title: Allan Bloom

text: In one chapter, in a style of analysis which resembles the work of the Frankfurt School, he examined the philosophical effects of popular music on the lives of students, placing pop music, or as it is generically branded by record companies "rock music", in a historical context from Plato's "Republic" to Nietzsche's Dionysian longings. Treating it for the first time with genuine philosophical interest, he gave fresh attention to the industry, its target-marketing to children and teenagers, its top performers, its place in the late-capitalist bourgeois economy, and its pretensions to liberation and freedom. Some critics, including the popular musician Frank Zappa, argued that Bloom's view of pop music was based on the same ideas that critics of pop "in 1950s held, ideas about the preservation of 'traditional' white American society".


title: Allan Bloom

text: Bloom, informed by Socrates, Aristotle, Rousseau, and Nietzsche, explores music's power over the human soul. He cites the soldier who throws himself into battle at the urging of the drum corps, the pious believer who prays under the spell of a religious hymn, the lover seduced by the romantic guitar, and points towards the tradition of philosophy that treated musical education as paramount. He names the pop-star Mick Jagger as a cardinal representative of the hypocrisy and erotic sterility of pop-rock music. Pop music employs sexual images and language to enthrall the young and to persuade them that their petty rebelliousness is authentic politics, when, in fact, they are being controlled by the money-managers whom successful performers like Jagger quietly serve. Bloom claims that Jagger is a hero to many university students who envy his fame and wealth but are really just bored by the lack of options before them.


title: Allan Bloom

text: Along with the absence of literature in the lives of the young and their sexual but often unerotic relationships, the first part of "The Closing" tries to explain the current state of education in a fashion beyond the purview of an economist or psychiatrist—contemporary culture's leading umpires.


title: Allan Bloom

text: The book met with early critical acclaim including positive reviews in "The New York Times", "Time", "Newsweek", the "Chronicle of Higher Education", and "The Washington Post". A second round of reviews was generally more critical.


title: Allan Bloom

text: Martha Nussbaum, a political philosopher and classicist, and Harry V. Jaffa, a conservative, both argued that Bloom was deeply influenced by 19th-century European philosophers, especially Friedrich Nietzsche. Nussbaum wrote that, for Bloom, Nietzsche had been disastrously influential in modern American thought.


title: Allan Bloom

text: In a passage of her review, Nussbaum wrote: "How good a philosopher, then, is Allan Bloom? The answer is, we cannot say, and we are given no reason to think him one at all." The criticism of the book was continued by impassioned reviews of political theorist Benjamin Barber in "Harper's"; Alexander Nehamas, a scholar of ancient philosophy and Nietzsche, in the "London Review of Books"; and David Rieff in "The Times Literary Supplement". David Rieff called Bloom "an academic version of Oliver North: vengeful, reactionary, antidemocratic". The book, he said, was one that "decent people would be ashamed of having written." The tone of these reviews led James Atlas in "The New York Times Magazine" to conclude that "the responses to Bloom's book have been charged with a hostility that transcends the usual mean-spiritedness of reviewers." One reviewer, the philosopher Robert Paul Wolff writing in the scholarly journal "Academe", satirically reviewed the book as a work of fiction: he claimed that Bloom's friend Saul Bellow, who had written the introduction, had written a "coruscatingly funny novel in the form of a pettish, bookish, grumpy, reactionary complaint against the last two decades", with the "author" a "mid-fiftyish professor at the University of Chicago, to whom Bellow gives the evocative name 'Bloom.'" Yet some reviewers tempered that criticism with an admission of the merits of Bloom's writing: for example, Fred Matthews, an historian from York University, began an otherwise relatively critical review in the "American Historical Review" with the statement that Bloom's "probes into popular culture" were "both amusing and perceptive" and that the work was "a rich, often brilliant, and disturbing book".


title: Allan Bloom

text: Some critics embraced Bloom's argument. Norman Podhoretz noted that the closed-mindedness in the title refers to the paradoxical consequence of the academic "open mind" found in liberal political thought—namely "the narrow and intolerant dogmatism" that dismisses any attempt, by Plato or the Hebrew Bible for example, to provide a rational basis for moral judgments. Podhoretz continued, "Bloom goes on to charge liberalism with vulgarizing the noble ideals of freedom and equality, and he offers brilliantly acerbic descriptions of the sexual revolution and the feminist movement, which he sees as products of this process of vulgarization."


title: Allan Bloom

text: In a 1989 article, Ann Clark Fehn discusses the critical reception of the book, noting that it had eclipsed other titles that year dealing with higher education—Ernest Boyer's "College" and E. D. Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy"—and quoting "Publishers Weekly" which had described Bloom's book as a "best-seller made by reviews."


title: Allan Bloom

text: Camille Paglia, a decade after the book's release, called it "the first shot in the culture wars". An early "New York Times" review by Roger Kimball called the book "an unparalleled reflection on the whole question of what it means to be a student in today's intellectual and moral climate."


title: Allan Bloom

text: In an article on Bloom for "The New Republic" in 2000, conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan wrote that "reading [Bloom] ... one feels he has not merely understood Nietzsche; he has imbibed him. But this awareness of the abyss moved Bloom, unlike Nietzsche, toward love and political conservatism. Love, whether for the truth or for another, because it can raise us out of the abyss. Political conservatism because it best restrains the chaos that modernity threatens". More recently, Bloom's book also received a more positive re-assessment from Jim Sleeper in "The New York Times".


title: Allan Bloom

text: Bloom's last book, which he dictated while partially paralyzed and in the hospital, and which was published posthumously, was "Love and Friendship". The book offered interpretations on the meaning of love, through a reading of novels by Stendhal, Jane Austen, Flaubert; Tolstoy in light of Rousseau's influence on the Romantic movement; plays by William Shakespeare; Montaigne's "Essays"; and Plato's "Symposium".


title: Allan Bloom

text: Of the work, Andrew Sullivan wrote "you cannot read <nowiki>[Bloom]</nowiki> on "Romeo and Juliet" or "Antony and Cleopatra" without seeing those works in a new light. You cannot read his account of Rousseau's "La nouvelle Heloise" without wanting to go back and read it—more closely—again ... Bloom had a gift for reading reality—the impulse to put your loving face to it and press your hands against it". Recollecting his friend in an interview, Bellow said "Allan inhaled books and ideas the way the rest of us breathe air ... People only want the factual truth. Well, the truth is that Allan was a very superior person, great-souled. When critics proclaim the death of the novel, I sometimes think they are really saying that there are no significant people to write about. [But] Allan was certainly one."


title: Allan Bloom

text: Bloom was gay. His last book, "Love and Friendship", was dedicated to his companion, Michael Z. Wu. Whether or not he died of AIDS is a subject of controversy.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: Stevo Pendarovski (, ; born 3 April 1963) is a Macedonian politician who serves as the 5th and current President of North Macedonia since 12 May 2019.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: Stevo Pendarovski was born on 3 April 1963 in Skopje. His family originates from Galičnik. He grew up in post-earthquake Skopje. His parents were teachers. Pendarovski started his elementary studies at the then-Dositej Obradovikj School in Skopje (current-day Panajot Ginovski School) while he finished his secondary studies at the Cvetan Dimov gymnasium.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: Pendarovski earned a Bachelor of Laws degree from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje in 1987, later earning his MA and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science from the same university.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: As a law graduate, Pendarovski first worked as a trainee in a law office in Skopje, but later left and got a job at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he worked as a security analyst. In 1998, he was appointed head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs' Analysis and Research Administration and a spokesman for the ministry, in the capacity of Deputy Minister of Public Relations. He was a spokesman for the Ministry of Internal Affairs during the country's 2001 armed conflict.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: In 2001, Pendarovski joined the cabinet of President Boris Trajkovski, where he worked as a national security advisor. President Trajkovski and eight other people, including three members of his cabinet, died in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 26 February 2004. When the plane crash happened, Pendarovski was in Dublin as a representative of President Trajkovski in the state delegation that was due to submit the country's application for EU membership that day, which was subsequently postponed.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: In 2005, he returned to the presidential cabinet, this time as an advisor to President Branko Crvenkovski on national security and later on foreign policy. Pendarovski left the presidential cabinet in 2009, when Crvenkovski ended his presidency.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: Pendarovski began teaching at the University American College in Skopje in 2008. Some of the areas he has taught and researched are: international relations, intelligence and national security, geopolitics, globalization, US foreign policy, EU foreign and security policy, small states in international relations and others.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: On 4 March 2014, Pendarovski was elected by the main opposition party Social Democratic Union of Macedonia as its candidate for the April 2014 presidential election.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: Pendarovski ran in the 2019 election as a presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia and the Democratic Union for Integration. He went on to win 436,212 votes in the second round of the presidential election, 51.66% of the votes cast.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Pendarovski introduced the nation's first ever state of emergency to contain the coronavirus, a move that paved the way for a 2022 parliamentary election.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: Pendarovski was seen walking with an 11-year-old girl with Down syndrome to school after he heard she was being bullied. President Stevo Pendarovski held Embla Ademi's hand as he walked her to her elementary school in the city of Gostivar in February 2022.


title: Stevo Pendarovski

text: Pendarovski is married to Elizabeta Gjorgievska, a medical doctor who works at the Clinic for Pediatric and Preventive Dentistry and a professor at the Faculty of Dentistry in Skopje. They have one child, named Ognen.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: Everyone's Hero is a 2006 American computer-animated sports comedy-drama film directed by Christopher Reeve (in his final directed film after his death in 2004), Daniel St. Pierre, and Colin Brady. Starring the voices of Jake T. Austin, Rob Reiner, William H. Macy, Raven-Symoné and Whoopi Goldberg, the film was produced by IDT Entertainment in Toronto with portions outsourced to Reel FX Creative Studios. Distributed by 20th Century Fox, "Everyone's Hero" was released theatrically on September 15, 2006, to mixed reviews from critics and earned $16 million. It also marked the final film for Dana Reeve before her death in March 2006, six months before the release of the film.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: In 1932 New York City during the Great Depression, Yankee Irving is a 10-year-old baseball fan whose father Stanley works as a custodian at Yankee Stadium. While the two are on the premises, a thief disguised as a security guard steals Babe Ruth's famous bat Darlin'. Stanley is falsely blamed and is temporarily dismissed until Darlin' can be found. Stanley blames Yankee for being alone in the locker room and setting him up. And Stanley accuses him by grounding him and sending him to his room. But the real thief is Lefty Maginnis, a cheating pitcher for the Chicago Cubs. Maginnis works for the Cubs' general manager Napoleon Cross, who desires to see the Cubs defeat the New York Yankees during the 1932 World Series.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: Determined to reclaim the bat and save his family from being evicted and being out on the streets, Yankee journeys to Chicago where the next World Series game will be held. After putting the bat back on the train, Yankee decides to return it to Babe Ruth and thereby clear his father's name and save his job. Darlin' and her counterpart Screwie, a baseball, gain the ability to speak and telling him that he is just a kid and the real world and playing baseball (with his punishment standing) would let his punishment be in danger. Unbeknownst to Yankee, Maginnis attempts to steal the bat from Yankee during a wild chase. Yankee meets others who help him in his quest such as hobos Andy, Louis and Jack, a girl named Marti Brewster, her baseball pitcher father Lonnie Brewster, who helps him drive to the city by teaching Yankee to set his feet right, and Babe Ruth. Maginnis steals Darlin and gives her to Cross, who kidnaps Yankee. During the game Cross manipulates Yankee inside the office and reveals his plans to him.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: A series of improbable coincidences allows Yankee himself to play for the Yankees. After Yankee escapes the office and evades several security guards, Cross tries to talk Babe out of accepting the victory, saying that Yankee is too young to be a counting player after he was trying to return Darlin’ to the latter. Despite this, Yankee has shown confidence in beating the Cubs and manages to hit Screwie after two strikes. While the numerous Cubs players tried to strike Yankee out, he dodges and trips them. Maginnis tries to make his last attempts to strike him out, but Yankee manages to outsmart him by jumping over him (as payback for getting both him and Stanley in trouble) and landing on home plate, scoring a run. This restores the morale of the Yankees, who score seven more runs to take the lead and win the World Series.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: The revelation of Darlin's theft leads to the arrest of Cross, who says that he was a fan that cheated. When his involvement as an accomplice and as a cheater is also revealed, Maginnis is kicked off the team and is also arrested. Stanley's name is cleared and officially reinstated as the stadium's custodian. Yankee, his parents and his new baseball friends, Screwie and Darlin, celebrate the Yankees’ World Series win in a victory parade where he becomes an official player while Cross is handing out the Babe Ruth bobbleheads with Maginnis sweeping the streets as part of their work release. Yankee happily plays catch with Screwie and the hobos' dog.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: "Everyone's Hero" was released on DVD on March 20, 2007, by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The movie was released on Blu-ray on March 5, 2013, and is exclusive to Walmart stores. The movie premiered on Disney+ on 7 May 2021, in Canada and the United States; prior to then it was available from launch on HBO Max.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: In its opening weekend, the film grossed $6.1 million in 2,896 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #3 at the box office, behind "Gridiron Gang" and "The Black Dahlia". By the end of its run, "Everyone's Hero" grossed $14.5 million in the US and $2.1 million internationally, for an approximate total of $16.6 million worldwide.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: Jack Matthews of the "New York Daily News" wrote, "Whoever wanders into the theater should leave a winner". "L.A. Weekly" called the themes "fairly pro forma" and cited the film's "antique Rockwellian look" as "its greatest pleasure". Gregory Kirschling of "Entertainment Weekly" rated it B− and wrote, ""Everyone's Hero" re-creates Depression-era America with surprisingly agreeable anachronistic panache", though he criticized the character designs.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: "The Austin Chronicle" primarily criticized "Everyone's Hero" for focusing too much on sentimentality over entertaining moments. Tasha Robinson of "The A.V. Club" opined the film "ranges from improbable to nonsensical to just plain dull. [...] The lame banter, the one-note characters, the predictable clumsy stabs at emotional uplift, or the booger jokes [don't help]." Screwie and Darlin were bashed on in a review by "The Washington Post"s Stephen Hunter, panning their inability to "move or express emotion;" and "Slant Magazine"s Ed Gonzalez disliked the lack of reasoning for anthropomorphic baseball gear for being "random." The anachronisms, such as its out-of-time slang, pop-song-dominated soundtrack, and use of an African-American-voiced talking bat, were also panned, with Gonzalez even calling the Great Depression setting "nonexistent."


title: Everyone's Hero

text: The story did have its supporters. "Variety" reviewer Joe Leydon lukewarmly honored "Everyone's Hero" as a "modestly engaging mix of broad comedy and nostalgic fable," picaresque plot and the inclusion of a Negro leagues player; however, in addition to disliking its gross-out humor, he questioned the rejection of segregation that occurred in the 1930s era the film is set in. He also suggested the film would have a hard time selling to children: "the toon’s target demo — i.e., toddlers and grade-schoolers — are too young to know about the Reeves, and pic could be a hard sell to youngsters who aren't baseball fanatics and recognize Babe Ruth only as the name of a candy bar." "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" writer Manny Lewis concluded that "the film certainly will appeal to kids; with its beating-the-odds theme and its dramatic finale involving a crucial at-bat in the World Series, it is reminiscent of a boyhood daydream." "Orlando Sentinel" film critic Roger Moore concluded that "the kids will laugh and there's enough heart in Everyone's Hero to bring it over the plate -- barely." MaryAnn Johanson similarly spotlighted the "sweet gentleness" and "can-do-it-iveness" that made its otherwise typical children's film plot stand out. "Time Out London" applauded the characters, especially Screwie, which recouped for its "lacking" amount of tension.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: The visuals garnered a mixed response, Robinson calling the animation "bland" and "generic" and Leydon "herky-jerky." Lewis found Screwie and Darlin's visual gags "stale" but praised those of Lefty, reasoning "his flailing limbs giving him a clumsy grace far more entertaining to watch than either the ball or the bat." Hunter acclaimed the animation as "quite advanced, bringing emotional subtleties, vivid eye dilations and expressions and complex movements to exceptional life"; while Moore opined "the animated people look plastic, but the backdrops are pretty, and the slapstick bits are a 'stitch'."


title: Everyone's Hero

text: In the United States, FX aired "Everyone's Hero" on July 12, 2009. In the United States, Telemundo aired the film on October 4, 2009. In Latin America, Cartoon Network Latino aired the film on November 23, 2011. In Asia, Disney Channel premiered May 29, 2012. In the United States, FXM aired the film on June 16, 2012. It also aired on Disney XD in the United States on April 8, 2013, and March 30, 2014. It also aired on Cartoon Network in the United States on November 5, 2016.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: Upon its launch in May 2020, the movie was available to stream on HBO Max as part of a longtime distribution deal the HBO network had made with Fox; the deal was still enacted even after the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney, which had its own streaming service, Disney+. However, on May 7, 2021, the film had moved from HBO Max to Disney+, though it's since been removed from the latter service as of September 2021 in the United States, but still available internationally.


title: Everyone's Hero

text: The soundtrack, released on the Columbia Records/Sony Music Soundtrax labels, features tracks by the star of the film Raven-Symoné, Grammy-winners Wyclef Jean, Brooks & Dunn, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and various other artists.


title: Hair whorl

text: A hair whorl is a patch of hair growing in a circular direction around a visible center point. Hair whorls occur in most hairy animals, on the body as well as on the head. Hair whorls, also known as crowns, swirls, or trichoglyphs, can be either clockwise or counterclockwise in direction of growth.


title: Hair whorl

text: Hair whorls on the head (parietal whorls) have been studied by some behaviorists. Most people have clockwise scalp hair-whorls. Parietal whorls which are considered to be normal scalp patterns could be a single whorl or double whorls. Cases of triple parietal whorls are less common.


title: Hair whorl

text: Amar J. S. Klar conducted research to see if there was a genetic link between handedness and hair-whorl direction. He found that 8.4% of right-handed people and 45% of left-handed people have counterclockwise hair-whorls. His research suggested that a single gene may control both handedness and hair-whorl direction.


title: Hair whorl

text: Another result concerning handedness of the progeny of discordant monozygotic twins suggests that left handed people are one gene apart from right handed people. Together, these results suggest (1) that a single gene controls handedness, whorl orientation, and twin concordance and discordance and (2) that neuronal and visceral (internal organs) forms of bilateral asymmetry are coded by separate sets of genetic pathways.


title: Hair whorl

text: One paper has suggested that abnormal hair whorls can be used to assess the likelihood of agitated behavior or temperament in cattle in the auction ring.


title: Angling

text: Angling is a fishing technique that uses a fish hook or "angle" (from Old English "angol") attached to a fishing line to tether individual fish in the mouth. The fishing line is usually manipulated via a fishing rod, although rodless techniques such as handlining and longlining also exist. Modern angling rods are usually fitted with a reel that functions as a cranking device for storing, retrieving and releasing out the line, although Tenkara fishing and cane pole fishing are two rod-angling methods that do not use any reel. The hook itself can be additionally weighted with a dense tackle called a sinker, and is typically dressed with an appetizing bait to attract the fish and enticing it into swallowing the hook, but sometimes an inedible fake bait with multiple attached hooks (known as a lure) is used instead of a single hook with edible bait. A bite indicator, such as a float or a quiver tip, is often used to relay underwater status of the hook to the surface.


title: Angling

text: When angling, the fisherman (known as the angler) will first throw the hook (i.e. "cast") to a chosen area of water, and then patiently wait for fish to attack and eat the hookbait. It is also not uncommon for the angler to scatter some loose bait (groundbait) around the spot before even casting the hook, in order to better attract fish with scents. If a fish has succumbed to its own feeding instinct and swallowed the hook (i.e. "bite" or "strike"), the hook point will pierce into and anchor itself inside the fish mouth, gullet or gill, and the fish in turn becomes firmly tethered to the fishing rod via the fishing line. Once the fish is hooked (often colloquially called "fish-on"), any struggles and attempts to escape will pull along the line, causing the bite indicator to signal the angler, who jerks the rod to further secure the hook anchorage (i.e. "setting the hook") and then tries to retrieve the line back, pulling the fish closer in the process. During the line retrieval, the angler will carefully monitor the line and rod tension to avoid equipment breaking. With stronger and feistier fish, the angler might need to temporarily halt or even reverse the line retrieval in order to prolong the struggle time and tire out the fish (i.e. "walking" the fish), before dragging it near enough to eventually lift it out of the water (known as ""landing"") for a successful catch. Sometimes a hand net (or "landing net") or a long-handled hook is used to make fetching the fish easier.


title: Angling

text: Angling is the principal method of recreational fishing, but commercial fisheries also use angling methods such as longlining or trolling. Catch and release angling is increasingly practiced by sport fishermen. In many parts of the world, size limits apply to certain species, meaning fish below and/or above a certain size must, by law, be released alive after capture. The species of game fish pursued by anglers vary with geography. Among the many species of saltwater fish that are angled for sport globally are billfish (swordfish, sailfish and marlin), tuna and grouper, while cod and sea bass are popular targets in Europe. In North America the most popular freshwater fish species include bass, northern pike/muskellunge, walleye, yellow perch, trout and anadromous salmon, tilapia, and panfishes such as crappie, bluegill and sunfish. In Europe, many anglers fish for species such as carp, pike, bream, tench, rudd, roach, European perch, catfish and barbel.


title: Angling

text: Angling is not to be confused with snagging, which is another fishing technique also uses line and hook to catch fish. The differences between the two techniques are that angling often uses very small hooks and relies on the target fish to actively swallow the hook in order to pierce "internally" into the mouth; while snagging uses very large, sharp, multi-pointed grappling hooks that actively pierce "externally" into the body/gill of the fish, and hardly ever involves any hookbait. Snagging also inflicts far more mutilating injuries to the fish and makes it very difficult to heal and survive even if the fish is released alive or manages to escape the snag.


title: Angling

text: The use of the hook in angling is descended, historically, from what would today be called a "gorge." The word "gorge", in this context, comes from the French word meaning "throat." Gorges were used by ancient peoples to capture fish and animals like seal, walrus and birds. A gorge was a long, thin piece of bone or stone attached by its midpoint to a thin line. The gorge would be baited so that it would rest parallel to the lay of the line. When the game would swallow the bait, a tug on the line would cause the gorge to orient itself at right angles to the line, thereby sticking in the fish or animal's throat or gullet. Gorges evolved into the modern fishing hook which is a J shaped wire with a loop on one end and a sharp point on the other. Most hooks have a barb near the point to prevent a fish from unhooking itself while being reeled in. Some laws and regulations require hooks to be barbless. This rule is commonly implemented to protect populations of certain species. A barbed hook could kill a fish if it were to penetrate the gills.


title: Angling

text: Fishing lines are long, ultra-thin, flexible cords that may come in monofilament or braided multifilament forms. Traditional fishing lines are made of silk, while most modern fishing lines are made from synthetic polymers such as nylon, polyethylene or polyvinylidene fluoride ("fluorocarbon") or copolymer materials. Important specifications for a fishing line include its material and forms, test weight, diameter, stretch, memory, abrasion resistance, UV resistance, and reflective and/or refractive visibility.


title: Angling

text: A fishing rod is a long, thin stick/pole that acts as an extended lever and allows the angler to amplify line movements while luring and pulling the fish. It also enhances casting distance by lengthening the swing radius (compared to that of a human arm) and increasing the launch speed of the terminal tackles (the hook, bait/lure, and other co-launched attachments such as float and sinker/feeder). Traditional fishing rods are made from single piece of hardwood (e.g. ash and hickory) or bamboo, while contemporary rods are usually made from alloys (e.g. aluminium) or more often high-tensile composite materials such as fibreglass or carbon fiber, and newer rod designs are often constructed from hollow blanks to increase the specific strength and reduce the overall weight. Modern rods also may come in multi-piece or telescoping forms, which are more portable and storage-friendly.


title: Angling

text: Fishing reels are manually cranked reels typically mounted onto a fishing rod, used to wind and stow fishing line when a long casting distance or a prolonged retrieval is expected. Traditional fishing reels are essentially compact windlasses with a "direct-drive" design, while modern reels since the Industrial Revolution typically are "multiplier" reels that use internal gear trains to gain a higher rotational speed. Most reels made from the latter half of the 20th century onwards have smoother line guides, anti-reverse designs, gear disengagement mechanisms and sophisticated drag and braking adjustments to help casting farther, more accurately and reliably, and to provide optimal pulling forces when retrieving the line.


title: Angling

text: A bite indicator is any device that can help to notify the angler that the hook has been swallowed by a fish. There are many types of bite indicators, the oldest and most ubiquitously used being the fishing float, which floats at the water surface with the hook and bait suspended below it. When the fish swallows the hook, the leader line between the hook and the float pulls the float deeper into the water, causing it to oscillates in and out of water in a bobbing-like fashion (hence its American English name, the "bobber").


title: Angling

text: In angling, two broad types of baits are used: "groundbait", which is thrown separately into the water in large quantities as an "appetizer" to olfactorily attract distant fish nearer to the angler's position; and "hookbait", which is directly attached to the fish hook in order to entice the fish into swallowing the hook along with the bait. In colloquial usage, the word "bait" refers specifically to hookbaits, which can be further separated into three main categories: "natural baits", "artificial baits" and "lures".


title: Angling

text: The choice of what bait to use is dictated mainly by the target species's diet, the habitat and weather conditions (which can alter the fish's foraging behavior), the angler's own personal preferences, and the local fishery regulations. Using an optimal angling bait can increase the chance of catching the intended fish, while conversely using an inadequate bait will greatly reduce the success rate, especially when there are other bait fishermen nearby.


title: Angling

text: Natural baits are food items that are present within the target fish's natural diet, which are usually animals at a lower trophic level in the food web. A natural bait angler, with few exceptions, will use a common prey species of the target fish as a bait. The natural bait used may be live food (known as a "live bait") or carcass (i.e. "dead bait"), and a bait improvised from grossly intact portions of a dead animal (e.g. fish head) is known as a "cutbait". Common natural baits for both fresh and saltwater fishing include earthworm, leech, insects and larvae, minnow, squid, prawn, crayfish, and even crabs, frogs and salamanders. Natural baits are effective due to the real texture, odour and movements of the bait presented.


title: Angling

text: The common earthworm is a universal live bait for freshwater angling, and grubs and maggots are also excellent bait when trout fishing. Grasshoppers, crickets, bees and even ants are also used as bait for trout in their season, although many anglers believe that trout or salmon roe is superior to any other bait.


title: Angling

text: Crayfish, which are preyed upon by a variety of ray-finned fishes, are also commonly used as bait, either live or with only the tail meat. They are popular for catching catfish, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, striped bass, perch and pike. However, studies had confirmed that introducing crayfish outside of their home range has led to various ecological problems of them becoming invasive species. Transporting crayfish as live bait has also contributed to the spread of zebra mussels, which are known to attach themselves onto crayfish, in various waterways throughout Europe and North America.


title: Angling

text: The capture, transportation and culture of bait fish can spread damaging organisms between ecosystems, endangering them. In 2007 several American states enacted regulations designed to slow the spread of fish diseases, including viral hemorrhagic septicemia, by bait fish. Because of the risk of transmitting "Myxobolus cerebralis" (whirling disease), trout and salmon should not be used as bait.


title: Angling

text: Anglers may increase the possibility of contamination by emptying bait buckets into fishing venues and collecting or using bait improperly. The transportation of fish from one location to another can break the law and cause the introduction of fish alien to the ecosystem.


title: Angling

text: Artificial baits are edible baits that are not directly acquired via natural means, but are made from other food materials via some kind of artificial processing. These can be fish food that are either homemade (e.g. dried food paste) or commercially purchased (e.g. boilies and feed pellets), or prepared/processed food such as cutlets, offals, dehulled kernels (e.g. peas and corns), dairy products (cheese and curd), bread or doughballs made from various ingredient mixtures (e.g. rice, semolina, cornmeal, bread crumbs and fishmeal, etc.), which can be used to attract omnivorous or even herbivorous fish. In lakes in southern climates such as Florida, panfish such as sunfish will even take household wheat bread or pet food as bait. These bread bait is prepared from a small amount of bread, often moistened and softened by saliva, then squeezed into a ball of the bite size of small fish.


title: Angling

text: Some baits are not actual food items but rather just "fake" replicas of food made of inedible materials (e.g. wood, metal, silicone rubber, plastics, etc), and are designed to entice predatory fish to strike by imitating the appearance and motions of real prey (shad, worm, frog, insect, crayfish, etc.). These inedible, replica baits are typically called "lures" instead of baits, although expressions such as "swimbaits", "crankbaits", "jerkbaits", "spinnerbaits" and "chatterbaits" are still used when describing specific types of lures. Unlike conventional baits, lures typically do not release any scents and rely solely on looks and sounds/vibrations to attract fish, although occasionally chemical attractants (e.g. dimethyl-β-propiothetin) are still used in addition either to impregnate favorable smells or to mask away unwanted plastic smells. Many anglers prefer to fish solely using lures, as these rely more on the user's rod and reel actions to successfully attract fish, and requires frequent casting and retrieving the line, and are thus more interactive and exciting.


title: Angling

text: Lures can be broadly categorized into "hard-body" and "soft-body lures", although hybrid lures with both hard and soft components are also common. Soft-body lures tend to give a more flexible and realistic "swimming" posture when towed through the water, while hard-body lures usually rely on stirring up more noise and turbulences. Some newer hard lure designs, however, are multi-jointed and can resemble soft lures in dynamics. Soft lures are typically coupled with a single conventional fish hook or a jighead, while hard lures commonly have more than one hooks (which are often treble hooks). When lures are used in combination with other terminal tackles (floats, sinkers, swivels, etc.) to produce sophisticated presentations, the entire lure package is known as a "rig". Common rigs with a soft plastic lure are the Texas Rig or the Carolina Rig.


title: Angling

text: Some fishing lures (e.g. spoons and spinnerbaits) may not even resemble any prey in looks, and may require skilled rod movements to impart an enticing presentation to the target fish, for example in jigging and topwater fishing. Some lures, such as the flies used in fly fishing, are ultralight and even require specialized gears and techniques to be cast properly. In modern times, there are also lures that photically attract fish with LED illuminiation, as well as battery-powered "bionic" lures that are essentially primitive robot fish that can swim around without needing to be towed by a fishing line.


title: Angling

text: Almost all recreational angling activities involve the use of fishing rods, which is used to manipulate the movements of fishing lines and to allow farther casting of baits/lures. The main rod fishing techniques are float fishing, bottom fishing, lure fishing and trolling, while the former two are often collectively known as "bait fishing" due to the exclusive use of conventional edible baits.


title: Angling

text: Float fishing is the most common method of angling, defined by the use of a compact light buoy attached to fishing line — known as a "float" (or ""bobber"" in the United States) — as the bite indicator. Due to buoyancy, the float remains at the water surface and suspends the baited hook at a predetermined depth. It can also drift in the prevailing current and carry the hook to areas of water otherwise inaccessible by casting alone. When the fish bites and swallows the hook, the float visually signals any forces exerted on the leader line below it, as the fisherman can then see it being pulled underwater and/or sideways.


title: Angling

text: Bottom fishing, also called "legering" in the United Kingdom, uses a weighted tackle called a "sinker" tied to the end of the fishing line to keep the baited hook close to the bottom of the water, in order to target groundfishes such as sucker, bream, catfish and crappie. The sinker can also be used to add momentum to the hook and help casting the line to a further distance. The method can be used both with handlining and rod fishing, and can be done both from boats and from the land. Specialized fishing rods called "donkas" are also commonly used for bottom fishing, and a quiver tip (sometimes coupled with a jingle bell) is used instead as the bite indicator.


title: Angling

text: Some sinkers are replaced by "feeders", which is designed to contain and release groundbaits to help attract fish towards the hook.


title: Angling

text: Lure fishing uses a type of artificial fake bait known as "lure", which is usually made from inedible materials such as wood, metal and plastics. Unlike conventional fishing baits, lures do not emit any scent and thus cannot attract fish olfactorily, but instead using prey-like appearances, movements, vibrations, bright reflections and flashy colors to attract and entice carnivorous predatory fish into mistakenly striking. Many lures are equipped with more than one hooks to better the chance of anchoring into the fish's mouth, though some hookless lures are used to bait the fish nearer so it can be captured via other means such as spearing, netting/trapping or capturing by hand. In addition to rod angling, handlining, longlining and commercial trolling also employ lure fishing.


title: Angling

text: Lure fishing is a popular style of recreational fishing. When fishing, a lure angler will repeatedly cast out the lure afar and then methodically retrieves the line, pulling the lure through the water and creating vibrations, turbulent splashes and/or a popping action in the process, which imitating a small aquatic prey such as a baitfish, a drowning insect or a frog. A skilled angler can explore many possible hiding spots for fish through lure casting such as under logs and on flats. No bite indicator is used, and when the lure catches the attention of a game fish and successfully results in biting/swallowing of the lure, the angler can detect it by watching for splashes and feeling any vibrations, rod bending and changes in line tension. Lure fishing also typically uses relatively lightweight fishing rods coupled with baitcasting reels or spinning reels.


title: Angling

text: Depending on the style of lure retrieval, lure fishing can roughly be separated into "power fishing", which relies on more frequent and vigorous lure retrievals to increase the chance of luring fish; and "finesse fishing", which focuses on the more lingered and vivid lure presentation within "each" cast-retrieval cycle to better entice fish.


title: Angling

text: Rod trolling is basically a simplified version of commercial trolling (see below), with fishing rods functioning as improvised outriggers to tow the baits/lures through the water, usually behind or beside a moving boat with the rod fixated to the gunwale. It can also be done by very slowly winding the line in (like "finesse"-type lure fishing) or even sweeping the line sideways, with the angler operating the rod from a static position (e.g. atop a jetty, pier or bridge).


title: Angling

text: A variation of trolling is "drift fishing", which is usually done from an unpowered boat in faster-flowing waters. The line is not actively reeled, and the bait/lure is allowed to drift and react freely to the turbulences in the water current, much like how a tethered kite would behave in a wind gust.


title: Angling

text: Although all angling techniques use hook and line, the term "line fishing" specifically refers to those that don't involve using fishing rods.


title: Angling

text: Handlining is angling with a handheld fishing line, baited with lures or bait fish just like normal rod angling. Handlining is the oldest angling technique used by mankind, and can be done from boats or from the shore. It is used mainly to catch groundfish and squid, but smaller pelagic fish can also be caught.


title: Angling

text: Deadlining is the practice of leaving a baited handline in the water (with the other end fastened to the bank) and returning later (usually overnight) to check and capture any tethered fish, similar to the use of a snare trap by hunters.


title: Angling

text: Longlining is a commercial fishing technique that uses a long heavy line with a series of hundreds or even thousands of baited hooks hanging from the main line via branch lines called "snoods". Longlines are usually operated from specialised boats called "longliners", which use a special winch to haul in the line and can operate in deeper waters targeting pelagic species such as swordfish, tuna, halibut and sablefish.


title: Angling

text: Droplining involves setting a longline vertically down into the water (instead of being more horizontally deployed like longlining) with a series of baited hooks. Droplines are weighted at the bottom and have a float at the top. They are not usually as long as longlines and have fewer hooks, and tend to be stationary.


title: Angling

text: Trotlining uses a longline that, instead of being tethered to the water surface only at one end, are fixed at/near the surface at both ends of the longline, with hooked snood lines hanging vertically down along the main line. Trotlines are used for catching crabs or fish (e.g. catfish), particularly across rivers. They can be physically set in many ways, such as tying each end to a fixed structure and span the line across the water in-between like a boom, and adjusting rest of the line with weights and floats.


title: Angling

text: Slabbing is a bass fishing technique that resembles jigging, and involves repetitively lifting and dropping a flat lure, usually made of 1 to 2.5 oz of lead painted to look like a baitfish (or heavy slabs of metal), through a school of actively feeding fish that the angler has located on a fishfinder. It is used on white and striped bass in the reservoirs of the southern USA.


title: Angling

text: Rodless trolling is typically used in commercial fishing, with one or more baited lines drawn through the water behind a slow moving fishing boat that is usually equipped with outriggers, downriggers and trolling motors. Trolling is used to catch economic pelagic fish such as mackerel and kingfish.


title: Angling

text: "Pahila" (literally meaning "pulled") is a Filipino traditional shoreline trolling, uniquely using baited hooks tied to a laterally flattened float called "palyaw", which is shaped like a small outrigger boat, a catamaran or a fish. A longline is attached to the float, and set unto the water's edge and dragged by someone running or walking along the beach. The combination of the water resistance and the diagonal pull forces the float outwards into deeper waters, like a kite. Once the line reaches its maximum line length, it moves rapidly parallel to the person pulling it along the beach, and is pulled back to the shore intermittently to check for catches. It is also called , , , , hilada, or , among other names, in other Philippine languages.


title: Angling

text: Laws and regulations managing angling vary greatly, often regionally, within countries. These commonly include permits (licences), closed periods (seasons) where specific species are unavailable for harvest, restrictions on gear types, and quotas.


title: Angling

text: Laws generally prohibit catching fish with hooks other than in the mouth (i.e. snagging, or "foul hooking" and "jagging") or the use of nets and hand hooks other than as an aid in landing a captured fish. Some species, such as bait fish, may be taken with nets, and a few for food. Sometimes, non-sport fish are considered of lesser value and it may be permissible to take them by methods like snagging, bow and arrow or spearing, none of which fall under the definition of angling since they do not rely upon the use of a hook and line.


title: Angling

text: Fishing seasons are set by countries or localities to indicate what kinds of fish may be caught during sport fishing (also known as angling) for a certain period of time. Fishing seasons are enforced (usually by water police) to maintain ecological balance and to protect species of fish during their spawning period during which they are easier to catch and more physiologically vulnerable.


title: Angling

text: Slot limits prohibit the harvest of fish where the measured lengths (from the snout to the end of the tail fin) fall within a protected interval. These are put in action to help protect certain fish (usually juvenile) in a given area. They generally require anglers to release captured fish if they fall within a given size range, allowing anglers to keep only smaller (though rare) or larger fish. Slot limits vary from water to water depending on what local officials believe would produce the best outcome for managing fish populations.


title: Angling

text: Individual fishing quota (IFQ), also known as individual transferable quota (ITQ), is a kind of "catch share" that sets a species-specific total allowable catch (TAC), typically by weight and for a given time period. A dedicated portion of the TAC (called "quota share") is then allocated to individual fishermen, and can typically be transferable (i.e. bought, sold or leased). As of 2008, 148 major fisheries (generally, a single species in a single fishing ground) around the world had adopted some variant of this approach, along with approximately 100 smaller fisheries in individual countries. Approximately 10% of the marine harvest was managed by ITQs as of 2008. The first countries to adopt individual fishing quotas were the Netherlands, Iceland and Canada in the late 1970s, and the most recent is the United States Scallop General Category IFQ Program in 2010 The first country to adopt individual transferable quotas as a national policy was New Zealand in 1986.


title: Angling

text: The minimum landing size (MLS) is the smallest fish measurement at which it is legal for the fisherman to keep a captured fish. The MLS depends on the species of fish, and allowed sizes also vary around the world, as they are legal definitions which are defined by the local regulatory authority.


title: Angling

text: The idea behind this limitation is that only the older, more mature adult fish get taken, leaving growing juveniles behind to continue breeding and propagating their species. There is some criticism of this legal requirement, however, as it applies artificial selection pressure to the fish population (see Fisheries-induced evolution) unless the anglers voluntarily practise catch and release indiscriminate of sizes. As larger fish (whose survival has been more successful so far) get taken out of the population, the genes for larger size are reduced or removed from the gene pool, while fish that mature at a smaller size survive longer to continue breeding, and the average size of fish stock shrinks over time. This has led to a collapse in the amount of catchable fish in some fisheries.


title: Angling

text: Although most anglers keep their catch for consumption, catch and release fishing is increasingly practiced, especially by fly anglers. The general principle is that releasing fish allows them to survive, thus avoiding unintended depletion of the population. For species such as marlin, muskellunge, and bass, there is a cultural taboo among anglers against taking them for food. In many parts of the world, size limits apply to certain species, meaning fish below a certain size must, by law, be released. It is generally believed that larger fish have a greater breeding potential. Some fisheries have a slot limit that allows the taking of smaller and larger fish, but requiring that intermediate sized fish be released. It is generally accepted that this management approach will help the fishery create a number of large, trophy-sized fish. In smaller fisheries that are heavily fished, catch and release is the only way to ensure that catchable fish will be available from year to year.


title: Angling

text: The practice of catch and release is criticised by some who consider it unethical to inflict pain upon a fish for purposes of sport. Some of those who object to releasing fish do not object to killing fish for food. Adherents of catch and release dispute this charge, pointing out that fish commonly feed on hard and spiky prey items, and as such can be expected to have tough mouths, and also that some fish will re-take a lure they have just been hooked on, a behaviour that is unlikely if hooking were painful. Opponents of catch and release fishing would find it preferable to ban or to severely restrict angling. On the other hand, proponents state that catch-and-release is necessary for many fisheries to remain sustainable, is a practice that generally has high survival rates, and consider the banning of angling as not reasonable or necessary.


title: Angling

text: In some jurisdictions, in the Canadian province of Manitoba, for example, catch and release is mandatory for some species such as brook trout. Many of the jurisdictions which mandate the live release of sport fish also require the use of artificial lures and barbless hooks to minimise the chance of injury to fish. Mandatory catch and release also exists in the Republic of Ireland where it was introduced as a conservation measure to prevent the decline of Atlantic salmon stocks on some rivers. In Switzerland, catch and release fishing is considered inhumane and was banned in September 2008.


title: Angling

text: Barbless hooks, which can be created from a standard hook by removing the barb with pliers or can be bought, are sometimes resisted by anglers because they believe that increased fish escapes. Barbless hooks reduce handling time, thereby increasing survival. Concentrating on keeping the line taut while fighting fish, using recurved point or "triple grip" style hooks on lures, and equipping lures that do not have them with split rings can significantly reduce escapement.


title: Angling

text: Sometimes considered within the broad category of angling is where contestants compete for prizes based on the total length or weight of a fish, usually of a pre-determined species, caught within a specified time (fishing tournaments). Such contests have evolved from local fishing contests into large competitive circuits, where professional anglers are supported by commercial endorsements. Professional anglers are not engaged in commercial fishing, even though they gain an economic reward. Similar competitive fishing exists at the amateur level with fishing derbies. In general, derbies are distinguished from tournaments; derbies normally require fish to be killed. Tournaments normally deduct points if fish can not be released alive.


title: Angling

text: A ten-year-long survey of US fishing club members, completed in 1997, indicated that motivations for recreational angling have shifted from personal leisure, outdoor exercise, experiencing nature and thrill of the catch, to the importance of family time and social bonding via recreational fishing. Anglers with higher family incomes went fishing more frequently and were less concerned about obtaining fish as food.


title: Angling

text: A German study indicated that satisfaction derived from angling was not dependent on the actual catch, but depended more on the angler's expectations of the experience.


title: Angling

text: A 2006 study by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries tracked the motivations of anglers on the Red River. Among the most often stated responses were the fun of catching fish, the experience, to catch a lot of fish or a very large fish, for challenge, and adventure. Use as food was not investigated as a motive.


title: Kerch Strait

text: The Kerch Strait is a strait in Eastern Europe. It connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, separating the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea in the west from the Taman Peninsula of Russia's Krasnodar Krai in the east. The strait is to wide and up to deep. The most important harbor, the Crimean city of Kerch, gives its name to the strait, formerly known as the Cimmerian Bosporus. It has also been called the Straits of Yenikale after the Yeni-Kale fortress in Kerch.


title: Kerch Strait

text: Taman, the most important settlement on the Taman Peninsula side of the strait, sits on Taman Bay, which is separated from the main Kerch Strait by the Chushka Spit to the north and the former Tuzla Spit to the south; the Tuzla Spit is now Tuzla Island, connected to the Taman Peninsula by a 2003 Russian-built dam, and to mainland Crimea by the Crimean Bridge opened in 2018. A major cargo port is under construction near Taman.


title: Kerch Strait

text: The straits are about long and are wide at the narrowest and separate an eastern extension of Crimea from Taman, the westernmost extension of the Caucasus Mountains. In antiquity, there seem to have been a group of islands intersected by arms of the Kuban River ("Hypanis") and various sounds which have since silted up. The Romans knew the strait as the Cimmerian Bosporus (') from its Greek name, the Cimmerian Strait"' (, "Kimmérios Bosporos"), which honored the Cimmerians, nearby steppe nomads. In ancient times the low-lying land near the Strait was known as the Maeotic Swamp.


title: Kerch Strait

text: During the Second World War, the Kerch Peninsula became the scene of much desperate combat between forces of the Soviet Red Army and Nazi Germany. Fighting frequency intensified in the coldest months of year when the strait froze over, allowing the movement of troops over the ice.


title: Kerch Strait

text: After the Eastern Front stabilized in early 1943, Hitler ordered the construction of a road-and-rail bridge across the Strait of Kerch in the spring of 1943 to support his desire for a renewed offensive to the Caucasus. The cable railway (aerial tramway), which went into operation on 14 June 1943 with a daily capacity of one thousand tons, was only adequate for the defensive needs of the Seventeenth Army in the Kuban bridgehead. Because of frequent earth tremors, this bridge would have required vast quantities of extra-strength steel girders, and their transport would have curtailed shipments of military material to the Crimea. The bridge was never completed, and the Wehrmacht finished evacuating the Kuban bridgehead in September 1943.


title: Kerch Strait

text: In 1944 the Soviets built a "provisional" railway bridge (Kerch railway bridge) across the strait. Construction made use of supplies captured from the Germans. The bridge went into operation in November 1944, but moving ice floes destroyed it in February 1945; reconstruction was not attempted.


title: Kerch Strait

text: After the war, ferry transportation across the strait was established in 1954, connecting Crimea and the Krasnodar Krai (Port Krym – Port Kavkaz line). Originally there were four train ferry ships; later three car-ferry ships were added. Train transportation continued for almost 40 years. The aging train-ferries became obsolete in the late 1980s and were removed from service. In the autumn of 2004, new ships were delivered as replacements and train transportation was re-established. The ferry line stopped operations in late 2020.


title: Kerch Strait

text: A territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine in 2003 centred on Tuzla Island in the Strait of Kerch. Ukraine and Russia agreed to treat the strait and the Azov Sea as shared internal waters.


title: Kerch Strait

text: On Sunday 11 November 2007 news agencies reported a very strong storm on the Black Sea. Four ships sank, six ran aground on a sandbank, and two tankers were damaged, resulting in a major oil spill and the death of 23 sailors.


title: Kerch Strait

text: The Russian-flagged oil tanker "Volgoneft-139" encountered trouble in the Kerch Strait where it sought shelter from the above storm. During the storm the tanker split in half, releasing more than 2000 tonnes of fuel oil. Four other boats sank in the storm, resulting in the release of sulphur cargo. The storm hampered efforts to rescue crew members.


title: Kerch Strait

text: Another victim of the storm, the Russian cargo ship "Volnogorsk", loaded with sulfur, sank at Port Kavkaz on the same day.


title: Kerch Strait

text: Russia and Ukraine agreed to guarantee each other freedom of navigation for ships of both nations in a 2003 naval treaty.


title: Kerch Strait

text: Since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, however, Russian forces have forcibly established a new status quo, now being the straits' sole controlling power.


title: Kerch Strait

text: Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov campaigned for a highway bridge to be constructed across the strait. Since 1944, various bridge projects to span the strait have been proposed or attempted, always hampered by the difficult geologic and geographic configuration of the area. Construction of an approach was actually started in 2003 with the -long dam, provoking the 2003 Tuzla Island conflict.


title: Kerch Strait

text: After the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea the government of Russia decided to build a bridge across the Kerch Strait. The 19-kilometre Crimean Bridge opened to road traffic in 2018 and the rail section opened in 2019.


title: Kerch Strait

text: Russian state-backed media claims that construction of the bridge caused increases in nutrients and planktons in the waters, attracting large numbers of fish and more than 1,000 of endangered Black Sea bottlenose dolphins. However, Ukraine claims that the acoustic noise and pollution from both the bridge construction and military exercises may actually be killing Black Sea dolphins.


title: Kerch Strait

text: When two Ukrainian navy vessels tried to pass under the bridge to reach Mariupol in November 2018, Russian forces responded by blocking the straits with a large container ship. Upon turning back, the Ukrainian ships and crews were fired upon and seized by the Russian coast guard.


title: Kerch Strait

text: On 15 April 2021 Russia decided to close the area of Kerch Strait to "warships and other state vessels" from 24 April to 31 October. The stated rationale for the closure are military exercises. The closure partially cut off the Ukrainian ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol from the Black Sea. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry protested against the decision, stating that "such actions by the Russian Federation are another attempt to violate the norms and principles of international law to usurp the sovereign rights of Ukraine as a coastal state, as Ukraine has the right to regulate navigation in these areas of the Black Sea". According to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the decision is a violation of the freedom of navigation under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.


title: Kerch Strait

text: The decision to close the strait was preceded by Russia's warning the United States after the Biden administration's plan to send two destroyers (USS "Roosevelt" and USS "Donald Cook") to the Black Sea amid Russia's increasing military presence near Ukraine. The Biden administration withheld the destroyers after fighting intensified between Ukrainian and Russian-backed separatist forces in an effort to alleviate the tension. Putin had threatened the safety of the US Navy ships, saying that they should stay away from the area “for their own good”. After the destroyers were withheld, Russia took advantage of the opening to close the Kerch Strait.


title: Kerch Strait

text: On 9 December 2021 Ukrainian command ship "Donbas" departed from Mariupol and approached Kerch Strait. It didn't give a notice in advance to pass the strait and was warned by Russian coast guard such a notice should be given for the safety of maritime traffic. At the moment around 80 civilian ships were waiting to pass the strait.


title: Kerch Strait

text: In the morning of 8 October 2022 at 06:07 (Moscow time), an explosion occurred on the road portion of the Crimean Bridge, causing major damage. Seven fuel cars of a passing railway train also ignited, causing an extensive fire on the parallel rail bridge, and two half-sections of the road bridge collapsed.


title: Kerch Strait

text: In order to improve navigational capabilities of the Strait of Kerch, which is quite shallow in its narrowest point, the Kerch–Yenikale Canal was dredged through the strait. The main channel can accommodate vessels up to 215 meters long with a draft of up to 8 meters with a compulsory pilot assistance. The canal is not straight, and its geometry further complicates safe navigation. The narrowness, limited depth, and turns of the main channel together with the often unpredictable effects of wind and visibility (fog) mean that there are strict procedures regulating strait transit. Transit of large vessels occurs on a one-way (alternating) group convoy basis. Transit procedures have remained unchanged, whether under Soviet, Ukrainian, or Russian jurisdiction. The Vessel Traffic Control Post in Kerch controls and oversees all traffic.


title: Kerch Strait

text: Several fish-processing plants are located on the Crimean coast of the strait. The fishing season begins in late autumn and lasts for 2 to 3 months, when many seiners put out into the strait to fish. The Taman Bay is a major fishing ground, with many fishing villages scattered along the coast.


title: Hana-bi

text: , released in the United States as Fireworks, is a 1997 Japanese crime drama film written, directed and edited by Takeshi Kitano, who also stars in it. The film's score was composed by Joe Hisaishi in his fourth collaboration with Kitano. is the Japanese word for "fireworks."


title: Hana-bi

text: "Hana-bi" won the Golden Lion at the 54th Venice International Film Festival and helped to establish Kitano as an internationally acclaimed filmmaker.


title: Hana-bi

text: Yoshitaka Nishi is a violent former police detective who had to retire after a tragic accident during a botched arrest in which a detective, Tanaka, was killed by the suspect while two others, Nakamura and Horibe, were severely injured. Becoming unemployed, Nishi spends most of his time taking care of his sick wife Miyuki, who has terminal leukemia. To pay for his wife's care, Nishi borrows money from the "yakuza", but is having difficulty repaying them.


title: Hana-bi

text: Meanwhile, Horibe, who becomes paralyzed after the incident, experiences a deep depression after his wife and daughter leave him. In a conversation with Nishi, Horibe hints he considered committing suicide, while adding that he would like to paint but cannot afford to buy himself the necessary materials. After a botched suicide attempt, Horibe receives art supplies mailed to him by Nishi. He then takes up painting and creates surreal works of art, and later in a pointillist style.


title: Hana-bi

text: Nishi buys a second-hand taxi cab and repaints it in police colors. He arms himself with a revolver and robs a bank dressed as a policeman. Using the money, he pays off the "yakuza" and gives some to Tanaka's widow. Nishi then leaves with his wife for a road trip. Nakamura learns from Tanaka's widow about the gift and advises her to keep the money. He also learns about the paints for Horibe and soon realizes who committed the robbery. Nakamura and his partner attempt to reach Nishi, eventually tracing his route as he and his wife embark on their trip.


title: Hana-bi

text: Meanwhile, even though Nishi has paid his debt to them, the "yakuza" deduce Nishi committed the robbery and attempt to extort additional money from him. The "yakuza" track down and confronts Nishi, but he kills them all in a violent shootout. The next day, Nishi and his wife are at a beach when they are found by Nakamura and his partner. They prepare to arrest Nishi, but Nishi asks Nakamura to spare him a moment of time and lies alongside his wife on the beach. The couple comforts each other before the camera pans away towards the ocean before two gunshots are heard in the distance.


title: Hana-bi

text: Horibe takes up painting in the pointillist style in order to compensate for his paralysis. In reality, these paintings were painted by Kitano himself, whilst in recovery from an infamous motorcycle accident in August 1994 that left half of his face paralyzed.


title: Hana-bi

text: Kitano's daughter and former singer, Shoko Kitano, makes a cameo appearance playing a nameless girl flying a kite in the film's closing scenes.


title: Hana-bi

text: The film's title is sometimes listed as ""Hana-bi"", ""hana-bi"" or ""Hanabi"" on the covers of international DVD releases and other references to the film in the West. However, the official title is actually "HANA-BI", fully capitalized, and is used on all Japanese licensed products, including theatrical posters, video covers and OST covers.


title: Hana-bi

text: Although it was not a big success financially, "Hana-bi" received critical acclaim and won the Golden Lion award at the 54th Venice International Film Festival and numerous other accolades. Kitano himself said it was not until he won the Golden Lion that he was accepted as a serious director in his native Japan; his prior films had been looked at as just the hobby of a famous comedian.


title: Hana-bi

text: Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 95% of 20 critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 8.3 out of 10. American film critic Roger Ebert rated it three stars out of four, citing its unusual approach toward serenity and brutality, calling it "a Charles Bronson "Death Wish" movie so drained of story, cliché, convention and plot that nothing is left, except pure form and impulse." Jaime N. Christley of "Slant Magazine" gave the film a perfect four star rating. David Stratton of The Movie Show called Hana-bi "an unclassifiable film" and "quite extraordinary," with co-host Margaret Pomeranz stating "I was ultimately so moved by it. It did what cinema is meant to do, for me anyway, and that's take me on a journey that is mine, that ultimately ends up inside me, in my heart." Stratton concluded that Hana-bi is "hard to describe to audiences, but all I can say is: Go and see it. It's great." The duo both awarded the film five stars out of five.


title: The Ropers

text: The Ropers is an American sitcom television series that aired on ABC from March 13, 1979, to May 22, 1980. It is a spin-off of "Three's Company" and loosely based on the British sitcom "George and Mildred", which was itself a spin-off of "Man About the House", on which "Three's Company" was based.


title: The Ropers

text: It was taped at CBS Television City in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, where its parent series, "Three's Company", was taping at the time, from February to April 1979 (Season 1) and from July 1979 to February 1980 (Season 2).


title: The Ropers

text: The series focused on middle-aged couple Stanley (Norman Fell) and Helen Roper (Audra Lindley), who were landlords to Jack, Janet and Chrissy on "Three's Company".


title: The Ropers

text: In this spin-off, the Ropers have sold their apartment building in the "Three's Company" episode "An Anniversary Surprise" (season 3, episode 20) to live in the upmarket community of Cheviot Hills, where the social-climbing Helen struggled to fit in with her neighbors. Stanley made little attempt to fit in with the standards of the community, thereby causing Helen much embarrassment.


title: The Ropers

text: As was the case during their time on "Three's Company", opening credits for "The Ropers" alternate between Audra Lindley and Norman Fell being credited first.


title: The Ropers

text: After the enormous success of "Three's Company" in its short first season in 1977, ABC head Fred Silverman was anxious to capitalize on the show's success. In early 1977, Silverman approached Fell and Lindley with the subject of doing a spin-off from the show after its first full season wrapped in the spring of 1978. Both actors as well as the "Three's Company" producers backed off as the show had yet to prove itself for an entire season. With the show's continued success in its second season, however, the idea was brought up again in 1978, this time by "Three's Company's" own producers as well as new ABC head Tony Thomopolous (Silverman had gone to NBC). The idea intrigued Lindley, but Fell was extremely reluctant, as he was satisfied with his role on a show that was already a proven hit. Fell feared that a spin-off would be unsuccessful and thus put him out of a good role and a job. To alleviate his fears, "Three's Company" producers contractually promised Fell that they would give the new series a year to prove itself. If the show were to be canceled prior to that time, then he and Lindley would return to "Three's Company". A reluctant Fell agreed to the new terms.


title: The Ropers

text: Like "Three's Company", "The Ropers" was introduced as a late season replacement series in the spring of 1979 premiering the same night as "Three's Company" on ABC's successful Tuesday night lineup, airing at 10pm. In its first season, the ratings for the show were very high (the show finished at #8 for the 1978–79 season), and had the second-highest series premiere rating at the time. After the season premiere, "Three's Company" went on hiatus, but "The Ropers" still did well. ABC reran the episodes over the summer of 1979 (in August on Sundays) where they continued to achieve high ratings leading many to believe that the series would enjoy a long run.


title: The Ropers

text: At the beginning of the 1979–80 season, ABC moved the show to Saturdays at 8pm, resulting in an audience drop that put it near the bottom of the ratings. Being placed on Saturday nights, rather than on the ABC Tuesday night lineup, caused an immediate fall into the bottom ten (#52 out of 61 shows for the week of September 17–23, its second week of the season) as the show was in direct competition with the NBC show "CHiPs". The show later moved to 8:30pm on Saturdays by January 1980. The move upset Fell to the point that he actually went to ABC headquarters in New York to plead with the network to move the show to a better time slot. His effort was in vain, however, and the show continued to pull in low ratings. The drop in ratings and the fact that the show wasn't pulling in the key young demographic audience led to announcement of the show's cancellation by ABC in May 1980. The last three episodes aired Thursdays at 9:30pm after "Barney Miller" in May 1980. Audra Lindley stated in Chris Mann's 1997 book about "Three's Company" that she was surprised that "The Ropers" had been canceled after a late-season surge in the series ratings had allowed it to finish the 1979–80 season at number 25; the Nielsen ratings for that year, however, list the series "Soap" at number 25.


title: The Ropers

text: With the series canceled, Fell approached "Three's Company" producers about the Ropers returning to the show. However, during the time "The Ropers" was on the air, the landlord characters had been replaced on "Three's Company" by Ralph Furley (Don Knotts). The addition had worked well and "Three's Company" had retained its popularity. The idea of returning Fell and Lindley to their original "Three's Company" roles was undesirable to producers and ABC, mainly because they had one character playing the landlord role now as opposed to two, which would require more money to be paid out per episode; the cancellation of "The Ropers" came just as Suzanne Somers began to renegotiate her contract, which would lead to her very public contract dispute during the 1980–81 television season that led to her departure from the series. The cancellation of "The Ropers" came just one month after the one-year contractual deadline had passed. Fell would later state that he always believed the decision to pull the plug on the show had been made much earlier, but that the network deliberately postponed making the cancellation official until after the one-year mark specifically to be relieved of the obligation to allow Fell and Lindley to return to "Three's Company". There was an attempt by producers to sell the show to Silverman over at NBC; Silverman, however, passed on it too.


title: The Ropers

text: Despite the hard feelings, in March 1981 both Fell and Lindley made one final guest appearance on "Three's Company" (in Season 5, Episode #18 "Night of The Ropers") nearly a year after the end of their own series before the characters were retired for good. For audiences, it was a chance to see all of the three landlord characters – played by Fell, Lindley, and Knotts – on the same stage.


title: The Ropers

text: Tambor appeared on "Three's Company" that same season playing a different character, a wealthy but unwelcome suitor of Chrissy's cousin Cindy (Season 5, Episode #13). Tambor also made other guest appearances on "Three's Company," portraying different characters.


title: The Ropers

text: In 1986, distributor D. L. Taffner revealed its plans for a spin-off of "The Ropers" called "Three Apartments". The spin-off would again star Fell and Lindley, this time as landlords of a three-unit apartment building. The show was offered as either a two-year, 44-episode package in syndication starting April 1987, or as a 52-episode package on NBC-owned station checkerboards beginning in September 1987. Guest stars would include John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt, Richard Kline and Don Knotts from "Three's Company"; Robert Mandan from "Three's a Crowd"; and Jim J. Bullock and Nancy Dussault from "Too Close for Comfort"/"The Ted Knight Show". "Three Apartments" was to replace "The Ted Knight Show", a fellow Taffner-distributed show that ended production after the death of show namesake Ted Knight in August 1986. The spin-off was withdrawn in January 1987 because of a glut of syndicated sitcom offerings, a lack of time slots, and a difficult advertising market.


title: The Ropers

text: "The Ropers" was aired in syndication on local channels in the 1980s and early 1990s, but has had limited airings in recent years, likely because, due to its relatively short network run—roughly a season-and-a-half—there aren't enough episodes to strip the show. Two episodes of the series, however, play in the syndication package of "Three's Company". When initially offered in syndication, the series ran under the title Three's Company's Friends, The Ropers. That version used an instrumental version of the original series' theme song. Six episodes of the series were aired on TV Land in September 2006, and four episodes were aired on WGN America in October 2008.


title: The Ropers

text: Beginning in January 2011 Antenna TV, a television network designed for digital television subchannels and owned by Tribune Broadcasting, aired the sitcom. The series started on Tuesday, February 15, 2011, and went through one entire rotation of all episodes before being removed from the lineup. On August 29, 2011, the show returned to the lineup as the "Three's Company" cycle again came to the point of the series where the Ropers left.


title: The Ropers

text: Antenna TV usually shows back-to-back episodes of "Three's Company". But when the cycle comes to the point of the Ropers' departure, the network then airs "The Ropers" following a single episode of "Three's Company" until the end of the "Ropers" cycle, then resumes the back-to-back "Three's Company" airings.


title: The Ropers

text: Beginning in 2015, Antenna TV began airing the series on weekends back to back with the other "Three's Company" spin-off series "Three's a Crowd".


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: The separation of Panama from Colombia was formalized on 3 November 1903, with the establishment of the Republic of Panama. From the Independence of Panama from Spain in 1821, Panama had simultaneously declared independence from Spain and joined itself to the confederation of Gran Colombia through the Independence Act of Panama. Panama was always tenuously connected to the rest of the country to the south, owing to its remoteness from the government in Bogotá and lack of a practical overland connection to the rest of Gran Colombia. In 1840–41, a short-lived independent republic was established under Tomás de Herrera. After rejoining Colombia following a 13-month independence, it remained a province which saw frequent rebellious flare-ups, notably the Panama crisis of 1885, which saw the intervention of the United States Navy, and a reaction by the Chilean Navy.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: During the construction of the Panama canal, the initial attempts by France to construct a sea-level canal across the isthmus were secured through treaty with Colombia; however French cost overruns and corruption in the Panama scandals led to abandonment of the Canal for a decade. During the intervening years, local separatists used the political instability of the Thousand Days' War to agitate for political separation from Colombia and establishment of an independent republic. When the United States sought to take over the canal project, the government of Colombia proved difficult to work with, and with the cooperation of French financier Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla, Panama simultaneously declared independence from Colombia and negotiated a treaty granting the U.S. the right to construct the canal.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: The United States was the first country to recognize the independence of the nascent republic, sending the U.S. Navy to prevent Colombia from retaking the territory during the first days of the new Republic. In exchange for its role in defending the Republic, and for constructing the canal, the U.S. was granted a perpetual lease on the land around the canal, known as the Panama Canal Zone, which was later returned to Panama under the terms of the Torrijos–Carter Treaties.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: After the United States, many other nations quickly recognized the independent republic, though Colombia refused to do so until 1909, after receiving a $500,000 concession from Panama to cover its share of the debts it owed at independence.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: After it achieved independence from Spain on November 28, 1821, Panama became a part of the Republic of Gran Colombia which consisted of today's Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and most of Ecuador.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: The political struggle between federalists and centralists that followed independence from Spain resulted in a changing administrative and jurisdictional status for Panama. Under centralism Panama was established as the Department of the Isthmus and during federalism as the Sovereign State of Panama.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: An 1846 treaty between Colombia and the United States, the Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty, pledged the United States to maintain "neutrality" in Panama in exchange for transit rights in the isthmus on behalf of Colombia. In March 1885 Colombia thinned its military presence in Panama, sending troops stationed there to fight rebels in other provinces. These favourable conditions prompted an insurgency in Panama. The United States Navy was sent there to keep order, in spite of invoking its obligations according to the treaty of 1846.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: In 1885 the United States occupied the city of Colón, Panama. Chile, which at that time had the strongest fleet in the Americas, sent the cruiser to occupy Panama City in response. "Esmeralda"s captain was ordered to stop by any means an eventual annexation of Panama by the United States.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: The Thousand Days' War (1899–1902) was one of the many armed struggles between the Liberal and Conservative Parties which devastated Colombia, including Panama, during the 19th century. This new civil war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Wisconsin. However, the Liberal leader Victoriano Lorenzo refused to accept the terms of the agreement and was executed on May 15, 1903.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: On July 25, 1903, the headquarters of the Panamanian newspaper "El Lápiz" were assaulted by orders of the military commander for Panama, General José Vásquez Cobo, brother of the then Colombian Minister of War, as a retaliation for the publication of a detailed article narrating the execution and protests in Panama. This event damaged the trust of Panamanian liberals in the Conservative government based in Bogotá, and they later joined the separatist movement.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: In 1903, the United States and Colombia signed the Hay–Herrán Treaty to finalize the construction of the Panama Canal but the process was not completed because the Congress of Colombia rejected the measure (which the Colombian government had proposed) on August 12, 1903. The United States then moved to support the separatist movement in Panama to gain control over the remnants of the French attempt at building a canal.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: Panamanian politician José Domingo De Obaldía was selected for the Governor of the Isthmus of Panama office that he had previously held, and was supported by separatist movements. Another Panamanian politician named José Agustín Arango began to plan the revolution and separation. The separatists wanted to negotiate the construction of the Panama Canal directly with the United States due to the negativity of the Colombian government.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: The separatist network was formed by Arango, Dr. Manuel Amador Guerrero, General Nicanor de Obarrio, Ricardo Arias, Federico Boyd, Carlos Constantino Arosemena, Tomás Arias, Manuel Espinosa Batista and others. Amador Guerrero was in charge of going to the United States to get support for the separatist plan; he also gained the support of important Panamanian liberal leaders and the support of another military commander, Esteban Huertas.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: With strong support the separatist movement set November 1903 as the time for the separation. However, rumors in Colombia spread but the information managed by the government of Colombia indicated that Nicaragua was planning to invade a region of northern Panama known as the Calovébora. The Government deployed troops from the Tiradores Battalion from Barranquilla, and instructed the commander to take over the functions of the Governor of Panama José Domingo de Obaldía and General Esteban Huertas, whom the government did not trust.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: The Tiradores Battalion was led by Generals Juan Tovar and Ramón Amaya and arrived in the Panamanian city of Colón the morning of November 3, 1903. It suffered delays on its way to Panama City caused by the complicity of the Panama Railway authorities who sympathized with the separatist movement. On arrival in Panama City, the troops were put under the command of Col. Eliseo Torres. General Huertas commander of the Colombia Battalion in Panama ordered the arrest of Tovar and his other officials.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: The Colombian gunboat "Bogotá" fired shells upon Panama City the night of November 3, causing injuries and mortally wounding Mr. Wong Kong Yee of Hong Sang, China. He was the only casualty of independence.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: A United States Navy gunboat, , commanded by Commander John Hubbard, who had also helped to delay the disembarkation of the Colombian troops in Colón, continued to interfere with their mission by insisting that the "neutrality" of the railway had to be respected.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: With the suppression of the Colombian troops, the Revolutionary Junta declared the secession of the Isthmus and later its independence, with the declaration of the Republic of Panama. A naval squadron in the Bay of Panama was captured without resistance.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: Demetrio H. Brid president of the Municipal Council of Panama became the "de facto" President of Panama and on November 4, 1903 appointed a Provisional Government Junta, which governed the country until February 1904 and the Constituent National Convention. The convention elected Manuel Amador Guerrero as first constitutional president. News of the separation of Panama from Colombia reached Bogotá only on November 6, 1903 due to a problem with the submarine cables.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: On November 13, 1903, the United States formally recognized the Republic of Panama (after recognizing it unofficially on November 6 and 7). On November 18, 1903, the United States Secretary of State John Hay and Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla signed the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty. No Panamanians signed the treaty, although Bunau-Varilla was present as the diplomatic representative of Panama (a role he had purchased through financial assistance to the rebels), even though he had not lived in Panama for seventeen years prior to independence, and never returned afterwards. The treaty was later approved by the Panamanian government and the Senate of the United States.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: The ambassador of Colombia in Ecuador Emiliano Isaza was informed of the situation in Panama but did not inform his government to prevent a revolt in Bogotá. The government of Colombia then sent a diplomatic mission to Panama in an effort to make them reconsider by suggesting an approval by the senate of Colombia if they reconsidered the Hay–Herrán Treaty instead of the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty and also proposed making Panama City the capital of Colombia.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: The mission met aboard the ship with the Panamanian delegation formed by Constantino Arosemena, Tomás Arias and Eusebio A. Morales, which rejected all proposals. Colombia then sent later a delegation of prominent politicians and political figures; General Rafael Reyes, Pedro Nel Ospina, Jorge Holguín and Lucas Caballero who met with the same representative for Panama and Carlos Antonio Mendoza, Nicanor de Obarrio y Antonio Zubieta, without reaching any consensus.


title: Separation of Panama from Colombia

text: Panama's independence alarmed Chilean authorities about a growing influence of the United States. This made Chile put great efforts to deny a United States purchase of the Galápagos Islands or the establishment of a United States Guantanamo-like naval base there. Chilean diplomacy was backed by Germany and Britain on this issue.


title: Morgan (singer)

text: Marco Castoldi (born 23 December 1972), better known by his stage name Morgan, is an Italian singer and musician. His musical genres are mainly alternative rock and electronic rock, sometimes experimental rock and synthpop. He has also been a judge for seven seasons in the Italian version of" The X Factor," winning five of them through acts he mentored: Aram Quartet (series 1 - 2008), Matteo Becucci (series 2 - 2008–9), Marco Mengoni (series 3 - 2009), Chiara Galiazzo (series 6 - 2012) and Michele Bravi (series 7 - 2013).


title: Tabletop game

text: Tabletop games or tabletops are games that are normally played on a table or other flat surface, such as board games, card games, dice games, miniature wargames, or tile-based games.


title: Tabletop game

text: Games like chess and draughts are examples of games belonging to the board game category. Other games, however, use various attributes and cannot be classified unambiguously (e.g. "Monopoly" utilises a board as well as dice and cards).


title: Tabletop game

text: For several of these categories there are sub-categories and even sub-sub-categories or genres. For instance, German-style board games, board wargames, and are all types of board games that differ markedly in style and general interest.


title: Tabletop game

text: A refereed game could also include various aids to play, including scenario packs and computer game aids. Role-playing games can include campaign settings and various supplementary manuals and notes.


title: Tabletop game

text: As an alternative to classifying games by equipment, they can also be classified according to the elements of chance involved.


title: Tabletop game

text: Examples of the chance classification for some well-known tabletop games are given in the table below.


title: Tabletop game

text: Numerous independent, local groups run by gamers exist to play tabletop games. Additionally, many colleges have student run organizations pertaining solely to table top gaming. The Collegiate Association of Table Top Gamers is one such organization that has a few chapters at different schools.


title: Tabletop game

text: Digital tabletops games are digital variations of tabletop games, which include straight reproductions of existing physical tabletop games, video games that use tabletop game principles as part of their gameplay mechanics, and tabletop simulators that provide a virtual tabletop for conducting tabletop games online.


title: Comparison of karate styles

text: The table contains a comparison of karate styles. Some of the distinguishing features are listed, such as lineage, general form of stances, the balance of hard and soft techniques, and the number and names of kata forms.


title: Comparison of karate styles

text: The four major karate styles developed in Japan, especially in Okinawa are Shotokan, Wado-ryu, Shito-ryu, and Goju-ryu; many other styles of Karate are derived from these four. The first three of these styles find their origins in the Shorin-Ryu style from Shuri, Okinawa, while Goju-ryu finds its origins in Naha. Shuri karate is rather different from Naha karate, drawing on different predecessor influences. Shito-ryu can be regarded as a blend of Shuri and Naha traditions as its kata incorporate both Shuri and Naha kata.


title: Comparison of karate styles

text: When it comes to individual karate styles; Shotokan involves long, deep stances and powerful long range techniques. Shito-ryu, on the other hand, uses more upright stances and stresses speed rather than power in its long and middle range techniques. Wado-ryu too employs shorter, more natural stances and the style is characterised by the emphasis on body shifting to avoid attacks. Kyokushin, an extremely hard style, involves breaking more often than the other styles and full contact, knockdown sparring as a main part of its training. Goju-ryu places emphasis on Sanchin kata and its rooted Sanchin stance, and it features grappling and close-range techniques.


title: Investment casting

text: Investment casting is an industrial process based on lost-wax casting, one of the oldest known metal-forming techniques. The term "lost-wax casting" can also refer to modern investment casting processes.


title: Investment casting

text: Investment casting has been used in various forms for the last 5,000 years. In its earliest forms, beeswax was used to form patterns necessary for the casting process. Today, more advanced waxes, refractory materials and specialist alloys are typically used for making patterns. Investment casting is valued for its ability to produce components with accuracy, repeatability, versatility and integrity in a variety of metals and high-performance alloys.


title: Investment casting

text: The fragile wax patterns must withstand forces encountered during the mould making. Much of the wax used in investment casting can be reclaimed and reused. Lost-foam casting is a modern form of investment casting that eliminates certain steps in the process.


title: Investment casting

text: Investment casting is so named because the process invests (surrounds) the pattern with refractory material to make a mould, and a molten substance is cast into the mold. Materials that can be cast include stainless steel alloys, brass, aluminium, carbon steel and glass. The cavity inside the refractory mould is an exact duplicate of the desired part. Due to the hardness of refractory materials used, investment casting can produce products with exceptional surface qualities, which can reduce the need for secondary machine processes.


title: Investment casting

text: Water glass and silica sol investment casting are the two primary investment casting methods nowadays. The main differences are the surface roughness and cost of casting. Water glass method dewaxes into the high-temperature water, and the ceramic mould is made of water glass quartz sand. Silica sol method dewaxes into the flash fire, and silica sol zircon sand makes the ceramic mould. Silica sol method costs more but has the better surface than the water glass method.


title: Investment casting

text: The process can be used for both small castings of a few ounces and large castings weighing several hundred pounds. It can be more expensive than die casting or sand casting, but per-unit costs decrease with large volumes. Investment casting can produce complicated shapes that would be difficult or impossible with other casting methods. It can also produce products with exceptional surface qualities and low tolerances with minimal surface finishing or machining required.


title: Investment casting

text: Castings can be made from an original wax model (the direct method) or from wax replicas of an original pattern that need not be made from wax (the indirect method). The following steps describe the indirect process, which can take two to seven days to complete.


title: Investment casting

text: The main disadvantage is the overall cost, especially for short-run productions. Some of the reasons for the high cost include specialized equipment, costly refractories, and binders, many operations to make a mould, a lot of labor is needed and occasional minute defects occur. However, the cost is still less than producing the same part by machining from bar stock; for example, gun manufacturing has moved to investment casting to lower costs of producing pistols.


title: Investment casting

text: The variation on the gravity pouring technique is to fill the mould using a vacuum. A common form of this is called the "Hitchiner" process after the Hitchiner Manufacturing Company that invented the technique. In this technique, the mould has a downward fill pipe that is lowered into the melt. A vacuum draws the melt into the cavity; when the important parts have solidified, the vacuum is released, and the unused material leaves the mould. The technique can use substantially less material than gravity pouring because the sprue and some gating need not solidify.


title: Investment casting

text: This technique is more metal efficient than traditional pouring because less material solidifies in the gating system. Gravity pouring only has a 15 to 50% metal yield compared to 60 to 95% for counter-gravity pouring. There is also less turbulence, so the gating system can be simplified since it does not have to control turbulence. The metal is drawn from below the top of the pool, so the metal is free from dross and slag (which are lower density (lighter) and float to the top of the pool). The pressure differential helps the metal flow into every intricacy of the mould. Finally, lower temperatures can be used, which improves the grain structure.


title: Investment casting

text: "Vacuum pressure casting" ("VPC"), properly referred to as "vacuum assist direct pour", uses gas pressure and a vacuum to improve the quality of the casting and minimize porosity. Typically VPC machines consist of an upper and a lower chamber—the upper chamber, or melting chamber, housing the crucible, and the lower casting chamber housing the investment mould. Both chambers are connected via a small hole containing a stopper. A vacuum is pulled in the lower chamber, while pressure is applied in the upper, and then the stopper is removed. This creates the greatest pressure differential to fill the moulds. The most common materials for "vacuum casting process" are the high nickel-based alloy and super alloys. Turbocharger products are a common applications for this casting process, though it is also regularly used in the manufacture of silver and gold jewellery.