title: SAS Institute

text: During the 1980s, SAS was one of Inc. Magazine's fastest growing companies in America from 1979 and 1985. It grew more than ten percent per year from $10 million in revenues in 1980 to $1.1 billion by 2000. In 2007, SAS revenue was $2.15 billion, and in 2013 its revenue was $3.02 billion. By the late 1990s, SAS was the largest privately held software company. The Associated Press reported that analysts attributed the growth to aggressive R&D spending. It had the highest ratio of its revenues spent on R&D in the industry for eight years, setting a record of 34 percent of its revenues in 1993, as it was working on a new menu-based interface. The company began its relationship with Microsoft and development for Windows operating systems in 1989. Shortly afterwards it established partnerships with database companies like Oracle, Sybase and Informix.


title: SAS Institute

text: An education division was created in 1997 to create software for schools, including the newly formed Cary Academy. In 2003 the Bank of America Foundation purchased and donated licenses for the software to 400 schools in North Carolina. SAS funded its first advertising program in 2000 with a $30 million television and radio campaign.


title: SAS Institute

text: The company considered making 25 percent of the company available on the stock market and providing employees with stock-options during the dot-com bubble before the following downturn, but ultimately chose not to. SAS was one of the few technology companies that did well during the downturn and hired aggressively to take advantage of available staff.


title: SAS Institute

text: In 2009, SAS filed a lawsuit against World Programming Ltd., alleging World Programming System—a software product designed to use the features of the SAS language—violated their copyright as it was reverse engineered from the functionality of SAS Learning Edition. The European Court of Justice ruled that functionality and language elements were not protected and the case was discussed in Oracle v. Google


title: SAS Institute

text: SAS introduced its first reseller program intended to grow sales with small to medium-sized businesses in 2006. Leading up to 2007, SAS provided funding and curriculum assistance to help start the Master of Science in Analytics program at nearby North Carolina State University. The company's cloud-based products grew in revenues by 35 percent in 2014 and the construction of Building Q was completed late that year to house its corresponding operations.


title: SAS Institute

text: In March 2014, SAS launched its SAS Analytics U initiative to provide free foundational technologies and support to teachers and students.


title: SAS Institute

text: In July 2021, the "Wall Street Journal" reported that the semiconductor giant Broadcom was in talks to acquire SAS. In a July 13, 2021 email, SAS CEO Jim Goodnight stated that the company was not for sale.


title: SAS Institute

text: SAS Institute has grown in revenue each year since it was incorporated in 1976. About 20-30% of the company's revenues are spent on research and development, which is the highest ratio among software companies of its size. In 1994, "Computerworld" found that out of the world's 50 largest software companies, SAS spent 2.5 times the industry average on R&D. As of 2010 revenues come relatively evenly from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. According to the company's 2014 financial reporting, its revenues are currently 46.7 percent from the Americas, 41.4 from Europe, Middle East and Africa, and 11.9 percent from Asia-Pacific. SAS has about 5,200 employees at its headquarters in Cary, North Carolina, 1,600 employees elsewhere in the US and 6,900 in Europe, Asia, Canada or Latin America. CEO James Goodnight owns about two-thirds of the company and co-founder John Sall owns the other one-third.


title: SAS Institute

text: SAS is well known for its workplace culture. The company was used as a model for workplace perks at Google and is taught as a case study in management seminars at Stanford. SAS has been identified as a "Best Company to Work For" in Fortune's annual rankings each year since the list's inception in 1997. In 2014, SAS ranked No. 2 on the elite Top 25 World's Best Multinational Workplaces list from Great Place to Work as well as No. 2 among Fortune's 2014 Best Companies to Work For in the US. SAS was No. 1 on the US list in 2010 and 2011. On March 5, 2015, Fortune ranked SAS No. 4 on its annual list of best companies to work for in the US. On March 5, 2016, Fortune ranked SAS No. 8, down from number 4 in 2015 on its annual list of best companies to work for in the US. It is also regularly in "Working Mother Magazine's" "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers" list.


title: SAS Institute

text: SAS offers on-site day care services to its employees for 850 children for about a third of the normal cost. Medical services are provided to employees and their families for free and 80% of the cost is covered for specialists. Employees are encouraged to work 35-hour weeks and have free access to a recreation and fitness center as well as life counseling services. It also hosts a summer camp for children and operates on-site cafeterias and cafes. 22.5 tons of M&Ms are provided each year, in jars that are re-filled every Wednesday. Similar amenities are provided at its other offices besides its headquarters.


title: SAS Institute

text: SAS spokespeople say its employee benefits are provided for business, not altruistic, reasons. The company evaluates new benefits using three criteria: whether it would benefit the company culture, whether it would serve a significant number of employees and whether it would save more money than is spent on it. According to academics, the company's practices improve the loyalty, focus and creativity of its staff. Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer from the Stanford Graduate School of Business estimated that the company saves $60–$80 million annually in expenses related to employee turnover. SAS has an annual employee turnover of three to five percent, while the software industry's average is 20 to 25 percent. According to "USA Today", the workplace culture has created "intensely loyal" staff who care about the company's well-being. Even though there are unlimited sick days, the average employee takes only two. The 40,000 free medical visits provided to employees annually are estimated to cost the company US$4.5 million, but save it US$5 million due to the employee productivity lost when staff spend their work-hours in waiting rooms at other hospitals.


title: SAS Institute

text: SAS has a limited corporate hierarchy and an egalitarian culture. As the company grew it created new divisions, instead of layers of management, creating a flat, simple organizational structure. According to professor Jeffrey Pfeffer from Stanford, there are only three levels in the organization and CEO Jim Goodnight has 27 people who directly report to him. The organizational structure is fluid and employees can change roles rapidly.


title: SAS Institute

text: Managers are involved in the day-to-day work with their employees. Employees are given a large extent of autonomy and developers are encouraged to pursue experimental product ideas. Input from customers guides the company's marketing and software development. According to SAS, 80 percent of suggestions for product improvements are incorporated into the software. The dress code is informal. According to "Fast Company", employees describe the environment as "relaxed."


title: SAS Institute

text: Employees are encouraged to do volunteer work and the company makes donation to non-profits where employees are involved. The company primarily focuses its philanthropic efforts on improving education. It funds pilot programs for new education models, donates laptops and provides free online software for classrooms called Curriculum Pathways.


title: SAS Institute

text: As of 2012, SAS is the largest privately owned software company in the world. It develops, supports and markets a suite of analytics software also called SAS (statistical analysis system), which captures, stores, modifies, analyzes and presents data. The SAS system and SAS programming language are used by most of the Fortune 500. The SAS software includes a Base SAS component that performs analytical functions and more than 200 other modules that add graphics, spreadsheets or other features. SAS Institute also sells the JMP suite of statistical analysis software, which consists of JMP, JMP Pro, JMP Clinical and JMP Genomics.


title: SAS Institute

text: Some of the uses for SAS' software include analyzing financial transactions for indications of fraud, optimizing prices for retailers, or evaluating the results of clinical trials. As of 2012, SAS is the largest market-share holder in the advanced analytics segment with a 36.2 percent share and the fifth largest for business intelligence software with a 6.9 percent share. SAS typically sells its software with an emphasis on subscription models that include support and updates, as opposed to software licenses.


title: SAS Institute

text: The SAS certification program was established in 1999. and SAS Publishing was created in 2000 as a separate entity that works to increase the availability of SAS-related books. SAS Publishing hosts an online bookstore, develops product documentation and publishes SAS-related books authored by users. There are more than 200 SAS users groups devoted to a specialty, an individual client, or a geography. There are local, regional, national and international users groups


title: Israeli passport

text: The Israeli passport (, "Darkon Yisre'eli"; ) is a passport issued to Israeli citizens to enable them to travel outside Israel, and entitles the bearer to the protection of Israel's consular officials overseas. Israeli citizens have visa-free or visa on arrival access to 160 countries and territories.


title: Israeli passport

text: Israeli citizens are allowed to hold passports of other countries, but, per a 2002 regulation, are required to use the Israeli passport when entering and leaving Israel.


title: Israeli passport

text: Mandatory Palestine passports ceased to be valid at the end of the British Mandate of Palestine on 15 May 1948. Israel began issuing what was described as travel documents from that date, with an initial validity of two years and used Hebrew and French texts. After the Knesset (Israeli parliament) passed the Israeli nationality law in 1952, Israeli travel documents began to be described as passports. The first passport was issued to Golda Meir, who at the time worked for the Jewish Agency and was soon to become Israel's ambassador to the USSR.


title: Israeli passport

text: The first Israeli travel documents bore the limitation: "Valid to any country except Germany." An Israeli who wished to visit Germany had to ask that the words "except Germany" be deleted from their passport. This was done manually by drawing a line through these words. After the signing of the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany in 1952, the limitation was withdrawn and passports became "valid to all countries".


title: Israeli passport

text: Israeli passports issued after 30 March 1980 have used Hebrew and English texts, instead of the previous Hebrew and French.


title: Israeli passport

text: In 2006, an Israeli passport became an accepted form of identification in elections in Israel. Previously, only an internal identity card was accepted for this purpose.


title: Israeli passport

text: Denial or withdrawal of an Israeli passport is one of the sanctions an Israeli rabbinical court may use to enforce divorce upon a husband who chains his wife into marriage against her will.


title: Israeli passport

text: Since 2013, biometric passports have been introduced, in line with standards used by the United States, European Union and other countries. To obtain a biometric passport, an applicant must appear in an Interior Ministry office "to be photographed by the special camera which records information such as facial bone structure, distance between one's eyes, ears to eyes and ratio of facial features one from another. One will also be fingerprinted and all this information will be contained in the new high-tech electronic passport." It was reported that the border control representatives tore non-biometric passports of Israeli citizens.


title: Israeli passport

text: As of May 2022, the Ministry of Population starting reissuing non-biometric passports (valid for 2 years instead of 1) to tackle the enormous influx of Israelis applying for biometric passport, as it is rumored that a normal passport application take up to 6 weeks instead of 2. A new temporary office has been opened in Bnei Brak where Israelis can receive a temporary passport for NIS 400, which must be paid online as the office itself can receive payments. This provides a cheaper alternative to the office at Ben Gurion airport, which provides such passports for NIS 820. By the end of May, 5,000 people will have received such passports from the Bnei Brak office.


title: Israeli passport

text: Israeli passports are navy blue, with the Israeli emblem in the center of the front cover, below the words "" and "STATE OF ISRAEL" in Hebrew and English, respectively. The words "" and "PASSPORT" are inscribed below the emblem. The inner pages are decorated with the Israeli emblem of olive branches and the seven-branched menorah. The regular passport contains 32 pages, and the business passport contains 64 pages.


title: Israeli passport

text: Israeli passports are valid for up to 10 years for persons over the age of 18. They are bilingual, using both Hebrew and English. Since Hebrew is written from right to left, the passports are opened from their right end and their pages are arranged from right to left. Arabic is not used in Israeli passports, even though it is used in internal identity cards and is as having a 'special status in the state' with its use by state institutions to be set in law.


title: Israeli passport

text: All information appears both in Hebrew and English. The information page ends with the Machine Readable Zone. The signature of bearer follows on page 3 (in a non-biometric passport).


title: Israeli passport

text: "The Minister of the Interior of the State of Israel hereby requests all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer of this passport to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford him such assistance and protection as may be necessary."


title: Israeli passport

text: The information on the inside back cover of an Israeli passport states in Hebrew only (English translation below):


title: Israeli passport

text: This passport is the property of the State of Israel and is a valuable document which must be preserved carefully. Do not add or delete any information in the passport, tear out a page or pages from it, or destroy or corrupt the passport. The law states that the perpetrator of such action and who uses an illegal passport that is not his or lets anyone else use his passport illegally, has committed an offense and is liable to be punished.


title: Israeli passport

text: An Israeli citizen who is also a foreign citizen and holds a foreign passport must enter and exit Israel with an Israeli passport or travel document.


title: Israeli passport

text: In the case of loss or theft of the passport in Israel, the nearest Population Office must be immediately notified. If the passport is lost or stolen overseas, the nearest Israeli embassy or consulate must be notified.


title: Israeli passport

text: Be careful not to lose your passport. When you use it, keep it secured inside the pocket of your clothes and not in your bag or car. When you travel abroad, it is recommended to bring a photocopy of the information page.


title: Israeli passport

text: The passport is valid for all countries (unless otherwise noted) until the date listed on page 2. After expiration, or if your passport has worn thin or is filled, it must be replaced with a new one.


title: Israeli passport

text: Attention!!! This passport contains sensitive electronic circuits. For optimal functioning of these circuits, please do not fold, puncture and/or expose your passport to high temperatures and/or excessive moisture.


title: Israeli passport

text: Israel may issue a travel document ( "teudat ma'avar") to a person who does not have an Israeli or foreign passport which allows the person to enter and leave the country. It may be issued in the following circumstances:


title: Israeli passport

text: Holders of a travel document are not entitled to the same visa-free entry to certain countries as holders of a standard Israeli passport, as the travel document is not accepted for travel or identification purposes by many countries. The use of a travel document to leave Israel does not, of itself, entitle the holder to enter another country nor to return to Israel.


title: Israeli passport

text: A travel document ( "Teudat Ma'avar Israelit Lezarim") may be issued to Arab residents of East-Jerusalem who have neither Israeli nor Jordanian citizenship, and to non-Israeli Arab residents of the Golan Heights.


title: Israeli passport

text: A Travel Document in Lieu of National Passport ( "Teudat Ma'avar bimkom Darkon Leumi") may be issued to an Israeli citizen by the Ministry of Interior in a number of circumstances:


title: Israeli passport

text: They are normally valid for two years, and not for more than five years. The issuance of travel documents instead of passports became prevalent in the 1990s as the Israeli government reacted to a wave of Russian organized crime gangs who immigrated to Israel and began using Israeli passports for their activities.


title: Israeli passport

text: According to the 2018 Henley Passport Index, Israeli citizens had visa-free or visa on arrival access to 161 countries and territories, ranking the Israeli passport 21st in the world in terms of travel freedom (tied with the Barbadian and Emirati passports). Additionally, Arton Capital's Passport Index ranked the Israeli passport 16th in the world in terms of travel freedom, with a visa-free score of 146, as of 2 December 2018.


title: Israeli passport

text: Under the 1954 Israeli Prevention of Infiltration Law, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Yemen were designated "enemy states". Israeli citizens may not visit countries so designated without a permit issued by the Israeli Interior Ministry. Egypt and Jordan were removed from the list following the signing of peace accords with these countries in 1978 and 1994, while Iran was added after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. In January 2020, Israel's Minister of the Interior announced that Israeli citizens, both Muslims and Jews, can travel to Saudi Arabia for religious and business purposes. These countries have their own bans on the entry of Israelis.


title: Israeli passport

text: Fourteen countries that do not recognize the state of Israel also do not admit Israeli passport holders:


title: Israeli passport

text: In addition, six of these countries — Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Yemen — do not allow entry to people with evidence of travel to Israel, or whose passports have either a used or an unused Israeli visa.


title: Israeli passport

text: As a consequence, many countries may issue a second passport to citizens wishing to circumvent this restriction, and the Israeli immigration services have now mostly ceased stamping entry or exit stamps in all passports. Some Israelis will try to apply for dual citizenship in order to circumvent existing travel bans as an Israeli citizen.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: The Red Queen hypothesis is a hypothesis in evolutionary biology proposed in 1973, that species must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate in order to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing species. The hypothesis was intended to explain the constant (age-independent) extinction probability as observed in the paleontological record caused by co-evolution between competing species; however, it has also been suggested that the Red Queen hypothesis explains the advantage of sexual reproduction (as opposed to asexual reproduction) at the level of individuals, and the positive correlation between speciation and extinction rates in most higher taxa.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: In 1973, Leigh Van Valen proposed the hypothesis as an "explanatory tangent" to explain the "law of extinction" known as "Van Valen's law", which states that the probability of extinction does not depend on the lifetime of the species or higher-rank taxon, instead being constant over millions of years for any given taxon. However, the probability of extinction is strongly related to adaptive zones, because different taxa have different probabilities of extinction. In other words, extinction of a species occurs randomly with respect to age, but nonrandomly with respect to ecology. Collectively, these two observations suggest that the effective environment of any homogeneous group of organisms deteriorates at a stochastically constant rate. Van Valen proposed that this is the result of an evolutionary zero-sum game driven by interspecific competition: the evolutionary progress (= increase in fitness) of one species deteriorates the fitness of coexisting species, but because coexisting species evolve as well, no one species gains a long-term increase in fitness, and the overall fitness of the system remains constant.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: Van Valen coined the hypothesis "Red Queen" because under his hypothesis, species have to "run" or evolve in order to stay in the same place, or else go extinct as the Red Queen said to Alice in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass" in her explanation of the nature of Looking-Glass Land:


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: Palaeontological data suggest that high speciation rates correlate with high extinction rates in almost all major taxa. This correlation has been attributed to a number of ecological factors, but it may result also from a Red Queen situation, in which each speciation event in a clade deteriorates the fitness of coexisting species in the same clade (provided that there is phylogenetic niche conservatism).


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: Discussions of the evolution of sex was not part of Van Valen's Red Queen hypothesis, which addressed evolution at scales above the species level. The microevolutionary version of the Red Queen hypothesis was proposed by Bell (1982), also citing Lewis Carroll, but not citing Van Valen.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: The Red Queen hypothesis is used independently by Hartung and Bell to explain the evolution of sex, by John Jaenike to explain the maintenance of sex and W. D. Hamilton to explain the role of sex in response to parasites. In all cases, sexual reproduction confers species variability and a faster generational response to selection by making offspring genetically unique. Sexual species are able to improve their genotype in changing conditions. Consequently, co-evolutionary interactions, between host and parasite, for example, may select for sexual reproduction in hosts in order to reduce the risk of infection. Oscillations in genotype frequencies are observed between parasites and hosts in an antagonistic coevolutionary way without necessitating changes to the phenotype. In multi-host and multi-parasite coevolution, the Red Queen dynamics could affect what host and parasite types will become dominant or rare. Science writer Matt Ridley popularized the term in connection with sexual selection in his 1993 book "The Red Queen", in which he discussed the debate in theoretical biology over the adaptive benefit of sexual reproduction to those species in which it appears. The connection of the Red Queen to this debate arises from the fact that the traditionally accepted Vicar of Bray hypothesis only showed adaptive benefit at the level of the species or group, not at the level of the gene (although the protean "Vicar of Bray" adaptation is very useful to some species that belong to the lower levels of the food chain). By contrast, a Red-Queen-type thesis suggesting that organisms are running arms races with their parasites can explain the utility of sexual reproduction at the level of the gene by positing that the role of sex is to preserve genes that are currently disadvantageous, but that will become advantageous against the background of a likely future population of parasites.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: Further evidence of the Red Queen hypothesis was observed in allelic effects under sexual selection. The Red Queen hypothesis leads to the understanding that allelic recombination is advantageous for populations that engage in aggressive biotic interactions, such as predator-prey or parasite-host interactions. In cases of parasite-host relations, sexual reproduction can quicken the production of new multi-locus genotypes allowing the host to escape parasites that have adapted to the prior generations of typical hosts. Mutational effects can be represented by models to describe how recombination through sexual reproduction can be advantageous. According to the mutational deterministic hypothesis, if the deleterious mutation rate is high, and if those mutations interact to cause a general decline in organismal fitness, then sexual reproduction provides an advantage over asexually reproducing organisms by allowing populations to eliminate the deleterious mutations not only more rapidly, but also most effectively. Recombination is one of the fundamental means that explain why many organisms have evolved to reproduce sexually.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: Sexual organisms must spend resources to find mates. In the case of sexual dimorphism, usually one of the sexes contributes more to the survival of their offspring (usually the mother). In such cases, the only adaptive benefit of having a second sex is the possibility of sexual selection, by which organisms can improve their genotype.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: Evidence for this explanation for the evolution of sex is provided by the comparison of the rate of molecular evolution of genes for kinases and immunoglobulins in the immune system with genes coding other proteins. The genes coding for immune system proteins evolve considerably faster.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: Further evidence for the Red Queen hypothesis was provided by observing long-term dynamics and parasite coevolution in a mixed sexual and asexual population of snails ("Potamopyrgus antipodarum"). The number of sexuals, the number of asexuals, and the rates of parasitic infection for both were monitored. It was found that clones that were plentiful at the beginning of the study became more susceptible to parasites over time. As parasite infections increased, the once-plentiful clones dwindled dramatically in number. Some clonal types disappeared entirely. Meanwhile, sexual snail populations remained much more stable over time.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: In 2011, researchers used the microscopic roundworm "Caenorhabditis elegans" as a host and the pathogenic bacterium "Serratia marcescens" to generate a host–parasite coevolutionary system in a controlled environment, allowing them to conduct more than 70 evolution experiments testing the Red Queen hypothesis. They genetically manipulated the mating system of "C. elegans", causing populations to mate either sexually, by self-fertilization, or a mixture of both within the same population. Then they exposed those populations to the "S. marcescens" parasite. It was found that the self-fertilizing populations of "C. elegans" were rapidly driven extinct by the coevolving parasites, while sex allowed populations to keep pace with their parasites, a result consistent with the Red Queen hypothesis.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: Currently, there is no consensus among biologists on the main selective forces maintaining sex. The competing models to explain the adaptive function of sex have been reviewed by Birdsell and Wills.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: The Red Queen hypothesis has been invoked by some authors to explain evolution of aging. The main idea is that aging is favored by natural selection since it allows faster adaptation to changing conditions, especially in order to keep pace with the evolution of pathogens, predators and prey.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: "The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner." Aesop


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: The predator-prey relationship can also be established in the microbial world, producing the same evolutionary phenomenon that occurs in the case of foxes and rabbits. A recently observed example has as protagonists "M.xanthus" (predator) and "E.coli" (prey) in which a parallel evolution of both species can be observed through genomic and phenotypic modifications, producing in future generations a better adaptation of one of the species that is counteracted by the evolution of the other, thus generating an arms race that can only be stopped by the extinction of one of the species.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: The interactions between parasitoid wasps and insect larvae, necessary for the parasitic wasp's life cycle, are also a good illustration of a race. Evolutionary strategy was found by both partners to respond to the pressure generated by the mutual association of lineages. For example, the parasitoid wasp group, "Campoletis sonorensis", is able to fight against the immune system of its hosts, "Heliothis virescens" (Lepidopteran) with the association of a polydnavirus (PDV) ("Campoletis sonorensis" PDV). During the oviposition process, the parasitoid transmits the virus ("Cs"PDV) to the insect larva. The "Cs"PDV will alter the physiology, growth and development of the infected insect larvae to the benefit of the parasitoid.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: A competing evolutionary idea is the court jester hypothesis, which indicates that an arms race is not the driving force of evolution on a large scale, but rather it is abiotic factors.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: The Black Queen hypothesis is a theory of reductive evolution that suggests natural selection can drive organisms to reduce their genome size. In other words, a gene that confers a vital biological function can become dispensable for an individual organism if its community members express that gene in a "leaky" fashion. Like the Red Queen hypothesis, the Black Queen hypothesis is a theory of co-evolution.


title: Red Queen hypothesis

text: Van Valen originally submitted his article to the "Journal of Theoretical Biology", where it was accepted for publication. However, because "the manner of processing depended on payment of page charges", Van Valen withdrew his manuscript and founded a new Journal called "Evolutionary Theory", in which he published his manuscript as the first paper. Van Valen's acknowledgement to the National Science Foundation ran: "I thank the National Science Foundation for regularly rejecting my (honest) grant applications for work on real organisms, thus forcing me into theoretical work".


title: The Nightfly

text: The Nightfly is the debut solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Donald Fagen. Produced by Gary Katz, it was released October 1, 1982, by Warner Bros. Records. Fagen was previously best known for his work in the group Steely Dan, with whom he enjoyed a successful career in the 1970s. The band separated in 1981, leading Fagen to pursue a solo career. Although "The Nightfly" includes a number of production staff and musicians who had played on Steely Dan records, it was Fagen's first release without longtime collaborator Walter Becker.


title: The Nightfly

text: Unlike most of Fagen's previous work, "The Nightfly" is almost blatantly autobiographical. Many of the songs relate to the cautiously optimistic mood of his suburban childhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s and incorporate such topics as late-night jazz disc jockeys, fallout shelters, and tropical vacations. Recorded over eight months at various studios between New York City and Los Angeles, the album is an early example of a fully digital recording in popular music. The nascent technology, as well as the perfectionist nature of its engineers and musicians, made the album difficult to record.


title: The Nightfly

text: "The Nightfly" was well-received, both critically and commercially. It was certified platinum in both the US and UK and generated two popular singles with the top 40 hit "I.G.Y." and the MTV favorite "New Frontier". Among critics, "The Nightfly" gained widespread acclaim and received seven nominations at the 1983 Grammy Awards. The relatively low-key but long-lived popularity of "The Nightfly" led Robert J. Toth of "The Wall Street Journal" in 2008 to dub the album "one of pop music's sneakiest masterpieces."


title: The Nightfly

text: Donald Fagen, born in Passaic, New Jersey, in 1948, grew up with an affinity for music. As a kid, he enjoyed listening to rock and roll pioneers Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, but personally felt that, as rock music gained popularity, it lost an edge. Fagen, a "lonely" kid, then turned to late-night jazz radio shows for the vitality he felt the new music lacked. As he got older, he intended to go to graduate school and pursue literature. Instead, he was "swept up" into the counterculture at Bard College, where he met Walter Becker. They later moved to Los Angeles at the suggestion of their friend Gary Katz and took jobs as staff writers for ABC Records. Together, they formed Steely Dan, releasing their first album, "Can't Buy a Thrill", in 1972. Over the course of the decade, the group became enormously successful on the strength of the albums "Countdown to Ecstasy" (1973), "Pretzel Logic" (1974), "Katy Lied" (1975), "The Royal Scam" (1976), and "Aja" (1977), the band's best-selling effort and a critical favorite. They gradually shifted from performing live to working solely in the studio, making the project a revolving selection of session musicians at the behest of Fagen and Becker.


title: The Nightfly

text: Their relationship became strained during the making of 1980's "Gaucho", largely due to their insistence for perfection. Both Becker and Fagen would later recall they seemed depressed. In addition, Becker was in the midst of a drug problem and went through a withdrawal stage. Though Fagen imagined they might "stick it out for a while," he admitted to Robert Palmer of "The New York Times", in an article published on June 17, 1981, that the group had indeed separated. "Basically, we decided after writing and playing together for 14 years, we could use a "changement d'air" as the French say," he told Palmer. After their split, Fagen worked on a song for the soundtrack of the film "Heavy Metal", which got him back into the studio. He began working towards a solo album shortly thereafter. "Working on it has been interesting. The fact that it's not a Steely Dan album has freed me from a certain image, a preconceived idea of how it'll sound," he said at the time. Fagen had hoped to record music on his own "a year or so" prior to the duo's breakup. The album was originally slated to be titled "Talk Radio".


title: The Nightfly

text: To prepare to use the digital technology, the album's engineers took classes at 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota.


title: The Nightfly

text: "The Nightfly" was recorded in 1981–82 at Soundworks Digital Audio/Video Recording Studios and Automated Sound in New York City, and at Village Recorders in Los Angeles. The producer was Gary Katz, the album engineer was Roger Nichols and the mixer was Elliot Scheiner; all had worked on most of the seven previous Steely Dan albums. Many of the musicians had also played on Steely Dan records, including Jeff Porcaro, Rick Derringer and Larry Carlton. Similar to the "Aja" and "Gaucho" albums, a large number of studio musicians were employed, with the liner notes crediting a total 31 musicians. During a radio interview on "Off the Record" in 1983, Fagen revealed that, though he had considered song writing one of his strengths, and that initially the album's songs came to him easily, he began to struggle without his long-term co-writer Walter Becker. This writing difficulty turned into a lengthy writer's block after the album was finished. His demos for the album were mostly composed on keyboards and a drum machine and remained without lyrics, to allow for alteration when in the studio.


title: The Nightfly

text: "The Nightfly" is one of the earliest examples of fully digital recording in popular music. Katz and Fagen had previously experimented with digital recording for "Gaucho", which ended up entirely analog. Nichols conducted experiments and found that the digital recordings sounded better than those recorded to magnetic tape. "The Nightfly" was recorded using 3M's 32-track and four-track recorders. Nichols built a new drum machine, the Wendel II—a sequel to the original Wendel, which was employed for their work on "Gaucho". The new model was upgraded from 8 bits to 16 bits and "plugged straight into the 3M digital machines, so there was no degradation" in sound. Problems with the technology persisted in the beginning, particularly regarding the alignment of the 3M machines. Representatives from 3M had to be called to align the machines, but eventually Fagen and Nichols grew tired of this. Nichols and engineers Jerry Garsszva and Wayne Yurgelun took classes at 3M's Minnesota headquarters and returned knowing how to align the machines themselves. "I was ready to transfer to analog and give it up on several occasions, but my engineering staff kept talking me into it," Fagen remembered. They practiced an early form of "comping" Fagen's vocals—which they called "beat[ing] the computer"—wherein he would record multiple takes and the engineers would pick the best lines from each take. On "Walk Between Raindrops", they combined bass parts playing on a keyboard bass and bass guitar. Doubling bass lines would "become common practice on many records," according to writer James Sweet.


title: The Nightfly

text: Though previous Steely Dan projects were often recorded live, Fagen opted to overdub each part separately for "The Nightfly". It became enormously difficult, between this approach and the new technology, to record the album. Pianist Michael Omartian "objected strongly" when Fagen tasked him to "set the groove" of the title track on his own, with nothing but a click track. On another occasion, Fagen "demanded subtle timing differences between the left and right-hand piano parts" on "Ruby Baby". The effect he desired was achieved with Omartian and Greg Phillinganes playing together on the same keyboard. For the "party noises" in "Ruby Baby", the team suspended a microphone from the ceiling of Studio 54 – just next door to the studio they were working in – and recorded one of Jerry Rubin's "business parties". Unsatisfied with the results, the group instead held a party in the studio by themselves and included that ambience in the song.


title: The Nightfly

text: Larry Carlton performs lead guitar on much of the album and recorded his pieces in four days. During his time with the group, he discovered a humming sound coming from his amplifier. The engineers discovered the source on the outside of the building: a large magnet "that formed part of the New York subway system." In one instance, a strange smell permeated the studio space at Soundworks. The studio staff "gutted" the studio, removing its air conditioning, carpeting, and recording console until they discovered the cause of the smell: a deceased rat in a drainpipe. Sessions regularly stretched long into the evening; Fagen would often refer to this as "being on the night train." In the end, the album took eight months to record and was mixed in 10 days.


title: The Nightfly

text: "The Nightfly" is considered more jazzy than Fagen's previous work with Steely Dan, and his lyrics are more wistful and nostalgic than biting. Fagen aimed for his lyrics to have "as little irony as possible”, and his goal was to make an album that was fun to listen to. As many of the songs come from an adolescent viewpoint, he hoped for them to maintain "a certain innocence”. Walter Becker was responsible for the more sardonic elements in Steely Dan, and many writers have considered his absence the reason for the album's "warm and nostalgic" tone. Another difference between "The Nightfly" and his work with Becker is that it maintains a focus on a "certain period [or] motif”, according to Fagen. Though Fagen hints in the album's liner notes that it is an autobiographical piece, he downplayed this notion in a later interview: "It is not me exactly. It is a composite character of myself, what I remember and people I knew. Plus, it includes my feelings in retrospect”.


title: The Nightfly

text: According to Sam Sutherland, writing for "Billboard", Fagen's songs "shimmer with jazz harmonies and alternately swing, shuffle or bounce to a samba“. Will Fulford-Jones, in his appraisal of the album in "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die", considered it ironic in the sense that while it focuses on a simpler time, its production sounded like a modern Steely Dan album. Fagen held a "propensity for the perfect drum track”, and multiple drummers are credited on the album, sometimes on the same song. For example, James Gadson and Jeff Porcaro are present on "I.G.Y.", with the former playing the snare drum, kick drum, and hi-hat, and the latter performing the tom-tom fills. Even still, some songs contain the drum machine Wendel II. Fagen feared listeners finding plagiarism in his lyrics, so he altered a lyric in "The Goodbye Look"—"Behind the big casinos by the beach"—as it "reminded him of a line from a well-known poem." He was also concerned the "late line" lyrics in the title song were too close to the late-night news program "Nightline".


title: The Nightfly

text: The album opens with "I.G.Y.", the title of which refers to the "International Geophysical Year", an event that ran from July 1957 to December 1958. The I.G.Y. was an international scientific project promoting collaboration among the world's scientists. Fagen's lyrics reference, from the point of view of that time, an optimistic vision of futuristic concepts such as solar-powered cities, a transatlantic tunnel, permanent space stations, and spandex jackets. Fagen remembered being enchanted by the prospects of a "gleaming future" and hoped to give an optimistic look back at it. The title of "Green Flower Street" is a "nod to the jazz standard On Green Dolphin Street." "Ruby Baby" is modeled after the Drifters' version of the song. For his rewrite of "Ruby Baby", he listened to several records from the 1950s to "get a general atmosphere of the period." "Maxine" references the harmonies of the Four Freshmen, and revolves around an "extremely idealized version of high-school romance." The music was created from an Ed Greene drum track rescued from another song, where it wasn't working.


title: The Nightfly

text: "New Frontier" follows a "gawky teenager" inviting a girl back to his family's backyard fallout shelter for a private gathering. "The Nightfly", the title song, was once described by American novelist Arthur Phillips as a "portrait of a late-night D.J. in Baton Rouge, taking lunatic phone calls from listeners while silently battling his own loneliness and regret." According to Fagen, the song "uses a lot of images from the blues: that hair formula gets its name from Charley Patton, the old delta blues guitarist, and Mount Belzoni gets its name from another old blues lyric: 'When the trial's in Belzoni/No need to scream and cry.'" "The Goodbye Look" alludes to the popularity of bossa nova in the 1960s. The song is a "tale of military upheaval on a Caribbean island." The last song, "Walk Between Raindrops", has origins in a Jewish folk tale. It was the last song to be recorded, and took form "almost as an afterthought," according to writer Sweet.


title: The Nightfly

text: The album's cover artwork features a photo of Donald Fagen as a disc jockey, wearing a collared shirt and tie, speaking into a RCA 77DX microphone. In front of him is a turntable (16 inch '50s model, with a Para-Flux A-16 tonearm), an ashtray, a matchbook, and a pack of Chesterfield King cigarettes. Visible on the table with the record player is the cover of the 1958 jazz album "Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders" (one of Fagen's favorite albums). On the wall behind is a large clock, indicating that the time is 4:09. An advertisement in "Billboard" shortly before the album's release described the album cover: "At 4:09 a.m., silence and darkness have taken hold of the city. The only sound is the voice of "The Nightfly"". Fagen appeared on the album cover despite his reclusive nature. "It was an autobiographical album so it seemed like I might as well go public with it," he said. The cover was shot in Fagen's apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan by photographer James Hamilton. Two shoots were arranged because in the first, the RCA microphone was facing the wrong direction. Gale Sasson and Vern Yenor are credited with the cover's set design.


title: The Nightfly

text: In his memoir, "Eminent Hipsters", Fagen notes that the cover figure "wasn't supposed to be a stand-in for any particular jazz DJ," but noted a few personalities from the period that factored into the creation: Ed Beach, Dan Morgenstern, Martin Williams, R.D. Harlan, "Symphony Sid" Torin, and what Fagen regarded as his "main man", WEVD's Mort Fega. "He was laid-back, knowledgeable, and forthright, the cool uncle you wished you'd had." At the time of the album's release, he remembered that jazz music offered him an escape from the adults in his life: "When I saw "'E.T.",' I realized that the E.T. in my bedroom was my Thelonious Monk records. Everything that he represented was totally unworldly in a way, although at the same time, jazz to me seemed more real than the environment in which I was living." "The Wall Street Journal" Robert J. Toth writes, "The cover adds another layer of autobiography. On the front, we see Mr. Fagen as a crew-cut deejay on the graveyard shift. On the back is his audience, a single lighted window in a row of tract homes — or maybe the artist as a young man, drinking in inspiration." Robert Palmer, of "The New York Times", continued in this line of thinking: "Inside, there's a teenager with his ear next to a portable radio. He's playing it softly, so his parents won't wake up, and he can barely make out the sounds through the static. [...] The teenager was Donald Fagen."


title: The Nightfly

text: "The Nightfly" was released on October 1, 1982, on vinyl and cassette. It was also released in its first prerecorded digital form, via half-inch Beta and VHS format cassettes issued by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. In addition, a matching folio for the album was released by Cherry Lane Music in February 1983. It was first widely available on compact disc in 1984; a reader's poll conducted by "Digital Audio" magazine the following year ranked it among the best releases of the time, alongside "Security" (1982) by Peter Gabriel (another fully digital recording) and Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." (1984). Early CD copies, however, suffered from being manufactured from third and fourth generation masters. Nichols discovered this when he received a call from Stevie Wonder, who told him that his CD copy of "The Nightfly" sounded "funny." Nichols penned an essay in "Recording Engineer and Producer", criticizing record companies' apparent carelessness in manufacturing the then-nascent format. "The Nightfly" was reissued on various disc formats four times in recent years, each time with a multichannel mix: on DVD-Audio in 2002, on DualDisc in 2004, on MVI in 2007 and on hybrid multichannel SACD in The Warner Premium Sound series by Warner Japan in 2011.


title: The Nightfly

text: Following completion of the album, Fagen entered therapy and more-or-less dropped out of public sight. In his memoir, "Eminent Hipsters", he writes that "the panic attacks I used to get as a kid returned, only now accompanied by morbid thoughts and paranoia, big-time." He remained paralyzed for much of the rest of the 1980s, "gobbling antidepressants" and nearly unable to get through each day. He came to view "The Nightfly" as the culmination of "whatever kind of energy was behind the writing I had been doing in the '70s." He turned down requests for television performances, opting only for radio and press interviews. Though he suggested he may do smaller concerts in New York, Fagen did not tour behind "The Nightfly". He expounded upon his mental state after the album's completion:


title: The Nightfly

text: Since resuming as a touring band in 1993, Steely Dan has performed several songs from "The Nightfly" on occasion; Fagen also did as a solo artist during a 2006 tour in support of his third solo album, "Morph the Cat". Most recently, Steely Dan — now with Fagen as the sole original member following Walter Becker's death in 2017 — performed "The Nightfly" in its entirety during residencies in Beacon, New York in 2018 and Boston, Massachusetts in 2019.


title: The Nightfly

text: "The Nightfly" was met with almost universally positive reviews. "Billboard" labeled it their top album pick in the first month of its release, calling it a "stunning debut" and praising its "typically blue chip crew of crack players and crisp digital production." David Fricke wrote in "Rolling Stone" that "Donald Fagen conjures a world where all things are possible, even to a kid locked in his bedroom." Robert Christgau, writing for "The Village Voice", gave the album an A and commented, "these songs are among Fagen's finest [...] his acutely shaded lyrics put the jazziest music he's ever committed to vinyl into a context that like everything here is loving but very clear-eyed." Robert Palmer of "The New York Times" called it a "vivid and frequently ingenious look back at a world that is gone forever. Its sound is glossy and contemporary, but references to both the spirit and the music of the years when Mr. Fagen was growing up can be found in almost every song." Charles Shaar Murray of "NME" called "The Nightfly" "an album which doesn't so much dilute the arctic smartassery of the Dan as warm it up, loosen it up, and present it in a new context." The sole poor review came from Paul Strange at "Melody Maker", who dubbed the album a "bummer. What made the Dan an important band of the early '70s has been replaced by ultra-slick, uninspired background mush."


title: The Nightfly

text: Subsequent reviews have remained positive. Jon Matsumoto picked it for a "Classic of the Week" editorial in the "Los Angeles Times" in 1994, calling it an "elegant pop album," praising the album's "vivid lyrical tapestry" and "rhythmically effervescent" music. Jason Ankeny of AllMusic regarded "The Nightfly" as a continuation of "the smooth pop-jazz mode favored on the final Steely Dan records", as well as "lush and shimmering, produced with cinematic flair by Gary Katz; romanticized but never sentimental... crafted with impeccable style and sophistication." Bud Scoppa, in a review of the "Nightfly" trilogy (a reissue of Fagen's first three studio albums), wrote that they are "united not just by their sophistication but also by a sense of nostalgia for what has been irretrievably lost." "The Nightfly" is described as a "superb jazz-pop solo album" in Pete Prown and HP Newquist's 1997 book "Legends of Rock Guitar". Jazz historian Ted Gioia cites it as an example of Steely Dan "proving that pop-rock could equally benefit from a healthy dose of jazz" during their original tenure, which coincided with a period when rock musicians frequently experimented with jazz idioms and techniques.


title: The Nightfly

text: "The Nightfly" was nominated for seven awards at the 25th Annual Grammy Awards in 1983, including Album of the Year and Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical. "I.G.Y." received the most nominations, included on lists for Song of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, and Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s), while "Ruby Baby" received a nod for Best Vocal Arrangement. In addition, Gary Katz was nominated for Producer of the Year. In 2000, it was voted number 288 in Colin Larkin's "All Time Top 1000 Albums", and in 2006, it was included in Robert Dimery's "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". In 2010, Vatican City's "L'Osservatore Romano" selected "The Nightfly" as one of its official Top 10 Albums.


title: The Nightfly

text: "The Nightfly" debuted on "Billboard" Rock Albums chart at number 39 during the week ending October 23, 1982, peaking at number 25 on November 13. It debuted on the magazine's all-genre Top LPs and Tape chart on October 30 at number 45; it climbed to number 11, its peak, on November 27. It also charted on "Billboard" Black LPs chart, peaking at number 24. Internationally, the album charted higher: in Norway, it reached number seven on the charts. In Sweden and New Zealand, the album peaked at numbers eight and nine, respectively. "The Nightfly" performed more poorly than "Gaucho" commercially; Fagen felt as though the label did not market the album properly or effectively. WBCN in Boston, inspired by the album cover, developed a promotion in which listeners could register to host their own radio show.


title: The Nightfly

text: The album remains a favorite among audiophiles. According to Paul Tingen, from "Sound on Sound" magazine, "The Nightfly" was "for years a popular demonstration record in hi-fi stores across the globe." Paul White, editor-in-chief of "Sound on Sound", said "The Nightfly" "is always a good reference for checking out monitoring systems and shows what good results could be obtained from those early digital recording systems in the right hands." In addition to its use in recording studio tests, Clive Young of "Pro Sound News" called Fagen's "I.G.Y." the "Free Bird" of pro audio, claiming that almost every live sound engineer uses the song to test the front-of-house system's sound response. "EQ Magazine" rated "The Nightfly" as among the Top 10 Best Recorded Albums of All Time, alongside the Beatles's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds".


title: Josh Mostel

text: Joshua Mostel (born December 21, 1946) is an American actor with numerous film and Broadway credits. The son of Zero Mostel, he is best known for his supporting roles in films such as "Jesus Christ Superstar" (1973), "Harry and Tonto" (1974), "Sophie's Choice" (1982), "City Slickers" (1991), "Billy Madison" (1995), and "Big Daddy" (1999).


title: Josh Mostel

text: Mostel was born in New York City, the son of Kathryn Celia (née Harken), an actress, dancer, and writer, and comic actor Zero Mostel. His brother Tobias is a painter, ceramic artist and professor of art, teaching at Florida State University and Tallahassee Community College.


title: Josh Mostel

text: Mostel started his career as a boy soprano at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He graduated from Brandeis University. His Broadway debut was in 1971 with "Unlikely Heroes". In 1973, Mostel had one of his more notable film performances as Herod in "Jesus Christ Superstar". In 1979, Mostel briefly starred in "Delta House", the television version of the film "Animal House"; he played Blotto Blutarsky, the brother of the character Bluto (played by John Belushi in the original film).


title: Josh Mostel

text: On Broadway, he appeared in the 1989 revival of "The Threepenny Opera" as Money Matthew and as the frazzled head writer in the original 1992 production of "My Favorite Year".


title: Josh Mostel

text: He also played the part of "the best trader on the street", Ollie, one of Gordon Gekko's traders in "Wall Street".


title: Joe Hamilton (producer)

text: Joseph Henry Hamilton Jr. (January 6, 1929 – June 9, 1991) was an American television producer and actor.


title: Joe Hamilton (producer)

text: Beginning his career as a singer and composer with a vocal group, The Skylarks, Hamilton became the producer of "The Garry Moore Show" in 1958, where actress Carol Burnett was a regular. With The Skylarks, he appeared on many early television programs, including Dinah Shore's. He also appeared in two 1964 episodes of "The New Phil Silvers Show". Joe appeared in several episodes of The Andy Griffith Show as a bystander who made fun of Deputy Barney Fife (Don knotts) for overreacting to simple situations. He worked with Burnett on the short-lived CBS variety show "The Entertainers" and her long-running eponymous series, "The Carol Burnett Show", as executive producer and composer of its theme song. He made one brief appearance (albeit on a poster) as Duke Reeves on "Mama's Family". was Executive Producer of "Mama's Family" for its 130 episode run, with the first 30 episodes on NBC (1982-1984) and then for the 100-episode syndicated version, produced independently for Lorimar Telepictures, from 1986-1990. Prior to this, he was Executive Producer of "The Tim Conway Show" in 1980-81. He was Executive Producer of the "Eunice" TV movie, which he and Burnett commissioned, and which spawned "Mama's Family", despite Thelma "Mama" Harper dying in the TV movie.


title: Joe Hamilton (producer)

text: Hamilton also wrote Burnett's famous theme song, which she sang to end her show each week, “I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together”.


title: Joe Hamilton (producer)

text: Hamilton’s first marriage (April 10, 19481963), to Gloria Hartley, produced eight children. He married Carol Burnett on May 4, 1963. They had three children, including Carrie Hamilton, before divorcing in 1984. He married Sandy Troggio in 1991, before dying of cancer that same year on June 9.


title: Sam Denby

text: Sam Denby is an American YouTuber, best known for creating the edutainment YouTube channels Wendover Productions, Half as Interesting, Extremities, and Jet Lag: The Game. Across all of Denby's channels, he has accumulated more than a billion views.


title: Sam Denby

text: Denby's YouTube channel Wendover Productions has over 3.7 million subscribers and more than 557 million total video views. His videos most commonly feature the topics of logistics, most notably those of aviation, as well as geography and economics. The Wendover Productions video about tourism in Iceland received significant attention from Iceland's national newspapers. Wendover Productions is based in Aspen, Colorado.


title: Sam Denby

text: In June 2019, Denby created a scripted podcast called "Extremities" about the logistics of living in the world's most isolated populated locations. As of November 7, 2022, the channel has over 161,000 subscribers and more than 1.26 million total video views.


title: Sam Denby

text: Denby's YouTube channel "Jet Lag: The Game" hosts game shows created by Denby, Ben Doyle, and Adam Chase. Inspired by "The Amazing Race", the first game show hosted on the channel was a variant of Connect Four—described by "Wired" as "what might be the world’s largest Connect Four game ever constructed" — where the aim is to create a vertical or horizontal line of four American states. "Jet Lag"'s second season, "Circumnavigation", was a race to circumnavigate the world in 100 hours, while the third, "Tag EUR It", is a game of tag played across Western Europe. The fourth season premiered on December 7, 2022. All travel on the show is offset by a factor of 10 via Gold Standard carbon credits. As of November 11, 2022, the channel has over 329,000 subscribers and more than 12.48 million total video views.


title: Sam Denby

text: Denby was born and raised in Washington, D.C. In 2018, Denby stated he had been living in Edinburgh, Scotland for the past two years for university studies he was studying international business. Denby stated he has lived in Colorado somewhere in the mountains outside Denver.


title: Tit for tat

text: Tit for tat is an English saying meaning "equivalent retaliation". It developed from "tip for tap", first recorded in 1558.


title: Tit for tat

text: It is also a highly effective strategy in game theory. An agent using this strategy will first cooperate, then subsequently replicate an opponent's previous action. If the opponent previously was cooperative, the agent is cooperative. If not, the agent is not.


title: Tit for tat

text: Tit-for-tat has been very successfully used as a strategy for the iterated prisoner's dilemma. The strategy was first introduced by Anatol Rapoport in Robert Axelrod's two tournaments, held around 1980. Notably, it was (on both occasions) both the simplest strategy and the most successful in direct competition.


title: Tit for tat

text: An agent using this strategy will first cooperate, then subsequently replicate an opponent's previous action. If the opponent previously was cooperative, the agent is cooperative. If not, the agent is not. This is similar to reciprocal altruism in biology.


title: Tit for tat

text: The term developed most concretely in Northern Ireland, to describe increasing eye for an eye mentality, amongst the Irish Republicans and Ulster Unionists. This can be seen with the Red Lion Pub bombing by the IRA being followed by the McGurk's Bar bombing, both targeting civilians. Specifically the attacks of massacres would be structured around the mutual killings of Protestant and Catholic communities, both communities being generally uninterested in the violence. This sectarian mentality led to the term ""Tit for tat bombings"" to enter the common lexicon of Northern Irish society.


title: Tit for tat

text: The success of the tit-for-tat strategy, which is largely cooperative despite that its name emphasizes an adversarial nature, took many by surprise. Arrayed against strategies produced by various teams it won in two competitions. After the first competition, new strategies formulated specifically to combat tit-for-tat failed due to their negative interactions with each other; a successful strategy other than tit-for-tat would have had to be formulated with both tit-for-tat and itself in mind.


title: Tit for tat

text: This result may give insight into how groups of animals (and particularly human societies) have come to live in largely (or entirely) cooperative societies, rather than the individualistic "red in tooth and claw" way that might be expected from individuals engaged in a Hobbesian state of nature. This, and particularly its application to human society and politics, is the subject of Robert Axelrod's book "The Evolution of Cooperation".


title: Tit for tat

text: Moreover, the tit-for-tat strategy has been of beneficial use to social psychologists and sociologists in studying effective techniques to reduce conflict. Research has indicated that when individuals who have been in competition for a period of time no longer trust one another, the most effective competition reverser is the use of the tit-for-tat strategy. Individuals commonly engage in behavioral assimilation, a process in which they tend to match their own behaviors to those displayed by cooperating or competing group members. Therefore, if the tit-for-tat strategy begins with cooperation, then cooperation ensues. On the other hand, if the other party competes, then the tit-for-tat strategy will lead the alternate party to compete as well. Ultimately, each action by the other member is countered with a matching response, competition with competition and cooperation with cooperation.


title: Tit for tat

text: In the case of conflict resolution, the tit-for-tat strategy is effective for several reasons: the technique is recognized as "clear", "nice", "provocable", and "forgiving". Firstly, it is a "clear" and recognizable strategy. Those using it quickly recognize its contingencies and adjust their behavior accordingly. Moreover, it is considered to be "nice" as it begins with cooperation and only defects in response to competition. The strategy is also "provocable" because it provides immediate retaliation for those who compete. Finally, it is "forgiving" as it immediately produces cooperation should the competitor make a cooperative move.


title: Tit for tat

text: The implications of the tit-for-tat strategy have been of relevance to conflict research, resolution and many aspects of applied social science.


title: Tit for tat

text: The Tit for Tat strategy copies what the other player previously chose. If players cooperate by playing strategy (C,C) they cooperate forever.


title: Tit for tat

text: If a player deviates to defecting (D), then the next round they get punished. Alternate between outcomes where p1 cooperates and p2 deviates, and vice versa.


title: Tit for tat

text: While Axelrod has empirically shown that the strategy is optimal in some cases of direct competition, two agents playing tit for tat remain vulnerable. A one-time, single-bit error in either player's interpretation of events can lead to an unending "death spiral": if one agent defects and the opponent cooperates, then both agents will end up alternating cooperate and defect, yielding a lower payoff than if both agents were to continually cooperate. This situation frequently arises in real world conflicts, ranging from schoolyard fights to civil and regional wars. The reason for these issues is that tit for tat is not a subgame perfect equilibrium, except under knife-edge conditions on the discount rate.


title: Tit for tat

text: While this sub-game is not directly reachable by two agents playing tit for tat strategies, a strategy must be a Nash equilibrium in all sub-games to be sub-game perfect. Further, this sub-game may be reached if any noise is allowed in the agents' signaling. A sub-game perfect variant of tit for tat known as "contrite tit for tat" may be created by employing a basic reputation mechanism.


title: Tit for tat

text: Knife-edge is "equilibrium that exists only for exact values of the exogenous variables. If you vary the variables in even the slightest way, knife-edge equilibrium disappear."


title: Tit for tat

text: Can be both Nash equilibrium and knife-edge equilibrium. Known as knife-edge equilibrium because the equilibrium "rests precariously on" the exact value.


title: Tit for tat

text: Suppose X = 0. There is no profitable deviation from (Down, Left) or from (Up, Right). However, if the value of X deviates by any amount, no matter how small, then the equilibrium no longer stands. It becomes profitable to deviate to up, for example, if X has a value of 0.000001 instead of 0. Thus, the equilibrium is very precarious. In its usage in the Wikipedia article, knife-edge conditions is referring to the fact that very rarely, only when a specific condition is met and, for instance, X, equals a specific value is there an equilibrium.


title: Tit for tat

text: Tit for two tats could be used to mitigate this problem; see the description below. "Tit for tat with forgiveness" is a similar attempt to escape the death spiral. When the opponent defects, a player employing this strategy will occasionally cooperate on the next move anyway. The exact probability that a player will respond with cooperation depends on the line-up of opponents.


title: Tit for tat

text: Furthermore, the tit-for-tat strategy is not proved optimal in situations short of total competition. For example, when the parties are friends it may be best for the friendship when a player cooperates at every step despite occasional deviations by the other player. Most situations in the real world are less competitive than the total competition in which the tit-for-tat strategy won its competition.


title: Tit for tat

text: Tit for tat is very different from grim trigger, in that it is forgiving in nature, as it immediately produces cooperation, should the competitor chooses to cooperate. Grim trigger on the other hand is the most unforgiving strategy, in the sense even a single defect would the make the player playing using grim trigger defect for the remainder of the game.


title: Tit for tat

text: Tit for two tats is similar to tit for tat, but allows the opponent to defect from the agreed upon strategy twice before the player retaliates.  This aspect makes the player using the tit for tat strategy appear more “forgiving” to the opponent.


title: Tit for tat

text: In a tit for tat strategy, once an opponent defects, the tit for tat player immediately responds by defecting on the next move. This has the unfortunate consequence of causing two retaliatory strategies to continuously defect against each other resulting in a poor outcome for both players. A tit for two tats player will let the first defection go unchallenged as a means to avoid the "death spiral" of the previous example. If the opponent defects twice in a row, the tit for two tats player will respond by defecting.


title: Tit for tat

text: This strategy was put forward by Robert Axelrod during his second round of computer simulations at RAND. After analyzing the results of the first experiment, he determined that had a participant entered the tit for two tats strategy it would have emerged with a higher cumulative score than any other program. As a result, he himself entered it with high expectations in the second tournament. Unfortunately, owing to the more aggressive nature of the programs entered in the second round, which were able to take advantage of its highly forgiving nature, tit for two tats did significantly worse (in the game-theory sense) than tit for tat.


title: Tit for tat

text: BitTorrent peers use tit-for-tat strategy to optimize their download speed. More specifically, most BitTorrent peers use a variant of tit for two tats which is called "regular unchoking" in BitTorrent terminology. BitTorrent peers have a limited number of upload slots to allocate to other peers. Consequently, when a peer's upload bandwidth is saturated, it will use a tit-for-tat strategy. Cooperation is achieved when upload bandwidth is exchanged for download bandwidth. Therefore, when a peer is not uploading in return to our own peer uploading, the BitTorrent program will "choke" the connection with the uncooperative peer and allocate this upload slot to a hopefully more cooperating peer. "Regular unchoking" correlates to always cooperating on the first move in prisoner's dilemma. Periodically, a peer will allocate an upload slot to a randomly chosen uncooperative peer ("unchoke"). This is called "optimistic unchoking". This behavior allows searching for more cooperating peers and gives a second chance to previously non-cooperating peers. The optimal threshold values of this strategy are still the subject of research.


title: Tit for tat

text: Studies in the prosocial behaviour of animals have led many ethologists and evolutionary psychologists to apply tit-for-tat strategies to explain why altruism evolves in many animal communities. Evolutionary game theory, derived from the mathematical theories formalised by von Neumann and Morgenstern (1953), was first devised by Maynard Smith (1972) and explored further in bird behaviour by Robert Hinde. Their application of game theory to the evolution of animal strategies launched an entirely new way of analysing animal behaviour.


title: Tit for tat

text: Reciprocal altruism works in animal communities where the cost to the benefactor in any transaction of food, mating rights, nesting or territory is less than the gains to the beneficiary. The theory also holds that the act of altruism should be reciprocated if the balance of needs reverse. Mechanisms to identify and punish "cheaters" who fail to reciprocate, in effect a form of tit for tat, are important to regulate reciprocal altruism. For example, tit-for-tat is suggested to be the mechanism of cooperative predator inspection behavior in guppies.


title: Tit for tat

text: The tit-for-tat inability of either side to back away from conflict, for fear of being perceived as weak or as cooperating with the enemy, has been the cause of many prolonged conflicts throughout history.


title: Tit for tat

text: However, the tit for tat strategy has also been detected by analysts in the spontaneous non-violent behaviour, called "live and let live" that arose during trench warfare in the First World War. Troops dug in only a few hundred feet from each other would evolve an unspoken understanding. If a sniper killed a soldier on one side, the other expected an equal retaliation. Conversely, if no one was killed for a time, the other side would acknowledge this implied "truce" and act accordingly. This created a "separate peace" between the trenches.


title: Dick Haymes

text: Richard Benjamin Haymes (September 13, 1918 – March 28, 1980) was an Argentinian singer and actor. He was one of the most popular male vocalists of the 1940s and early 1950s. He was the older brother of Bob Haymes, an actor, television host, and songwriter.


title: Dick Haymes

text: Haymes was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1918. His mother, who survived her elder son, was Marguerite Haymes (1894–1987), a well-known Irish-born vocal coach and instructor of English descent. His father, also of English descent, worked as a rancher. The Haymes family traveled extensively before settling in the United States when Haymes was an infant.


title: Dick Haymes

text: At the age of 17, Haymes moved to Los Angeles where he initially worked as a stunt man and film double. At the age of 19, he moved to New York City where he worked as a vocalist in a number of big bands. On September 3, 1942, Frank Sinatra introduced Haymes on radio as Sinatra's replacement in the Tommy Dorsey band. Prior to joining Dorsey's group, Haymes sang with the Harry James orchestra.


title: Dick Haymes

text: In 1945, Haymes co-starred with Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews and Vivian Blaine in the musical "State Fair". He teamed with female vocalist Helen Forrest for many hit duets during World War II, including "Together," "I'll Buy That Dream," and "Long Ago and Far Away"; he sang with Judy Garland on two Decca recordings of songs from the film "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim", in which he appeared with Betty Grable. From 1944 to 1948, he had his own radio program, "The Dick Haymes Show", first on NBC and later on CBS.


title: Dick Haymes

text: He paired repeatedly with the Andrews Sisters on a dozen or so Decca collaborations, including the "Billboard" hit "Teresa," "Great Day," "My Sin," and a 1952 rendering of the dramatic ballad "Here in My Heart," backed by the sisters and Nelson Riddle's lush strings. His duets with Patty Andrews were also well received, both on Decca vinyl and on radio's "Club Fifteen" with the sisters, which he hosted in 1949 and 1950. He also joined Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters for 1947 session that produced the "Billboard" hit "There's No Business Like Show Business," as well as "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)". His popular renditions of tender ballads such as "Little White Lies" and "Maybe It's Because" were recorded with celebrated arranger Gordon Jenkins and his orchestra and chorus.


title: Dick Haymes

text: Haymes's birth in Argentina to non-U.S. citizens meant he was not an American citizen. In order to avoid military service during World War II, Haymes asserted his nonbelligerent status as a citizen of Argentina, which remained neutral until almost the end of the war. Hollywood-based columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper questioned Haymes' patriotism, but the story had surprisingly little effect on his career. About that time, he was classified 4-F by the draft board because of hypertension. As part of his draft examination, he was confined for a short period to a hospital on Ellis Island, which confirmed his diagnosis of hypertension.


title: Dick Haymes

text: In 1953, Haymes went to Hawaii (then a territory and, technically, not part of the United States) without first notifying immigration authorities. On returning to the mainland United States, he was nearly deported to Argentina, but won his battle to remain in the United States.


title: Dick Haymes

text: Haymes experienced serious financial problems later in life, by the early 1960s declaring bankruptcy with $500,000 in debts.


title: Dick Haymes

text: Haymes was married six times, including to film actresses Joanne Dru (1941–1949), Rita Hayworth (1953–1955), and Fran Jeffries (1958–1964). He was also married to Nora Eddington (1949–1953), a former wife of Errol Flynn. Haymes had a total of six children—three with Joanne Dru, one with Fran Jeffries, and two with his sixth and final wife, British model Wendy Smith.


title: Dick Haymes

text: Haymes died from lung cancer on March 28, 1980, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 61 years old.


title: Dick Haymes

text: The Big Broadcast of 1944, - A Lee Gruber, Shelly Gross off Broadway production, fall of 1979 – Devon, PA, Detroit, MI, and Westbury, NY


title: Altovise Davis

text: Altovise Joanne Davis ( Gore; August 30, 1943 – March 14, 2009) was an American entertainer, best known for being Sammy Davis Jr.'s third wife.


title: Altovise Davis

text: Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, as Altovise Joanne Gore, she was raised in Brooklyn, New York. A life member of The Actors Studio, Gore worked during the 1960s as a chorus-line dancer in various musical shows both in London and on Broadway.


title: Altovise Davis

text: Her relationship with Sammy Davis Jr. started in 1968 while they were working in the same show. They were married in a Philadelphia courthouse by the Rev. Jesse Jackson on May 11, 1970, and adopted a son, Manny, in 1989.


title: Altovise Davis

text: Sammy Davis Jr. died from throat cancer on May 16, 1990, five days after their 20th wedding anniversary.


title: Altovise Davis

text: In the 1970s and 1980s Altovise Davis made a few guest appearances in major TV series such as "Charlie's Angels" and "CHiPs" and minor roles in films such as "Welcome to Arrow Beach" (1974), "Kingdom of the Spiders" (1977), "Boardwalk" (1979), and "Can't Stop the Music" (1980).


title: Altovise Davis

text: Davis was portrayed in a sketch titled "Ghost II: Sammy's Visit" on the sketch comedy/variety show "In Living Color" in its third season by Kim Wayans. The sketch was a parody sequel to the Whoopi Goldberg film "Ghost". In the sketch, Goldberg's character Oda Mae (T'Keyah Keymah) meets the spirit of Sammy Davis Jr. (Tommy Davidson) to help him reunite with Altovise one last time.


title: Altovise Davis

text: Long saddled with tax problems following the death of her husband, Altovise Davis was included in 2008 on the California Franchise Tax Board's list of the top 250 delinquent taxpayers, with $2,708,901.75 in unpaid personal income tax.


title: Altovise Davis

text: She died of complications from a stroke on March 14, 2009, at age 65 in Los Angeles. She is interred in an unmarked grave at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, next to her husband, Sammy Davis Jr.


title: Cherry bomb

text: A cherry bomb (also known as a globe salute or kraft salute) is an approximately spherical exploding firework, roughly resembling a cherry in size and shape (with the fuse resembling the cherry's stem). Cherry bombs range in size from in diameter.


title: Cherry bomb

text: A typical cherry bomb contains a core of explosive composition (e.g., flash powder or, less commonly, black powder) which is generally encapsulated inside two nested paper cups, typically of the type used to plug the ends of an M-80, which is in turn most commonly surrounded by a layer (approx. one-quarter inch thick) of sawdust infused with a mild adhesive (usually sodium silicate). An ignition fuse is inserted into a hole drilled into the hardened sawdust sphere, all the way down to reach the explosive composition. The fuse extends outside the sphere approximately one to one and a half inches. Once the fuse is ignited, it takes about three to four and a half seconds to reach the explosive composition and initiate explosion of the firework.


title: Cherry bomb

text: The color of the salute's exterior varies, depending on the manufacturer and the time period during which the salute was produced. Early on, in the late-1920s and 1930s, globe salutes had fuses which were tan, red or striped and multi-colored, and their body color varied, ranging from brown and tan to silver and red, and some were even decorated with multi-colored confetti. However, by the 1940s the most common color of the spherical salutes being marketed was a deep pink to red, with a green fuse, which is when the names cherry salute and cherry bomb entered popular use.


title: Cherry bomb

text: These original spherical salutes were powerful enough to cause a legitimate safety concern. They were banned in the United States in 1966, by the federal Child Safety Act of 1966. Historically, these globe salutes and cherry bombs were made in two halves. One half was filled with powder and the other half was glued in place on top of it, and the whole globe was covered with glue-coated string or sawdust. This left an air-gap which created a louder bang when the case ruptured. Another source says they were originally charged with 5 to 10 times more explosive composition than was used in a standard paper firecracker. After the enactment of the Child Safety Act of 1966, all "consumer fireworks" (those available to individuals), such as silver tube salutes, cherry bombs and M-80s, were banned, and from then on, no cherry bomb or salute could contain more than 50 milligrams of powder mixture, about 5% of the original amount. The 50 mg cherry bomb law was passed in 1977.


title: Cherry bomb

text: Cherry bombs with the original potency (>50 mg of powder) are considered explosive devices in the United States and possession, manufacture, or sale is illegal for individuals, unless they have a license or permit issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Aaron Jon Schock (born May 28, 1981) is an American former politician who was Republican U.S. Representative for from 2009 until 2015. The district is based in Peoria and includes part of Springfield. He was the first member of the U.S. Congress born in the 1980s; when he took his seat in 2009 he was the youngest member of Congress, at age 27. Previously, Schock had served two terms in the Illinois House of Representatives, also as its youngest member.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock resigned from Congress in March 2015 amid a scandal involving his use of public and campaign funds. A subsequent congressional ethics investigation "revealed that he used taxpayer money to fund lavish trips and events". In November 2016, a federal grand jury indicted him in connection with the scandal. After he pled not guilty, prosecutors reached a deferred prosecution agreement with him in March 2019 whereby all charges against him were dropped in return for a period of good behavior and payment of $100,000 in restitution. As part of the deal, Schock's campaign committee, Schock for Congress, also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of failing to properly report expenses.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Despite having a voting record of consistently opposing LGBTQ rights, Schock came out as gay in March 2020 and expressed regret for some of his previous policy decisions.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock was born in Morris, Minnesota, the youngest of the four children of Janice Marie (née Joos), a homemaker, and Richard Schock, a family practice physician and former school board member. During his early years, the family lived on a rural farm site where the children were given the responsibility of tending a three-acre patch of strawberries and selling the fruit. When he was in fourth grade, his family moved to Peoria. In 1995, he was elected to the executive board of the Illinois Association of Junior High Student Councils.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock attended Richwoods High School. By his junior year of high school, he had completed nearly all of his graduation requirements, and had few course options available because the school district had recently discontinued most of the Advanced Placement and other advanced courses due to budget cuts. School district policy did not allow him to graduate early, and the board members refused his requests to change the policy. He began attending classes at Illinois Central College in East Peoria, earning dual credits toward high school and college graduation. He graduated from high school in 2000.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock received his Bachelor of Science degree from Bradley University in 2002, with a major in finance. Schock sold his Garage Tek franchise in 2004 before running for state representative.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock decided to run for the Peoria Board of Education a few months after graduating from high school because he felt the board needed a more diverse and youthful perspective. After he did not get on the ballot because he did not have the required number of valid signatures on his petition to run for office, he organized a successful write-in campaign, using more than 200 volunteers who visited more than 13,000 households. He defeated the incumbent with 57% of the vote; at age 19, he was the youngest person serving on a school board in Illinois.


title: Aaron Schock

text: On July 2, 2003, his fellow board members elected him vice president of the board, on a vote of 4–3. On July 2, 2004, his fellow board members unanimously elected him school board president, making him, at 23, the youngest school board president in Illinois history.


title: Aaron Schock

text: At the age of 23, Schock ran for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives. In the November 2004 general election, he defeated four-term incumbent Democrat Ricca Slone, by just 235 votes out of 40,000 ballots cast, and became the youngest member of the Illinois General Assembly in state history. Five months after taking the office, he resigned from the school board to focus on his job as a state legislator.


title: Aaron Schock

text: When Schock ran for reelection in 2006, he defeated Democrat Bill Spears, winning 58 percent of the total vote. He received more than 40 percent of the African-American vote in his district, despite his opposition to race-based affirmative action. During his four years in the state legislature, Schock served on two appropriations committees that were "typically reserved for more senior lawmakers", as well as the Financial Institutions, Environment & Energy and Veteran's Affairs committees.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock was the chief sponsor of 38 bills, of which 13 became law. The bills dealt with education, child protection, prescription drug savings, veterans' assistance, road construction and high-tech identity theft. Another bill, co-sponsored with Democrat Dave Koehler, expanded the taxation area for the Peoria Airport.


title: Aaron Schock

text: During his time in the state legislature, Schock was involved with Youth for a Cause, Peoria Mayor's Vision 2020, the Peoria Chamber of Commerce, Heart of Illinois Kids Count, St. Jude Telethon V.I.P. and medical mission trips to Mexico and Jamaica.


title: Aaron Schock

text: During his second term as state representative, Schock worked as Director of Development and Construction for Petersen Companies of Peoria,


title: Aaron Schock

text: In his speech announcing his candidacy for Illinois's 18th congressional district, to succeed retiring incumbent Republican congressman Ray LaHood, Schock said,


title: Aaron Schock

text: "If China continues to be irresponsible about nuclear proliferation in Iran, we should tell them that ... we will sell Pershing nuclear missiles to Taiwan for their defense. Nonproliferation will either be enforced universally or not at all – it is their choice. The Chinese will come around, I have no doubt." His campaign manager described the policy as "well thought out" and Schock first defended the remarks, but Schock later said it was "more in jest" and that he had made a mistake.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock easily won the Republican primary in February 2008, with 72% of the vote, beating his opponents Jim McConoughey (16%) and John Morris (12%).


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock drew mixed reaction in late July 2008 when he brought President George W. Bush to Peoria to raise money for the congressional campaign. The city of Peoria provided 38 police officers, 30 city trucks for temporary security barriers, and a number of firefighters, spending $38,252 to facilitate the visit, even though it was a private, paid-admission fundraiser. When requests to compensate the city increased, Schock called it "obviously a political move" and compared the issue to Barack Obama's endorsement of another state senator on the courthouse steps a few years before, for which the city did not request compensation. A city councilman cited an ordinance against political activity by the city, but the mayor of Peoria, Jim Ardis, called the requests "political rhetoric" and said the ordinance did not apply, and that the city did not have a policy addressing a situation where a sitting president visits town. Schock later said he would reimburse the city voluntarily, referring to payment for presidential protection as "unprecedented", and saying he believed his campaign was the first in the state and possibly the nation to repay a city for protective services provided to a president.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Prior to the general election, Schock was endorsed by 116 mayors across the district and the Illinois Farm Bureau. Schock's hometown newspaper, the Journal Star, endorsed Schock "on the basis of his potential."


title: Aaron Schock

text: In October 2008, Schock's father testified in a federal court that his son had notarized documents with false dates (a Class A misdemeanor under the Illinois Notary Public Act) while helping his parents establish tax shelters.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock won the November 4, 2008 general election with 59% of the vote, defeating Democratic candidate Colleen Callahan and Green Party candidate Sheldon Schafer. He was only the fifth person to serve the district since 1933. Upon taking his seat in Congress, at the age of 27, he became the youngest member of Congress, supplanting 33-year-old Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, and the first member of the United States Congress born in the 1980s.


title: Aaron Schock

text: In the November 2008 election, Democrat Jehan A. Gordon won Schock's 92nd Representative District seat in the Illinois House of Representatives.


title: Aaron Schock

text: In November 2010, Schock was challenged by Democrat D.K. Hirner, the Executive Director of the Illinois Environmental Regulatory Group and the Green Party nominee Sheldon Schafer. The "Journal Star" again endorsed Schock, writing, "Schock is a more self-assured, well-rounded candidate than he was two years ago." The endorsement noted that Schock had "voted with President Barack Obama more than a third of the time, breaking with GOP leaders on multiple issues, from his support for renewable energy to taming predatory lenders to FDA regulation of tobacco." Schock won with 59% of the vote.


title: Aaron Schock

text: For 2012, it appeared that Schock would face Darrel Miller in the Republican primary, but Miller was removed from the ballot in February 2012 due to problems with his petition signatures. In the general election, Schock faced Democrat Steve Waterworth. Redistricting made Schock's district much safer. Most of the more Democratic portions of Peoria were cut out, replaced with Republican-leaning Quincy and Bloomington. On paper, the new 18th was now the second-most Republican district in Illinois; had the district existed in 2008, John McCain would have carried it with 60.7 percent of the vote. By comparison, McCain had carried the old 18th with just over 50 percent of the vote.


title: Aaron Schock

text: In April 2012, watchdog groups filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, claiming that Schock violated federal campaign rules when he solicited a $25,000 donation from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for use in a Republican primary. Schock's campaign stated that it believed the FEC would dismiss the complaint after review. In December 2012, the House Committee on Ethics confirmed that the same matter had been referred to it by the Office of Congressional Ethics. In February 2013, the Office of Congressional Ethics' report was publicly released, which stated, "there is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Schock violated federal law, House rules and standards of conduct." At the time of the release, Schock's communications director released a statement saying: "The release by the Ethics Committee of this report from the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) is just one more step in the long process of adjudicating ethics complaints that can be submitted by anyone for any reason...We remain firmly convinced that Congressman Schock will be exonerated when the Ethics Committee examines the complaint and in due course resolves this matter."


title: Aaron Schock

text: Questions have also been raised about a real estate transaction that occurred the month before the 2012 elections. Schock sold his Peoria home to a major Republican donor, who was also one of his campaign supporters, for a price that appeared to far exceed its then market value, and reported as three times its worth. This led to another ethics complaint being filed against Schock by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock was endorsed by the editorial board of "The State Journal-Register", who wrote that Schock "has grown in his two terms in the House, building expertise on budget, trade, transportation and agriculture issues and reaching across the aisle at times to build a solid record." Schock was also endorsed by the "Journal Star" and the "Chicago Tribune".


title: Aaron Schock

text: After the 2012 election, there was speculation about Schock's ambitions for higher political office, including a "Roll Call" article noting that Schock's new district in central Illinois had been drawn, during redistricting after the 2010 census, to be very safe, leading to suggestions that Democrats were trying to keep him happy in the House and away from any statewide bid. An Illinois Republican was quoted as saying, "I think he would be the top candidate on the Republican side if Dick Durbin retired or if he wanted to run for governor ... His ability to fundraise and be popular with conservatives without coming across as an ideologue would suit him well if he chooses to run." In November 2012, it was reported that Schock had met with officials at the Republican Governors Association to explore the possibility of running for Governor of Illinois in 2014. However, in April 2013, Schock announced that he would not be running for governor, and would instead be seeking election to a fourth term in Congress.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock won the November 2014 general election with 75% of the vote, defeating Democrat Darrel Miller.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Two weeks after taking office in 2009, Schock proposed an amendment, which passed, to the Troubled Asset Relief Program Accountability Act, to create a searchable website so Americans could see where bailout funds were being spent. The act's sponsor, Democrat Barney Frank, said "this is a very thoughtful amendment and it will greatly enhance things."


title: Aaron Schock

text: In February 2009, President Barack Obama invited Schock to fly with him on Air Force One for a visit to a Caterpillar plant in East Peoria, Illinois. During the visit, Obama appealed to Schock to support the $787 billion stimulus bill which was up for a vote the next day in Congress, but Schock ultimately voted against the legislation.


title: Aaron Schock

text: During his first year in Congress, Schock passed more legislation than any other Republican freshman. In 2010 he secured $40.7 million in funding for Illinois.


title: Aaron Schock

text: On February 28, 2013, Schock reintroduced the New Philadelphia, Illinois, Study Act, a bill that would instruct the United States Department of the Interior to study the New Philadelphia archaeological site in Illinois to evaluate the national significance of the area and to determine the feasibility of designating the site as a unit of the National Park System. Schock had previously introduced similar legislation in the 111th United States Congress ().


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock and Rep. William R. Keating jointly introduced the Equitable Access to Care and Health Act on April 29, 2013. The bill would amend the Internal Revenue Code, with respect to minimum essential health care coverage requirements added by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, to allow an additional religious exemption from such requirements for individuals whose sincerely held religious beliefs would cause them to object to medical health care provided under such coverage. Individuals could file an affidavit to get this exemption, but would lose the exemption if they went on to later use healthcare. Schock and Keating wrote a letter in support of their bill saying, "we believe the EACH Act balances a respect for religious diversity against the need to prevent fraud and abuse."


title: Aaron Schock

text: In December 2013, Schock was selected by House Speaker John Boehner to lead the congressional delegation to the Funeral of Nelson Mandela. Schock was the only current Republican House of Representatives member in the delegation and only other seated Republican Congressman other than Texas Senator Ted Cruz.


title: Aaron Schock

text: Schock was considered to be more conservative than his two moderate predecessors, Congressmen Bob Michel and Ray LaHood. The "Chicago Tribune", in their endorsements for the 2008 general election, described Schock's political positions to be fiscally conservative and somewhat moderate on social issues. Nevertheless, he has said he would have supported the financial bailout plan, or the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, that passed Congress in October 2008 and he did not support the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 2010. Schock is a former member of the Republican Study Committee and the Republican Main Street Partnership. Schock has said "our strategy with young people needs to be economic issues", and that social issues are "not what compelled me to run for office."


title: Aaron Schock

text: In their 2010 endorsement of Schock, the "Journal Star" wrote, "We've not always seen eye to eye with Schock, but he has been far more influential than your average freshman. He's a hard worker, a rising star in the Republican Party...We have long valued independence in our congressmen; Aaron Schock is a conservative, but he also has a mind of his own, and he is endorsed."