title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The British High Commission in Delhi held a large Jubilee reception, which the Duke of York also attended. Children took a ride on an elephant named Rupa draped in the Union Jack, during the Jubilee events in New Delhi. The British Jubilee Tea Party received high amounts of media coverage, so also did Rupa the elephant.


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: In Nairobi, the High Commission commemorated the Queen's Diamond Jubilee by lighting a beacon at Treetops Lodge, the location where Princess Elizabeth learned of her father's death and her immediate accession to the throne in 1952. The celebrations also featured items such as the car used by the Queen in 1952 and an exhibition featuring radio broadcasts and photographs from that time.


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: In Pakistan, the British High Commission organised an event with local school children, in which they buried a time capsule, to be dug out on 25 years later. The children were asked to draw about their families, community, country, and connections between the United Kingdom and Pakistan. Coins, newspapers, magazines, and pictures of Pakistani landmarks with signatures and messages for the Queen by the children were also put in the time capsule. The event received a lot of positive media coverage.


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The British Consulate in Cape Town, in conjunction with the Hout Bay and Llandudno Heritage Trust, hosted a firing of ancient muzzle-loading cannons at East Fort in Hout Bay. The Hout Bay and Llandudno Heritage Trust restored the Fort's original Swedish made 18-pounder muzzle-loading cannons, dating from 1752, and fired two rolling salvo salutes, of six cannon shots each, in the Queen's honour and each representing a decade of her reign. Members of the public were also invited to join in lighting of a Jubilee Beacon. The South African Navy Band was in attendance and the guns were fired by VIPs who were guided by gunners of the "Honourable Order of Hout Bay Artillerymen".


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: At the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront of the Port of Cape Town, a flotilla from the Royal Cape Yacht Club sailed past the Hildebrand Ristorante and into-the Victoria Basin and the Cape Town Highlanders marched from Ferryman's to Nobel Square. British Consul General Chris Trott lit a beacon, followed by a further six-gun salute and both South African national anthem and "God Save the Queen".


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: On 5 June 2012, about 500 eminent personalities from various fields gathered in Brussels on the island in Bois de la Cambre to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee. A ferry transported guests to the island, which showcased British brands and products. This was followed by a visit from HMS "Edinburgh".


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The British Embassy held a Jubilee week in São Paulo and Brasilia, with prominent areas in both cities being dressed with Union flags. Cultural exhibitions were set up and images (60 photos for 60 years) and films, highlighting the Royal visits to Brazil, were showcased. There were many activities for children, including making model boats for a mini-flotilla and a Big Jubilee Lunch. Local cinemas and restaurants showed Jubilee-themed films and served special Jubilee dishes.


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: Hong Kong, a British dependent territory until 1997 and the most populous one, had The Big Jubilee Lunch on 3 June 2012, organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society in Hong Kong. On 5 June 2012, there was a service of thanksgiving at the territory's Anglican Cathedral Church of St. John the Evangelist.


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The Embassy in Rome and Consulate in Milan held multiple events to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, including "UK-Italy in the pages of Corriere della Sera", an exhibition organised by Fondazione Corriere della Sera and the British Council. It was held from 7 June to 21 June in Milan. A multimedia Symphonic concert was held by the Orchestra Italiana del Cinema with the support of Lazio Regional Council, which was dedicated to British and Italian cinematography. A documentary series on the royal family, titled 'London Calling', was broadcast by BBC Knowledge. Milan also used their Jubilee activity to supplement events highlighting high end British jewellery design.


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: In Tokyo, the British Embassy hosted a Vivienne Westwood collection launch to commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The event was attended by 800 guests, where they saw the World Premiere of Vivienne Westwood's 2012-13 spring summer collection fashion show. There was a display of 13 British manufactured cars and motorbikes worth £1.3 million. In a surprise guest appearance, Tomoyasu Hotei played his signature tune from "Kill Bill". The garden marquee provided a special Jubilee menu of the finest British food and drink. The event was featured on Japan's premier evening and breakfast news shows, reaching an estimated audience of 21.5 million viewers.


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: A series of events were held in Mexico City to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The British Embassy held a reception showcasing British brands, the BBC provided Diamond Jubilee programming, and Wedgewood and Twinings set up a British Tea House experience. The reception was attended by over 1000 guests and the Ambassador gave a number of interviews around the Jubilee and events both in the UK and Mexico.


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: In the UAE, a number of events were held to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. In Abu Dhabi, the British Embassy held a 'Great British Car Rally', the first of its kind in the UAE. The Rally, which was organised by the Embassy and the Yas Marina Circuit, started at the Embassy in Abu Dhabi at 6pm, and travelled along Abu Dhabi's Corniche en route to the Yas Marina Circuit, where the participants first did a loop of the F1 race track before mixing and mingling at a reception at the Circuit's main pit garages. At the reception, the guests were shown the Rolls Royce that the Queen travelled in during her first visit to the UAE in 1979.


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The Embassy in Dubai opened up its lawns up to the British and International community who then picnicked there. The people also saw the live transmission of the Diamond Jubilee Pageant down the River Thames. The Dubai Offshore Sailing Club held a "Jubilee Pursuit Race", to mark the Queen's Jubilee.


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: In a video message, President Obama offered the Queen the "heartfelt congratulations of the American people" on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee, and said that the Queen was a "living witness" to the power of the special relationship between the US and UK, and the "chief source of its resilience." He added, "May the light of Your Majesty’s crown continue to reign supreme for many years to come".


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: In New York City, around 700 people were invited to run through Central Park for six kilometers, one for every decade of her reign on 31 May. The run raised $14,000 for two charities: St. George's Society and Disabled Sports USA. "Sex and the City" star Kim Cattrall started the race and the music was provided by a Beatles tribute band.


title: Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II

text: The British Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan celebrated the Queen's Diamond Jubilee with a Big Jubilee Lunch on 1 June 2012. The Embassy also used the example of the Queen to engage with businesswomen, who were having an increasingly important impact on the Uzbek economy but remain unrecognised.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate people about global warming. The film features a slide show that, by Gore's own estimate, he has presented over 1,000 times to audiences worldwide.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The idea to document Gore's efforts came from producer Laurie David, who saw his presentation at a town hall meeting on global warming, which coincided with the opening of "The Day After Tomorrow". Laurie David was so inspired by his slide show that she, with producer Lawrence Bender, met with Guggenheim to adapt the presentation into a film. Premiering at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opening in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006, the film was a critical and commercial success, winning two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song. The film grossed $24 million in the U.S. and $26 million at the international box office, becoming the 11th highest grossing documentary film to date in the United States.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Since the film's release, "An Inconvenient Truth" has been credited for raising international public awareness of global warming and reenergizing the environmental movement. The documentary has also been included in science curricula in schools around the world, which has spurred some controversy. A sequel to the film, titled "", was released on July 28, 2017.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: "An Inconvenient Truth" presents in film form an illustrated talk on climate by Al Gore, aimed at alerting the public to an increasing "planetary emergency" due to global warming, and shows re-enacted incidents from his life story which influenced his concerns about environmental issues. He began making these presentations in 1989 with flip chart illustrations; the film version uses a Keynote presentation, which Gore refers to as "the slide show".


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The former vice president opens the film by greeting an audience with his well-known line about his campaign in 2000: "I am Al Gore. I used to be the next President of the United States." He is shown using his laptop to edit his presentation, and pondering the difficulty he has had in awakening public concern: "I've been trying to tell this story for a long time and I feel as if I've failed to get the message across."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Gore then begins his slide show on Global Warming; a comprehensive presentation replete with detailed graphs, flow charts and stark visuals. Gore shows off several photographs of the Earth taken from multiple space missions, as "Earthrise" and "The Blue Marble". Gore notes that these photos dramatically transformed the way we see the Earth, helping spark modern environmentalism.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Following this, Gore shares anecdotes that inspired his interest in the issue, including his college education with early climate expert Roger Revelle at Harvard University, his sister's death from lung cancer and his young son's near-fatal car accident. Gore recalls a story from his grade-school years, where a fellow student asked his geography teacher about continental drift, whether the coastlines of South America and Africa might fit together; in response, the teacher called the concept the "most ridiculous thing [he'd] ever heard." Gore ties this conclusion to the assumption that "the Earth is so big, we can't possibly have any lasting, harmful impact on the Earth's environment." For comic effect, Gore uses a clip from the "Futurama" episode "Crimes of the Hot" to describe the greenhouse effect. Gore refers to his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 United States presidential election as a "hard blow" yet one which subsequently "brought into clear focus, the mission [he] had been pursuing for all these years."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Throughout the movie, Gore discusses the scientific opinion on global warming, as well as the present and future effects of global warming and stresses that global warming "is really not a political issue, so much as a moral one," describing the consequences he believes global warming will produce if the amount of human-generated greenhouse gases is not significantly reduced in the very near future. Gore also presents Antarctic ice coring data showing CO levels higher now than in the past 650,000 years.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The film includes segments intended to refute critics who say that global warming is unproven or that warming will be insignificant. For example, Gore cites the retreat of nearly all glaciers caused by melting over recent decades, showing nine cases, such as the Grinnel and Boulder Glaciers and Patagonia. He discusses the possibility of the collapse and melting of a major ice sheet in Greenland or in West Antarctica, either of which could raise global sea levels by approximately 20 feet (6m), flooding coastal areas and producing 100 million refugees. Melt water from Greenland, because of its lower salinity, could then halt the currents that keep northern Europe warm and quickly trigger dramatic local cooling there. It also contains various short animated projections of what could happen to different animals more vulnerable to global warming.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The documentary ends with Gore arguing that if appropriate actions are taken soon, the effects of global warming can be successfully reversed by releasing less CO and planting more vegetation to consume existing CO. Gore calls upon his viewers to learn how they can help him in these efforts. Gore closes the film by saying:


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: During the film's end credits, several calls to action pop up on screen suggesting to viewers things at home they can do to combat global warming, including "recycle", "speak up in your community", "try to buy a hybrid vehicle" and "encourage everyone you know to watch this movie."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Gore's book of the same title was published concurrently with the theatrical release of the documentary. The book contains additional information, scientific analysis, and Gore's commentary on the issues presented in the documentary. A 2007 documentary entitled "An Update with Former Vice President Al Gore" features Gore discussing additional information that came to light after the film was completed, such as Hurricane Katrina, coral reef depletion, glacial earthquake activity on the Greenland ice sheet, wildfires, and trapped methane gas release associated with permafrost melting.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Gore became interested in global warming when he took a course at Harvard University with Professor Roger Revelle, one of the first scientists to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Later, when Gore was in Congress, he initiated the first congressional hearing on the subject in 1981. Gore's 1992 book, "Earth in the Balance", dealing with a number of environmental topics, reached the "New York Times" bestseller list.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: As Vice President during the Clinton Administration, Gore pushed for the implementation of a carbon tax to encourage energy efficiency and diversify the choices of fuel better reflecting the true environmental costs of energy use; it was partially implemented in 1993.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: He helped broker the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The treaty was not ratified in the United States after a 95 to 0 vote in the Senate. The primary objections stemmed from the exemptions the treaty gave to China and India, whose industrial base and carbon footprint have grown rapidly, and fears that the exemptions would lead to further trade imbalances and offshoring arrangement with those countries.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Gore also supported the funding of the controversial, and much-delayed satellite called Triana, which would have provided an image of the Earth 24 hours a day, over the internet and would have acted as a barometer measuring the process of global warming. During his 2000 presidential campaign, Gore ran, in part, on a pledge to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: After his defeat in the 2000 presidential election by George W. Bush, Gore returned his focus to the topic. He edited and adapted a slide show he had compiled years earlier, and began featuring the slide show in presentations on global warming across the U.S. and around the world. At the time of the film, Gore estimated he had shown the presentation more than one thousand times.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Producer Laurie David saw Gore's slide show in New York City at a global warming town-hall meeting after the May 27, 2004 premiere of "The Day After Tomorrow". Gore was one of several panelists and he showed a ten-minute version of his slide show.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Inspired, David assembled a team, including producer Lawrence Bender and former president of eBay Jeffrey Skoll, who met with Gore about the possibility of making the slide show into a movie. It took some convincing. The slide show, she says, "was his baby, and he felt proprietary about it and it was hard for him to let go."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: David said the box office returns weren't important to her, and that what was at stake was the planet, saying "none of us are going to make a dime."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: David and Bender later met with director Davis Guggenheim, to have him direct the film adaptation of his slide show. Guggenheim, who was skeptical at first, later saw the presentation for himself, stating that he was "blown away," and "left after an hour and a half thinking that global warming [was] the most important issue ... I had no idea how you'd make a film out of it, but I wanted to try," he said.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: In 2004 Gore enlisted Duarte Design to condense and update his material and add video and animation. Ted Boda described the tools that went into designing the project: "Gore's presentation was in fact using Apple's Keynote presentation software (the same software Steve Jobs presents from) and did so for a number of reasons. As a designer for the presentation, Keynote was the first choice to help create such an engaging presentation."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Initially reluctant of the film adaptation, Gore said after he and the crew were into the production of the movie, the director, Guggenheim, earned his trust.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: When Bender first saw Gore's visual presentation he had concerns about connection with viewers, citing a "need to find a personal way in." In the string of interviews with Gore that followed, Gore himself felt like they "were making "Kill Al Vol. 3"". Bender had other issues including a time frame that was "grueling" and needed to be done in "a very short period of time" despite many filming locations planned. These included many locations throughout the United States and also included China. "It was a lot of travel in a very short period of time. And they had to get this thing edited and cut starting in January, and ready to screen in May. That's like a seriously tight schedule. So the logistics of pulling it off with a low budget were really difficult, and if there's one person who gets credit, it's Leslie Chilcott, because she really pulled it together."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: "Most of my movies take a year and a half, if not two and a half," Guggenheim said. "We all felt like we were on a mission from God just to make it as fast as we could. We just felt like it was urgent. The clock was ticking, and people had to see it."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The producers struggled to find an effective title for the film. "We had a lot of really bad titles," Guggenheim recalled. "One was "The Rising". I remember Al talking about whether he should give Bruce Springsteen a call, because he had an album out called "The Rising". It had a great triple-entendre, because it was like the sea-level rising and the idea of people rising. So we got excited about that for a while." "There were also some really bad ones like "Too Hot to Handle,"" he added. "Maybe that's not right, but it was something with 'hot,' ya know? We had a lot of hot puns."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Guggenheim remembers asking Gore why climate change was "so hard for people to grasp." To which Gore replied, "Because it's an inconvenient truth, ya know." "[...] In the back of my head, I go, that's the title of our movie," Guggenheim said.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Initially, the title was not a popular choice, even Gore remembers saying "Nah, I don't think so" but Guggenheim "defended it vigorously against other titles." "People thought it was hard to say, people thought it wasn't fun, it wasn't sexy," Guggenheim remembered. "Days before we went to Sundance and had to decide, there was a large group of people who did not like the title."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The majority of the movie exhibits Gore delivering his lecture to an audience at a relatively small theater in Los Angeles. Gore's presentation was delivered on a 70-foot (21 m) digital screen that Bender commissioned specifically for the movie.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: While the bulk of the film was shot on 4:4:4 HDCAM, according to director Guggenheim, a vast array of different film formats were used: "There's 35mm and 16mm. A lot of the stuff on the farm I just shot myself on 8mm film. We used four Sony F950 HDCAMs for the presentation. We shot three different kinds of prosumer HD, both 30 and 24. There's MiniDV, there's 3200 black-and-white stills, there's digital stills, some of them emailed on the day they were taken from as far off as Greenland. There was three or four different types of animation. One of the animators is from New Zealand and emailed me his work. There's JPEG stuff."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Guggenheim says while it would've been a lot easier to use one format, it would not have had the same impact. "Each format has its own feel and texture and touch. For the storytelling of what Gore's memory was like of growing up on the farm, some of this 8mm stuff that I shot is very impressionistic. And for some of his memories of his son's accident, these grainy black-and-white stills ... have a feel that contrasted very beautifully with the crisp hi-def HD that we shot. Every format was used to its best potential. Some of the footage of Katrina has this blown-out video, where the chroma is just blasted, and it looks real muddy, but that too has its own kind of powerful, impactful feeling."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The film's thesis is that global warming is real, potentially catastrophic, and human-caused. Gore presents specific


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The Associated Press contacted more than 100 climate researchers and questioned them about the film's veracity. All 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie or had read the homonymous book said that Gore accurately conveyed the science, with few errors.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: William H. Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School of Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University, said "[Gore] got all the important material and got it right." Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, was also impressed. "I sat there and I'm amazed at how thorough and accurate. After the presentation I said, 'Al, I'm absolutely blown away. There's a lot of details you could get wrong.'...I could find no error." Michael Shermer, scientific author and founder of The Skeptics Society, wrote in "Scientific American" that Gore's slide show "shocked me out of my doubting stance." Eric Steig, a climate scientist writing on RealClimate, lauded the film's science as "remarkably up to date, with reference to some of the very latest research."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Ted Scambos, lead scientist from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said the film "does an excellent job of outlining the science behind global warming and the challenges society faces in the coming century because of it."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: One concern among scientists in the film was the connection between hurricanes and global warming, which at the time was contentious in the scientific community. Gore cited five recent scientific studies to support his view. "I thought the use of imagery from Hurricane Katrina was inappropriate and unnecessary in this regard, as there are plenty of disturbing impacts associated with global warming for which there is much greater scientific consensus," said Brian Soden, professor of meteorology and oceanography at the University of Miami.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Gavin Schmidt, climate modeler for NASA, thought Gore appropriately addressed the issue. "Gore talked about 2005 and 2004 being very strong seasons, and if you weren't paying attention, you could be left with the impression that there was a direct cause and effect, but he was very careful to not say there's a direct correlation," Schmidt said. "There is a difference between saying 'we are confident that they will increase' and 'we are confident that they have increased due to this effect,'" added Steig. "Never in the movie does he say: 'This particular event is caused by global warming.'"


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Gore's use of long ice core records of CO and temperature (from oxygen isotope measurements) in Antarctic ice cores to illustrate the correlation between the two drew some scrutiny; Schmidt, Steig and Michael E. Mann back up Gore's data. "Gore stated that the greenhouse gas levels and temperature changes over ice age signals had a complex relationship but that they 'fit'. Both of these statements are true," said Schmidt and Mann. "The complexity though is actually quite fascinating ... a full understanding of why CO changes in precisely the pattern that it does during ice ages is elusive, but among the most plausible explanations is that increased received solar radiation in the southern hemisphere due to changes in Earth's orbital geometry warms the southern ocean, releasing CO into the atmosphere, which then leads to further warming through an enhanced greenhouse effect. Gore's terse explanation does not delve into such complexities, but the crux of his point—that the observed long-term relationship between CO and temperature in Antarctica supports our understanding of the warming impact of increased CO concentrations—is correct. Moreover, our knowledge of why CO is changing now (fossil fuel burning) is solid. We also know that CO is a greenhouse gas, and that the carbon cycle feedback is positive (increasing temperatures lead to increasing CO and CH), implying that future changes in CO will be larger than we might anticipate." "Gore is careful not to state what the temperature/CO scaling is," said Steig. "He is making a qualitative point, which is entirely accurate. The fact is that it would be difficult or impossible to explain past changes in temperature during the ice age cycles without CO changes. In that sense, the ice core CO-temperature correlation remains an appropriate demonstration of the influence of CO on climate."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Steig disputed Gore's statement that you can visibly see the effect that the United States Clean Air Act has had on ice cores in Antarctica. "One can neither see, nor even detect using sensitive chemical methods any evidence in Antarctica of the Clean Air Act," he said, but did note that they are "clearly recorded in ice core records from Greenland." Despite these flaws, Steig said that the film got the fundamental science right and the minor factual errors did not undermine the main message of the film, adding ""An Inconvenient Truth" rests on a solid scientific foundation."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Lonnie Thompson, Earth Science professor at Ohio State University, whose work on retreating glaciers was featured in the film, was pleased with how his research was presented. "It's so hard given the breadth of this topic to be factually correct, and make sure you don't lose your audience," Thompson said. "As scientists, we publish our papers in "Science" and "Nature", but very few people read those. Here's another way to get this message out. To me, it's an excellent overview for an introductory class at a university. What are the issues and what are the possible consequences of not doing anything about those changes? To me, it has tremendous value. It will reach people that scientists will never reach."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: John Nielsen-Gammon from Texas A&M University said the "main scientific argument presented in the movie is for the most part consistent with the weight of scientific evidence, but with some of the main points needing updating, correction, or qualification." Nielsen-Gammon thought the film neglected information gained from computer models, and instead relied entirely on past and current observational evidence, "perhaps because such information would be difficult for a


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Steven Quiring, a climatologist from Texas A&M University, added that "whether scientists like it or not, "An Inconvenient Truth" has had a much greater impact on public opinion and public awareness of global climate change than any scientific paper or report."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The film opened in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006. On Memorial Day weekend, it grossed an average of $91,447 per theater, the highest of any movie that weekend and a record for a documentary, though it was only playing on four screens at the time.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: At the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, the movie received three standing ovations. It was also screened at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and was the opening night film at the 27th Durban International Film Festival on June 14, 2006.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: "An Inconvenient Truth" was the most popular documentary at the 2006 Brisbane International Film Festival.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The film has grossed over $24 million in the U.S., making it the eleventh-highest-grossing documentary in the U.S. (from 1982 to the present). It grossed nearly $26 million in foreign countries, the highest being France, where it grossed $5 million. According to Gore, "Tipper and I are devoting 100 percent of the profits from the book and the movie to a new bipartisan educational campaign to further spread the message about global warming." Paramount Classics committed 5% of their domestic theatrical gross from the film to form a new bipartisan climate action group, Alliance for Climate Protection, dedicated to awareness and grassroots organizing.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The film received a positive reaction from film critics and audiences. It garnered a "certified fresh" 93% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 166 reviews, and an average rating of 7.74/10.The website's critical consensus states, "This candid, powerful and informative documentary illuminates some of the myths surrounding its dual subjects: global warming and Al Gore". At "Metacritic", which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 75, based on 32 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper gave the film "two thumbs up". Ebert said, "In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to," calling the film "horrifying, enthralling and [having] the potential, I believe, to actually change public policy and begin a process which could save the Earth."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: "New York Magazine" critic David Edelstein called the film "One of the most realistic documentaries I've ever seen—and, dry as it is, one of the most devastating in its implications."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: "The New Yorker" David Remnick added that while it was "not the most entertaining film of the year ... it might be the most important" and a "brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hellbent path to global suicide."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: "The New York Times" reviewer A.O. Scott thought the film was "edited crisply enough to keep it from feeling like 90 minutes of C-SPAN and shaped to give Mr. Gore's argument a real sense of drama," and "as unsettling as it can be," Scott continued, "it is also intellectually exhilarating, and, like any good piece of pedagogy, whets the appetite for further study."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: "Bright Lights Film Journal" critic Jayson Harsin declared the film's aesthetic qualities groundbreaking, as a new genre of slideshow film.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: NASA climatologist James Hansen described the film as powerful, complemented by detail in the book. Hansen said that "Gore has put together a coherent account of a complex topic that Americans desperately need to understand. The story is scientifically accurate and yet should be understandable to the public, a public that is less and less drawn to science." He added that with "An Inconvenient Truth", "Al Gore may have done for global warming what "Silent Spring" did for pesticides. He will be attacked, but the public will have the information needed to distinguish our long-term well-being from short-term special interests."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: In "extensive exit polling" of "An Inconvenient Truth" in "conservative suburban markets like Plano and Irvine (Orange County), as well as Dallas and Long Island", 92 percent rated "Truth" highly and 87 percent of the respondents said they'd recommend the film to a friend. University of Washington professor Michele Poff argued that Gore was successful in communicating to conservative-leaning audiences by framing the climate crisis as apolitical. "Gore's and the environment's identification with the Democratic Party posed a significant challenge to reaching Republicans and conservatives, as well as those disgruntled with politics in general," Poff wrote. "To appeal to such individuals, Gore framed the matter as distinctly apolitical – as an issue both outside politics and one that was crucial regardless of one's ideological leanings. These explicit attempts to frame the issue as apolitical take on further gravitas when we consider how Gore infused the film with reflections of conservative values. Indeed, Gore reached deeply into the value structure of American conservatives to highlight ideals that suggested his cause was not liberal, but rather was beyond politics, beyond ideology."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: A small number of reviews criticized the film on scientific and political grounds. Journalist Ronald Bailey argued in the libertarian magazine "Reason" that although "Gore gets [the science] more right than wrong," he exaggerates the risks. MIT atmospheric physicist Richard S. Lindzen was vocally critical of the film, writing in a June 26, 2006 op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal" that Gore was using a biased presentation to exploit the fears of the public for his own political gain.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: A few other reviewers were also skeptical of Gore's intent, wondering whether he was setting himself for another Presidential run. "The Boston Globe" writer Peter Canellos criticized the "gauzy biographical material that seems to have been culled from old Gore campaign commercials."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Phil Hall of "Film Threat" gave the film a negative review, saying ""An Inconvenient Truth" is something you rarely see in movies today: a blatant intellectual fraud."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Others felt that Gore did not go far enough in depicting the threat Indigenous peoples faced with the dire consequences of climate change. ""An Inconvenient Truth" completely ignores the plight of Arctic indigenous peoples whose cultures and landscapes are facing profound changes produced by melting polar ice," argued environmental historian Finis Dunaway.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: "An Inconvenient Truth" has received many different awards worldwide. The film won two awards at the 79th Academy Awards: Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song for Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up". It is the first documentary to win 2 Oscars and the first to win a best original song Oscar. After winning the 2007 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, the Oscar was awarded to director Guggenheim, who asked Gore to join him and other members of the crew on stage. Gore then gave a brief speech, saying:


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: For Gore's wide-reaching efforts to draw the world's attention to the dangers of global warming which is centerpieced in the film, Al Gore, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Gore also received the Prince of Asturias Prize in 2007 for international cooperation. The related album, which featured the voices of Beau Bridges, Cynthia Nixon and Blair Underwood, also won Best Spoken Word Album at the 51st Grammy Awards.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The film received numerous other accolades, including a special recognition from the Humanitas Prize, the first time the organization had handed out a Special Award in over 10 years, the 2007 Stanley Kramer Award from The Producers Guild of America, which recognizes "work that dramatically illustrates provocative social issues" and the President's Award 2007 from the Society for Technical Communication "for demonstrating that effective and understandable technical communication, when coupled with passion and vision, has the power to educate—and change—the world."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The documentary has been generally well-received politically in many parts of the world and is credited for raising further awareness of global warming internationally. The film inspired producer Kevin Wall to conceive the 2007 "Live Earth" festival and influenced Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli to write an operatic adaptation, entitled "CO2," premiering at La Scala in Milan in 2015.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: According to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", in response to the documentary, "Pro-industry conservative politicians and their supporters (many of whom saw global warming as a hoax designed to bilk taxpayers out of their money) lined up on one side, while scientists and more-liberal politicians (who pressed that global warming was among the most important issues humanity would face) teamed up on the other.", adding that "Most remember the film as part motivational science lecture with slick graphics and part self-reflection."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Following the film, Gore founded The Climate Reality Project in 2006 which trained 1,000 activists to give Gore's presentation in their communities. Presently, the group has 3,500 presenters worldwide. An additional initiative was launched in 2010, called "Inconvenient Youth". "'Inconvenient Youth' is built on the belief that teens can help lead efforts to solve the climate crisis," said Gore. The project was inspired by Mary Doerr, a 16-year-old who trained as presenter for the organization.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: University of Scranton professor Jessica Nolan found in a 2010 study published for "Environment and Behavior" that people became more informed and concerned about climate change right after seeing the film but that these concerns didn't translate into changed behavior a month later. On the contrary, in a 2011 paper published in the "Journal of Environmental Economics and Management", University of Oregon professor Grant Jacobsen found in the two months following the release of the film, zip codes within a 10-mile (16 km) radius of a zip code where the film was shown experienced a 50 percent relative increase in the purchase of voluntary carbon offsets.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: In a July 2007 47-country Internet survey conducted by The Nielsen Company and Oxford University, 66% of those respondents who said they had seen "An Inconvenient Truth" stated that it had "changed their mind" about global warming and 89% said it had made them more aware of the problem. Three out of four (74%) said they had changed some of their habits because of seeing the film.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Then-President George W. Bush, when asked whether he would watch the film, responded: "Doubt it." "New technologies will change how we live and how we drive our cars, which all will have the beneficial effect of improving the environment," Bush said. "And in my judgment we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and at the same time protect the environment". Gore responded that "The entire global scientific community has a consensus on the question that human beings are responsible for global warming and he [Bush] has today again expressed personal doubt that that is true." White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino stated that "The president noted in 2001 the increase in temperatures over the past 100 years and that the increase in greenhouse gases was due to a certain extent to human activity".


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Several United States Senators screened the film. New Mexico Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman and Nevada Democratic Senator Harry Reid saw the movie at its Washington premiere at the National Geographic Society. New Mexico Democratic Senator Tom Udall planned to see the film saying "It's such a powerful statement because of the way the movie is put together, I tell everybody, Democrat or Republican, they've got to go see this movie." Former New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici thought Gore's prominence on the global warming issue made it more difficult to get a consensus in Congress. Bingaman disputed this saying, "It seems to me we were having great difficulty recruiting Republican members of Congress to support a bill before Al Gore came up with this movie."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Oklahoma Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, then-chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, didn't plan to see the film (which he appears in), and compared it to Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf". "If you say the same lie over and over again, and particularly if you have the media's support, people will believe it," Inhofe said, adding that he thought Gore was trying to use the issue to run for president again in 2008. In contrast to Inhofe, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, did not criticize Gore's efforts or the movie, which he planned to see. Tennessee Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, said "Because (Gore) was a former vice president and presidential nominee, he brings a lot of visibility to (the issue)," Alexander said. "On the other hand it may be seen as political by some, and they may be less eager to be a part of it." Alexander also criticized the omission of nuclear power in the film. "Maybe it needs a sequel: 'An Inconvenient Truth 2: Nuclear Power.'"


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: In September 2006, Gore traveled to Sydney, Australia to promote the film. Then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he would not meet with Gore or agree to Kyoto because of the movie: "I don't take policy advice from films." Former Opposition Leader Kim Beazley joined Gore for a viewing and other MPs attended a special screening at Parliament House earlier in the week. After winning the general election a year later, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ratified Kyoto in his first week of office, leaving the United States the only industrialized nation in the world not to have signed the treaty.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: In the United Kingdom, Conservative party leader and future Prime Minister David Cameron urged people to watch the film in order to understand climate change. In Belgium, activist Margaretha Guidone persuaded the entire Belgian government to see the film.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: 200 politicians and political staff accepted her invitation, among whom were Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt and Minister-President of Flanders, Yves Leterme. In Costa Rica, the film was screened by president Óscar Arias. Arias's subsequent championing of the climate change issue was greatly influenced by the film.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The Competitive Enterprise Institute released pro-carbon dioxide television ads in preparation for the film's release in May 2006. The ads featured a little girl blowing a dandelion with the tagline, "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: In August 2006, "The Wall Street Journal" revealed that a YouTube video lampooning Gore and the movie, titled "Al Gore's Penguin Army", appeared to be "astroturfing" by DCI Group, a Washington public relations firm.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Several colleges and high schools have featured the film in science curricula. In Germany, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel bought 6,000 DVDs of "An Inconvenient Truth" to make it available to German schools. Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero distributed 30000 copies to the Spanish schools in October 2007. In Burlington, Ontario, Canada, the Halton District School Board made "An Inconvenient Truth" available at schools and as an educational resource.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: As part of a nationwide "Sustainable Schools Year of Action" launched in late 2006, the UK Government, Welsh Assembly Government and Scottish Executive announced between January–March 2007 that copies of "An Inconvenient Truth" would be sent to all their secondary schools. The film was placed into the science curriculum for fourth and sixth-year students in Scotland as a joint initiative between Learning and Teaching Scotland and ScottishPower.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: In May 2007, Stewart Dimmock—a school governor from Kent, England and member of the right-wing New Party—challenged the UK Government's distribution of the film in a lawsuit, "Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education and Skills", with help from political ally and New Party founder Viscount Monckton, who notably pointed out "35 serious scientific errors". The plaintiffs sought an injunction preventing the screening of the film in English schools, arguing that by law schools are forbidden to promote partisan political views and, when dealing with political issues, are required to provide a balanced presentation of opposing views.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: On October 10, 2007, High Court Justice Michael Burton, after explaining that the requirement for a balanced presentation does not warrant that equal weight be given to alternative views of a mainstream view, ruled that it was clear that the film was substantially founded upon scientific research and fact, albeit that the science had been used, in the hands of a "talented politician and communicator", to make a political statement and to support a political program. The judge ruled that "An Inconvenient Truth" contained nine scientific errors and thus must be accompanied by an explanation of those errors before being shown to school children. The judge said that showing the film without the explanations of error would be a violation of education laws.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: The judge concluded "I have no doubt that Dr Stott, the Defendant's expert, is right when he says that: 'Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate.'" On the basis of testimony from Robert M. Carter and the arguments put forth by the claimant's lawyers, the judge also pointed to nine "errors", i.e. statements the truth of which he did not rule on, but that he found to depart from the mainstream scientific positions on global warming. He also found that some of these departures from the mainstream arose in the context of alarmism and exaggeration in support of political theses. Since the government had already accepted to amend the guidance notes to address these along with other points in a fashion that the judge found satisfactory, no order was made on the application.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Government Minister of Children, Young People and Families, Kevin Brennan stated: "We have updated the accompanying guidance, as requested by the judge to make it clearer for teachers as to the stated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change position on a number of scientific points raised in the film." Plaintiff Dimmock complained that "no amount of turgid guidance" could change his view that the film was unsuitable for the classroom.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: In January 2007, the Federal Way (Washington State) School Board voted to require an approval by the principal and the superintendent for teachers to show the film to students and that the teachers must include the presentation of an approved "opposing view". The moratorium was repealed, at a meeting on January 23, after a predominantly negative community reaction. Shortly thereafter, the school board in Yakima, Washington, calling the film a "controversial issue", prevented the Environmental Club of Eisenhower High School from showing it, pending review by the school board, teachers, principal, and parents. It lifted the stay a month later, upon the approval by a review panel.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: In the United States, 50,000 free copies of "An Inconvenient Truth" were offered to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), which declined to take them. Producer David provided an email correspondence from the NSTA detailing that their reasoning was that the DVDs would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters," and that they saw "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the free DVDs. In public, the NSTA argued that distributing this film to its members would have been contrary to a long-standing NSTA policy against distributing unsolicited materials to its members. The NSTA also said that they had offered several other options for distributing the film but ultimately "[it] appears that these alternative distribution mechanisms were unsatisfactory."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: David has said that NSTA Executive Director Gerry Wheeler promised in a telephone conversation to explore alternatives with NSTA's board for advertising the film but she had not yet received an alternative offer at the time of NSTA's public claim. She also said that she rejected their subsequent offers because they were nothing more than offers to sell their "commercially available member mailing list" and advertising space in their magazine and newsletter, which are available to anyone. The American Association for the Advancement of Science publication "ScienceNOW" published an assessment discussing both sides of the NSTA decision in which it was reported that "David says NSTA's imprimatur [i.e. endorsement or sanction] was essential and that buying a mailing list is a nonstarter. 'You don't want to send out a cold letter, and it costs a lot of money,' she says. 'There are a thousand reasons why that wouldn't work.'"


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: A "The Washington Post" editorial called the decision "Science "a la" Joe Camel", citing for example that the NSTA had received $6 million since 1996 from Exxon Mobil, which had a representative on the organization's corporate board. David noted that in the past, NSTA had shipped out 20,000 copies of a 10-part video produced by Wheeler with funding provided by ConocoPhillips in 2003. NSTA indicated that they retained editorial control over the content, which David questioned based on the point of view portrayed in the global warming section of the video.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Former ACT New Zealand Member of Parliament Muriel Newman filed a petition to have New Zealand schoolchildren be protected from political indoctrination by putting provisions that resembled those in the UK to the Education Act. The petition was in response to concerned parents who talked with Newman after "An Inconvenient Truth" was shown in schools in 2007. The parents were apparently worried that teachers were not pointing out supposed inaccuracies in the film and were not explaining differing viewpoints.


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: "An Inconvenient Truth" was scored by Michael Brook with an accompanying theme song played during the end credits by Melissa Etheridge. Brook explained that he wanted to bring out the emotion expressed in the film: "... in An Inconvenient Truth, there's a lot of information and it's kind of a lecture, in a way, and very well organized and very well presented, but it's a lot to absorb. And the director, Guggenheim, wanted to have – sort of give people a little break every once in a while and say, okay, you don't have to absorb this information, you can just sort of – and it was more the personal side of Al Gore's life or how it connected to the theme of the film. And that's when there's music."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: Etheridge agreed to write "An Inconvenient Truth" theme song, "I Need to Wake Up" after viewing Gore's slide show. "I was so honored he would ask me to contribute to a project that is so powerful and so important, I felt such a huge responsibility," she said. "Then I went, 'What am I going to write? What am I going to say?' " Etheridge's former partner, Tammy Lynn Michaels, told her: "Write what you feel, because that's what people are going to feel." Of Etheridge's commitment to the project, Gore said, "Melissa is a rare soul who gives a lot of time and effort to causes in which she strongly believes." Etheridge received the 2006 Academy Award for Best Original Song for "I Need to Wake Up." Upon receiving the award, she noted in her acceptance speech:


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: When asked during a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" in October 2013 whether there were plans for a follow-up film, Guggenheim said, "I think about it a lot – I think we need one right now." In 2014, "The Hollywood Reporter" reported that the producers of the film were in talks over a possible sequel. "We have had conversations," co-producer Bender said. "We've met; we've discussed. If we are going to make a movie, we want it to have an impact." Co-producer David also believed a sequel was needed. "God, do we need one," David said. "Everything in that movie has come to pass. At the time we did the movie, there was Hurricane Katrina; now we have extreme weather events every other week. The update has to be incredible and shocking."


title: An Inconvenient Truth

text: In December 2016, Al Gore announced that a follow-up to "An Inconvenient Truth" would open at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. The film was screened in the "Climate" section, a new section for films featuring themes of climate and the environment. It was released by Paramount on July 28, 2017.


title: Nate Burleson

text: Nathaniel Eugene Burleson (born August 19, 1981) is a Canadian-born television host, American football commentator, and former wide receiver. He played college football for the University of Nevada, Reno and was drafted into the National Football League (NFL) by the Minnesota Vikings in the third round of the 2003 NFL Draft. Burleson was also a member of the Seattle Seahawks and Detroit Lions.


title: Nate Burleson

text: Burleson is now at Paramount (formerly ViacomCBS), co-hosting "CBS Mornings" and covering football for CBS on its "The NFL Today" program, as well as on Nickelodeon. He previously co-hosted "Good Morning Football" on NFL Network, along with being a New York correspondent for the entertainment news program "Extra". He has been featured on several rap songs under the name New Balance.


title: Nate Burleson

text: Burleson was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. At the time his father, Al Burleson, was playing defensive back for the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League (CFL). He was born into a prolific and tight-knit sporting family. His oldest brother, Alvin Jr., played college football for the University of Washington Huskies and the Western Illinois University Leathernecks. Another older brother, Kevin played professional basketball and was formerly a point guard for the Charlotte Bobcats of the National Basketball Association (NBA). His younger brother Lyndale played college basketball for the University of Nevada Wolf Pack. Kevin and Nate Burleson are one of only two sibling duos in which one brother played in the NBA while the other played in the NFL. As a mark of his father's influence, Nate Burleson's jersey number on the Seattle Seahawks, 81, was his father's high school number.


title: Nate Burleson

text: In 1983, his father signed with the Los Angeles Express of the United States Football League (USFL), moving the family back to the United States. However, Burleson remains proud of his Canadian heritage, sporting a maple leaf tattoo and expressing interest in playing for Canada in a World Cup of football to the media. After an injury ended Alvin Burleson's playing career, he moved the family to his hometown of Seattle, Washington, U.S., where he worked for Associated Grocers. Nate Burleson attended Rainier View Elementary School in Seattle. He attended Lindbergh High School in the suburb of Renton as a freshman, and then transferred to O'Dea High School in Seattle, where he graduated. As a senior, he was named "Seattle Times" City Athlete of the Year.


title: Nate Burleson

text: Burleson was also on the school's track and field team, competing as a sprinter and hurdler. He won the state title in the 300-meter hurdles with a time of 38.70 seconds in 1999, and finished eighth in 110-meter hurdles as junior.


title: Nate Burleson

text: Burleson hoped to attend the University of Washington, his father's alma mater, but was not offered a football scholarship. Instead he accepted a scholarship offer from the University of Nevada, Reno and played for the Nevada Wolf Pack. In the 2002 season, he made 138 receptions, the second highest in NCAA history. His senior year, he led the NCAA in both receiving yards and in receptions per game. During his time at Nevada he made a total of 248 receptions for a total of 3,293 yards and 22 touchdowns. He was named first-team All-America by the American Football Coaches Association, All-WAC by the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), and team MVP, and was named second-team All-America by "The Sporting News" and CNN/SI. He currently holds the WAC and Nevada all-time records for single game receptions with 19 catches. He graduated with a degree in human development and family studies.


title: Nate Burleson

text: Burleson was selected in the third round of the 2003 NFL Draft by the Minnesota Vikings, the 71st overall pick. Despite showing promise, Burleson did not put up strong numbers during his rookie season. In his second season, 2004, an injury to fellow receiver Randy Moss opened up opportunity for Burleson as he became the team's number one receiver. Burleson put up strong numbers, reaching over 1,000 receiving yards for the first time in his career. Not only a good receiver, but also a standout special teams player, Burleson is the only player in NFL history to have three punt returns of 90 or more yards.


title: Nate Burleson

text: On March 24, 2006, Burleson signed a seven-year $49 million offer sheet to play with his hometown Seattle Seahawks. In retribution for the Vikings signing an offer sheet with former Seahawks guard Steve Hutchinson, the Seahawks put clauses in Burleson's offer sheet which made it virtually impossible for Minnesota to match (similar to what the Vikings did with Hutchinson). The offer sheet stated that the entire $49 million would be guaranteed if Burleson played five games, in one season, in the state of Minnesota, or if his average per year exceeded the average of all running backs on the team combined. The Vikings played eight home games a year in Minneapolis, and at the time of the offer sheet, the team spent far less than $7 million per year for its entire running back corps. On the other hand, Seattle was spending over $7 million a year on just one of its running backs (Shaun Alexander). The Vikings had seven days to match the offer sheet but declined to do so. Minnesota received Seattle's third-round pick in the 2006 NFL Draft; Seattle, however, received no compensation for the departure of Hutchinson. On September 7, 2008, Burleson tore a ligament in his knee in Seattle's season opener against the Bills. He was put on injured reserve for the remainder of the season.


title: Nate Burleson

text: Burleson owns the Seahawk team record for most punt return yards in a single season (2007) as well as career punt return yards.


title: Nate Burleson

text: During the early hours of the NFL free agency period on March 5, 2010, Burleson agreed to a five-year $25 million contract with the Detroit Lions. Burleson reunited with his former offensive coordinator, Scott Linehan, with whom he had his best season of his career in 2004, when he caught 68 passes for 1,006 yards and nine touchdowns while playing for the Vikings. In 2011, Burleson was named recipient of the Detroit Lions-Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association/Pro Football Writers Association's Media-Friendly "Good Guy Award" for his interactions with the media in. On September 24, 2013, Burleson fractured his forearm in two places in an early morning, single-car crash. It was reported that Burleson was attempting to save a pizza from falling off a seat in his car and lost control of his vehicle. He was cut from the Lions on February 13, 2014.


title: Nate Burleson

text: On April 6, 2014, Burleson signed a one-year deal with the Cleveland Browns, but was cut on August 30.


title: Nate Burleson

text: Burleson attended a Broadcast Boot Camp put on by the NFL in 2012. After his playing career ended in 2014, he began working as an analyst for the NFL Network. In 2015, Burleson was also a member of the Detroit Lions preseason broadcast team as a color commentator for the Detroit Lions Television Network. In 2016, "Good Morning Football" debuted on NFL Network with Burleson, Kay Adams, Kyle Brandt, and Peter Schrager as co-hosts. Burleson joined the "NFL on CBS" team as a studio analyst for "The NFL Today" for the 2017 season, while still serving as co-host of "Good Morning Football". He is a two-time Sports Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Studio Analyst (2021 and 2022).


title: Nate Burleson

text: Burleson expanded his work with CBS and its sister properties in 2021, first as the color commentator for the NFL Wild Card game airing on Nickelodeon then as host for the of "" reunion show on Paramount+. By August, CBS had named Burleson a co-anchor for "CBS Mornings", a retooling of "CBS This Morning", alongside Gayle King and Tony Dokoupil. He also continued with Nickelodeon as a host of its new weekly highlights show "NFL Slimetime" and reteam with Noah Eagle and Gabrielle Nevaeh Green on the network's 2022 Wild Card broadcast.


title: Nate Burleson

text: Burleson and his wife Atoya have two sons and a daughter, Mia, who appears on "NFL Slimetime" as a contributor.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: The Brady Bunch Movie is a 1995 American comedy film that parodies the 1969–1974 television series "The Brady Bunch". The film was directed by Betty Thomas, with a screenplay by Laurice Elehwany, Rick Copp, and Bonnie and Terry Turner, and stars Shelley Long, Gary Cole, and Michael McKean. It also features cameos from Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and RuPaul, along with some of the original cast of "The Brady Bunch" in small roles. The film places the original sitcom characters, with their 1970s fashion sense and sitcom family morality, in a contemporary 1990s setting, drawing humor from the resulting culture clash.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: "The Brady Bunch Movie" was released in the United States on February 17, 1995, and grossed $54 million. A sequel titled "A Very Brady Sequel" was released on August 23, 1996, and a television film titled "The Brady Bunch in the White House" was aired on November 29, 2002.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: Larry Dittmeyer, an unscrupulous real estate developer, explains to his supervisor that almost all the families in his neighborhood — except for the Brady family — have agreed to sell their property as part of a plan to turn the area into a shopping mall.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: At the Bradys' house, Mike and Carol are having breakfast prepared by their housekeeper, Alice, while the six children prepare for school. Jan is jealous of her elder, popular sister Marcia. Cindy is tattling about everything she's hearing. Greg is dreaming of becoming a singer (but sings folk songs more appropriate to the seventies). Peter is beginning puberty with his voice starting to break and the numerous titillations he is exposed to, notably sex education and his very attractive teacher Miss Linley. He is also trying to win the affection of the girl he loves, Holly, but his shy and awkward personality prevents him from doing so, or so he thinks. Bobby is excited about his new role as hall monitor at school.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: Cindy gives Mike and Carol a tax delinquency notice (which was earlier mistakenly delivered to the Dittmeyers) stating that they face foreclosure on their house if they do not pay $20,000 in back taxes. The two initially ignore the crisis, but when Mike's architectural design (which is exactly the same as their house) is turned down by two potential clients, he tells Carol that they may have to sell the house.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: Cindy overhears this and tells her siblings and they look for work to raise money to save the house, but their earnings are nowhere near enough to reach the required sum. Mike manages to sell a Japanese company on one of his dated designs, thereby securing the money, only for Larry to sabotage it by claiming that Mike's last building collapsed.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: On the night before the Bradys have to move out, Marcia suggests that they enter a "Search for the Stars" contest, the prize of which is exactly $20,000. Jan, having originally suggested this and been rejected, runs away from home. Cindy sees her leave and tattles, and the whole family goes on a search for her. They use their car's citizens' band radio, and their transmission is heard by Schultzy (Ann B. Davis), a long-haul trucker who picks up Jan and convinces her to return home.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: The next day, the children join the "Search for the Stars" contest. Peter finally builds the confidence to stand up to Eric Dittmeyer, Peter's tormentor and Holly's boyfriend. This earns him a kiss from Holly, which gives him a deep masculine voice. The children's dated performance receives a poor audience response compared to the more modern performances of other bands. However, the judges — Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, and Peter Tork of The Monkees — vote for them, and they win the contest as a result. The tax bill is paid, and their neighbors withdraw their homes from the market, foiling Larry's plan and securing the neighborhood.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: Later, Carol's mother arrives and finally convinces Jan to stop being jealous of Marcia, only for Cindy to start feeling jealous of Jan.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: The film was shot almost entirely in Los Angeles, California, with the Brady house being located in Sherman Oaks. The school scenes were shot at Taft High School in Woodland Hills. Some scenes were filmed at Bowcraft amusement park in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: The producers had sought to film the original house that had been used for exterior shots during the original "Brady Bunch" series, but its appearance had been seriously altered since 1969. The filmmakers instead erected a facade around a house in nearby Encino and filmed scenes in the front yard.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: "The Brady Bunch Movie" was released in theaters on February 17, 1995. The film opened at number 1 at the US box office with $14.8 million in its opening four-day weekend and went on to gross $46.6 million in the U.S. and Canada. Internationally, it only grossed $7.5 million for a worldwide total of $54.1 million. "The Brady Bunch Movie" was released on DVD June 10, 2003 and April 25, 2017. The film has also been released digitally on Google Play.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 63% approval rating based on 43 reviews and an average rating of 5.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads "Though lightweight and silly, "The Brady Bunch Movie" still charms as homage to the 70s sitcom."


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: Leonard Klady of "Variety" wrote "For five years back in the early 1970s, U.S. TV homes were in the thrall of "The Brady Bunch". Two decades after their small-screen demise, the clean-cut crew is back in mythic form as "The Brady Bunch Movie". Part homage, part spoof, the deft balancing act is a clever adaptation—albeit culled from less than pedigreed source material."


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" wrote "The film establishes a bland, reassuring, comforting Brady reality – a certain muted tone that works just fine but needs, I think, a bleaker contrast from outside to fully exploit the humor. "The Brady Bunch Movie" is rated PG-13, which is a compromise: The Bradys themselves live in a PG universe, and the movie would have been funnier if when they ventured outside it was obviously Wayne's World." He and Gene Siskel also agreed that the film offers charmingly bright and silly set decoration but fails to deliver genuine laughs.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: Common Sense Media said that "for those who grew up watching the TV show, "The Brady Bunch Movie" is deeply satisfying and the best part is its nostalgia. Sure, it's fun to see the Bradys treated as freaks. But the heart of the film is a campy, affectionate interpretation of the TV show."


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: "A Very Brady Sequel", directed by Arlene Sanford, was released theatrically on August 23, 1996. It sees the family routine thrown into disarray when a man claiming to be Carol's long-lost first husband arrives on their doorstep. The family must then follow Carol to Hawaii in order to set things straight. All of the main cast members reprised their roles.


title: The Brady Bunch Movie

text: The second sequel, "The Brady Bunch in the White House", sees a convoluted series of mishaps end with Mike and Carol Brady elected as President and Vice President of the United States. Despite innocent efforts to improve the country, the Brady family is beset on all sides by controversy and imagined scandals which threaten to tear them apart. Although the original actors for Mike and Carol return, the children and Alice are all recast for this film, which was released as a filmed-for-television movie.


The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading. It was first performed in 2000 and then repeated every three years. Its aim is to provide comparable data with a view to enabling countries to improve their education policies and outcomes. It measures problem solving and cognition.


title: Programme for International Student Assessment

text: PISA, and similar international standardised assessments of educational attainment are increasingly used in the process of education policymaking at both national and international levels.


text: PISA was conceived to set in a wider context the information provided by national monitoring of education system performance through regular assessments within a common, internationally agreed framework; by investigating relationships between student learning and other factors they can "offer insights into sources of variation in performances within and between countries".


text: Until the 1990s, few European countries used national tests. In the 1990s, ten countries / regions introduced standardised assessment, and since the early 2000s, ten more followed suit. By 2009, only five European education systems had no national student assessments.


text: The impact of these international standardised assessments in the field of educational policy has been significant, in terms of the creation of "new knowledge", changes in "assessment policy", and "external influence over national educational policy" more broadly.


text: Data from international standardised assessments can be useful in research on causal factors within or across education systems. Mons notes that the databases generated by large-scale international assessments have made it possible to carry out inventories and comparisons of education systems on an unprecedented scale* on themes ranging from the conditions for learning mathematics and reading, to institutional autonomy and admissions policies. They allow typologies to be developed that can be used for comparative statistical analyses of education performance indicators, thereby identifying the consequences of different policy choices. They have generated new knowledge about education: PISA findings have challenged deeply embedded educational practices, such as the early tracking of students into vocational or academic pathways.


text: Barroso and de Carvalho find that PISA provides a common reference connecting academic research in education and the political realm of public policy, operating as a mediator between different strands of knowledge from the realm of education and public policy. However, although the key findings from comparative assessments are widely shared in the research community the knowledge they create does not necessarily fit with government reform agendas; this leads to some inappropriate uses of assessment data.


text: Emerging research suggests that international standardised assessments are having an impact on national assessment policy and practice. PISA is being integrated into national policies and practices on assessment, evaluation, curriculum standards and performance targets; its assessment frameworks and instruments are being used as best-practice models for improving national assessments; many countries have explicitly incorporated and emphasise PISA-like competencies in revised national standards and curricula; others use PISA data to complement national data and validate national results against an international benchmark.


text: More important than its influence on countries' policy of student assessment, is the range of ways in which PISA is influencing countries education policy choices.


text: Policy-makers in most participating countries see PISA as an important indicator of system performance; PISA reports can define policy problems and set the agenda for national policy debate; policymakers seem to accept PISA as a valid and reliable instrument for internationally benchmarking system performance and changes over time; most countries—irrespective of whether they performed above, at, or below the average PISA score—have begun policy reforms in response to PISA reports.


text: Against this, impact on national education systems varies markedly. For example, in Germany, the results of the first PISA assessment caused the so-called 'PISA shock': a questioning of previously accepted educational policies; in a state marked by jealously guarded regional policy differences, it led ultimately to an agreement by all Länder to introduce common national standards and even an institutionalised structure to ensure that they were observed. In Hungary, by comparison, which shared similar conditions to Germany, PISA results have not led to significant changes in educational policy.


text: Because many countries have set national performance targets based on their relative rank or absolute PISA score, PISA assessments have increased the influence of their (non-elected) commissioning body, the OECD, as an international education monitor and policy actor, which implies an important degree of 'policy transfer' from the international to the national level; PISA in particular is having "an influential normative effect on the direction of national education policies". Thus, it is argued that the use of international standardised assessments has led to a shift towards international, external accountability for national system performance; Rey contends that PISA surveys, portrayed as objective, third-party diagnoses of education systems, actually serve to promote specific orientations on educational issues.


text: National policy actors refer to high-performing PISA countries to "help legitimise and justify their intended reform agenda within contested national policy debates". PISA data can be "used to fuel long-standing debates around pre-existing conflicts or rivalries between different policy options, such as in the French Community of Belgium". In such instances, PISA assessment data are used selectively: in public discourse governments often only use superficial features of PISA surveys such as country rankings and not the more detailed analyses. Rey (2010:145, citing Greger, 2008) notes that often the real results of PISA assessments are ignored as policymakers selectively refer to data in order to legitimise policies introduced for other reasons.


text: In addition, PISA's international comparisons can be used to justify reforms with which the data themselves have no connection; in Portugal, for example, PISA data were used to justify new arrangements for teacher assessment (based on inferences that were not justified by the assessments and data themselves); they also fed the government's discourse about the issue of pupils repeating a year, (which, according to research, fails to improve student results). In Finland, the country's PISA results (that are in other countries deemed to be excellent) were used by Ministers to promote new policies for 'gifted' students. Such uses and interpretations often assume causal relationships that cannot legitimately be based upon PISA data which would normally require fuller investigation through qualitative in-depth studies and longitudinal surveys based on mixed quantitative and qualitative methods, which politicians are often reluctant to fund.


text: Recent decades have witnessed an expansion in the uses of PISA and similar assessments, from assessing students' learning, to connecting "the educational realm (their traditional remit) with the political realm". This raises the question of whether PISA data are sufficiently robust to bear the weight of the major policy decisions that are being based upon them, for, according to Breakspear, PISA data have "come to increasingly shape, define and evaluate the key goals of the national / federal education system". This implies that those who set the PISA tests – e.g. in choosing the content to be assessed and not assessed – are in a position of considerable power to set the terms of the education debate, and to orient educational reform in many countries around the globe.


text: PISA stands in a tradition of international school studies, undertaken since the late 1950s by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Much of PISA's methodology follows the example of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS, started in 1995), which in turn was much influenced by the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The reading component of PISA is inspired by the IEA's Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).


text: PISA aims to test literacy the competence of students in three fields: reading, mathematics, science on an indefinite scale.


text: The PISA mathematics literacy test asks students to apply their mathematical knowledge to solve problems set in real-world contexts. To solve the problems students must activate a number of mathematical competencies as well as a broad range of mathematical content knowledge. TIMSS, on the other hand, measures more traditional classroom content such as an understanding of fractions and decimals and the relationship between them (curriculum attainment). PISA claims to measure education's application to real-life problems and lifelong learning (workforce knowledge).


text: In the reading test, "OECD/PISA does not measure the extent to which 15-year-old students are fluent readers or how competent they are at word recognition tasks or spelling." Instead, they should be able to "construct, extend and reflect on the meaning of what they have read across a wide range of continuous and non-continuous texts."


text: PISA also assesses students in innovative domains. In 2012 and 2015 in addition to reading, mathematics and science, they were tested in collaborative problem solving. In 2018 the additional innovative domain was global competence.


text: The students tested by PISA are aged between 15 years and 3 months and 16 years and 2 months at the beginning of the assessment period. The school year pupils are in is not taken into consideration. Only students at school are tested, not home-schoolers. In PISA 2006, however, several countries also used a grade-based sample of students. This made it possible to study how age and school year interact.


text: To fulfill OECD requirements, each country must draw a sample of at least 5,000 students. In small countries like Iceland and Luxembourg, where there are fewer than 5,000 students per year, an entire age cohort is tested. Some countries used much larger samples than required to allow comparisons between regions.


text: Each student takes a two-hour computer based test. Part of the test is multiple-choice and part involves fuller answers. There are six and a half hours of assessment material, but each student is not tested on all the parts. Following the cognitive test, participating students spend nearly one more hour answering a questionnaire on their background including learning habits, motivation, and family. School directors fill in a questionnaire describing school demographics, funding, etc. In 2012 the participants were, for the first time in the history of large-scale testing and assessments, offered a new type of problem, i.e. interactive (complex) problems requiring exploration of a novel virtual device.


text: Germany does this in a very extensive way: On the day following the international test, students take a national test called PISA-E (E=Ergänzung=complement). Test items of PISA-E are closer to TIMSS than to PISA. While only about 5,000 German students participate in the international and the national test, another 45,000 take the national test only. This large sample is needed to allow an analysis by federal states. Following a clash about the interpretation of 2006 results, the OECD warned Germany that it might withdraw the right to use the "PISA" label for national tests.


text: From the beginning, PISA has been designed with one particular method of data analysis in mind. Since students work on different test booklets, raw scores must be 'scaled' to allow meaningful comparisons. Scores are thus scaled so that the OECD average in each domain (mathematics, reading and science) is 500 and the standard deviation is 100. This is true only for the initial PISA cycle when the scale was first introduced, though, subsequent cycles are linked to the previous cycles through IRT scale linking methods.


text: This generation of proficiency estimates is done using a latent regression extension of the Rasch model, a model of item response theory (IRT), also known as conditioning model or population model. The proficiency estimates are provided in the form of so-called plausible values, which allow unbiased estimates of differences between groups. The latent regression, together with the use of a Gaussian prior probability distribution of student competencies allows estimation of the proficiency distributions of groups of participating students. The scaling and conditioning procedures are described in nearly identical terms in the Technical Reports of PISA 2000, 2003, 2006. NAEP and TIMSS use similar scaling methods.


text: All PISA results are tabulated by country; recent PISA cycles have separate provincial or regional results for some countries. Most public attention concentrates on just one outcome: the mean scores of countries and their rankings of countries against one another. In the official reports, however, country-by-country rankings are given not as simple league tables but as cross tables indicating for each pair of countries whether or not mean score differences are statistically significant (unlikely to be due to random fluctuations in student sampling or in item functioning). In favorable cases, a difference of 9 points is sufficient to be considered significant.


text: PISA never combines mathematics, science and reading domain scores into an overall score. However, commentators have sometimes combined test results from all three domains into an overall country ranking. Such meta-analysis is not endorsed by the OECD, although official summaries sometimes use scores from a testing cycle's principal domain as a proxy for overall student ability.


text: The results of PISA 2018 were presented on 3 December 2019, which included data for around 600,000 participating students in 79 countries and economies, with China's economic area of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang emerging as the top performer in all categories. Note that this does not represent the entirety of mainland China. Reading results for Spain were not released due to perceived anomalies.


text: China's participation in the 2012 test was limited to Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau as separate entities. In 2012, Shanghai participated for the second time, again topping the rankings in all three subjects, as well as improving scores in the subjects compared to the 2009 tests. Shanghai's score of 613 in mathematics was 113 points above the average score, putting the performance of Shanghai pupils about 3 school years ahead of pupils in average countries. Educational experts debated to what degree this result reflected the quality of the general educational system in China, pointing out that Shanghai has greater wealth and better-paid teachers than the rest of China. Hong Kong placed second in reading and science and third in maths.


text: Andreas Schleicher, PISA division head and co-ordinator, stated that PISA tests administered in rural China have produced some results approaching the OECD average. Citing further as-yet-unpublished OECD research, he said, "We have actually done Pisa in 12 of the provinces in China. Even in some of the very poor areas you get performance close to the OECD average." Schleicher believes that China has also expanded school access and has moved away from learning by rote, performing well in both rote-based and broader assessments.


text: In 2018 the Chinese provinces that participated were Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. In 2015, the participating provinces were Jiangsu, Guangdong, Beijing, and Shanghai. The 2015 Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Guangdong cohort scored a median 518 in science in 2015, while the 2012 Shanghai cohort scored a median 580.


text: Critics of PISA counter that in Shanghai and other Chinese cities, most children of migrant workers can only attend city schools up to the ninth grade, and must return to their parents' hometowns for high school due to hukou restrictions, thus skewing the composition of the city's high school students in favor of wealthier local families. A population chart of Shanghai reproduced in "The New York Times" shows a steep drop off in the number of 15-year-olds residing there. According to Schleicher, 27% of Shanghai's 15-year-olds are excluded from its school system (and hence from testing). As a result, the percentage of Shanghai's 15-year-olds tested by PISA was 73%, lower than the 89% tested in the US. Following the 2015 testing, OECD published in depth studies on the education systems of a selected few countries including China.


text: In 2014, Liz Truss, the British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Education, led a fact-finding visit to schools and teacher-training centres in Shanghai. Britain increased exchanges with Chinese teachers and schools to find out how to improve quality. In 2014, 60 teachers from Shanghai were invited to the UK to help share their teaching methods, support pupils who are struggling, and help to train other teachers. In 2016, Britain invited 120 Chinese teachers, planning to adopt Chinese styles of teaching in 8,000 aided schools. By 2019, approximately 5,000 of Britain's 16,000 primary schools had adopted the Shanghai's teaching methods. The performance of British schools in PISA improved after adopting China's teaching styles.


text: Finland, which received several top positions in the first tests, fell in all three subjects in 2012, but remained the best performing country overall in Europe, achieving their best result in science with 545 points (5th) and worst in mathematics with 519 (12th) in which the country was outperformed by four other European countries. The drop in mathematics was 25 points since 2003, the last time mathematics was the focus of the tests. For the first time Finnish girls outperformed boys in mathematics narrowly. It was also the first time pupils in Finnish-speaking schools did not perform better than pupils in Swedish-speaking schools. Minister of Education and Science Krista Kiuru expressed concern for the overall drop, as well as the fact that the number of low-performers had increased from 7% to 12%.


text: India participated in the 2009 round of testing but pulled out of the 2012 PISA testing, with the Indian government attributing its action to the unfairness of PISA testing to Indian students. The Indian Express reported, "The ministry (of education) has concluded that there was a socio-cultural disconnect between the questions and Indian students. The ministry will write to the OECD and drive home the need to factor in India's "socio-cultural milieu". India's participation in the next PISA cycle will hinge on this". The Indian Express also noted that "Considering that over 70 nations participate in PISA, it is uncertain whether an exception would be made for India".


text: A Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) committee as well as a group of secretaries on education constituted by the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi recommended that India should participate in PISA. Accordingly, in February 2017, the Ministry of Human Resource Development under Prakash Javadekar decided to end the boycott and participate in PISA from 2020. To address the socio-cultural disconnect between the test questions and students, it was reported that the OECD will update some questions. For example, the word avocado in a question may be replaced with a more popular Indian fruit such as mango.


text: In 2015, the results from Malaysia were found by the OECD to have not met the maximum response rate. Opposition politician Ong Kian Ming said the education ministry tried to oversample high-performing students in rich schools.


text: Sweden's result dropped in all three subjects in the 2012 test, which was a continuation of a trend from 2006 and 2009. It saw the sharpest fall in mathematics performance with a drop in score from 509 in 2003 to 478 in 2012. The score in reading showed a drop from 516 in 2000 to 483 in 2012. The country performed below the OECD average in all three subjects. The leader of the opposition, Social Democrat Stefan Löfven, described the situation as a national crisis. Along with the party's spokesperson on education, Ibrahim Baylan, he pointed to the downward trend in reading as most severe.


text: In 2020, Swedish newspaper Expressen revealed that Sweden had inflated their score in PISA 2018 by not conforming to OECD standards. According to professor Magnus Henrekson a large number of foreign-born students had not been tested. According to an article of Sveriges Radio, poor immigrant children's scores are a significant cause of the recent decrease in Swedish Pisa scores.


text: In the 2012 test, as in 2009, the result was slightly above average for the United Kingdom, with the science ranking being highest (20). England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland also participated as separated entities, showing the worst result for Wales which in mathematics was 43rd of the 65 countries and economies. Minister of Education in Wales Huw Lewis expressed disappointment in the results, said that there were no "quick fixes", but hoped that several educational reforms that have been implemented in the last few years would give better results in the next round of tests. The United Kingdom had a greater gap between high- and low-scoring students than the average. There was little difference between public and private schools when adjusted for socio-economic background of students. The gender difference in favour of girls was less than in most other countries, as was the difference between natives and immigrants.


text: Writing in the "Daily Telegraph", Ambrose Evans-Pritchard warned against putting too much emphasis on the UK's international ranking, arguing that an overfocus on scholarly performances in East Asia might have contributed to the area's low birthrate, which he argued could harm the economic performance in the future more than a good PISA score would outweigh.


text: In 2013, the "Times Educational Supplement" (TES) published an article, "Is PISA Fundamentally Flawed?" by William Stewart, detailing serious critiques of PISA's conceptual foundations and methods advanced by statisticians at major universities.


text: In the article, Professor Harvey Goldstein of the University of Bristol was quoted as saying that when the OECD tries to rule out questions suspected of bias, it can have the effect of "smoothing out" key differences between countries. "That is leaving out many of the important things," he warned. "They simply don't get commented on. What you are looking at is something that happens to be common. But (is it) worth looking at? PISA results are taken at face value as providing some sort of common standard across countries. But as soon as you begin to unpick it, I think that all falls apart."


text: Queen's University Belfast mathematician Dr. Hugh Morrison stated that he found the statistical model underlying PISA to contain a fundamental, insoluble mathematical error that renders Pisa rankings "valueless". Goldstein remarked that Dr. Morrison's objection highlights "an important technical issue" if not a "profound conceptual error". However, Goldstein cautioned that PISA has been "used inappropriately", contending that some of the blame for this "lies with PISA itself. I think it tends to say too much for what it can do and it tends not to publicise the negative or the weaker aspects." Professors Morrison and Goldstein expressed dismay at the OECD's response to criticism. Morrison said that when he first published his criticisms of PISA in 2004 and also personally queried several of the OECD's "senior people" about them, his points were met with "absolute silence" and have yet to be addressed. "I was amazed at how unforthcoming they were," he told TES. "That makes me suspicious." "Pisa steadfastly ignored many of these issues," he says. "I am still concerned."


text: Professor Svend Kreiner, of the University of Copenhagen, agreed: "One of the problems that everybody has with PISA is that they don't want to discuss things with people criticising or asking questions concerning the results. They didn't want to talk to me at all. I am sure it is because they can't defend themselves.


text: Since 2012 a few states have participated in the PISA tests as separate entities. Only the 2012 and 2015 results are available on a state basis. Puerto Rico participated in 2015 as a separate US entity as well.


text: Although PISA and TIMSS officials and researchers themselves generally refrain from hypothesizing about the large and stable differences in student achievement between countries, since 2000, literature on the differences in PISA and TIMSS results and their possible causes has emerged. Data from PISA have furnished several researchers, notably Eric Hanushek, Ludger Wößmann, Heiner Rindermann, and Stephen J. Ceci, with material for books and articles about the relationship between student achievement and economic development, democratization, and health; as well as the roles of such single educational factors as high-stakes exams, the presence or absence of private schools and the effects and timing of ability tracking.


text: David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge wrote: "Pisa does present the uncertainty in the scores and ranks - for example the United Kingdom rank in the 65 countries is said to be between 23 and 31. It's unwise for countries to base education policy on their Pisa results, as Germany, Norway and Denmark did after doing badly in 2001."


text: According to a Forbes opinion article, some countries such as China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Argentina select PISA samples from only the best-educated areas or from their top-performing students, slanting the results.


text: According to an open letter to Andreas Schleicher, director of PISA, various academics and educators argued that "OECD and Pisa tests are damaging education worldwide".


text: According to O Estado de São Paulo, Brazil shows a great disparity when classifying the results between public and private schools, where public schools would rank worse than Peru, while private schools would rank better than Finland.


title: Izanami

text: , formally known as , is the creator deity of both creation and death in Japanese mythology, as well as the Shinto mother goddess. She and her brother-husband Izanagi are the last of the seven generations of primordial deities that manifested after the formation of heaven and earth. Izanami and Izanagi are held to be the creators of the Japanese archipelago and the progenitors of many deities, which include the sun goddess Amaterasu, the moon deity Tsukuyomi and the storm god Susanoo.