title: Acadia National Park

text: Bog plants include bog aster, bog rosemary, cottongrass, large cranberry, small cranberry, bog goldenrod, dwarf huckleberry, blue flag, Labrador-tea, bog laurel, leatherleaf, pitcher plant, rhodora, bristly rose, creeping snowberry, round-leaved sundew, spatulate-leaved sundew, and sweetgale, along with larch and black spruce trees.


title: Acadia National Park

text: Meadow and roadside plants include speckled alder, flat-topped white aster, New York aster, blue-eyed-grass, azure bluet, spreading dogbane, fireweed, gray goldenrod, rough-stemmed goldenrod, wavy hair-grass, hardhack, whorled loosestrife, tall meadow-rue, meadowsweet, common milkweed, pearly everlasting, wild strawberry, and yellow rattle.


title: Acadia National Park

text: Freshwater marsh and pond plants include common arrowhead, horned bladderwort, highbush blueberry, bluejoint, common cattail, water lobelia, pickerelweed, marsh St. John's wort, swamp candles, swamp rose, white turtlehead, fragrant water-lily, and yellow water-lily.


title: Acadia National Park

text: The Mount Desert Island section of the park harbors more than half of the vascular plant species occurring in Maine. Plant, algal, and fungal specimens collected during research activities at the park are deposited for future study at a herbarium jointly administered by the park and the College of the Atlantic. A special garden called "The Wild Gardens of Acadia" was established in the Sieur de Monts area of the park in 1961 and has since grown to include more than 400 indigenous plant species found throughout all park areas.


title: Acadia National Park

text: The park's wide variety of natural habitats provides homes for many different animal species. The coastal location also encourages a large number of species; however, the small size and isolation of these habitats from mainland habitats limits the types of animals, especially their size. Smaller animals are better adapted to smaller habitats which makes them more common and easily observed than larger ones such as black bears and moose.


title: Acadia National Park

text: Seven reptilian species live in the park including five snakes (milk, smooth green, redbelly, eastern garter, and the ring-necked snake) and two turtles (the common snapping turtle and the eastern painted turtle).


title: Acadia National Park

text: Eleven amphibian species inhabit the park including the American toad, five frog species (bullfrog, spring peeper, green, pickerel, and wood frog), four salamander species (spotted, dusky, northern two-lined, and four-toed salamander), and the eastern newt.


title: Acadia National Park

text: The most abundant fish are the American eel, golden shiner, banded killifish, and pumpkinseed, while commonly found fish include alewife, white sucker, northern redbelly dace, chain pickerel (non-native), three-spined stickleback, nine-spined stickleback, rainbow smelt, and brook trout. Thirteen other fish species (ten non-native) are listed by the NPS as uncommon, while eight other species are listed with an unknown abundance.


title: Acadia National Park

text: Many marine species may be observed in the surrounding waters, including seals and whales, from a sea kayak or other personal watercraft, or on ranger-narrated boat cruises. Special whale-watching excursions launch from Bar Harbor.


title: Acadia National Park

text: A total of 215 bird species, including migratory birds, are present at some time during the year. An additional 116 species are possibly present but unconfirmed, making a total of 331 potential species. Thirty-three other bird species are considered historical and no longer present in the park. Large birds include golden and bald eagles, gyrfalcons, turkey vultures, ospreys, cormorants, and various herons, hawks, and owls. Waterfowl species include four geese (Canada, brant, snow, and greater white-fronted geese), along with various ducks including mallards, wood ducks, pintails, wigeons, blue-winged and green-winged teals, canvasbacks, buffleheads, eiders, goldeneyes, and harlequin ducks. Seabirds include terns and four gull species (herring, laughing, ring-billed, and great black-backed gulls), while shorebirds include avocets, sandpipers and plovers. Songbirds are represented by various species of blackbirds, chickadees, finches, jays, sparrows, swallows, thrushes, vireos, warblers, and wrens.


title: Acadia National Park

text: One of the more unique songbirds is the red crossbill, a finch that uses its crossed mandibles to efficiently extract the seeds from conifer cones, especially those of spruces, hemlocks, and pines. The crossbills feed their young with the same seeds, rather than the insects which other species feed to their chicks. Any given subspecies of the crossbill (as many as ten are known in North America) will have the same bill size, utilize the same calls to communicate, and prefer certain cones, with smaller-billed birds preferring the smaller cones of hemlocks and larger-billed birds preferring the larger cones of white pines.


title: Acadia National Park

text: In 1991, peregrine falcons had a successful nesting in Acadia for the first time since 1956. At least one pair and as many as four pairs have produced offspring over the years since 1991, totaling more than 160 chicks. Many of those chicks were banded to learn about migration, habitat use, and longevity. Banded falcons have been observed as far away as Vermont, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and New Brunswick. Beginning in early spring and continuing into mid-summer, certain trails may be closed to avoid disturbance to falcon nesting areas. The Jordan Cliffs Trail, Valley Cove Trail, Precipice Trail, and a portion of the Orange and Black Path were closed from April 13 to July 13, 2018. The same trails were closed from March 22 to August 3, 2017.


title: Acadia National Park

text: Motor vehicle touring along the Park Loop Road begins on April 15, if weather permits, and ends on December 1, unless significant snowfall closes it sooner. A stretch of the Ocean Drive portion of the loop, from Schooner Head Road to Sand Beach and Otter Cliff, is plowed and open all year, as is Jordan Pond Road.


title: Acadia National Park

text: The coastline can be explored on guided boat trips or by sea kayak. Canoeing and kayaking are popular activities on accessible lakes and ponds. About of hiking trails traverse forests and mountains, while of carriage roads can be hiked or bicycled (motorized vehicles, including electric bikes, are prohibited). Horseback riding is permitted on carriage roads and certain other park areas. Climbing is popular at high Otter Cliff, and at Great Head, Precipice, and South Bubble. Sand Beach offers seawater swimming and Echo Lake Beach offers freshwater swimming. In summer, ocean water temperature ranges from while lake and pond temperatures range from .


title: Acadia National Park

text: Ranger-led programs from mid-May to mid-October introduce visitors to the park's diverse natural and cultural history. Park rangers offer short walks, longer hikes, boat cruises, evening amphitheater programs, and children's programs, as well as viewing of peregrine falcons and raptors.


title: Acadia National Park

text: Winter activities include hiking on trails using snowshoes, or traction footwear, and trekking poles, cross-country skiing on carriage roads, snowmobiling on the paved loop road, and ice fishing on frozen ponds and lakes.


title: Acadia National Park

text: Mount Desert Island has two NPS campgrounds, constructed mainly by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s along with various park trails. Blackwoods Campground is located on the east side of the island, closer to the most popular sites, the carriage roads, and Bar Harbor. Seawall Campground is on the less crowded west side of the island. Schoodic Woods on the Schoodic Peninsula is the newest NPS campground, opened in 2015. Five lean-to shelters are available by advance reservation at Duck Harbor Campground on Isle au Haut. Blackwoods is open throughout the year, though only primitive walk-in camping by permit is possible in winter (December–March), while the others are open from late spring (mid-to-late May) to early autumn (late September to mid-October). Mount Desert Island also has eleven private campgrounds outside park boundaries, while two private campgrounds are on the Schoodic Peninsula, and one is on Isle au Haut.


title: Acadia National Park

text: The park hosts the annual Acadia Night Sky Festival, attracting speakers, researchers, photographers, and artists to the area.


title: Acadia National Park

text: Park attendance increased to 3.53 million in 2018, setting a new record for the second year in a row. The seasonal nature of the park means a concentration of visitors in the summer months that is beyond the capacity of park infrastructure. Congestion leads to lack of available parking and gridlock, requiring road closures. Traffic management places a toll on available rangers, competing with rescue operations that also see a sharp increase on peak attendance days.


title: Acadia National Park

text: The Island Explorer bus system is offered in part to reduce congestion; it has served 7.7 million passengers since it began operations in 1999. A portion of park entrance fees partially funds the service.


title: Acadia National Park

text: Since the park's founding in 1916, climate change has lengthened the growing season by nearly two months. A longer growing season threatens native plants and invites invasive species that thrive in the longer, warmer summer season. An expanded warm season also lengthens the tourism season, placing further strain on park resources. Changes in rainfall patterns have also taxed park infrastructure, increasing the maintenance required to control erosion and protect the historic carriage roads.


title: Acadia National Park

text: Park officials estimated the cost of needed infrastructure maintenance to be $65.8 million in 2019, a $6 million increase from 2018. The National Park Service has an estimated $11 billion in total deferred maintenance across all units, a number which continues to increase. The backlog compounds existing problems in environmental management and traffic congestion, as infrastructure to manage traffic flow cannot be built until existing infrastructure is properly maintained. Trail and wilderness restoration is also deferred due to insufficient funding. Additionally, the large number of park entrances creates issues with fee compliance, costing additional lost revenue.


title: Acadia National Park

text: Six visitor information centers are located in or near the park, including the main visitor center at Hulls Cove (northwest of Bar Harbor), a nature center at Sieur de Monts (south of Bar Harbor), an information center on Thompson Island (along the roadway to Mount Desert Island), another information center at Village Green in Bar Harbor, a historical museum in Islesford on Little Cranberry Island, and the Rockefeller Welcome Center on the Schoodic Peninsula. The Rockefeller Welcome Center is the only one open throughout the year, though it is closed on winter weekends; the others are all closed in winter.


title: Acadia National Park

text: After the naval base on the Schoodic Peninsula closed in 2002, the National Park Service (NPS) acquired the land and established the Schoodic Education and Research Center (SERC). The SERC campus is managed by the nonprofit Schoodic Institute and the NPS in a public-private partnership as one of 19 NPS research learning centers in the country. The center is dedicated to supporting scientific research in the park, providing professional development for teachers, and educating students who will become the next generation of park stewards.


title: Acadia National Park

text: In 1986, a group of Acadia-area residents and park volunteers formed the membership-based nonprofit organization Friends of Acadia (FOA) to organize volunteer efforts and private philanthropy for the benefit of Acadia National Park. The group's first major achievement was a $3.4 million endowment, raised between 1991 and 1996, to maintain the park's carriage road system in perpetuity, which leveraged federal funds to fully restore the road system. Subsequent projects and partnerships included Acadia Trails Forever, the first endowed trail system in an American national park with $13 million raised between 1999 and 2001, and the Island Explorer, a free, propane-powered bus system serving the park and local communities since 1999.


title: Acadia National Park

text: The Acadia Youth Conservation Corps was established by FOA and endowed by an anonymous donor in 1999 to employ 16 high school students in maintenance of trails and carriage roads in the summer months. FOA also partnered with park administration to establish the Acadia Youth Technology Team in 2011, an initiative involving local teenaged interns and college-age team leaders supplied with professional-quality imaging tools to foster an appreciation of nature and environmental stewardship, especially among younger people. The team has since been renamed the Acadia Digital Media Team.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Gerald Vincent Bull (March 9, 1928 – March 22, 1990) was a Canadian engineer who developed long-range artillery. He moved from project to project in his quest to economically launch a satellite using a huge artillery piece, to which end he designed the Project Babylon "supergun" for Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Bull was assassinated outside his apartment in Brussels, Belgium, in March 1990. His assassination is believed to be the work of the Mossad over his work for the Iraqi government. No person has ever been charged with the murder of Bull.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Bull was born in North Bay, Ontario, Canada, to George L. Toussaint Bull, a solicitor, and Gertrude Isabelle (née LaBrosse) Bull. George Bull was from a family from the Trenton area and had moved to North Bay in 1903 to start a law firm. As a Roman Catholic, LaBrosse would have been forbidden from marrying Bull, an Anglican. George converted to Roman Catholicism on February 20, 1909, and the two married three days later. The couple had 10 children.


title: Gerald Bull

text: George Bull was offered the position of King's Counsel in 1928. The family was well off, but the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and ensuing Great Depression dramatically changed their circumstances. Within a year the loans Bull had taken to buy stocks on margin were called in, and the family was forced to move to Toronto to look for work.


title: Gerald Bull

text: The next year Gertrude Bull suffered complications while giving birth to her 10th child, Gordon. She died April 1, 1931. George Bull suffered a nervous breakdown and fell into heavy drinking; he left his children in the care of his sister Laura, who fell victim to cancer and died in mid-1934. The next year, banks foreclosed on the family home. The same year, George, at the age of 58, met and married Rose Bleeker. He gave up the children to various relatives: Gerald ending up living with his older sister Bernice.


title: Gerald Bull

text: In 1938, Gerald was sent to spend the summer holidays with his uncle and aunt, Philip and Edith LaBrosse (Philip was the younger brother of Gerald's mother, Gertrude). During the Depression, Phil and Edith had won about $175,000 in the Irish Sweepstakes, and were relatively well off. Gerald was sent to an all-boys Jesuit school, Regiopolis College, Kingston, Ontario. Although too young to attend, the school allowed him to start in 1938 and he returned to spend the summers with the LaBrosses. During this time he took up the hobby of building balsa wood airplanes of his own design, and was a member of the school's modelling club. He graduated in 1944.


title: Gerald Bull

text: After graduating, Bull entered Queen's University, with hopes of eventually entering military officers' training school. Philip LaBrosse visited the University of Toronto with the intention of having Bull placed there. He wrote to Bull, who was in Kingston, having found room in the medical school. Bull declined the offer and instead asked LaBrosse if a position in the new aeronautical engineering course was available. The department, being brand new, had limited qualifying criteria for entrance and agreed to interview Bull even though he was only sixteen years old – and he was accepted into the undergraduate program. Records and recollections of both classmates and his professors show little evidence of Bull's brilliance; one professor noted that "He certainly didn't stand out". After graduating in 1948, with marks that were described as "strictly average", Bull took a drafting job at A.V. Roe Canada.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Later that year, the University of Toronto opened a new Institute of Aerodynamics (now the Institute for Aerospace Studies) under the direction of Dr. Gordon Patterson. The Institute could afford to employ twelve students, accepting three per year for a four-year period, and was funded by the Defence Research Board (DRB). Bull applied and was accepted at Patterson's personal recommendation, as Patterson felt that any lack in academics was made up for by Bull's tremendous energy. Bull was soon assigned to work with fellow student Doug Henshaw, and the two were given the task of building a supersonic wind tunnel, which was at that time a relatively rare device.


title: Gerald Bull

text: When the Royal Canadian Air Force donated land adjacent to RCAF Station Downsview to the institute, the operations were quickly moved. During construction, Bull used the wind tunnel as the basis for his September 15, 1949 Master's thesis, on the design and construction of advanced wind tunnels. The tunnel was to be featured prominently during the opening of the new Institute grounds, leading to an all-night rush to get it fully operational in time for the presentation. The work was completed at 3:30 am, but the team was too exhausted to test it. The next day Air Marshal Wilfred Curtis pushed the start button and nothing happened, but Dr. Patterson quickly reached around, pushed harder, and the wind tunnel worked perfectly.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Bull had largely finished his PhD thesis on the same topic in 1950, when a request from the DRB asking that the Institute provide an aerodynamicist to help on their Velvet Glove Missile project arrived. It was to be an unpaid position on which the volunteer would remain on a normal PhD stipend from the University. Patterson selected Bull for the position, which led to a period of successful work at the Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment, or CARDE.


title: Gerald Bull

text: The Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment (CARDE) was formed as a joint Canadian-British operation to study artillery and ballistics, in an effort to harness the intellectual resources of Canada, as well as to place developing British technology outside of German reach during World War II. Formed up on a military training area and artillery range outside Valcartier, northwest of Quebec City, CARDE was one of a number of research divisions of the DRB that were well funded in the immediate post-war era. CARDE was researching supersonic flight and a variety of rocket and missile projects when Bull was asked to join. Bull asked to build a wind tunnel for this research, but his suggestions were dismissed as too expensive.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Gunners at CARDE suggested that firing models out of existing gun barrels would permit gathering data at much lower cost, and guided Bull in this direction. As a proof of concept, they tried an Ordnance QF 17-pounder barrel bored to . The aerodynamicists' demands to accommodate larger models resulted in boring out a BL 5.5 inch Medium Gun barrel to produce a smooth-bore. Borrowing an idea developed in England in 1916, cards were placed on holders along the range and scaled models of the missile fired through them. The models were carried in a segmented aluminum sabot, which peeled away as the round left the muzzle.


title: Gerald Bull

text: As originally built the range was long, with "jump cards" located at intervals. A metallic coating on the cards permitted timing of flight progress to measure velocity. One station was equipped for Schlieren photography to record the shock waves and wake around the projectile. In some ways this technique was superior to wind tunnel study, as it allowed for the direct measurement of real-world influences on the trajectory, as a test of theoretical calculations. On the downside, reducing the collected data to a mathematical trajectory for checking against the theoretical calculations is difficult.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Bull was at CARDE briefly before returning to the university to defend his thesis in March 1951, at 23 years old becoming the youngest PhD graduate in the institute's history—a record that remains to this day. He returned to CARDE, now on the DRB's payroll, and continued working on the instrumented guns. On one of these trips, in 1953, he and a friend stopped in Charny after a fishing trip to drop off some of their catch at a local doctor's house. Bull met Noemi "Mimi" Gilbert, the doctor's daughter, and the two soon started dating. Given Bull's work schedule they were rarely able to see each other, but they became engaged in February 1954, and married on July 15. Gilbert gave the couple a small house as a wedding gift. Mimi gave birth to their first son, Phillippe, on July 3, 1955, and a second, Michel, in November 1956.


title: Gerald Bull

text: In 1954 Bull decided that a wind tunnel was too important to ignore, even if he could not arrange for funding through the DRB. Instead, he gained the ear of professors at Laval University in Quebec City, and Bull and a number of graduate students started work on a tunnel similar to the one he had earlier built at the UofT. It opened in the summer of 1955 and was capable of speeds up to Mach 4, but cost only $6,000, the result of using scrap for most of its parts.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Bull's work was brought to the public's attention in a May 20, 1955 "Toronto Telegram" headline article, "Unveil Canadian Gun that Fires 4,550 M.P.H. Missiles". Around this time Bull further improved the data-collection capabilities of the system by developing a telemetry system that could fit in the models. DRB staff thought the idea was unworkable and worked against having it funded, but Bull shuffled his own department's funding and went ahead and developed it anyway. All the parts of Bull's future efforts, smooth-bore high-velocity guns, sabots for increasing performance, and hardened electronics, were now complete.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Work on the Velvet Glove ended in 1956, and the DRB turned its attention to anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs). Bull's gun system was not fast enough to be useful in this role, so it was adapted to use a "sabot" to improve its performance. Bull then moved on to hypersonics research and the study of infrared and radar cross sections for detection. As the UK's research efforts wound down in the post-war political environment, CARDE's joint UK-Canadian funding was dramatically cut back, with the project eventually being handed over to the Canadians entirely and followed by further cuts. Bull was vocal about this turn of events, calling the Liberal government of the day "second-rate lawyers and jumped-up real-estate salesmen".


title: Gerald Bull

text: During this period CARDE was visited by a US team, including Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau, who was impressed with Bull's work. Trudeau was director of US Army Research and Development, and he quickly set up a similar effort at the Aberdeen Proving Ground under the direction of Dr. Charles Murphy. They built an analog of Bull's gun using a gun and started test firing it over the Atlantic in 1961. The team used a fire-control radar from a Nike Hercules missile battery to track the shells, which released a cloud of chaff at altitudes up to .


title: Gerald Bull

text: Around the same time, Bull and Murphy started discussing the idea of firing scale aircraft models from their guns. Both started working on the idea, but Bull beat Murphy when he successfully fired a model of the Gloster Javelin from his gun and managed to take shadowgraph photos of it showing supersonic shock cones. Bull then used the same method to work on the Avro Arrow, discovering an instability that led to the use of a stability augmentation system. Work on the Avro Arrow was soon cancelled, which angered Bull.


title: Gerald Bull

text: With attention turning to space after the launch of Sputnik in 1957, Bull leaked a story that Canada would soon match this feat by placing a high-velocity gun in the nose of a US Army Redstone missile. The story was a complete fabrication, but caused a major stir when it hit the papers on April 22, 1958. After the story broke Prime Minister John Diefenbaker was besieged in the House of Commons press scrum, later dismissing it stating that "There is no foundation whatsoever to the story, not a scintilla of truth to it".


title: Gerald Bull

text: A major flap broke out as a result, leading to the dressing down of several of Bull's superiors. When the press was invited to visit CARDE, the Canadian Broadcasting Company broadcast a piece covering much of the work at CARDE on May 11, including lengthy sections on Bull's gun and their work on infrared detection and anti-ballistic missile systems.


title: Gerald Bull

text: On April 1, 1961, Bull got into an argument with his direct superior over paperwork. Bull wrote out his resignation. A report prepared after his departure stated "... his tempestuous nature and strong dislike for administration and red tape constantly led him into trouble with senior management."


title: Gerald Bull

text: Bull had long prepared for this event, and soon re-appeared as a professor at McGill University, which was in the process of building up a large engineering department under the direction of Donald Mordell. Mordell had long maintained links with CARDE and became one of Bull's ardent supporters, in spite of what other professors saw as "second-rate attempts at manipulation" and that "[Mordell] always supported Bull's work ... I think sometimes he got pretty tired of supporting Bull." Bull, for his part, appeared to enjoy the new position, and later described it as "a marriage made in heaven". Bull remained in contact with his counterparts in the US and the University of Toronto, and set about equipping the University with the instrumentation it would need to be a leader in the field of aerodynamics.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Several years earlier, while still working at CARDE, Gerald and Mimi had purchased a plot of land on the Québec–Vermont border. Bull donated the land to be used by McGill and turned into a new ballistics lab, a private analog of the CARDE site. Renamed to become "Highwater Station" due to the local village of Highwater, Quebec, the site was quickly developed under the direction of former British Army colonel Robert Stacy, who bulldozed large sections, built various test facilities and ran power to the site. There they began working with and artillery pieces.


title: Gerald Bull

text: In late 1961 Bull visited Murphy and Trudeau at Aberdeen and was able to interest them in the idea of using guns to loft missile components for re-entry research, a task that was otherwise very expensive and time-consuming aboard rockets. They arranged funding for the work under Project HARP (for "High Altitude Research Project", not to be confused with HAARP). The US Navy supplied a surplus battleship gun, and a contract from the Office of Naval Research paid for the gun to be re-bored into a smooth bore. The entire contract, excluding shipping, was only $2,000.


title: Gerald Bull

text: The performance of the gun was so great that the Highwater site was too small to support it. McGill had long been running a meteorological station on Barbados and had close connections with the new Democratic Labour Party (DLP), and suggested that it would make an ideal location for the gun to be set up. Bull met with then Premier Errol Barrow who became Barbados' first Prime Minister after Barbados received its Independence from the UK in 1966. Barrow, an enthusiastic supporter of HARP, arranged for a firing site at Paragon, on the southeast coast of the island near the Seawell Airport. The guns arrived in early 1962 but could not be put ashore at the site, and had to be offloaded up the coast at Foul Bay, and then transported overland via a purpose-built railway that employed hundreds of locals. As the project continued, this figure grew to over 300 permanently employed with the project, and it became a major reason for Barrow's continued support. Bull encouraged the locals to use the project as a stepping-stone to a science or engineering degree of their own, and his efforts were widely lauded in the press.


title: Gerald Bull

text: In January 1962 the first test shot was carried out, firing an empty sabot. The test was completely successful, so a further two similar firings were abandoned and the second firing was made with a dart-like finned projectile named "Martlet" (after the mythical bird without feet on the McGill University crest). These tests demonstrated several problems, including poor shot-to-shot performance of the decades-old gunpowder, and the fact that the projectile left the barrel so quickly that the powder did not have time to burn completely. New charges using modern powder were soon supplied, and by November 1962 the 150-kilogram Martlets were being fired at over and reaching altitudes of .


title: Gerald Bull

text: The Martlet's electronics triggered the release of the chemical markers at a set altitude. This left a sort of "smoke trail" through the atmosphere that could be used to measure winds aloft by visual means. The chemical was typically triethylaluminium, which burns on contact with air. Loading the shells was a dangerous job that required special handling. The Martlets were also used to release chaff instead of chemicals, allowing tracking via radar. Some shots used additional electronics to measure the magnetic field. Similar firings in support of the upper atmosphere research were made using 5" and 7" guns at Highwater, Alaska, and Wallops Island Virginia.


title: Gerald Bull

text: By the time the program ran down, about 1,000 firings had taken place, and the data collected during HARP represents half of all the upper-atmospheric data to this day.


title: Gerald Bull

text: The Martlet-2 was only a stepping-stone on the way to Bull's real interest, a gun-launched rocket that could reach outer space. The gun had been thoroughly tested and was well past intercontinental ranges, but needed modifying. In early 1963 HARP started experimenting with the "Martlet-3", a 7-inch-diameter (177.8 mm) "full bore" projectile designed to test the basic problems of launching a solid-fuel artillery shell from guns. Solid shell fuel has the consistency of soft rubber and is cut into a pattern that is open in the middle, so on firing the "grain" would tend to collapse into the cavity. This problem was solved by filling the cavity with zinc bromide, which prevented the collapse and was drained after firing to allow the rocket to light. Test firings began at the US Ballistic Research Laboratory (now part of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory) in Aberdeen using a bored-out 175 mm gun from the M107. This program proved the basic concept and shots of the Martlet-3 reached altitudes of .


title: Gerald Bull

text: The ultimate goal of the program was the "Martlet-4", a three-stage 16.4" rocket that would be fired from a lengthened gun at Barbados and would reach orbit. In 1964 Donald Mordell was able to convince the Canadian government of the value of the HARP project as a low-cost method for Canada to enter the space-launch business, and arranged a joint Canadian-US funding program of $3 million a year for three years, with the Canadians supplying $2.5 million of that. Another 16.4" gun, mounted horizontally, was being tested at the Highwater range, and was extended by cutting the breech off the end of one gun and welding it to the end of another to produce a new gun over 110 feet long. The extension allowed the powder to be contained for a longer period of time, slowing down the acceleration and loads on the airframe, while also offering higher overall performance. Once the system had been tested at Highwater, a second barrel was shipped to Foul Bay, attached and strengthened with external bracing to allow it to be raised from the horizontal. This gun was extensively tested in 1965 and 1966.


title: Gerald Bull

text: The orbital project faced a constant race with its own budget. Originally guaranteed three years of funding, the money was handled by the DRB, who was less than impressed with its former "star" going on to greater things while their own funding was being dramatically cut. Although the money was allocated for 1964, the DRB managed to delay delivery for ten months, forcing McGill to cover salaries in the interim. These problems did not go unnoticed in the US Army, and in order to ensure that firings would not be interrupted by problems on the Canadian side, a third double-length gun was built at the Yuma Proving Grounds to continue the high-altitude measurements. On November 18, 1966, this gun launched a Martlet-2 to 180 km, a world record that still stands today.


title: Gerald Bull

text: By 1967 it was becoming clear that the Martlet-4 would not be ready by the time the funding ran out in 1968. An effort started to build a simplified version, the GLO-1A (Gun-launched Orbiter, Version 1A), based on the Martlet-2G. Continued budget pressures, changing public attitudes towards military affairs, negative reviews from the press and other researchers in Canada and a change of government all conspired to ensure that Canadian funding was not renewed in 1967. Bull had been working on a last-ditch effort to launch a Canadian flag into orbit in time for the Canadian Centennial, but nothing came of this plan.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Bull returned to his Highwater range, and transferred HARP's assets to a new company. He invoked a clause in the original contract with McGill that required them to return the range to its original natural condition. Faced with hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction costs to wind down a project that could not garner funding, McGill was left with little choice but to trade Bull for title to the Highwater equipment. Setting up a new company, Space Research Corporation (SRC), Bull became an international artillery consultant. Incorporated in both Quebec and Vermont, a number of contracts from both the Canadian and US military research arms helped the company get started.. In the late 1960s, Bull established a space program at Norwich University, in Northfield, Vermont.


title: Gerald Bull

text: At SRC Bull continued the development of his high-velocity artillery, adapting the HARP smoothbore into a new "reverse rifled" design where the lands of a conventional rifling were replaced by grooves cut into the barrel to make a slightly larger gun also capable of firing existing ammunition. Normally artillery shells are sealed into the rifling by a driving band of soft metal like copper, which demands that the shell be shaped so that it balances at its widest point, where the band is located. This is not ideal for ballistics, especially supersonically where a higher fineness ratio is desirable. Bull solved this problem by using an additional set of nub "fins" near the front of the shell to keep it centered in the barrel, allowing the driving band to be greatly reduced in size, and located wherever was convenient. Re-shaping the shell for better supersonic performance provided dramatically improved range and accuracy, up to double in both cases, when compared to a similar gun using older-style ammunition. He called the new shell design "Extended Range, Full Bore" (ERFB).


title: Gerald Bull

text: Starting in 1975, Bull designed a new gun based on the common US 155/39 M109 howitzer, extending it slightly to 45 calibre through modifications that could be applied to existing weapons, calling the resulting weapon the GC-45 howitzer. Bull also purchased the base bleed technology being developed in Sweden, which allowed for further improvements in range. With ERFB round the GC-45 could routinely place rounds into circles at ranges up to , extending this to with some loss in accuracy. The gun offered ranges far in excess of even the longest-ranged heavy artillery in a gun only slightly larger than common medium-weight guns.


title: Gerald Bull

text: SRC's first major sales success was the sale of 50,000 ERFB shells to Israel in 1973 for use in American-supplied artillery pieces. The Israelis had successfully used a number of 175 mm M107 guns in the counter-battery role against its Soviet counterpart, the 130 mm towed field gun M1954 (M-46), but the introduction of long range rockets fired from Lebanon outranged them. The ERFB shells extended the range of the already formidable M107 to as much as , allowing the guns to counter-battery even the longest range rockets.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Bull was rewarded for success of this program by a Congressional bill, sponsored by Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) making him retroactively eligible for a decade of American citizenship and high-level American nuclear security clearance. He was granted citizenship by an Act of Congress.


title: Gerald Bull

text: In 1977 and 1978, Bull orchestrated the illegal sale of 30,000 155mm artillery shells, gun barrels and plans for the GC-45 howitzer as well as radar equipment to Armscor, the South African state arms corporation; with two shipments made through Antigua in 1978 and another through Spain in 1979. The South African Defence Force's arsenal of vintage howitzers – antiquated by the arms embargo – had been outperformed by BM-21 Grads during "Operation Savannah" in 1975. In order to counter the modern Soviet artillery deployed in neighbouring Angola, South African officials began seeking longer-ranged weapons systems and were referred to SRC. Armscor trialled the GC-45 with a new mounting to allow for increased powder loads and installed an auxiliary power unit for improving mobility in the field. The resulting G5 howitzer was vital to South African campaigns against Cuban expeditionary forces in Angola, allowing them to target infrastructure and personnel with phenomenal accuracy. In addition, the urgent shipments were also meant to address the acute shortage of artillery shells due to their incursion into Angola.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Once these shipments had been uncovered, Bull was arrested for illegal arms dealing in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 418 for arms export to South Africa. Expecting a token punishment, Bull found himself spending six months in the Federal Correctional Complex, Allenwood, Pennsylvania in 1980. After his release, he was again charged (this time in Canadian courts) for transferring technology on 155mm extended range shell development to China without the necessary export permits and fined $55,000 for international arms dealing.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Bull left Canada and moved to Brussels, where a subsidiary of SRC called European Poudreries Réunies de Belgique was based. Bull continued working with the ERFB ammunition design, developing a range of munitions that could be fired from existing weapons. A number of companies designed upgrades to work with older weapons, like the M114 155 mm howitzer, combining a new barrel from the M109 with Bull's ERFB ammunition to produce an improved weapon for relatively low cost.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Bull also continued working with the GC-45 design, and soon secured work with the People's Republic of China, and then Iraq. He designed two artillery pieces for the Iraqis: the 155 mm "Al-Majnoonan", an updated version of the G5, and a similar set of adaptations applied to the 203 mm US M110 howitzer to produce the 210 mm Al-Fao with a maximum range of without base bleed. Although it appears the Al-Fao was not put into production, the Al-Majnoonan started replacing Soviet designs as quickly as they could be delivered. When deliveries could not be made quickly enough, additional barrels were ordered from South Africa. The guns were built and sold through an Austrian intermediary.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Based on his HARP results, Bull secured additional Iraqi funding and support for the construction of a smoothbore gun barrel assembly. He received a $25m down-payment for the project on condition that he continued the development work on the "Al-Majnoonan" and "Al-Fao" guns. Initially, a smaller 45-meter, 350 mm caliber gun (known as "Baby-Babylon") was completed for testing purposes and then Bull started work on the "real" "PC-2" machine, a gun that was 150 meters long, weighed 1,510 tonnes, with a bore of one meter (39 inches) that would allow the firing of multi-stage rocket assisted shells with a range of over or to launch satellites into orbit. The project objective was to eventually provide Iraq with three 350 mm "Baby Babylon" guns and two 1000 mm PC-2 "Big Babylon" guns.


title: Gerald Bull

text: The Iraqis then told Bull they would go ahead with the project only if he would also help with development of their longer-range Scud-based missile project. Bull agreed. Construction of the individual sections of the new gun started in England at Sheffield Forgemasters and Matrix Churchill as well as in Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland while he concurrently worked on the Scud project, making calculations for the new nose cone needed for the greater re-entry speeds and temperatures the missile would face.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Over a period of a few months following, his apartment suffered several non-robbery break-ins, apparently as a threat or a warning, but he continued to work on the project. He was assassinated on 22 March 1990, shot five times in the head and back at point blank range while approaching the door of his apartment in Brussels. "The New York Times" reported that when police arrived at the scene they found the key still in his door and his unopened briefcase containing nearly $20,000 in cash. Another account states he was shot by a three-man team when he answered the doorbell.


title: Gerald Bull

text: The co-operation between Bull and Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat to Israel which had had previous military engagements with Iraq during the Arab–Israeli war. Watching development of the gun, Israel feared it could be used to launch nuclear weapons, but the re-designed Scud missiles were of greater concern at that moment.


title: Gerald Bull

text: According to investigative journalist Gordon Thomas, the assassination of Bull had been sanctioned by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Nahum Admoni sent a three-man team to Brussels, where the Mossad agents shot Bull at his door-step. Within hours of the killing, according to Thomas, Mossad was engaged in distributing false stories to the European media, alleging that Bull had been shot by agents from Iraq.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Although it was in the immediate interest of both Israel and Iran that Bull discontinue his co-operation with Saddam Hussein, he had worked for many different parties in many critical defence projects, and had become both an asset and a liability for several powerful groups simultaneously. Due to Bull's past ventures, it has been speculated that besides Iran or Israel, the CIA, MI6, or the Chilean, Syrian, Iraqi, or South African government could have been behind his assassination.


title: Gerald Bull

text: Project Babylon was stopped when supergun parts were seized by Customs in the United Kingdom in March 1990 leading to most of Bull's staff returning to Canada. Some of the confiscated parts have survived after they were not needed as evidence and because customs were interested in the story, some of the barrel pipes were given to museums and to the Ministry of Defence. In Iraq, all remaining gun barrels and propellant were destroyed by UN inspectors after the Persian Gulf War in October 1991.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: Alessio Romagnoli (born 12 January 1995) is an Italian professional footballer who plays as a centre-back for club Lazio and the Italy national team.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: Romagnoli began his career with Roma in 2012, and later spent a season on loan with Sampdoria in 2014, before moving to AC Milan in 2015. At the start of the 2018–19 Serie A season, he was named the team's captain following Leonardo Bonucci's return to Juventus.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: A product of Roma's youth academy, Romagnoli was included in the first team squad by new head coach Zdeněk Zeman at age 17. He made his senior debut on 11 December 2012 against Atalanta, playing the full game in the Coppa Italia as a starter. He made his Serie A debut 12 days later, as a substitute in the final minutes of a league game against A.C. Milan. He scored his first goal in Serie A on 3 March 2013 against Genoa.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: He found more first-team opportunities in the second half of the 2013–14 season under new manager Rudi Garcia, both at full-back and in the centre of defence. On 31 May 2014, Romagnoli signed a new four-year contract with Roma.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: On 1 September 2014, Romagnoli was loaned to Sampdoria for €500,000, with an option to purchase for €2 million, as well as a counter-option of €750,000. Romagnoli made his Sampdoria debut as a late substitute in a 2–0 victory against Torino on 14 September. He scored his first goal for Sampdoria on 24 September 2014 in a 2–1 defeat of Chievo. In June 2015, Roma activated the buy-back clause and he returned to the club.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: On 11 August 2015, he was sold to A.C. Milan for a fee of €25 million, signing a five-year contract. In addition, there was a sell-on clause entitling Roma to 30% over the value of €25 million. He made his official debut for Milan on 18 August, in a 2–0 win over Perugia in Coppa Italia. Six days later, he made his first appearance in the league with the club, as Milan lost 2–0 to Fiorentina.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: On 1 March 2016, he scored his first goal for Milan in a 5–0 win against Alessandria in the Coppa Italia. This match sent Milan to the final for the first time since 2003. He concluded his first season with Milan with 40 appearances in all competitions and one goal.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: Romagnoli made his first appearance of the 2016–17 season in a 3–2 victory in Serie A against Torino. On 23 December, Romagnoli helped lead Milan to victory in the Supercoppa Italiana, playing the full 120 minutes as Milan beat Juventus 4–3 in the penalty shoot-out following a 1–1 draw after extra time. On 15 April 2017, Romagnoli scored his first ever Serie A goal for Milan in the Derby della Madonnina.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: After missing Milan's first 4 games of the season due to injury, he returned to the squad and he made his return to play the second leg of Europa league playoffs against Shkëndija. On 19 September 2017, he made his first appearance of the Serie A season against Udinese.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: Following Leonardo Bonucci's return to Juventus, Romagnoli was appointed as Milan's team captain a few months after he renewed his contract on 5 June 2018. Romagnoli scored stoppage-time winning goals two times in five days for Milan, earning his club a 2–1 win over Genoa and a 1–0 win over Udinese.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: Romagnoli was the only player on the team to have been featured in every game of the season before a muscle injury on 21 July 2020 in a home game against Sassuolo. Having his captain's armband handed in to Gianluigi Donnarumma, he was substituted for Matteo Gabbia after 32 minutes and missed the last three games of the season. He finished the season with 39 games in total and one goal.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: In his sixth season for Milan, Romagnoli had a string of minor injuries and a series of poor performances, causing him to unexpectedly lose his place in the starting 11 to Fikayo Tomori, a loanee who arrived from Chelsea during the winter transfer window. Rarely playing in the second half of season, he made just 22 appearances in Serie A, scoring one goal on 29 November 2020 in a 2–0 home win over Fiorentina. Following the sub-par season, Romagnoli was not called up by the national team coach Roberto Mancini to join the provisional squad for UEFA Euro 2020 (competition postponed for a year due to the pandemic) and was also rumored to have been placed on a transfer market due to the expiration of his contract in June 2022 and unwillingness of the club management to deal with agent Mino Raiola, who had convinced the team's goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma to leave the club as a free agent.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: On 28 November 2021, Romagnoli scored his first goal of the season against Sassuolo in an eventual 3–1 loss. On 9 February 2022, against Lazio in the Coppa Italia, he assisted the opening goal in an eventual 4–0 win, a long pass through the field to his teammate Leao. Romagnoli rejected a contract extension from Milan and thus left the club at the end of the season.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: Romagnoli has represented Italy on multiple occasions at under-16, under-17 and under-19 levels. He made his first appearance for the Italy under-21 team against Northern Ireland on 5 March 2014, playing the full 90 minutes. With the Italy under-21, he took part at the 2015 UEFA European Under-21 Championship, forming an effective partnership with fellow centre-back Daniele Rugani.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: On 27 August 2016 Romagnoli was called up to the senior squad for the first time for a friendly against France on 1 September and a 2018 World Cup qualification match on 5 September against Israel. However, he was later moved to the under-21 squad for 2017 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualification match against Serbia.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: Romagnoli made his senior debut on 6 October 2016, in a 2018 World Cup qualification match, playing all 90 minutes, in a 1–1 home draw against Spain.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: He scored his first senior international goal on 15 October 2019, in a 5–0 away win against Liechtenstein, in a UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying match.


title: Alessio Romagnoli

text: An elegant, versatile, composed and gifted left-footed centre-back, with good technique and distribution, Romagnoli is known for his confidence in possession, and ability to play the ball out from the back; due to his ability to advance into more attacking positions or put pressure on opponents higher up on the pitch, he is also capable of functioning as a left-sided full-back. Romagnoli is effective in the air and known for his ability to time his challenges; regarded as one of the most promising young Italian defenders of his generation, his precocious displays, technique, positional sense, decision-making, and tackling abilities have led pundits to compare him with legendary Italian defender Alessandro Nesta, whom Romagnoli has described as his footballing idol. In 2015, Romagnoli was named one of the top 100 young footballers in the world born after 1994 by Don Balón.


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: Chicken McNuggets are a type of chicken nuggets sold by the international fast food restaurant chain McDonald's. They consist of small pieces of reconstituted boneless chicken meat that have been battered and deep fried. Chicken McNuggets were conceived by Keystone Foods in the late 1970s and introduced in select markets in 1981. The nuggets were made available worldwide by 1983 after correcting a supply issue. The formula was changed in 2016 to remove artificial preservatives and improve the nutritional value.


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: The Chicken McNugget is a small piece of processed chicken meat that is fried in batter and flash-frozen at a central manufacturing facility, then shipped out and sold at McDonald's restaurants. It was conceived by Keystone Foods founder Herb Lotman in the late 1970s.


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: McDonald's first executive chef, René Arend, a native of Luxembourg, created the Chicken McNuggets recipe in 1979. "The McNuggets were so well-received that every franchise wanted them", said Arend in a 2009 interview. "There wasn't a system to supply enough chicken". Supply problems were solved by 1983, and Chicken McNuggets became available nationwide in the United States. In Canada, the national release was in late January 1984.


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: According to McDonald's, the nuggets come in four shapes: the bell, the bow-tie, the ball and the boot. The reason for the four different shapes is to ensure consistent cooking times for food safety. Four shapes were chosen because McDonalds states "The 4 shapes we make Chicken McNuggets in was the perfect equilibrium of dipability and fun. 3 would’ve been too few. 5 would’ve been, like, wacky."


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: As of August 1, 2016, the ingredients within the United States are as follows: White boneless chicken, water, salt, seasoning (yeast extract, salt, wheat starch, natural flavoring, safflower oil, lemon juice solids, dextrose, citric acid), sodium phosphates. Battered and breaded with water, enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, bleached wheat flour, salt, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium lactate), spices, wheat starch, dextrose, corn starch. Prepared in vegetable oil (canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil) with citric acid as a preservative. McDonald's ingredients can vary outside of the US. In August 2016 McDonald's announced that Chicken McNuggets no longer contained artificial preservatives.


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: Chicken McNuggets are sold in various portion sizes depending on the country of purchase. In the United States, they come in packs of 4, 6, 10, 20 and 50 (in selected stores). In some markets, including the United Kingdom, they are sold in packs of 4 (as part of a Happy Meal), 6, 9 or 20 (as a "ShareBox"). In New Zealand and Australia, they are also available in 3-packs in Happy Meals and Heart Foundation-approved "Tick healthy" meals. In Canada, Chicken McNuggets are sold in packs of 4 (as part of a Happy Meal), 6, 10, and 20. A 50-piece McNuggets meal deal has been promoted at times for special events such as the NFL's Super Bowl.


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: They have recently been introduced by McDonald's in India, first as a part of its "Breakfast Meal" and later in the regular menu in May 2009. A halal version of the McNuggets have been sold at two franchises in Dearborn, Michigan, beginning in the early 2000s, bringing in double the average McNuggets sales.


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: In September 2020, McDonald's introduced Spicy Chicken McNuggets in the United States for a limited time along with Mighty Hot Sauce. Spicy Chicken McNuggets returned on February 1, 2021 again for a limited time.


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: In a 2002 lawsuit against McDonald's, a judge commented that Chicken McNuggets are a "McFrankenstein" creation. The judge identified that rather than being merely chicken fried in a pan, McNuggets included elements not utilized by the home cook, including unusual sounding ingredients such as extracts of rosemary, vitamins (niacin, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, and folic acid) all of which are common in enriched flour, and leavening (baking soda, calcium lactate, etc.).


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: The 2004 documentary "Super Size Me" states that "[o]riginally created from old chickens that can no longer lay eggs, McNuggets are now made from chickens with unusually large breasts. They're stripped from the bone, and ground-up into a sort of 'chicken mash', which is then combined with all sorts of stabilizers and preservatives, pressed into familiar shapes, breaded, deep-fried, freeze-dried, and then shipped to a McDonald's near you." "Super Size Me" also alleged inclusion of ingredients such as TBHQ, polydimethylsiloxane, and others not used by a typical home cook. This was subsequently restated by CNN. Marion Nestle, a New York University professor and author of "What to Eat," says that the ingredients in McNuggets probably pose no health risks.


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: Before August 2016, dimethylpolysiloxane and TBHQ were listed as ingredients in the McNuggets cooking process. According to Lisa McComb, a media relations representative for McDonald's, dimethylpolysiloxane is used as a matter of safety to keep the frying oil from foaming. A review of animal studies by the World Health Organization found no adverse health effects associated with dimethylpolysiloxane. TBHQ is a common preservative for vegetable oils, cereals, nuts, cookies, chips and animal fats, found in other foods such as Girl Scout Cookies and Quaker Chewy Granola Bars. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sets an upper limit of 0.02% of the oil or fat content in foods, which like other foods, applies to the oil used in McNuggets. Effective use of TBHQ was 1 gram per 5,000 grams of cooking oil (1 gram per 11.023 pounds of cooking oil).


title: Chicken McNuggets

text: A mathematical problem, discussed on Eric W. Weisstein's MathWorld and Brady Haran's YouTube channel "Numberphile," is that of determining the greatest number of McNuggets which cannot be made from any combination of pack sizes on offer. For example, in the UK, McNuggets are sold in boxes of 6, 9 or 20 (excluding Happy Meals). Consequently, the greatest number of McNuggets which cannot be purchased exactly is 43, the Frobenius number of the set {6,9,20}. This means that all natural numbers greater than 43 can be expressed, in some way, as the sum of some multiple of each of 6, 9, and 20. For example, 139 = (5 × 20) + (5 × 6) + (1 × 9).


title: Whale Rider

text: Whale Rider is a 2002 New Zealand drama film written and directed by Niki Caro. Based on the 1987 novel "The Whale Rider" by Witi Ihimaera, the film stars Keisha Castle-Hughes as Kahu Paikea Apirana, a twelve-year-old Māori girl whose ambition is to become the chief of the tribe. Her koro Apirana believes that this is a role reserved for males only.


title: Whale Rider

text: The film was a coproduction between New Zealand and Germany. It was shot on location in Whangara, the setting of the novel. The world premiere was on 9 September 2002, at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film received critical acclaim upon its release. At age 13, Keisha Castle-Hughes became the youngest nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actress before she was surpassed by Quvenzhané Wallis, at age 9, for "Beasts of the Southern Wild", in 2012, less than a decade later. The film earned $41.4 million on a NZ$9,235,000 budget. In 2005, the film was named on the BFI "List of the 50 Films You Should See By the Age of 14".


title: Whale Rider

text: The film's plot follows the story of Paikea Apirana ("Pai"). The village leader should be the first-born son, a direct patrilineal descendant of Paikea, the Whale Rider, he who rode on top of a whale (Tohora) from Hawaiki. Pai is originally born a twin, but her twin brother and her mother died during childbirth. Pai is female and so technically cannot inherit the leadership. While her grandfather, Koro, later forms an affectionate bond with his granddaughter, carrying her to school every day on his bicycle, he also condemns her and blames her for conflicts within the tribe.


title: Whale Rider

text: After the death of his wife and despite overwhelming pressure from Koro, Pai's father refuses to assume traditional leadership or finish the waka that he had started building for the baby son; instead, he moves to Germany to pursue a career as an artist. At one point, Paikea decides to live with her father because her grandfather says he doesn't want her. However, as they are driving away, she finds that she cannot bear to leave the sea as the whale seems to be calling her back. Pai tells her father to return her home.


title: Whale Rider

text: Koro leads a cultural school for the village's first-born boys, hoping to find a new leader. He teaches the boys to use a taiaha (fighting stick), which is traditionally reserved for males. Pai is interested in the lessons, but is discouraged and scolded by Koro for doing so. Pai feels that she can become the leader (although no woman has ever done so) and is determined to succeed. Her grandmother, Nanny, tells Pai that her second son, Pai's uncle, had won a taiaha tournament in his youth while he was still slim and so Pai secretly learns from him. She also secretly follows Koro's lessons. One of the students, Hemi, is also sympathetic towards her.


title: Whale Rider

text: Koro is enraged when he finds out, particularly when she wins a taiaha fight against Hemi. Koro is devastated when none of the boys succeeds at the traditional task of recovering the rei puta (whale tooth) that he threw into the ocean, the mission that would prove one of them worthy of becoming leader. With the loss of the rei puta, Koro in despair calls out the ancient ones, the whales. In an attempt to help, Pai also calls out to them and they hear her call.


title: Whale Rider

text: One day Pai, her uncle, her uncle's girlfriend Shilo, and others take the boat to where Koro flung the rei puta into the sea. Pai confidently declares she'll find it and dives into the water. She finds the rei puta, which means that she is the rightful leader. Nanny does not think Koro is ready to accept this and does not tell him. Pai, in an attempt to bridge the rift that has formed, invites Koro to be her guest of honour at a concert of Māori chants that her school is putting on. Unknown to all, she had won an interschool speech contest with a touching dedication to Koro and the traditions of the village. However, Koro was late, and as he was walking to the school, he notices that numerous southern right whales are beached near Pai's home.


title: Whale Rider

text: The entire village attempts to coax and drag them back into the water, but all efforts prove unsuccessful, and even a tractor does not help. Koro sees that as a sign of his failure and despairs further. He admonishes Pai against touching the largest whale because she has "done enough" damage with her presumption. Also, the largest whale traditionally belongs to the legendary Paikea.


title: Whale Rider

text: When Koro walks away, Pai climbs onto the back of the largest whale on the beach and coaxes it to re-enter the ocean. The whale leads the entire pod back into the sea; Pai submerges completely underwater before being thrown off the whale's back by the tide, and the spectators fear she has drowned. At this point, fearing Pai is lost, Nanny reveals to Koro that his granddaughter found the rei puta, and Koro is stunned into realizing the error of his ways. When Pai is found and brought to the hospital, Koro declares her the leader and asks for her forgiveness.


title: Whale Rider

text: The film ends with Pai's father, grandparents, and uncle coming together to celebrate her status as the new leader, as the finished waka is hauled into the sea for its maiden voyage. In voiceover, Pai declares, "My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider. I'm not a prophet, but I know that our people will keep going forward, all together, with all of our strength."


title: Whale Rider

text: The film had budget of NZ$9,235,000. It received $2.5 million from the New Zealand Film Production Fund. Additional financing came from ApolloMedia, Filmstiftung NRW, the New Zealand Film Commission and NZ On Air. Casting director Diana Rowan visited numerous schools to find an actress to play Pai. 10,000 children were auditioned before narrowing it down to 12. Castle-Hughes impressed Caro in the resulting workshop and was cast as Pai. The film was shot in Whangara, Te Tai Rāwhiti, and in Auckland. Producer John Barnett said "This novel was set in Whangara and it would almost have been heresy to shoot anywhere else. There are very physical things that are described in the book – the sweep of the bay, the island that looks like a whale, the meeting houses, the number of houses that are present and of course, the people whose legend we were telling. [...] If we'd gone somewhere else and tried to manufacture the surroundings and the ambience, then I think it would have been noticeable in the picture." The whale beaching was depicted using full-scale models created by Auckland-based Glasshammer Visual Effects. The -long waka seen at the end of the film was made in two-halves in Auckland before being transported to Whangara. The waka was given to the Whangara community after filming concluded.


title: Whale Rider

text: Shout! Factory released a 15th anniversary Blu-ray of "Whale Rider" on their Shout! Select imprint on 22 August 2017.


title: Whale Rider

text: The film received critical acclaim and Castle-Hughes's performance won rave reviews. Based on 155 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an overall approval rating from critics of 91%, with an average score of 7.77 as of October 2020. The website's critical consensus states, "An empowering and uplifting movie, with a wonderful performance by Castle-Hughes". By comparison, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 79, based on 31 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton of "The Movie Show" both gave the film four out of five stars. Pomeranz said "Niki Caro has directed this uplifting story with great sensitivity, eliciting affecting performances from a sterling cast, and a wonderful one from newcomer Keisha Castle-Hughes." Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and said, "The genius of the movie is the way it sidesteps all of the obvious cliches of the underlying story and makes itself fresh, observant, tough and genuinely moving." He said of Castle-Hughes: "This is a movie star." Ebert later went on to name it as one of the ten best films of 2003. The "Los Angeles Times"s Kenneth Turan praised Caro for her "willingness to let this story tell itself in its own time and the ability to create emotion that is intense without being cloying or dishonest." Claudia Puig of "USA Today" gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and praised Castle-Hughes' acting, saying "so effectively does she convey her pained confusion through subtle vocal cues, tentative stance and expressive dark eyes."


title: Whale Rider

text: The film has also been discussed and praised widely within academia. Anthropologist A. Asbjørn Jøn discussed a range of Maori tribal traditions that resonate within the film, while noting links between the release of "Whale Rider" and increases in both New Zealand's whale watching tourism industry and conservation efforts.


title: Whale Rider

text: At the age of 13, Keisha Castle-Hughes was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance, becoming the youngest actress ever nominated for the award at that time (breaking Isabelle Adjani's record at the age of 20). She held the record until 2012 when Quvenzhané Wallis (at the age of 9) was nominated for that category for the film "Beasts of the Southern Wild".


title: Whale Rider

text: New Zealand filmmaker Jonathan Brough made the documentary film "Riding the Wave: The Whale Rider Story", as well as short documentary clips about "Whale Rider", to accompany the DVD.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (), sometimes published with the subtitle A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 book by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. In the book, Sartre develops a philosophical account in support of his existentialism, dealing with topics such as consciousness, perception, social philosophy, self-deception, the existence of "nothingness", psychoanalysis, and the question of free will.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: While a prisoner of war in 1940 and 1941, Sartre read Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time" (1927), which uses the method of Husserlian phenomenology as a lens for examining ontology. Sartre attributed the course of his own philosophical inquiries to his exposure to this work. Though influenced by Heidegger, Sartre was profoundly skeptical of any measure by which humanity could achieve a kind of personal state of fulfillment comparable to the hypothetical Heideggerian "re-encounter with Being". In Sartre's account, man is a creature haunted by a vision of "completion" (what Sartre calls the "ens causa sui", meaning literally "a being that causes itself"), which many religions and philosophers identify as God. Born into the material reality of one's body, in a material universe, one finds oneself inserted into being. In accordance with Husserl's notion that consciousness can only exist as consciousness "of" something, Sartre develops the idea that there can be no form of self that is "hidden" inside consciousness. On these grounds, Sartre goes on to offer a philosophical critique of Sigmund Freud's theories, based on the claim that consciousness is essentially self-conscious.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: "Being and Nothingness" is regarded as both the most important non-fiction expression of Sartre's existentialism and his most influential philosophical work, original despite its debt to Heidegger. Many have praised the book's central notion that "existence precedes essence", its introduction of the concept of bad faith, and its exploration of "nothingness", as well as its novel contributions to the philosophy of sex. However, the book has been criticized for its abstruseness and for its treatment of Freud.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Sartre's existentialism shares its philosophical starting point with René Descartes: The first thing we can be aware of is our existence, even when doubting everything else (Cogito ergo sum). In "Nausea", the main character's feeling of dizziness towards his own existence is induced by things, not thinking. This dizziness occurs "in the face of one's freedom and responsibility for giving a meaning to reality". As an important break with Descartes, Sartre rejects the "primacy of knowledge" (a rejection summed up in the phrase "Existence precedes essence") and offers a different conception of knowledge and consciousness.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Important ideas in "Being and Nothingness" build on Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. To both philosophers, consciousness is intentional, meaning that there is only consciousness "of" something. For Sartre, intentionality implies that there is no form of self that is hidden inside consciousness (such as Husserl's "transcendental ego"). An ego must be a structure outside consciousness, so that there can be consciousness "of" the ego.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: In the introduction, Sartre sketches his own theory of consciousness, being, and phenomena through criticism of both earlier phenomenologists (most notably Husserl and Heidegger) as well as idealists, rationalists, and empiricists. According to him, one of the major achievements of modern philosophy is phenomenology because it disproved the kinds of dualism that set the existent up as having a "hidden" nature (such as Immanuel Kant's noumenon); Phenomenology has removed "the illusion of worlds behind the scene".


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Based on an examination of the nature of phenomena, he describes the nature of two types of being, "being-in-itself" (the being of things) and "being-for-itself". While being-in-itself is something that can only be approximated by human being, being-for-itself is the being of consciousness.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: From Sartre's phenomenological point of view, nothingness is an experienced reality and cannot be a merely subjective mistake. The absence of a friend and absence of money hint at a "being" of nothingness. It is part of reality. In the first chapter, Sartre develops a theory of nothingness which is central to the whole book, especially to his account for bad faith and freedom. For him, nothingness is not just a mental concept that sums up negative judgements such as "Pierre is not here" and "I have no money". Though "it is evident that non-being always appears within the limits of a human expectation", the concrete nothingness differs from mere abstract inexistence, such as the square circle. A concrete nothingness, e.g. not being able to see, is part of a totality: the life of the blind man in this world. This totality is modified by the nothingness which is part of it.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: In the totality of consciousness and phenomenon (Heidegger's being-in-the-world), both can be considered separately, but exist only as a whole (intentionality of consciousness). The human attitude of inquiry, of asking questions, puts consciousness at distance from the world. Every question brings up the possibility of a negative answer, of non-being, e.g. "Who is entering? No one." For Sartre, this is how "nothingness" can exist at all. Non-being can neither be part of the being-in-itself nor can it be as a complement of it. Being-for-itself is the origin of negation. The relation between being-for-itself and being-in-itself is one of questioning the latter. By bringing nothingness into the world, consciousness does not annihilate the being of things, but changes its relation to it.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: As bad faith, Sartre describes one's self-deception about the human reality. It can take two forms, the first one is making oneself falsely believe not to be what one actually is. The second one is conceiving oneself as an object (e.g. being identical to a job) and thereby denying freedom.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: This essentially means that in being a waiter, grocer, etc., one must believe that their social role is equivalent to their human existence. Living a life defined by one's occupation, social, racial, or economic class, is the very essence of "bad faith", the condition in which people cannot transcend their situations in order to realize what they must be (human) and what they are not (waiter, grocer, etc.). It is also essential for an existent to understand that negation allows the self to enter what Sartre calls the "great human stream". The great human stream arises from a singular realization that nothingness is a state of mind in which we can become anything, in reference to our situation, that we desire.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: The difference between existence and identity projection remains at the heart of human subjects who are swept up by their own condition, their "bad faith". An example of projection that Sartre uses is the café waiter who performs the duties, traditions, functions, and expectations of a café waiter:


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Sartre also gives, as an example of bad faith, the attitude of the homosexual who denies that he is a homosexual, feeling that "a homosexual is not a homosexual" in the same sense that a table is a table or a red-haired man is red-haired. Sartre argues that such an attitude is partially correct since it is based in the "irreducible character of human reality", but that it would be fully correct only if the homosexual accepted that he is a homosexual in the sense that he has adopted a pattern of conduct defined as that of a homosexual, although not one "to the extent that human reality can not be finally defined by patterns of conduct".


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Sartre consistently mentions that in order to get out of bad faith, one must realize that one's existence and one's formal projection of a self are distinctly separate and within the means of human control. This separation is a form of "nothingness". Nothingness, in terms of bad faith, is characterized by Sartre as the internal negation which separates pure existence and identity, and thus we are subject to playing our lives out in a similar manner. An example is "something that is what it is" (existence) and "something that is what it is not" (a waiter defined by his occupation).


title: Being and Nothingness

text: However, Sartre takes a stance against characterizing bad faith in terms of "mere social positions". Says Sartre, "I am never any one of my attitudes, any one of my actions." The good speaker is the one who "plays" at speaking because he cannot "be speaking". This literally means that, like the café waiter, the speaker is not his condition or social categorization, but is a speaker consumed by bad faith. Thus, we must realize what we are (beings who exist) and what we are not (a social/historical preoccupation) in order to step out of bad faith. Yet, existents (human beings) must maintain a balance between existence, their roles, and nothingness to become authentic beings."


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Additionally, an important tenet of bad faith is that we must enact a bit of "good faith" in order to take advantage of our role to reach an authentic existence. The authentic domain of bad faith is realizing that the role we are playing is the lie. To live and project into the future as a project of a self, while keeping out of bad faith and living by the will of the self is living life authentically.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: One of the most important implications of bad faith is the abolition of traditional ethics. Being a "moral person" requires one to deny authentic impulses (everything that makes us human) and allow the will of another person to change one's actions. Being "a moral person" is one of the most severe forms of bad faith. Sartre essentially characterizes this as "the faith of bad faith" which is and should not be, in Sartre's opinion, at the heart of one's existence. Sartre has a very low opinion of conventional ethics, condemning it as a tool of the bourgeoisie to control the masses.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Bad faith also results when individuals begin to view their life as made up of distinct past events. By viewing one's ego as it once was rather than as it currently is, one ends up negating the current self and replacing it with a past self that no longer exists.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: The mere possible presence of another person causes one to look at oneself as an object and see one's world as it appears to the other. This is not done from a specific location outside oneself, but is non-positional. This is a recognition of the subjectivity in others.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: This transformation is most clear when one sees a mannequin that one confuses for a real person for a moment.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Sartre states that many relationships are created by people's attraction not to another person, but rather how that person makes them feel about themselves by how they look at them. This is a state of emotional alienation whereby a person avoids experiencing their subjectivity by identifying themselves with "the look" of the other. The consequence is conflict. In order to maintain the person's own being, the person must control the other, but must also control the freedom of the other "as freedom". These relationships are a profound manifestation of "bad faith" as the for-itself is replaced with the other's freedom. The purpose of either participant is not to exist, but to maintain the other participant's looking at them. This system is often mistakenly called "love", but it is, in fact, nothing more than emotional alienation and denial of freedom through conflict with the other. Sartre believes that it is often created as a means of making the unbearable anguish of a person's relationship to their "facticity" (all of the concrete details against the background of which human freedom exists and is limited, such as birthplace and time) bearable. At its extreme, the alienation can become so intense that due to the guilt of being so radically enslaved by "the look" and therefore radically missing their own freedoms, the participants can experience masochistic and sadistic attitudes. This happens when the participants cause pain to each other, in attempting to prove their control over the other's look, which they cannot escape because they believe themselves to be so enslaved to the look that experiencing their own subjectivity would be equally unbearable.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Sartre explains that "the look" is the basis for sexual desire, declaring that a biological motivation for sex does not exist. Instead, "double reciprocal incarnation" is a form of mutual awareness which Sartre takes to be at the heart of the sexual experience. This involves the mutual recognition of subjectivity of some sort, as Sartre describes: "I make myself flesh in order to impel the Other to realize for herself and for me her own flesh. My caress causes my flesh to be born for me insofar as it is for the Other flesh causing her to be born as flesh."


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Even in sex (perhaps especially in sex), men and women are haunted by a state in which consciousness and bodily being would be in perfect harmony, with desire satisfied. Such a state, however, can never be. We try to bring the beloved's consciousness to the surface of their body by use of magical acts performed, gestures (kisses, desires, etc.), but at the moment of orgasm the illusion is ended and we return to ourselves, just as it is ended when the skier comes to the foot of the mountain or when the commodity that once we desired loses its glow upon our purchase of it. There will be, for Sartre, no such moment of completion because "man is a useless passion" to be the "ens causa sui", the God of the ontological proof.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Sartre contends that human existence is a conundrum whereby each of us exists, for as long as we live, within an overall condition of nothingness ("no thing-ness")—that ultimately allows for free consciousness. Yet simultaneously, within our "being" (in the physical world), we are constrained to make continuous, conscious choices.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: It is this dichotomy that causes anguish, because choice (subjectivity) represents a limit on freedom within an otherwise unbridled range of thoughts. Subsequently, humans seek to flee our anguish through action-oriented constructs such as escapes, visualizations, or visions (such as dreams) designed to lead us toward some meaningful end, such as necessity, destiny, determinism (God), etc. Thus, in living our lives, we often become unconscious "actors"—Bourgeois, Feminist, Worker, Party Member, Frenchman, Canadian or American—each doing as we must to fulfill our chosen characters' destinies.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: However, Sartre contends our conscious choices (leading to often unconscious actions) run counter to our intellectual freedom. Yet we are bound to the conditioned and physical world—in which some form of action is always required. This leads to "failed dreams of completion", as Sartre described them, because inevitably we are unable to bridge the void between the purity and spontaneity of thought and all-too constraining action; between the "being" and the "nothingness" that inherently coincide in our "self".


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Sartre's recipe for "fulfillment" is to escape all quests by "completing" them. This is accomplished by rigorously forcing order onto nothingness, employing the "spirit (or consciousness of mind) of seriousness" and describing the failure to do so in terms such as "bad faith" and "false consciousness". Though Sartre's conclusion seems to be that being diminishes before nothingness since consciousness is probably based more on spontaneity than on stable seriousness, he contends that any person of a serious nature is "obliged" to continuous struggle between two things:


title: Being and Nothingness

text: In Sartre's opinion, consciousness does not make sense by itself: it arises only as an awareness of objects. Consciousness is therefore always and essentially consciousness "of something", whether this "something" is a thing, a person, an imaginary object, etc. Phenomenologists often refer to this quality of consciousness as "intentionality". Sartre's contribution, then, is that in addition to always being consciousness "of something", consciousness is always consciousness "of itself". In other words, all consciousness is, by definition, "self-consciousness". By "self-consciousness", Sartre does not mean being aware of oneself thought of as an object (e.g., one's "ego"), but rather that, as a phenomenon in the world, consciousness both appears and appears "to itself" at the same time. By appearing to itself, Sartre argues that consciousness is fully transparent; unlike an ordinary "object" (a house, for instance, of which it is impossible to perceive all of the sides at the same time), consciousness "sees" all aspects of itself at once. This non-positional quality of consciousness is what makes it a unique type of being, a being that exists "for itself".


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Sartre offers a critique of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious, based on the claim that consciousness is essentially self-conscious. Sartre also argues that Freud's theory of repression is internally flawed. According to Sartre, in his clinical work, Freud encountered patients who seemed to embody a particular kind of paradox—they appeared to both "know" and "not know" the same thing. In response, Freud postulated the existence of the unconscious, which contains the "truth" of the traumas underlying the patients' behavior. This "truth" is actively repressed, which is made evident by the patients' resistance to its revelation during analysis. Yet what does the resisting if the patients are unaware of what they are repressing? Sartre finds the answer in what Freud calls the "censor". "The only level on which we can locate the refusal of the subject", Sartre writes, "is that of the censor." Further:


title: Being and Nothingness

text: In other words, Sartre views Freud's unconscious to be a scapegoat for the paradox of simultaneously knowing and not knowing the same information. Instead of alleviating the paradox, Freud simply moves it to the censor, establishing "between the unconscious and consciousness an autonomous consciousness in bad faith". Sartre thinks that the postulation of a censor within the psychic economy is therefore redundant: at the level of the censor, we still encounter the same problem of a consciousness that hides something from itself. For Sartre, what Freud identifies as repression is rather indicative of the larger structure of bad faith. Psychoanalysis thus does not yield any special insight, since hiding something from oneself occurs at the level of consciousness as a unified phenomenon, not as part of some intra-psychic mechanism.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Toward the end of "Being and Nothingness", Sartre attempts to adapt some of Freud's ideas, and thereby develop an "existential psychoanalysis" in which causal categories are replaced by teleological categories.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Explanation of terms based on appendix to the English edition of "Being and Nothingness" by translator Hazel Barnes


title: Being and Nothingness

text: "Being and Nothingness" is considered Sartre's most important philosophical work, and the most important non-fiction expression of his existentialism. Christian existentialist Gabriel Marcel wrote that it was of "incontestable" importance and ranked among the most important contributions made to general philosophy. While Marcel noted the influence of Heidegger on "the form at least" of "Being and Nothingness", he also observed that Sartre diverged from the views expressed by Heidegger in "Being and Time" (1927) in important ways, and that Sartre's contributions were original. Marcel considered Sartre's analysis of bad faith "one of the most outstanding and solid" parts of "Being and Nothingness", writing that it prevented Sartre's arguments from being purely abstract. Marcel saw one of the most important merits of the work to be to show "that a form of metaphysics which denies or refuses grace inevitably ends by setting up in front of us the image of an atrophied and contradictory world where the better part of ourselves is finally unable to recognise itself".


title: Being and Nothingness

text: The philosopher Jean Wahl criticized Sartre's arguments about the topic of "nothing". The philosopher Frederick Copleston described Sartre's view that all human actions are the result of free choice as "highly implausible", though he noted that Sartre had ways of defending his position. He also expressed sympathy for Marcel's criticism of Sartre, and described Sartre's view of freedom as both "nihilistic" and possibly inconsistent with some of Sartre's other views. The philosopher A. J. Ayer wrote that, apart from some psychological insights, the book was "a pretentious metaphysical thesis" and "principally an exercise in misusing the verb 'to be'".


title: Being and Nothingness

text: The author Susan Sontag praised Sartre's discussions of the body and concrete relations with others. She identified them as part of a French tradition of serious thought about problems of fundamental importance. The literary scholar John B. Vickery wrote that "Being and Nothingness" resembles Sir James George Frazer's "The Golden Bough" (1890) in the way its author "merges psychology and the concrete sense of fiction", although he considered it less readable than Frazer's work. The philosopher Iris Murdoch compared "Being and Nothingness" to Gilbert Ryle's "The Concept of Mind" (1949). She maintained that continental philosophy shares the same general orientation as English analytic philosophy. According to the philosopher Steven Crowell, "Being and Nothingness" had come to be seen as outdated by Sartre's death in 1980, since its emphasis on consciousness associated with "the subjectivism and psychologism that structuralism and analytic philosophy had finally laid to rest".


title: Being and Nothingness

text: The philosopher David Pears criticized Sartre's critique of Freud, describing it as complex but imprecisely formulated and open to potential objections. The philosopher Thomas Baldwin described "Being and Nothingness" as a work of pessimism. He wrote that Sartre's argument that Freud's theory of repression is internally flawed is based on a misunderstanding of Freud, and that Sartre's attempts to adapt Freud's ideas are of greater interest. The director Richard Eyre recalled that "Being and Nothingness" was popular among British students in the 1960s, but suggests that among them the work usually went unread.


title: Being and Nothingness

text: Several authors, including the sociologist Murray S, Davis, the philosophers Roger Scruton and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, and the physician Frank Gonzalez-Crussi, have praised Sartre for his contributions to the philosophy of sex. Davis credited Sartre with being the first author to present a phenomenological analysis of sex. Scruton credited Sartre with providing "perhaps the most acute philosophical analysis" of sexual desire and correctly arguing that treating sexual desire as equivalent to appetite ignores "the interpersonal component of human sexual responses." He described Sartre's reflections on "le visqueux" as "celebrated". He has also credited Sartre with providing a "stunning apology for sado-masochism", and characterized "Being and Nothingness" as a "great work of post-Christian theology". Gonzalez-Crussi credited Sartre with recognizing that it is incorrect to equate sexual desire with desire for sexual acts. Sheets-Johnstone believed Sartre presented a subtle analysis of human sexuality. She praised his understanding of desire in general and suggested that his views about the subject anticipated those of the philosopher Michel Foucault. She believed that his views contained both significant truth and internal contradictions. She suggested that despite his criticism of Freud, his views about women and female sexuality were in some ways similar to Freud's. Naomi Greene, arguing that there is a "distaste for sexuality" in Sartre's work, identifies a clear "anti-sexual bias" present in "Being and Nothingness".


title: Jean-Claude Juncker

text: Jean-Claude Juncker (; born 9 December 1954) is a Luxembourgish politician who served as the 21st Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1995 to 2013 and 12th President of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019. He also served as Finance Minister from 1989 to 2009 and President of the Eurogroup from 2005 to 2013.


title: Jean-Claude Juncker

text: By the time Juncker left office as Prime Minister in 2013, he was the longest-serving head of any national government in the EU and one of the longest-serving democratically elected leaders in the world, with his tenure encompassing the height of the European financial and sovereign debt crisis. In 2005, he became the first permanent President of the Eurogroup.


title: Jean-Claude Juncker

text: In 2014, the European People's Party (EPP) had Juncker as its lead candidate, or "Spitzenkandidat", for the presidency of the Commission in the 2014 elections. This marked the first time that the "Spitzenkandidat" process was employed. Juncker is the first president to have campaigned as a candidate for the position prior to the election, a process introduced with the Treaty of Lisbon. The EPP won 220 out of 751 seats in the Parliament. On 27 June 2014, the European Council officially nominated Juncker for the position, and the European Parliament elected him on 15 July 2014 with 422 votes out of the 729 cast. He succeeded José Manuel Barroso as president on 1 November 2014.


title: Jean-Claude Juncker

text: Juncker has stated that his priorities would be the creation of a digital single market, the development of an EU Energy Union, the negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade Agreement, the continued reform of the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union—with the social dimension in mind, a "targeted fiscal capacity" for the Eurozone, and the 2015–2016 British EU membership renegotiations.


title: Jean-Claude Juncker

text: Juncker was born in Redange and spent the majority of his childhood in Belvaux. His father, Joseph, was a steel worker and Christian trade unionist who was forcibly conscripted into the German "Wehrmacht" during World War II, following the Nazi occupation of Luxembourg. Juncker has often remarked that the horrors of war he heard from his father's experiences had a profound influence in shaping his views on the need for European reconciliation and integration. His mother was born Marguerite Hecker. He studied at the Roman Catholic "école apostolique" (secondary school) at Clairefontaine on the edge of Arlon in Belgium, before returning to Luxembourg to study for his Baccalaureate at Lycée Michel Rodange. He joined the Christian Social People's Party in 1974. He studied law at the University of Strasbourg, graduating with a master's degree in 1979; although he was sworn into the Luxembourg Bar Council in 1980, he never practised as a lawyer.


title: Jean-Claude Juncker

text: Juncker grew up in Belvaux, in the commune of Sanem in the canton of Esch-sur-Alzette in the south of Luxembourg. Dominated by coal and steel manufacturing, the neighbourhood was home to a multicultural workforce of Italian and Portuguese immigrants. This social environment influenced Juncker's way of thinking and his ideology of integration and togetherness. He visits his hometown as often as he can.


title: Jean-Claude Juncker

text: Juncker's father was heavily wounded during his service in the "Wehrmacht" at the Eastern Front, which left him visibly scarred. Throughout his life Joseph Juncker was also a member of the Christian Labour union, and he took his son to several union and party meetings, which impacted his son's political views even in his early days. Having come from a poor family, he made central to his political ideology the fight against social inequalities, and for equal opportunities and fairness for all people. Jean-Claude went to a Jesuit Boarding school close to the border of Belgium; as a schoolboy, Juncker negotiated and debated with the school's administrators on behalf of his classmates. Juncker was one of twelve children in a large household, where money was tight; he learned from a young age the importance of saving. This experience proved useful during his later role as Minister of Finance.


title: Jean-Claude Juncker

text: Following Juncker's graduation from the University of Strasbourg, he was appointed as a Parliamentary Secretary. He later won election to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time in 1984 and was immediately appointed to the Cabinet of Prime Minister Jacques Santer as Minister of Labour. In the second half of 1985, Luxembourg held the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Communities, permitting Juncker to develop his European leadership qualities as chair of the Social Affairs and Budget Councils. It was here that Juncker's pro-Europe credentials first emerged.


title: Jean-Claude Juncker

text: Shortly before the 1989 election Juncker was seriously injured in a road accident, spending two weeks in a coma. He has stated that the accident has caused him difficulty with balancing since. He nonetheless recovered in time to be returned to the Chamber of Deputies once more, after which he was promoted to become Minister for Finance, a post traditionally seen as a rite of passage to the country's premiership. His eventual promotion to Prime Minister seemed at this time inevitable, with political commentators concluding that Santer was grooming Juncker as his successor. Juncker at this time also accepted the position of Luxembourg's representative on the 188-member Board of Governors of the World Bank.