title: Clandestine cell system

text: ALPINE and ALTITUDE only know how to reach ALASTAIR, but they are aware of at least some of other team members' identities should ALASTAIR be unavailable, and they would accept a message from ALBERT. Most often, the identity (and location) of the radio operator may not be shared. ALPINE and ALTITUDE, however, do not know one another. They do not know any of the members of team ALICE.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: The of the subcell structure came from the recruitment process, originally by the case officer and then by the cell leaders. The cell leader might propose subcell member names to the case officer, so the case officer could have headquarters run a background check on the potential recruit before bringing them into the subcell. In principle, however, the subcell members would know ALPINE, and sometimes the other members of the ALPINE cell if they needed to work together; if ALPINE-1 and ALPINE-2 had independent assignments, they might not know each other. ALPINE-1 and ALPINE-2 certainly would not know ALASTAIR or anyone in the ALTITUDE or ALLOVER cells.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: As the networks grow, a subcell leader might create her or his own cell, so ALPINE-2 might become the leader of the ALIMONY cell.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Modern communications theory has introduced methods to increase fault tolerance in cell organizations. Game theory and graph theory have been applied to the study of optimal covert network design.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: In the past, if cell members only knew the cell leader, and the leader was neutralized, the cell was cut off from the rest of the organization. But if a traditional cell had independent communications with the foreign support organization, headquarters might be able to arrange its reconnection. Another method is to have impersonal communications as "side links" between cells, such as a pair of dead drops, one for Team ALAN to leave "lost contact" messages to be retrieved by Team ALICE, and another dead drop for Team ALICE to leave messages for Team ALAN.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: These links, to be used only on , do not guarantee a contact. When a team finds a message in its emergency drop, it might do no more than send an alert message to headquarters. Headquarters might determine, through SIGINT or other sources, that the enemy had captured the leadership and the entire team, and order the other team not to attempt contact. If headquarters can have reasonable confidence that there is a communications failure or partial compromise, it might send a new contact to the survivors.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: When has electronic communications, such as the Internet, it has a much better chance of eluding surveillance and getting emergency instructions than by using a dead drop that can be under physical surveillance.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: If the "al-Qaeda Training Manual" is authentic, it demonstrates that Eastern cell structures may differ from the Western mode. Al-Qaeda's minimal core leadership group can be viewed as a ring or chain network, with each leader/node heading their own particular hierarchy.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Such networks function by having their sub-networks provide information and other forms of support (the 'many-to-one' model), while the core group supplies 'truth' and decisions/directions (the 'one-to-many' model). Trust and personal relationships are an essential part of the Al-Qaida network (, even while it provides enhanced security). Cell members are trained as 'replaceable' units and 'vetting' of members occurs during the training period under the observation of the core group.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Cells of this structure are an internal leadership core. Superficially, this might be likened to a Western cell structure that emanates from a headquarters, but the Western centrality is bureaucratic, while structures in other non-Western cultures build on close personal relationships, often built over years, perhaps involving family or other in-group linkages. Such in-groups are thus extremely hard to infiltrate. Still, it may be possible for an in-group to be compromised through COMINT or, in rare cases, by compromising a member.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: The core group is a ring, superimposed on an . Each member of the core forms another hub and spoke system, the spokes leading to infrastructure cells under the supervision of the core group member, and possibly to operational groups that the headquarters supports. In an organization like this, there is a point at which the operational cell becomes autonomous of the core.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Osama bin Laden, in this model, had the responsibility of commanding the organization and being the spokesman on propaganda messages distributed by the propaganda cell. The other members of the core each command one or more infrastructure cells.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: While enhances security, it can limit flexibility and the ability to scale the organization. The in-group values that tie the cell together initially, shared cultural and ideological values, are not sufficient to create additional loyalty to a bureaucratic process.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: "Members of the core group are under what could be termed 'positive control'—long relationships and similar mindsets make 'control' not so much of an issue, but there are distinct roles, and position (structural, financial, spiritual) determines authority, thus making the core group a hierarchy topologically."


title: Clandestine cell system

text: In the illustration of the core shown here, each member knows how to reach two other members, and also knows the member(s) he or she considers her or his ideological superior. Solid lines show basic communication, dotted red arrows show , and dotted blue arrows show a second level of ideological respect.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: If Osama, the most respected, died, the core would reconstitute itself. While different members each have an individual ideological guide, and these are not the same for all members, the core would reconstitute itself with (in our example) Richard as most respected.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Assume there are no losses, and Osama can be reached directly only by members of the core group. Members of outer cells and support systems might know him only as "the Commander", or, as in the actual case of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's face is recognizable worldwide, but only a few people knew where he was or even how to contact him.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Any clandestine or covert service, especially a non-national one, needs a variety of technical and administrative functions, such as:


title: Clandestine cell system

text: has a support organization to deal with services like finance, logistics, facilities (e.g., safehouses), information technology, communications, training, weapons and explosives, medical services, etc. Transportation alone is a huge function, including the need to buy tickets without drawing suspicion, and, where appropriate, using private vehicles. Finance includes the need to transfer money without coming to the attention of financial security organizations.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Some of these functions, such as finance, are far harder to operate in remote areas (like the FATA of Pakistan) than in cities with large numbers of official and unofficial financial institutions and the communications to support them. If the financial office is distant from the remote headquarters, there is a need for couriers, who must be trusted to some extent, but who may not know the contents of their messages or the actual identity of the sender and/or receiver. The couriers, depending on the balance among type and size of message, security, and technology available, may memorize messages, carry audio or video recordings, or hand-carry computer media.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: These cells are socially embedded (less so than the core group, however), structurally embedded, functionally embedded (they are specialized into a domain), and knowledge base-specific (there does not seem to be a great deal of cross-training or lateral mobility in the organization). Such cells are probably subjected to a mixture of both positive and negative control ('do this, do these sorts of things, don't do that').


title: Clandestine cell system

text: The leader of a military cell is responsible for training its members, and, when an operation is scheduled, selecting the operational commander, giving her or him the basic objective and arranging whatever support is needed, and then releasing her or him from tight control to execute the . Military leaders might have direct, possibly one-way, communications with their cells, or they might have to give Kim the messages to be transmitted, by means that Anton and Hassan have no need to know.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Kim operates two systems of cells, one for secure communications and one for propaganda. To send out a propaganda message, Osama must pass it to Kim. If Kim were compromised, the core group might have significant problems with any sort of outside communications.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Terrorist networks do not to other cell systems that regularly report to a headquarters. The apparent al-Qaeda methodology, of letting operational cells decide on their final dates and means of attack, exhibits that could easily be used for an indications checklist appropriate for a warning center. Such lists depend on seeing a pattern to give a specific warning.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Note that Hassan has two subordinates that have not yet established operational cells. These subordinates can be considered sleepers, but not necessarily with a sleeper cell.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: For each mission, one or more operational cells . If al-Qaeda uses its typical modus operandi of multiple concurrent attacks, there may be an operational cell for each target location. Some operations may need support cells in the operational area. For example, it may be more secure to have a local cell build bombs, which will be delivered by cells coming from outside the area.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Operational cells need to have continuous internal communication; there is a commander, who may be in touch with infrastructure cells or, less likely from a security standpoint, with the core group.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: "While Al-Qaeda has elements of the organization designed to support the structure, but such elements are insufficient in meeting the needs of such an organization, and for security reasons there would be redundant and secondary-/tertiary-networks that are unaware of their connection to Al-Qaeda. These networks, primarily related to fundraising and financial activities, as well as technology providers, are in a 'use' relationship with Al-Qaeda—managed through cut-outs or individuals that do not inform them of the nature of activities, and that may have a cover pretext sufficient to deflect questions or inquiry."


title: Clandestine cell system

text: In 2002, "U.S. News & World Report" said that American intelligence was beginning to acquire intelligence on al-Qaida indicating that "[o]nce thought nearly impossible to penetrate, al-Qaeda is proving no tougher a target than the KGB or the Mafia—closed societies that took the U.S. government years to get inside. 'We're getting names, the different camps they trained at, the hierarchy, the infighting,' says an intelligence official. 'It's very promising.'" The report also said that the collected data has allowed the recruiting of informants.


title: Clandestine cell system

text: Writing in the U.S. Army journal "Military Review", David W. Pendall suggested that a "catch-and-release program for suspected operatives might create reluctance or distrust in such suspects and prevent them from further acts or, perhaps more important, create distrust in the cell leaders of these individuals in the future." The author noted the press release describing Ramzi bin al-Shibh's cooperation with the United States is "sure to prevent reentry into a terrorist cell as a trusted member and most likely limits the further trust and assignments of close cell associates still at large. The captor would determine when to name names and when to remain silent." Indeed, once intelligence learns the name and characteristics of an at-large adversary, as well as some sensitive information that would plausibly be known to him, a news release could be issued to talk about his cooperation. Such a method could not be used too often, but, used carefully, could disturb the critical trust networks. The greatest uncertainty might be associated with throwing doubt onto a key member of an operational cell that has gone autonomous.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit is a steel roller coaster at Universal Studios Florida in Orlando, Florida. With a height of , a length of , and a top speed of , it is the largest X-Coaster ever built by German manufacturer Maurer Söhne. Announced on March 19, 2008, the coaster officially debuted on August 19, 2009, despite original plans to open several months earlier in the spring. Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit features on-ride music LED lighting, and on-ride photos and videos captured from cameras mounted in each passenger row.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: During the second week of January 2008, Universal Parks & Resorts filed a Notice of Commencement with Orange County, Florida indicating that they were to construct a ride system that they had code-named "Project Rumble." The notice also stated that the contractor was "Maurer Rides GmbH," located in Munich, Germany.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: The new attraction was officially announced by Universal Studios on March 19, 2008. Although the layout was not revealed, the original press release stated that the roller coaster's vertical lift hill would be tall, and that the trains would reach a maximum speed of . It also mentioned that each train would be equipped with a multi-media package, LED lights, built-in video recorders, and the option for riders to choose a song from a list to be played during the course of the ride. The ride would also include six near miss encounters. At the time, the new roller coaster was scheduled to open in Spring 2009. Also, in the months after the announcement, Universal Studios surveyed guests on what songs they think should be included in the roller coaster. Some of the artists that guests could choose from were: The Black Eyed Peas, Bee Gees, The Beach Boys, and Johnny Cash.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: Construction began in May 2008 with preliminary land clearing, which caused the removal of some of Twister...Ride it Out's outdoor extended queue. The first track pieces were installed during the week of December 7, 2008. In February 2009, Universal launched a website for the attraction, which included a construction blog and photographs chronicling progress of the attraction's construction. The track layout was completed at the end of April 2009 with the crowning of the lift hill.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: In April 2009, Universal confirmed that the roller coaster would not open as originally planned and said it would open in the summer. Though Universal has never mentioned what the exact problem with the roller coaster was, it is believed by newspapers that issues with the anti-rollback devices on the lift hill that were not working correctly caused the delay.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: After the issues with the ride were resolved, Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit began public previews in mid-August 2009. On August 19, 2009, Universal Studios Florida officially opened the attraction. It continued to experience technical issues early on after opening. A number of its features worked sporadically or not at all. There were also operational issues, such as slower-than-expected loading times that diminished capacity and led to long lines. One of the notable complaints was the rough ride experience, especially for guests sitting in the back seat.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit closed indefinitely in September 2010. Maurer issued an alert warning that stress testing of its X-Car ride vehicles had found that the coupling bars holding the trains together would not be "fatigue endurable." It eventually reopened on October 28, 2010, with refurbished trains to improve the ride experience.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: Guests first enter into one of three queues; either the main queue, the express queue, or the single rider queue. As of 2015, riders must pass through a metal detector in order to board, and may not board with any loose items on their person or in pockets. Lockers are provided for storage of these items. In each of the queue lines, there are several large screen displays that explain how to pick a song to play during the ride and important safety instructions. In the video, characters called "Video DJ's" are used as demonstrators to provide a visual explanation.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: The station for the roller coaster is a unique design, in which trains enter and slow down but do not stop. There is a moving sidewalk on both sides that moves at the same speed as the train allowing riders to board. Riders have approximately 30 seconds to take their seat, lower the lap-bar, and make their song choice. After the restraints are checked, the train immediately begins to climb the vertical chain lift, and the song selected by the rider begins to play. The on-ride video recorder also begins recording. When the train reaches the top of the lift, it drops back to the ground, reaching a maximum speed of . The train then enters a non-inverting loop nicknamed "The Double Take", followed by an upward right turn into one of the several mid-course brakes. It drops back down, going through a hole in a wall before entering a left, upward helix section of the coaster that is nicknamed "The Treble Clef". Next the train enters a quick element nicknamed "The Jump Cut", a non-inverting corkscrew. This is followed by a large dip that takes the train into a second set of mid-course brakes. Following a small drop to the left, the track straightens for a moment before making a right turn, a left turn, and then another right leading into the third set of mid-course brakes. An s-bend turn follows, which leads the train into an inclined loop and a fourth set of brakes. Finally, the train drops once more, travels over a small hill, and then enters the final brake run as the song playing ends.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: The steel track of Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit is long, and the height of the lift is approximately . Because the lift hill is vertical, a special evacuation system is used in the event that a train stalls on the lift. Also, the track is filled with sand and gravel to reduce the noise when a train is on the track. Throughout the layout of the roller coaster, there are 6 sets of brakes to control the speed of the trains.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: The roller coaster operates with seven stadium-style seating X-Car trains. Each train has two cars that can hold six riders each for a total of twelve riders per train. On the headrest of each seat there are two speakers that play music during the ride. The speakers have been designed so that only the rider's selected music track will be audible. On the restraint is a small touch screen where riders can choose which song they want to listen to during the ride. Additionally, the trains are equipped with multi-colored lights that can be seen during the night.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: The initial announcement just said that there would be 5 categories of songs. The full tracklist was not released until July 6, 2009, with Universal Studios Florida unveiling thirty songs (6 in each category) that can be played during the ride.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: A touchscreen is built into the restraint on each seat. Once riders board the train and lower the restraint, they may use this screen to select one of the five music categories, then one of the six songs in the chosen category. If the rider fails to make a selection within 30 seconds, a song will be chosen at random. The chosen song begins as the train climbs the vertical lift hill. Some soundtracks begin partway into the full-length song, or end early, since the total ride time is 1 minute and 39 seconds.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: In addition to these 28 songs, Universal Studios Florida also provided additional "hidden" songs that are available to riders, but are not included in the queue video.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: In order to access these songs, the rider must press and hold the ride logo on the touch screen for 10 seconds after lowering the restraint. The list of song categories will then be replaced by a 10-digit keypad, on which the rider can enter a three-digit code for the desired song.


title: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

text: On August 1, 2013, an unidentified woman received minor injuries when the ride came to a sudden stop.


title: MS Queen Anne

text: In 2017, Cunard announced the order of fourth ship in their current fleet and the 249th ship in its history. It was initially announced that the new vessel will be based on the MS "Koningsdam", Holland America Line's Pinnacle-class ship. With a gross tonnage of 113,000, the ship will carry up to 3,000 passengers.


title: MS Queen Anne

text: In June 2019 Cunard announced the design team for the public spaces. Steel cutting began at Fincantieri’s Castellammare di Stabia shipyard on 11 October 2019.


title: MS Queen Anne

text: Media agencies initially speculated whether the ship's name would continue with Cunard's practice of naming them after queens or return to its 20th century convention of giving their vessels names ending in -'ia' like past Cunard ships RMS "Aquitania", RMS "Berengaria", RMS "Caronia" and RMS "Mauretania". In February 2022, Cunard announced that the ship would be named "Queen Anne".The ship's maiden voyage is scheduled for May 2024.


title: Rodney Carrington

text: Rodney Scott Carrington (born October 19, 1968) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist and songwriter. He has released six major-label studio albums and a greatest hits package, on Mercury Records and Capitol Records. His comedy act typically combines stand-up comedy and original songs. Most of his songs are performed in a neotraditional country style, with Carrington handling lead vocals and guitar. Carrington has also starred in the ABC sitcom "Rodney" and in the 2008 film "Beer for My Horses".


title: Rodney Carrington

text: Rodney Carrington was born in Longview, Texas in 1968, and lived there until 1990. He worked as a comedian in local venues, gaining exposure through radio programs such as "The Bob and Tom Show".


title: Rodney Carrington

text: Carrington's first album, "Hangin' with Rodney", was released in 1998 via Mercury Records Nashville. This album, consisting of both stand-up comedy and original songs, contained the non-charting single "Letter to My Penis" and peaked at No. 73 on Top Country Albums.


title: Rodney Carrington

text: He moved to Capitol Nashville for his next album, 2000's "Morning Wood". It was his first Top 20 album on the US Country charts, first Gold-certified recording, and it brought him to the singles charts for the first time with "More of a Man", which reached No. 71 on Hot Country Singles & Tracks (now Hot Country Songs). After it came the live album "Live: C'mon Laugh You Bastards", which did not chart. Carrington's third release for Capitol was 2003's "Nut Sack". It mostly consisted of studio-recorded comedy songs and only featured five stand-up sketches. It included the single "Don't Look Now" which reached No. 60.


title: Rodney Carrington

text: A "Greatest Hits" package followed in 2004. This album comprised selections from his Capitol recordings on two discs: stand-up routines on one disc, and songs on the other. It also included two previously unreleased songs: "Put Your Clothes Back On" and his first non-comedy song, "Things We Didn't Know." This compilation album reached No. 3 on the "Billboard" Top Comedy Albums chart and No. 11 on the "Billboard" Top Country albums chart, becoming Carrington's first Platinum-certified recording.


title: Rodney Carrington

text: Also in 2004, Carrington made his acting debut in "Rodney", a sitcom based largely on his own life which aired on ABC for two seasons. He released "King of the Mountains" in 2007. In addition to reaching No. 2 on the US Comedy Albums chart and No. 15 on the US Country chart, "King of the Mountains" reached No. 68 on the US "Billboard 200" pop albums chart, the highest-ever peak position for any of his recordings. "King of the Mountains" contains his second serious song, "Angel Friend", a tribute to his best friend Barry Martin, who died suddenly in 2003.


title: Rodney Carrington

text: Carrington released his sixth studio album "El Niño Loco" in 2009. The album was his final release for Capitol Records. Unlike his previous releases, "El Niño Loco" does not feature any stand-up sketches. It also contains his third non-comedy song "Funny Man".


title: Rodney Carrington

text: Later in 2009, Carrington released his first Christmas album, "Make It Christmas". The first single from the album, a non-comedy tribute to soldiers stationed abroad called "Camouflage and Christmas Lights", became his first Top 40 country hit in December 2009.


title: Rodney Carrington

text: Carrington has released two more comedy albums on the independent label Laughter's Good Records: "Laughter's Good" (2014) and "Here Comes the Truth" (2017). In between these two, he also released a compilation album of comedy songs, titled "Rodney Carrington: The Hits" (2015). He continues to tour as of 2022.


title: Rodney Carrington

text: Carrington has a home in south Tulsa, where his 2004–2006 sitcom was set. He was previously married to Terri Carrington (née Terri Shae) and has three sons with her.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: G.I. Joe: The Movie (also known as Action Force: The Movie in the UK) is a 1987 American direct-to-video animated military science fiction film produced as a sequel to the animated series "", based on the original Hasbro . It was produced by Sunbow Productions and Marvel Productions and was animated in Japan by Toei Animation Co., Ltd.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: Created at the height of the G.I. Joe craze in the 1980s, "G.I. Joe: The Movie" was intended as a theatrical release to be closely followed by "". However, the G.I. Joe film encountered unexpected production delays which allowed the "Transformers" feature to be released first. Due to the poor box office performances of "The Transformers: The Movie" and "", "G.I. Joe: The Movie" was instead released direct-to-video as well as aired on television in syndication, first in feature-length format and later split into a five-part miniseries format as part of the series' syndication package.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: While Cobra Commander and Serpentor blame each other's stewardship of Cobra as the root cause of the organization's failures, Pythona, a woman from the secret civilization Cobra-La, infiltrates the Terror Drome. While there, she reveals to Serpentor that Cobra-La was responsible for inspiring Doctor Mindbender to create Serpentor through dream manipulation. At her urging, Serpentor plans to capture G.I. Joe's latest weapon, the Broadcast Energy Transmitter (BET).


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: Cobra assaults the Joes as they test the BET in the Himalayas. The Joes use the BET to activate their automated weapons systems. Serpentor is captured and Cobra Commander orders a retreat. Cobra Commander leads his troops into Cobra-La.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: As the Joes celebrate their victory, a new group of rookie Joes are brought onto the team, including the allegedly clumsy kunoichi Jinx, military police officer Law and his dog Order, former basketball player , EOD specialist Tunnel Rat, undercover officer Chuckles, and Duke's reckless half-brother, Lt. Falcon, a Green Beret.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: In Cobra-La, the Joe forces are ambushed and detained within the Lovecraftian living environment. The Cobra soldiers are met by the civilization's leader Golobulus, who has Pythona and his other henchman, Nemesis Enforcer, arrest Cobra Commander. While there, Cobra learns about their history: 40,000 years ago, Cobra-La was an ancient civilization that ruled Earth. However, the Ice Age, the evolution of humans and their development of scientific technology resulted in Cobra-La's survivors being forced into caverns within the Himalayas. Cobra-La rebuilt their society in secret as centuries passed. Golobulus vowed to destroy humanity so that his people could reclaim the earth. He eventually discovered a nobleman who was working on biological weapons. The nobleman later became Cobra Commander, charged with conquering the world for Cobra-La. However, Cobra Commander's repeated failures caused Golobulus to use a Psychic Motivator on Doctor Mindbender to create Serpentor.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: Meanwhile, a disguised Zarana uses Falcon to infiltrate Serpentor's holding cell. For abandoning his training, Falcon is put on guard duty by his older half-brother Duke. After Falcon abandons his post to flirt with Jinx, the Dreadnoks and Nemesis Enforcer free Serpentor, injuring Alpine, Bazooka and Gung-Ho in the process. General Hawk scolds Falcon for abandoning his post and confines him to his quarters until court-martial.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: In Cobra-La, Cobra Commander is tried and Golobulus reveals his plans to launch spore pods, filled with mutative spores into space and use the BET to hatch them thus dooming humanity. He punishes Cobra Commander for his repeated failures following his trial by exposing him to the spores, which transforms Cobra Commander into a snake. He flees and makes his way to the Joes' camp with Roadblock.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: Convinced by Duke to spare Falcon from a harsh punishment, General Hawk reassigns Falcon to the "Slaughter House" where he is to be retrained by Sgt. Slaughter and his "Renegades" consisting of ex-Viper Mercer, former football player , and former acrobat . On a weaponless recon mission in the Terror Drome, the five learn of Cobra's plans and that the Baroness has discovered the location of the BET. As Falcon and the others destroy the Terror Drome, Cobra launches an assault on the Joes. The Joes launch a counterattack on Cobra, but the BET is stolen. Serpentor attempts to kill Falcon, but Duke intervenes and falls into a coma.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: Falcon, the Renegades and the new recruits head to the Himalayas to stop Cobra-La. The G.I. Joe team is led to Cobra-La's lair by Cobra Commander. The new recruits prove themselves valuable soldiers as the Joes rescue their captured teammates. Falcon, Jinx and Sgt. Slaughter confront Golobulus, Pythona and Serpentor. The ensuing fight culminates in Jinx and Slaughter sending Pythona and Nemesis Enforcer falling to their apparent demise. Finally, Falcon sends Serpentor out of Cobra-La and reconfigures the BET to incinerate the spore pods in space and destroying Cobra-La. Immediately following the battle, the strike team receives news that Duke has come out of his coma and is recovering.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: The writers did not originally intend for "Cobra-La" to be the name of the rival civilization; this was merely a placeholder name in the drafts until a more alien label came to mind, but Hasbro executives fell in love with the name and forced the writers to keep it.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: In the film's original script, Duke dies in battle after receiving a wound from a snake spear hurled by Serpentor. After this was written into the script, it inspired the death of the Autobot leader Optimus Prime in "" while both films were in production. However, Optimus Prime's death sparked a severe backlash among both fans and parents, and Hasbro reversed their decision on allowing Duke's death. While the scene was kept, replacement dialogue was inserted stating that Duke had gone into a coma. In the film's ending, it is stated that he had come out of the coma. Writer and story editor Buzz Dixon said in an interview with JoeHeadquarters.com, "[If] you watch the visuals and don't listen to the soundtrack, it's obvious Duke dies." In the original script, the Joes also held his funeral prior to the final battle.


title: G.I. Joe: The Movie

text: Rhino Entertainment/Kid Rhino Entertainment first released the film on DVD on June 20, 2000, with 5.1 remastered and remixed “Rhinophonic” sound and contains some extra features. Shout! Factory released a remastered special edition on DVD and Blu-ray on July 27, 2010, featuring audio commentary from story consultant (and series writer) Buzz Dixon, and a printable copy of the original screenplay.


title: 1492 Pictures

text: 1492 Pictures is an American film production company founded by Chris Columbus, Mark Radcliffe and Michael Barnathan in 1994. The name is a play on Columbus's more famous namesake, Christopher Columbus, and his 1492 landing in the Americas. In addition, the fanfare for 1492 Pictures was composed by Hans Zimmer.


title: 1492 Pictures

text: In addition to various Columbus films, 1492 Pictures has produced movies by other directors including Brian Levant ("Jingle All the Way"), Henry Selick ("Monkeybone"), Alfonso Cuarón ("Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"), Joe Roth ("Christmas with the Kranks"), Tim Story (the "Fantastic Four" films), and Shawn Levy (the ""Night at the Museum"" series).


title: 1492 Pictures

text: In 1994, Chris Columbus, who successfully directed the first two "Home Alone" films, and "Mrs. Doubtfire", signed a three-year deal with 20th Century Fox, thus eventually led to the creation of a company called 1492 Pictures. Its first feature was "Nine Months". The deal was eventually extended in 1997.


title: 1492 Pictures

text: In 2009, it signed a deal with Korean company CJ Entertainment for three years, to produce its feature films.


title: 1492 Pictures

text: In February 2011, the company bought the rights to the South Korean comedy film "Hello Ghost" starring Cha Tae-hyun and is scheduled to remake it.


title: 1492 Pictures

text: In August 2011, the production company released an adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's novel "The Help".


title: 1492 Pictures

text: In 2012, it signed a deal with ro*co productions to adapt documentary films into scripted feature films.


title: Jeconiah

text: Jeconiah ( "Yəḵonəyā" , meaning "Yah has established"; ; ), also known as Coniah and as Jehoiachin ( "Yəhōyāḵīn" ; ), was the nineteenth and penultimate king of Judah who was dethroned by the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II in the 6th century BCE and was taken into captivity. He was the son and successor of King Jehoiakim, and the grandson of King Josiah. Most of what is known about Jeconiah is found in the Hebrew Bible. Records of Jeconiah's existence have been found in Iraq, such as the Jehoiachin's Rations Tablets. These tablets were excavated near the Ishtar Gate in Babylon and have been dated to c. 592 BCE. Written in cuneiform, they mention Jeconiah (, "Yaʾúkinu" ["ia-ʾ-ú-ki-nu"]) and his five sons as recipients of food rations in Babylon.


title: Jeconiah

text: Jeconiah reigned three months and ten days, beginning December 9, 598 BCE. He succeeded Jehoiakim as king of Judah after raiders from surrounding lands invaded Jerusalem and killed his father. It is likely that the king of Babylon was behind this effort, as a response to Jehoiakim's revolt, starting sometime after 601 BCE. Three months and ten days after Jeconiah became king, the armies of Nebuchadnezzar II seized Jerusalem, with the intention to take high class Judahite captives and assimilate them into Babylonian society. On March 15/16th, 597 BCE, Jeconiah, his entire household and three thousand Jews were exiled to Babylon.


title: Jeconiah

text: The Masoretic Text of 2 Chronicles 36 states that Jeconiah's rule began at the age of eight, while in Jeconiah is said to have come to the throne at eighteen. Modern scholars have treated the difference between "eight" and "eighteen" as reflecting a copying error on one side or the other of the issue.


title: Jeconiah

text: After Jeconiah was deposed as king, Jeconiah's uncle, Zedekiah () was appointed by Nebuchadnezzar to rule Judah. Zedekiah was the son of Josiah. Jeconiah would later be regarded as the first of the exilarchs. In the Book of Ezekiel, the author refers to Jeconiah as king and dates certain events by the number of years he was in exile. The author identifies himself as Ezekiel, a contemporary of Jeconiah, and he never mentions Zedekiah by name.


title: Jeconiah

text: According to –, Jeconiah was released from prison "in the 37th year of the exile", in the year that Amel-Marduk (Evil-Merodach) came to the throne, and given a prestigious position at court. Jeconiah's release in Babylon brings to a close the Books of Kings and the Deuteronomistic history. Babylonian records show that Amel-Marduk began his reign in October 562 BCE. According to , Jeconiah was released from prison "on the 27th day of the twelfth month": this indicates the first year of captivity to be 598/597 BCE, according to Judah's Tishri-based calendar. The 37th year of captivity was thus, by Judean reckoning, the year that began in Tishri of 562, consistent with the synchronism to the accession year of Amel-Marduk given in Babylonian records.


title: Jeconiah

text: Jeremiah (22:28–30) cursed Jeconiah that none of his descendants would ever sit on the throne of Israel:


title: Jeconiah

text: Jeconiah was the son of Jehoiakim and Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem. He had seven children: Shealtiel, Malkiram, Pedaiah, Shenazzar, Jekamiah, Hoshama and Nedabiah. (). Jeconiah is also mentioned in the first book of Chronicles as the father of Pedaiah, who in turn was the father of Zerubbabel. A list of his descendants is given in .


title: Jeconiah

text: In listing the genealogy of Jesus Christ, records Jeconiah as an ancestor of Joseph, the husband of Mary.


title: Jeconiah

text: The Babylonian Chronicles establish that Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem for the first time on 2 Adar (16 March) 597 BCE. Before Wiseman's publication of the Babylonian Chronicles in 1956, Thiele had determined from biblical texts that Nebuchadnezzar's initial capture of Jerusalem and its king Jeconiah occurred in the spring of 597 BCE, whereas Kenneth Strand points out that other scholars, including Albright, more frequently dated the event to 598 BCE.


title: Jeconiah

text: Thiele said that the 25th anniversary of Jeconiah's captivity was April 25 (10 Nisan), 573 BCE, implying that he began the exile to Babylon on 10 Nisan 597, 24 years earlier. His reasoning in arriving at this exact date was based on , where Ezekiel, without naming the month, says it was the tenth day of the month, "on that very day." Since this fits with his idea that Jeconiah's (and Ezekiel's) exile to Babylon began a month later than the capturing of the city, thus allowing a new Nisan-based year to begin, Thiele took these words in Ezekiel as referring to the day in which the captivity or exile proper began. He therefore ended Jehoiachin's reign of three months and ten days on this date. The dates he gives for Jeconiah's reign are then: 21 Heshvan (9 December) 598 BCE to 10 Nisan (22 April) 597 BCE.


title: Jeconiah

text: Thiele's reasoning in this regard has been criticized by Rodger C. Young, who advocates the 587 date for the fall of Jerusalem. Young argues that Thiele's arithmetic is inconsistent, and adds an alternative explanation of the phrase "on that very day" ("be-etsem ha-yom ha-zeh") in Ezekiel 40:1. This phrase is used three times in Leviticus 23:28–30 to refer the Day of Atonement, always observed on the tenth of Tishri, and Ezekiel's writings in several places show familiarity with the Book of Leviticus. A further argument in favor of this interpretation is that in the same verse, Ezekiel says it was Rosh Hashanah (New Year's Day) and also the tenth of the month, indicating the start of a Jubilee year, since only in a Jubilee year did the year begin on the tenth of Tishri, the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 25:9). The Talmud (tractate "Arakin" 12a,b) and the Seder Olam (chapter 11) also say that Ezekiel saw his vision at the beginning of a Jubilee year, the 17th, consistent with this interpretation of .


title: Jeconiah

text: Because this offers an alternative explanation to Thiele's interpretation of Ezekiel 40:1, and because Thiele's chronology for Jeconiah is incompatible with the records of the Babylonian Chronicle, the infobox below dates the end of Jeconiah's reign to 2 Adar (16 March) 597 BCE, the date of the first capture of Jerusalem as given in the Babylonian records. Thiele's dates for Jeconiah, however, and his date of 586 BCE for the fall of Jerusalem, continue to hold considerable weight with the scholarly community.


title: Jeconiah

text: However, no such complication is necessary since the tenth of Tishri 574 BCE is precisely as stated in Ezekiel 40:1, both in the fourteenth year of the Temple's destruction in 587 BCE and the twenty-fifth year of Jeconiah's exile in 597 BCE.


title: Jeconiah

text: Gershon Galil also attempted to reconcile a 586 date for the fall of Jerusalem with the data for Jeconiah's exile. Like Thiele, he assumed that the years of exile should be measured from Nisan, but for a different reason. Galil hypothesized that Israel’s calendar was one month ahead of that of Babylon because Babylon had inserted an intercalary month and Israel had not yet done so. This would make Adar (the twelfth month) in the Babylonian records correspond to Nisan (the first month) in Judean counting. But this hypothesis, like Thiele's, runs into difficulty with , since the 25th year of captivity would begin in Nisan of 573 and the fall of Jerusalem, 14 years earlier, would be in 587, not the 586 that Galil and Thiele advocate. There is further conflict with the Babylonian data, because the 37th year of captivity, the year in which Jeconiah was released from prison, would be the year starting in Nisan of 561 BCE, not Nisan of 562 BCE as given in the Babylonian Chronicle. Recognizing these conflicts, Galil admits (p. 377) that his date for the fall of Jerusalem (586 BCE) is inconsistent with the precise data given in the Bible and the Babylonian Chronicle.


title: Jeconiah

text: The reign of Jeconiah is considered important in establishing the chronology of events in the early sixth century BCE in the Middle East. This includes resolving the date of the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar. According to , the city wall was breached in the summer month of Tammuz in the eleventh year of Zedekiah.


title: Jeconiah

text: Historians, however, have been divided on whether the year was 587 or 586 BCE. A 1990 study listed eleven scholars who preferred 587 and eleven who preferred 586. The Babylonian records of the second capture of Jerusalem have not been found, and scholars looking at the chronology of the period must rely on the Biblical texts, as correlated with extant Babylonian records from before and after the event. In this regard, the Biblical texts regarding Jeconiah are especially important, because the time of his reign in Jerusalem was fixed by Donald Wiseman's 1956 publication, and this is consistent with his thirty-seventh year of captivity overlapping the accession year of Amel-Marduk, as mentioned above.


title: Jeconiah

text: Ezekiel's treatment of Jeconiah's dates are a starting point for determining the date of the fall of Jerusalem. He dated his writings according to the years of captivity he shared with Jeconiah, and he mentions several events related to the fall of Jerusalem in those writings. In , Ezekiel dates his vision to the 25th year of the exile and fourteen years after the city fell. If Ezekiel and the author of were both using Tishri-based years, the 25th year would be 574/573 BCE and the fall of the city, 14 years earlier, would be in 588/587—i.e., in the summer of 587 BCE. This is consistent with other texts in Ezekiel related to the fall of the city. relates that a refugee arrived in Babylon and reported the fall of Jerusalem in the twelfth year, tenth month of "our exile." Measuring from the first year of exile, 598/597, this was January of 586 BCE, incompatible with Jerusalem falling in the summer of 586 BCE, but consistent with its fall in the summer of 587 BCE. The other side holds that since Jeconiah surrendered in March 597, January 586 is less than eleven years later and therefore can not be considered in the twelfth year of the exile.


title: Jeconiah

text: Thiele held to a 586 BCE date for the capture of Jerusalem and the end of Zedekiah's reign. Recognizing to some extent the importance of Ezekiel's measuring time by the years of captivity of Jeconiah, and in particular the reference to the 25th year of that captivity in Ezekiel 40:1, he wrote,


title: Jeconiah

text: Although the Babylonian tablets dealing with the final fall and destruction of Jerusalem have not been found, it should be noticed that the testimony of Ezekiel 40:1 is definitive in regard to the year 586. Since Ezekiel had his vision of the temple on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his and Jehoiachin's captivity (28 April 573), and since this was the fourteenth year after Jerusalem's fall, the city must have fallen eleven years after the captivity. Eleven years after 597 is 586.


title: Jeconiah

text: In order to justify his 586 date, Thiele had assumed that the years of captivity for Jeconiah must be calendar years starting in Nisan, in contrast to the Tishri-based years that he used everywhere else for the kings of Judah. He also assumed that Jeconiah's captivity or exile was not to be measured from Adar of 597 BCE, the month Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and its king according to the Babylonian Chronicle, but in the next month, Nisan, when Thiele assumed Jeconiah began the trip to Babylon. Granting these assumptions, the first year of captivity would be the year starting in Nisan of 597 BCE. The twenty-fifth year of captivity would start in Nisan of 573 BCE, (573/572) twenty-four years later. Years of captivity must be measured in this non-accession sense (the year in which the captivity started was considered year one of the captivity), otherwise the 37th year of captivity, the year in which Jeconiah was released from prison, would start on Nisan 1 of 560 BCE (597 − 37), two years "after" the accession year of Amel-Marduk, according to the dating of his accession year that can be fixed with exactitude by the Babylonian Chronicle. Thiele then noted that Ezekiel 40:1 says that this 25th year of captivity was 14 years after the city fell. Fourteen years before 573/572 is 587/586, and since Thiele is assuming Nisan years for the captivity, this period ended the day before Nisan 1 of 586. But this is three months and nine days before Thiele's date for the fall of the city on 9 Tammuz 586 BCE. Even Thiele's assumption that the years of captivity were measured from Nisan does not reconcile Ezekiel's chronology for the captivity of Jeconiah with a 586 date, and the calculation given above that uses the customary Tishri-based years yields the summer of 587, consistent with all other texts in Ezekiel related to Jeconiah's captivity.


title: Jeconiah

text: Another text in Ezekiel offers a clue to why there has been such a conflict over the date of Jerusalem's fall in the first place. (NIV) records the following:


title: Jeconiah

text: In the ninth year, in the tenth month on the tenth day, the word of the Lord came to me: "Son of man, record this date, this very date, because the king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day."


title: Jeconiah

text: Assuming that dating here is according to the years of exile of Jeconiah, as elsewhere in Ezekiel, the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem began on January 27, 589 BCE. This can be compared to a similar passage in (NIV):


title: Jeconiah

text: So in the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. He encamped outside the city and built siege works all around it.


title: Jeconiah

text: The ninth year, tenth month, tenth day in Ezekiel is identical to the period in 2 Kings. In Ezekiel, the years are everywhere else measured according to Jeconiah's captivity, which must be taken in a non-accession sense, so that the beginning of the siege was eight actual years after the beginning of the captivity. The comparison with 2 Kings 25:1 would indicate that Zedekiah's years in 2 Kings were also by non-accession reckoning. His eleventh year, the year in which Jerusalem fell, would then be 588/587 BCE, in agreement with all texts in Ezekiel and elsewhere that are congruent with that date.


title: Jeconiah

text: Some who maintain the 586 date therefore maintain that in this one instance, Ezekiel, without explicitly saying so, switched to the regnal years of Zedekiah, although Ezekiel apparently regarded Jeconiah as the rightful ruler and never names Zedekiah in his writing. Another view is that a later copyist, aware of the 2 Kings passage, modified it and inserted it into the text of Ezekiel. In his study of all biblical texts related to the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem, Young concludes that these conjectures are not necessary, and that all texts related to the fall of Jerusalem in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 2 Kings, and 2 Chronicles are internally consistent and consistent with the fall of the city in Tammuz of 587 BCE.


title: Jeconiah

text: During his excavation of Babylon in 1899–1917, Robert Koldewey discovered a royal archive room of King Nebuchadnezzar near the Ishtar Gate. It contained tablets dating to 595–570 BCE. The tablets were translated in the 1930s by the German Assyriologist, Ernst Weidner. Four of these tablets list rations of oil and barley given to various individuals—including the deposed King Jehoiachin—by Nebuchadnezzar from the royal storehouses, dated five years after Jehoiachin was taken captive.


title: Jeconiah

text: 10 (sila of oil) to the king of Judah, Yaukin; 2 1/2 sila (oil) to the offspring of Judah's king; 4 sila to eight men from Judea.


title: Jeconiah

text: 1 1/2 sila (oil) for three carpenters from Arvad, 1/2 apiece; 11 1/2 sila for eight wood workers from Byblos ...; 3 1/2 sila for seven Greek craftsman, 1/2 sila apiece; 1/2 sila to the carpenter, Nabuetir; 10 sila to Ia-ku-u-ki-nu, the son of Judah's king[1]; 2 1/2 sila for the five sons of the Judean king.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: The Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) is an analog video disc playback system developed by RCA, in which video and audio could be played back on a TV set using a special stylus and high-density groove system similar to phonograph records.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: First conceived in 1964, the CED system was widely seen as a technological success which was able to increase the density of a long-playing record by two orders of magnitude. Despite this achievement, the CED system fell victim to poor planning, various conflicts with RCA management, and several technical difficulties that slowed development and stalled production of the system for 17 years—until 1981, by which time it had already been made obsolete by laser videodisc (DiscoVision, later called LaserVision and LaserDisc) as well as Betamax and VHS video cassette formats. Sales for the system were nowhere near projected estimates. In the spring of 1984, RCA announced it was discontinuing player production, but continued the production of videodiscs until 1986, losing an estimated $600 million in the process. RCA had initially intended to release the SKT425 CED player with their high end Dimensia system in late 1984, but cancelled CED player production prior to the Dimensia system's release.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: The format was commonly known as "videodisc", leading to much confusion with the contemporaneous LaserDisc format. LaserDiscs are read optically with a laser beam, whereas CED discs are read physically with a stylus (similar to a conventional gramophone record). The two systems are mutually incompatible.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: RCA used the brand "SelectaVision" for the CED system, a name also used for some early RCA brand VCRs, and other experimental projects at RCA. The Video High Density system is similar to that of CED.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: RCA began videodisc research in 1964, in an attempt to produce a phonograph-like method of reproducing video under the name 'Discpix'. Research and development was slow in the early years, as the development team originally comprised only four men, but by 1972, the CED team at RCA had produced a disc capable of holding ten minutes of color video (a portion of the "Get Smart" episode "A Tale of Two Tails", re-titled "Lum Fong").


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: The first CED prototype discs were multi-layered, consisting of a vinyl substrate, nickel conductive layer, glow-discharge insulating layer and silicone lubricant top layer. Failure to fully solve the stylus/disc wear and manufacturing complexity forced RCA to seek simpler construction of the disc. The final disc was crafted using PVC blended with carbon to make the disc conductive. To preserve stylus and groove life, a thin layer of silicone was applied to the disc as a lubricant.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: CED videodiscs were originally conceived as being housed in jackets and handled by hand similar to LP records, but during testing it was shown that exposure to dust caused skipped grooves. If dust was allowed to settle on the discs, the dust would absorb moisture from the air and cement the dust particle to the disc surface, causing the stylus to jump back in a locked groove situation. Thus, an idea was developed in which the disc would be stored and handled in a plastic caddy from which the CED would be extracted by the player so that exposure to dust would be minimized.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: After 17 years of research and development, the first CED player (model SFT100W) went on sale on March 22, 1981. A catalog of approximately 50 videodisc titles was released at the same time. The first title to be manufactured was "Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown". Fifteen months later, RCA released the SGT200 and SGT250 players, both with stereo sound while the SGT-250 was also the first CED player model to include a wireless remote control. Models with random access hit the market in 1983.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: Several problems doomed the CED system before it was even introduced. From the early development of the CED system, it was clear that VCRs and home videotape—with their longer storage capacity and recording capabilities—posed a threat to the system. However, development pushed ahead. Once released, sales for the CED players were slow. RCA had expected to sell 200,000 players by the beginning of 1982, but only about half that number had been sold, and there was little improvement in sales throughout 1982 and 1983.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: The extremely long period of development—caused in part by political turmoil and a great deal of turnover in the high management of RCA—also contributed to the demise of the CED system. RCA had originally slated the videodisc system for a 1977 release. The discs were not able to hold more than 30 minutes of video per side, and the nickel-like material used to make discs was not sturdy enough for manufacture. Signal degradation was an issue, as handling the discs was causing them to deteriorate more rapidly than expected, baffling engineers.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: Adding onto the issues was the length of the disks; sixty minutes per disk side rendered it impossible for most movies over 120 minutes to be released on one CED disk. This was easily attainable on VHS and Betamax, as a T-120 VHS, for example (which holds two hours and four minutes of tape), could carry most of these movies. However, this was not the case on CED. Movies like "Oklahoma! (1955)", "Black Sunday", and several James Bond films had to be released on two CED disks. All three of these examples were typically seen on one VHS/Betamax cassette.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: RCA had hoped that by 1985 CED players would be in close to 50% of American homes, but the sales of players continued to drop. RCA cut the prices of CED players and offered incentives to consumers such as rebates and free discs, but sales only slightly improved. RCA management realized that the system would never be profitable and announced the discontinuation of production of CED players on April 4, 1984. Remaining stocks of players were sold by dealers and liquidation retailers for as little as $20 each. In an unexpected twist, demand for the videodiscs themselves became high immediately after the announcement, so RCA alerted customers that videodiscs would continue to be produced and new titles released for at least another three years after the discontinuation of players. A few months after this announcement, the sale of discs began to decline, prompting RCA to abandon videodisc production after only two years, in 1986.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: The last titles released were "The Jewel of the Nile" by CBS/Fox Video, and "Memories of VideoDisc", a commemorative CED given to many RCA employees involved with the CED project, both in 1986.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: CEDs are conductive vinyl platters that are in diameter. To avoid metric names they are usually called "12 inch discs". A CED has a spiral groove on both sides. The groove is 657 nm wide and has a length of up to 12 miles (19 km). The discs rotate at a constant angular speed during playback (450 rpm for NTSC, 375 rpm for PAL) and each rotation contains 8 interlaced fields, or 4 full frames of video. These appear as spokes on the disc surface, with the gap between each field clearly visible under certain light. This meant that freeze frame was impossible on players without an expensive electronic frame store facility.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: A keel-shaped stylus with a titanium electrode layer rides in the groove with extremely light tracking force (65 mg) and an electronic circuit is formed through the disc and stylus. Like an audio turntable, the stylus reads the disc, starting at the outer edge and going towards the center. The video and audio signals are stored on the Videodiscs in a composite analog signal which is encoded into vertical undulations in the bottom of the groove, somewhat like pits. These undulations have a shorter wavelength than the length of the stylus tip in the groove, and the stylus rides over them; the varying distance between the stylus tip and the conductive surface due to the depth of the undulations in the groove under the stylus directly controls the capacitance between the stylus and the conductive carbon-loaded PVC disc. This varying capacitance in turn alters the frequency of a resonant circuit, producing an FM electrical signal, which is then decoded into video and audio signals by the player's electronics.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: The capacitive stylus pickup system which gives the CED its name can be contrasted with the technology of the conventional phonograph. Whereas the phonograph stylus physically vibrates with the variations in the record groove, and those vibrations are converted by a mechanical transducer (the phono pickup) to an electrical signal, the CED stylus normally does not vibrate and moves only to track the CED groove (and the disc surface—out-of-plane), while the signal from the stylus is natively obtained as an electrical signal. This more sophisticated system, combined with a high revolution rate, is necessary to enable the encoding of video signals with bandwidth of a few megahertz, compared to a maximum of 20 kilohertz for an audio-only signal—a difference of two orders of magnitude. Also, while the undulations in the bottom of the groove may be likened to pits, it is important to note that the spacing of vertical wave crests and troughs in a CED groove is continuously variable, as the CED is an analog medium. Usually, the term "pits", when used in the context of information media, refers to features with sharply defined edges and discrete lengths and depths, such as the pits on digital optical media such as CDs and DVDs.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: In order to maintain an extremely light tracking force, the stylus arm is surrounded by coils, which sense deflection, and a circuit in the player responds to the signals from these coils by moving the stylus head carriage in steps as the groove pulls the stylus across the disc. Other coils are used to deflect the stylus, to finely adjust tracking. This system is very similar to—yet predates—the one used in Compact Disc players to follow the spiral optical track, where typically a servo motor moves the optical pickup in steps for coarse tracking and a set of coils shifts the laser lens for fine tracking, both guided by an optical sensing device, which is the analogue of CED stylus-deflection sensing coils. For the CED player, this tracking arrangement has the additional benefit that the stylus drag angle remains uniformly tangent to the groove, unlike the case for a phonograph tonearm, in which the stylus drag angle and consequently the stylus side force varies with the tonearm angle, which in turn depends on the radial position on the record of the stylus. Whereas for a phonograph, where the stylus has a pinpoint tip, linear tracking is merely ideal to reduce wear of records and styli and to maximize tracking stability, for a CED player linear tracking is a necessity for the keel-shaped stylus, which must always stay tangent to the groove. Furthermore, the achievement of an extremely light tracking force on the CED stylus enables the use of a fine groove pitch (i.e. fine spacing of adjacent revolutions of the spiral), necessary to provide a long playing time at the required high rotational speed, while also limiting the rate of disc and stylus wear.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: The disc is stored inside a caddy, from which the player extracts it when it is loaded. The disc itself is surrounded by a "spine", a plastic ring (actually square on the outside edge) with a thick, straight rim-like edge, which extends outside of, and latches into, the caddy. When a person inserts a caddy containing a disc into the player, the player captures the spine, and both the disc and the spine are left in the player as the person pulls the caddy out. The inner edges of the opening of the caddy have felt strips designed to catch any dust or other debris that could be on the disc as it is extracted. Once the caddy has been withdrawn by the person, the player loads the disc onto the turntable, either manually with all SFT and most SGT prefix RCA players or automatically with the RCA SGT-250 and all other models and brands of players. When playback has been started, the player spins the disc up to speed while moving the pickup arm over the disc surface and lowering the stylus onto the beginning of the disc.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: When Stop is pressed, the stylus is lifted from the disc and returned to its parking location, and the disc and spine are lifted up again to align with the caddy slot. When ready, the slot is unlocked, and the caddy can be inserted and withdrawn by a person, now with the disc back inside.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: CED players, from an early point in their life, appealed to a lower-income market more than VHS, Betamax, and LaserDisc. The video quality (approximately 3 MHz of luma bandwidth for CED) was comparable to or better than a VHS-SP or Betamax-II video, but sub-par compared to LaserDisc (about 5 MHz of luma bandwidth).


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: CED players were intended to be "low-cost" because they cost around half as much to manufacture as a VCR and had fewer precision parts.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: Like VCRs, CED videodisc players had features like rapid forward/reverse and visual search forward/reverse. They also had a pause feature, though it blanked the screen rather than displaying a still image; many players featured a "page mode", during which the current block of four successive frames would be repeatedly displayed.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: Since CEDs were a disc-based system, they did not require rewinding. Early discs were available only in monophonic sound, but many later discs were issued in stereo sound. (Mono CED discs were packaged in white protective caddies, while the caddies for stereo discs were blue.) Other discs could be switched between two separate mono audio tracks, providing features such as bilingual audio capability.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: Like the LaserDisc and DVD, some CEDs feature random access, allowing users to quickly move to certain parts of the movie. Each side of a CED disc could be split into up to 63 "chapters", or bands. Two late RCA players (the SJT400 and SKT400) could access these bands in any given order. Unlike its laser-based counterparts, the chapters in a CED are based on minutes of the film, not scenes.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: Novelty discs and CED-based games were produced whereby accessing the chapters in a specified order would string together a different story each time. However, only a few were produced before the halt of CED player manufacturing.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: In comparison with LaserDisc technology, CEDs suffered from the fact that they were a phonograph-style contact medium: RCA estimated that the number of times a CED could be played back, under ideal conditions, was 500. By comparison, a clean, laser rot-free LaserDisc could, in theory, be played an unlimited number of times (although repeated or careless handling could still result in damage).


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: Since the CED system used a stylus to read the discs, it was necessary to regularly change the stylus in the player to avoid damage to the videodiscs, while worn and damaged discs also caused problems for consumers. When a disc began to wear, video and audio quality would severely decline, and the disc would begin to skip. Several discs suffered from a condition called "video virus", where a CED would skip a great deal due to dust particles stuck in the grooves of the disc. However, playing the disc several times would generally solve this problem.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: Unlike VHS tapes, CEDs (along with LaserDisc) required a disc flip (however, some LaserDisc players were able to read both sides of the disc without physically flipping the disc, achieved by moving the laser from one side of the disc to the other, but this still resulted in a pause of playback during the change) at some point during the course of almost all films as only sixty minutes of video could be stored per side (75 mins on UK PAL discs due to the slower rotation speed); if a feature ran over two hours, it would be necessary to spread the feature over two discs.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: In some cases, if a movie's theatrical running time was only slightly longer than two hours, studios would often trim short scenes throughout the movie and/or employ time compression (speeding the extra run time out of the film) in order to avoid the expense of issuing two discs.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: This problem was not unique to CEDs: LaserDiscs presented the same difficulty, and some longer features, such as "The Ten Commandments" (1956), still required more than one tape or disc in the VHS, Beta, and LaserDisc formats. There were no two-disc UK PAL releases.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: Less significant disadvantages include lack of support for freeze-frame during pause, since CEDs scanned four frames in one rotation versus one frame per rotation on CAV LaserDisc, while computer technology was not advanced enough at the time to outfit the player with a framebuffer affordably. However, a "page mode" was available on many players that would allow those four frames to be repeated in an endless loop.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: CEDs were also larger than VHS tapes, thicker than LaserDiscs, and considerably heavier due to the plastic caddies.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: CED players were manufactured by four companies—RCA, Hitachi, Sanyo, and Toshiba—but seven other companies marketed players manufactured by these companies.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: Upon release, 50 titles were available for the CED; along with RCA (which included the company's partnership with Columbia Pictures plus Paramount and Disney releases), CBS Video Enterprises (later CBS/FOX Video) produced the first 50 titles. Eventually, Disney, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, MCA, Vestron Video, and other labels began to produce CED discs under their own home video labels, and did so until the end of disc manufacturing in 1986.


title: Capacitance Electronic Disc

text: Capacitance Electronic Disc's competitors, Philips/Magnavox and Pioneer, instead manufactured optical discs, read with lasers. On April 4, 1984, RCA, having sold only 550,000 players, ended sales. RCA's losses since the product's introduction were announced as $580 million. The losses resulted in General Electric's acquisition of RCA in 1986, and the "SelectaVision" brand was abandoned.


title: Garry Sandhu

text: Gurmukh Singh "Garry" Sandhu, is an Indian singer, songwriter, rapper and actor known for his work in Punjabi music. Originally, he came to the United Kingdom on a work visa, and worked as a construction worker situated in the Birmingham area. Whilst working, he would aspire to eventually make his songwriting into an actual career. He made his singing debut in 2010 with song "Main Ni Peenda" and acting debut with the film "Romeo Ranjha" (2014). He has released songs including Illegal Weapon, Yeah Baby, Banda Ban Ja, Excuses etc. He also owns his record label "Fresh Media Records". In 2019, his song "Yeah Baby" was released in a bollywood film De De Pyaar De as "Hauli Hauli". He has been nominated for many awards at PTC Punjabi Music Awards. On December 14, 2020, Business Today reported that Sandhu's song "Illegal Weapon 2.0" was one of the top YouTube music videos in India.


title: Blue note

text: In jazz and blues, a blue note is a note that—for expressive purposes—is sung or played at a slightly different pitch from standard. Typically the alteration is between a quartertone and a semitone, but this varies depending on the musical context.


title: Blue note

text: The blue notes are usually said to be the lowered third, lowered fifth, and lowered seventh scale degrees. The lowered fifth is also known as the raised fourth. Though the blues scale has "an inherent minor tonality, it is commonly 'forced' over major-key chord changes, resulting in a distinctively dissonant conflict of tonalities". A similar conflict occurs between the notes of the minor scale and the minor blues scale, as heard in songs such as "Why Don't You Do Right?", "Happy" and "Sweet About Me".


title: Blue note

text: In the case of the lowered third over the root (or the lowered seventh over the dominant), the resulting chord is a neutral mixed third chord.


title: Blue note

text: Blue notes are used in many blues songs, in jazz, and in conventional popular songs with a "blue" feeling, such as Harold Arlen's "Stormy Weather". Blue notes are also prevalent in English folk music. Bent or "blue notes", called in Ireland "long notes", play a vital part in Irish music.


title: Blue note

text: Music theorists have long speculated that blue notes are intervals of just intonation not derived from European 12-tone equal temperament tuning. Just intonation musical intervals derive directly from the harmonic series. Humans naturally learn the harmonic series as infants. This is essential for many auditory activities such as understanding speech (see formant) and perceiving tonal music. In the harmonic series, overtones of a fundamental tonic tone occur as integer multiples of the tonic frequency. It is therefore convenient to express musical intervals in this system as integer ratios (e.g. = octave, = perfect fifth, etc.). The relationship between just and equal temperament tuning is conveniently expressed using the 12-tone equal temperament cents system. Just intonation is common in music of other cultures such as the 17-tone Arabic scale and the 22-tone Indian classical music scale. In African cultures, just intonation scales are the norm rather than the exception. As the blues appears to have derived from "a cappella" field hollers of African slaves, it would be expected that its notes would be of just intonation origin closely related to the musical scales of western Africa.


title: Blue note

text: The blue "lowered third" has been speculated to be from (267 cents) to 350 cents above the tonic tone. It has recently been found empirically to center at (316 cents, a minor third in just intonation, or a slightly sharp minor third in equal temperament) based on cluster analysis of a large number of blue notes from early blues recordings. This note is commonly slurred with a major third justly tuned at (386 cents) in what Temperley et al. refer to as a "neutral third". This bending or glide between the two tones is an essential characteristic of the blues.


title: Blue note

text: The blue "lowered fifth" has been found to be quite separate from the perfect fifth and clusters with the perfect fourth with which it is commonly slurred. This "raised fourth" is most commonly expressed at (583 cents). The eleventh harmonic (i.e. or 551 cents) as put forward by Kubik and Curry is also possible as it is in the middle of the slur between the perfect fourth at and .


title: Blue note

text: The blue "lowered seventh" appears to have two common locations at (969 cents) and (1018 cents). Kubik and Curry proposed as it is commonly heard in the barbershop quartet harmonic seventh chord. The barbershop quartet idiom also appears to have arisen from African American origins. It was a surprising finding that was a much more common tonal location although both were used in the blues sometimes within the same song.


title: Blue note

text: It should not be surprising that blue notes are not represented accurately in the 12-tone equal temperament system, which is made up of a cycle of very slightly flattened perfect fifths (i.e. ). The just intonation blue note intervals identified above all involve prime numbers not equally divisible by 2 or 3. Prime-number harmonics greater than 3 are all perceptually different from 12-tone equal temperament notes.


title: Blue note

text: The blues has likely evolved as a fusion of an African just intonation scale with European 12-tone musical instruments and harmony. The result has been a uniquely American music which is still widely practiced in its original form and is at the foundation of another genre, American jazz.


title: Sven Ulreich

text: Sven Ulreich (born 3 August 1988) is a German professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Bundesliga club Bayern Munich.


title: Sven Ulreich

text: He was Stuttgart II's first-choice goalkeeper during their first four matches of the 2007–08 Regionalliga season, keeping two clean sheets in that period. He played 10 matches during the previous season, receiving two yellow cards.


title: Sven Ulreich

text: In January 2008, he was promoted to the first team of VfB Stuttgart. But he also played again for the reserve team. He made his first team debut on 9 February 2008, in the 3–1 loss to Hertha BSC and earned his first victory as the starting goalkeeper on 16 February 2008, against MSV Duisburg.


title: Sven Ulreich

text: On 6 April 2010, Ulreich extended his contract at VfB Stuttgart until the summer of 2013. On 20 January 2012 he extended his contract until June 2017.


title: Sven Ulreich

text: Ulreich transferred to Bayern prior to the 2015–16 season and signed a contract until 2018. He was on the substitutes' bench for the 2015 DFL-Supercup. He finished the 2015–16 season with three appearances. He finished the 2016–17 season with seven appearances.


title: Sven Ulreich

text: He was able to feature regularly for Bayern Munich during the 2017–18 season, due to a long-term injury to first-choice goalkeeper Manuel Neuer. Ulreich started the 2017–18 season by playing in the German Super Cup. Ulreich played a key role in guiding Bayern Munich to a record sixth successive German Bundesliga title, which was confirmed in a 1–4 win away at FC Augsburg on 7 April 2018. However, Bayern Munich were eliminated from 2017–18 Champions League partly due to a goalkeeping error by Ulreich against Real Madrid in semi-finals. Bayern lost 4–3 on aggregate. In total, he made 47 appearances in the 2017–18 season.


title: Sven Ulreich

text: After Bayern had signed another goalkeeper in the form of Alexander Nübel in the summer of 2020 amidst much public interest, discussions arose as to who would be the backup behind Manuel Neuer in the future. Ulreich therefore moved to 2. Bundesliga club Hamburger SV in early October 2020 shortly before the end of the transfer window, signing a three-year contract. There, the 32-year-old immediately took over as the starter instead of Daniel Heuer Fernandes under new head coach Daniel Thioune.


title: Sven Ulreich

text: On 27 June 2021, Ulreich returned to Bayern Munich. On 11 November 2022, he extended his contract with Bayern until 2024.


title: Sven Ulreich

text: Ulreich was also a member of the Germany U16, Germany U19, Germany U21 teams and received a call-up for the senior team.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam (; born 26 March 1959), better known as K. Shanmugam, is a Singaporean politician and lawyer who has been serving as Minister for Law since 2008 and Minister for Home Affairs since 2015. A member of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) representing the Chong Pang division of Nee Soon GRC since 2011.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: A lawyer by profession, Shanmugam made a name for himself in litigation, arbitration and insolvency cases before he entered politics. In 1998, at the age of 38, he was one of the youngest lawyers in Singapore to be appointed Senior Counsel. Along with Davinder Singh, he was known as one of the "twin titans of litigation" and a prominent figure in Singapore's legal circles. Shanmugam has also received praise for being one of the top cross-examiners in Singapore and has acted for and against all three prime ministers in civil lawsuits.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Kurt Campbell, former United States Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, once spoke of Shanmugam: "The quality of his mind is impressive. In meetings with him, he has legal framing, approaches problems in a deeply systemic way, is unsentimental about the world, clear-eyed and very strategic... He can be hard-headed about what is best for Singapore, but he is always upfront and clear."


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Shanmugam was educated at Raffles Institution from 1972 to 1977. He went on to read law at the National University of Singapore's Faculty of Law and graduated in 1984.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: During his time in law school, Shanmugam earned several awards, book prizes and scholarships for being the top student from his first to third years and for academic merit (1982–1983). He also won the Montrose Memorial Prize for Jurisprudence (1984).


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Shanmugam was awarded the Adrian Clarke Memorial Medal, the Leow Chia Heng Prize and the External Examiner's Prize (1984) for being the top law student of his graduating class and top student in the final-year examinations. He also represented Singapore in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition in 1984, in which his team won Runner-Up in the International Division.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: After being admitted to the Singapore Bar as an advocate and solicitor in 1985, Shanmugam went into private practice and became a senior partner and Head of Litigation and Dispute Resolution at Allen & Gledhill.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: In 1998, Shanmugam became one of the youngest lawyers to be appointed Senior Counsel of the Supreme Court at the age of 38.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Shanmugam has acted for Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his predecessors (Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong) in lawsuits. In 1995, the "International Herald Tribune" selected Shanmugam to represent them after the Lees and Goh initiated a civil libel lawsuit against the newspaper. Lee Kuan Yew later stated that the "Tribune"'s decision to choose Shanmugam to represent them even though he was a People's Action Party member and was close to the Lees and Goh, was the highest form of praise to the Senior Counsel's integrity and to the integrity of the Singapore Government as a whole.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Shanmugam entered politics when he joined the People's Action Party (PAP) team contesting Sembawang GRC in the 1988 general election. The PAP team won and Shanmugam became a Member of Parliament representing the Chong Pang ward of Sembawang GRC.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Shanmugam served as a Member of Parliament and continued to practise law until 2008 when he joined the Cabinet to replace S. Jayakumar as Minister for Law. He was concurrently appointed Second Minister for Home Affairs in 2008, and succeeded Wong Kan Seng as Minister for Home Affairs in 2010.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Following the 2011 general election, Shanmugam relinquished his portfolio as Minister for Home Affairs and was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs, while continuing to serve concurrently as Minister for Law. As of 2015, Shanmugam remains as a Member of Parliament representing Chong Pang ward, which had become part of Nee Soon GRC.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Following Shanmugam's remarks on changes to the qualifying criteria for Singapore's elected presidency, he was criticised by former presidential candidate Tan Cheng Bock for pre-empting the legislative process and the Presidential Elections Committee, which decides the eligibility of candidates for the presidential election.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: In February 2018, Shanmugam said that Singapore would change its criminal breach of trust (CBT) laws to address concerns that company directors and key officers of charities would face lower maximum penalties for CBT offences compared to their employees.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Shanmugam was a member of the Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods formed in 2018. During the public hearings, he questioned Simon Milner, Facebook's Vice President of Public Policy for Asia-Pacific, about the misuse of online data by Cambridge Analytica., and crossed swords with historian Thum Ping Tjin over a paper about Operation Coldstore written by Thum in 2013.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: As Minister for Law, Shanmugam was a believer in tempering the law with empathy. This has been the basis to make Singapore's laws to be more compassionate, with greater collectivism, and to make the country to looks out for those who are unable to look after themselves.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: During Shanmugam's tenure as Minister for Law, some changes to the criminal and family justice system were effected. These include:


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Shanmugam served on the board of directors for several companies before his appointment to the Singapore Cabinet.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Shanmugam served as the President of the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) from March 2002 to March 2009.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Shanmugam has been married to clinical psychologist Seetha Shanmugam since 2008. He was formerly married to Jothie Rajah, daughter of KS Rajah. They later divorced.


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Shanmugam is a practising Hindu. He is also often involved in various religious activities organised by communities of various faiths. He has met Pope Francis in the Vatican City and has referred to the Pontiff as exemplifying the "essence of religion" and a "strong advocate of interfaith dialogue and understanding".


title: K. Shanmugam

text: Shanmugam also participates regularly in the Taoist Nine Emperor God's festival in his Constituency since he became an MP for the area.


title: Dick Francis

text: Richard Stanley Francis (31 October 1920 – 14 February 2010) was a British steeplechase jockey and crime writer whose novels centre on horse racing in England.


title: Dick Francis

text: After wartime service in the RAF, Francis became a full-time jump-jockey, winning over 350 races and becoming champion jockey of the British National Hunt. He came to further prominence in 1956 as jockey to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, riding her horse Devon Loch which fell when close to winning the Grand National. Francis retired from the turf and became a journalist and novelist.


title: Dick Francis

text: Many of his novels deal with crime in the horse-racing world, with some of the criminals being outwardly respectable figures. The stories are narrated by the main character, often a jockey, but sometimes a trainer, an owner, a bookie, or someone in a different profession, peripherally linked to racing. This person always faces great obstacles, often including physical injury. More than forty of these novels became international best-sellers.


title: Dick Francis

text: Francis was born in Coedcanlas, Pembrokeshire, Wales. Some sources report his birthplace as the inland town of Lawrenny, but at least two of his obituaries stated his birthplace as the coastal town of Tenby. His autobiography says that he was born at his maternal grandparents' farm at Coedcanlas on the estuary of the River Cleddau, roughly a mile north-west of Lawrenny. His mother had likely returned to her parents' home to give birth, as was the custom. He was the son of a jockey and stable manager and his wife. Francis grew up in Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. He left school at 15 without any qualifications, intending to become a jockey; by the time he was 18, in 1938, he also was training horses.


title: Dick Francis

text: In October 1945, he met Mary Margaret Brenchley (17 June 1924 – 30 September 2000) at a cousin's wedding. In most interviews, they commented that it was love at first sight. (Francis has some of his characters fall similarly in love within moments of meeting, as in the novels "Flying Finish", "Knockdown", and "The Edge".) Their families were not entirely happy with their engagement, but the couple married in June 1947 in London. She had graduated with a degree in English and French from London University at the age of 19, was an assistant stage manager, and later worked as a publisher's reader. She also became a pilot, and her experience of flying contributed to many novels, including "Flying Finish", "Rat Race", and "Second Wind". She contracted polio while pregnant with their first child. (Francis drew from this in his novel "Forfeit", which he named as one of his favourites.) They had two sons, Merrick (born 1950) and Felix (born 1953).


title: Dick Francis

text: For nearly 30 years, Francis lived in Blewbury in Berkshire (now in Oxfordshire). In the 1980s, he and his wife moved to Florida in the United States. In 1992, they moved to the Cayman Islands, where Mary died of a heart attack in 2000. In 2006, Francis had a heart bypass operation; in 2007 his right foot was amputated. He died of natural causes on 14 February 2010 at his Caribbean home in Grand Cayman, survived by both sons.


title: Dick Francis

text: During the Second World War, Francis volunteered, hoping to join the cavalry. Instead, he served in the Royal Air Force, initially as a member of ground crew and later piloting fighter and bomber aircraft, including the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters, and the Wellington and Lancaster bombers. He received an emergency commission as a pilot officer on 29 July 1944, and was promoted war-substantive flying officer on 29 January 1945. Much of his six-year service career was spent in Africa.


title: Dick Francis

text: After leaving the RAF in 1946, Francis became a highly successful jockey, reaching celebrity status in the world of British National Hunt racing. He won over 350 races, becoming champion jockey in the 1953–54 season.


title: Dick Francis

text: Shortly after becoming a professional, he was offered the prestige job of first jockey to Vivian Smith, Lord Bicester.


title: Dick Francis

text: From 1953 to 1957, Francis was jockey to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. His best remembered moment as a jockey came while riding the Queen Mother's horse, Devon Loch, in the 1956 Grand National, when the horse inexplicably fell when close to winning the race. Decades later, Francis considered losing that race his greatest regret and called it "a disaster of massive proportions".


title: Dick Francis

text: Francis suffered racing injuries, being first hospitalized from riding at the age of 12 when a pony fell on him and broke his jaw and nose. He drew from this career resulting in broken bones and damaged organs for his novels, in which his characters suffer the same. In 1957, after Francis suffered another serious fall, the Queen Mother's adviser, Lord Abergavenny, advised him that she wanted him to retire from racing for her.


title: Dick Francis

text: In 1983, the Grand National at Aintree Racecourse in England "stood at the brink of extinction," according to "The Philadelphia Inquirer". News reporter Don Clippinger wrote,


title: Dick Francis

text: "Britain's Jockey Club negotiated a $14 million deal to buy the land and save the race forever. The only problem was that the Jockey Club did not have $14 million, so two prominent racing personalities—Lord Derby and novelist Dick Francis—were selected to raise the money in a worldwide campaign". Other philanthropists, including Charles C. Fenwick Jr., who rode Ben Nevis to victory in the 1980 Grand National, and Paul Mellon, an American breeder and racing enthusiast, also contributed to saving the race.


title: Dick Francis

text: Francis wrote more than 40 international best-sellers. His first book was his autobiography "The Sport of Queens" (1957); he was offered the aid of a ghostwriter but rejected the idea. The book's success led to his becoming the racing correspondent for London's "Sunday Express" newspaper, and he continued in that job for 16 years.


title: Dick Francis

text: He set his first thriller, "Dead Cert", published in 1962, in the world of horse racing, establishing a specialized niche for his work. Subsequently he regularly produced a novel a year for the next 38 years, missing only 1998 (during which he published a short-story collection). Although all his books were set against a similar background, his male protagonists held a variety of jobs, including artist ("In the Frame" and "To the Hilt"), investigator for the Jockey Club ("Slay-Ride" and "The Edge"), pilot ("Rat Race" and "Flying Finish"), and wine merchant ("Proof"). All the novels are narrated by the hero, who in the course of the story learns that he is more resourceful, brave, tricky, than he had thought, and usually finds a certain salvation for himself as well as bestowing it on others. Details of other people's occupations fascinated Francis, and he explores the workings of such fields as photography, accountancy, the gemstone trade, and restaurant service on transcontinental trains—but always in the interest of the plot. Dysfunctional families were a subject which he also exploited ("Reflex", a baleful grandmother; "Hot Money", a multi-millionaire father and serial ex-husband; "Decider", the related co-owners of a racecourse).


title: Dick Francis

text: Francis rarely re-used his lead characters. Only two heroes were used more than once; injured ex-jockey turned one-handed private investigator Sid Halley ("Odds Against", "Whip Hand", "Come to Grief", "Under Orders", also in "Refusal" by Felix Francis after his father's death) and Kit Fielding ("Break In" and "Bolt").


title: Dick Francis

text: According to a columnist for the "Houston Chronicle", Francis "writes believable fairy tales for adults—ones in which the actors are better than we are but are believable enough to make us wonder if indeed we could not one day manage to emulate them."


title: Dick Francis

text:
In January, he sits down to write, staring down the barrel of a deadline. "My publisher comes over in mid-May to collect the manuscript," he says, "and it's got to be done."
The book's publication takes place in England in September. American publication in past years has been in February, although his next book, "Straight", is set to be published in November. Once the manuscript is out of his hands, he takes the summer off, while percolating the plot of his next book. Research on the next book begins in late summer and continues through the autumn, while he's gearing up for his promotional tour for the just-published book. Come January, he sits down to write again.
He doesn't like book tours. He is not one for revelations, major life changes, and intimacies with strange interviewers, and he says he gets tired of answering the same questions again and again.
He shuns the lecture circuit. He'd prefer to let his novels and his sales volume speak for themselves... And though he doesn't love the act of writing [and] could easily retire, he finds himself planning his new book as each summer ends.
He says, "Each one, you think to yourself, 'This is the last one,' but then, by September, you're starting again. If you've got money, and you're just having fun, people think you're a useless character."
Or, as independently wealthy Tor Kelsey says in "The Edge", explaining why he works for a minuscule salary: "I work... because I like it, I'm not all that bad at what I do, really, and it's useful, and I'm not terribly good at twiddling my thumbs."


title: Dick Francis

text: Francis collaborated extensively in his fiction with his wife, Mary, until her death. Learning this was a surprise to some readers and reviewers. He credited her with being a great researcher for the novels. In 1981, Don Clippinger interviewed the Francises for "The Philadelphia Inquirer" and wrote,


title: Dick Francis

text: "When Dick Francis sits down each January to begin writing another of his popular mystery-adventure novels, it is almost a certain bet that his wife, Mary, has developed a new avocation... For instance, in "Rat Race", [the protagonist] operated an air-taxi service that specialized in carrying jockeys, trainers and owners to distant race courses. Before that book came out in 1970, Mrs. Francis obtained a pilot's license and was operating an air-taxi service of her own. Francis' newest novel, "Reflex", is built around photography, and sure enough, Mary Francis has become accomplished behind the camera and in the darkroom... And, in their condominium, they have set up the subject of his 20th novel ["Twice Shy"] – a computer. While he is touring the country, she is working on new computer programs."


title: Dick Francis

text: According to journalist Mary Amoroso, "Mary does much of the research: She went so far as to learn to fly a plane for "Flying Finish". She also edits his manuscripts, and serves as sounding board for plot line and character development. Says Francis, 'At least the research keeps her from going out shopping.'" Francis told interviewers Jean Swanson and Dean James,


title: Dick Francis

text: Francis's manager (and co-author of his later books) was his son Felix, who left his post as teacher of A-Level Physics at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire in order to work for his father. Felix was the inspiration behind a leading character, a marksman and physics teacher, in the novel "Twice Shy". The older son, Merrick, was a racehorse trainer and later ran his own horse transport business, which inspired the novel "Driving Force".


title: Dick Francis

text: Father and son collaborated on four novels. Since his father's death, Felix has carried on to publish novels with his father's name in the title, including a return for Sid Halley ("Dick Francis's Refusal", 2013).


title: Dick Francis

text: Francis is the only three-time recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best Novel, winning for "Forfeit" in 1970, "Whip Hand" in 1981, and "Come To Grief" in 1996. Britain's Crime Writers Association awarded him its Gold Dagger Award for fiction in 1979 and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989. He was granted another Lifetime Achievement Award. Tufts University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1991.


title: Dick Francis

text: In 1996 he was given the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, the highest honour bestowed by the MWA. In 2000, he was granted the Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was created an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1983 and promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000.


title: Dick Francis

text: Amoroso wrote in 1989, "And yet he has a keen sense of the evanescence of literary endeavors. 'Whole months of work can be gone in four hours,' he says ruefully. 'People say they can't put my books down, and so they read them in one sitting of four hours.' Francis has been long accustomed to celebrity as a British sports star, but today he is a worldwide phenomenon, having been published in 22 languages. In Australia, he is recognized in restaurants, from his book-jacket picture. He and Mary will see people reading the novels on planes and trains."


title: Dick Francis

text: His first novel, "Dead Cert", was adapted as a film under the same title in 1974. Directed by Tony Richardson, it starred Scott Antony, Judi Dench and Michael Williams. It was adapted again as "Favorit" (a Soviet made-for-television movie) in 1976.