first five plate appearances against the Yankees.


title: Juan Soto

text: On June 21, he started as the cleanup hitter for the first time in the major leagues, against the Baltimore Orioles. He doubled home the winning run in a 4–2 victory. Soto's first multi-home run game came on June 13, 2018, against the New York Yankees, and he repeated the feat on June 29, 2018, at Citizens Bank Park against the Philadelphia Phillies, tallying two home runs, four hits, and five RBIs as the Nationals defeated the Phillies 17–7. Soto had another multi-home run game against the Phillies on September 11, 2018, going 3-for-4 with four RBIs in the second game of a doubleheader. On September 16, Soto became the youngest player to steal 3 bases in a game, breaking Rickey Henderson's mark of 20 years, 241 days by accomplishing the feat at 19 years, 326 days.


title: Juan Soto

text: In 2018, Soto slashed .292/.406/.517 with 79 walks (10th in the NL), 22 home runs, and 70 RBIs in 414 at-bats, and was the youngest player in the NL. He was named NL Rookie of the Month in June, July, and September, becoming the 6th player to win the award 3 or more times. Soto set many MLB teenage records during the season, including the most walks by a teenager (79), most multi-homer games by a teenager (3), highest OBP by a teenager (.406), and highest OPS by a teenager (.923). His 22 homers tied him with then-teammate Bryce Harper for 2nd most home runs by a teenager and he became the only teenager to walk more than 60 times in a season and post an on-base percentage over .400. He finished second in voting for NL Rookie of the Year to Braves outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr., becoming the only 3-time Rookie of the Month winner to not win the Rookie of the Year award.


title: Juan Soto

text: After the season, Soto was selected to the MLB All-Stars Team for the 2018 MLB Japan All-Star Series.


title: Juan Soto

text: On August 19, 2019, Soto became only the fourth player in MLB history to record 100 extra-base hits before his 21st birthday, joining Mel Ott, Tony Conigliaro, and his former teammate, Bryce Harper. He later became the seventh MLB player in history to reach 30 home runs before their 21st birthday. In 2019, he batted .282/.401/.548 with 110 runs (7th), 108 walks (3rd), 34 home runs, and 110 RBIs (9th) and he stole 12 bases in 13 attempts.


title: Juan Soto

text: With the Nationals trailing the Milwaukee Brewers 3–1 in the bottom of the eighth during the NL Wild Card Game, Soto hit a bases-clearing single off of Brewers closer Josh Hader to give the Nationals a 4–3 lead. They would later hang on to the lead and advance to the National League Division Series.


title: Juan Soto

text: In Game 3 of the NLDS, Soto hit his first career postseason home run off Hyun-jin Ryu. In in the decisive Game 5 of the NLDS, Soto hit an RBI single in the 6th inning off of Walker Buehler and later hit a game-tying home run in the top of the 8th off Clayton Kershaw. The Nationals would go on to win in 10 innings and eliminated the Dodgers, advancing to the National League Championship Series for the first time in franchise history. Soto went 3-16 (.188) with a double and an RBI in the NLCS against the St. Louis Cardinals and the Nationals advanced to the World Series after sweeping the best-of-seven series.


title: Juan Soto

text: In Game 1 of the World Series, Soto hit a home run off of Astros' ace Gerrit Cole to start the fourth inning and became the fourth youngest player in MLB history to ever hit a home run in a World Series. Game 3 of the World Series fell on October 25, Soto's 21st birthday, fulfilling an approximately 10 year old prediction made by Soto's father who had said that Soto would play in the World Series on his birthday. In Game 5 of the series, Soto hit another home run off Cole, providing the lone Nationals' run in a 7–1 loss which put the Nationals down 3 games to 2 in the best-of-seven series. In Game 6, Soto hit his third home run of the series off Justin Verlander, a go-ahead solo run home run, to help force a decisive Game 7.


title: Juan Soto

text: The Nationals would go on to win the World Series, their first in franchise history, and Soto batted .277/.373/.554 with 5 home runs and 14 RBIs in the postseason (.333/.438/.741 with 3 HR, 7 RBIs in the World Series). For the series, he led the Nationals in home runs, hits, walks and runs scored. Soto was later named the co-winner (with Stephen Strasburg) of the 2019 Babe Ruth Award. Soto was named to the All-MLB Second Team in the first edition of the annual award.


title: Juan Soto

text: On July 23, 2020, just before the opening game of a shortened 2020 season, it was announced that Soto had tested positive for COVID-19. Soto returned to action on August 4 after multiple negative tests; he told "The Washington Post" that he had been following team rules for social distancing before the positive test, never experienced COVID-19 symptoms, received negative results on three rapid-result tests the day he learned of the positive test result through the official MLB testing program, and believed the result that caused him to miss time was a false positive.


title: Juan Soto

text: In a series at Citi Field against the division-rival New York Mets, Soto first hit a home run on August 10, the longest of his career, then another home run measured at on August 12 to set a new personal best. He was named National League Player of the Week on August 17, his first such honor.


title: Juan Soto

text: Despite losing the first week of play to the positive COVID-19 test and missing some time in September with an elbow injury, Soto qualified for the batting title and became the youngest player in National League history to win, hitting .351 during the regular season. Soto also led all qualified hitters in MLB in on-base percentage (.490), slugging percentage (.695), and on-base plus slugging (1.185), posting the highest marks in those three categories for any major league hitter with at least 195 plate appearances in a season since Barry Bonds in the 2004 season. Soto won his first career Silver Slugger Award and was also named to the All-MLB First Team for the first time in his career. In spite of Soto's exceptional play, the Nationals were unable to capitalize, missing the playoffs even with an expanded format.


title: Juan Soto

text: In the Nationals' first game of the season on April 6, Soto hit a walk-off single off of Will Smith of the Atlanta Braves for his first career walk-off hit. On April 20, Soto was put on the 10-Day IL for a left shoulder strain and was reinstated to the active roster on May 4. Soto was named a reserve to the National League All Star Team for the 2021 All Star Game, receiving his first All-Star selection. Soto also participated in the Home Run Derby for the first time, where he upset top-seeded Los Angeles Angels pitcher/designated hitter Shohei Ohtani in double-overtime before losing in the semifinal to eventual repeat winner Pete Alonso of the New York Mets.In 2021, Soto batted .313/.465/.534 with 29 home runs, 95 RBIs, and 111 runs scored. He reinforced his reputation as the most disciplined hitter in baseball by swinging at an MLB-low 15.1% of pitches outside the strike zone, leading the next closest player, Dodgers infielder Max Muncy, by 4.0 percentage points. Soto joined Ted Williams as the only players in MLB history to have led the major leagues in on base percentage multiple times by age 22. His total of 145 walks was the highest in a single season since Barry Bonds set the major league record with 232 in 2004. Soto's former teammate Bryce Harper of the Philadelphia Phillies ranked second in the league with 100 walks, making Soto only the 6th player in the live ball era to have led his league in walks by a margin of 40 or more. He led the major leagues in walk percentage, at 22.2%, and intentional walks, with 23. He had the best walk/strikeout ratio in the majors, at 1.56. He swung at the lowest percentage of pitches of all major leaguers, at 35.0%.


title: Juan Soto

text: Following the season, Soto was named to the All-MLB First Team and won the National League Silver Slugger Award for the outfield, receiving both honors for the second straight season. Soto was the runner up in National League Most Valuable Player Award (NL MVP) voting, losing out to Bryce Harper. Soto became the sixth player in MLB history to finish as runner-up in both MVP and Rookie of the Year voting.


title: Juan Soto

text: Prior to the 2021–22 MLB lockout, the Nationals offered Soto a 13-year, $350 million contract extension which would've signed the then 23 year old Soto through his age 35 season in 2034. However, Soto declined the offer and said that he and his agent, Scott Boras, wanted to wait until he became a free agent after the 2024 season to sign a contract and that he "still think[s] of Washington as the place where [he] would like to spend the rest of [his] career."


title: Juan Soto

text: On March 22, 2022, Soto agreed to a $17.1M contract with the Nationals, avoiding arbitration. On April 12, Soto hit his 100th career home run off of Braves pitcher Bryce Elder. At the age of 23 years, 169 days, Soto became the youngest player to reach that milestone in Nationals history and the eighth-youngest player to reach the milestone in MLB history.


title: Juan Soto

text: Soto reportedly rejected a 15-year, $440 million contract extension offer by the Nationals during the 2022 season.


title: Juan Soto

text: Soto was named to the 2022 Major League Baseball All-Star Game and also participated in the 2022 Major League Baseball Home Run Derby, which he won. He became the second youngest Home Run Derby winner behind Juan González who won in 1993; Soto was one day older.


title: Juan Soto

text: On August 2, 2022, Soto, along with Josh Bell, was traded to the San Diego Padres in exchange for C. J. Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, Robert Hassell, James Wood, Jarlin Susana, and Luke Voit. The magnitude of the trade drew comparisons to the Herschel Walker trade in the NFL.


title: Juan Soto

text: On August 12, 2022, just ten days after being traded to the Padres, Soto faced the Nationals in Washington, where he received a 45-second-long standing ovation from the crowd. For the remainder of the 2022 season with the Padres, Soto played 51 games with the team, compiling a .240 batting average, 6 home runs, 16 RBI, and 36 walks.


title: Juan Soto

text: Overall in 2022, combined with both teams, Soto played 152 total games with a .244 batting average, 27 home runs, 62 RBI, and an MLB-leading 135 walks. He walked in 20.3% of his plate appearances, tops in the major leagues, and had the highest BB/K% in the majors, at 1.41. He swung at a lower percentage of pitches outside the strike zone (19.9%) than any other major league batter.


title: Juan Soto

text: Soto is known for his exceptional plate discipline, ranking 5th all time in walk rate and 10th all time in career on-base percentage among hitters with least 2000 plate appearances at the conclusion of the 2021 season. During his 2018 rookie season, Soto became known for his movements in the batter's box after he successfully takes a pitch for a ball. Dubbed the "Soto Shuffle," the routine often includes Soto swinging his hips, wiping the dirt with a wide arc of his leg, tapping his leg, hopping, or lowering himself into a squat and staring at the pitcher. As an ESPN writer described it: "He'll swing his hips or spread his legs or sweep his feet or shimmy his shoulders or lick his lips or squeeze his, um, junk, sometimes all at once". Soto says he started the routine in the minor leagues "to get in the minds of the pitchers, because sometimes they get scared". In Game 1 of the 2019 National League Championship Series, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas responded to Soto's antics by grabbing his own crotch after retiring Soto on a ground out. Soto responded later by saying, "He got me out, he can do whatever he wants." In subsequent seasons, Soto eliminated crotch-grabbing from the routine.


title: Juan Soto

text: Soto employs a "two-strike approach" in which he raises his grip along the bat handle and adopts a wider, lower stance, sometimes described as a crouch, in the batter's box. He is noted for his ability to drive the ball to all fields, even on a two-strike count. At the conclusion of his 2020 season, Soto had hit 69 career home runs in MLB and divided them evenly by direction: 23 to left field, 23 to center field, and 23 to right field.


title: Juan Soto

text: Although he was a finalist for a Gold Glove Award as a left fielder after the 2019 season, Soto has indicated a preference for playing right field, his main position during his brief minor league career. The Nationals began deploying him as their starting right fielder late in the 2020 season and he became the Nationals everyday right fielder in 2021. Soto is statistically a significantly better defender in right field than in left field: in left field he has produced −3.8 UZR per 150 games while in right field he has produced +1.5 UZR per 150 games.


title: Vernacular

text: A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, normally spoken informally rather than written, and seen as of lower status than more codified forms. It may vary from more prestigious speech varieties in different ways, in that the vernacular can be a distinct stylistic register, a regional dialect, a sociolect, or an independent language. Vernacular is a term for a type of speech variety, generally used to refer to a local language or dialect, as distinct from what is seen as a standard language. The vernacular is contrasted with higher-prestige forms of language, such as national, literary, liturgical or scientific idiom, or a "lingua franca", used to facilitate communication across a large area.


title: Vernacular

text: According to another definition, a vernacular is a language that has not developed a standard variety, undergone codification, or established a literary tradition. In the context of language standardization, the terms "vernacular" and "vernacular dialect" are also used as alternative designations for "non-standard dialect".


title: Vernacular

text: Concerning Italy, doubtless there were divers before the Latin did spread all over that Country; the Calabrian, and Apulian spoke Greek, whereof some Relicks are to be found to this day; but it was an adventitious, no Mother-Language to them: 'tis confess'd that Latium it self, and all the Territories about Rome, had the Latin for its maternal and common first vernacular Tongue; but Tuscany and Liguria had others quite discrepant, viz. the Hetruscane and Mesapian, whereof though there be some Records yet extant; yet there are none alive that can understand them: The Oscan, the Sabin and Tusculan, are thought to be but Dialects to these.


title: Vernacular

text: Here, vernacular, mother language and dialect are already in use in a modern sense. According to Merriam-Webster, "vernacular" was brought into the English language as early as 1601 from the Latin "vernaculus" ("native") which had been in figurative use in Classical Latin as "national" and "domestic", having originally been derived from "vernus" and "verna", a male or female slave born in the house rather than abroad. The figurative meaning was broadened from the diminutive extended words "vernaculus, vernacula". Varro, the classical Latin grammarian, used the term "vocabula vernacula", "termes de la langue nationale" or "vocabulary of the national language" as opposed to foreign words.


title: Vernacular

text: In general linguistics, a vernacular is contrasted with a "lingua franca", a third-party language in which persons speaking different vernaculars not understood by each other may communicate. For instance, in Western Europe until the 17th century, most scholarly works had been written in Latin, which was serving as a lingua franca. Works written in Romance languages are said to be in the vernacular. The "Divina Commedia", the "Cantar de Mio Cid", and The Song of Roland are examples of early vernacular literature in Italian, Spanish, and French, respectively.


title: Vernacular

text: In Europe, Latin was used widely instead of vernacular languages in varying forms until c. 1701, in its latter stage as New Latin.


title: Vernacular

text: In religion, Protestantism was a driving force in the use of the vernacular in Christian Europe, the Bible having been translated from Latin into vernacular languages with such works as the Bible in Dutch: published in 1526 by Jacob van Liesvelt; Bible in French: published in 1528 by Jacques Lefevre d’Étaples (or Faber Stapulensis); German Luther Bible in 1534 (New Testament 1522); Bible in Spanish: published in Basel in 1569 by Casiodoro de Reina (Biblia del Oso); Bible in Czech: Bible of Kralice, printed between 1579 and 1593; Bible in English: King James Bible, published in 1611; Bible in Slovene, published in 1584 by Jurij Dalmatin. In Catholicism, vernacular bibles were later provided, but Latin was used at Tridentine Mass until the Second Vatican Council of 1965. Certain groups, notably Traditionalist Catholics, continue to practice Latin Mass. In Eastern Orthodox Church, four Gospels translated to vernacular Ukrainian language in 1561 are known as Peresopnytsia Gospel.


title: Vernacular

text: In India, the 12th century Bhakti movement led to the translation of Sanskrit texts to the vernacular.


title: Vernacular

text: In science, an early user of the vernacular was Galileo, writing in Italian c. 1600, though some of his works remained in Latin. A later example is Isaac Newton, whose 1687 "Principia" was in Latin, but whose 1704 "Opticks" was in English. Latin continues to be used in certain fields of science, notably binomial nomenclature in biology, while other fields such as mathematics use vernacular; see scientific nomenclature for details.


title: Vernacular

text: In diplomacy, French displaced Latin in Europe in the 1710s, due to the military power of Louis XIV of France.


title: Vernacular

text: Certain languages have both a classical form and various vernacular forms, with two widely used examples being Arabic and Chinese: see Varieties of Arabic and Chinese language. In the 1920s, due to the May Fourth Movement, Classical Chinese was replaced by written vernacular Chinese.


title: Vernacular

text: The vernacular is also often contrasted with a liturgical language, a specialized use of a former "lingua franca". For example, until the 1960s, Roman Rite Catholics held Masses in Latin rather than in vernaculars; the Coptic Church still holds liturgies in Coptic, not Arabic (Liturgy is commonly conducted in the language of the parish. Arabic is the most-used vernacular language for Liturgy, and by far, the most used language in the Coptic church. The Liturgies were translated to Arabic a few centuries after the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century. Coptic is still used in the Liturgy, but is not the only language used. Just as EOC uses Amharic) . ; the Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds liturgies in Ge'ez though parts of Mass are read in Amharic.


title: Vernacular

text: Similarly, in Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in Sanskrit (long after its use as a spoken language) or in Tamil in Tamil country. Sanskrit was a lingua franca among the non-Indo-European languages of the Indian subcontinent and became more of one as the spoken language, or prakrits, began to diverge from it in different regions. With the rise of the bhakti movement from the 12th century onwards, religious works were created in the other languages: Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and many others. For example, the Ramayana, one of Hinduism's sacred epics in Sanskrit, had vernacular versions such as "Ranganadha Ramayanam" composed in Telugu by Gona Buddha Reddy in the 15th century; and "Ramacharitamanasa", a Hindi version of the Ramayana by the 16th-century poet Tulsidas.


title: Vernacular

text: These circumstances are a contrast between a vernacular and language variant used by the same speakers. According to one school of linguistic thought, all such variants are examples of a linguistic phenomenon termed diglossia ("split tongue", on the model of the genetic anomaly). In it, the language is bifurcated, i.e. the speaker learns two forms of the language and ordinarily uses one but under special circumstances the other. The one most frequently used is the low (L) variant, equivalent to the vernacular, while the special variant is the high (H). The concept was introduced to linguistics by Charles A. Ferguson (1959), but Ferguson explicitly excluded variants as divergent as dialects or different languages or as similar as styles or registers. H must not be a conversational form; Ferguson had in mind a literary language. For example, a lecture is delivered in a different variety than ordinary conversation. Ferguson's own example was classical and spoken Arabic, but the analogy between Vulgar Latin and Classical Latin is of the same type. Excluding the upper-class and lower-class register aspects of the two variants, Classical Latin was a literary language; the people spoke Vulgar Latin as a vernacular.


title: Vernacular

text: Joshua Fishman redefined the concept in 1964 to include everything Ferguson had excluded. Fishman allowed both different languages and dialects and also different styles and registers as the H variants. The essential contrast between them was that they be "functionally differentiated"; that is, H must be used for special purposes, such as a liturgical or sacred language. Fasold expanded the concept still further by proposing that multiple H exist in society from which the users can select for various purposes. The definition of an H is intermediate between Ferguson's and Fishman's. Realizing the inappropriateness of the term diglossia (only two) to his concept, he proposes the term broad diglossia.


title: Vernacular

text: Within sociolinguistics, the term "vernacular" has been applied to several concepts. Context, therefore, is crucial to determining its intended sense.


title: Vernacular

text: In variation theory, pioneered by William Labov, language is a large set of styles or registers from which the speaker selects according to the social setting of the moment. The vernacular is "the least self-conscious style of people in a relaxed conversation", or "the most basic style"; that is, casual varieties used spontaneously rather than self-consciously, informal talk used in intimate situations. In other contexts the speaker does conscious work to select the appropriate variations. The one they can use without this effort is the first form of speech acquired.


title: Vernacular

text: In another theory, the vernacular is opposed to the standard. The non-standard varieties thus defined are dialects, which are to be identified as complexes of factors: "social class, region, ethnicity, situation, and so forth." Both the standard and the non-standard language have dialects, but in contrast to the standard, the non-standard have "socially disfavored" structures. The standard are primarily written (in traditional print media) but the non-standard are spoken. An example of a vernacular dialect is African American Vernacular English.


title: Vernacular

text: Vernaculars acquired the status of official languages through metalinguistic publications. Between 1437 and 1586, the first grammar of Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German and English were written, though not always immediately published. It is to be understood that the first vestiges of those languages preceded their standardization by up to several hundred years.


title: Vernacular

text: In the 16th century, the "rederijkerskamers", learned literary societies founded throughout Flanders and Holland from the 1420s onward, attempted to impose a Latin structure on Dutch, on the presumption that Latin grammar had a "universal character." However, in 1559 John III van de Werve, Lord of Hovorst published his grammar "Den schat der Duytsscher Talen" in Dutch and so did Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert ("Eenen nieuwen ABC of Materi-boeck") in 1564. The Latinizing tendency changed course with the joint publication in 1584 by De Eglantier, the rhetoric society of Amsterdam, of the first comprehensive Dutch grammar, "Twe-spraack vande Nederduitsche letterkunst/ ófte Vant spellen ende eyghenscap des Nederduitschen taals". Hendrick Laurenszoon Spieghel was a major contributor but others contributed as well.


title: Vernacular

text: Modern English is considered to have begun at a conventional date of about 1550, most notably at the end of the Great Vowel Shift. It was created by the infusion of Old French into Old English after the Norman conquest of 1066 AD and of Latin at the instigation of the clerical administration. While present-day English speakers may be able to read Middle English authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Old English is much more difficult.


title: Vernacular

text: Middle English is known for its alternative spellings and pronunciations. The British Isles, although geographically limited, have always supported populations of widely variant dialects (as well as a few different languages). Being the language of a maritime power, English was of necessity formed from elements of many different languages. Standardization has been an ongoing issue. Even in the age of modern communications and mass media, according to one study, "… although the Received Pronunciation of Standard English has been heard constantly on radio and then television for over 60 years, only 3 to 5% of the population of Britain actually speaks RP … new brands of English have been springing up even in recent times ..." What the vernacular would be in this case is a moot point: "… the standardisation of English has been in progress for many centuries."


title: Vernacular

text: Modern English came into being as the standard Middle English, i.e. as the preferred dialect of the monarch, court and administration. That dialect was East Midland, which had spread to London where the king resided and from which he ruled. It contained Danish forms not often used in the north or south, as the Danes had settled heavily in the midlands. Chaucer wrote in an early East Midland style, John Wycliffe translated the New Testament into it, and William Caxton, the first English printer, wrote in it. Caxton is considered the first modern English author. The first printed book in England was Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", published by Caxton in 1476.


title: Vernacular

text: The first English grammars were written in Latin, with some in French. After a general plea for mother-tongue education in England: "The first part of the elementary", published in 1582 by Richard Mulcaster, William Bullokar wrote the first English grammar to be written in English: "Pamphlet for Grammar", followed by "Bref Grammar", both in 1586. Previously he had written "Booke at Large for the Amendment of Orthography for English Speech" (1580) but his orthography was not generally accepted and was soon supplanted, and his grammar shared a similar fate. Other grammars in English followed rapidly: Paul Greaves' "Grammatica Anglicana", 1594; Alexander Hume's "Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britain Tongue", 1617, and many others. Over the succeeding decades many literary figures turned a hand to grammar in English: Alexander Gill, Ben Jonson, Joshua Poole, John Wallis, Jeremiah Wharton, James Howell, Thomas Lye, Christopher Cooper, William Lily, John Colet and so on, all leading to the massive dictionary of Samuel Johnson.


title: Vernacular

text: French (as Old French) emerged as a Gallo-Romance language from Colloquial Latin during late antiquity. The written language is known from at least as early as the 9th century. That language contained many forms still identifiable as Latin. Interest in standardizing French began in the 16th century. Because of the Norman conquest of England and the Anglo-Norman domains in both northwestern France and Britain, English scholars retained an interest in the fate of French as well as of English. Some of the numerous 16th-century surviving grammars are:


title: Vernacular

text: The development of a standard German was impeded by political disunity and strong local traditions until the invention of printing made possible a "High German-based book language." This literary language was not identical to any specific variety of German. The first grammar evolved from pedagogical works that also tried to create a uniform standard from the many regional dialects for various reasons. Religious leaders wished to create a sacred language for Protestantism that would be parallel to the use of Latin for the Roman Catholic Church. Various administrations wished to create a civil service, or chancery, language that would be useful in more than one locality. And finally, nationalists wished to counter the spread of the French national language into German-speaking territories assisted by the efforts of the French Academy.


title: Vernacular

text: With so many linguists moving in the same direction, a standard German ("hochdeutsche Schriftsprache") did evolve without the assistance of a language academy. Its precise origin, the major constituents of its features, remains uncertainly known and debatable. Latin prevailed as a lingua franca until the 17th century, when grammarians began to debate the creation of an ideal language. Before 1550 as a conventional date, "supraregional compromises" were used in printed works, such as the one published by Valentin Ickelsamer ("Ein Teutsche Grammatica") 1534. Books published in one of these artificial variants began to increase in frequency, replacing the Latin then in use. After 1550 the supraregional ideal broadened to a universal intent to create a national language from Early New High German by deliberately ignoring regional forms of speech, which practice was considered to be a form of purification parallel to the ideal of purifying religion in Protestantism.


title: Vernacular

text: In 1617, the Fruitbearing Society, a language club, was formed in Weimar in imitation of the Accademia della Crusca in Italy. It was one of many such clubs; however, none became a national academy. In 1618–1619 Johannes Kromayer wrote the first all-German grammar. In 1641 Justin Georg Schottel in "teutsche Sprachkunst" presented the standard language as an artificial one. By the time of his work of 1663, "ausführliche Arbeit von der teutschen Haubt-Sprache", the standard language was well established.


title: Vernacular

text: "Auraicept na n-Éces" is a grammar of the Irish language which is thought to date back as far as the 7th century: the earliest surviving manuscripts are 12th-century.


title: Vernacular

text: Italian appears before standardization as the "lingua Italica" of Isidore and the "lingua vulgaris" of subsequent medieval writers. Documents of mixed Latin and Italian are known from the 12th century, which appears to be the start of writing in Italian.


title: Vernacular

text: The first known grammar of a Romance language was a book written in manuscript form by Leon Battista Alberti between 1437 and 1441 and entitled "Grammatica della lingua toscana", "Grammar of the Tuscan Language." In it Alberti sought to demonstrate that the vernacular – here Tuscan, known today as modern Italian – was every bit as structured as Latin. He did so by mapping vernacular structures onto Latin.


title: Vernacular

text: The book was never printed until 1908. It was not generally known, but it was known, as an inventory of the library of Lorenzo de'Medici lists it under the title "Regule lingue florentine" ("Rules of the Florentine language"). The only known manuscript copy, however, is included in the codex, Reginense Latino 1370, located at Rome in the Vatican library. It is therefore called the "Grammatichetta vaticana."


title: Vernacular

text: More influential perhaps were the 1516 "Regole grammaticali della volgar lingua" of Giovanni Francesco Fortunio and the 1525 "Prose della vulgar lingua" of Pietro Bembo. In those works the authors strove to establish a dialect that would qualify for becoming the Italian national language.


title: Vernacular

text: The first grammar in a vernacular language in western Europe was published in Toulouse in 1327. Known as the "Leys d'amor" and written by Guilhèm Molinièr, an advocate of Toulouse, it was published in order to codify the use of the Occitan language in poetry competitions organized by the company of the Gai Saber in both grammar and rherotical ways.


title: Vernacular

text: Spanish (more accurately, "lengua castellana") has a development chronologically similar to that of Italian: some vocabulary in Isidore of Seville, traces afterward, writing from about the 12th century, standardization beginning in the 15th century, coincident with the rise of Castile as an international power. The first Spanish grammar by Antonio de Nebrija ("Tratado de gramática sobre la lengua Castellana", 1492) was divided into parts for native and nonnative speakers, pursuing a different purpose in each: Books 1–4 describe the Spanish language grammatically in order to facilitate the study of Latin for its Spanish speaking readers. Book 5 contains a phonetical and morphological overview of Spanish for nonnative speakers.


title: Vernacular

text: The "Grammar Books of the Master-poets" () are considered to have been composed in the early fourteenth century, and are present in manuscripts from soon after. These tractates draw on the traditions of the Latin grammars of Donatus and Priscianus and also on the teaching of the professional Welsh poets. The tradition of grammars of the Welsh Language developed from these through the Middle Ages and to the Renaissance.


title: Vernacular

text: A dictionary is to be distinguished from a glossary. Although numerous glossaries publishing vernacular words had long been in existence, such as the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville, which listed many Spanish words, the first vernacular dictionaries emerged together with vernacular grammars.


title: Vernacular

text: Shortly after (1579) the Southern Netherlands came under the dominion of Spain, then of Austria (1713) and of France (1794). The Congress of Vienna created the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 from which southern Netherlands (being Catholic) seceded in 1830 to form the Kingdom of Belgium, which was confirmed in 1839 by the Treaty of London. As a result of this political instability no standard Dutch was defined (even though much in demand and recommended as an ideal) until after World War II. Currently the Dutch Language Union, an international treaty organization founded in 1980, supports a standard Dutch in the Netherlands, while Afrikaans is regulated by Die Taalkommissie founded in 1909.


title: Vernacular

text: Standard English remains a quasi-fictional ideal, despite the numerous private organizations publishing prescriptive rules for it. No language academy was ever established or espoused by any government past or present in the English-speaking world. In practice the British monarchy and its administrations established an ideal of what good English should be considered to be, and this in turn was based on the teachings of the major universities, such as Cambridge University and Oxford University, which relied on the scholars whom they hired. There is a general but far from uniform consensus among the leading scholars about what should or should not be said in standard English, but for every rule examples from famous English writers can be found that break it. Uniformity of spoken English never existed and does not exist now, but usages do exist, which must be learnt by the speakers, and do not conform to prescriptive rules.


title: Vernacular

text: Usages have been documented not by prescriptive grammars, which on the whole are less comprehensible to the general public, but by comprehensive dictionaries, often termed unabridged, which attempt to list all usages of words and the phrases in which they occur as well as the date of first use and the etymology where possible. These typically require many volumes, and yet not more so than the unabridged dictionaries of many languages.


title: Vernacular

text: Bilingual dictionaries and glossaries precede modern English and were in use in the earliest written English. The first monolingual dictionary was Robert Cawdrey's "Table Alphabeticall" (1604) which was followed by Edward Phillips's "A New World of English Words" (1658) and Nathaniel Bailey's "An Universal Etymological English Dictionary" (1721). These dictionaries whetted the interest of the English-speaking public in greater and more prescriptive dictionaries until Samuel Johnson published "Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language" (1747), which would imitate the dictionary being produced by the French Academy. He had no problem acquiring the funding, but not as a prescriptive dictionary. This was to be a grand comprehensive dictionary of all English words at any period, "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755).


title: Vernacular

text: By 1858, the need for an update resulted in the first planning for a new comprehensive dictionary to document standard English, a term coined at that time by the planning committee. The dictionary, known as the "Oxford English Dictionary", published its first fascicle in 1884. It attracted significant contributions from some singular minds, such as William Chester Minor, a former army surgeon who had become criminally insane and made most of his contributions while incarcerated. Whether the OED is the long-desired standard English Dictionary is debatable, but its authority is taken seriously by the entire English-speaking world. Its staff is currently working on a third edition.


title: Vernacular

text: Surviving dictionaries are a century earlier than their grammars. The Académie française founded in 1635 was given the obligation of producing a standard dictionary. Some early dictionaries are:


title: Vernacular

text: High German dictionaries began in the 16th century and were at first multi-lingual. They were preceded by glossaries of German words and phrases on various specialized topics. Finally interest in developing a vernacular German grew to the point where Maaler could publish a work called by Jacob Grimm "the first truly German dictionary", Joshua Maaler's "Die Teutsche Spraach: Dictionarium Germanico-latinum novum" (1561).


title: Vernacular

text: It was followed along similar lines by Georg Heinisch: "Teütsche Sprache und Weißheit" (1616). After numerous dictionaries and glossaries of a less-than-comprehensive nature came a thesaurus that attempted to include all German, Kaspar Stieler's "Der Teutschen Sprache Stammbaum und Fortwachs oder Teutschen Sprachschatz" (1691), and finally the first codification of written German, Johann Christoph Adelung's "Versuch eines vollständigen grammatisch-kritischen Wörterbuches Der Hochdeutschen Mundart" (1774–1786). Schiller called Adelung an "Orakel" and Wieland is said to have nailed a copy to his desk.


title: Vernacular

text: In the early 15th century a number of glossaries appeared, such as that of Lucillo Minerbi on Boccaccio in 1535, and those of Fabrizio Luna on Ariosto, Petrarca, Boccaccio and Dante in 1536. In the mid-16th the dictionaries began, as listed below. In 1582 the first language academy was formed, called Accademia della Crusca, "bran academy", which sifted language like grain. Once formed, its publications were standard-setting.


title: Vernacular

text: The first Spanish dictionaries in the 15th century were Latin-Spanish/Spanish-Latin, followed by monolingual Spanish. In 1713 the Real Academia Española, "Royal Spanish Academy," was founded to set standards. It published an official dictionary, 1726–1739.


title: Vernacular

text: The term "vernacular" may also be applied metaphorically to any cultural product of the lower, common orders of society that is relatively uninfluenced by the ideas and ideals of the educated élite. Hence, vernacular has had connotations of a coarseness and crudeness. "Vernacular architecture", for example, is a term applied to buildings designed in any style based on practical considerations and local traditions, in contrast to the "polite architecture" produced by professionally trained architects to nationally or internationally agreed aesthetic standards. The historian Guy Beiner has developed the study of "vernacular historiography" as a more sophisticated conceptualization of folk history.


title: Herb

text: In general use, herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables and other plants consumed for macronutrients, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicinal purposes, or for fragrances. Culinary use typically distinguishes herbs from spices. "Herbs" generally refers to the leafy green or flowering parts of a plant (either fresh or dried), while "spices" are usually dried and produced from other parts of the plant, including seeds, bark, roots and fruits.


title: Herb

text: Herbs have a variety of uses including culinary, medicinal, aromatic and in some cases, spiritual. General usage of the term "herb" differs between culinary herbs and medicinal herbs; in medicinal or spiritual use, any parts of the plant might be considered as "herbs", including leaves, roots, flowers, seeds, root bark, inner bark (and cambium), resin and pericarp.


title: Herb

text: The word "herb" is pronounced in Commonwealth English, but is common among North American English speakers and those from other regions where h-dropping occurs. In botany, the noun "herb" refers to a "plant that does not produce a woody stem", and the adjective "herbaceous" means "herb-like", referring to parts of the plant that are green and soft in texture".


title: Herb

text: In botany, the term herb refers to a herbaceous plant, defined as a small, seed-bearing plant without a woody stem in which all aerial parts (i.e. above ground) die back to the ground at the end of each growing season. Usually the term refers to perennials, although herbaceous plants can also be annuals (plants that die at the end of the growing season and grow back from seed next year), or biennials. This term is in contrast to shrubs and trees which possess a woody stem. Shrubs and trees are also defined in terms of size, where shrubs are less than ten meters tall, and trees may grow over ten meters. The word herbaceous is derived from Latin "herbāceus" meaning "grassy", from "herba" "grass, herb".


title: Herb

text: Another sense of the term herb can refer to a much larger range of plants, with culinary, therapeutic or other uses. For example, some of the most commonly described herbs such as sage, rosemary and lavender would be excluded from the botanical definition of a herb as they do not die down each year, and they possess woody stems. In the wider sense, herbs may be herbaceous perennials but also trees, subshrubs, shrubs, annuals, lianas, ferns, mosses, algae, lichens, and fungi. Herbalism can utilize not just stems and leaves but also fruit, roots, bark and gums. Therefore, one suggested definition of a herb is a plant which is of use to humans, although this definition is problematic since it could cover a great many plants that are not commonly described as herbs.


title: Herb

text: Ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus divided the plant world into trees, shrubs, and herbs. Herbs came to be considered in three groups, namely pot herbs (e.g. onions), sweet herbs (e.g. thyme), and salad herbs (e.g. wild celery). During the seventeenth century as selective breeding changed the plants size and flavor away from the wild plant, pot herbs began to be referred to as vegetables as they were no longer considered only suitable for the pot.


title: Herb

text: Botany and the study of herbs was, in its infancy, primarily a study of the pharmacological uses of plants. During the Middle Ages, when humoral theory guided medicine, it was posited that foodstuffs, possessing their own humoral qualities, could alter the humoral temperaments of people. Parsley and sage were often used together in medieval cookery, for example in chicken broth, which had developed a reputation as a therapeutic food by the 14th century. One of the most common sauces of the age, green sauce, was made with parsley and often sage as well. In a 14th-century recipe recorded in Latin "for lords, for settling their temperament and whetting their appetite" green sauce is served with a dish of cheese and whole egg yolks boiled in watered down wine with herbs and spices.


title: Herb

text: Perennial herbs are usually reproduced by stem cuttings, either softwood cuttings of immature growth, or hardwood cuttings where the bark has been scraped to expose the cambium layer. A cutting will usually be approximately 3 to 4 inches in length. Plant roots can grow from the stems. Leaves are stripped from the lower portion up to one half before the cutting is placed in growth medium or rooted in a glass of water. This process requires high humidity in the environment, sufficient light, and root zone heat.


title: Herb

text: Culinary herbs are distinguished from vegetables in that, like spices, they are used in small amounts and provide flavor rather than substance to food.


title: Herb

text: Herbs can be perennials such as thyme, sage or lavender, biennials such as parsley, or annuals like basil. Perennial herbs can be shrubs such as rosemary ("Rosmarinus officinalis"), or trees such as bay laurel ("Laurus nobilis") – this contrasts with botanical herbs, which by definition cannot be woody plants. Some plants are used as both herbs and spices, such as dill weed and dill seed or coriander leaves and seeds. There are also some herbs, such as those in the mint family, that are used for both culinary and medicinal purposes.


title: Herb

text: Emperor Charlemagne (742–814) compiled a list of 74 different herbs that were to be planted in his gardens. The connection between herbs and health is important already in the European Middle Ages--"The Forme of Cury" (that is, "cookery") promotes extensive use of herbs, including in salads, and claims in its preface "the assent and advisement of the masters of physic and philosophy in the King's Court".


title: Herb

text: Some herbs can be infused in boiling water to make herbal teas (also termed tisanes). Typically the dried leaves, flowers or seeds are used, or fresh herbs are used. Herbal teas tend to be made from aromatic herbs, may not contain tannins or caffeine, and are not typically mixed with milk. Common examples include chamomile tea, or mint tea. Herbal teas are often used as a source of relaxation or can be associated with rituals.


title: Herb

text: Herbs were used in prehistoric medicine. As far back as 5000 BCE, evidence that Sumerians used herbs in medicine was inscribed on cuneiform. In 162 CE, the physician Galen was known for concocting complicated herbal remedies that contained up to 100 ingredients.


title: Herb

text: Some plants contain phytochemicals that have effects on the body. There may be some effects when consumed in the small levels that typify culinary "spicing", and some herbs are toxic in larger quantities. For instance, some types of herbal extract, such as the extract of St. John's-wort ("Hypericum perforatum") or of kava ("Piper methysticum") can be used for medical purposes to relieve depression and stress. However, large amounts of these herbs may lead to toxic overload that may involve complications, some of a serious nature, and should be used with caution. Complications can also arise when being taken with some prescription medicines.


title: Herb

text: Herbs have long been used as the basis of traditional Chinese herbal medicine, with usage dating as far back as the first century CE and far before. In India, the Ayurveda medicinal system is based on herbs. Medicinal use of herbs in Western cultures has its roots in the Hippocratic (Greek) elemental healing system, based on a quaternary elemental healing metaphor. Famous herbalist of the Western tradition include Avicenna (Persian), Galen (Roman), Paracelsus (German Swiss), Culpepper (English) and the botanically inclined Eclectic physicians of 19th century/early 20th century America (John Milton Scudder, Harvey Wickes Felter, John Uri Lloyd). Modern pharmaceuticals had their origins in crude herbal medicines, and to this day, some drugs are still extracted as fractionate/isolate compounds from raw herbs and then purified to meet pharmaceutical standards.


title: Herb

text: There is a record dated 1226 for '12d for Roses for Baron's Chamber and in 1516 for flowers and rushes for chambers for henry the 9th


title: Herb

text: Certain herbs contain psychoactive properties that have been used for both religious and recreational purposes by humans since the early Holocene era, notably the leaves and extracts of the cannabis and coca plants. The leaves of the coca plant have been chewed by people in northern Peruvian societies for over 8,000 years, while the use of cannabis as a psychoactive substance dates back to the first century CE in China and northern Africa.


title: Herb

text: Indigenous Australian peoples developed "bush medicine" based on plants that were readily available to them. The isolation of these groups meant the remedies developed were for far less serious diseases than the western illnesses they contracted during colonisation. Herbs such as river mint, wattle and eucalyptus were used for coughs, diarrhea, fever and headaches.


title: Herb

text: Herbs are used in many religions. During the monastic era, monks would cultivate herbs alongside vegetables, while others would be set aside in a physic garden for specific purposes. For example, myrrh ("Commiphora myrrha") and frankincense ("Boswellia" species) in Hellenistic religion, the nine herbs charm in Anglo-Saxon paganism, neem ("Azadirachta indica") leaves, bael ("Aegele marmelos") leaves, holy basil or "tulsi" ("Ocimum tenuiflorum"), turmeric or "haldi" ("Curcuma longa"), cannabis in Hinduism, and white sage in Wicca. Rastafari also consider cannabis to be a holy plant.


title: Herb

text: Siberian shamans also used herbs for spiritual purposes. Plants may be used to induce spiritual experiences for rites of passage, such as vision quests in some Native American cultures. The Cherokee Native Americans use both white sage and cedar for spiritual cleansing and smudging.


title: Herb

text: Originally there was always doubt in ancient societies, especially in the sceptical medium of western traditions, as to the efficacity of herbal medicines. The use of herbal cosmetics dates back to around six centuries ago in the European and Western countries. Mixtures and pastes were often concocted to whiten the face. During the 1940s, herbal cosmetics took a turn with the emerging red lipstick color, with every year gaining a more intense red. Herbal cosmetics come in many forms, such as face creams, scrubs, lipstick, natural fragrances, powders, body oils, deodorants and sunscreens. They activate through the epithelium of sebaceous glands to make the skin more supple. Ayurvedic oils are widely used in India, prized for their natural health-giving properties.


title: Herb

text: One method and perhaps the best, used to extract natural oils from herbs to make lipstick is partition chromatography. The process involves separation in watery solution, and then the injection of colour under pressure.


title: Herb

text: Strewing herbs are scattered (strewn) over the floors of dwelling places and other buildings. Such plants usually have fragrant or astringent smells, and many also serve as insecticides (e.g. to repel fleas) or disinfectants. For example, meadowsweet ("Filipendula ulmaria") was sometimes strewn across floors in the middle ages because of its sweet smell.


title: Public policy

text: Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public policy can be considered to be the sum of government direct and indirect activities and has been conceptualized in a variety of ways.


title: Public policy

text: They are created and/or enacted on behalf of the public typically by a government. Sometimes they are made by nonprofit organisations or are made in co-production with communities or citizens, which can include potential experts, scientists, engineers and stakeholders or scientific data, or sometimes use some of their results. They are typically made by policy-makers affiliated with (in democratic polities) currently elected politicians.


title: Public policy

text: A popular way of understanding and engaging in public policy is through a series of stages known as "the policy cycle". The characterization of particular stages can vary, but a basic sequence is: agenda setting – formulation – legitimation – implementation – evaluation.


title: Public policy

text: Officials considered as policymakers bear responsibility to reflect the interests of a host of different stakeholders. Policy design entails conscious and deliberate effort to define policy aims and map them instrumentally. Academics and other experts in policy studies have developed a range of tools and approaches to help in this task.


title: Public policy

text: Public policy can be conceptualized in varying ways, according to the purposes of the speaker or author, and the characteristics of the situation they are concerned with.


title: Public policy

text: One dividing line in conceptions of public policy is between those that see it primarily in terms of ideas (principles and plans of action) and those that see it as a collection of empirical phenomena (the things that are done, and their outcomes). The first of these conceptualizations is suitable when the matter of concern is relatively simple and unambiguous, and the means of enactment are expected to be highly disciplined. But where the matter is complex and/or contested – where intentions are confused and/or disguised – it may not be possible to define the policy ideas clearly and unambiguously. In this case it may be useful to identify a policy in terms of what actually happens.


title: Public policy

text: David Easton in the USA of the 1950s provided an illustration of the need he found to broaden his conceptualization of public policy beyond stated ideas: "If the formal policy of an educational system forbids discrimination against Negroes but local school boards or administrators so zone school attendance that Negroes are segregated in a few schools, both the impartial law and discriminatory practices must be considered part of the policy." Easton characterized public policy as "a web of decisions and actions that allocates values".


title: Public policy

text: Other definitions of public policy in terms of a broad range of empirical phenomena include that of Paul Cairney: "the sum total of government action from signals of intent to the final outcomes".


title: Public policy

text: An example of conceiving public policy as ideas is a definition by Richard Titmuss: "the principles that govern action directed towards given ends". Titmuss' perspective was particularly one of social contract ethics.


title: Public policy

text: More recently, Antonio Lassance has defined public policy as "an institutionalized proposal to solve a central problem, guided by a conception" (Lassance, 2020: 7). Lassance's perspective and concerns are grounded in a theory of change or program theory which he believes can be empirically tested.


title: Public policy

text: One of the most known and controversial concepts of public policy is that of Thomas R. Dye, according to whom "public policy is whatever governments choose to do or not to do" (Dye, 1972: 2). Although widely used, Dye's concept is also criticized as being an empty concept. Dye himself admitted that his concept "discourages elaborate academic discussions of the definition of public policy - we say simply that public policy is whatever governments choose to do or not to do".


title: Public policy

text: In an institutionalist view, the foundation of public policy is composed of national constitutional laws and regulations. Further foundational aspects include both judicial interpretations and regulations which are generally authorized by legislation. Public policy is considered strong when it solves problems efficiently and effectively, serves and supports governmental institutions and policies, and encourages active citizenship.


title: Public policy

text: In his book "Advanced Introduction to Public Policy", B. Guy Peters defines public policy as "the set of activities that governments engage in for the purpose of changing their economy and society", effectively saying that public policy is legislation brought in with the aim of benefiting or impacting the electorate in some way. In another definition, author B. Dente in his book "Understanding Policy Decisions" explains public policy as "a set of actions that affect the solution of a policy problem, i.e. a dissatisfaction regarding a certain need, demand or opportunity for public intervention. Its quality is measured by the capacity to create public value."


title: Public policy

text: Other scholars define public policy as a system of "courses of action, regulatory measures, laws, and funding priorities concerning a given topic promulgated by a governmental entity or its representatives". Public policy is commonly embodied in "constitutions, legislative acts, and judicial decisions". Transformative constitutions of Global South considers judicial actions for Public policy as paramount, since the political forces that facilitate legislative decisions may run counter to the will of the people.


title: Public policy

text: Public policy focuses on the decisions that create the outputs of a political system, such as transport policies, the management of a public health service, the administration of a system schooling and the organization of a defense force. The directly measurable policy outputs, "actions oactually taken in pursuance of policy decisions and statements," can be differentiated from the broader policy outcomes, "focus[ing] on a policy's societal consequences."


title: Public policy

text: In the United States, this concept refers not only to the result of policies, but more broadly to the decision-making and analysis of governmental decisions. As an academic discipline, public policy is studied by professors and students at public policy schools of major universities throughout the country. The U.S. professional association of public policy practitioners, researchers, scholars, and students is the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.


title: Public policy

text: Much of public policy is concerned with evaluating decision-making in governments and public bureaucracies.


title: Public policy

text: Public policy making can be characterized as a dynamic, complex, and interactive system through which public problems are identified and resolved through the creation of new policy or reform of existing policy.


title: Public policy

text: Public problems can originate in endless ways and require different policy responses (such as regulations, subsidies, import quotas, and laws) on the local, national, or international level. The public problems that influence public policy making can be of economic, social, or political nature.


title: Public policy

text: The Government holds a legal monopoly to initiate or threaten physical force to achieve its ends when necessary. For instance, in times of chaos when quick decision making is needed.


title: Public policy

text: Agenda setting identifies problems that require government attention, deciding which issue deserve the most attention and defining the nature of the problem.


title: Public policy

text: Most public problems are made through the reflection of social and ideological values. As societies and communities evolve over time, the nature in which norms, customs and morals are proven acceptable, unacceptable, desirable or undesirable changes as well. Thus, the search of crucial problems to solve becomes difficult to distinguish within 'top-down' governmental bodies.


title: Public policy

text: The policy stream is a concept developed by John Kingdon as a model proposed to show compelling problems need to be conjoined with two other factors: appropriate political climate and favourable and feasible solutions attached to problems) that flow together to move onto policy agenda. This reinforces the "policy window", another concept demonstrating the critical moment within a time and situation that a new policy could be motivated.


title: Public policy

text: Because the definition of public problems are not obvious, they are most often denied and not acted upon. The problem stream represents a policy process to compromise for how worthy problems are to create policies and solutions. This is represented in five discrete factors:


title: Public policy

text: Therefore, John Kingdon's model suggests the policy window appears through the emergence and connection of problems, politics and policies, emphasizing an opportunity to stimulate and initiate new policies.


title: Public policy

text: The "issue attention cycle" is a concept developed by Anthony Downs (1972) where problems progress through five distinct stages. This reinforces how the policy agenda does not necessarily lead to policy change, as public interest dissipates, most problems end up resolving themselves or get ignored by policymakers. Its key stages include:


title: Public policy

text: This is the setting of the objectives for the policy, along with identifying the cost and effect of solutions that could be proposed from policy instruments.


title: Public policy

text: Legitimation is when approval/ support for the policy instruments is gathered, involving one of or a combination of executive approval, legislative approval, and seeking consent through consultation or referendums.


title: Public policy

text: Policy implementation is establishing or employing an organisation to take responsibility for the policy, making sure the organisation has the resources/legal authority to do so, in addition to making sure the policy is carried out as planned. An example of this would be the department of education being set up.