title: Collabro

text: Collabro progressed to the live semi-finals. They competed in the first semi-final on 26 May, performing the song "Bring Him Home", also from "Les Misérables". The performance was praised by all four judges, again receiving a standing ovation, and they received the highest number of votes from the public (receiving 62.3% of the total votes cast), ensuring their automatic progression to the final. During the live final on 7 June, Collabro performed a different arrangement of their audition song "Stars" for which they received 26.5% of the vote, winning the competition by a wide margin.


title: Collabro

text: On 12 June 2014, Collabro signed a record deal with Cowell's record label, Syco Music, and released their debut album on 28 July. On 17 June, they announced that they would be going on their first ever tour, along with runner-up Lucy Kay, in 2015. The group's debut album "Stars", which includes cover versions of songs such as "All of Me" and "Let It Go", was released on 18 August and debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart. On 31 October, it was announced that the album would be re-released as a special edition. The re-released version features the seasonal "White Christmas" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as well as "Falling Slowly" from the musical "Once" and "Say Something". Collabro's debut tour 'Stars' sold 50,000 tickets culminating in a headliner show at The London Palladium.


title: Collabro

text: On 22 April 2015, Collabro revealed they had signed a record deal with Sony Masterworks in the US for £1 million. The following week, they announced that their second album would be called "Act Two" and would be released on 1 June. It debuted at #2 in the UK Albums Chart. In 2016 the group did their second tour around the UK (Act Two) after the success of their last tour. They finished their first official tour in Japan and also been touring around the US as well as Canada.


title: Collabro

text: Following the departure of Richard Hadfield from the band, Collabro announced their third album "Home" would be released in March 2017 having set up their own record label "Peak Productions". The band artistically controlled everything and decided to "go home to Musical Theatre" having done pop crossover tracks on their first two albums. This new offering featured a selection of stage classics, fan favourites and their first original song "Lighthouse", co-written by Ben Adams. On 20 March 2017, the band announced they would be joining Cliff Richard on his summer Just Fabulous Rock 'n' Roll Tour of the UK. Following this, their third UK Tour took place in September and December 2017, titled "The Home UK Tour".


title: Collabro

text: In August 2018, the band released their fourth studio album "Road to the Royal Albert Hall". The album peaked at number nineteen on the UK Albums Chart. Following this, the band went on a fifty-one date UK tour in 2019. The tour started on 10 February in South Shields and ended on 20 April at the Royal Albert Hall in London.


title: Collabro

text: In September 2019, the band took part in "", they were eliminated at the Preliminaries, they finished third in the audience vote. The band announced that they had signed a new record deal with BMG, they also announced the release date for their new album. On their social media accounts, the band said, "After 5 incredible years together, we're proud to announce we've signed a major new record deal with @BMG. We'll be releasing our 5th album #LoveLikeThis on 15th November this year, and we're going back out on tour in 2020." In November 2019, they released their fifth studio album "Love Like This". The album peaked at number twenty-two on the UK Albums Chart. In October 2019, the band announced a UK tour for October 2020. In April 2020 the band had to postponed the tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tour will now take place between October and November 2021.


title: Collabro

text: In January 2020, the band took part in "", they were eliminated at the Preliminaries. In November 2020, they released their sixth studio album "Christmas Is Here". The album peaked at number eighty on the UK Albums Chart. The album includes the single "Christmas Is Here", their second original song, also co-written by Ben Adams.


title: Collabro

text: The group announced on 17 August 2022 that they would part ways as a group following an upcoming farewell tour In December. The group also released their final album on 7 October titled "Be Still My Soul".


title: Collabro

text: On 25 April 2014, the group appeared on the ITV television programme "This Morning" to discuss their appearance on "Britain's Got Talent" and they performed the song "Let It Go" on the show on 11 July. On 18 May 2014, Collabro (excluding Hadfield) appeared at the "Soccer Six" charity football tournament at The Valley, home ground of Charlton Athletic F.C. They made appearances on QVC and Weekend to further promote the album. They also performed at the 2014 Royal Variety Performance in front of the Royal Family, which is part of the prize for winning "Britain's Got Talent". On 9 May 2015, they performed at in Horse Guards Parade, London. In 2016, following the departure of Richard Hadfield, Collabro were invited back to Soccer Aid - performing live on ITV to 7 million viewers for the first time as a four piece.


title: Collabro

text: Michael Auger (born 6 March 1990) lives in Petersfield. At the time of Collabro's "BGT" audition, he was working at a petrol station, which his father owns a number of stations, and also at Pricewaterhouse Coopers as an intern. He attended Churcher's College in Hampshire before moving to Alton College where he studied A Levels in Maths, Further Maths, Chemistry, Biology and Geography. He later attended the University of Bath to study Accounting and Finance. Also attended London School of Musical Theatre. Auger was a member of ‘the 100’ on BBC talent show All Together Now, alongside Geri Halliwell.


title: Collabro

text: Jamie Lambert (born 19 June 1990), was brought up in Washington, Tyne and Wear and studied at Dame Allan's School, Newcastle. At the time of Collabro's "BGT" audition, he was working part-time in the finance department of Barts Health NHS Trust in London. He previously worked at the South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust of which his mother, Lorraine Lambert, is the chief executive. Lambert has performed solo at a number of events including mayoral charity events, the South Tyneside Summer Festival, and Cancer Connections in South Shields. He has also won regional talent competitions Open Zone Idol and Talent on the Tyne. He came out in the press as gay.


title: Collabro

text: Matthew "Matt" Pagan (born 25 July 1993) was brought up in Carlisle, Cumbria. At the time of Collabro's "BGT" audition, he was working as a kitchen salesman.


title: Collabro

text: Thomas J. Redgrave (born Thomas Leak on 28 August 1989 in Grimsby) is from Saltfleetby. He chose his stage surname from a theatre poster. He studied at Monks' Dyke Tennyson College. He performed in St James' Choir for seven years and was also part of the Louth Playgoers Group. At the time of Collabro's "BGT" audition, he was working in a Japanese restaurant. Thomas became an ambassador for The IBS Network, the UK charity working to support people living with irritable bowel syndrome, in March 2017.


title: Collabro

text: Richard Lester Hadfield (born 1 December 1993) lives in Portslade, East Sussex. At the time of Collabro's "BGT" audition, he was working as a labourer. He was part of Collabro between 2014 and 2016. Hadfield attended Hurstpierpoint College in West Sussex, busking during the school holidays to earn money to pay the school's fees. In June 2016 Hadfield parted ways with Collabro, stating they "wish each other continued success and support for each other's future careers." Hadfield had reportedly made the decision to leave the group after the "Britain's Got Talent" final. A source close to him admitted he had been "unhappy for a long time." He later auditioned for "The Voice UK" in 2022, but received no turns from the coaches.


title: Ram (film)

text: Ram is an upcoming Indian Malayalam-language action thriller film written and directed by Jeethu Joseph. It was jointly produced by Abhishek Films and Passion Studios. The film stars Mohanlal in the title role, along with an ensemble cast including Trisha, Indrajith Sukumaran, Samyuktha Menon, Adil Hussain, Durga Krishna, Prachi Tehlan, Anoop Menon, Saikumar, Suman, Chandhunadh, and Siddique. Debutant music director Vishnu Syam composed the film's music.


title: Ram (film)

text: Principal photography of the film began on 6 January 2020. After a schedule break in February, filming was halted for around three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the delay, Jeethu scaled-up the film's size. It resumed filming in August 2022.


title: Ram (film)

text: Jeethu Joseph began the pre-production work of "Ram" by late 2019 at the same time he was overseeing the post-production work of "The Body" and "Thambi". In September 2019, it was reported that Mohanlal and Trisha would be starring in Jeethu's high-budget thriller film produced by Chennai-based Abhishek Films, to be shot in India and abroad, with filming set to begin in November lasting 100 days. Filming date was pushed to late December to begin during the releasing week of "Thambi". Jeethu described the film as an action thriller with a story spanning several countries. A pooja function for the film and a press meet was held on 16 December 2019, where the film's title was revealed. While interacting with the press, Jeethu said he was approached by the producers three years ago to make a second film with Mohanlal after "Drishyam" (2013), "I was tensed about doing another film with Lalettan [Mohanlal] because it's a huge responsibility. It took me three years to come up with the right subject".


title: Ram (film)

text: Mohanlal reportedly plays a R&AW agent in the film. During the casting process, Trisha was suggested for the role by Mohanlal. Trisha plays one of the lead roles in the film. She plays Vineetha, a doctor. Mohanlal also suggested Prachi Tehlan for a role, who was in talks in January 2020. Tehlan reportedly joined the film that month. Anoop Menon also joined in January. Chandhunadh plays Vivek, a journalist. Adil Hussain was cast in a brief but crucial role, while Indrajith Sukumaran was cast in a role with ample screen time. Suresh Chandra Menon was cast in the role of a villain. Durga Krishna played the character of Meera in the first schedule of filming. Meera is sister to Vineetha. David John, who had contested in the Mohanlal-hosted reality TV show "Bigg Boss" was cast in a negative role, he was suggested by Mohanlal. Samyuktha Menon joined the film's shoot in September 2022 at London. Her character was created after the film was scaled-up after the schedule break due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Priyanka Nair also joined the shoot in London.


title: Ram (film)

text: Principal photography began on 6 January 2020. First phase of filming took place at Ernakulam. Another schedule in Dhanushkodi was completed on 20 February. The film was also shot in Delhi and Shimla. The film had completed its shoot in India in February. However, their plans to shoot the film in other countries for the remaining portions was hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic, which would delay the production for two years. In May that year, Jeethu said the filming would resume in the United Kingdom and Uzbekistan once the virus spread is controlled. Meanwhile, he decided to move on to another film which can be shot entirely in Kerala. Editing of "Ram" began in November along with the post-production work of "Drishyam 2" (2021). Till then, ₹14 crore was spent on the film and needed another ₹14 crore to complete filming, as per the estimate at that time. Due to prolonged restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, at one time they thought of shifting location to France, since it was costlier, they decided to wait until the restrictions are lifted. They also wanted to shoot the film in the Middle East for which location scouting begin in May 2022. Jeethu scaled up the size of the film during the pandemic break. As per media reports, "Ram" has been split into a two-part film. Jeethu told that "Ram" was the most expensive film he had done till then.


title: Ram (film)

text: For the remaining schedule, Jeethu started location scouting in mid-2022. London, Tunisia Morocco and Israel were picked, with filming set to begin in mid-August 2022. After almost three years of halt, filming resumed on 6 August 2022 at Ernakulam for a 10-day schedule. Mohanlal, Indrajith, and Trisha performed in these portions. Filming was shifted to London following that. London schedule was held in September. Hollywood stunt director Peter Pedrero choreographed the action scenes, he joined the film in October in London. London scheduled is planned for 40 days.


title: Ram (film)

text: Vishnu Shyam, a disciple of composer Vidyasagar, makes his debut as a music director in the film. The lyrics for songs were written by Vinayak Sasikumar.


title: Ram (film)

text: Before production, "Ram" was planned as to release in Onam 2020. With filming delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in May 2022, Jeethu said that they want to release the film in theatres itself and that is why they pushed the shooting dates to get the desired locations.


title: Castration anxiety

text: Castration anxiety is the fear of emasculation in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Castration anxiety is an overwhelming fear of damage to, or loss of, the penis—one of Sigmund Freud's earliest psychoanalytic theories. Although Freud regarded castration anxiety as a universal human experience, few empirical studies have been conducted on the topic. The theory is that a child has a fear of damage being done to their genitalia by the parent of the same sex (e.g., a son fearing his father) as punishment for sexual feelings toward the parent of the opposite sex (e.g., a son desiring his mother). It has been theorized that castration anxiety begins between the ages of 3 and 5, otherwise known as the phallic stage of development according to Freud. Although typically associated with males, castration anxiety is theorized to be experienced in differing ways for both the male and female sexes.


title: Castration anxiety

text: Castration anxiety is the conscious or unconscious fear of losing all or part of the sex organs, or the function of such. In the literal sense, castration anxiety refers to the fear of having one's genitalia disfigured or removed to punish sexual desires of a child.


title: Castration anxiety

text: In Freudian psychoanalysis, castration anxiety ("Kastrationsangst") refers to an unconscious fear of penile loss originating during the phallic stage of psychosexual development and lasting a lifetime. According to Freud, when the infantile male becomes aware of differences between male and female genitalia he assumes that the female's penis has been removed and becomes anxious that his penis will be cut off by his rival, the father figure, as punishment for desiring the mother figure.


title: Castration anxiety

text: In 19th-century Europe, it was not unheard of for parents to threaten their misbehaving sons with castration or otherwise threaten their genitals. This theme is explored in the story "Tupik" by French writer Michel Tournier in his collection of stories entitled "Le Coq de Bruyère" (1978) and is a phenomenon Freud documents several times. In this same period, Dr. Kellogg and others in America and English-speaking countries offered to Victorian parents circumcision and, in grave instances, "castration" of their boys and girls as a terminal "cure" and punishment for a wide variety of perceived misbehaviours (such as masturbation), a practice that became widely used at the time.


title: Castration anxiety

text: Castration anxiety can also refer to being castrated symbolically. In the metaphorical sense, castration anxiety refers to the idea of feeling or being insignificant; there is a need to keep one's self from being dominated; whether it be socially or in a relationship.


title: Castration anxiety

text: Symbolic castration anxiety refers to the fear of being degraded, dominated or made insignificant, usually an irrational fear where the person will go to extreme lengths to save their pride and/or perceives trivial things as being degrading making their anxiety restrictive and sometimes damaging.


title: Castration anxiety

text: This can also tie in with literal castration anxiety in fearing the loss of virility or sexual dominance.


title: Castration anxiety

text: According to Freudian psychoanalysis, castration anxiety can be completely overwhelming to the individual, often breaching other aspects of his or her life. A link has been found between castration anxiety and fear of death. Although differing degrees of anxiety are common, young men who felt the most threatened in their youth tended to show chronic anxiety. Because the consequences are extreme, the fear can evolve from potential disfigurement to life-threatening situations. Essentially, castration anxiety can lead to a fear of death, and a feeling of loss of control over one's life.


title: Castration anxiety

text: To feel so powerless can be detrimental to an individual's mental health. One of the most concerning problems with all of this is the idea that the individual does not recognize that their sexual desires are the cause of the emotional distress. Because of unconscious thoughts, as theorized in the ideas of psychoanalysis, the anxiety is brought to the surface where it is experienced symbolically. This will lead to the fear associated with bodily injury in castration anxiety, which can then lead to the fear of dying or being killed.


title: Castration anxiety

text: Freud had a strongly critical view of circumcision, believing it to be a 'substitute for castration', and an 'expression of submission to the father's will'. This view was shared by others in the psychoanalytic community, such as Wilhelm Reich, Hermann Nunberg, and Jaques Lacan, who stated that there is "nothing less castrating than circumcision!"


title: Castration anxiety

text: Themes central to castration anxiety that feature prominently in circumcision include pain, fear, loss of control (with the child's forced restraint, and in the psychological effects of the event, which may include sensation seeking, and lower emotional stability) and the perception that the event is a form of punishment.


title: Castration anxiety

text: The ritual's origination as a result of Oedipal conflict was tested by examining 111 societies, finding that circumcision is likely to be found in societies in which the son sleeps in the mother's bed during the nursing period in bodily contact with her, and/or the father sleeps in a different hut.


title: Castration anxiety

text: A study of the procedure without anaesthesia on children in Turkey found 'each child looked at his penis immediately after the circumcision 'as if to make sure that all was not cut off'. Another study of 60 males subject to communal circumcision ceremonies in Turkey found that 21.5% of them "remembered that they were specifically afraid that their penis might or would be cut off entirely," while 'specific fears of castration' occurred in 28% of the village-reared men. Fear of the authoritarian father increased considerably in 12 children.


title: Castration anxiety

text: Psychoanalytic interpretation of Biblical stories shows themes of castration anxiety present in Judaic mythology concerning circumcision.


title: Castration anxiety

text: The figure of Lilith, described as "a hot fiery female who first cohabited with man" presents as an archetypal representation of the first mother of man, and primordial sexual temptation. Male children were said to be at risk of Lilith's wrath for eight days after birth. Deceiving Lilith into believing newborn babies were a girl – letting the boy's hair grow and even dressing him in girl clothes – were said to be the most effective means to avoid her harm, until they were ritually circumcised on the eighth day of life as part of a covenant with God.


title: Castration anxiety

text: The figure of Judith, depicted both as "a type of the praying Virgin... who tramples Satan and harrows Hell," and also as "seducer-assassin" archetypically reflects the dichotomous themes presented by castration anxiety and circumcision: sexual purity, chastity, violence, and eroticism. Judith defeats Assyrian General, Holofernes by cutting his head off – decapitation being an act that Freud equated with castration in his essay, "Medusa's Head".


title: Castration anxiety

text: It is implied in Freudian psychology that both girls and boys pass through the same developmental stages: oral, anal, and phallic stages. Freud, however, believed that the results may be different because the anatomy of the different sexes is different.


title: Castration anxiety

text: The counterpart of castration anxiety for females is penis envy. Penis envy, and the concept of such, was first introduced by Freud in an article published in 1908 titled "On the Sexual Theories of Children". The idea was presumed that females/girls envied those (mostly their fathers) with a penis because theirs was taken from them—essentially they were already "castrated". Freud entertained that the envy they experienced was their unconscious wish to be like a boy and to have a penis.


title: Castration anxiety

text: Penis envy, in Freudian psychology, refers to the reaction of the female/young girl during development when she realizes that she does not possess a penis. According to Freud, this was a major development in the identity (gender and sexual) of the girl. The contemporary culture assumes that penis envy is the woman wishing they were in fact a man. This is unrelated to the notion of "small penis syndrome" which is the assumption by the man that his penis is too small. According to Freud's beliefs, girls developed a weaker superego, which he considered a consequence of penis envy.


title: Castration anxiety

text: Among his many suggestions, Freud believed that during the phallic stage, young girls distance themselves from their mothers and instead envy their fathers and show this envy by showing love and affection towards their fathers. According to Cohler and Galatzer, Freud believed that all of the concepts related to penis envy were among his greatest accomplishments. However, these are also his most criticized theories as well—most famously by Karen Horney.


title: Castration anxiety

text: Sarnoff et al. surmised that men differ in their degree of castration anxiety through the castration threat they experienced in childhood. Therefore, these men may be expected to respond in different ways to different degrees of castration anxiety that they experience from the same sexually arousing stimulus. The experimenters aimed to demonstrate that in the absence of a particular stimulus, men who were severely threatened with castration, as children, might experience long-lasting anxiety. The researchers claimed that this anxiety is from the repressed desires for sexual contact with women. It was thought that these desires are trying to reach the men's consciousness. The experimenters deduced that unconscious anxiety of being castrated might come from the fear the consciousness has of bodily injury. The researchers concluded that individuals who are in excellent health and who have never experienced any serious accident or illness may be obsessed by gruesome and relentless fears of dying or of being killed.


title: Castration anxiety

text: In another article related to castration anxiety, Hall et al. investigated whether sex differences would be found in the manifestations of castration anxiety in their subject's dreams. The researchers hypothesized that male dreamers would report more dreams that would express their fear of castration anxiety instead of dreams involving castration wish and penis envy. They further hypothesized that women will have a reversed affect, that is, female dreamers will report more dreams containing fear of castration wish and penis envy than dreams including castration anxiety. The results demonstrated that many more women than men dreamt about babies and weddings and that men had more dreams about castration anxiety than women.


title: Scalpel

text: A scalpel, lancet, or bistoury is a small and extremely sharp bladed instrument used for surgery, anatomical dissection, podiatry and various arts and crafts (either called a hobby knife or an X-acto knife.). Scalpels may be single-use disposable or re-usable. Re-usable scalpels can have permanently attached blades that can be sharpened or, more commonly, removable single-use blades. Disposable scalpels usually have a plastic handle with an extensible blade (like a utility knife) and are used once, then the entire instrument is discarded. Scalpel blades are usually individually packed in sterile pouches but are also offered non-sterile. Double-edged scalpels are referred to as "lancets".


title: Scalpel

text: Scalpel blades are usually made of hardened and tempered steel, stainless steel, or high carbon steel; in addition, titanium, ceramic, diamond and even obsidian knives are not uncommon. For example, when performing surgery under MRI guidance, steel blades are unusable (the blades would be drawn to the magnets and would also cause image artifacts). Historically, the preferred material for surgical scalpels was silver. Scalpel blades are also offered by some manufacturers with a zirconium nitride–coated edge to improve sharpness and edge retention. Others manufacture blades that are polymer-coated to enhance lubricity during a cut. Alternatives to scalpels in surgical applications include electrocautery and lasers.


title: Scalpel

text: Surgical scalpels consist of two parts, a blade and a handle. The handles are often reusable, with the blades being replaceable. In medical applications, each blade is only used once (sometimes just for a single, small cut).


title: Scalpel

text: The handle of medical scalpels come in several basic types. The first is a flat handle used in the #3 and #4 handles. The #7 handle is more like a long writing pen, rounded at the front and flat at the back. A #4 handle is larger than a #3. #5 handles are also common, and are round, with a patterning to ensure a non-slip grip. Blades are manufactured with a corresponding fitment size so that they fit on only one size handle. The following table of blades is incomplete and some blades listed may work with handles not specified here.


title: Scalpel

text: Also called the "dinner knife" grip. The handle is held with the second through fourth fingers and secured along the base of the thumb, with the index finger extended along the top rear of the blade and the thumb along the side of the handle. This grip is best for initial incisions and larger cuts.


title: Scalpel

text: Best used for more accurate cuts with smaller blades (e.g. #15) and the #7 handle. The scalpel is held with the tips of the first and second fingers and the tip of the thumb with the handle resting on the fleshy base of the index finger and thumb. Care should be taken not to allow the handle to rest too far along the index finger as this promotes an unstable grip and cramped fingers.


title: Scalpel

text: Graphical and model-making scalpels tend to have round handles, with textured grips (either knurled metal or soft plastic). The blade is usually flat and straight, allowing it to be run easily against a straightedge to produce straight cuts.


title: Scalpel

text: There are many kinds of graphic arts blades; the most common around the graphic design studio is the #11 blade which is very similar to a #11 surgical blade (q.v.). Other blade shapes are used for wood carving, cutting leather and heavy fabric, etc.


title: Scalpel

text: Rising awareness of the dangers of sharps in a medical environment around the beginning of the 21st century led to the development of various methods of protecting healthcare workers from accidental cuts and puncture wounds. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 1,000 people were subject to accidental needle sticks and lacerations each day in the United States while providing medical care. Additionally, surgeons can expect to suffer hundreds of such injuries over the course of their career. Scalpel blade injuries were among the most frequent sharps injuries, second only to needlesticks. Scalpel injuries made up 7 percent to 8 percent of all sharps injuries in 2001.


title: Scalpel

text: "Scalpel Safety" is a term coined to inform users that there are choices available to them to ensure their protection from this common sharps injury.


title: Scalpel

text: Safety scalpels are becoming increasingly popular as their prices come down and also on account of legislation such as the Needle Stick Prevention Act, which requires hospitals to minimize the risk of pathogen transmission through needle or scalpel-related accidents.


title: Scalpel

text: There are essentially two kinds of disposable safety scalpels offered by various manufacturers. They can be either classified as retractable blade or retractable sheath type. The retractable blade version made by companies such as OX Med Tech, DeRoyal, Jai Surgicals, Swann Morton, and PenBlade are more intuitive to use due to their similarities to a standard box-cutter. Retractable sheath versions have much stronger ergonomic feel for the doctors and are made by companies such as Aditya Dispomed, Aspen Surgical and Southmedic.


title: Scalpel

text: A few companies have also started to offer a safety scalpel with a reusable metal handle. In such models, the blade is usually protected in a cartridge. Such systems usually require a custom handle and the price of blades and cartridges is considerably more than for conventional surgical blades.


title: Scalpel

text: However, CDC studies shows that up to 87% of active medical devices are not activated. Safety scalpels are active devices and therefore the risk of not activating is still significant. There is a study that indicated there were actually four times more injuries with safety scalpels than reusable scalpels.


title: Scalpel

text: There are various scalpel blade removers on the market that allows users to safely remove blades from the handle, instead of dangerously using fingers or forceps. In the medical field, when taking into account activation rates, the combination of a single-handed scalpel blade remover with a passing tray or a neutral zone was as safe and up to five times safer than a safety scalpel. There are companies which offer a single-handed scalpel blade remover that complies with regulatory requirements such as US Occupational Safety and Health Administration Standards.


title: Scalpel

text: The usage of both safety scalpels and a single-handed blade remover, combined with a hands-free passing technique, are potentially effective in reducing scalpel blade injuries. It is up to employers and scalpel users to consider and use safer and more effective scalpel safety measures when feasible.


title: ColecoVision

text: ColecoVision is a second-generation home video-game console developed by Coleco and launched in North America in August 1982. It was released a year later in Europe by CBS Electronics as the CBS ColecoVision.


title: ColecoVision

text: The console offered a closer experience to more powerful arcade video games compared to competitors such as the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. The initial catalog of twelve games on ROM cartridge included the first home version of Nintendo's "Donkey Kong" as the pack-in game. Approximately 136 games were published between 1982 and 1984, including Sega's "Zaxxon" and some ports of lesser known arcade games that found a larger audience on the console, such as "Lady Bug", "Cosmic Avenger", and "Venture".


title: ColecoVision

text: Coleco released a series of hardware add-ons and special controllers to expand the capabilities of the console. "Expansion Module #1" allows the system to play Atari 2600 cartridges. A later module converts ColecoVision into the Coleco Adam home computer.


title: ColecoVision

text: ColecoVision was discontinued in 1985 when Coleco withdrew from the video game market. Coleco had already contemplated shifting focus to their Cabbage Patch Kids success after the costly failure of their Coleco Adam computer.


title: ColecoVision

text: Coleco entered the video game market in 1976 during the dedicated-game home console period with their line of Telstar consoles. When that market became oversaturated over the next few years, the company nearly went bankrupt, but found a successful product through handheld electronic games, with products that beat out those of the current market leader, Mattel. The company also developed a line of miniaturized tabletop arcade video games with licensed rights from arcade game makers including Sega, Bally, Midway, and Nintendo. Coleco was able to survive on sales of their electronic games through to 1982, but that market itself began to wane, and Greenberg was still interested in producing a home video game console.


title: ColecoVision

text: According to Eric Bromley, who led the engineering for the ColecoVision, Coleco president Arnold Greenberg had wanted to get into the programmable home console market with arcade-quality games but the cost of components had been a limiting factor. As early as 1979, Bromley had drawn out specifications for a system using a Texas Instruments video and a General Instruments audio chip but could not get the go-ahead due to cost of RAM. Around 1981, Bromley saw an article in "The Wall Street Journal" that asserted the price of RAM had fallen and, after working the cost numbers, Bromley found the system cost fell within their cost margins. Within ten minutes of reporting this to Greenberg, they had established the working name "ColecoVision" for the console as they began a more thorough design, which the marketing department never was able to surpass.


title: ColecoVision

text: Coleco recognized that licensed conversion of arcade conversions had worked for Atari in selling the Atari VCS, so they had approached Nintendo around 1981 for potential access to their arcade titles. Bromley described a tense set of meetings with Nintendo's president Hiroshi Yamauchi under typical Japanese customs where he sought to negotiate for game rights, though Yamauchi only offered seemingly obscure titles. After a meal with Yamauchi during one day, Bromley excused himself to the restroom and happened upon one of the first "Donkey Kong" cabinets which had yet to be released to Western countries. Knowing this game would likely be a hit, Bromley arranged a meeting the following day with Yamauchi and requested the exclusive rights to "Donkey Kong"; Yamauchi offered them if only they could provide upfront by that day and gave them per unit sold. Greenberg agreed, though as in Japanese custom, Bromley did not have a formal contract from Nintendo on his return. By the time of that year's Consumer Electronics Show, which Yamauchi was attending, Bromley found out from Yamauchi's daughter and translator that he had apparently given the rights to Atari. With Yamauchi's daughter's help, Bromley was able to commit Yamauchi to sign a formal contract to affirm the rights to Coleco. Coleco's announcement that they would bundle "Donkey Kong" with the console was initially met with surprise and skepticism, with journalists and retailers questioning why they would give away their most anticipated home video game with the console.


title: ColecoVision

text: The ColecoVision was released in August 1982. By Christmas 1982, Coleco had sold more than 500,000 units, in part on the strength of "Donkey Kong" as the bundled game. ColecoVision's main competitor was the less commercially successful Atari 5200. Sales quickly passed 1 million in early 1983.


title: ColecoVision

text: The ColecoVision was distributed by CBS Electronics outside of North America and was branded the CBS ColecoVision. In Europe the console was released in July 1983, nearly one year after the North American release.


title: ColecoVision

text: In January 1985, Coleco discontinued the Adam, which was a home computer expansion for ColecoVision. By mid-1985, Coleco planned to withdraw from the video game market, and the ColecoVision was officially discontinued by October. Total sales are uncertain but were ultimately in excess of 2 million consoles, with the console continuing to sell modestly up until its discontinuation.


title: ColecoVision

text: In 1983, Spectravideo announced the SV-603 ColecoVision Video Game Adapter for its SV-318 computer. The company stated that the $70 product allowed users to "enjoy the entire library of exciting ColecoVision video-game cartridges".


title: ColecoVision

text: ColecoVision is based around the Zilog Z80 CPU and a variant of the Texas Instruments TMS9918 video chip that was introduced in 1979.


title: ColecoVision

text: On NTSC ColecoVision consoles, all first-party cartridges and most third-party software titles feature a 12.7 second pause before presenting the game select screen. CBS Electronics reduced this pause in the BIOS to 3.3 seconds for their PAL and SECAM ColecoVision consoles.


title: ColecoVision

text: From its introduction, Coleco touted the ColecoVision's hardware expandability by highlighting the "Expansion Module Interface" on the front of the unit. These hardware expansion modules and accessories were sold separately.


title: ColecoVision

text: "Expansion Module #1" makes the ColecoVision compatible with Atari 2600 cartridges and controllers. It leveraged the fact that the 2600 used largely off-the-shelf components and was effectively a complete set of 2600 electronics, including a reverse-engineered equivalent of the 2600's sole custom chip, the TIA. The ColecoVision console did not do any translation or processing of the game code on the 2600 cartridges; it only provided power and clock input to and audio/video output from the expansion module, which was otherwise entirely self-contained and could be thought of as the first Atari 2600 clone console. Functionally, this gave the ColecoVision the largest software library of any console of its day. The expansion module prompted legal action from Atari. Coleco and Atari settled out of court with Coleco becoming licensed under Atari's patents. The royalty based license also applied to Coleco's Gemini game system, a stand-alone clone of the 2600.


title: ColecoVision

text: "Expansion Module #2" is a driving controller (steering wheel / gas pedal) that came packaged with the cartridge "Turbo". The gas pedal is merely a simple on/off switch. Although Coleco called the driving controller an expansion module, it actually plugs into the controller port, not the "Expansion Module Interface". The driving controller is also compatible with the cartridges "Destructor", "Bump 'n' Jump", "Pitstop", and "The Dukes of Hazzard".


title: ColecoVision

text: "Expansion Module #3" converts the ColecoVision into the Adam computer, complete with keyboard, digital data pack (DDP) cassette drive, 64 KB RAM, and printer.


title: ColecoVision

text: The "Roller Controller" is a trackball that came packaged with the cartridge "Slither", a conversion of the arcade game. The roller controller uses a special power connector that is not compatible with Expansion Module #3 (the Adam computer). Coleco mailed an adapter to owners of both units who complained. The other cartridge programmed to use the roller controller is "Victory". A joystick mode switch on the roller controller allows it to be used with all cartridges including "WarGames", "Omega Race", and Atarisoft's "Centipede".


title: ColecoVision

text: The "Super Action Controller Set", available in September 1983, is a set of two handheld joystick controllers that came packaged with the cartridge "Super Action Baseball". Each controller has a ball-top joystick, four finger triggered action buttons, a 12-button numeric keypad, and a "speed roller". The cartridges "Super Action Football", "Rocky" "Super Action Boxing", and a conversion of the arcade game "Front Line" are also designed to be used with the "Super Action Controller".


title: ColecoVision

text: Expansion Module #3 was originally the Super Game Module. It was advertised for an August 1983 release but was ultimately cancelled and replaced with the Adam computer expansion. The Super Game Module added a tape drive known as the Exatron Stringy Floppy with 128KB capacity, and the additional RAM, said to be 30KB, to load and execute programs from tape. Games could be distributed on tiny tapes, called "wafers", and be much larger than the 16KB or 32KB ROM cartridges of the day. "Super Donkey Kong", with all screens and animations, "Super Donkey Kong Jr", and "Super Smurf Rescue" were demonstrated with the Super Game Module. The Adam computer expansion with its 256KB tape drive and 64KB RAM fulfilled the specifications promised by the Super Game Module.


title: ColecoVision

text: Masayuki Uemura, head of Famicom development, stated that the ColecoVision set the bar that influenced how he approached the creation of the Famicom. During the creation of the Nintendo Entertainment System, Takao Sawano, chief manager of the project, brought a ColecoVision home to his family, who were impressed by the system's capability to produce smooth graphics, which contrasted with the flickering commonly seen on Atari 2600 games.


title: ColecoVision

text: In 1986, Bit Corporation produced a ColecoVision clone called the Dina, which was sold in the United States by Telegames as the Telegames Personal Arcade.


title: ColecoVision

text: IGN named the ColecoVision their 12th-best video-game console out of their list of 25, citing "its incredible accuracy in bringing current-generation arcade hits home."


title: ColecoVision

text: In 1997, Telegames released "Personal Arcade Vol. 1", a collection of ColecoVision games for Microsoft Windows, and a 1998 follow-up, "Colecovision Hits Volume One".


title: ColecoVision

text: In 2012, Opcode Games released their own Super Game Module expansion, which increases RAM from 16KB to 32KB and adds four additional sound channels. This expansion brings the ColecoVision close to the MSX architecture standard, allowing MSX software to be more easily ported.


title: ColecoVision

text: In 2014, AtGames began producing the ColecoVision Flashback console that includes 60 games, but not the original pack-in game, "Donkey Kong".


title: Madonna (art)

text: In art, a Madonna () is a representation of Mary, either alone or with her child Jesus. These images are central icons for both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The word is (archaic). The Madonna and Child type is very prevalent in Christian iconography, divided into many traditional subtypes especially in Eastern Orthodox iconography, often known after the location of a notable icon of the type, such as the "Theotokos of Vladimir", "Agiosoritissa", "Blachernitissa", etc., or descriptive of the depicted posture, as in "Hodegetria", "Eleusa", etc.


title: Madonna (art)

text: The term "Madonna" in the sense of "picture or statue of the Virgin Mary" enters English usage in the 17th century, primarily in reference to works of the Italian Renaissance. In an Eastern Orthodox context, such images are typically known as "Theotokos". "Madonna" may be generally used of representations of Mary, with or without the infant Jesus, is the focus and central figure of the image, possibly flanked or surrounded by angels or saints. Other types of Marian imagery have a narrative context, depicting scenes from the Life of the Virgin, e.g. the Annunciation to Mary, are not typically called "Madonna".


title: Madonna (art)

text: The earliest depictions of Mary date to Early Christian art of the (2nd to 3rd centuries, found in the Catacombs of Rome. These are in a narrative context. The classical "Madonna" or "Theotokos" imagery develops from the 5th century, as Marian devotion rose to great importance after the Council of Ephesus formally affirmed her status as "Mother of God or "Theotokos" ("God-bearer") in 431. The "Theotokos" iconography as it developed in the 6th to 8th century rose to great importance in the high medieval period (12th to 14th centuries) both in the Eastern Orthodox and in the Latin spheres.


title: Madonna (art)

text: According to a tradition first recorded in the 8th century, and still strong in the Eastern Church, the iconography of images of Mary goes back to a portrait drawn from life by Luke the Evangelist, with a number of icons (such as the "Panagia Portaitissa") claimed to either represent this original icon or to be a direct copy of it. In the Western tradition, depictions of the Madonna were greatly diversified by Renaissance masters such as Duccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, Caravaggio, and Rubens (and further by certain modernists such as Salvador Dalí and Henry Moore), while Eastern Orthodox iconography adheres more closely to the inherited traditional types.


title: Madonna (art)

text: Liturgy depicting Mary as powerful intercessor (such as the "Akathist") was brought from Greek into Latin tradition in the 8th century. The Greek title of Δεσποινα ("Despoina") was adopted as Latin "Domina" "Lady". The medieval Italian "Ma Donna" ("My Lady") reflects "Mea Domina", while "Nostra Domina" (δεσποινίς ἡμῶν) was adopted in French, as "Nostre Dame" "Our Lady".


title: Madonna (art)

text: These names signal both the increased importance of the cult of the virgin and the prominence of art in service to Marian devotion during the late medieval period. During the 13th century, especially, with the increasing influence of chivalry and aristocratic culture on poetry, song and the visual arts, the Madonna is represented as the queen of Heaven, often enthroned, such as the Ognissanti Madonna. Madonna was meant more to remind people of the theological concept which is placing such a high value on purity or virginity. This is also represented by the color of her clothing. The color blue symbolized purity, virginity, and royalty. Ultramarine was usually reserved for only the most important commissions, such as the blue robes of the Virgin Mary in Gérard David’s Virgin and Child with Female Saints.


title: Madonna (art)

text: While the Italian term "Madonna" paralleled English "Our Lady" in late medieval Marian devotion, it was imported as an art historical term into English usage in the 1640s, designating specifically the Marian art of the Italian Renaissance. In this sense, "a Madonna", or "a Madonna with Child" is used of specific works of art, historically mostly of Italian works. A "Madonna" may alternatively be called "Virgin" or "Our Lady", but "Madonna" is not typically applied to eastern works; e.g. the "Theotokos of Vladimir" may in English be called "Our Lady of Vladimir", while it is less usual, but not unheard of, to refer to it as the "Madonna of Vladimir".


title: Madonna (art)

text: The earliest representation of the Madonna and Child may be the wall painting in the Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome, in which the seated Madonna suckles the Child, who turns his head to gaze at the spectator.


title: Madonna (art)

text: The earliest consistent representations of Mother and Child were developed in the Eastern Empire, where despite an iconoclastic strain in culture that rejected physical representations as "idols", respect for venerated images was expressed in the repetition of a narrow range of highly conventionalized types, the repeated images familiar as icons (Greek "image"). On a visit to Constantinople in 536, Pope Agapetus was accused of being opposed to the veneration of the "theotokos" and to the portrayal of her image in churches. Eastern examples show the Madonna enthroned, even wearing the closed Byzantine pearl-encrusted crown with pendants, with the Christ Child on her lap.


title: Madonna (art)

text: In the West, hieratic Byzantine models were closely followed in the Early Middle Ages, but with the increased importance of the cult of the Virgin in the 12th and 13th centuries a wide variety of types developed to satisfy a flood of more intensely personal forms of piety. In the usual Gothic and Renaissance formulas the Virgin Mary sits with the Infant Jesus on her lap, or enfolded in her arms. In earlier representations the Virgin is enthroned, and the Child may be fully aware, raising his hand to offer blessing. In a 15th-century Italian variation, a baby John the Baptist looks on. The socalled "Madonna della seggiola" shows both of them: the Virgin embraces the infant Jesus, near John the Baptist.


title: Madonna (art)

text: Late Gothic sculptures of the Virgin and Child may show a standing virgin with the child in her arms. Iconography varies between public images and private images supplied on a smaller scale and meant for personal devotion in the chamber: the Virgin suckling the Child (such as the "Madonna Litta") is an image largely confined to private devotional icons.


title: Madonna (art)

text: There was a great expansion of the cult of Mary after the Council of Ephesus in 431, when her status as Theotokos ("God-bearer") was confirmed; this had been a subject of some controversy until then, though mainly for reasons to do with arguments over the nature of Christ. In mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, dating from 432–440, just after the council, she is not yet shown with a halo, and she is also not shown in Nativity scenes at this date, though she is included in the Adoration of the Magi.


title: Madonna (art)

text: By the next century the iconic depiction of the Virgin enthroned carrying the infant Christ was established, as in the example from the only group of icons surviving from this period, at Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt. This type of depiction, with subtly changing differences of emphasis, has remained the mainstay of depictions of Mary to the present day. The image at Mount Sinai succeeds in combining two aspects of Mary described in the Magnificat, her humility and her exaltation above other humans, and has the Hand of God above, up to which the archangels look. An early icon of the Virgin as queen is in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, datable to 705–707 by the kneeling figure of Pope John VII, a notable promoter of the cult of the Virgin, to whom the infant Christ reaches his hand. This type was long confined to Rome. The roughly half-dozen varied icons of the Virgin and Child in Rome from the 6th–8th century form the majority of the representations surviving from this period; "isolated images of the Madonna and Child ... are so common ... to the present day in Catholic and Orthodox tradition, that it is difficult to recover a sense of the novelty of such images in the early Middle Ages, at least in western Europe".


title: Madonna (art)

text: At this period the iconography of the Nativity was taking the form, centred on Mary, that it has retained up to the present day in Eastern Orthodoxy, and on which Western depictions remained based until the High Middle Ages. Other narrative scenes for Byzantine cycles on the "Life of the Virgin" were being evolved, relying on apocyphal sources to fill in her life before the Annunciation to Mary. By this time the political and economic collapse of the Western Roman Empire meant that the Western, Latin, church was unable to compete in the development of such sophisticated iconography, and relied heavily on Byzantine developments.


title: Madonna (art)

text: The earliest surviving image in a Western illuminated manuscript of the Madonna and Child comes from the Book of Kells of about 800 (there is a similar carved image on the lid of St Cuthbert's coffin of 698) and, though magnificently decorated in the style of Insular art, the drawing of the figures can only be described as rather crude compared to Byzantine work of the period. This was in fact an unusual inclusion in a Gospel book, and images of the Virgin were slow to appear in large numbers in manuscript art until the book of hours was devised in the 13th century.


title: Madonna (art)

text: The "Madonna of humility" by , 1433, is considered one of the most innovative devotional images from the early Renaissance.


title: Madonna (art)

text: Very few early images of the Virgin Mary survive, though the depiction of the Madonna has roots in ancient pictorial and sculptural traditions that informed the earliest Christian communities throughout Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East. Important to Italian tradition are Byzantine icons, especially those created in Constantinople (Istanbul), the capital of the longest, enduring medieval civilization whose icons participated in civic life and were celebrated for their miraculous properties. Byzantium (324–1453) saw itself as the true Rome, if Greek-speaking, Christian empire with colonies of Italians living among its citizens, participating in Crusades at the borders of its land, and ultimately, plundering its churches, palaces and monasteries of many of its treasures. Later in the Middle Ages, the Cretan school was the main source of icons for the West, and the artists there could adapt their style to Western iconography when required.


title: Madonna (art)

text: While theft is one way that Byzantine images made their way West to Italy, the relationship between Byzantine icons and Italian images of the Madonna is far more rich and complicated. Byzantine art played a long, critical role in Western Europe, especially when Byzantine territories included parts of Eastern Europe, Greece and much of Italy itself. Byzantine manuscripts, ivories, gold, silver and luxurious textiles were distributed throughout the West. In Byzantium, Mary's usual title was the Theotokos or Mother of God, rather than the Virgin Mary and it was believed that salvation was delivered to the faithful at the moment of God's incarnation. That theological concept takes pictorial form in the image of Mary holding her infant son.


title: Madonna (art)

text: However, what is most relevant to the Byzantine heritage of the Madonna is twofold. First, the earliest surviving independent images of the Virgin Mary are found in Rome, the center of Christianity in the medieval West. One is a valued possession of Santa Maria in Trastevere, one of the many Roman churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Another, a splintered, repainted ghost of its former self, is venerated at the Pantheon, that great architectural wonder of the Ancient Roman Empire, that was rededicated to Mary as an expression of the Church's triumph. Both evoke Byzantine tradition in terms of their medium, that is, the technique and materials of the paintings, in that they were originally painted in tempera (egg yolk and ground pigments) on wooden panels. In this respect, they share the Ancient Roman heritage of Byzantine icons. Second, they share iconography, or subject matter. Each image stresses the maternal role that Mary plays, representing her in relationship to her infant son. It is difficult to gauge the dates of the cluster of these earlier images, however, they seem to be primarily works of the 7th and 8th centuries.


title: Madonna (art)

text: It was not until the revival of monumental panel painting in Italy during the 12th and 13th centuries, that the image of the Madonna gains prominence outside of Rome, especially throughout Tuscany. While members of the mendicant orders of the Franciscan and Dominican Orders are some of the first to commission panels representing this subject matter, such works quickly became popular in monasteries, parish churches, and homes. Some images of the Madonna were paid for by lay organizations called confraternities, who met to sing praises of the Virgin in chapels found within the newly reconstructed, spacious churches that were sometimes dedicated to her. Paying for such a work might also be seen as a form of devotion. Its expense registers in the use of thin sheets of real gold leaf in all parts of the panel that are not covered with paint, a visual analogue not only to the costly sheaths that medieval goldsmiths used to decorate altars, but also a means of surrounding the image of the Madonna with illumination from oil lamps and candles. Even more precious is the bright blue mantle colored with lapis lazuli, a stone imported from Afghanistan.


title: Madonna (art)

text: This is the case of one of the most famous, innovative and monumental works that Duccio executed for the Laudesi at Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Often the scale of the work indicates a great deal about its original function. Often referred to as the Rucellia Madonna (c. 1285), the panel painting towers over the spectator, offering a visual focus for members of the Laudesi confraternity to gather before it as they sang praises to the image. Duccio made an even grander image of the Madonna enthroned for the high altar of the cathedral of Siena, his home town. Known as the "Maesta" (1308–1311), the image represents the pair as the center of a densely populated court in the central part of a complexly carpentered work that lifts the court upon a predella (pedestal of altarpiece) of narrative scenes and standing figures of prophets and saints. In turn, a modestly scaled image of the Madonna as a half-length figure holding her son in a memorably intimate depiction, is to be found in the National Gallery of London. This is clearly made for the private devotion of a Christian wealthy enough to hire one of the most important Italian artists of his day.


title: Madonna (art)

text: The privileged owner need not go to Church to say his prayers or plead for salvation; all he or she had to do was open the shutters of the tabernacle in an act of private revelation. Duccio and his contemporaries inherited early pictorial conventions that were maintained, in part, to tie their own works to the authority of tradition.


title: Madonna (art)

text: Despite all of the innovations of painters of the Madonna during the 13th and 14th centuries, Mary can usually be recognized by virtue of her attire. Customarily when she is represented as a youthful mother of her newborn child, she wears a deeply saturated blue mantle over a red garment. This mantle typically covers her head, where sometimes, one might see a linen, or later, transparent silk veil. She holds the Christ Child, or Baby Jesus, who shares her halo as well as her regal bearing. Often her gaze is directed out at the viewer, serving as an intercessor, or conduit for prayers that flow from the Christian, to her, and only then, to her son. However, late medieval Italian artists also followed the trends of Byzantine icon painting, developing their own methods of depicting the Madonna. Sometimes, the Madonna's complex bond with her tiny child takes the form of a close, intimate moment of tenderness steeped in sorrow where she only has eyes for him.


title: Madonna (art)

text: While the focus of this entry currently stresses the depiction of the Madonna in panel painting, her image also appears in mural decoration, whether mosaics or fresco painting on the exteriors and interior of sacred buildings. She is found high above the apse, or east end of the church where the liturgy is celebrated in the West. She is also found in sculpted form, whether small ivories for private devotion, or large sculptural reliefs and free-standing sculpture. As a participant in sacred drama, her image inspires one of the most important fresco cycles in all of Italian painting: Giotto's narrative cycle in the Arena Chapel, next to the Scrovegni family's palace in Padua. This program dates to the first decade of the 14th century.


title: Madonna (art)

text: Italian artists of the 15th century onward are indebted to traditions established in the 13th and 14th centuries in their representation of the Madonna.


title: Madonna (art)

text: While the 15th and 16th centuries were a time when Italian painters expanded their repertoire to include historical events, independent portraits and mythological subject matter, Christianity retained a strong hold on their careers. Most works of art from this era are sacred. While the range of religious subject matter included subjects from the Old Testament and images of saints whose cults date after the codification of the Bible, the Madonna remained a dominant subject in the iconography of the Renaissance.


title: Madonna (art)

text: Some of the most eminent 16th-century Italian painters to turn to this subject were Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Giovanni Bellini and Titian. They developed on the foundations of 15th-century Marian images by Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Mantegna and Piero della Francesca in particular, among countless others. The subject was equally popular in Early Netherlandish painting and that of the rest of Northern Europe.


title: Madonna (art)

text: The subject retaining the greatest power on all of these men remained the maternal bond, even though other subjects, especially the Annunciation, and later the Immaculate Conception, led to a greater number of paintings that represented Mary alone, without her son. As a commemorative image, the "Pietà" became an important subject, newly freed from its former role in narrative cycles, in part, an outgrowth of popular devotional statues in Northern Europe. Traditionally, Mary is depicted expressing compassion, grief and love, usually in highly charged, emotional works of art even though the most famous, early work by Michelangelo stifles signs of mourning. The tenderness an ordinary mother might feel towards her beloved child is captured, evoking the moment when she first held her infant son Christ. The spectator, after all, is meant to sympathize, to share in the despair of the mother who holds the body of her crucified son.


title: Madonna (art)

text: In some European countries, such as Germany, Italy and Poland sculptures of the Madonna are found on the outside of city houses and buildings, or along the roads in small enclosures.


title: Madonna (art)

text: In Germany, such a statue placed on the outside of a building is called a "Hausmadonna". Some date back to the Middle Ages, while some are still being made today. Usually found on the level of the second floor or higher, and often on the corner of a house, such sculptures were found in great numbers in many cities; Mainz, for instance, was supposed to have had more than 200 of them before World War II. The variety in such statues is as great as in other Madonna images; one finds Madonnas holding grapes (in reference to the "Song of Songs" 1:14, translated as "My lover is to me a cluster of henna blossoms" in the NIV), "immaculate" Madonnas in pure, perfect white without child or accessories, and Madonnas with roses symbolizing her life determined by the mysteries of faith.


title: Madonna (art)

text: In Italy, the "roadside Madonna" is a common sight both on the side of buildings and along roads in small enclosures. These are expected to bring spiritual relief to people who pass them. Some Madonnas statues are placed around Italian towns and villages as a matter of protection, or as a commemoration of a reported miracle.


title: Madonna (art)

text: In the 1920s, the Daughters of the American Revolution placed statues called the "Madonna of the Trail" from coast to coast, marking the path of the old National Road and the Santa Fe Trail.


title: Madonna (art)

text: Throughout his life, the painter Ray Martìn Abeyta created works inspired by the Cusco School style of Madonna painting, creating a hybrid of traditional and contemporary Latino subject matter representing the colonialist encounters between Europeans and Mesoamericans.


title: Madonna (art)

text: In 2015 iconographer Mark Dukes created the icon Our Lady of Ferguson, depicting the Madonna and child, in relation to the Shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.


title: Madonna (art)

text: The first important encounter between Islam and the image of the Madonna is said to have happened during the Prophet Muhammad's conquest of Mecca. At the culmination of his mission, in 629 CE, Muhammad conquered Mecca with a Muslim army, with his first action being the "cleansing" or "purifying" of the Kaaba, wherein he removed all the pre-Islamic pagan images and idols from inside the temple. According to reports collected by Ibn Ishaq and al-Azraqi, Muhammad did, however, protectively put his hand over a painting of Mary and Jesus, and a fresco of Abraham in order to keep them from being effaced. In the words of the historian Barnaby Rogerson, "Muhammad raised his hand to protect an icon of the Virgin and Child and a painting of Abraham, but otherwise his companions cleared the interior of its clutter of votive treasures, cult implements, statuettes and hanging charms."


title: Madonna (art)

text: The Islamic scholar Martin Lings narrated the event thus in his : "Christians sometimes came to do honour to the Sanctuary of Abraham, and they were made welcome like all the rest. Moreover one Christian had been allowed and even encouraged to paint an icon of the Virgin Mary and the child Christ on an inside wall of the Ka'bah, where it sharply contrasted with all the other paintings. But Quraysh were more or less insensitive to this contrast: for them it was simply a question of increasing the multitude of idols by another two; and it was partly their tolerance that made them so impenetrable... Apart from the icon of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus, and a painting of an old man, said to be Abraham, the walls inside had been covered with pictures of pagan deities. Placing his hand protectively over the icon, the Prophet told Uthman to see that all the other paintings, except that of Abraham, were effaced."


title: Madonna (art)

text: There are a large number of articles on individual works of various sorts in and its sub-category. See also the incomplete List of depictions of the Virgin and Child. The term "Madonna" is often applied to representations of Mary that were not created by Italians. A small selection of examples include:


My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman (commonly referred to as My Next Guest) is an American talk show hosted by David Letterman that premiered on January 12, 2018, on Netflix. The series consists of interviews with one guest per episode both inside and outside a studio setting. The show has received generally positive reviews, with its format, Letterman's hosting, choice of guests, and insightful conversations receiving praise. "My Next Guest" has been nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special 4 times.


title: My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman

text: On August 8, 2017, Netflix announced it had ordered a six-episode interview series starring David Letterman. Each hour-long episode was set to feature Letterman conducting a long-form conversation with a single guest and in-the-field segments, in which he would explore topics on his own.


text: On January 5, 2018, it was announced that Letterman's guests in the first season would include Barack Obama, George Clooney, Malala Yousafzai, Jay-Z, Tina Fey, and Howard Stern. It was also announced that the series would premiere on January 12, 2018, with Letterman's interview with Obama. This interview was Obama's first since leaving office.


text: On December 14, 2018, it was announced that Netflix had renewed the series for a second season consisting of six episodes. On May 31, 2019, five new episodes were released. On June 21, a bonus episode was released.


text: The show's theme song and bridging music were written and recorded by Letterman's long-time bandleader, Paul Shaffer. Soon after it was announced publicly that Netflix had given the series an order, Shaffer received a phone call from Letterman asking him to work on the show. Soon after, Shaffer began to receive cuts of episodes from the first season and he started to put music in afterwards where the director thought it was needed.


text: In developing the sound of the show's music, Shaffer initially looked to Letterman for guidance. Finding none, he remembered his and Letterman's shared love for the sort of music produced at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield, Alabama describing it as "the honesty you hear, the southern soul feeling." The score initially included drums but the show's producers and director thought that the music should "feel like it's Dave's old friend Paul playing," so it was ultimately stripped down to solely include piano, organ, and bass guitar.


text: The first season of "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction" has been met with a positive response from critics. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the first season holds an 83% approval rating with an average rating of 6.79 out of 10 based on 29 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, ""My Next Guest" may not be groundbreaking, but a more intimate setting provides ample room for intelligent, insightful interviews with interesting subjects that go beyond standard late-night conversations." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the season a score of 70 out of 100 based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Allegra Edwards

text: Allegra Rose Edwards is an American television actress known for playing Cindy McCabe in the USA Network anthology series "Briarpatch" and Ingrid Kannerman in the Amazon Prime Video comedy "Upload".


title: Allegra Edwards

text: Edwards is originally from Denver, Colorado. She began modeling when she was 18 months old and continued to model, dance, and act throughout her childhood.


title: Allegra Edwards

text: Edwards studied theatre and television at Pepperdine University in Malibu. During her time at Pepperdine, she wrote scenes for Pepperdine's annual "Songfest", performed with Pepperdine's Improv Troupe, and appeared in "Tutor", a 2009 comedy short written and directed by Jeff Loveness.


title: Allegra Edwards

text: After graduating from Pepperdine with her bachelor's degree in 2010, Edwards moved to San Francisco to attend the American Conservatory Theater's three-year Master of Fine Arts program, which she completed in 2013. After earning her MFA, she spent time in Los Angeles and New York City. In 2015, she performed in an off-Broadway production of "Everything You Touch."


title: Allegra Edwards

text: In 2019, Edwards played Cindy McCabe in the USA Network anthology series "Briarpatch". She stars as Ingrid Kannerman on the Amazon Prime Video comedy "Upload" that first aired in 2020.


title: Allegra Edwards

text: Edwards has also appeared in episodes of "Modern Family", "New Girl", "Friends from College", "The Mindy Project", and "Orange Is the New Black".


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Facebook (and parent company Meta Platforms) has been the subject of criticism and legal action. Criticisms include the outsize influence Facebook has on the lives and health of its users and employees, as well as Facebook's influence on the way media, specifically news, is reported and distributed. Notable issues include Internet privacy, such as use of a widespread "like" button on third-party websites tracking users, possible indefinite records of user information, automatic facial recognition software, and its role in the workplace, including employer-employee account disclosure. The use of Facebook can have negative psychological effects that include feelings of sexual jealousy, stress, lack of attention, and social media addiction that in some cases is comparable to drug addiction.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Facebook's operations have also received coverage. The company's electricity usage, tax avoidance, real-name user requirement policies, censorship policies, handling of user data, and its involvement in the United States PRISM surveillance program and Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal have been highlighted by the media and by critics. Facebook has come under scrutiny for 'ignoring' or shirking its responsibility for the content posted on its platform, including copyright and intellectual property infringement, hate speech, incitement of rape, violence against minorities, terrorism, fake news, Facebook murder, crimes, and violent incidents live-streamed through its Facebook Live functionality.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: The company and its employees have also been subject to litigation cases over the years, with its most prominent case concerning allegations that CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke an oral contract with Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra to build the then-named "HarvardConnection" social network in 2004, instead allegedly opting to steal the idea and code to launch Facebook months before HarvardConnection began. The original lawsuit was eventually settled in 2009, with Facebook paying approximately $20 million in cash and 1.25 million shares. A new lawsuit in 2011 was dismissed. Some critics point to problems which they say will result in the demise of Facebook. Facebook has been banned by several governments for various reasons, including Syria, China, Iran and Russia.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: While Facebook operates transparent policies around certain types of content moderation—such as the removing of hateful speech and images which contain sex or violence—the company has been criticized for selectively censoring information in nontransparent ways. Some examples of this include:


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Newspapers regularly report stories of users who claim they've been censored on Facebook for being critical of Facebook itself, with their posts removed or made less visible. Examples include Elizabeth Warren in 2019 and Rotem Shtarkman in 2016.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In the context of media reports and lawsuits from people formerly working on Facebook content moderation, a former Facebook moderator (Chris Gray) has claimed that specific rules existed to monitor and sometimes target posts about Facebook which are anti-Facebook or criticize Facebook for some action, for instance by matching the keywords "Facebook" or "DeleteFacebook".


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Facebook's search function has been accused of preventing users from searching for certain terms. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has written about Facebook's possible censorship of "Ron Paul" as a search term. MoveOn.org's Facebook group for organizing protests against privacy violations could for a time not be found by searching. The very word "privacy" was also restricted.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In 2015, it was reported that Facebook has a policy to censor anything related to Kurdish opposition against Turkey, such as maps of Kurdistan, flags of Kurdish armed terrorist groups (such as PKK and YPG), and criticism of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of Turkey.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: During a podcast, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook suppressed all the coverage of Joe Biden's son's email leaks during the 2020 United States elections due to a general request from the FBI. The censored news claimed that the son of Joe Biden, who was vice-president in Obama's administration, used his father's influence to fix a deal with a Ukrainian businessman.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In 2021, Facebook was accused of censoring messages critical of Israel and supportive of Palestine. During conflict over the Sheikh Jarrah property dispute in 2021 Facebook was accused of deleting hundreds of posts critical of Israel. Senior Facebook officials apologized to the Palestinian Prime Minister for censoring pro-Palestinian voices.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In October 2021, a secret blacklist of "dangerous individuals and organizations" maintained by Facebook was discovered by "The Intercept", which revealed censorship in the MENA region was stricter than in USA. Critics and scholars have argued the blacklist and the guideline stiffles free discussion, as well as enforcing an uneven enforcement of the rules.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Facebook has faced a number of privacy concerns; for instance, in August 2019, it was revealed that the company had enlisted contractors to generate transcripts of users' audio chats. The contractors were tasked with re-transcribing the conversations in order to gauge the accuracy of the automatic transcription tool. In part these concerns stem from the company's revenue model that involves selling information about its users, and the loss of privacy this could entail. In addition, employers and other organizations and individuals have been known to use Facebook data for their own purposes. As a result peoples' identities have sometimes been revealed without their permission. In response, pressure groups and governments have increasingly asserted the users' right to privacy and to control their personal data.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In addition to noting with evolutionary biologist George C. Williams in the development of evolutionary medicine that most chronic medical conditions are the consequence of evolutionary mismatches between a stateless environment of nomadic hunter-gatherer life in bands and contemporary human life in sedentary technologically modern state societies (e.g. WEIRD societies), psychiatrist Randolph M. Nesse has argued that evolutionary mismatch is an important factor in the development of certain mental disorders. In 1948, 50 percent of U.S. households owned at least one automobile. In 2000, a majority of U.S. households had at least one personal computer and internet access the following year. In 2002, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported having a mobile phone. In September 2007, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported having broadband internet at home. In January 2013, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported owning a smartphone.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: The "World Unplugged" study, which was conducted in 2011, claims that for some users quitting social networking sites is comparable to quitting smoking or giving up alcohol. Another study conducted in 2012 by researchers from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in the United States found that drugs like alcohol and tobacco could not keep up with social networking sites regarding their level of addictiveness. A 2013 study in the journal "CyberPsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking" found that some users decided to quit social networking sites because they felt they were addicted. In 2014, the site went down for about 30 minutes, prompting several users to call emergency services.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In April 2015, the Pew Research Center published a survey of 1,060 U.S. teenagers ages 13 to 17 who reported that nearly three-quarters of them either owned or had access to a smartphone, 92 percent went online daily with 24 percent saying they went online "almost constantly". In March 2016, "Frontiers in Psychology" published a survey of 457 post-secondary student Facebook users (following a face validity pilot of another 47 post-secondary student Facebook users) at a large university in North America showing that the severity of ADHD symptoms had a statistically significant positive correlation with Facebook usage while driving a motor vehicle and that impulses to use Facebook while driving were more potent among male users than female users.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In June 2018, "Children and Youth Services Review" published a regression analysis of 283 adolescent Facebook users in the Piedmont and Lombardy regions of Northern Italy (that replicated previous findings among adult users) showing that adolescents reporting higher ADHD symptoms positively predicted Facebook addiction, persistent negative attitudes about the past and that the future is predetermined and not influenced by present actions, and orientation against achieving future goals, with ADHD symptoms additionally increasing the manifestation of the proposed category of psychological dependence known as "problematic social media use".


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In January 2019, both the Health Secretary of the United Kingdom, and the Children's Commissioner for England, urged Facebook and other social media companies to take responsibility for the risk to children posed by content on their platforms related to self-harm and suicide.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Facebook has been criticized for making people envious and unhappy due to the constant exposure to positive yet unrepresentative highlights of their peers. Such highlights include, but are not limited to, journal posts, videos, and photos that depict or reference such positive or otherwise outstanding activities, experiences, and facts. This effect is caused mainly by the fact that most users of Facebook usually only display the positive aspects of their lives while excluding the negative, though it is also strongly connected to inequality and the disparities between social groups as Facebook is open to users from all classes of society. Sites such as AddictionInfo.org state that this kind of envy has profound effects on other aspects of life and can lead to severe depression, self-loathing, rage and hatred, resentment, feelings of inferiority and insecurity, pessimism, suicidal tendencies and desires, social isolation, and other issues that can prove very serious. This condition has often been called "Facebook Envy" or "Facebook Depression" by the media.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In 2010, "Social Science Computer Review" published research by economists Ralf Caers and Vanessa Castelyns who sent an online questionnaire to 398 and 353 LinkedIn and Facebook users respectively in Belgium and found that both sites had become tools for recruiting job applicants for professional occupations as well as additional information about applicants, and that it was being used by recruiters to decide which applicants would receive interviews. In 2017, sociologist Ofer Sharone conducted interviews with unemployed workers to research the effects of LinkedIn and Facebook as labor market intermediaries and found that social networking services (SNS) have had a filtration effect that has little to do with evaluations of merit, and that the SNS filtration effect has exerted new pressures on workers to manage their careers to conform to the logic of the SNS filtration effect.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: A joint study conducted by two German universities demonstrated Facebook envy and found that as many as one out of three people actually feel worse and less satisfied with their lives after visiting the site. Vacation photos were found to be the most common source of feelings of resentment and jealousy. After that, social interaction was the second biggest cause of envy, as Facebook users compare the number of birthday greetings, likes, and comments to those of their friends. Visitors who contributed the least tended to feel the worst. "According to our findings, passive following triggers invidious emotions, with users mainly envying happiness of others, the way others spend their vacations; and socialize", the study states.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: A 2013 study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that the more people used Facebook, the worse they felt afterwards.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Narcissistic users who show excessive grandiosity give negative emotion to viewers and cause envy, but as a result, that may cause viewers' loneliness. Viewers sometimes need to terminate relationships with them to avoid this negative emotion. However, this "avoidance" such as "terminate relationships" would be reinforcement and it may lead to loneliness. The cyclical pattern is a vicious circle of loneliness and avoidance coping, the study states.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Social networks, like Facebook, can have a detrimental effect on marriages, with users becoming worried about their spouse's contacts and relations with other people online, leading to marital breakdown and divorce. According to a 2009 survey in the UK, around 20 percent of divorce petitions included references to Facebook. Facebook has given us a new platform for interpersonal communication. Researchers proposed that high levels of Facebook use could result in Facebook-related conflict and breakup/divorce. Previous studies have shown that romantic relationships can be damaged by excessive Internet use, Facebook jealousy, partner surveillance, ambiguous information, and online portrayal of intimate relationships. Excessive Internet users reported having greater conflict in their relationships. Their partners feel neglected and there's lower commitment and lower feelings of passion and intimacy in the relationship. According to the article, researchers suspect that Facebook may contribute to an increase in divorce and infidelity rates in the near future due to the amount and ease of accessibility to connect with past partners. The use of Facebook can cause feelings of sexual jealousy.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Research performed by psychologists from Edinburgh Napier University indicated that Facebook adds stress to users' lives. Causes of stress included fear of missing important social information, fear of offending contacts, discomfort or guilt from rejecting user requests or deleting unwanted contacts or being unfriended or blocked by Facebook friends or other users, the displeasure of having friend requests rejected or ignored, the pressure to be entertaining, criticism or intimidation from other Facebook users, and having to use appropriate etiquette for different types of friends. Many people who started using Facebook for positive purposes or with positive expectations have found that the website has negatively impacted their lives.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Next to that, the increasing number of messages and social relationships embedded in SNS also increases the amount of social information demanding a reaction from SNS users. Consequently SNS users perceive they are giving too much social support to other SNS friends. This dark side of SNS usage is called 'social overload'. It is caused by the extent of usage, number of friends, subjective social support norms, and type of relationship (online-only vs offline friends) while age has only an indirect effect. The psychological and behavioral consequences of social overload include perceptions of SNS exhaustion, low user satisfaction, and high intentions to reduce or stop using SNS.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In July 2018, a meta-analysis published in "Psychology of Popular Media" found that grandiose narcissism positively correlated with time spent on social media, frequency of status updates, number of friends or followers, and frequency of posting self-portrait digital photographs, while a meta-analysis published in the "Journal of Personality" in April 2018 found that the positive correlation between grandiose narcissism and social networking service usage was replicated across platforms (including Facebook). In March 2020, the "Journal of Adult Development" published a regression discontinuity analysis of 254 Millennial Facebook users investigating differences in narcissism and Facebook usage between the age cohorts born from 1977 to 1990 and from 1991 to 2000 and found that the later born Millennials scored significantly higher on both. In June 2020, "Addictive Behaviors" published a systematic review finding a consistent, positive, and significant correlation between grandiose narcissism and the proposed category of psychological dependence called "problematic social media use". Also in 2018, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff noted in "The Coddling of the American Mind" that former Facebook president Sean Parker stated in a 2017 interview that the Like button was consciously designed to prime users receiving likes to feel a dopamine rush as part of a "social-validation feedback loop".


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: "Conspicuous compassion" is the practice of publicly donating large sums of money to charity to enhance the social prestige of the donor, and is sometimes described as a type of conspicuous consumption. Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff argued that microaggression training on college campuses in the United States has led to a call-out culture and a climate of self-censorship due to fear of shaming by virtue signalling social media mobs with users who are often anonymous and tend to deindividuate as a consequence. Citing February 2017 Pew Research Center survey data showing that critical Facebook postings expressing "indignant disagreement" were twice as likely to receive likes, comments, or shares (along with a similar finding for Twitter posts published in "PNAS USA" in July 2017), Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell cite the phrase "moral grandstanding" to describe how having an audience on social media forums converts much of its interpersonal communication into a public performance.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the subsequent protests in his name, Civiqs and YouGov/"Economist" polls showed that while net support for Black Lives Matter among White Americans increased from –4 points to +10 points in early June 2020 (with 43 percent in support) it fell to –6 points by early August 2020, and by April 2021, further Civiqs polls showed that support for Black Lives Matter among White Americans had reverted to roughly its level of support prior to George Floyd's murder (37 percent in favor and 49 percent opposed). In a February 2021 interview on "Firing Line", journalist Charles M. Blow criticized a minority of young white protestors in the George Floyd protests in the United States whom he argued were using the protests for their own personal growth to substitute for social rites of passage (e.g. prom) and summertime social gatherings (e.g. attending movie theaters or concerts) that were precluded by COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing measures, noting that as lockdowns began to be relaxed and removed, support for Black Lives Matter among whites began to decline.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In February 2021, "Psychological Medicine" published a survey reviewing 14,785 publicly reported murders in English language news worldwide between 1900 and 2019 compiled in a database by psychiatrists at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Columbia University Irving Medical Center that found that of the 1,315 personal-cause mass murders (i.e. driven by personal motivations and not occurring within the context of war, state-sponsored or group-sponsored terrorism, gang activity, or organized crime) only 11 percent of mass murderers and only 8 percent of mass shooters had a "serious mental illness" (e.g. schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder), that mass shootings have become more common than other forms of mass murder since 1970 (with 73 percent occurring in the United States alone), and that mass shooters in the United States were more likely to have legal histories, to engage in recreational drug use or alcohol abuse, and to display non-psychotic psychiatric or neurologic symptoms.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Survey coauthor psychiatrist Paul S. Appelbaum argued that the data from the survey indicated that "difficulty coping with life events seem more useful foci for prevention [of mass shootings] and policy than an emphasis on serious mental illness", while psychiatrist Ronald W. Pies has suggested that psychopathology should be understood as a three-gradation continuum of mental, behavioral and emotional disturbance with most mass shooters falling into a middle category of "persistent emotional disturbance". In 2015, psychiatrists James L. Knoll and George D. Annas noted that the tendency of most media attention following mass shootings on mental health leads to sociocultural factors being comparatively overlooked. Instead, Knoll and Annas cite research by social psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell on narcissism and social rejection in the personal histories of mass shooters, as well as cognitive scientist Steven Pinker's suggestion in "The Better Angels of Our Nature" (2011) that further reductions in human violence may be dependent upon reducing human narcissism.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Facebook is a Big Tech company with over 2.7 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2020 and therefore has a meaningful impact on the masses that use it. Big data algorithms are used in personalized content creation and automatization; however, this method can be used to manipulate users in various ways. The problem of misinformation is exacerbated by the educational bubble, users' critical thinking ability and news culture. Based on a 2015 study, 62.5% of the Facebook users are oblivious to any curation of their News Feed. Furthermore, scientists have started to investigate algorithms with unexpected outcomes that may lead to antisocial political, economic, geographic, racial, or other discrimination. Facebook has remained scarce in transparency of the inner workings of the algorithms used for News Feed correlation. Algorithms use the past activities as a reference point for predicting users' taste to keep them engaged. However, this leads to the formation of a filter bubble that starts to refrain users from diverse information. Users are left with a skewed worldview derived from their own preferences and biases.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In 2015, researchers from Facebook published a study indicating that the Facebook algorithm perpetuates an echo chamber amongst users by occasionally hiding content from individual feeds that users potentially would disagree with: for example the algorithm removed one in every 13 diverse content from news sources for self-identified liberals. In general, the results from the study indicated that the Facebook algorithm ranking system caused approximately 15% less diverse material in users' content feeds, and a 70% reduction in the click-through-rate of the diverse material. In 2018, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff argued in "The Coddling of the American Mind" that the filter bubbles created by the News Feed algorithm of Facebook and other platforms are one of the principal factors amplifying political polarization in the United States since 2000 (when a majority of U.S. households first had at least one personal computer and then internet access the following year).


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: In his "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (1790), philosopher Edmund Burke observed "We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages." In "The Signal and the Noise" (2012), statistician Nate Silver noted that IBM had estimated that the world was generating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day (more than 90 percent of which was created in the previous two years), and that the increase in data was analogous to increases in book production as a consequence of the invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg as well as the effect of the increase in book production in causing the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and the European wars of religion.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Citing Burke, Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell suggested in "The Atlantic" in December 2019 that because the proportion of most of the information that Generation Z receives due to regular social media usage is information created primarily within the past month (e.g. cat videos, tabloid gossip about celebrities, sensationalistic hot takes on news items) rather than information created in decades or centuries past, members of Generation Z are less familiar with the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of humanity (e.g. great ideas, great books, history) than generations past, and as a consequence, are more prone to embrace misguided ideas that bring them greater esteem and prestige within their immediate social network (noting the declining faith among Generation Z in democracy across the ideological spectrum in polling data alongside renewed interest in socialism, communism, and Nazism that is reflective of ignorance of the history of the 20th century).


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: Facebook has, at least in the political field, a counter-effect on being informed: in two studies from the US with a total of more than 2,000 participants, the influence of social media on the general knowledge on political issues was examined in the context of two US presidential elections. The results showed that the frequency of Facebook use was moderately negatively related to general political knowledge. This was also the case when considering demographic, political-ideological variables and previous political knowledge. According to the latter, a causal relationship is indicated: the higher the Facebook use, the more the general political knowledge declines. In 2019, Jonathan Haidt argued that there is a "very good chance American democracy will fail, that in the next 30 years we will have a catastrophic failure of our democracy." Following the 2021 United States Capitol attack, in February 2021, Facebook announced that it would reduce the amount of political content in users News Feeds.


title: Criticism of Facebook

text: It has been admitted by many students that they have experienced bullying on the site, which leads to psychological harm. Students of high schools face a possibility of bullying and other adverse behaviors over Facebook every day. Many studies have attempted to discover whether Facebook has a positive or negative effect on children's and teenagers' social lives, and many of them have come to the conclusion that there are distinct social problems that arise with Facebook usage. British neuroscientist Susan Greenfield stuck up for the issues that children encounter on social media sites. She said that they can rewire the brain, which caused some hysteria over whether or not social networking sites are safe. She did not back up her claims with research, but did cause quite a few studies to be done on the subject. When that self is then broken down by others by badmouthing, criticism, harassment, criminalization or vilification, intimidation, demonization, demoralization, belittlement, or attacking someone over the site it can cause much of the envy, anger, or depression.