title: Irish dance

text: The most predominant form of Irish Stepdance is that popularised by the Broadway show Riverdance, and other Irish dancing stage shows since the late 20th century. Characterised by a rigid torso and dances performed high on the balls of the feet, this style became distinct from the late 19th century when the Gaelic League began efforts to preserve and promote Irish dance as part of a broader nationalist movement concerned with Irish culture. Although a rigid torso may be the initial characterization of Irish dance, modern soft shoe Irish ballerinas commonly gracefully use their arms in flowing movements, abandoning the traditional form. It is not uncommon for hard shoe dancers to use their arms in strict hand formations other than arms at sides. In 1929, the League formed "An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha" (CLRG, The Irish Dancing Commission) in order to codify and standardise stepdancing competition and education. Over the following decades, CLRG expanded globally, and promoted this particular form of stepdance by developing examinations and qualifications for teachers and competition adjudicators. Today, stepdance in the style codified by the Gaelic League is performed competitively in a number of countries, and under the auspices of a number of organisations which have at various times broken away from CLRG.


title: Irish dance

text: Irish solo stepdances fall into two broad categories based on the shoes worn: 'hard shoe' (or heavy shoe) and 'soft shoe' (or light shoe) dances.


title: Irish dance

text: There are four soft shoe dance styles: the reel, slip jig, light jig and 'single jig' (also referred to as 'hop jig'). Reels have a (or sometimes or ) time signature. Slip jigs are in time. Light and single jigs are in time, with different emphasis within the measure distinguishing the music.


title: Irish dance

text: Hard shoe dances include the hornpipe in syncopated or time, the treble jig (also called the 'heavy jig' or 'double jig') in a slow , the treble reel (hard shoe dance done to reel music) and 'traditional sets', which are a group of dances with set music and steps. Many traditional sets have irregular musical phrasing. There are multiple traditional sets, including St. Patrick's Day, Blackbird, Job of Journeywork, Three Sea Captains, Garden of Daisies, and King of the Fairies. While theoretically standardised, different organisations recognize different traditional sets and slight variations exist between teachers. There are also "non-traditional sets" done by advanced dancers. These have set music, but not steps; the steps are choreographed by individual dance schools.


title: Irish dance

text: Competitive dancers generally dance two or three steps at a time, depending on their dancing level. Each step lasts for sixteen bars of music. They are each danced starting with the right foot for eight bars, then repeated with the left foot for the last eight bars, doing the same movements with the opposite feet. Set dances, however, have a different format. The dancer usually dances one step, which is limited to the length of the first part of the music that is repeated (often eight bars, though this varies depending on the specific set dance), and is then repeated, resembling the steps of other dances. Then the dancer usually dances a "set" which is not repeated. It is a highly sought after and competitive feat to recall to dance this "third round" — at regional, national, and world competitions, only a small percentage (typically the top half of dancers graded after the first two rounds) of dancers are invited back to perform.


title: Irish dance

text: The "Céilí" dances used in competitions are more precise versions of those danced in less formal settings. There is a list of 30 "Céilí" dances which have been standardised and published in "An Coimisiún's" "Ar Rinncidhe Foirne" as examples of typical Irish folk dances; these are called the "book" dances by competitive stepdancers. Most Irish dancing competitions only ask for a short piece of any given dance, in the interests of time and the endurance of the dancers.


title: Irish dance

text: There are two types of shoes; soft shoes (also known as ghillies or pumps) and hard shoes. Hard shoes are similar to tap shoes, except that the tips and heels are made of fiberglass, instead of metal, and are significantly bulkier. The first hard shoes had wooden or leather taps with metal nails. Later the taps and heels were made of resin or fiberglass to reduce the weight and to make the sounds louder. The soft shoes, which are called "ghillies", are black leather lace-up shoes similar to ballet slippers. "Ghillies" are only worn by girls, while boys wear black leather shoes called "reel shoes", which resemble black jazz shoes with a hard heel. Boy's soft-shoe dancing features audible heel clicks. A new trend includes adding white laces to the soft shoes, and white tape to the straps of the hard shoes to blend in with the sock and give the illusion of elongating the legs.


title: Irish dance

text: Several generations ago, the appropriate dress for a competition was simply "Sunday best" (clothes one would wear to church). Irish Dance schools generally have school dresses, worn by lower-level competitors, in public performances, and in team competitions. As dancers advance in competition or are given starring roles in public performances, they may get a solo dress of their own design and colours or wear the team dress. In the 1970s and 1980s, ornately embroidered dresses became popular. Today even more ornamentation is used on girls' dresses, including rhinestones, sequins, and other bling. Solo dresses are unique to each dancer. Today most women and girls wear a wig, a bun or hairpiece for a competition, but some still curl their own hair. Costumes are heavily integrated into the Irish dance culture and feature traditional elements of classic peasant wear adorned with Celtic designs. Most men wear a shirt, vest or jacket, and tie paired with black trousers. Each Irish dance school has its own distinctive full skirted dress, often featuring lace or an embroidered pattern copied from the medieval Irish Book of Kells.


title: Irish dance

text: An organised dance competition is referred to as a "feis" (plural "feiseanna"). The word "feis" means "festival" in Irish, and strictly speaking would also have competitions in music and crafts. "Féile" () is a more correct term for the dance competition, but the terms may be used interchangeably. Dance competitions are divided by age and level of expertise. The names of the levels and other organising rules vary between countries and regions. Dancers are scored based on technique (placement of the feet, turn out, off of their heels, etc.), style (grace, power, etc.) and other items such as timing, rhythm, carriage, choreography and sounds in their hard shoe dances.


title: Irish dance

text: "An Coimisiún" dancers take part in their annual regional Championship competition, which is known as an oireachtas (). An Coimisiún also holds various "national" championship competitions. These are qualifying events for Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne, or "The World Championships". An Coimisiún's World Championships are the largest of all Irish step dance organisations, with over 6,000 dancers competing from over 30 countries worldwide. The "Aisling" Award (pronounced 'Ashling', Gaelic for dream) is awarded to the highest placing dancer in each solo dancing category from outside of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the US and Canada to encourage them to continue their dream of dancing. Other smaller Irish step dance organisations host their own premier championship.


title: Irish dance

text: "Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne", or "The World Championships" (for An Coimisiún dancers), first took place in Dublin in 1970 at "Coláiste Mhuire", a school in Parnell Square. The "Worlds" outgrew its original location and moved around the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. In 2002, for the first time, the "Worlds" left Ireland for Glasgow. In 2009, for the first time, the World Championships were held in the United States, in Philadelphia. The 2010-2019 championships were held in Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast, Boston, London, Montréal, Glasgow, Dublin, Glasgow, and Greensboro, respectively, always taking place during the week leading up to Easter Sunday, when the championships end. The BBC documentary film "Jig" provided an insight into championship level dancers competing in the 2010 World Championships held in Glasgow. Oireachtas Rince Na Cruinne planned return to Dublin in 2020 for the 50 year anniversary of the championships was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, the competition was held in Belfast.


title: Irish dance

text: An Coimsiún also holds Oireachtas Rince na hÉireann, or "The All Irelands" which took place in Killarney in February 2019. It is the oldest Irish dancing competition in the world.


title: Irish dance

text: An Comhdhail's World championships also take place each Easter week, with the competition being held in Dublin in 2018 and Killarney in 2019. WIDA (World Irish Dance Association), which mainly consists of dancers from European countries, also hold their own World and International Championships over the Easter week, with the competition being held in Maastricht in 2018, Eindhoven in 2019, digitally in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in Moers in 2022.


title: Irish dance

text: Old-style step dancing is a tradition related to, yet distinct from, sean-nós dancing, though it is sometimes called "Munster-style sean-nós". Old-style step dancing evolved in the 17th-18th century from the dancing of travelling Irish dance masters. The dance masters slowly formalized and transformed both solo and social dances. Modern masters of old-style step dancing style can trace the lineage of their steps directly back to 18th century dancers.


title: Irish dance

text: The Irish Dance masters refined and codified indigenous Irish dance traditions. Rules emerged about proper upper body, arm, and foot placement. Also, dancers were instructed to dance a step twice—first with the right foot then with the left. Old-style step dancers dance with arms loosely (but not rigidly) at their sides. They dance in a limited space. There is an emphasis on making percussive sound with the toes. The Irish dance masters of this period also choreographed particular steps to particular tunes in traditional music creating the solo traditional set dances such as the Blackbird, St. Patrick's Day, and the Job of Journey Work, which also persist in modern Irish stepdancing. In this context, "set dance" signifies a separate tradition from the social dance tradition also called set dance.


title: Irish dance

text: Following criticism of CLRG for its emphasis on certain regional forms of stepdance to the detriment of others, dance teacher Patricia Mulholland developed a new style of stepdance, beginning in the 1950s. It was described as a form of "folk ballet" which appealed to dancers of both Catholic and Protestant religious persuasions. Like other forms which share the heritage of modern stepdance but have departed from its codification, festival dance emphasises individuality and practises more relaxed style and posture.


title: Irish dance

text: "Sean-nós", or "old style" dance is a form of Irish dancing which originated from western regions of Ireland. It has been described variously as a regional style of stepdancing, and as an entirely separate style that was virtually unknown outside small areas until the late 20th century. It is distinguished by footwork which is percussive but low to the ground in comparison to step dancing, and by its more freeform nature. Performers use a more relaxed posture, and improvise steps to fit with music. Typically, sean-nós dances are performed in small spaces, traditionally doors laid flat and table tops.


title: Irish dance

text: Irish social, or céilí (, ) dances vary widely throughout Ireland and the rest of the world. A céilí dance may be performed with as few as two people and as many as sixteen.


title: Irish dance

text: Céilí dances may also be danced with an unlimited number of couples in a long line or proceeding around in a circle (such as in "The Walls of Limerick", "The Waves of Tory", "Haymakers Jig", "An Rince Mor" or "Bonfire Dance"). Céilí dances are often fast and some are quite complex ("Antrim Reel", "Morris Reel").


title: Irish dance

text: In a social setting, a céilí dance may be "called" – that is, the upcoming steps are announced during the dance for the benefit of newcomers. The céilí dances are typically danced to Irish instruments such as the Irish "bodhrán" or fiddle in addition to the concertina (and similar instruments), guitar, whistle or flute.


title: Irish dance

text: The term "céilí dance" was invented in the late 19th century by the Gaelic League. as a noun differs from the adjective . A céilí is a social gathering featuring Irish music and dance. Céilí dancing is a specific type of Irish dance. Some (plural of céilí) will only have céilí dancing, some only have set dancing, and some will have a mixture.


title: Irish dance

text: Irish set dancing (also referred to as "country set dancing") are dances similar to English country dancing and later French quadrilles; later adapting and integrating forms of the dance with the Irish sean-nós steps and Irish music. Distinguishing characteristics of Irish set dancing include that it is danced in square sets of four couples (eight people), and consist of several "figures," each of which has a number of parts, frequently repeated throughout the set. Each part of the set dance (figure) is danced to a music tempo, mostly reels, jigs, polkas and hornpipes. The sets come from various parts of Ireland and are often named for their place of origin; examples are the North Kerry Set, the Clare Set, the Corofin Plain Set, the South Galway Set and the Clare Lancers Set.


title: Irish dance

text: There are many solo set dances which can be performed in competition. These include both traditional sets and non-traditional sets. Some traditional sets include Blackbird (hornpipe), Job of the Journeywork (hornpipe), Garden of Daises (hornpipe), St. Patrick's Day (treble jig), King of the Fairies (hornpipe). These dances are set in their choreography, which means that no teacher can vastly change the steps.


title: Hello Monster

text: Hello Monster (; lit. I Remember You) is a South Korean television series starring Seo In-guk, Jang Na-ra, Choi Won-young, and Park Bo-gum. It aired on KBS2 from June 22 to August 11, 2015 every Mondays and Tuesdays at 21:55 for 16 episodes.


title: Hello Monster

text: Despite the show's lacklustre ratings, audiences and critics alike praised its story and the performances of the cast, particularly Park Bo-gum's performance.


title: Hello Monster

text: Genius profiler Lee Hyun (Seo In-guk), returns home to Korea after something from a case he has been sent triggers a memory he thought he had lost forever. Unbeknownst to him, one of his team members, Detective Cha Ji-an (Jang Na-ra), has been investigating him for some time. She is aware that his father was murdered and his brother disappeared under mysterious circumstances involving a criminal named Lee Joon Young (Do Kyungsoo) -- whom they both want found and incarcerated. Each seeks to unravel the other, unaware that they've been drawn into a dangerous game of cat and mouse by a master player and that both truth and evil are closer and far more twisted than they think.


title: Hello Monster

text: The first script reading took place in end-April 2015 at the annex of KBS in Yeouido, Seoul, South Korea.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Fergana Valley (; ; ) in Central Asia lies mainly in eastern Uzbekistan, but also extends into southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Divided into three republics of the former Soviet Union, the valley is ethnically diverse and in the early 21st century was the scene of conflict. A large triangular valley in what is an often dry part of Central Asia, the Fergana owes its fertility to two rivers, the Naryn and the Kara Darya, which run from the east, joining near Namangan, forming the Syr Darya river. The valley's history stretches back over 2,300 years, when Alexander the Great founded Alexandria Eschate at its southwestern end.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Chinese chroniclers date its towns to more than 2,100 years ago, as a path between Greek, Chinese, Bactrian and Parthian civilisations. It was home to Babur, founder of the Mughal Dynasty, tying the region to modern Afghanistan and South Asia. The Russian Empire conquered the valley at the end of the 19th century, and it became part of the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Its three Soviet republics gained independence in 1991. The area largely remains Muslim, populated by ethnic Uzbek, Tajik and Kyrgyz people, often intermixed and not matching modern borders. Historically there have also been substantial numbers of Russian, Kashgarian, Kipchak, Bukharan Jewish and Romani minorities.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Mass cotton cultivation, introduced by the Soviets, remains central to the economy, along with a wide range of grains, fruits and vegetables. There is a long history of stock breeding, leatherwork and a growing mining sector, including deposits of coal, iron, sulfur, gypsum, rock-salt, naphtha and some small known oil reserves.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Fergana Valley is an intermountain depression in Central Asia, between the mountain systems of the Tien Shan in the north and the Alay in the south. The valley is approximately long and up to wide, forming an area covering . Its position makes it a separate geographic zone. The valley owes its fertility to two rivers, the Naryn and the Kara Darya, which unite in the valley, near Namangan, to form the Syr Darya. Numerous other tributaries of these rivers exist in the valley including the Sokh River. The streams, and their numerous mountain effluents, not only supply water for irrigation, but also bring down vast quantities of sand, which is deposited alongside their courses, more especially alongside the Syr Darya where it cuts its way through the Khujand-Ajar ridge and forms the valley. This expanse of quicksand, covering an area of , under the influence of south-west winds, encroaches upon the agricultural districts.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The central part of the geological depression that forms the valley is characterized by block subsidence, originally to depths estimated at , largely filled with sediments that range in age as far back as the Permian-Triassic boundary. Some of the sediments are marine carbonates and clays. The faults are upthrusts and overthrusts. Anticlines associated with these faults form traps for petroleum and natural gas, which has been discovered in 52 small fields.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The climate of this valley is dry and continental, being mostly a cool arid climate (Köppen "BWk") or a cool semi-arid climate ("BSk") in less shielded areas. In March the temperature reaches , and then rapidly rises to in June, July and August. During the five months following April precipitation is rare, but increases in frequency starting in October. Snow and frost, down to , occurs in December and January.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Fergana, on the route to Tarim Basin from the west, remained at the boundaries of a number of classical era empires.


title: Fergana Valley

text: As early as 500 BC, the western sections of the Fergana Valley formed part of the Sogdiana region, which was ruled from further west and owed fealty to the Achaemenid Empire at the time of Darius the Great. The independent and warlike Sogdiana formed a border region insulating the Achaemenid Persians from the nomadic Scythians to the north and east. It was forcibly settled by exiled Greeks from the Anatolian coast, who had rebelled or otherwise given Persia trouble. Eventually, it had a significant Greek community. The capital of the region was known to the Greeks as Cyropolis, named after Cyrus the Great.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Sogdian Rock or Rock of Ariamazes, a fortress in Sogdiana, was captured in 327 BC by the forces of Alexander the Great; after an extended campaign putting down Sogdian resistance and founding military outposts manned by his Greek veterans, Alexander united Sogdiana with Bactria into one satrapy.


title: Fergana Valley

text: In 329 BC, Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria Eschate "The Furthest", probably renaming Cyropolis. This was in the southwestern part of the Fergana Valley, on the southern bank of the river Syr Darya (ancient Jaxartes), at the location of the modern city of Khujand, in the state of Tajikistan. Supplemented by Alexander's veterans, it was later ruled by Seleucids before secession of Bactria.


title: Fergana Valley

text: After 250 BC, the city probably remained in contact with the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom centered on Bactria, especially when the Greco-Bactrian king Euthydemus extended his control to Sogdiana. There are indications that from Alexandria Eschate the Greco-Bactrians may have led expeditions as far as Kashgar and Ürümqi in Chinese Turkestan, leading to the first known contacts between China and the West around 220 BC. Several statuettes and representations of Greek soldiers have been found north of the Tian Shan, on the doorstep to China, and are today on display in the Xinjiang museum at Urumqi (Boardman). Of the Greco-Bactrians, the Greek historian Strabo too writes that:


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Fergana area, called Dayuan by the Chinese, remained an integral part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom until after the time of Demetrius I of Bactria (c. 120 BC), when confronted with invasions by the Yuezhi from the east and the Sakas Scythians from the south. After 155 BC, the Yuezhi were pushed into Fergana by the alliance of the powerful Xiongnu and the neighboring Wusun from the north and east, invaded urban civilization of the Dayuan, eventually settling on the northern bank of the Oxus in the region of Transoxiana in modern-day Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, just north of the Hellenistic Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. The Greek city of Alexandria on the Oxus was apparently burnt to the ground by the Yuezhi around 145 BC. Pushed by these twin forces, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom reoriented itself around lands in what is now Afghanistan, while the new invaders were partially assimilated into the Hellenistic culture left in Fergana Valley.


title: Fergana Valley

text: According to the Han dynasty "Records of the Grand Historian" or "Shiji", based on the travels of Zhang Qian and published around 126 BC, the region of Fergana is presented as the country of the Dayuan (Ta-Yuan), possibly descendants of Greeks colonists (Dayuan may be a transliteration of "Great Ionians"). The area was renowned for its Heavenly Horses, which the Chinese tried to obtain from the Dayuan with little success until they waged war against them in 104 BC.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Dayuan were identified by the Chinese as unusual in features, with a sophisticated urban civilization, similar to that of the Bactrians and Parthians: "The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Fergana (Dayuan) and the possessions of Bactria and Parthia are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China" ("Book of the Later Han").


title: Fergana Valley

text: Agricultural activities of the Dayuan reported by Zhang Qian included cultivation of grain and grapes for wine-making. The area of Fergana was thus the theater of the first major interaction between an urbanized culture speaking Indo-European languages and the Chinese civilization, which led to the opening up the Silk Road from the 1st century BC onwards.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Han later captured Dayuan in the Han-Dayuan war, installing a king there. Later the Han set up the Protectorate of the Western Regions


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Kushan Empire formed from the same Yuezhi who had conquered the Hellenistic Fergana. The Kushan spread out in the 1st century AD from the Yuezhi confederation in the territories of ancient Bactria on either side of the middle course of the Oxus River or Amu Darya in what is now northern Afghanistan, and southern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The Kushan conquered most of what is now northern India and Pakistan, driving east through Fergana. Kushan power also consolidated long distance trade, linking Central Asia to both Han Dynasty China and the Roman Empire in Europe.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Kushans ruled the area as part of their larger empire until the 3rd century AD, when the Zoroastrian Persian Sassanid Empire invaded Kushan territory from the southwest. Fergana remained under shifting local and Transoxian rulers thereafter. For periods in the 4th and 5th centuries, the Sassanid Empire directly controlled Transoxiana and Fergana, led by the conquests of Shapur II and Khosrau I against the Kushans and the Hephthalite Empire.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Hepthalite rule was ended by the Gokturks in mid of 6th century. The Turkic Khaganates ruled it until the first quarter of 8th century when it was subjugated by the Tang dynasty


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Kingdom of Ferghana was ruled by the Ikhshids, who submitted as vassal to the Chinese Tang between 659 and 790. It was attacked by the Tibetan Empire in 715.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Umayyad Caliphate in 715 deposed the ruler, and installed a new king Alutar on the throne. The Chinese sent 10,000 troops under Zhang Xiaosong to Ferghana. He defeated Alutar and the Arab occupation force at Namangan and reinstalled Ikhshid on the throne.


title: Fergana Valley

text: During the 8th century, Fergana was the location of fierce rivalry between Tang dynasty China and the expansion of Muslim power. The Umayyads waged several wars against the Sogdian and Turkic population. They were defeated by the Turgesh who came dominated the Ferghana Valley until their defeat by Tang in 750. At the same time, the Abbasids defeated the Umayyads and sent their forces to Central Asia. This was leading to the Battle of Talas in 751, which resulted in a victory for the Abbasids and the disengagement of China from Central Asia. Two antecedent battles in 715 and 717 had seen the Chinese prevail over Arab forces. A series of Arab, Persian, and later Turkic Muslim rulers reigned over the Fergana.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Samanid Empire, rising from the Arab Muslim conquest of Persia, pushed into what was then called Greater Khorasan, including Transoxiana and the Fergana Valley from the West. In 819, Ahmad ibn Asad—son of Asad ibn Saman—was granted authority over the city of Fergana by Caliph Al-Ma'mun's governor of Khorasan, Ghassan ibn 'Abbad, as a reward for his support against the rebel Rafi' ibn Laith. Following the death of his brother Nuh, who ruled in Samarkand, Ahmad and another brother Yahya were given rule over the city by Abdallah, the governor of Khurasan.


title: Fergana Valley

text: By the time of Ahmad's death in 864 or 865, he was the ruler of most of Transoxiana, Bukhara and Khwarazm. Samarkand and Fergana went to his son, Nasr I of Samanid, leading to a series of Samanid Dynasty Muslim rulers of the valley. During demise of Samanids in 10th century, Fergana Valley was conquered by Karakhanids. Eastern part of Fergana later was under suzerenaity of Karakhitays. Karakhanid rule lasted till 1212, when Khwarezmshahs conquered the western part of the valley.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Mongol ruler Genghis Khan invaded Transoxiana and Fergana in 1219 during his conquest of Khwarazm. Before his death in 1227, he assigned the lands of Western Central Asia to his second son Chagatai, and this region became known as the Chagatai Khanate. But it was not long before Transoxian Turkic leaders ruled the area, along with most of central Asia as fiefs from the Golden Horde of the Mongol Empire. The Fergana became part of a larger Turco-Mongol empire. This Mongolian nomadic confederation known as Barlas, were remnants of the original Mongol army of Genghis Khan.


title: Fergana Valley

text: After the Mongol conquest of Central Asia, the Barlas settled in Turkistan (which then became also known as "Moghulistan" - "Land of Mongols") and intermingled to a considerable degree with the local Turkic and Turkic-speaking population, so that at the time of Timur's reign the Barlas had become thoroughly Turkicized in terms of language and habits. Additionally, by adopting Islam, the Central Asian Turks and Mongols also adopted the Persian literary and high culture which had dominated Central Asia since the early days of Islamic influence. Persian literature was instrumental in the assimilation of the Timurid elite to the Perso-Islamic courtly culture.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Heir to one of these confederations, Timur, founder of the Timurid dynasty, added the valley to a newly consolidated empire in the late 14th century, ruling the area from Samarkand.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Located on the Northern Silk Road, the Fergana played a significant part in the flowering of medieval Central Asian Islam. Its most famous son is Babur, heir to Timur and famous conqueror and founder of the Mughal dynasty in Medieval India. Islamic proselytizers from the Fergana Valley such as al-Firghani الفرغاني, al-Andijani الأندجاني, al-Namangani النمنگاني, al-Khojandi الخوجندي spread Islam into parts of present-day Russia, China, and India.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Fergana valley was ruled by a series of Muslim states in the medieval period. For much of this period local and southwestern rulers divided the valley into a series of small states. From the 16th century, the Shaybanid Dynasty of the Khanate of Bukhara ruled Fergana, replaced by the Janid Dynasty of Bukhara in 1599. In 1709 Shaybanid emir Shahrukh of the Minglar Uzbeks declared independence from the Khanate of Bukhara, establishing a state in the eastern part of the Fergana Valley. He built a citadel to be his capital in the small town of Kokand. As the Khanate of Kokand, Kokand was capital of a territory stretching over modern eastern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, southern Kazakhstan and all of Kyrgyzstan.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Fergana was a province of Russian Turkestan, formed in 1876 out of the former khanate of Kokand. It was bounded by the provinces of Syr-darya in the North and Northwest, Samarkand in the West, and Zhetysu in the Northeast, by Chinese Turkestan (Kashgaria) in the East, and by Bukhara and Afghanistan in the South. Its southern limits, in the Pamirs, were fixed by an Anglo-Russian commission in 1885, from Zorkul (Victoria Lake) to the Chinese frontier; and Khignan, Roshan and Wakhan were assigned to Afghanistan in exchange for part of Darvaz (on the left bank of the Panj), which was given to Bukhara. The area amounted to some , of which are in the Pamirs.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Not all the inhabitants of the area were happy with this state of affairs. In 1898 Muhammed Ali Khalfa proclaimed a jihad against the Russians. However, after about 20 Russians had been killed, Khalfa was captured and executed. When the 1905 Revolution spread across the Russian Empire, some Jadids were active in the Fergana Valley. When the Tsarist regime extended the military draft to include Muslims, this led to a revolt which was far more widespread than that of 1898, and which was not entirely suppressed by the time of the Russian Revolution.


title: Fergana Valley

text: In 1924, the new boundaries separating the Uzbek SSR and Kyrgyz SSR cut off the eastern end of the Fergana Valley, as well as the slopes surrounding it. This was compounded in 1928 when the Tajik ASSR became a fully-fledged republic, and the area around Khujand was made a part of it. This blocked the valley's natural outlet and the routes to Samarkand and Bukhara, but none of these borders was of any great significance so long as Soviet rule lasted. The whole region was part of a single economy geared to cotton production on a massive scale, and the overarching political structures meant that crossing borders was not a problem.


title: Fergana Valley

text: With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the establishment of independent republics, borders have been strongly enforced, though the impact of the new international borders was minor until 1998-2000. Uzbekistan regularly closes its borders with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, strangling trade and causing immense difficulties for those who live in the region.


title: Fergana Valley

text: People in the Tajikistan city of Khujand traveling to the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, unable to take the more direct route through Uzbekistan, have to cross a high mountain pass between the two cities instead, along a terrible road. Communications between the Kyrgyzstan cities of Bishkek and Osh pass through difficult mountainous country. Ethnic tensions also flared into riots in 1990, most notably in the town of Uzgen, near Osh. There has been no further ethnic violence, and things appeared to have quieted down for several years.


title: Fergana Valley

text: However, the valley is a religiously conservative region which was particularly hard-hit by President Karimov's secularization legislation in Uzbekistan, together with his decision to close the borders with Kyrgyzstan in 2003. This devastated the local economy by preventing the importation of cheap Chinese consumer goods. The deposition of Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan in April 2005, coupled with the arrest of a group of prominent local businessmen brought underlying tensions to a head in the region around Andijan and Qorasuv during the May 2005 unrest in Uzbekistan in which hundreds of protestors were killed by troops. There was violence again in 2010 in the Kyrgyz part of the valley, heated by ethnic tensions, worsening economic conditions due to the global economic crisis, and political conflict over the ouster of Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April 2010. In June 2010, about 200 people have been reported to be killed during clashes in Osh and Jalal-Abad, and 2000 more were injured. Between 100,000 and 300,000 refugees, predominantly of Uzbek ethnic origin, attempted to flee to Uzbekistan, causing a major humanitarian crisis.


title: Fergana Valley

text: In Tsarist times, out of some of cultivated land, about two thirds were under constant irrigation and the remaining third under partial irrigation. The soil was considered by the authors of the article in the "Encyclopædia Britannica" Eleventh Edition to be admirably cultivated, the principal crops having been cotton, wheat, rice, barley, maize, millet, lucerne, tobacco, vegetables and fruit. Gardening was conducted with a high degree of skill and success. Large numbers of horses, cattle and sheep were kept, and a good many camels are bred. Over were planted with vines, and some were under cotton.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Nearly were covered with forests. The government maintained a forestry farm at Marghelan, from which 120,000 to 200,000 young trees were distributed free every year amongst the inhabitants of the province. Silkworm breeding, formerly a prosperous industry, had decayed, despite the encouragement of a state farm at New Marghelan.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Coal, iron, sulfur, gypsum, rock-salt, and naphtha are all known to exist, but only the last two have ever been extracted in significant quantities. In the late 19th century there were a few small oil-wells in Fergana, but these no longer function. In the Tsarist period the only industrial enterprises were some seventy or eighty factories engaged in cotton cleaning. Leather, saddlery, paper and cutlery were the principal products of the domestic or cottage industries. This was not greatly added to in Soviet times, when industrialisation was concentrated in the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Historically the Fergana Valley was an important staging-post on the Silk Road for goods and people traveling from China to the Middle East and Europe. After crossing the passes from Kashgar in Xinjiang, traders would have found welcome relief in the fertile abundance of Fergana, as well as the possibility of purchasing further high-quality silk manufactured in Margilan.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The most famous export from the region were the 'blood-sweating' "Heavenly Horses" which captured the imagination of the Chinese during the Han dynasty, but in fact these were almost certainly bred on the Steppe, either west of Bukhara or north of Tashkent, and merely brought to Fergana for sale. In the 19th century, a considerable trade carried on with Russia: raw cotton, raw silk, tobacco, hides, sheepskins, fruit and cotton and leather goods were exported, and manufactured wares, textiles, tea and sugar were imported and in part re-exported to Kashgaria and Bokhara. The total trade of Fergana reached an annual value of nearly £3.5 million in 1911. Nowadays it suffers from the same depression that affects all trade that either originates in or has to pass through Uzbekistan. The only significant international export is cotton, although the Daewoo plant in Andizhan sends cars all over Uzbekistan.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Until the late 19th century, Fergana, like everywhere else in Central Asia, was dependent on the camel, horse and donkey for transport, while roads were few and bad. The Russians built a "trakt" or post-road linking Andijan, Kokand, Margilan and Khujand with Samarkand and Tashkent in the early 1870s. A new impulse was given to trade by the extension (1898) of the Transcaspian railway into Fergana as far as Andijan, and by the opening of the Orenburg-Tashkent or Trans-Aral Railway in (1906).


title: Fergana Valley

text: Until Soviet times and the construction of the Pamir Highway from Osh to Khorog in the 1920s the routes to Kashgaria and the Pamirs were mere bridle-paths over the mountains, crossing them by lofty passes. For instance, the passes of Kara-kazyk, 4,389 m (14,400 ft) and Tenghiz-bai 3,413 m (11,200 ft), both passable all the year round, lead from Marghelan to Karateghin and the Pamirs, while Kashgar is reached via Osh and Gulcha, and then over the passes of Terek-davan, 3,720 m (12,205 ft); (open all the year round), Taldyk, 3,505 m (11,500 ft), Archat, 3,536 m (11,600 ft), and Shart-davan, 4,267 m (14,000 ft). Other passes leading out of the valley are the Jiptyk, 3,798 m (12,460 ft), S. of Kokand; the Isfairam, 3,657 m (12,000 ft), leading to the glen of the Surkhab, and the Kavuk, 3,962 m (13,000 ft), across the Alai Mountains.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Angren-Pap railway line was completed in 2016 (together with the Kamchiq Tunnel), giving the region a direct railroad connection to the rest of Uzbekistan.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The information contained in the "Encyclopædia Britannica" Eleventh Edition (1911) gives the full information from the 1897 census, the only one held in the Russian Empire before 1917, and helps illuminate a situation rendered obscure by the vagaries of Soviet Nationalities policy in the 1920s and 1930s. The population numbered 1,571,243 in 1897, and of that number 707,132 were women and 286,369 were urban.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The population was estimated at 1,796,500 in 1906; two-thirds were Sarts and Uzbek. They lived mostly in the valley, while the mountain slopes above it were occupied by Kyrgyz, partly nomadic and pastoral, partly agricultural and settled. The other nations were Kashgarians, Kipchaks, Bukharan Jews and Gypsies. The governing class was primarily Russian, who also constituted much of the merchants and industrial working class. However, another merchant class in West Turkestan were commonly known as the "Andijanis", from the town of Andijan in Fergana. The majority of the population were Muslims (1,039,115 in 1897).


title: Fergana Valley

text: The divisions revealed by the 1897 census, between a largely Tajik-speaking area around Khuhand, hill-regions populated by Kyrgyz and a settled, population in the main body of the valley, roughly reflect the borders as drawn after 1924. One exception is the town of Osh, which had a majority Uzbek population but ended up in Kyrgyzstan.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The one significant element that is missing when looking at modern accounts of the region are the Sarts. This term Sart was abolished by the Soviets as derogatory, but in fact there was a clear distinction between long-settled, Persianised Turkic peoples, speaking a form of Qarluq Turkic that is very close to Uyghur, and those who called themselves Uzbeks, who were a Kipchak tribe speaking a Turkic dialect much closer to Kazakh, who arrived in the region with Shaibani Khan in the mid-16th century. That this difference existed and was felt in Fergana is attested to in Timur Beisembiev's recent translation of the "Life of Alimqul" (London, 2003). There were few Kipchak-Uzbeks in Fergana, although they had at various times held political power in the region. In 1924, however, Soviet policy decreed that all settled Turks in Central Asia would thenceforth be known as "Uzbeks," (although the language chosen for the new Republic was not Kipchak but Qarluq) and the Fergana Valley is now seen as an Uzbek heartland.


title: Fergana Valley

text: In 1911, the province was divided into five districts, the chief towns of which were Fergana, capital of the province (8,977 inhabitants in 1897); Andijan (49,682 in 1900); Kokand (86,704 in 1900); Namangan (61,906 in 1897); and Osh (37,397 in 1900); but Old Marghelan (42,855 in 1900) and Chust (13,686 in 1897) were also towns of importance.


title: Fergana Valley

text: The Valley is now divided between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In Tajikistan it is part of Soghd Region or vilayat, with the capital at Khujand. In Uzbekistan it is divided between the Namangan, Andijan and Fergana viloyati, while in Kyrgyzstan it contains parts of Batken, Jalal-abad and Osh oblasts, with Osh being the main town for the southern part of the country.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Notes: 1). The bulk of the population of every region lies in the valley, despite the land area. 2). Population references for 2014 by respective national agencies. (Kyrghyz)(Uzbek),(Tajik 2013)


title: Fergana Valley

text: The most complicated border negotiations in the Central Asia region involve the Fergana Valley where multiple enclaves struggle to exist. Three countries share in the tangled border region; Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan all have historic and economic claims to the region's transport routes and natural resources. Negotiations between the three countries are often tense and are prone to conflict.


title: Fergana Valley

text: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, border negotiations left substantial Uzbek populations stranded outside of Uzbekistan. In south-western Kyrgyzstan, a conflict over land between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks exploded in 1990 into large-scale ethnic violence; the violence reoccurring in 2010. By establishing political units on a mono-ethnic basis in a region where various peoples have historically lived side by side, the Soviet process of national delimitation sowed the seeds of today's inter-ethnic tensions.


title: Fergana Valley

text: Conflicts over water have contributed to border disputes. For instance, the border between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in Jalal-Abad Region is kept open in a limited way to help irrigation, however inter-ethnic disputes in border regions often turn into national border disputes. Even during the summer there are border conflicts over water, as there is not enough to share.


title: Estuary English

text: Estuary English is an English accent associated with the area along the River Thames and its estuary, including London. Phonetician John C. Wells proposed a definition of Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southeast of England". He views Estuary English as an emerging standard accent of England: an "intermediate" between the 20th-century higher-class non-regional standard accent, Received Pronunciation, and the 20th-century lower-class local London accent, Cockney. There is some debate among linguists as to where Cockney speech ends and Estuary English begins.


title: Estuary English

text: Cruttenden uses the term London Regional General British in preference to the popular term 'Estuary English'.


title: Estuary English

text: Wells has used different names for an accent closer to Cockney (Popular London) or closer to Received Pronunciation (London Regional Standard or South-Eastern Regional Standard). Cruttenden uses the name Popular London to refer to Cockney pronunciation itself.


title: Estuary English

text: The boundaries between RP (Received Pronunciation), Estuary English and Cockney are far from clear-cut. Wells cites Rosewarne as locating EE in the middle of "a continuum that has RP and London speech at either end". Several writers have argued that Estuary English is not a discrete accent distinct from the accents of the London area. The sociolinguist Peter Trudgill has written that the term "Estuary English" is inappropriate because "it suggests that we are talking about a new variety, which we are not; and because it suggests that it is a variety of English confined to the banks of the Thames estuary, which it is not. The label actually refers to the lower middle-class accents, as opposed to working-class accents, of the Home Counties Modern Dialect area". Roach comments, "In reality there is no such accent and the term should be used with care. The idea originates from the sociolinguistic observation that some people in public life who would previously have been expected to speak with an RP accent now find it acceptable to speak with some characteristics of the London area... such as glottal stops, which would in earlier times have caused comment or disapproval".


title: Estuary English

text: Collins et al. state that "In the 1990s and the first few years of the 2000s, this putative new variety was fiercely debated both in the media and academia, but since then interest in Estuary English has waned and been replaced by discussion of the capital's latest linguistic innovation – Multicultural London English".


title: Estuary English

text: Published accounts of EE describe it mainly in terms of differences from contemporary RP and from Cockney. Wells (1994) states that "Estuary English (EE) is like RP, but unlike Cockney, in being associated with standard grammar and usage". Differences are found at phonemic and allophonic levels.


title: Estuary English

text: Wells identifies a small number of key features that may distinguish EE from RP: these features may be summarized as follows:


title: Estuary English

text: It has been widely observed that EE exhibits vocalization of preconsonantal/final /l/, perhaps with various vowel mergers before it (an informal example being miwk-bottoo 'milk-bottle'). Wells cites the specific case of allophony in GOAT (> [ɒʊ] before dark /l/ or its reflex), leading perhaps to a phonemic split ('wholly' vs. 'holy'). This topic is usually referred to as L-vocalization. There is said to be alternation between the vocalized , dark non-vocalized and clear non-vocalized , depending on the word. These alternation happen in final positions or in a final consonant cluster, e.g. "sold" (pronounced ). In London, that may even occur before a vowel: "girl out" . In all phonetic environments, male London speakers were at least twice as likely to vocalize the dark l as female London speakers. According to , the vocalized dark l is sometimes an unoccluded lateral approximant, which differs from the RP only by the lack of the alveolar contact.


title: Estuary English

text: /l/-vocalization can lead to loss of distinctions between some vowels and diphthongs. Examples of vowel mergers before historic found in EE are:


title: Estuary English

text: /l/-vocalization appears to be spreading into RP (or GB, the similar accent referred to by some writers). Collins et al say "Traditional RP speakers tend to stigmatize this feature, which is nevertheless one of the most striking changes going on in present-day GB English".


title: Estuary English

text: The term glottalization has several different meanings: the most important are glottal reinforcement (or "pre-glottalization"), where a glottal closure accompanies an oral closure, and glottal replacement, where a glottal closure is substituted for an oral consonant.


title: Estuary English

text: Although glottalization of /t/ has been singled out for attention in discussion of EE features, pre-glottalization of /p/, /k/ and /tʃ/ is also widespread in RP, particularly when another consonant follows. Examples are 'popcorn' ['pɒʔpkɔːn], 'electric' [ɪ'leʔktrɪk], 'butcher' ['bʊʔtʃə].


title: Estuary English

text: Wells proposes that in transcribing EE, the glottal stop symbol [ʔ] could be used in contexts where the consonant in question is preceded by a vowel and followed by a consonant or the end of a word: examples are 'bit' [bɪʔ], 'football' [ˈfʊʔbɔo], 'belt' [beoʔ], 'Cheltenham' [ˈtʃeoʔnəm], 'bent' [benʔ], 'Bentley' [ˈbenʔli].


title: Estuary English

text: Glottal "replacement" of /t/ may be found when /t/ occurs before another consonant. Examples from RP where /t/ is replaced by a glottal stop are: 'that table' [ðæʔ 'teɪbəl], 'Scotland' ['skɒʔlənd], 'witness' ['wɪʔnəs]. The most extreme case of glottal replacement is when a glottal stop takes the place of /t/ between vowels (normally when the preceding vowel is stressed). Examples are 'not on' [ˌnɒʔ 'ɒn], 'bottle' ['bɒʔo]. Wells says "glottalling word-internally before a vowel is well-known as a 'rough' pronunciation variant: thus EE water ˈwɔːtə, but Cockney ˈwɔʊʔə". However, in work published twenty years later, Cruttenden (p 184) remarks that such glottal replacement "was until recently stigmatized as non-GB but all except [ʔl̩] are now acceptable in London RGB" (i.e. EE). He continues "Use of [ʔ] for /t/ word-medially intervocalically, as in "water", still remains stigmatized in GB".


title: Estuary English

text: EE is said to exhibit diphthong shift, particularly of the FACE, PRICE, MOUTH and GOAT vowels (informal example: "nime" for "name").


title: Estuary English

text: yod-coalescence is found in EE: the use of the affricates and instead of the clusters and in words like "dune" and "Tuesday" results in the words sounding like "June" and "choose day", respectively. Although at the time when most studies of EE were carried out, yod-coalescence was not common in RP, it has now become so widely accepted that RP-based pronunciation dictionaries include it. Thus the latest edition of the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary gives /dʒuːn/ and /tʃuːz.deɪ/ as the preferred pronunciations; the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation give /djuːn/ and /tjuːzdeɪ/ as their first preference, but give /dʒuːn/ and /tʃuːz.deɪ/ as second preference. It cannot be said that the presence of yod-coalescence distinguishes EE from RP.


title: Estuary English

text: It has been suggested that "th"-fronting is "currently making its way" into Estuary English, for example those from the Isle of Thanet often refer to Thanet as "Plannit Fannit" (Planet Thanet). However, this feature was also present in the traditional dialect of Essex before the spread of Estuary English.


title: Estuary English

text: Estuary English is widely encountered throughout southeast England, particularly among the young. It is considered to be a working-class accent, although often used by the lower middle classes too. In the debate that surrounded a 1993 article about Estuary English, a London businessman claimed that RP was perceived as unfriendly, so Estuary English was now preferred for commercial purposes.


title: Estuary English

text: Some adopt the accent as a means of "blending in" to appear to be more working class or in an attempt to appear to be "a common man". That affectation of the accent is sometimes derisively referred to as "Mockney". A move away from traditional RP accents is almost universal among middle-class young people in the South-East of England.


title: Estuary English

text: Older rural dialects of the Estuary region survived longest in areas like Kent and the east of Essex, which early on showed features of, as well as some features distinct from, the modern Estuary dialect that has since become regionally widespread. Notably, rhoticity was a feature of older rural English in most of the Estuary counties, now largely replaced by non-rhoticity.


title: Beefsteak

text: A beefsteak, often called just steak, is a flat cut of beef with parallel faces, usually cut perpendicular to the muscle fibers. In common restaurant service a single serving has a raw mass ranging from . Beef steaks are usually grilled, pan-fried, or broiled. The more tender cuts from the loin and rib are cooked quickly, using dry heat, and served whole. Less tender cuts from the chuck or round are cooked with moist heat or are mechanically tenderized ("cf." cube steak).


title: Beefsteak

text: In Australia, beef steak is referred to as just "steak" and can be purchased uncooked in supermarkets, butchers, and some smallgood shops. It is sold cooked as a meal in almost every pub, bistro, or restaurant specialising in modern Australian food, and is ranked based on the quality and the cut. Most venues usually have three to seven different cuts of steak on their menu and serve it from blue to well-done according to preference. A steak is normally accompanied by a choice of sauces and a choice of either chips (thick fried potatoes) or mash potato. A complementary choice of side salad or steamed vegetables is also commonly offered.


title: Beefsteak

text: In France, steak, locally called , is usually served with fried potatoes ( in French). The combination is known as steak frites. Vegetables are not normally served with steak in this manner, but a green salad may follow or (more commonly) be served at the same time. This is also the case in Argentina. Steaks are often served with classic French sauces.


title: Beefsteak

text: In Indonesia, bistik jawa is a beefsteak dish that is influenced by Dutch cuisine. Another Indonesian beefsteak is selat solo with Dutch-influence, a specialty of Surakarta, Central Java.


title: Beefsteak

text: In Italy, steak was not widely eaten until after World War II because the relatively rugged countryside does not readily accommodate the space and resource demands of large herds of cattle. Some areas of Piedmont, Lombardy, and Tuscany, however, were renowned for the quality of their beef. is a well-known specialty of Florence; it is typically served with just a salad. From the 1960s onward, economic gains allowed more Italians to afford a red-meat diet.


title: Beefsteak

text: In Mexico, as well as in Spain and other former Spanish colonies, (a Spanish loanword from English "beefsteak") refers to dishes of salted and peppered beef sirloin strips. One form of Mexican is usually flattened with a meat tenderizing tool. The dish is usually served in tortillas as a taco.


title: Beefsteak

text: Spain and its former colonies have variations of (beefsteak with onions). It can be found across Latin America and in The Philippines.


title: Beefsteak

text: In The Philippines, "bistek Tagalog", a specialty of the Tagalog provinces, is typically made with strips of sirloin beef and onions slowly cooked in soy sauce and calamansi juice. It comes from the Spanish influence on The Philippines, and is the same as bistec encebollado found in Spain and Latin America, but with more Filipino ingredients and a slightly different flavor. Unlike usual beefsteak that has different degrees of doneness, Filipino "bistek" is always served well done.


title: Beefsteak

text: In the United Kingdom, steak is often served with medium-thick fried potatoes (chips), fried onions, mushrooms, and tomatoes; however, in some restaurants, it is more likely to be served with potatoes and other vegetables and offered with a selection of cooked sauces such as red wine, Diane, Bordelaise, mushroom, Hollandaise, (peppercorn), or Béarnaise. Other vegetables such as peas or a green salad can also be served. Various types of mustard are sometimes offered as a condiment.


title: Beefsteak

text: In the United States, a restaurant that specializes in beef steaks is a steakhouse. The more expensive steakhouses serve the highest grades of beef and often dry-age it for many weeks. The well-aged beef cooked on high-heat grills and broilers produces a steak difficult to emulate in a home kitchen. A typical steak dinner consists of a steak, optionally topped with sautéed onions or mushrooms, with a starchy side dish; usually baked or mashed potatoes, or thick-cut fried potatoes known as steak fries. Chili, rice, pasta, or beans are also common sides. A side salad or a small serving of cooked vegetables often accompanies the meat and side, with corn on the cob, green beans, creamed spinach, asparagus, tomatoes, mushrooms, peas, and onion rings being popular. Bread is generally served, usually a dinner roll.


title: Beefsteak

text: Special steak knives are provided, which are usually serrated, though straight blades also work; they also often have wooden handles. Prepared condiments known as steak sauces are generally on the table in steakhouses. Tenderized round or sirloin steaks, breaded, and pan-fried or deep-fried, are called "chicken fried" or "country fried" steaks, respectively. An iconic specialty of Philadelphia is the Philly cheesesteak, composed of thinly sliced ribeye or other tender cuts, cooked on a hot griddle and shredded slightly, and served on Italian-style rolls with one of a few types of cheese (American, mild Provolone or "Cheez Whiz" sauce).


title: Beefsteak

text: The amount of time a steak is cooked is based upon personal preference; shorter cooking times retain more juice, whereas longer steak cooking times result in drier, tougher meat, but reduce concerns about disease. A vocabulary has evolved to describe the degree to which a steak is cooked. The following terms are in order from least cooked to most cooked:


title: Beefsteak

text: A style exists in some parts of North America called "Chicago". A Chicago-style steak is cooked to the desired level and then quickly charred. The diner orders it by asking for the style followed by the doneness (e.g. "Chicago-style rare"). A steak ordered "Pittsburgh rare" is rare or very rare on the inside and charred on the outside. In Pittsburgh, this style is referred to as "black and blue" (black or "sooty" on the outside, and blue rare on the inside).


title: Fermi level

text: The Fermi level of a solid-state body is the thermodynamic work required to add one electron to the body. It is a thermodynamic quantity usually denoted by "µ" or "E"


title: Fermi level

text: for brevity. The Fermi level does not include the work required to remove the electron from wherever it came from.


title: Fermi level

text: A precise understanding of the Fermi level—how it relates to electronic band structure in determining electronic properties, how it relates to the voltage and flow of charge in an electronic circuit—is essential to an understanding of solid-state physics.


title: Fermi level

text: In band structure theory, used in solid state physics to analyze the energy levels in a solid, the Fermi level can be considered to be a hypothetical energy level of an electron, such that at thermodynamic equilibrium this energy level would have a "50% probability of being occupied at any given time".


title: Fermi level

text: The position of the Fermi level in relation to the band energy levels is a crucial factor in determining electrical properties.


title: Fermi level

text: The Fermi level does not necessarily correspond to an actual energy level (in an insulator the Fermi level lies in the band gap), nor does it require the existence of a band structure.


title: Fermi level

text: Nonetheless, the Fermi level is a precisely defined thermodynamic quantity, and differences in Fermi level can be measured simply with a voltmeter.


title: Fermi level

text: Sometimes it is said that electric currents are driven by differences in electrostatic potential (Galvani potential), but this is not exactly true.


title: Fermi level

text: As a counterexample, multi-material devices such as p–n junctions contain internal electrostatic potential differences at equilibrium, yet without any accompanying net current; if a voltmeter is attached to the junction, one simply measures zero volts.


title: Fermi level

text: Clearly, the electrostatic potential is not the only factor influencing the flow of charge in a material—Pauli repulsion, carrier concentration gradients, electromagnetic induction, and thermal effects also play an important role.


title: Fermi level

text: In fact, the quantity called "voltage" as measured in an electronic circuit has a simple relationship to the chemical potential for electrons (Fermi level).


title: Fermi level

text: When the leads of a voltmeter are attached to two points in a circuit, the displayed voltage is a measure of the "total" work transferred when a unit charge is allowed to move from one point to the other.


title: Fermi level

text: If a simple wire is connected between two points of differing voltage (forming a short circuit), current will flow from positive to negative voltage, converting the available work into heat.


title: Fermi level

text: The Fermi level of a body expresses the work required to add an electron to it, or equally the work obtained by removing an electron.


title: Fermi level

text: Therefore, "V" − "V", the observed difference in voltage between two points, "A" and "B", in an electronic circuit is exactly related to the corresponding chemical potential difference, "µ" − "µ", in Fermi level by the formula


title: Fermi level

text: From the above discussion it can be seen that electrons will move from a body of high "µ" (low voltage) to low "µ" (high voltage) if a simple path is provided.


title: Fermi level

text: This flow of electrons will cause the lower "µ" to increase (due to charging or other repulsion effects) and likewise cause the higher "µ" to decrease.


title: Fermi level

text: This also means that the voltage (measured with a voltmeter) between any two points will be zero, at equilibrium.


title: Fermi level

text: Note that thermodynamic equilibrium here requires that the circuit be internally connected and not contain any batteries or other power sources, nor any variations in temperature.


title: Fermi level

text: In the band theory of solids, electrons are considered to occupy a series of bands composed of single-particle energy eigenstates each labelled by "ϵ". Although this single particle picture is an approximation, it greatly simplifies the understanding of electronic behaviour and it generally provides correct results when applied correctly.


title: Fermi level

text: The Fermi–Dirac distribution, formula_2, gives the probability that (at thermodynamic equilibrium) a state having energy "ϵ" is occupied by an electron:


title: Fermi level

text: Here, "T" is the absolute temperature and "k" is the Boltzmann constant. If there is a state at the Fermi level ("ϵ" = "µ"), then this state will have a 50% chance of being occupied. The distribution is plotted in the left figure. The closer "f" is to 1, the higher chance this state is occupied. The closer "f" is to 0, the higher chance this state is empty.


title: Fermi level

text: The location of "µ" within a material's band structure is important in determining the electrical behaviour of the material.


title: Fermi level

text: In semiconductors and semimetals the position of "µ" relative to the band structure can usually be controlled to a significant degree by doping or gating. These controls do not change "µ" which is fixed by the electrodes, but rather they cause the entire band structure to shift up and down (sometimes also changing the band structure's shape). For further information about the Fermi levels of semiconductors, see (for example) Sze.


title: Fermi level

text: If the symbol "ℰ" is used to denote an electron energy level measured relative to the energy of the edge of its enclosing band, "ϵ", then in general we have "ℰ" = "ϵ" – "ϵ". We can define a parameter "ζ" that references the Fermi level with respect to the band edge:


title: Fermi level

text: The band theory of metals was initially developed by Sommerfeld, from 1927 onwards, who paid great attention to the underlying thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Confusingly, in some contexts the band-referenced quantity "ζ" may be called the "Fermi level", "chemical potential", or "electrochemical potential", leading to ambiguity with the globally-referenced Fermi level.


title: Fermi level

text: In this article, the terms "conduction-band referenced Fermi level" or "internal chemical potential" are used to refer to "ζ".


title: Fermi level

text: "ζ" is directly related to the number of active charge carriers as well as their typical kinetic energy, and hence it is directly involved in determining the local properties of the material (such as electrical conductivity).


title: Fermi level

text: For this reason it is common to focus on the value of "ζ" when concentrating on the properties of electrons in a single, homogeneous conductive material.


title: Fermi level

text: By analogy to the energy states of a free electron, the "ℰ" of a state is the kinetic energy of that state and "ϵ" is its potential energy. With this in mind, the parameter, "ζ", could also be labelled the "Fermi kinetic energy".


title: Fermi level

text: Unlike "µ", the parameter, "ζ", is not a constant at equilibrium, but rather varies from location to location in a material due to variations in "ϵ", which is determined by factors such as material quality and impurities/dopants.


title: Fermi level

text: Near the surface of a semiconductor or semimetal, "ζ" can be strongly controlled by externally applied electric fields, as is done in a field effect transistor. In a multi-band material, "ζ" may even take on multiple values in a single location.


title: Fermi level

text: For example, in a piece of aluminum metal there are two conduction bands crossing the Fermi level (even more bands in other materials); each band has a different edge energy, "ϵ", and a different "ζ".


title: Fermi level

text: The value of "ζ" at zero temperature is widely known as the Fermi energy, sometimes written "ζ". Confusingly (again), the name "Fermi energy" sometimes is used to refer to "ζ" at non-zero temperature.


title: Fermi level

text: The Fermi level, "μ", and temperature, "T", are well defined constants for a solid-state device in thermodynamic equilibrium situation, such as when it is sitting on the shelf doing nothing. When the device is brought out of equilibrium and put into use, then strictly speaking the Fermi level and temperature are no longer well defined. Fortunately, it is often possible to define a quasi-Fermi level and quasi-temperature for a given location, that accurately describe the occupation of states in terms of a thermal distribution. The device is said to be in "quasi-equilibrium" when and where such a description is possible.


title: Fermi level

text: The quasi-equilibrium approach allows one to build a simple picture of some non-equilibrium effects as the electrical conductivity of a piece of metal (as resulting from a gradient of "μ") or its thermal conductivity (as resulting from a gradient in "T"). The quasi-"μ" and quasi-"T" can vary (or not exist at all) in any non-equilibrium situation, such as:


title: Fermi level

text: In some situations, such as immediately after a material experiences a high-energy laser pulse, the electron distribution cannot be described by any thermal distribution.


title: Fermi level

text: One cannot define the quasi-Fermi level or quasi-temperature in this case; the electrons are simply said to be "non-thermalized". In less dramatic situations, such as in a solar cell under constant illumination, a quasi-equilibrium description may be possible but requiring the assignment of distinct values of "μ" and "T" to different bands (conduction band vs. valence band). Even then, the values of "μ" and "T" may jump discontinuously across a material interface (e.g., p–n junction) when a current is being driven, and be ill-defined at the interface itself.


title: Fermi level

text: The term "Fermi level" is mainly used in discussing the solid state physics of electrons in semiconductors, and a precise usage of this term is necessary to describe band diagrams in devices comprising different materials with different levels of doping.


title: Fermi level

text: In these contexts, however, one may also see Fermi level used imprecisely to refer to the "band-referenced Fermi level", "µ" − "ϵ", called "ζ" above.


title: Fermi level

text: It is common to see scientists and engineers refer to "controlling", "pinning", or "tuning" the Fermi level inside a conductor, when they are in fact describing changes in "ϵ" due to doping or the field effect.


title: Fermi level

text: In fact, thermodynamic equilibrium guarantees that the Fermi level in a conductor is "always" fixed to be exactly equal to the Fermi level of the electrodes; only the band structure (not the Fermi level) can be changed by doping or the field effect (see also band diagram).


title: Fermi level

text: In the wider context of quantum mechanics, the term Fermi energy usually refers to "the maximum kinetic energy of a fermion in an idealized non-interacting, disorder free, zero temperature Fermi gas".


title: Fermi level

text: This concept is very theoretical (there is no such thing as a non-interacting Fermi gas, and zero temperature is impossible to achieve). However, it finds some use in approximately describing white dwarfs, neutron stars, atomic nuclei, and electrons in a metal.


title: Fermi level

text: On the other hand, in the fields of semiconductor physics and engineering, "Fermi energy" often is used to refer to the Fermi level described in this article.


title: Fermi level

text: Much like the choice of origin in a coordinate system, the zero point of energy can be defined arbitrarily. Observable phenomena only depend on energy differences.


title: Fermi level

text: When comparing distinct bodies, however, it is important that they all be consistent in their choice of the location of zero energy, or else nonsensical results will be obtained.


title: Fermi level

text: It can therefore be helpful to explicitly name a common point to ensure that different components are in agreement.


title: Fermi level

text: On the other hand, if a reference point is inherently ambiguous (such as "the vacuum", see below) it will instead cause more problems.


title: Fermi level

text: A practical and well-justified choice of common point is a bulky, physical conductor, such as the electrical ground or earth.


title: Fermi level

text: Such a conductor can be considered to be in a good thermodynamic equilibrium and so its "µ" is well defined.


title: Fermi level

text: It provides a reservoir of charge, so that large numbers of electrons may be added or removed without incurring charging effects.


title: Fermi level

text: It also has the advantage of being accessible, so that the Fermi level of any other object can be measured simply with a voltmeter.


title: Fermi level

text: In principle, one might consider using the state of a stationary electron in the vacuum as a reference point for energies.


title: Fermi level

text: This approach is not advisable unless one is careful to define exactly where "the vacuum" is. The problem is that not all points in the vacuum are equivalent.


title: Fermi level

text: At thermodynamic equilibrium, it is typical for electrical potential differences of order 1 V to exist in the vacuum (Volta potentials).


title: Fermi level

text: The source of this vacuum potential variation is the variation in work function between the different conducting materials exposed to vacuum.


title: Fermi level

text: Just outside a conductor, the electrostatic potential depends sensitively on the material, as well as which surface is selected (its crystal orientation, contamination, and other details).


title: Fermi level

text: The parameter that gives the best approximation to universality is the Earth-referenced Fermi level suggested above. This also has the advantage that it can be measured with a voltmeter.


title: Fermi level

text: In cases where the "charging effects" due to a single electron are non-negligible, the above definitions should be clarified. For example, consider a capacitor made of two identical parallel-plates. If the capacitor is uncharged, the Fermi level is the same on both sides, so one might think that it should take no energy to move an electron from one plate to the other. But when the electron has been moved, the capacitor has become (slightly) charged, so this does take a slight amount of energy. In a normal capacitor, this is negligible, but in a nano-scale capacitor it can be more important.


title: Fermi level

text: In this case one must be precise about the thermodynamic definition of the chemical potential as well as the state of the device: is it electrically isolated, or is it connected to an electrode?


title: Fermi level

text: These chemical potentials are not equivalent, , except in the thermodynamic limit. The distinction is important in small systems such as those showing Coulomb blockade.


title: Fermi level

text: The parameter, , (i.e., in the case where the number of electrons is allowed to fluctuate) remains exactly related to the voltmeter voltage, even in small systems.


title: Fermi level

text: To be precise, then, the Fermi level is defined not by a deterministic charging event by one electron charge, but rather a statistical charging event by an infinitesimal fraction of an electron.


title: The Resort (TV series)

text: The Resort is an American dark comedy mystery television series created for Peacock by Andy Siara. The series stars William Jackson Harper and Cristin Milioti as a married couple on vacation at a holiday resort for their 10th anniversary, where they are drawn into a mystery that took place fifteen years before. It premiered on Peacock on July 28, 2022.


title: The Resort (TV series)

text: Noah and Emma are vacationing in the Mayan Riviera for their 10th anniversary. Noah has been content with life, whereas Emma feels like their marriage isn't advancing. They are then pulled into an unsolved mystery of two missing persons from fifteen years ago, which tests the resolve of their marriage.


title: The Resort (TV series)

text: In February 2020, it was reported that UCP was developing the dark comedy series "The Resort" from Sam Esmail and Andy Siara. In June 2021, it was announced Peacock had ordered the series, with Siara serving as a writer and Esmail serving as an executive producer under his Esmail Corp banner.


title: The Resort (TV series)

text: In January 2022, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Nina Bloomgarden, and Gabriela Cartol joined the cast in series regular roles, with Debby Ryan, Dylan Baker and Michael Hitchcock set to recur. In March 2022, William Jackson Harper, Cristin Milioti, Skyler Gisondo, and Nick Offerman joined the cast in series regular roles, while Ben Sinclair and Parvesh Cheena joined the cast in recurring capacity.


title: The Resort (TV series)

text: Principal photography was began in March 2022, in Puerto Rico, and wrapped by May 2022. Executive producer Ben Sinclair directed the first four episodes. The fifth and sixth episodes were directed by filmmaking duo Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia, with Ariel Kleiman directing the final two episodes.


title: The Resort (TV series)

text: The eight-episode series premiered on July 28, 2022, exclusively on Peacock. The premiere consists of the first three episodes, with new episodes debuting each Thursday after that. On August 24, 2022, NBC aired the pilot episode at 9 p.m. after a semi-final episode of America's Got Talent.


title: The Resort (TV series)

text: Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, rated the series with a score of 70 out of 100, based on 16 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Bottle Shock

text: Bottle Shock is a 2008 American comedy-drama film based on the 1976 wine competition termed the "Judgment of Paris", when California wine defeated French wine in a blind taste test. It stars Alan Rickman, Chris Pine, and Bill Pullman and is directed by Randall Miller, who wrote the screenplay along with Jody Savin and Ross Schwartz. It premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.


title: Bottle Shock

text: Sommelier and wine shop owner Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman), a British expatriate living in Paris, is concerned with how to save his business in his daily conversation with Maurice (Dennis Farina), a wine lover from Milwaukee who is Spurrier's regular (sometimes only) customer. He concocts a plan to hold a blind taste-test intended to introduce Parisians to the quality wines coming from elsewhere in the world.


title: Bottle Shock

text: Spurrier travels to the not-yet-famous Napa Valley in search of contestants for his Judgment of Paris taste test, where a chance meeting introduces him to founding vintner Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) of Chateau Montelena. Barrett wants no part in it, believing it to be a set-up designed by the French to humiliate New World wine producers. Barrett's son, Bo (Chris Pine), secretly passes Spurrier a couple of bottles of the Chateau's chardonnay for the competition. Comely and nonconformist university graduate student Sam Fulton (Rachael Taylor) arrives at Chateau Montelena seeking an internship, and is promptly put to work while stirring up interest among Bo and vineyard foreman Gustavo (Freddy Rodriguez).


title: Bottle Shock

text: Due to reductionist techniques in wine making (the absence/reduction of oxygen during the wine making process), the chardonnay has turned brown in the bottles, causing Barrett Sr. to call for the whole vintage to be carted away for dumping. But Bo discovers the brown color is only temporary and races back home. On the way back to Chateau Montelena, however, Bo's truck runs out of gas, forcing him and Sam to find someone to help them out. After several unsuccessful attempts on Bo's part, Sam takes over and gets a driver (who turns out to be a police officer) to pull over by exposing her breasts. Even though she could get arrested for indecent exposure, the officer agrees to help them out. Bo eventually manages to recover the vintage, thanks to the help of local bar owner Joe (Eliza Dushku) who had intercepted the bottles on the way to the dump, intending to recycle the bottles.


title: Bottle Shock

text: Bo is asked to travel to Paris to represent the Napa Valley vintners at the contest. After tallying the scores from the eight Parisian judges, Spurrier is shocked to find that Montelena's Chardonnay has won the competition.


title: Bottle Shock

text: The report is featured in an article of "Time"; restaurants and wine shops all around America are asked continuously for the wine (Chateau Montelena Chardonnay 1973) and forced to admit that they do not have it. This twist of fate and the resultant oenological epiphany forever changes the fortunes of Napa Valley wineries and the global wine industry as a whole, as it is revealed that French wines are in fact not unbeatable.


title: Bottle Shock

text: In the end, the futures of the characters are revealed: Jim Barrett continues to make wine into his 80s, although Bo now runs the winery. A bottle of Montelena Chardonnay 1973 and the red wine, Stags Leap cabernet sauvignon 1973, also from California, that had won the same competition were given a display case at the Smithsonian Institution. In 2006, thirty years after the first competition, Steven Spurrier hosted another contest, this time with full confidence that French wine would win. California won again.


title: Bottle Shock

text: Steven Spurrier himself has questioned the accuracy of the script while he was involved in another movie project depicting the events of the Judgment of Paris, stating: "There is hardly a word that is true in the script and many pure inventions as far as I am concerned".


title: Bottle Shock

text: While the film depicts Gustavo Brambila as being at Chateau Montelena throughout the events leading up to the Judgment of Paris, his 22-year term at Montelena actually began just after the tasting. While at Chateau Montelena, Brambila worked closely with Mike Grgich – who, although not depicted in the film, was the winemaker behind the 1973 Montelena Chardonnay that won in Paris.


title: Bottle Shock

text: In the film, the prize-winning chardonnay turns brown for 24 hours after bottling. In real life, the wine turned off-color for a short time after it was bottled, not an uncommon occurrence, and Grgich knew how to handle it.


title: Bottle Shock

text: The film received mixed reviews. , the film holds a 48% approval rating on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 124 reviews with an average rating of 5.62 out of 10. The website's critics consensus reads: ""Bottle Shock" fails to properly utilize the inspiring true tale at its core, settling instead for an ordinary, plodding account."


title: Shaka Laka Boom Boom

text: Shaka Laka Boom Boom is an Indian television series. It was written and directed by Vijay Krishna Acharya. Merchandise based on the series were also launched in markets.


title: Shaka Laka Boom Boom

text: The first season revolves around the central character, Sanju, finding a magical pencil, which has the ability to bring things drawn with it to life. The second season centres on an alien, Shaan, and his adventures with the magical pencil. The third season is about Sanju and Shaan's adventures in a magic school called Jadoo High, and in the fourth season, Sanju travels to the year 2022 to protect his family.


title: Shaka Laka Boom Boom

text: It first aired as 30 episodes series on DD National channel from 15 October 2000. It was later taken up by Star Plus in 2001 and their version first premiered on 19 August 2002 with Kinshuk Vaidya as Sanju. The series also re-aired on Star Utsav, Disney Channel India, STAR One, Disney XD, Hungama TV and a Tamil dubbed version on Vijay TV.


title: Diana (film)

text: Diana is a 2013 biographical drama film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, about the last two years of the life of Diana, Princess of Wales. The screenplay is based on Kate Snell's 2001 book, "Diana: Her Last Love", and was written by Stephen Jeffreys. British actress Naomi Watts plays the title role of Diana.


title: Diana (film)

text: The world premiere of the film was held in London on 5 September 2013. It was released in the UK on 20 September 2013. The film received negative reviews from both British and American critics.


title: Diana (film)

text: The film depicts the last two years of the princess's life, beginning with events when Diana (Naomi Watts) divorces Charles, Prince of Wales. She meets and falls in love with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews). The film depicts her tours of Angola in her campaign against the use of land mines. Trips to advance causes in Australia, Pakistan, New York City, Bosnia, Italy, and ultimately, Paris are also shown, with recreations of what she wore in real life. Her relationship with Dr. Khan ends due to his desire for a private life and objections to her celebrity status. The film depicts Diana's affair with Anglo-Egyptian billionaire Dodi Fayed as a calculated attempt to make Dr. Khan jealous, but it ends with the car crash that killed Diana, Fayed, and their driver in the Pont de l'Alma Tunnel in Paris – however, there is no re-enactment of the crash scene.


title: Diana (film)

text: The screenplay, which is based on Kate Snell's 2001 book, "Diana: Her Last Love", was written by Stephen Jeffreys. Robert Bernstein and Douglas Rae produced the movie for Ecosse Films.


title: Diana (film)

text: Key scenes involving Diana and Dodi Fayed on his family yacht, "Jonikal", were filmed on the 45m luxury charter yacht "Princess Iolanthe". The opening and closing scenes at the Paris Ritz Imperial Suite were filmed at Fetcham Park House in Fetcham, Surrey.


title: Diana (film)

text: The film has received overwhelmingly negative reviews. On review aggregator "Rotten Tomatoes", it has an 8% approval rating based on reviews from 97 critics and an average score of 3.5/10. The consensus states: "Naomi Watts tries hard in the title role, but "Diana" buries her efforts under a shoddy script and clumsy direction." On Metacritic, the film has a 35 (out of 100), based on 28 reviews.


title: Diana (film)

text: David Edwards from "The Mirror" said it was a "cheap and cheerless effort that looks like a Channel 5 mid-week matinee" and that "Wesley Snipes in a blonde wig would be more convincing", awarding the film one star out of five. Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" also awarded it one star out of five and called the film "car crash cinema".


title: Diana (film)

text: Joshua Rothkopf of "Time Out New York" called Watts's performance "extraordinary" and gave the film 3 stars out of 5, calling it "a restrained biopic that affords its subject the romantic privacy that life denied her." Nigel Andrews of the "Financial Times" said that "once again Watts supplies the wattage" but that her performance is "frighteningly isolated... the compensating passion in a torpid drama." Jim Schembri of 3AW praised Watts' "impressive performance" but remarked that the film "could actually have done with another half-hour putting more meat onto the bones of these underdeveloped chapters of her story. " Dominic Corry of flicks.co.nz called the film "bad in the blandest way possible" and lamented that "Watts is let down by the Mills & Boon-level script". Fionnuala Halligan of "Screen Daily" also criticised the writing, saying that Watts' "brave performance should not be under-estimated given the poverty of the dialogue and the pressure of the part."


title: Diana (film)

text: Naomi Watts received a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actress for her work in both this film and "Movie 43", where she lost to Tyler Perry for his performance in drag in "A Madea Christmas".


title: Dan Green (voice actor)

text: James Hadley Snyder, (born February 16, 1970) known professionally as Dan Green, is an American voice actor, voice director, and screenwriter. He is best known for being the voice of Yugi Muto/Yami Yugi for "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters", the anime series version of "Yu-Gi-Oh!", as well as all of the character's U.S. series appearances.


title: Dan Green (voice actor)

text: Green is best known as the voice of Yugi Muto/Yami Yugi in "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters", Trudge in "Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's", and Knuckles the Echidna in "Sonic X" and the "Sonic the Hedgehog" video games (2005–2010). He has worked for 4Kids Entertainment, DuArt Film and Video, NYAV Post, TAJ Productions and Central Park Media. He has also worked on script adaptations of "" and "Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn", and teaches voice acting at Edge Studio in New York City.


title: Dan Green (voice actor)

text: Green married singer and voice actress Michal Lura Friedman, better known as Michal the Girl, in 2008. While giving birth to twins (a son named Jackson and a daughter named Reverie) on November 25, 2011, Friedman died from complications following a C-section. Fans began charity efforts to provide financial support for the twins.


title: Robert Earl Keen

text: Robert Earl Keen (born January 11, 1956) is an American singer-songwriter and entertainer. Debuting with 1984's "No Kinda Dancer", the Houston native has recorded 20 full-length albums for both independent and major record labels. His songs have had cover versions recorded by many musicians, including George Strait, Joe Ely, Lyle Lovett, The Highwaymen and Nanci Griffith.


title: Robert Earl Keen

text: Although his albums and his live performances span many different styles-from folk, country, and bluegrass to rock- he is most commonly affiliated with roots music. Keen has toured extensively in the US and abroad throughout his career.


title: Robert Earl Keen

text: Keen was born and grew up in Houston, Texas, United States. As a teenager, Keen was an avid reader who excelled in writing and literature classes. Keen was a fan of the English rock band Cream, and was influenced by country music by artists Willie Nelson, Norman Blake, Jesse Winchester, Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Withers, Gary Stewart, and Jimmie Rodgers.


title: Robert Earl Keen

text: After graduation from Sharpstown High School, Keen started playing guitar himself shortly thereafter, learning to play classic country covers out of a songbook the summer before starting college at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1978 and began writing songs and playing bluegrass and folk music with friends, including his childhood friend (and future longtime fiddle player in his band) Bryan Duckworth. During his college years Keen lived with future musician Lyle Lovett.


title: Robert Earl Keen

text: In 1978, Keen graduated from Texas A&M and moved to Austin, Texas. He performed in nightclubs and live music venues in Austin, including Cactus Cafe, Emma Joe's, Alamo Lounge and Liberty Lunch, Anderson Fair in Houston, and Gruene Hall in New Braunfels. In 1983, Keen won the New Folk competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville, Texas. That same year, he began making his self-produced first album, "No Kinda Dancer".


title: Robert Earl Keen

text: Following the release of this album in 1985, Keen moved to Nashville with his future wife, Kathleen Gray. He signed a publishing deal, a new independent label deal, and signed with a national booking agent. While in Nashville, Keen and Gray worked at Hatch Show Print shop.


title: Robert Earl Keen

text: Keen returned to Texas in 1987 and released his second album, "The Live Album", in 1988, followed by his third album, "West Textures" in 1989. "West Textures" featured the first recording of Keen's signature song, "The Road Goes on Forever.” Fellow Texan Joe Ely recorded the song on his 1993 album "Love and Danger", along with another Keen song, "Whenever Kindness Fails". Keen's own version of "Whenever Kindness Fails" appeared on his fourth album, 1993's "A Bigger Piece of Sky." In 1994, he released "Gringo Honeymoon" followed by "No. 2 Live Dinner in 1996".


title: Robert Earl Keen

text: Keen has continued to write and record music, while also maintaining a prodigious tour schedule. His 1997 album, "Picnic", marked the beginning of his on-again, off-again relationship with major labels (both that album and 1998's "Walking Distance" were issued on Arista Records, and 2001's "Gravitational Forces", 2009's "The Rose Hotel" and 2011's "Ready for Confetti" were released on Lost Highway Records). Keen's other albums include 2003's "Farm Fresh Onions" (Audium/Koch Records) and 2005's "What I Really Mean" and 2006's "Live at the Ryman" (both on E1 Music). The producers with whom he has worked on those albums have included John Keane, Gurf Morlix, Gary Velletri, and Lloyd Maines. In 2022, his concert tour was listed as one of the most successful in the world.


title: Robert Earl Keen

text: In January 2022, Keen announced that he would stop touring and performing publicly after September 2022. His final tour was named the "I’m Coming Home Farewell Tour" and the final leg was played September 1st, 3rd and 4th at Floore’s Country Store in Helotes, Texas. Approximately 3,000 people attended the last show on September 4th for nearly two-and-a-half hours.


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: The Inbetweeners 2, is a 2014 teen coming of age adventure sex comedy film and sequel to "The Inbetweeners Movie" (2011), which is based on the E4 sitcom "The Inbetweeners". It was written and directed by series creators Damon Beesley and Iain Morris.


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: The film involves four school friends who meet up again for a holiday in Australia, and stars Simon Bird, Joe Thomas, James Buckley and Blake Harrison. In media interviews, the film's writers and actors stated that it was to be an end to the series.


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: "The Inbetweeners 2" was released on 6 August 2014 in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, to positive reception from critics. It surpassed the record of its predecessor for the highest gross on the opening day of a comedy in the UK, with £2.75 million, and ended its first weekend with a gross of £12.5 million, the largest opening of any film in 2014, then remained on top for a second week. With an overall gross of £33.3 million, it was the highest-grossing British film in the domestic market in 2014. On 21 August, it was released in Australia, to a mixed reception, and topped the box office in its opening weekend.


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: Will, Neil and Jay's girlfriends, whom they met in Malia, have since broken up with them. Simon is unhappy with his relationship with Lucy, who has become obsessive and abusive. While Jay is taking a gap year in Australia, Neil and Simon visit Will at the University of Bristol, Jay contacts them, claiming he is a DJ at a popular nightclub in Sydney and lives in a luxury mansion. The trio decide to go to Australia to visit Jay. Upon arrival, they discover that Jay works as a night club toilet attendant and lives in his uncle Bryan's front garden. Whilst at the night club, Will is reunited with Katie, his first love from private school, who is backpacking. At her request, Will agrees to join her at Byron Bay. When the boys return to Bryan's house, Simon attempts to break up with Lucy over Skype, but Bryan tricks her into thinking Simon is proposing and Lucy agrees to marry him.


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: The four boys travel to a youth hostel in Byron Bay and meet the backpackers, with member Ben taking a disliking to Will for being a holidaymaker. Simon deduces that Jay is in Australia to win Jane back following their breakup, as it is revealed she is in the country. That night, Will sings a bad falsetto cover of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" to Katie, who seduces him at the hostel. Before they can have sex, Katie passes out, shortly before a backpacker enters and attacks Will for thinking he is engaging in rape.


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: The boys join the backpackers at a water park named Splash Planet the next day, Jay believing Jane works there. Neil accidentally kills a dolphin by feeding it fast food, and Simon is attacked by some fathers after they mistake him for a paedophile. Jay is told that Jane has since left Splash Planet and is working in the outback. Ben challenges Will to a race on a waterslide, but Neil soils himself due to IBS symptoms and his faeces follows Will down the slide. Will wins the race, but is hit in the face by the faeces, causing him to vomit uncontrollably and the pool to be evacuated.


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: The boys leave Splash Planet, and Jay opens up about wishing to reconnect with Jane. Lucky tells Simon that Jane works in Birdsville. The boys prepare to drive there, but Will, angry and dejected over the Splash Planet incident and towards the boys' treatment of him, stays in Byron Bay in the hopes of starting a relationship with Katie. Will ultimately struggles to fit in with the "spiritual" activities of the travellers and discovers that Katie is sleeping with multiple people at once. He angrily rebukes the group and buys a flight ticket to Birdsville, reconciling with the boys.


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: In the desert, the car runs out of fuel and the boys are unsuccessful in their attempts to get help. Believing they will soon die, they are rescued by Jane and her colleagues. Jane is touched by Jay's efforts to win her over again, but does not take him back. Back at Bryan's house in Sydney, the boys discover that Jay's father and Will's mother have flown out to meet them. To Will's dismay, his old head of sixth form, Mr Gilbert, is now in a relationship with Will's mother. Over Skype, Lucy breaks up with Simon after revealing that she has been having sex with Pete, one of Simon's friends, which Simon responds to by ecstatically ending the call. The boys drive off to continue travelling in Australia.


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: In a montage over the credits, the four travel from Australia to Vietnam, and then spend time in Cambodia. Upon their return to the United Kingdom several months later, Simon, Will and Neil have considerably longer hair, while Jay has his hair in braids. Neil is in a relationship with an older female traveller from the Byron Bay hostel, while Will's mother announces her engagement to Mr. Gilbert, much to Will's horror.


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: Daisy Ridley's scene was cut from the final version. The filmmakers wanted to film another scene with her, but she was busy filming "".


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: Although originally intended as an unambiguous ending to the television series, the unexpected popularity and box office success of "The Inbetweeners Movie" led to speculation over the possibility of a sequel. These rumours began in early September 2011, while the film was still in cinemas, and were denied by its writers and actors. Around the same time, producer Christopher Young openly recognised the possibility of another film based on the series, claiming that "if there is a sequel it will come from the creative elements ... We've talked about it. In the short term people are dispersing and doing other things but I'm sure in the medium term a sequel is very possible. It won't be immediate but it's definitely not closed." Co-writer Damon Beesley later admitted "we didn't know how successful it would be and that it would have a life on screen. But they did translate to big-screen characters, people did care about them and did go back and see it more than once – and that's very rare in cinema. The idea of not following that up seemed insane to most people". The actors had mixed emotions on making a sequel. Although Buckley and Thomas felt put off by the success of the first film, Harrison and Bird became convinced on reading the script.


title: The Inbetweeners 2

text: Iain Morris received inspiration for the film from his own experiences as a high school exchange student on Australia's Gold Coast, describing it as "a place where people go to get drunk, pick some fruit and get drunk again".