title: Languages of Taiwan

text: People who emigrated from mainland China after 1949 (12% of the population) mostly speak Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin is almost universally spoken and understood. It was the only officially sanctioned medium of instruction in schools in Taiwan from late 1940s to late 1970s, following the handover of Taiwan to the government of the Republic of China in 1945, until English became a high school subject in the 1980s and local languages became a school subject in the 2000s.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Taiwanese Mandarin (as with Singlish and many other situations of a creole speech community) is spoken at different levels according to the social class and situation of the speakers. Formal occasions call for the acrolectal level of Standard Chinese of Taiwan (), which differs little from the Standard Chinese of China (). Less formal situations may result in the basilect form, which has more uniquely Taiwanese features. Bilingual Taiwanese speakers may code-switch between Mandarin and Taiwanese, sometimes in the same sentence.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Many Taiwanese, particularly the younger generations, speak Mandarin better than Hakka or Hokkien, and it has become a lingua franca for the island amongst the Chinese dialects.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Commonly known as Taiwanese (, ) and officially referred as Taiwanese Hokkien (); Taiwanese Hokkien is the most-spoken native language in Taiwan, spoken by about 70% of the population. Linguistically, it is a subgroup of Southern Min languages variety originating in southern Fujian province and is spoken by many overseas Chinese throughout Southeast Asia.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: There are both colloquial and literary registers of Taiwanese. Colloquial Taiwanese has roots in Old Chinese. Literary Taiwanese, which was originally developed in the 10th century in Fujian and based on Middle Chinese, was used at one time for formal writing, but is now largely extinct. Due to the era of Taiwan under Japanese rule, a large amount of loanwords from Japanese also appear in Taiwanese. The loanwords may be read in Kanji through Taiwanese pronunciation or simply use the Japanese pronunciation. These reasons makes the modern writing Taiwanese in a mixed script of traditional Chinese characters and Latin-based systems such as pe̍h-ōe-jī or the Taiwanese romanization system derived from pe̍h-ōe-jī in official use since 2006.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Recent work by scholars such as Ekki Lu, Sakai Toru, and Lí Khîn-hoāⁿ (also known as Tavokan Khîn-hoāⁿ or Chin-An Li), based on former research by scholars such as Ông Io̍k-tek, has gone so far as to associate part of the basic vocabulary of the colloquial language with the Austronesian and Tai language families; however, such claims are not without controversy. Recently there has been a growing use of Taiwanese Hokkien in the broadcast media.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Accent differences among Taiwanese dialects are relatively small but still exist. The standard accent — Thong-hêng accent () is sampled from Kaohsiung city, while other accents fall into a spectrum between


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Much of Taiwanese Hokkien is mutually intelligible with other dialects of Hokkien as spoken in China and South-east Asia (such as Singaporean Hokkien), but also to a degree with the Teochew variant of Southern Min spoken in Eastern Guangdong, China. It is, however, mutually unintelligible with Mandarin and other Chinese languages.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Hakka () is mainly spoken in Taiwan by people who have Hakka ancestry. These people are concentrated in several places throughout Taiwan. The majority of Hakka Taiwanese reside in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli. Varieties of Taiwanese Hakka were officially recognized as national languages. Currently the Hakka language in Taiwan is maintained by the Hakka Affairs Council. This governmental agency also runs Hakka TV and Hakka Radio stations. The government currently recognizes and maintains five Hakka dialects (six, if Sixian and South Sixian are counted independently) in Taiwan.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Matsu dialect (, "Mā-cū-huâ") is the language spoken in Matsu islands. It is a dialect of Fuzhou dialect, Eastern Min.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Cantonese is one of the Chinese languages in Taiwan. Cantonese is spread by Waishengren who have backgrounds in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macau.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Cantonese is mainly spoken by immigrants from Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, and Macau. Various Cantonese-speaking communities exist throughout Taiwan, and the use of the language in Taiwan continues to increase.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: There are a reported 87,719 Hongkongers residing in Taiwan as of the early 2010's; however, it is likely that this number has increased significantly since the Chinese government has gradually been dismantling their basic civil and political rights starting with the passing of the Hong Kong national security law in 2020.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Traditional Chinese characters are widely used in Taiwan to write Sinitic languages including Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka and Cantonese. The Ministry of Education maintains standards of writing for these languages, publications including the Standard Form of National Characters and the recommended characters for Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Written vernacular Chinese is the standard of written Chinese used in official documents, general literature and most aspects of everyday life, and has grammar based on Modern Standard Mandarin. Vernacular Chinese is the modern written variant of Chinese that supplanted the use of classical Chinese in literature following the New Culture Movement of the early 20th Century, which is based on the grammar of Old Chinese spoken in ancient times. Although written vernacular Chinese had replaced Classical Chinese and emerged as the mainstream written Chinese in the Republic of China since the May Fourth Movement, Classical Chinese continued to be widely used in the Government of the Republic of China. Most government documents in the Republic of China were written in Classical Chinese until reforms in the 1970s, in a reform movement spearheaded by President Yen Chia-kan to shift the written style to a more combined vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese style (文白合一行文）. After January 1, 2005, the Executive Yuan also changed the long-standing official document writing habit from vertical writing style to horizontal writing style.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Today, pure Classical Chinese is occasionally used in formal or ceremonial occasions, religious or cultural rites in Taiwan. The "National Anthem of the Republic of China" (), for example, is in Classical Chinese. Taoist texts are still preserved in Classical Chinese from the time they were composed. Buddhist texts, or sutras, are still preserved in Classical Chinese from the time they were composed or translated from Sanskrit sources. In practice there is a socially accepted continuum between vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese. Most official government documents, legal, courts rulings and judiciary documents used a combined vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese style (文白合一行文）. For example, most official notices and formal letters are written with a number of stock Classical Chinese expressions (e.g. salutation, closing). Personal letters, on the other hand, are mostly written in vernacular, but with some Classical phrases, depending on the subject matter, the writer's level of education, etc.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: In recent times, following the Taiwan localization movement and an increasing presence of Taiwanese literature, written Hokkien based on the vocabulary and grammar of Taiwanese Hokkien is occasionally used in literature and informal communications.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Traditional Chinese characters are also used in Hong Kong and Macau. A small number of characters are written differently in Taiwan; the Standard Form of National Characters is the orthography standard used in Taiwan and administered by the Ministry of Education, and has minor variations compared with the standardized character forms used in Hong Kong and Macau. Such differences relate to orthodox and vulgar variants of Chinese characters.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Latin alphabet is native to Formosan languages and partially native to Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka. With the early influences of European missionaries, writing systems such as Sinckan Manuscripts, Pe̍h-ōe-jī, and Pha̍k-fa-sṳ were based on in Latin alphabet. Currently the official writing systems of Formosan languages are solely based on Latin and maintained by the Council of Indigenous Peoples. The Ministry of Education also maintains Latin based systems Taiwanese Romanization System for Taiwanese Hokkien, and Taiwanese Hakka Romanization System for Hakka. The textbooks of Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka are written in a mixed script of traditional Chinese characters and Latin alphabet.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Chinese language romanization in Taiwan tends to be highly inconsistent. Taiwan still uses the Zhuyin system and does not commonly use the Latin alphabet as the language phonetic symbols. Traditionally Wade–Giles is used. The central government adopted Tongyong Pinyin as the official romanization in 2002 but local governments are permitted to override the standard as some have adopted Hanyu Pinyin and retained old romanizations that are commonly used. However, in August 2008 the central government announced that Hanyu Pinyin will be the only system of Romanization of Standard Mandarin in Taiwan as of January 2009.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: "Zhuyin Fuhao", often abbreviated as "Zhuyin", or known as "Bopomofo" after its first four letters, is the phonetic system of Taiwan for teaching the pronunciation of Chinese characters, especially in Mandarin. Mandarin uses 37 symbols to represent its sounds: 21 consonants and 16 rimes. Taiwanese Hokkien uses 45 symbols to represent its sounds: 21 consonants and 24 rimes. There is also a system created for Hakka language.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: These phonetic symbols sometimes appear as ruby characters printed next to the Chinese characters in young children's books, and in editions of classical texts (which frequently use characters that appear at very low frequency rates in newspapers and other such daily fare). In advertisements, these phonetic symbols are sometimes used to write certain particles (e.g., instead of ); other than this, one seldom sees these symbols used in mass media adult publications except as a pronunciation guide (or index system) in dictionary entries. Bopomofo symbols are also mapped to the ordinary Roman character keyboard (1 = "bo", q = "po", a = "mo", and so forth) used in one method for inputting Chinese text when using a computer. In more recent years, with the advent of smartphones, it has become increasingly common to see Zhuyin used in written slang terms, instead of typing full characters – for example "ㄅㄅ" replacing (bye bye). It is also used to give phrases a different tone, like using "ㄘ" for (to eat) to indicate a childlike tone in the writing.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: The sole purpose for Zhuyin in elementary education is to teach standard Mandarin pronunciation to children. Grade one textbooks of all subjects (including Mandarin) are entirely in zhuyin. After that year, Chinese character texts are given in annotated form. Around grade four, presence of Zhuyin annotation is greatly reduced, remaining only in the new character section. School children learn the symbols so that they can decode pronunciations given in a Chinese dictionary, and also so that they can find how to write words for which they know only the sounds. Even among adults, it is almost universally used in Taiwan to explain pronunciation of a certain character being referred to others.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: Taiwan has a national sign language, the Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL), which was developed from Japanese Sign Language during Japanese colonial rule. TSL has some mutual intelligibility with Japanese Sign Language (JSL) and the Korean Sign Language as a result (KSL). TSL has about a 60% lexical similarity with JSL.


title: Languages of Taiwan

text: The Japanese language was compulsorily taught while Taiwan was under Japanese rule (1895 to 1945). By 1943, over 80% of the Taiwanese population at the time were speakers of Japanese. Taiwanese Americans and others in the Taiwanese diaspora may have older relatives or grandparents who learned Japanese and also spoke it as the lingua franca during their youth. Many famous Taiwanese figures, including former Taiwanese President, Lee Teng-hui, and the founder of Nissin and inventor of instant ramen, Momofuku Ando, were considered to be native Japanese speakers due to being born in Japanese Taiwan.


title: End of the Road World Tour

text: The End of the Road World Tour is the ongoing final concert tour by the American rock band Kiss. The tour began on January 31, 2019, at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, Canada and is currently ongoing.


title: End of the Road World Tour

text: The tour was announced on September 19, 2018, following a performance of "Detroit Rock City" on "America's Got Talent". Tour dates were officially announced for North America, Europe and Oceania on October 30, 2018. Professional painter David Garibaldi served as Kiss's opening act for the 2019 North American and European legs of the tour. David Lee Roth was later announced as the opening act for the 2020 North American leg.


title: End of the Road World Tour

text: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the shows that were to take place in 2020 were postponed into 2021, with the final show being postponed to a later date to be announced.


title: End of the Road World Tour

text: The band later announced on November 20, 2020 that they would perform an exclusive New Year's Eve 2020 livestream show. The Kiss New Year's Eve 2020 Goodbye livestream concert was produced by City Drive Studios and directed by Daniel Catullo. The pay-per-view concert was part of the "Landmarks Live" Series and was filmed with over fifty 4K cameras with 360-degree views on a 250-foot stage at The Royal Beach at Atlantis The Palm, Dubai. The performance broke two Guinness World Records: one for the highest flame projection in a music concert and another for the most flame projections launched simultaneously in a music concert. On June 11, 2021, following the premiere of the band's documentary "Biography: Kisstory" at the Tribeca Film Festival, the band performed a five-song set at Battery Park in New York City.


title: End of the Road World Tour

text: In an October 2021 interview, Stanley stated that Kiss' final concert together is estimated to take place in early 2023: "I believe strongly by the beginning of 2023 we will be finished, it seems only natural for the final show to be in New York. That is where the band started, and that was really the background for the band getting together and writing these songs and played loft parties and played clubs starting with an audience of probably 10 people. It seems we should go full circle." The band performed on board the 2022 edition of the Kiss Kruise in October to November 2022, which was their final time they would perform on the cruise.


title: End of the Road World Tour

text: In addition to adding another 100 cities on tour into 2023, Simmons stated that he will continue working with the American rock-inspired restaurant Rock & Brews, and performing with his solo band when the final tour has concluded. He later stated that the band will be retiring out of self-respect and love for the fans and that he will be very emotional during the band's final performance which is set to take place around 2024.


title: End of the Road World Tour

text: "Vancouver Sun"'s Stuart Derdeyn, who had attended the tour's opening night in Vancouver, Canada, gave the show a positive review, stating: "After being treated to an opening trio of tunes that included "Detroit Rock City", "Shout It Out Loud" and "Deuce" embellish with as much pyrotechnics as other bands might use for an entire show, the crowd at the opening night of the KISS 'End of the World' tour was right in the sweet spot that the New York City quartet has always been able to get them into."


title: End of the Road World Tour

text: Chris Jordan from the "Asbury Park Press" who had attended the Madison Square Garden performance on March 27, 2019, gave the concert a positive review. He noted the large amount of energy that the band had, as well as praising the amount of explosions, fire breathing and elevated risers. The reporter closed the review, stating: "By the time the band got to 'Rock and Roll All Nite', with a burst of confetti to close the show, it was apparent. You were rocked."


title: End of the Road World Tour

text: Nikki O'Neill from the "Chicago Tribune" who had attended the performance in Chicago, stated: "Saturday's show was delivered by a musically tight and drama-free band. Original member Paul Stanley especially seemed to have fun on stage, often letting a smile crack through his "Starchild" makeup, addressing the crowd in his unmistakable stage voice, which best can be described as a mix of Southern rock 'n' roll preacher and fired up drag queen. Although the show is super-scripted - because of the ample pyrotechnics, the band would argue - there's not a moment of dullness or dead air as KISS gave the audience a live summary of its career, with 20 songs representing the classic '70s era and the makeup-free '80s, performing only one song from the '90s and one from 2009 with the current lineup."


title: Boeing 747SP

text: The Boeing 747SP (for "Special Performance") is a shortened version of the Boeing 747 wide-body airliner, designed for a longer range.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: Boeing needed a smaller aircraft to compete with the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and Lockheed L-1011 TriStar tri-jet wide-bodies, introduced in 1971/1972. Pan Am requested a 747-100 derivative to fly between New York and the Middle East, a request also shared by Iran Air, and the first order came from Pan Am in 1973.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: The variant first flew on July 4, 1975, was approved by the Federal Aviation Administration on February 4, 1976, and entered service that year with Pan Am.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: The SP is in length, shorter than the original 747 variants. Its main deck doors are reduced to four on each side to suit its lower capacity. The vertical and horizontal tailplane are larger and its wing flaps have been simplified. With a maximum take-off weight, it can fly 276 passengers in three classes over .


title: Boeing 747SP

text: The idea for the 747SP came from a request by Pan Am for a 747 variant capable of carrying a full payload non-stop on its longest route between New York and Tehran. Joined with Pan Am's request was Iran Air; their joint interest was for a high capacity airliner capable of covering Pan Am's New York–Middle Eastern routes and Iran Air's planned New York-Tehran route (New York to Tehran was the longest non-stop commercial flight in the world for a short time). The aircraft was launched with Pan Am's first order in 1973, and the first example delivered in 1976.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: A shorter derivative of the 747-100, the SP was developed to target two market requirements. The first was a need to compete with the DC-10 and L-1011 while maintaining commonality with the 747, which in its standard form was too large for many routes. Until the arrival of the 767, Boeing lacked a mid-sized wide-body to compete in this segment. The second market requirement was an aircraft suitable for the ultra-long-range routes emerging in the mid-1970s following the joint request. These routes needed not only longer range, but also higher cruising speeds. Boeing could not afford to develop an all-new design, instead opting to shorten the 747 and optimize it for speed and range, at the expense of capacity.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: Originally designated "747SB" for "short body", it was later nicknamed "Sutter's balloon" by employees after 747 chief engineer Joe Sutter. Boeing later changed the production designation to 747SP for "special performance", reflecting the aircraft's greater range and higher cruising speed. Production of the 747SP ran from 1976 to 1983. However, a VIP order for the Abu Dhabi Amiri Flight led Boeing to produce one last SP in 1987. Pan Am was the launch customer for the 747SP, taking the first delivery, "Clipper Freedom", on March 5, 1976.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: The 747SP was the longest-range airliner available until the 747-400 entered service in 1989. Despite its technical achievements, the SP never sold as well as Boeing hoped. Increased fuel prices in the mid-1970s to early 1980s, the SP's heavy wings, high cost, and reduced capacity, and the increased ranges of forthcoming airliners were some of the many factors that contributed to its low sales. Only 45 were built, and, of those remaining, most are used by operators in the Middle East. However, some of the engineering work on the 747SP was reused with the development of the 747-300. In the 747SP, the upper deck begins over the section of fuselage that contains the wingbox, not ahead of the wingbox (as is the case with the 747-100 and 747-200). This same design was used in the 747-300 and newer 747-400, resulting in a stretched upper deck.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: Apart from having a significantly shorter fuselage and one fewer cabin door per side, the 747SP differs from other 747 variants in having simplified flaps and a taller vertical tail to counteract the decrease in yaw moment-arm from the shortened fuselage. The 747SP uses single-piece flaps on the trailing edges, rather than the smaller triple-slotted flaps of standard 747s.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: The SP could accommodate 230 passengers in a 3-class cabin or 331 (303 economy, 28 business) in a 2-class cabin, and a maximum of 400 passengers in one class.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: From 2007 until 2022, a specially modified 747SP was used as the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy "(SOFIA)" astronomical observatory, operated jointly by NASA and Germany's DLR. A former Pan Am and United Airlines aircraft acquired in 1997, its airframe was modified to carry a 2.5-meter-diameter reflecting telescope to high altitude, above 99.9% of the light-absorbing water vapor in the atmosphere. The telescope and its detectors covered a wide wavelength range from the near infrared to the sub-millimeter region; no window material is transparent over this whole range, so the observations were made through a square hole in the port upper quarter of the rear fuselage, aft of a new pressure bulkhead. A sliding door covered the aperture when the telescope was not in use. Astronomers take data and control the instrument from within the normally pressurized cabin. Originally delivered to Pan Am and named "Clipper Lindbergh", the name was displayed in script on the port side of the aircraft.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: In September 2022, "SOFIA" ceased operations after the conclusion of its final mission. The retirement was made both on the grounds of cost and suitability for the requirements of the decade to come. The aircraft was later flown to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona to be put on public display.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: Forty-five 747SP aircraft were built between 1974 and 1987. The production line was ended in 1982 but reopened in 1987 to fulfill an order for the Abu Dhabi Amiri Flight.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: As of September 2022, there were just three Boeing 747SPs still in active service, with 18 more stored and one preserved. The remaining 23 were either scrapped, otherwise destroyed, or abandoned.


title: Boeing 747SP

text: In 2016, the last 747SP in commercial service was withdrawn from service after 40 years by Iran Air. In 2020, the last aircraft in governmental use was stored by the Royal Flight of Oman, and one of two aircraft remaining in VIP use by the Las Vegas Sands was written off by accidental damage sustained during Hurricane Laura. The latter aircraft was scrapped soon afterwards. The retirement of the "SOFIA" observatory left only three aircraft still in use as of September 2022, two of them for research purposes:


title: Boeing 747SP

text: There were three significant commercial around-the-world record-setting flights flown by 747SP: two operated by Pan Am and the other operated by United Airlines with the aircraft being "loaned" to Friendship Foundation, in order to raise money for the foundation. Those flights are:


title: 2010–11 NBA season

text: The 2010–11 NBA season was the 65th season of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The 2011 NBA All-Star Game was played on February 20, 2011, at Staples Center in Los Angeles. The season concluded with the Dallas Mavericks defeating the Miami Heat in six games, 4 games to 2, to win their first NBA title, and Dirk Nowitzki was named Finals MVP. Chicago's Derrick Rose was named the 2010–11 NBA MVP.


title: 2010–11 NBA season

text: The 2010 off-season had one of the most talented free agent pools in recent NBA history. The list of free agents included All-Stars LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, Carlos Boozer and Amar'e Stoudemire, as well as other veteran players such as Ray Allen, Joe Johnson, Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady, Shaquille O'Neal and Paul Pierce. Below are the major free agency signings, including the sign and trade agreements, that occurred during the off-season.


title: 2010–11 NBA season

text: NBA Europe Live 2010 was played October 3, 2010 – October 7, 2010, featuring the New York Knicks, Minnesota Timberwolves, Los Angeles Lakers and teams from Europe (Armani Jeans Milano and Regal FC Barcelona) The Dallas Mavericks and the Phoenix Suns played in Indian Wells, California, on October 9 for their outdoor special. The Houston Rockets and New Jersey Nets played in the fifth annual NBA China Games on October 13 in Beijing, and October 16 at Guangzhou. The preseason schedule was released in August.


title: 2010–11 NBA season

text: The regular season began on October 26, 2010, and ended on April 13, 2011. The Opening Day schedule on TNT had the Miami Heat face the Boston Celtics, followed by the Los Angeles Lakers' championship ring and banner ceremony and their game against the Houston Rockets. The opener began at 7:30 p.m. ET. On Christmas Day, ABC and ESPN had a five-game set, with ABC broadcasting the game between the Celtics and the Orlando Magic, and the Heat against the Lakers, which started at 2:00 p.m. ET. On Martin Luther King Day, ESPN aired the game between the Chicago Bulls and the Memphis Grizzlies at 1:00 p.m. ET, while NBA TV aired the Sacramento Kings–Atlanta Hawks matchup at 4:00 p.m. ET. TNT capped off the holiday with a doubleheader, beginning with the Magic facing the Celtics, followed by the Oklahoma City Thunder facing the Los Angeles Lakers, beginning at 8:00 p.m. ET. The full schedule was released on August 10, 2010.


title: 2010–11 NBA season

text: Other much-anticipated games include: on October 28, 2010, John Wall, the No. 1 pick in the 2010 NBA draft, made his NBA debut as the Washington Wizards visited the Magic on TNT. On December 2, LeBron James returned to Cleveland for the first time since the Decision as his Heat faced the Cavaliers on TNT. The Celtics–Lakers rivalry renewed on January 30, 2011 (at Los Angeles on ABC) and on February 10, 2011 (at Boston on TNT) in a rematch of the 2010 NBA Finals. On March 4–5, 2011, the New Jersey Nets and Toronto Raptors faced off in two regular season games held at London's O2 Arena.


title: 2010–11 NBA season

text: The 2011 NBA Playoffs began on April 16, with the Conference Finals concluding on May 26. The NBA Finals began on May 31 due to both Conference Finals ending in five games. ESPN began their playoff broadcast on April 16, and continued every Friday and Saturday thereafter, with the Sunday–Thursday schedule reserved for TNT (some Saturday first-round games apply) and NBA TV. ABC continued broadcasting early-round playoff coverage every Sunday afternoon, with select Saturday afternoon broadcasts. The first round playoff coverage was non-exclusive except for ABC-covered games, in which local sports networks (e.g. Fox Sports Net, Comcast SportsNet) still aired the game in their home market. TNT aired the Eastern Conference Finals while ESPN aired the Western Conference Finals. The NBA Finals were shown on ABC. Nationwide radio coverage was on ESPN Radio for select playoff games, the entire Conference Finals and NBA Finals.


title: 2010–11 NBA season

text: The 2011 NBA All-Star Game was played on February 20, 2011, at Staples Center in Los Angeles. This game was the 61st edition of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s annual basketball festivities, and was also the fifth All-Star Game held in Los Angeles; the city previously hosted in 1963, 1972, 1983 and 2004. As with the 2004 event, it was jointly hosted by the Lakers and the Clippers. The Western Conference All-Stars defeated the Eastern Conference 148–143, with the Lakers' Kobe Bryant named as MVP for the fourth time, tying the record of Bob Pettit.


title: 2010–11 NBA season

text: On July 7, the NBA announced that the salary cap for the 2010–11 season would be $58.044 million, an increase of $0.344 million from previous season's $57.70 million, and would go into effect on July 8 as the league's "moratorium period" had ended and teams could begin signing free agents and making trades. The increase came as a surprise as the league initially predicted a decrease in the salary cap. On March, before the playoffs, the league projected that the salary cap would be around $56.1 million. The tax level for the season was set at $70.307 million, with each team paying a $1 tax for each $1 by which it exceeds $70.307 million. The mid-level exception was $5.765 million for the season and the minimum team salary, which was set at 75% of the salary cap, was $43.533 million. The maximum salaries for players are set at $13.604 million for players with zero to six years of experience, $16.324 million for players with seven to nine years of experience, and $19.045 million for players with more than 10 years of experience.


title: Loch Lomond

text: Loch Lomond (; - 'Lake of the Elms') is a freshwater Scottish loch which crosses the Highland Boundary Fault, often considered the boundary between the lowlands of Central Scotland and the Highlands. Traditionally forming part of the boundary between the counties of Stirlingshire and Dunbartonshire, Loch Lomond is split between the council areas of Stirling, Argyll and Bute and West Dunbartonshire. Its southern shores are about northwest of the centre of Glasgow, Scotland's largest city. The Loch forms part of the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park which was established in 2002.


title: Loch Lomond

text: Loch Lomond is long and between wide, with a surface area of . It is the largest lake in Great Britain by surface area; in the United Kingdom, it is surpassed only by Lough Neagh and Lough Erne in Northern Ireland. In the British Isles as a whole there are several larger loughs in the Republic of Ireland. The loch has a maximum depth of about in the deeper northern portion, although the southern part of the loch rarely exceeds in depth. The total volume of Loch Lomond is , making it the second largest lake in Great Britain, after Loch Ness, by water volume.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The loch contains many islands, including Inchmurrin, the largest fresh-water island in the British Isles. Loch Lomond is a popular leisure destination and is featured in the song "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond". The loch is surrounded by hills, including Ben Lomond on the eastern shore, which is in height and the most southerly of the Scottish Munro peaks. A 2005 poll of "Radio Times" readers voted Loch Lomond as the sixth greatest natural wonder in Britain.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The depression in which Loch Lomond lies was carved out by glaciers during the final stages of the last ice age, during a return to glacial conditions known as the Loch Lomond Readvance between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago. The loch lies on the Highland Boundary Fault, and the difference between the Highland and Lowland geology is reflected in the shape and character of the loch: in the north the glaciers dug a deep channel in the Highland schist, removing up to 600 m of bedrock to create a narrow, fjord-like finger lake. Further south the glaciers were able to spread across the softer Lowland sandstone, leading to a wider body of water that is rarely more than 30 m deep. In the period following the Loch Lomond Readvance the sea level rose, and for several periods Loch Lomond was connected to the sea, with shorelines identified at 13, 12 and 9 metres above sea level (the current loch lies at 8 m above sea level).


title: Loch Lomond

text: The change in rock type can be clearly seen at points around the loch, as it runs across the islands of Inchmurrin, Creinch, Torrinch and Inchcailloch and over the ridge of Conic Hill. To the south lie green fields and cultivated land; to the north, mountains.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The loch contains thirty or more other islands, depending on the water level. Several of them are large by the standards of British bodies of freshwater. Inchmurrin, for example, is the largest island in a body of freshwater in the British Isles. Many of the islands are the remains of harder rocks that withstood the passing of the glaciers; however, as in Loch Tay, several of the islands appear to be crannogs, artificial islands built in prehistoric periods.


title: Loch Lomond

text: Writing 150 years earlier than Morton, Samuel Johnson had however been less impressed by Loch Lomond's islands, writing:


title: Loch Lomond

text: The Scottish dock ("Rumex aquaticus"), sometimes called the Loch Lomond dock, is in Britain unique to the shores of Loch Lomond, being found mostly on around Balmaha on the western shore of the loch. It was first discovered growing there in 1936 (else it grows eastwards through Europe and Asia all the way to Japan).


title: Loch Lomond

text: Powan are one of the commonest fish species in the loch, which has more species of fish than any other loch in Scotland, including lamprey, lampern, brook trout, perch, loach, common roach and flounder. The river lamprey of Loch Lomond display an unusual behavioural trait not seen elsewhere in Britain: unlike other populations, in which young hatch in rivers before migrating to the sea, the river lamprey here remain in freshwater all their lives, hatching in the Endrick Water and migrating into the loch as adults.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The surrounding hills are home to species such as black grouse, ptarmigan, golden eagles, pine martens, red deer and mountain hares. Many species of wading birds and water vole inhabit the loch shore. During the winter months large numbers of geese migrate to Loch Lomond, including over 1% of the entire global population of Greenland white-fronted geese (around 200 individuals), and up to 3,000 greylag geese.


title: Loch Lomond

text: In 2022 RSPB Scotland was granted a licence to release a family of beavers into the southeastern area of the loch in early 2023. The beavers will be translocated from other sites in Scotland where NatureScot considers that they may be having a negative impact on agricultural land that cannot be mitigated.


title: Loch Lomond

text: As well as forming part of the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, Loch Lomond holds multiple other conservation designations. 428 ha of land in the southeast, including five of the islands, is designated as national nature reserve: the Loch Lomond National Nature Reserve. Seven islands and much of the shoreline form a Special Area of Conservation (SAC), the "Loch Lomond Woods". This designation overlaps partially with the national nature reserve, and is protected due to the presence of Atlantic oak woodlands and a population of otters. Four islands and a section of the shoreline are designated as a Special Protection Area due to their importance for breeding capercaillie and visiting Greenland white-fronted geese: this designation overlaps partially with both the national nature reserve and the SAC. Loch Lomond is also a designated Ramsar site, again for the presence of Greenland white-fronted geese.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The loch and its surrounding are designated as a national scenic area, one of forty such areas in Scotland, which have been defined so as to identify areas of exceptional scenery and to ensure its protection from inappropriate development.


title: Loch Lomond

text: People first arrived in the Loch Lomond area around 5000 years ago, during the neolithic era. They left traces of their presence at places around the loch, including Balmaha, Luss, and Inchlonaig. Crannogs, artificial islands used as dwellings for over five millennia, were built at points in the loch. The Romans had a fort within sight of the loch at Drumquhassle. The crannog known as "The Kitchen", located off the island of Clairinsh, may have later been used as a place for important meetings by Clan Buchanan whose clan seat had been on Clairinsh since 1225: this usage would be in line with other crannogs such as that at Finlaggan on Islay, used by Clan Donald.


title: Loch Lomond

text: During the Early Medieval period viking raiders sailed up Loch Long, hauled their longboats over at the narrow neck of land at Tarbet, and sacked several islands in the loch.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The area surrounding the loch later become part of the province of Lennox, which covered much of the area of the later county of Dunbartonshire.


title: Loch Lomond

text: Loch Lomond became a popular destination for travellers, such that when James Boswell and Samuel Johnson visited the islands of Loch Lomond on the return from their tour of the Western Isles in 1773, the area was already firmly enough established as a destination for Boswell to note that it would be unnecessary to attempt any description.


title: Loch Lomond

text: Loch Lomond is one of Scotland's premier boating and watersports venues, with visitors enjoying activities including kayaking, Canadian canoeing, paddle boarding, wake boarding, water skiing and wake surfing. The national park authority has tried to achieve a balance between land-based tourists and loch users, with environmentally sensitive areas subject to a strictly enforced speed limit, but the rest of the loch open to speeds of up to .


title: Loch Lomond

text: The "Maid of the Loch" was the last paddle steamer built in Britain. Built on the Clyde in 1953, she operated on Loch Lomond for 29 years. She is now being restored at Balloch pier by the Loch Lomond Steamship Company, a charitable organisation, supported by West Dunbartonshire Council. Cruises also operate from Balloch, Tarbet, Inversnaid, Luss and Rowardennan.


title: Loch Lomond

text: Loch Lomond Rescue Boat provides 24-hour safety cover on the loch. The rescue boat is a volunteer organisation and a registered charity. The national park authority also have other boats on the loch such as "The Brigadier". Police Scotland also operates on the loch using RIBs and jet skis and work in conjunction with the national park authority.


title: Loch Lomond

text: Fly and coarse fishing on Loch Lomond is regulated by the Loch Lomond Angling Improvement Association (LLAIA), who issue permits to members and visiting anglers. The association employ water bailiffs to monitor the actions of anglers on the loch and ensure angling is carried out in accordance with permit conditions.


title: Loch Lomond

text: Loch Lomond Golf Club is situated on the south-western shore. It has hosted many international events including the Scottish Open. Another golf club, "The Carrick" has opened on the banks of the Loch adjacent to the Loch Lomond Club.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The West Highland Way runs along the eastern bank of the loch, and Inveruglas on the western bank is the terminus of the Cowal Way. The West Loch Lomond Cycle Path runs from Arrochar and Tarbet railway station, at the upper end of the loch, to Balloch railway station, at the south end. The long cycle path runs along the west bank.


title: Loch Lomond

text: At the southern end of the loch near Balloch is a large visitor and shopping complex named Loch Lomond Shores.


title: Loch Lomond

text: As with all land and inland water in Scotland there is a right of responsible access to the loch and its shoreline for those wishing to participate in recreational pursuits such as walking, camping, swimming and canoeing. In 2017 the national park authority introduced byelaws restricting the right to camp along much of the shoreline of Loch Lomond, due to issues such as litter and anti-social behaviour that were blamed on irresponsible campers. Camping is now restricted to designated areas, and campers are required to purchase a permit to camp within these areas between March and October. The byelaws were opposed by groups such as Mountaineering Scotland and Ramblers Scotland, who argued that they would criminalise camping even where it was carried out responsibly, and that the national park authority already had sufficient powers to address irresponsible behaviour using existing laws.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The main arterial route along the loch is the A82 road which runs the length of its western shore, following the general route of the Old Military Road. The road runs along the shoreline in places, but generally keeps some distance to the west of the loch in the "lowland" section to the south. Much of the southern section of the road was widened to a high quality single carriageway standard over the 1980s, at an estimated cost of £24 million (£ million as of ), while Luss itself is now bypassed to the west of the village along a single carriageway bypass constructed between 1990 and 1992. At Tarbet, the A83 branches west to Campbeltown while the A82 continues to the north end of the loch. This part of the road is currently of a lower standard than the sections further south. It is sandwiched between the shoreline of the loch and the mountains to the west, and it runs generally alongside the West Highland Line. The road narrows to less than in places and causes significant problems for heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), which have to negotiate tight bends and the narrow carriageway width. At Pulpit rock, the road was single-track, with traffic flow controlled by traffic lights for over 30 years. The road was widened in 2015 as part of a £9 million improvement programme, including a new viaduct bringing the carriageway width to modern standards.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The A811 runs to the south of Loch Lomond between Balloch and Drymen, following the route of another military road at a distance of between 2 and 3 kilometres from the loch. From Drymen the B837 extends north, meeting the eastern shore of the loch at Balmaha where the road terminates. A minor road extends north as far as Rowardennan, a further 11 km away, however beyond this point no road continues along the eastern shore, although there is road access to Inversnaid via another minor road that comes in from Loch Katrine to the east via the northern shore of Loch Arklet. As Loch Arklet is over 100 m above Loch Lomond and less than 2 km to the east this road must descend steeply to reach Inversnaid.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The West Highland railway line joins the western shore of the loch just north of Arrochar and Tarbet railway station. There is a further station alongside the loch at Ardlui. This line was voted the top rail journey in the world by readers of independent travel magazine "Wanderlust" in 2009, ahead of the iconic Trans-Siberian line in Russia and the Cuzco to Machu Picchu line in Peru. The railway system also reaches the loch at Balloch railway station, which is the terminus of the North Clyde Line.


title: Loch Lomond

text: Since 2004 "Loch Lomond Seaplanes" operates an aerial tour service from its seaplane base near Cameron.


title: Loch Lomond

text: On 22 April 1940, a BOAC Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra ("Loch Invar", registration G-AFKD) aircraft flying from Perth Airport to Heston Aerodrome in London crashed at Loch Lomond, killing all five passengers and crew.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The Loch Sloy Hydro-Electric Scheme is situated on the west bank of Loch Lomond. The facility is operated by Scottish and Southern Energy, and is normally in standby mode, ready to generate electricity to meet sudden peaks in demand. It is the largest conventional hydro electric power station in the UK, with an installed capacity of 152.5 MW, and can reach full-capacity within 5 minutes from a standing start. The hydraulic head between Loch Sloy and the outflow into Loch Lomond at Inveruglas is 277 m.


title: Loch Lomond

text: The song has been recorded by many performers over the years. The original author is unknown. One story is that the song was written by a Scottish soldier who awaited death in enemy captivity; in his final letter home, he wrote this song, portraying his home and how much he would miss it. Another tale is that during the Jacobite rising of 1745 a soldier on his way back to Scotland during the 1745–46 retreat from England wrote this song. The "low road" may be a reference to the Celtic belief that if someone died away from his homeland, then the fairies would provide a route of this name for his soul to return home. Within this theory, it is possible that the soldier awaiting death may have been writing either to a friend who was allowed to live and return home, or to a lover back in Scotland.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: Miracle is a 2004 American sports film about the United States men's ice hockey team, led by head coach Herb Brooks, portrayed by Kurt Russell, who won the gold medal in the 1980 Winter Olympics. The American team's victory over the heavily favored Soviet professionals in the medal round was dubbed the "Miracle on Ice". "Miracle" was directed by Gavin O'Connor and written by Eric Guggenheim and Mike Rich. It was released on February 20, 2004, where it grossed $64.5 million on a $28 million budget and received positive reviews, with Russell's performance garnering the most praise from critics.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: Herb Brooks, head ice hockey coach at the University of Minnesota, interviews with the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) for the national team coach's job, discussing his philosophy on how to beat the dominant Soviet team who have won the gold medal in the previous four Olympics, calling for changes to the practice schedule and strategy. The USOC is skeptical, but gives Brooks the job.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: Brooks meets assistant coach Craig Patrick at the tryouts in Colorado Springs. Brooks selects a preliminary roster of 26, indifferent to the preferences of senior USOC hockey officials. USOC executive director Walter Bush believes Brooks has their best interests at heart, and reluctantly agrees to take the heat from the committee.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: During the initial practice, tempers flare as forward Rob McClanahan and defenseman Jack O'Callahan get into a fight based on college rivalry. After the fight, Brooks tells all the players that they are to let go of old rivalries and start becoming a team. He has each player tell their name, hometown and which team they play for. As practices continue, Brooks uses unorthodox methods to reduce the roster to 20 players. The players themselves worry about being cut at any time, knowing that Brooks himself was the last player cut from the US squad that won the 1960 Olympic gold medal, so he will do anything to win.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: During an exhibition game against Norway in Oslo that ends in a 3–3 tie, Brooks notices the players are not playing up to their potential. After the game, he orders them back on the ice for a bag skatea relentless skate from one end of the ice to the other, continuing the drill even after the rink manager cuts the power. Exhausted, forward and team captain Mike Eruzione re-introduces himself, but this time says that he plays for the United States. Pleased, Brooks finally allows the team to go home.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: With their roster finalized, the Americans play the Soviets in an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden. The Soviets manhandle the young Americans, winning by a score of 10–3. During the game, O'Callahan suffers a knee injury that could keep him out of the entire Olympics and starting goaltender Jim Craig is told he may be benched in favor of backup Steve Janaszak. Brooks tells him that he hasn't been giving his very best, but decides to keep Craig as the starter for the Olympics.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: As the 1980 Winter Olympics begin, the Americans trail Sweden 2–1 in the first game. Brooks fires up the team during intermission by throwing a table and accuses McClanahan, who suffered a relatively minor leg injury, of quitting. McClanahan plays injured, which inspires the team. Bill Baker scores a goal with only 27 seconds remaining in the third period for a dramatic 2–2 tie. They next earn a 7–3 win over heavily favored Czechoslovakia. As the Olympics continue, the team defeats minor opponents Norway, Romania, and West Germany to earn a spot in the medal round.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: In the medal round, the Americans were overwhelming underdogs to the Soviets, who lost only a single Olympic game since 1964. The Soviets had scored the first goal before O'Callahan, having healed enough from his injury, enters the game for the first time. He heavily checks Vladimir Krutov on a play that leads to a goal by Buzz Schneider. The Soviets score again to retake the lead. Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak stops a long shot by Dave Christian, but Mark Johnson gets the rebound and ties the game to end the period.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: During the first intermission, Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov replaces Tretiak with backup Vladimir Myshkin. In the second period, the Soviets score a goal to go up 3–2. Early in the third period, the Soviet team is penalized for slashing, and Johnson scores a power play goal just as the penalty is about to expire. With 10 minutes left, Eruzione puts them ahead 4–3. The Americans hold off the Soviets to win the game, completing one of the biggest upsets in sports history. Two days later, the team would go on to defeat Finland 4–2 to win the gold medal.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: Gavin O'Connor directed and Mark Ciardi produced the movie. Both are drawn to inspirational stories and they decided to take on the "Greatest Sports Moment of the 20th Century". They chose to focus on the determination and focus of coach Herb Brooks. O'Connor knew from the beginning that he wanted to cast Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks because he needed someone with an athletic background and a fiery passion for sports. The casting of the team consisted of real hockey players to give the film a raw and accurate feel. O'Connor figured it would be easier to teach hockey players to act than to teach actors to play hockey. On-ice tryouts were held in New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Vancouver. Another tryout was held in Vancouver for the Soviet and European teams.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: There are a total of 133 different hockey plays in the film. To accomplish this, the directors turned to ReelSports Solutions, who had helped with the producers on a previous movie, "The Rookie". The ReelSports team referred to coach Herb Brooks for information on practices, plays, equipment, and uniform styles. Each fight and stunt scene was choreographed to ensure the actors' safety. Players went through a six-week training camp to relearn the game in older equipment.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: All of the locations of the real life hockey games are replicated by hockey arenas in British Columbia. The team tryouts, set in Colorado Springs, were filmed at the Queen's Park Arena in New Westminster. The team practices were filmed at the M.S.A. Arena in Abbotsford. The exhibition game in which the USA team lost to the USSR team at Madison Square Garden was filmed at the Pacific Coliseum, former home of the Vancouver Canucks. The Exhibition against Norway, the subsequent bag skate, and all Olympic game scenes were filmed at the PNE Agrodome.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: Al Michaels re-recorded most of his television commentary for the film. However, the last 30 seconds of the USA-Soviet game, including "Do you believe in miracles?" used the original audio, as Michaels didn't feel he could re-create the call effectively.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: Coach Brooks died in a car accident before the movie was released. At the end, before the credits it states, "This film is dedicated to the memory of Herb Brooks, who died shortly following principal photography. He never saw it. He lived it."


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: "Miracle" grossed $19,377,577 on its opening weekend, February 8, on 2,605 screens. It closed with a worldwide gross of $64,445,708.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, "Miracle" has an approval rating of 81% based on 165 reviews, with an average rating of 7.01/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Kurt Russell's performance guides this cliche-ridden tale into the realm of inspirational, nostalgic goodness." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: Elvis Mitchell of "The New York Times" stated that the movie "does a yeoman's job of recycling the day-old dough that passes for its story." Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" referred to the movie as "a classically well-made studio entertainment that, like "The Rookie" of a few years back, has the knack of being moving without shamelessly overdoing a sure thing." O'Callahan said in an interview that while the fight between him and McClanahan was fictional, the film accurately portrayed the "pretty intense" rivalry between Boston Terriers and Minnesota Gophers players, and was overall "pretty darn close" to actual events.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: As of January 2017 "Miracle" was rated the number two sports movie of all time with a rating of 8.85 out of 10 in the ongoing poll at "Sports In Movies", after maintaining the number one spot for several years.


title: Miracle (2004 film)

text: In 2006, the American Film Institute nominated this film for AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers. And In 2008, AFI nominated this film for its Top 10 Sports Films list.


title: Conceptual art

text: Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called installations, may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions. This method was fundamental to American artist Sol LeWitt's definition of conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:


title: Conceptual art

text: Tony Godfrey, author of "Conceptual Art (Art & Ideas)" (1998), asserts that conceptual art questions the nature of art, a notion that Joseph Kosuth elevated to a definition of art itself in his seminal, early manifesto of conceptual art, "Art after Philosophy" (1969). The notion that art should examine its own nature was already a potent aspect of the influential art critic Clement Greenberg's vision of Modern art during the 1950s. With the emergence of an exclusively language-based art in the 1960s, however, conceptual artists such as Art & Language, Joseph Kosuth (who became the American editor of Art-Language), and Lawrence Weiner began a far more radical interrogation of art than was previously possible (see below). One of the first and most important things they questioned was the common assumption that the role of the artist was to create special kinds of material objects.


title: Conceptual art

text: Through its association with the Young British Artists and the Turner Prize during the 1990s, in popular usage, particularly in the United Kingdom, "conceptual art" came to denote all contemporary art that does not practice the traditional skills of painting and sculpture. One of the reasons why the term "conceptual art" has come to be associated with various contemporary practices far removed from its original aims and forms lies in the problem of defining the term itself. As the artist Mel Bochner suggested as early as 1970, in explaining why he does not like the epithet "conceptual", it is not always entirely clear what "concept" refers to, and it runs the risk of being confused with "intention". Thus, in describing or defining a work of art as conceptual it is important not to confuse what is referred to as "conceptual" with an artist's "intention".


title: Conceptual art

text: The French artist Marcel Duchamp paved the way for the conceptualists, providing them with examples of prototypically conceptual works — the readymades, for instance. The most famous of Duchamp's readymades was "Fountain" (1917), a standard urinal-basin signed by the artist with the pseudonym "R.Mutt", and submitted for inclusion in the annual, un-juried exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York (which rejected it). The artistic tradition does not see a commonplace object (such as a urinal) as art because it is not made by an artist or with any intention of being art, nor is it unique or hand-crafted. Duchamp's relevance and theoretical importance for future "conceptualists" was later acknowledged by US artist Joseph Kosuth in his 1969 essay, "Art after Philosophy", when he wrote: "All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually".


title: Conceptual art

text: In 1956 the founder of Lettrism, Isidore Isou, developed the notion of a work of art which, by its very nature, could never be created in reality, but which could nevertheless provide aesthetic rewards by being contemplated intellectually. This concept, also called "Art esthapériste" (or "infinite-aesthetics"), derived from the infinitesimals of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – quantities which could not actually exist except conceptually. The current incarnation () of the Isouian movement, Excoördism, self-defines as the art of the infinitely large and the infinitely small.


title: Conceptual art

text: In 1961, philosopher and artist Henry Flynt coined the term "concept art" in an article bearing the same name which appeared in the proto-Fluxus publication "An Anthology of Chance Operations". Flynt's concept art, he maintained, devolved from his notion of "cognitive nihilism", in which paradoxes in logic are shown to evacuate concepts of substance. Drawing on the syntax of logic and mathematics, concept art was meant jointly to supersede mathematics and the formalistic music then current in serious art music circles. Therefore, Flynt maintained, to merit the label "concept art", a work had to be a critique of logic or mathematics in which a linguistic concept was the material, a quality which is absent from subsequent "conceptual art".


title: Conceptual art

text: The term assumed a different meaning when employed by Joseph Kosuth and by the English Art and Language group, who discarded the conventional art object in favour of a documented critical inquiry, that began in "Art-Language: The Journal of Conceptual Art" in 1969, into the artist's social, philosophical, and psychological status. By the mid-1970s they had produced publications, indices, performances, texts and paintings to this end. In 1970 "Conceptual Art and Conceptual Aspects", the first dedicated conceptual-art exhibition, took place at the New York Cultural Center.


title: Conceptual art

text: Conceptual art emerged as a movement during the 1960s – in part as a reaction against formalism as then articulated by the influential New York art critic Clement Greenberg. According to Greenberg Modern art followed a process of progressive reduction and refinement toward the goal of defining the essential, formal nature of each medium. Those elements that ran counter to this nature were to be reduced. The task of painting, for example, was to define precisely what kind of object a painting truly is: what makes it a painting and nothing else. As it is of the nature of paintings to be flat objects with canvas surfaces onto which colored pigment is applied, such things as figuration, 3-D perspective illusion and references to external subject matter were all found to be extraneous to the essence of painting, and ought to be removed.


title: Conceptual art

text: Some have argued that conceptual art continued this "dematerialization" of art by removing the need for objects altogether,


title: Conceptual art

text: while others, including many of the artists themselves, saw conceptual art as a radical break with Greenberg's kind of formalist Modernism. Later artists continued to share a preference for art to be self-critical, as well as a distaste for illusion. However, by the end of the 1960s it was certainly clear that Greenberg's stipulations for art to continue within the confines of each medium and to exclude external subject matter no longer held traction.


title: Conceptual art

text: Conceptual art also reacted against the commodification of art; it attempted a subversion of the gallery or museum as the location and determiner of art, and the art market as the owner and distributor of art. Lawrence Weiner said: "Once you know about a work of mine you own it. There's no way I can climb inside somebody's head and remove it." Many conceptual artists' work can therefore only be known about through documentation which is manifested by it, e.g., photographs, written texts or displayed objects, which some might argue are not in and of themselves the art. It is sometimes (as in the work of Robert Barry, Yoko Ono, and Weiner himself) reduced to a set of written instructions describing a work, but stopping short of actually making it—emphasising the idea as more important than the artifact. This reveals an explicit preference for the "art" side of the ostensible dichotomy between art and craft, where art, unlike craft, takes place within and engages historical discourse: for example, Ono's "written instructions" make more sense alongside other conceptual art of the time.


title: Conceptual art

text: Language was a central concern for the first wave of conceptual artists of the 1960s and early 1970s. Although the utilisation of text in art was in no way novel, only in the 1960s did the artists Lawrence Weiner, Edward Ruscha, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry, and Art & Language begin to produce art by exclusively linguistic means. Where previously language was presented as one kind of visual element alongside others, and subordinate to an overarching composition (e.g. Synthetic Cubism), the conceptual artists used language in place of brush and canvas, and allowed it to signify in its own right. Of Lawrence Weiner's works Anne Rorimer writes, "The thematic content of individual works derives solely from the import of the language employed, while presentational means and contextual placement play crucial, yet separate, roles."


title: Conceptual art

text: The British philosopher and theorist of conceptual art Peter Osborne suggests that among the many factors that influenced the gravitation toward language-based art, a central role for conceptualism came from the turn to linguistic theories of meaning in both Anglo-American analytic philosophy, and structuralist and post structuralist Continental philosophy during the middle of the twentieth century. This linguistic turn "reinforced and legitimized" the direction the conceptual artists took. Osborne also notes that the early conceptualists were the first generation of artists to complete degree-based university training in art. Osborne later made the observation that contemporary art is "post-conceptual" in a public lecture delivered at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Villa Sucota in Como on July 9, 2010. It is a claim made at the level of the ontology of the work of art (rather than say at the descriptive level of style or movement).


title: Conceptual art

text: The American art historian Edward A. Shanken points to the example of Roy Ascott who "powerfully demonstrates the significant intersections between conceptual art and art-and-technology, exploding the conventional autonomy of these art-historical categories." Ascott, the British artist most closely associated with cybernetic art in England, was not included in Cybernetic Serendipity because his use of cybernetics was primarily conceptual and did not explicitly utilize technology. Conversely, although his essay on the application of cybernetics to art and art pedagogy, "The Construction of Change" (1964), was quoted on the dedication page (to Sol LeWitt) of Lucy R. Lippard's seminal "Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972", Ascott's anticipation of and contribution to the formation of conceptual art in Britain has received scant recognition, perhaps (and ironically) because his work was too closely allied with art-and-technology. Another vital intersection was explored in Ascott's use of the thesaurus in 1963 telematic connections:: timeline, which drew an explicit parallel between the taxonomic qualities of verbal and visual languages – a concept would be taken up in Joseph Kosuth's "Second Investigation, Proposition 1" (1968) and Mel Ramsden's "Elements of an Incomplete Map" (1968).


title: Conceptual art

text: By adopting language as their exclusive medium, Weiner, Barry, Wilson, Kosuth and Art & Language were able to sweep aside the vestiges of authorial presence manifested by formal invention and the handling of materials.


title: Conceptual art

text: An important difference between conceptual art and more "traditional" forms of art-making goes to the question of artistic skill. Although skill in the handling of traditional media often plays little role in conceptual art, it is difficult to argue that no skill is required to make conceptual works, or that skill is always absent from them. John Baldessari, for instance, has presented realist pictures that he commissioned professional sign-writers to paint; and many conceptual performance artists (e.g. Stelarc, Marina Abramović) are technically accomplished performers and skilled manipulators of their own bodies. It is thus not so much an absence of skill or hostility toward tradition that defines conceptual art as an evident disregard for conventional, modern notions of authorial presence and of individual artistic expression.


title: Conceptual art

text: Proto-conceptualism has roots in the rise of Modernism with, for example, Manet (1832–1883) and later Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). The first wave of the "conceptual art" movement extended from approximately 1967


title: Conceptual art

text: to 1978. Early "concept" artists like Henry Flynt (1940– ), Robert Morris (1931–2018), and Ray Johnson (1927–1995) influenced the later, widely accepted movement of conceptual art. Conceptual artists like Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, and Lawrence Weiner have proven very influential on subsequent artists, and well-known contemporary artists such as Mike Kelley or Tracey Emin are sometimes labeled "second- or third-generation" conceptualists, or "post-conceptual" artists (the prefix Post- in art can frequently be interpreted as "because of").


title: Conceptual art

text: Contemporary artists have taken up many of the concerns of the conceptual art movement, while they may or may not term themselves "conceptual artists". Ideas such as anti-commodification, social and/or political critique, and ideas/information as medium continue to be aspects of contemporary art, especially among artists working with installation art, performance art, art intervention, net.art and electronic/digital art.


title: Amaranthe

text: Amaranthe is a Swedish metal band originally known as Avalanche. The band is notable for their blend of various metal genres and having three lead vocalists.


title: Amaranthe

text: Formed by Olof Mörck (Dragonland, Nightrage) and Joacim "Jake E" Lundberg (Dreamland, Dream Evil) in 2008, the project began taking shape when singers Elize Ryd (toured with Kamelot) and Andreas Solveström (Cipher System, Within Y) signed on, as did drummer Morten Løwe Sørensen (The Cleansing, Koldborn, Mercenary). Bassist Johan Andreassen (Engel) joined after the photoshoot for the "Leave Everything Behind" demo but before the recording of the first album "Amaranthe". The band was originally called Avalanche until May 2009, when they were forced to change their name due to legal issues. The members chose to rename the band Amaranthe. They later released their first demo, "Leave Everything Behind".


title: Amaranthe

text: The band's debut album, "Amaranthe", was released in April 2011 and reached a peak position of 35th on Swedish charts and 16th on Finnish Charts. Their second album, "The Nexus", was released in March 2013. Guitarist Olof Mörck described the album as having greater contrasts, a more controversial mix of genres, and featuring more creative freedoms than "Amaranthe". According to Olof, the band "took everything [up] to eleven" in the new album. The album reached 6th on Swedish charts, 4th on Finnish charts, and reached a peak of 12th on the US Heatseekers charts.


title: Amaranthe

text: In October 2013, harsh vocalist Solveström left the band and was replaced by Henrik Englund Wilhelmsson (Scarpoint). Their third album, "Massive Addictive", was released on 21 October 2014. A special compilation "Breaking Point - B-sides 2011-2015" was released on 30 October 2015. It consists of b-sides and bonus tracks from Amaranthe's career. Their fourth album, "Maximalism", was released on 21 October 2016.


title: Amaranthe

text: In November 2016, male clean vocalist Jake E announced that he would take a break from the band. In February 2017, the band confirmed that he was permanently leaving. In March 2017, he joined CyHra. In July 2017, Amaranthe stated on their Facebook page that Nils Molin of Dynazty would join the band as their permanent vocalist, after filling in for Jake E on tour dates.


title: Amaranthe

text: On 10 August 2018, they released their new single, "365", from their new album "Helix", which itself was released on 19 October. At that time, they wrote and performed the credits theme song to the 12 oz. Mouse special "INVICTUS".


title: Amaranthe

text: On 3 January 2020, the band released their rendition of Sabaton's "82nd All the Way", originally taken from Sabaton's 2019 studio album "The Great War".


title: Amaranthe

text: On 13 February 2020, the band released the single "Do or Die", which features former Arch Enemy-vocalist Angela Gossow on growling vocals and Arch Enemy-guitarist Jeff Loomis on the guitar solo. The official music video, which was filmed in Spain, was released the next day. In the music video's description, the band's label Nuclear Blast announced that their sixth studio album would be released in September 2020.


title: Amaranthe

text: On 5 March 2020, the band released the music video for "Endlessly", originally from the album "Maximalism". The video was directed, filmed and edited by Duminciuc Bogdan and is actually the documentation of the Transylvanian wedding between guitarist Olof Mörck and his wife Cătălina Popa (the flutist from the German symphonic metal band Haggard), which took place on 19 July 2019 at Sungarden, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.


title: Amaranthe

text: Amaranthe released their sixth studio album, titled "Manifest", on 2 October 2020. The first single 'Viral' was released on 26 June 2020, followed by a second single, 'Strong,' on 14 August 2020, and 'Archangel' as the third single on 18 September 2020.


title: Amaranthe

text: In December 2021, Amaranthe released a single called "PvP". The track was written as the official anthem for the Swedish E-Sports world cup team at the E-Sports world championship. The single was accompanied by a music video and a Browser game, hosted on the band's website.


title: Amaranthe

text: On 8 June 2022, Wilhelmsson announced his exit from the band, saying that he wished to spend more time with his family and began to dislike touring over the years. He also said that he was planning on releasing solo material in the near future. The band announced they would be joined by two special guests as his replacements at their summer shows of that year.


title: Amaranthe

text: Even as their body of work grows, where exactly Amaranthe's music fits into the heavy metal sphere remains notoriously undefined. Band members, websites, and critics have referred to the band and their albums as various different genres such as pop metal, melodic death metal, metalcore, power metal, symphonic metal, death metal, heavy metal, and alternative metal.


title: Dragon's Breath (chili pepper)

text: The plant was developed in a collaboration between chili farmer Neal Price, NPK Technology, and Nottingham Trent University during a test of a special plant food and for its essential oil having potential as a skin anesthetic. The Dragon's Breath plant was later cultivated by breeder Mike Smith of St Asaph, Denbighshire, Wales, who said that he had not planned to breed the chili for record heat, but rather was trying to grow an attractive pepper plant. Due to the nationality of the farmer who cultivated the pepper in Wales, it was named Dragon's Breath after the Welsh dragon. It was entered in the Plant of the Year contest at the 2017 Chelsea Flower Show where it was on the short list, but did not place.


title: Dragon's Breath (chili pepper)

text: The Dragon's Breath chili was unofficially tested at 2.48 million Scoville units making it a contender for the hottest chili pepper in the world. Guinness World Records has so far not recognized this claim, as the Carolina Reaper is still mentioned as the current record holder. It was allegedly surpassed several months later by Pepper X at 3.18 million Scoville units, but this is also unconfirmed.


title: Dragon's Breath (chili pepper)

text: Nottingham Trent University researchers suggest that the pepper's ability to numb the skin could make its essential oil useful as an anaesthetic for patients who cannot tolerate other anaesthetics, or in countries where they are too expensive. Experts at the university warned that swallowing one might cause death by choking or anaphylactic shock; one science writer noted that this was a standard warning that applied only to those with relevant allergies.


title: Nim

text: Nim is a mathematical game of strategy in which two players take turns removing (or "nimming") objects from distinct heaps or piles. On each turn, a player must remove at least one object, and may remove any number of objects provided they all come from the same heap or pile. Depending on the version being played, the goal of the game is either to avoid taking the last object or to take the last object.


title: Nim

text: Variants of Nim have been played since ancient times. The game is said to have originated in China—it closely resembles the Chinese game of 捡石子 "jiǎn-shízi", or "picking stones"—but the origin is uncertain; the earliest European references to Nim are from the beginning of the 16th century. Its current name was coined by Charles L. Bouton of Harvard University, who also developed the complete theory of the game in 1901, but the origins of the name were never fully explained.


title: Nim

text: Nim is typically played as a "misère game", in which the player to take the last object loses. Nim can also be played as a "normal play" game whereby the player taking the last object wins. This is called normal play because the last move is a winning move in most games, even though it is not the normal way that Nim is played. In either normal play or a misère game, when the number of heaps with at least two objects is exactly equal to one, the player who takes next can easily win. If this removes either all or all but one objects from the heap that has two or more, then no heaps will have more than one object, so the players are forced to alternate removing exactly one object until the game ends. If the player leaves an even number of non-zero heaps (as the player would do in normal play), the player takes last; if the player leaves an odd number of heaps (as the player would do in misère play), then the other player takes last.


title: Nim

text: Normal play Nim (or more precisely the system of nimbers) is fundamental to the Sprague–Grundy theorem, which essentially says that in normal play every impartial game is equivalent to a Nim heap that yields the same outcome when played in parallel with other normal play impartial games (see disjunctive sum).


title: Nim

text: While all normal play impartial games can be assigned a Nim value, that is not the case under the misère convention. Only tame games can be played using the same strategy as misère Nim.


title: Nim

text: The evolution graph of the game of Nim with three heaps is the same as three branches of the evolution graph of the Ulam-Warburton automaton.


title: Nim

text: At the 1940 New York World's Fair Westinghouse displayed a machine, the Nimatron, that played Nim. From May 11, 1940, to October 27, 1940, only a few people were able to beat the machine in that six-week period; if they did, they were presented with a coin that said Nim Champ. It was also one of the first-ever electronic computerized games. Ferranti built a Nim playing computer which was displayed at the Festival of Britain in 1951. In 1952 Herbert Koppel, Eugene Grant and Howard Bailer, engineers from the W. L. Maxon Corporation, developed a machine weighing which played Nim against a human opponent and regularly won. A Nim Playing Machine has been described made from TinkerToy.


title: Nim

text: The game of Nim was the subject of Martin Gardner's February 1958 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. A version of Nim is played—and has symbolic importance—in the French New Wave film "Last Year at Marienbad" (1961).


title: Nim

text: The normal game is between two players and is played with three heaps of any number of objects. The two players alternate taking any number of objects from any one of the heaps. The goal is to be the last to take an object. In misère play, the goal is instead to ensure that the opponent is forced to take the last remaining object.


title: Nim

text: The following example of a normal game is played between fictional players Bob and Alice, who start with heaps of three, four and five objects.


title: Nim

text: The practical strategy to win at the game of "Nim" is for a player to get the other into one of the following positions, and every successive turn afterwards they should be able to make one of the smaller positions. Only the last move changes between misere and normal play.


title: Nim

text: Nim has been mathematically solved for any number of initial heaps and objects, and there is an easily calculated way to determine which player will win and which winning moves are open to that player.


title: Nim

text: The key to the theory of the game is the binary digital sum of the heap sizes, i.e., the sum (in binary), neglecting all carries from one digit to another. This operation is also known as "bitwise xor" or "vector addition over GF(2)" (bitwise addition modulo 2). Within combinatorial game theory it is usually called the nim-sum, as it will be called here. The nim-sum of "x" and "y" is written to distinguish it from the ordinary sum, . An example of the calculation with heaps of size 3, 4, and 5 is as follows:


title: Nim

text: An equivalent procedure, which is often easier to perform mentally, is to express the heap sizes as sums of distinct powers of 2, cancel pairs of equal powers, and then add what is left:


title: Nim

text: In normal play, the winning strategy is to finish every move with a nim-sum of 0. This is always possible if the nim-sum is not zero before the move. If the nim-sum is zero, then the next player will lose if the other player does not make a mistake. To find out which move to make, let X be the nim-sum of all the heap sizes. Find a heap where the nim-sum of X and heap-size is less than the heap-size; the winning strategy is to play in such a heap, reducing that heap to the nim-sum of its original size with X. In the example above, taking the nim-sum of the sizes is . The nim-sums of the heap sizes A=3, B=4, and C=5 with X=2 are


title: Nim

text: The only heap that is reduced is heap A, so the winning move is to reduce the size of heap A to 1 (by removing two objects).


title: Nim

text: As a particular simple case, if there are only two heaps left, the strategy is to reduce the number of objects in the bigger heap to make the heaps equal. After that, no matter what move your opponent makes, you can make the same move on the other heap, guaranteeing that you take the last object.


title: Nim

text: When played as a misère game, Nim strategy is different only when the normal play move would leave only heaps of size one. In that case, the correct move is to leave an odd number of heaps of size one (in normal play, the correct move would be to leave an even number of such heaps).


title: Nim

text: These strategies for normal play and a misère game are the same until the number of heaps with at least two objects is exactly equal to one. At that point, the next player removes either all objects (or all but one) from the heap that has two or more, so no heaps will have more than one object (in other words, so all remaining heaps have exactly one object each), so the players are forced to alternate removing exactly one object until the game ends. In normal play, the player leaves an even number of non-zero heaps, so the same player takes last; in misère play, the player leaves an odd number of non-zero heaps, so the other player takes last.


title: Nim

text: Theorem. In a normal Nim game, the player making the first move has a winning strategy if and only if the nim-sum of the sizes of the heaps is not zero. Otherwise, the second player has a winning strategy.


title: Nim

text: "Proof:" Notice that the nim-sum (⊕) obeys the usual associative and commutative laws of addition (+) and also satisfies an additional property, "x" ⊕ "x" = 0.


title: Nim

text: Let "x", ..., "x" be the sizes of the heaps before a move, and "y", ..., "y" the corresponding sizes after a move. Let "s" = "x" ⊕ ... ⊕ "x" and "t" = "y" ⊕ ... ⊕ "y". If the move was in heap "k", we have "x" = "y" for all "i" ≠ "k", and "x" > "y". By the properties of ⊕ mentioned above, we have


title: Nim

text: "Proof:" If there is no possible move, then the lemma is vacuously true (and the first player loses the normal play game by definition). Otherwise, any move in heap "k" will produce "t" = "x" ⊕ "y" from (*). This number is nonzero, since "x" ≠ "y".


title: Nim

text: "Proof:" Let "d" be the position of the leftmost (most significant) nonzero bit in the binary representation of "s", and choose "k" such that the "d"th bit of "x" is also nonzero. (Such a "k" must exist, since otherwise the "d"th bit of "s" would be 0.)


title: Nim

text: Then letting "y" = "s" ⊕ "x", we claim that "y" < "x": all bits to the left of "d" are the same in "x" and "y", bit "d" decreases from 1 to 0 (decreasing the value by 2), and any change in the remaining bits will amount to at most 2−1. The first player can thus make a move by taking "x" − "y" objects from heap "k", then


title: Nim

text: The modification for misère play is demonstrated by noting that the modification first arises in a position that has only one heap of size 2 or more. Notice that in such a position "s" ≠ 0, and therefore this situation has to arise when it is the turn of the player following the winning strategy. The normal play strategy is for the player to reduce this to size 0 or 1, leaving an even number of heaps with size 1, and the misère strategy is to do the opposite. From that point on, all moves are forced.


title: Nim

text: In another game which is commonly known as Nim (but is better called the subtraction game), an upper bound is imposed on the number of objects that can be removed in a turn. Instead of removing arbitrarily many objects, a player can only remove 1 or 2 or ... or "k" at a time. This game is commonly played in practice with only one heap.


title: Nim

text: Bouton's analysis carries over easily to the general multiple-heap version of this game. The only difference is that as a first step, before computing the Nim-sums we must reduce the sizes of the heaps modulo "k" + 1. If this makes all the heaps of size zero (in misère play), the winning move is to take "k" objects from one of the heaps. In particular, in ideal play from a single heap of "n" objects, the second player can win if and only if


title: Nim

text: The game "21" is played as a misère game with any number of players who take turns saying a number. The first player says "1" and each player in turn increases the number by 1, 2, or 3, but may not exceed 21; the player forced to say "21" loses. This can be modeled as a subtraction game with a heap of 21–"n" objects. The winning strategy for the two-player version of this game is to always say a multiple of 4; it is then guaranteed that the other player will ultimately have to say 21; so in the standard version, wherein the first player opens with "1", they start with a losing move.


title: Nim

text: A similar version is the "100 game": Two players start from 0 and alternately add a number from 1 to 10 to the sum. The player who reaches 100 wins. The winning strategy is to reach a number in which the digits are subsequent (e.g., 01, 12, 23, 34...) and control the game by jumping through all the numbers of this sequence. Once a player reaches 89, the opponent can only choose numbers from 90 to 99, and the next answer can in any case be 100.


title: Nim

text: In another variation of Nim, besides removing any number of objects from a single heap, one is permitted to remove the same number of objects from each heap.


title: Nim

text: Yet another variation of Nim is 'Circular Nim', wherein any number of objects are placed in a circle and two players alternately remove one, two or three adjacent objects. For example, starting with a circle of ten objects,


title: Nim

text: In Grundy's game, another variation of Nim, a number of objects are placed in an initial heap and two players alternately divide a heap into two nonempty heaps of different sizes. Thus, six objects may be divided into piles of 5+1 or 4+2, but not 3+3. Grundy's game can be played as either misère or normal play.


title: Nim

text: "Greedy Nim" is a variation wherein the players are restricted to choosing stones from only the largest pile. It is a finite impartial game. "Greedy Nim Misère" has the same rules as Greedy Nim, but here the last player able to make a move loses.


title: Nim

text: Let the largest number of stones in a pile be "m" and the second largest number of stones in a pile be "n". Let "p" be the number of piles having "m" stones and "p" be the number of piles having "n" stones. Then there is a theorem that game positions with "p" even are "P" positions.


title: Nim

text: Thus, there exists a move to a state where "p" is even. Conversely, if "p" is even, if any move is possible ("p" ≠ 0), then it must take the game to a state where "p" is odd. The final position of the game is even ("p" = 0). Hence, each position of the game with "p" even must be a "P" position.


title: Nim

text: A generalization of multi-heap Nim was called "Nimformula_2" or "index-"k"" Nim by E. H. Moore, who analyzed it in 1910. In index-"k" Nim, instead of removing objects from only one heap, players can remove objects from at least one but up to "k" different heaps. The number of elements that may be removed from each heap may be either arbitrary or limited to at most "r" elements, like in the "subtraction game" above.


title: Nim

text: The winning strategy is as follows: Like in ordinary multi-heap Nim, one considers the binary representation of the heap sizes (or heap sizes modulo "r" + 1). In ordinary Nim one forms the XOR-sum (or sum modulo 2) of each binary digit, and the winning strategy is to make each XOR sum zero. In the generalization to index-"k" Nim, one forms the sum of each binary digit modulo "k" + 1.


title: Nim

text: Again the winning strategy is to move such that this sum is zero for every digit. Indeed, the value thus computed is zero for the final position, and given a configuration of heaps for which this value is zero, any change of at most "k" heaps will make the value non-zero. Conversely, given a configuration with non-zero value, one can always take from at most "k" heaps, carefully chosen, so that the value will become zero.


title: Nim

text: Building Nim is a variant of Nim wherein the two players first construct the game of Nim. Given "n" stones and "s" empty piles, the players, alternating turns, place exactly one stone into a pile of their choice. Once all the stones are placed, a game of Nim begins, starting with the next player that would move. This game is denoted "BN(n,s)".


title: Nim

text: "n"-d Nim is played on a formula_3 board, whereon any number of continuous pieces can be removed from any hyper-row. The starting position is usually the full board, but other options are allowed.


title: Nim

text: Candy Nim is a version of normal play Nim in which players try to achieve two goals at the same time: taking the last object (in this case, candy) and taking the maximum number of candies by the end of the game.


title: Nim

text: Wordnim is the verbal version of Nim where players form words from initial sets or series of letters until none are left or no legitimate word can be formed.


title: Jane Elliott

text: Jane Elliott (' Jennison; born November 30, 1933) is an American diversity educator. As a schoolteacher, she became known for her "Blue eyes/Brown eyes" exercise, which she first conducted with her third-grade class on April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Publication in the local newspaper of compositions the children had written about the experience led to much broader media interest.


title: Jane Elliott

text: The classroom exercise was filmed in 1970, becoming the documentary "The Eye of the Storm". PBS series "Frontline" featured a reunion of the 1970 class, as well as Elliott's work with adults, in its 1985 episode "A Class Divided". Invitations to speak and to conduct her exercise eventually led Elliott to give up school teaching and to become a full-time public speaker against discrimination. She has directed the exercise and lectured on its effects in many places throughout the world. She also has conducted the exercise with college students, as seen in the 2001 documentary "The Angry Eye".


title: Jane Elliott

text: Elliott was born in 1933 to Lloyd and Margaret (Benson) Jennison on her family's farm in or near Riceville, Iowa. Her father, who delivered her, was Irish-American. She was the fourth of several children.


title: Jane Elliott

text: In 1952, after graduating from high school, Elliott attended the Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa), where she attained an emergency elementary teaching certificate in five quarters. In 1953, she began her teaching career in a one-room school in Randall.


title: Jane Elliott

text: On the evening of April 4, 1968, Elliott turned on her television and learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She says she vividly remembers a scene in which a white reporter pointed his microphone toward a local black leader and asked things like "When "our" leader <nowiki>[</nowiki>John F. Kennedy<nowiki>]</nowiki> was killed several years ago, his widow held us together. Who's going to control "your" people?"


title: Jane Elliott

text: Elliott then decided to combine a lesson she had planned about Native Americans with a lesson she had planned about Martin Luther King Jr. for February's Hero of the Month project. At the moment she was watching the news of King's death, Elliott says she was ironing a teepee for use in a lesson unit about Native Americans. To tie the two lessons together, she used the Sioux prayer "Oh great spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked in his moccasins."


title: Jane Elliott

text: She wanted to give her small-town, all-white students the experience of walking in a "colored child's moccasins for a day".


title: Jane Elliott

text: Steven Armstrong was the first child to arrive in Elliott's classroom. Referring to Martin Luther King Jr., he asked, "Why'd they shoot that King?" After the rest of the class arrived, Elliott asked them how they think it feels to be a black boy or girl. She suggested to the class it would be hard for them to understand discrimination without experiencing it themselves and then asked the children if they would like to find out. The children agreed with a chorus of "yeah". She decided to base the exercise on eye color rather than skin color to show the children what racial segregation would be like.


title: Jane Elliott

text: At first, there was resistance among the students in the minority group to the idea brown-eyed children were better than blue-eyed children. To counter this, Elliott lied to the children by stating melanin was linked to their higher intelligence and learning ability. Shortly thereafter, this initial resistance fell away. Those who were deemed "superior" became arrogant, bossy, and otherwise unpleasant to their "inferior" classmates. Their grades on simple tests were better, and they completed mathematical and reading tasks that had seemed outside their ability before. The "inferior" classmates also transformed – into timid and subservient children who scored more poorly on tests, and even during recess isolated themselves, including those who had previously been dominant in the class. These children's academic performance suffered, even with tasks that had been simple before.


title: Jane Elliott

text: The next Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, making the blue-eyed children superior. While the blue-eyed children did taunt the brown-eyed children in ways similar to what had occurred the previous day, Elliott reports it was much less intense. To reflect on the experience, she asked the children to write down what they had learned.


title: Jane Elliott

text: The compositions the children wrote about the experience were printed in the "Riceville Recorder" on page 4 on April 18, 1968, under the headline "How Discrimination Feels", and the story was picked up by the Associated Press. As a result of the Associated Press article, Elliott was invited to appear on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson". After she spoke about her exercise in a short interview segment, the audience reaction was instant as hundreds of calls came into the show's telephone switchboard, much of it negative. An often-quoted letter stated, "How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children? Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage."


title: Jane Elliott

text: The publicity Elliott was getting did not make her popular in Riceville. When she walked into the teachers' lounge the day after her "Tonight Show" appearance, several other teachers walked out. When she went downtown to do errands, she heard whispers. When her oldest daughter went to the girls' bathroom in junior high, she came out of a stall to see a hateful message scrawled in red lipstick for her on the mirror.


title: Jane Elliott

text: Of all her coworkers, Elliott states only one of them, Ruth Setka, continued to speak to her after her exercise went public. Setka said she realized she was the only one who kept speaking to her. Setka believed the reason Eliott's exercise got so much backlash was because the students were very young and the exercise should have been done on at least junior high school-aged students. In a 2003 interview, Elliot said about 20% of the Riceville community were still furious with her over what she did that day in 1968, and some still called her "n-word lover", but she was grateful for the other 80%.


title: Jane Elliott

text: However, as news of her exercise spread, she appeared on more television shows and started to repeat the exercise in professional training days for adults. On December 15, 1970, Elliott staged the experience to adult educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth.


title: Jane Elliott

text: In 1970, ABC produced a documentary about Elliott called "The Eye of the Storm", which made her even more nationally known. Subsequently, William Peters wrote two books—"A Class Divided" and "A Class Divided: Then and Now"—about her and the exercise. "A Class Divided" was turned into a PBS "Frontline" documentary in 1985 and included a reunion of the schoolchildren featured in "The Eye of the Storm", for which Elliott received The Hillman Prize. A televised edition of the exercise was shown on Channel 4 on October 29, 2009, entitled "The Event: How Racist Are You?" This documentary was intended, according to the producers in their agreement with Jane Elliott, to create an awareness of the effects of racist behavior. After the exercise, Elliott said the result "wasn't as successful as I am accustomed to being", leaving journalist Andrew Anthony with the "nagging suspicion that she's more excited by white fear than she is by black success."


title: Jane Elliott

text: Elliott was featured by Peter Jennings on ABC as "Person of the Week" on April 24, 1992. She is listed on the timeline of 30 notable educators by textbook editor McGraw-Hill along with Confucius, Plato, Booker T. Washington, and Maria Montessori. She has been invited to speak at 350 colleges and universities and has appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" five times.


title: Jane Elliott

text: Elliott is considered to be the forerunner of diversity training, with the "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise as the basis of much of what is now called diversity training. She has done such training for corporations such as General Electric, Exxon, AT&T, and IBM, as well as lectured to the FBI, IRS, US Navy, US Department of Education, and US Postal Service.