title: Cat food

text: Nutraceuticals such as antioxidants are considered to be additives of gastrointestinal diets to prevent digestive upset. Antioxidants have the ability to remove free radicals from the body which can cause damage to cell membranes, and are involved in chronic degenerative diseases. Free radicals amplify inflammation by causing release of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Free radicals can be caused by many factors such as stress, disease and age. Some oxygen-derived free radicals can produce ischemia in the small bowel and stomach of cats. Combinations of antioxidants have been reported to improve serum vitamin status, suppress lipid peroxidation and distributes the effects of exercise on the immune system. The most common antioxidants found in cat gastrointestinal diets are vitamin E and vitamin C.


title: Cat food

text: Cats have a sulfinoalanine decarboxylase deficiency, preventing the synthesis of taurine from cysteine.


title: Cat food

text: Food allergy is a non-seasonal disease with skin and/or gastrointestinal disorders. The main complaint is excessive scratching (pruritus) which is usually resistant to treatment by steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. The exact prevalence of food allergy in cats remains unknown. In 20 to 30% of the cases, cats have concurrent allergic diseases (atopy/flea-allergic dermatitis). A reliable diagnosis can only be made with dietary elimination-challenge trials. Allergy testing is necessary for the identification of the causative food component(s). Therapy consists of avoiding the offending food component(s).


title: Cat food

text: The broad pet food recalls starting in March 2007 came in response to reports of renal failure in pets consuming mostly wet pet foods made with wheat gluten from a single Chinese company beginning in February 2007. Overall, several major companies recalled more than 100 brands of pet foods with most of the recalled product coming from Menu Foods. The most likely cause according to the FDA is the presence of melamine in the wheat gluten of the affected foods. Melamine is known to falsely inflate the protein content rating of substances in laboratory tests. The economic impact on the pet food market was extensive, with Menu Foods alone losing roughly $30 million from the recall. Some companies were not affected and utilized the situation to generate sales for alternative pet foods.


title: Cat food

text: A 2004 study reported that food packaged in cans coated with bisphenol A is correlated with the development of hyperthyroidism in cats.


title: Cat food

text: In a study on the impacts of the pet food industry on world fish and seafood supplies, researchers estimate that 2.48 million metric tonnes of fish are used by the cat food industry each year. It was suggested that there needs to be "a more objective and pragmatic approach to the use of a limited and decreasing biological resource, for human benefit." Marine conservation activist Paul Watson argues that the reduction in forage fish such as those commonly used in cat food (sardines, herring, anchovy etc.) negatively affects fish higher up the food chain like cod, tuna and swordfish, not to mention marine mammals and birds.


title: Cat food

text: Based on 2004 numbers, cats in the US consume the caloric equivalent of what 192,000 (0.0655%) Americans consume. While pet food is made predominantly using byproducts from human food production, the increase in popularity of human-grade and byproduct-free pet food means there is increasing pressure on the overall meat supply.


title: Cat food

text: AAFCO recommends 26% crude protein for feline diets on a dry matter basis. High animal protein in cat food has increased in popularity due to consumer demand for natural diets, in which protein content is usually much higher than the AAFCO minimum levels. This trend has led to a higher need for animal protein, which may have a detrimental effect on sustainability.


title: Cat food

text: In 2015, there were an estimated 77.8 million dogs and 85.6 million cats in the USA. The consumer desire to feed their pets premium foods which advertise healthy and human-grade ingredients, coupled with more pet ownership, requires more meat; this could require more land for raising livestock. In a study conducted by Okin in 2017, he suggests that if a quarter of all animal protein used in the food of American pets was human-grade, it would be equivalent to the energy needs of 5 million Americans. Okin uses an estimate of 33% of an animal's energy needs is derived from animal products; however, this is conservative in that many diets now have more than 33% of their diet in animal protein alone.


title: Cat food

text: Lowering protein levels in feline diets may help to improve the sustainability of both the human and pet food system by decreasing pressure on livestock agriculture and ultimately improving environmental effects. Other ways to improve sustainability include using animal byproducts (organs not eaten by humans), plant (mainly pea) proteins, and insect proteins. In addition, feeding less food to an animal helps reduce the carbon footprint and chances of obesity.


title: Cat food

text: The European Union does not use a unified nutrient requirement. A manufacturer committee called FEDIAF (European Pet Food Industry Federation) makes recommendations for cats and dogs that members follow. Both AAFCO and FEDIAF publish in two formats: one in the amount-per-kilogram form above, another in an amount-per-unit-energy format.


title: Nap

text: A nap is a short period of sleep, typically taken during daytime hours as an adjunct to the usual nocturnal sleep period. Naps are most often taken as a response to drowsiness during waking hours. A nap is a form of biphasic or polyphasic sleep, where the latter terms also include longer periods of sleep in addition to one single period.


title: Nap

text: For years, scientists have been investigating the benefits of napping, including the 30-minute nap as well as sleep durations of 1–2 hours. Performance across a wide range of cognitive processes has been tested.


title: Nap

text: Sara Mednick conducted a study experimenting on the effects of napping, caffeine, and a placebo. Her results showed that a 60–90-minute nap is more effective than caffeine in memory and cognition.


title: Nap

text: A power nap, also known as a Stage 2 nap, is a short slumber of 20 minutes or less which terminates before the occurrence of deep slow-wave sleep, intended to quickly revitalize the napper. The power nap is meant to maximize the benefits of sleep versus time. It is used to supplement normal sleep, especially when a sleeper has accumulated a sleep deficit.


title: Nap

text: It has been shown that excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) can be improved by prescribed napping in narcolepsy. Apart from narcolepsy, it has not been demonstrated that naps are beneficial for EDS in other sleep disorders.


title: Nap

text: The state of grogginess, impaired cognition and disorientation experienced when awakening from sleep is known as sleep inertia. This state reduces the speed of cognitive tasks but has no effects on the accuracy of task performance. The effects of sleep inertia rarely last longer than 30 minutes in the absence of prior sleep deprivation.


title: Nap

text: A 2016 meta-analysis showed that naps longer than an hour may be associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome or death. There was no effect of napping for as long as 40  minutes per day, but a sharp increase in risk of disease occurred at longer nap times.


title: Nap

text: For idiopathic hypersomnia, patients typically experience sleep inertia and are unrefreshed after napping.


title: Right axis deviation

text: The electrical axis of the heart is the net direction in which the wave of depolarization travels. It is measured using an electrocardiogram (ECG). Normally, this begins at the sinoatrial node (SA node); from here the wave of depolarisation travels down to the apex of the heart. The hexaxial reference system can be used to visualise the directions in which the depolarisation wave may travel.


title: Right axis deviation

text: RAD is an ECG finding that arises either as an anatomically normal variant or an indicator of underlying pathology.


title: Right axis deviation

text: There are often no symptoms for RAD and it is usually found by chance during an ECG. Many of the symptoms exhibited by patients with RAD are associated with its different causes. The table below displays the four most common causes and the signs, symptoms and risk factors associated with it.


title: Right axis deviation

text: Blockage of the left posterior fascicle would lead to activation of the anterior portion of the left ventricle followed by activation of the rest of the ventricle in a superior to inferior direction and directed towards the right. This would lead to right axis deviation findings on an ECG.


title: Right axis deviation

text: Bifascicular block is a combination of right bundle branch block and either left anterior fascicular block or left posterior fascicular block. Conduction to the ventricle would therefore be via the remaining fascicle. The ECG will show typical features of RBBB plus either left or right axis deviation.


title: Right axis deviation

text: The lateral wall of the left ventricle is supplied by branches of the left anterior descending (LAD) and left circumflex (LCx) arteries. Infarction of the lateral wall will thus lead to deviation of the axis away from the site of infarction.


title: Right axis deviation

text: Pre-excitation refers to early activation of the ventricles due to impulses bypassing the AV node via an accessory pathway.


title: Right axis deviation

text: Accessory pathways are abnormal conduction pathways formed during cardiac development. An example of pre-excitation syndromes is Wolff Parkinson White syndrome. Here, the presence of a left lateral accessory pathway leads to right-axis deviation.


title: Right axis deviation

text: Fascicular tachycardia usually arises from the posterior fascicle of the left bundle branch. They produce QRS complexes of relatively short durations with a right bundle branch block pattern. Tachycardias originating in the anterior left fascicle would lead to right axis deviation.


title: Right axis deviation

text: Right ventricular outflow tract tachycardia originates from the outflow tract of the right ventricle or the tricuspid annulus. As it arises from the right ventricle, the impulse spreads inferiorly from beneath the pulmonary valve, and there right axis deviation.


title: Right axis deviation

text: Ventricular ectopy is when the heartbeat is an abnormal heartbeat where the QRS complex is significantly wider. When the origin of the ectopic heartbeat is in the anterior fascicule then there is right axis deviation.


title: Right axis deviation

text: The pathophysiology depends on the specific cause of right axis deviation. Most causes can be attributed to one of four main mechanisms. These include right ventricular hypertrophy, reduced muscle mass of left ventricle, altered conduction pathways and change in the position of the heart in the chest.


title: Right axis deviation

text: Enlargement of right ventricular myocardial mass can result in right axis deviation. There are 2 main reasons for this mechanism. Firstly, more muscle mass will result in greater amplitude of depolarisation of that side of the heart. Secondly, depolarisation of the heart will be slower through the right ventricle relative to the left, and therefore the effects of the right ventricle on the axis of the heart will be dominant.


title: Right axis deviation

text: Decrease in myocardial mass of the left ventricle will shift the balance of depolarisation towards the right. For example, scarring and atrophy caused by ischaemia of the left ventricle will cause depolarisation of the left side of the heart to be less forceful. Hence, depolarisation of the right ventricle will be greater in amplitude than left, shifting the axis to the right.


title: Right axis deviation

text: Changes in the conduction pathways of the heart can result in right axis deviation. For example, an accessory pathway from the left atrium to the left ventricle, as in Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, will result in the left ventricle finishing depolarisation earlier than the right. Hence, the right ventricle will have more of an effect on the axis of the heart.


title: Right axis deviation

text: The apex of the heart is normally orientated towards the left. A more vertical orientation of the heart, shifts the axis to the right. Physiologically, this can occur in tall and thin individuals. Pathologically, conditions such as a left-sided pneumothorax and lung hyperinflation (e.g. COPD) can cause rightwards displacement of the heart. The congenital condition of dextrocardia results in right axis deviation.


title: Right axis deviation

text: In general, a positive (upwards) deflection of an ECG trace demonstrates an electrical activity that moves towards the measuring electrode, whereas a negative (downwards) deflection of an ECG trace demonstrates an electrical activity that moves away from the measuring electrode. The electrical heart axis can be estimated from the ECG by using the quadrant method or degree method.


title: Right axis deviation

text: A simple tool to quickly identify axis deviation (Figure 3) is the popular mnemonic; Reaching for Right Axis Deviation and Leaving for Left Axis Deviation. This refers to the appearance of leads I and III. If the QRS complex is negative in lead I and positive in lead III, the QRS complexes appear to be "reaching" to touch each other. This signifies right axis deviation. Conversely, if the QRS complex is positive in lead I and negative in lead III. the leads have the appearance of "leaving" each other. If the QRS complex in lead II is also negative, this confirms a left axis deviation.


title: Vons

text: Vons is a Southern California and Southern Nevada supermarket chain owned by Albertsons. It is headquartered in Fullerton, California, and operates stores under the Vons and Pavilions banners. It was owned by Safeway Inc. and headquartered in Arcadia, California, before that company was acquired by and folded into Albertsons along with all of their subsidiaries, including Vons.


title: Vons

text: Charles Von der Ahe opened a 20-foot wide store named Von's Groceteria in downtown Los Angeles, California, in 1906. The business had grown to 87 stores by 1928, when he sold the operation to MacMarr Stores. MacMarr was acquired by M.B. Skaggs' Safeway in 1930. In 1932, his sons Theodore and Wilfred Von der Ahe restarted the Von's Grocery Company.


title: Vons

text: In 1948, Von's opened a pioneering store which offered self-service, pre-packaged produce, meat, and deli items. By 1958, it had doubled in size to 27 stores, the third-largest grocery chain in the Greater Los Angeles Area In 1960 it acquired the sixth-largest, competitor Shopping Bag, a merger that was challenged by the Federal Trade Commission on antitrust grounds. In 1966 the United States Supreme Court ruled against Von's in "United States v. Von's Grocery Co." (384 U.S. 270), forcing a re-divestiture of the stores, which were eventually sold to Fisher Foods. The Von der Ahe family sold the chain to Household Finance Corporation in 1969. In 1970, Vons had 128 stores, making it the second largest supermarket chain in southern California behind Safeway.


title: Vons

text: In 1985, William Davila was named president and CEO of Vons, the first Mexican American to be CEO of an American supermarket chain. Prior to his appointment, Davila worked for 37 years at Vons before becoming CEO. He opened Tianguis in 1986, catering to Hispanic consumers, and was well received as the company's television spokesman, starring in commercials in both English and Spanish during his tenure. He retired in 1999.


title: Vons

text: In 1986, Household spun off Vons Companies in a leveraged buyout. To recapitalize itself, Vons merged with Detroit, Michigan-based Allied Supermarkets and sold off its assets outside California. Vons was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1987.


title: Vons

text: In October 1985, Vons introduced Pavilions, a "combination store" concept which offered a wider variety of upscale products as well as pharmacy and other non-food products and services. Some stores that were smaller were branded Pavilions Place.


title: Vons

text: In 1988, Safeway sold all of its stores in southern California and southern Nevada to Vons in exchange for an ownership stake. On April 8, 1997, Safeway acquired Vons for stock and Vons became a subsidiary of Safeway.


title: Vons

text: In March 2014, Cerberus Capital Management (which also owns rival grocery chain Albertsons) agreed to terms to purchase Vons' parent, Safeway. Cerberus' plans to merge the chains would likely result in store closures, especially with both Vons and Albertsons having a significant presence in Southern California. In late 2014, the FTC mandated that the new Albertson's/Safeway merger sell off almost 200 stores to allow for sufficient competition in markets where both Safeway and Albertson's stores had existed in price rivalry. One of the key buyers was Bellingham, Washington-based Haggen grocers which rebranded the newly purchased stores in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, and Nevada in early 2015 only to sell back the affected stores just months later after Haggen was forced into bankruptcy as a result of purchasing the new stores. Haggen was soon after acquired by Albertson's.


title: Vons

text: On April 18, 2005, Safeway began a $100 million brand re-positioning campaign labeled "Ingredients for life." This was done in an attempt to differentiate itself from its competitors, and to increase brand involvement. Steve Burd described it as "branding the shopping experience."


title: Vons

text: The launch included a redesigned logo, a new slogan "Ingredients for life" alongside a four-panel life icon to be used throughout stores and advertising, and a web application called "FoodFlex" to improve consumer nutrition. Many locations are being converted to the "Lifestyle" format. The new look was designed by Michigan-based PPC Design. In addition to the "inviting decor with warm ambiance and subdued lighting," the move required heavy redesign of store layout, new employee uniforms, sushi and olive bars, and the addition of in-store Starbucks kiosks (with cupholders on grocery carts). The change also involved differentiating the company from competitors with promotions based on the company's extensive loyalty card database. At the end of 2004, there were 142 "Lifestyle" format stores in the United States and Canada, with plans to open or remodel another 300 stores with this type of theme the following year. "Lifestyle format" stores have seen significantly higher average weekly sales than their other stores. By the end of 2006, shares were up proving that this rebranding campaign had a major impact on sale figures.


title: Jessie Anderson (The Walking Dead)

text: Jessie Anderson is a fictional character in the comic book series "The Walking Dead" and was portrayed by Alexandra Breckenridge in the television series of the same name. She is a resident in the Alexandria Safe-Zone. Created by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Charlie Adlard, the character made her debut in "The Walking Dead" #72 in 2010.


title: Jessie Anderson (The Walking Dead)

text: In both media Jessie is living in an unhappy, abusive marriage with her husband Pete and her son Ron (and Sam in the TV series) in the Alexandria Safe-Zone. Upon her husband's death, Jessie forms a romantic relationship with Rick Grimes. She is eventually devoured by walkers, along with her youngest son Sam, when a herd swarms Alexandria.


title: Jessie Anderson (The Walking Dead)

text: Jessie appears as a resident of the Alexandria Safe Zone community which Rick Grimes and his survivors enter. She makes her first appearance at the dinner party for the community, appearing nervous and quiet. Although her investment in the safe zone itself is limited and she refuses to speak about her marital problems, she is abruptly encountered by Rick who faces the issue immediately. Rick confronts her in private and she admits that Pete has been physically abusive, but still stands by him. She remains protective of their son, Ron.


title: Jessie Anderson (The Walking Dead)

text: A series of events occur that begin with Rick confronting Pete, which ultimately ends with Pete being executed after murdering Alexandria's leader's wife, Regina. Jessie grieves silently, but rather shortly, as she finds herself relieved that the trouble is over. She expresses gratitude towards Rick about the situation and later becomes more interested in him. She begins to make romantic advances on him, which he returns later. Rick begins to move on from his previous wife, Lori as his relationship with Jessie grows stronger.


title: Jessie Anderson (The Walking Dead)

text: During the horde that attacks Alexandria, Jessie, Rick, his son Carl and her son, Ron cover themselves in guts to move through the horde. The plan fails and Ron is devoured by walkers, and she is later bitten. She is unable to let go of Carl's hand as the horde moves in his direction, forcing Rick to amputate her hand with a hatchet to save his son. She is later found by Sgt. Abraham Ford devoured and reanimated who shoots her to avoid Rick seeing her undead.


title: Jessie Anderson (The Walking Dead)

text: In the episode "Remember", Jessie appears as a member of the Alexandria Safe-Zone who gives supplies to newcomer Rick Grimes, who recently shaved his long beard and Jessie offers to give him a haircut. Later when the group explores the neighborhood Rick loses sight of Carl and Judith and runs into Jessie who shows a panicking Rick that they are just talking to some elderly residents. In the episode "Forget", Jessie, Pete, Ron, and Sam attend Deanna's party. In "Spend", Jessie is shown when Rick visits her. She explains to him that her owl sculpture was broken, but doesn't know who did it. Rick promises to look into it, but Jessie questions what he will do, and he tells her that he will think of some kind of punishment. Later towards the end of the episode, Carol Peletier visits Pete, asking for Jessie. In response he replies, "Not a good time." Carol then informs Rick that Jessie is being abused and suggests that Sam may be as well.


title: Jessie Anderson (The Walking Dead)

text: In the episode "Try", Jessie is in her garage when Rick shows up, informing her that he knows her family's secret. She tells him that she is a grown, married woman who can take care of herself. Jessie closes the garage door on Rick. Jessie appears to be crying about her problems, when Rick walks through her door, asking her to let him help her. She then gives him permission to help her. Pete walks through the back door drunk. He demands Rick to leave, but Jessie tells him softly to leave. "Just go", she tells both Pete and Rick. Pete punches Rick, which leads to them having a fight in their house, and then in the street after they blast through the window, brawling. In the season finale "Conquer", Jessie is among the crowd discussing the fight.


title: Jessie Anderson (The Walking Dead)

text: In the season premiere, "First Time Again", Jessie first appears in a flashback. She is first seen hugging a devastated Sam at their home when Ron walks out. Later, Jessie is in the armory when Rick walks in. Jessie admonishes Rick for his behavior with Ron in the woods. In the episode "JSS" when The Wolves attack Alexandria, Jessie hides with Sam in a closet, but goes downstairs to warn Ron away from the house as she knows there is a Wolf inside, armed with a gun. A Wolf sneaks up behind her and slams her to the floor. The Wolf goes to pick up Jessie's gun that she threw away when she was attacked. Jessie arises from the ground and picks up some scissors from her stylist set and runs towards the Wolf when her back is turned. Jessie repeatedly stabs the Wolf in the chest violently. Ron walks in and watches her as Jessie kills the Wolf. Jessie then stabs the Wolf's brain to prevent reanimation. In the episode "Now", Jessie listens to Rick's speech after he is chased by a super-pack of walkers to the gates of Alexandria and now the community is surrounded by walkers. She goes home and removes the dead Wolf from her kitchen. Later, Jessie kills a zombified Betsy, who had committed suicide after her husband's death. In the episode "Heads Up", Jessie is at Rosita Espinosa's weapon training class learning how to use a machete. In the mid-season finale, "Start to Finish", Jessie helps Rick, an injured Deanna, Carl, Michonne, Gabriel and Ron into her house after Alexandria is swarmed with walkers. She urgently pushes against the walkers that are trying to push into her house along with the others. Pushing the walkers out downstairs, there seem to be too many and they begin entering the house. They all rush upstairs and formulate a plan to escape. They cover themselves in walker blood and guts and start walking through the herd, holding hands.


title: Jessie Anderson (The Walking Dead)

text: In the mid-season premiere, "No Way Out", Jessie is seen walking through the herd with Rick and the others. They stop and discuss an adapted plan to leave Alexandria. Jessie attempts to get Sam to go with Gabriel and Judith to the church for safety, but he refuses. Walking through the night, Sam begins to panic when he sees a young boy walker. He starts making noise and Jessie and Ron desperately try to calm him down, but the walkers find him and devour him. Jessie breaks down in tears, still holding onto Sam's hand. Carl, Ron, and Rick tell her that they must leave to avoid discovery by the walkers. She doesn't listen, however, leading the walkers to find and devour her. While Jessie is being eaten alive, Carl attempts to escape, but is unable due to her tight grip on his hand. Rick chops off her hand with his hatchet to save Carl from being pulled in after her.


title: Jessie Anderson (The Walking Dead)

text: Breckenridge explained: "I didn't know anything. I hadn't watched the show before. I'd watched the pilot a long time ago, which I enjoyed, but I wasn't into the blood and guts at the time so I didn't continue watching for that reason. When I got the part, I watched all four seasons in a week and was having zombie nightmares. It was like cramming for an exam. I hadn't read the comics and when I first had my meeting with Scott Gimple, he suggested I not read the comics because the show and characters aren't always exact to the comics. If you've seen the comics, my character has short black hair with bangs and wears a headband — and she's a meek; she's a weaker character than I'm playing on the show, which is great because I enjoy playing a stronger character."


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: "Enchanted" is a song written and recorded by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift for her third studio album, "Speak Now" (2010). Produced by Swift and Nathan Chapman, the song is about infatuation with someone after meeting them for the first time, and worrying about whether the initial feeling will be reciprocated. It is a power ballad with acoustic guitar crescendos after each refrain, leading to a harmony-layered coda.


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: Upon "Speak Now" release in 2010, "Enchanted" charted on the Canadian Hot 100 (number 95) and the US "Billboard" Hot 100 (number 75). It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Swift included the song on the set lists of two of her world tours, the Speak Now World Tour (2011–2012) and the 1989 World Tour (2015), and performed it on select dates of her other concerts.


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: After going viral on the TikTok video sharing app in October–November 2021, "Enchanted" reached a new peak on the Canadian Hot 100 (47). It also charted in Australia (50) and Singapore (14), and was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) in December 2021.


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: Taylor Swift released her third studio album, "Speak Now", on October 25, 2010. She wrote all 14 album tracks by herself. Swift wrote "Enchanted" about a man whom she was infatuated with after meeting him in person in New York City, and how she hoped to continue the relationship. She deliberately used the word "wonderstruck" in the lyrics because the subject used it in one of his emails to Swift after they met. In the album booklet, Swift includes the hidden message for the song as "A-D-A-M". "Enchanted" was originally the title track for "Speak Now", but Swift changed the album title after consulting with Big Machine Records president Scott Borchetta, who deemed "Enchanted" unfit for the album's grown-up perspectives.


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: Upon the album's release, the media speculated that the subject of the song was singer-songwriter Adam Young, the founder of music project Owl City. Young responded on Owl City's website on February 13, 2011, that he too was infatuated by Swift after they met for the first time. He uploaded his cover of "Enchanted", in which he changed some of the lyrics to directly address Swift. He sings, "I was never in love with someone else / I never had somebody waiting on me / 'Cause you were all of my dreams come true / And I just wish you knew / Taylor I was so in love with you;" responding to the original's lyrics, "Please don't be in love with someone else / Please don't have somebody waiting on you." Despite the media's speculation, Swift never confirmed or denied that Young was the song's subject, and she never responded to Young's cover.


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: In October 2011, Swift partnered with Elizabeth Arden, Inc. to release her fragrance brand "Wonderstruck", whose name references the lyrics of "Enchanted". After the success of "Wonderstruck", she released a second fragrance brand called "Wonderstruck Enchanted" in July 2012; both perfumes stem from the fairy tale-inspired theme of "Enchanted" about being enamored by someone after meeting for the first time.


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: Musically, "Enchanted" is a power ballad. The song begins with gentle acoustic guitar, which crescendos after each lyric "I was enchanted to meet you". Towards the song's conclusion is a harmony-layered coda featuring multitracked Swift's vocals over synthesizers. BBC Music critic Matthew Horton described it as a pop song. According to Rob Sheffield of "Rolling Stone", "Enchanted" includes rock influences. "The Daily Telegraph" described it as an old-school country song, but Brittany McKenna from "Billboard" considered the track "outside of the boundaries of country music". Cathalena E. Burch from the "Arizona Daily Star" deemed it an "arena-rock-worthy ballad".


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: "Enchanted" describes the aftermath of an encounter with a special person without knowing whether the infatuation would be reciprocated. The lyrics feature a fairy tale undertone to describe romance. The song opens with a scene where Swift first encounters her love interest, "Your eyes whispered 'have we met?'/ Across the room your silhouette starts to make its way to me," over repeated guitar chords. As the song progresses, she wonders about the possibility of a new romance over electric guitar riffs and a steady drum beat. Swift said the bridge was her favorite part because it represents her stream of consciousness when she was writing the song: "Please don't be in love with someone else / Please don't have somebody waiting on you." She said, "it feels good to write exactly what your thoughts were in a certain moment."


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: Swift's first live performance of "Enchanted" was for an NBC "Speak Now" Thanksgiving Special, which broadcast on November 25, 2010. The TV special showcased the making of the album along with live performances on a rooftop in New York City. Swift included "Enchanted" on the set list for her Speak Now World Tour (2011–2012). During the concerts, she performed in a night gown atop a winding staircase, with ballerinas dancing in the backdrop. For her shows on the 1989 World Tour, she included a stripped-down mashup of "Enchanted" and "Wildest Dreams" performing on a grand piano.


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: Swift included "Enchanted" on select dates of her other tours. During the Red Tour (2012–2013), she performed "Enchanted" at shows in Denver and Portland. She also performed it as a surprise song at the Reputation Stadium Tour show at MetLife Stadium on July 22, 2018.


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: "Enchanted" was acclaimed by critics. In a "Rolling Stone" review of "Speak Now", Sheffield commented that Swift's "voice is unaffected enough to mask how masterful she has become as a singer". He included "Enchanted" among the best songs released by Swift, highlighting the harmony-layered coda as a "coup de grace". Alex Macpherson from "The Guardian" praised the song for showcasing "Swift's instinct for capturing emotion with astonishing exactitude – right down to the dread sneaking in at the song's close". Matthew Horton of BBC Music praised its radio-friendly production, and "Slant Magazine" critic Jonathan Keefe lauded the production for exhibiting Swift's songwriting craftsmanship, selecting "Enchanted" as one of the album's highlights.


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: Erin Strecker of "Billboard" ranked it as the fourth most underrated Taylor Swift song in a 2014 list. "The Daily Telegraph" included it in their 2014 list of Swift's top ten songs. In another ranking of Swift's discography, Jane Song from "Paste" placed "Enchanted" among the top ten best songs released by Swift, lauding the track for Swift's songwriting resulting in a captivating narrative. Hannah Mylrea of "NME" specifically highlighted the track's "huge swooning instrumentals and [...] heartfelt chorus". Nate Jones from "Vulture" praised the production, but commented that the song "didn't need to be six minutes long".


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: After "Speak Now" was released, on November 13, 2010, "Enchanted" entered the US "Billboard" Hot 100 at number 75, the Digital Song Sales chart at number 44, and the Country Digital Song Sales chart at number 11. It entered at number 95 on the Canadian Hot 100 chart. In 2014, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified "Enchanted" gold for surpassing 500,000 track-equivalent units, based on sales and on-demand streaming.


title: Enchanted (Taylor Swift song)

text: Between October and November 2021, "Enchanted" experienced a popularity resurgence after it went viral on the video sharing app TikTok. In the United States, for the week of October 27, 2021, it amassed over one million streams; the following week, it gained over three million streams. The song's unexpected popularity was part of "SwiftTok", a hashtag for the collection of TikTok videos using Swift's songs. "Enchanted" peaked at number 55 on the "Billboard" Global 200. It reached a new peak on the Canadian Hot 100, at number 47. The song charted on the singles charts of Australia (number 50) and Singapore (number 14). In December 2021, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) certified the song gold. It reached the top ten on "Billboard" Country Streaming Songs, and entered two other "Billboard" component charts: Digital Song Sales and Streaming Songs.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Traditional Chinese marriage () is a ceremonial ritual within Chinese societies that involves not only a union between spouses, but also a union between the two families of a man and a woman, sometimes established by pre-arrangement between families. Marriage and family are inextricably linked, which involves the interests of both families. Within Chinese culture, romantic love and monogamy was the norm for most citizens. Around the end of primitive society, traditional Chinese marriage rituals were formed, with deer skin betrothal in the Fuxi era, the appearance of the "meeting hall" during the Xia and Shang dynasties, and then in the Zhou dynasty, a complete set of marriage etiquette ("six rituals") gradually formed. The richness of this series of rituals proves the importance the ancients attached to marriage. In addition to the unique nature of the "three letters and six rituals", monogamy, remarriage and divorce in traditional Chinese marriage culture are also distinctive.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: In Confucian thought, marriage is of grave significance to both families and society, as well as being important for the cultivation of virtue. Traditionally incest has been defined as marriage between people with the same surname. "One of the earliest marriage prohibitions, and one surviving to this day, was that forbidding persons of the same surname to marry. An imperial decree of 484 A.D. states that this rule was promulgated far back in the Chou dynasty, which was from 1122 to 255 B.C.' Any one marrying within his clan received sixty blows, and the marriage was declared null and void. It was feared that such mating would produce weak offspring.” From the perspective of a Confucian family, marriage brings together families of different surnames and continues the family line of the paternal clan. This is generally why giving birth to a boy is preferred over a girl. Therefore, the benefits and demerits of any marriage are important to the entire family, not just the individual couples. Socially, the married couple is thought to be the basic unit of society. In Chinese history, there have been many times when marriages have affected the country's political stability and international relations. For International Relations,“intermarriage has continued throughout Chinese history as a means of establishing and maintaining relations among families in the private sphere, as well as a factor in political careers. " For example, "Marriage alliances, or ho-ch'in 和亲, literally 'harmonious kinship,' was something new in its Han-era application. It was a part of a formal peace treaty arrangement at the interstate level, designed to pacify the powerful Hsiung-nu (匈奴) empire" During the Han Dynasty, the rulers of the powerful Xiongnu tribe demanded women from the imperial family. Many periods of Chinese history were dominated by the families of the wife or mother of the ruling emperor. For the country's political stability, during the Qing dynasty, although no "evidence of prohibitions against ethnic intermarriage within the Eight Banners", "in elite families of the ruling class, primary wives were almost entirely Manchu, while qie (commonly translated as "concubines") and other partners of lower status could be Han". In the Qing Dynasty, most of the high officials were mainly Manchu, so in order to protect the interests of the family, in the selection of a wife will be very important whether the woman was born in the "eight banners". For example, "the ethnicity apparent in the maiden names of wives in genealogies from elite Manchu descent groups, such as the Imperial Lineage."


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: In modern Chinese thinking, people in "primitive" societies did not marry, but had sexual relationships with one another indiscriminately. Such people were thought to live like animals, and they did not have the precise concept of motherhood, fatherhood, sibling, husband and wife, and gender, not to mention match-making and marriage ceremony. Part of the Confucian "civilizing mission" was to define what it meant to be a Father or a Husband, and to teach people to respect the proper relationship between family members and regulate sexual behavior.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: The story about the marriage of sister and brother Nüwa and Fu Xi told how they invented proper marriage procedures after marrying. At that time the world was unpopulated, so the siblings wanted to get married but, at the same time, they felt ashamed. So they went up to Kunlun Mountains and prayed to the heavens. They asked for permission for their marriage and said, "if you allow us to marry, please make the mist surround us." The heavens gave permission to the couple, and promptly the peak was covered in mist. It is said that in order to hide her shyness, Nüwa covered her blushing face with a fan. Nowadays in some villages in China, the brides still follow the custom and use a fan to shield their faces.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Endogamy among different classes in China were practiced, the upper class like the Shi class married among themselves, while commoners married among themselves also, avoiding marriage with slaves and other ordinary people. This practice was enforced under the law.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: In a maternal marriage, the husband moved in the woman's family home after the marriage. This happened in the transformation of antithetic marriage into monogamy, which signified the decline of matriarchy and the growing dominance of patriarchy in ancient China.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Even though Muslim women are forbidden to marry non-Muslims in Islamic law, from 1880 to 1949 it was frequently violated in Xinjiang since Chinese men married Muslim Turki (Uyghur) women, a reason suggested by foreigners that it was due to the women being poor, while the Turki women who married Chinese were labelled as whores by the Turki community, these marriages were illegitimate according to Islamic law but the women obtained benefits from marrying Chinese men since the Chinese defended them from Islamic authorities so the women were not subjected to the tax on prostitution and were able to save their income for themselves.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Chinese men gave their Turki wives privileges which Turki men's wives did not have, since the wives of Chinese did not have to wear a veil and a Chinese man in Kashgar once beat a mullah who tried to force his Turki Kashgari wife to veil. The Turki women also benefited in that they were not subjected to any legal binding to their Chinese husbands so they could make their Chinese husbands provide them with as much their money as she wanted for her relatives and herself since otherwise the women could just leave, and the property of Chinese men was left to their Turki wives after they died.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Because they were viewed as "impure", Islamic cemeteries banned the Turki wives of Chinese men from being buried within them, the Turki women got around this problem by giving shrines donations and buying a grave in other towns. Besides Chinese men, other men such as Armenians, Jews, Russians, and Badakhshanis intermarried with local Turki women.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: The local society accepted the Turki women and Chinese men's mixed offspring as their own people despite the marriages being in violation of Islamic law. Turki women also conducted temporary marriages with Chinese men such as Chinese soldiers temporarily stationed around them as soldiers for tours of duty, after which the Chinese men returned to their own cities, with the Chinese men selling their mixed daughters with the Turki women to his comrades, taking their sons with them if they could afford it but leaving them if they couldn't, and selling their temporary Turki wife to a comrade or leaving her behind.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Marriages during this time included a number of mandatory steps, of which the most important of them was the presentation of betrothal gifts from the groom and his family to the bride and her family. The bride's family then countered with a dowry. Sometimes the bride's family would buy goods with the betrothal money. Using a betrothal gift for family financial needs rather than saving it for the bride was viewed as dishonorable because it appeared as though the bride has been sold. A marriage without a dowry or a betrothal gifts was also seen as dishonorable. The bride was seen as a concubine instead of a wife. Once all the goods were exchanged the bride was taken to the ancestral home of the groom. There she was expected to obey her husband and his living relatives. Women continued to belong to their husband's families even if they had passed. If the widow's birth family wanted her to marry again, they would often have to ransom her back from her deceased husband's family. If they had any children they stayed with his family.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: In the Ming period, marriage was considered solemn and according to the law written in The Ming Code (Da Ming Lü), all commoners' marriages must follow the rules written in Duke Wen's Family Rules (Wen Gong Jia Li). The rules stated that "in order to arrange a marriage, an agent must come and deliver messages between the two families." A marriage broker had the license to play important roles by arranging marriages between two families. Sometimes both families were influential and wealthy and the matchmaker bonded the two families into powerful households. Studies have shown that, "In the Ming and Qing dynasties, a number of noble families emerged in Jiaxing of Zhejiang, where marriage is the most important way to expand their clan strength." Hence, marriage brokers were crucial during the Ming era, which offered us an insight of the lives of the Ming commoners.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Instead of using the more gender general term "mei ren" (媒人), texts more frequently referred to marriage brokers as "mei po" (媒婆). Since "po" (婆) translates to "grannies" in English, it suggests that elderly female characters dominated the "marriage market". Indeed, in the novel "The Golden Lotus" (Jing Ping Mei), the four matchmakers Wang, Xue, Wen, Feng were all elderly female characters. In ancient China, people believed that marriages belong to the "Yin" side (the opposite is "Yang"), which corresponds to females. In order to maintain the balance between Yin and Yang, women should not interfere with the Yang side and men should not interfere with the Yin side. Since breaking the balance may lead to disorder and misfortune, men were rarely seen in marriage arrangements. Furthermore, unmarried girls were not in the occupation because they themselves knew little about marriage and were not credible in arranging marriages. As a result, almost all marriage brokers in the literary work were presented as elderly females.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Being a successful marriage broker required various special skills. Firstly, the broker must be very persuasive. The broker must persuade both sides of the marriage that the arrangement was impeccable, even though many times the arrangement was actually not perfect. In Feng Menglong's "Old Man Zhang Grows Melons and Marries Wennü" in the collection "Stories Old and New" (Gu Jin Xiao Shuo), he wrote about an eighty-year-old man who married an eighteen-year young girl. The marriage was arranged by two matchmakers, Zhang and Li. Given the age difference, the marriage seemed impossible, but the two brokers still managed to persuade the father of the girl to marry her to the old man. Feng Menglong described them as "Once they start to speak the match is successfully arranged, and when they open their mouths they only spoke about harmony." The brokers gave powerful persuasions by avoiding about mentioning the differences between the couples they arranged. Which, only speak about the positive side. In addition to persuasion techniques, the brokers must possess great social skills. They needed to know a network of people so that when the time comes for marriage, they were able to seek the services of the brokers. Finally, when someone came to the broker, she must be able to pick out a matching suitors according to her knowledge of the local residents. Normally a perfect couple must have similar social status, economic status, and age. Wealthy families would look for a bride of similar social status who could manage the family finances and, most importantly, produce sons to inherit the family's wealth. Poor families, on the other hand, will not be as demanding and will only look for a bride who is willing to work hard in the fields. Sometimes they even need to travel to neighboring towns for a match, hence the verse "Traveling to the east household, traveling to the west household, their feet are always busy and their voices are always loud." Furthermore, mediators are required to know some mathematics and simple characters in order to write the matrimonial contract. The contract included "the sum of the bride price, the identity and age of both partners, and the identity of the person who presided over the wedding ceremony, usually the parents or grandparents." Without the knowledge of math and simple written characters, composing such a detailed contract would be impossible.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: The matchmakers made a living not only by facilitating successful marriage arrangements, but also by delivering messages between the two families. When they visited the households to deliver messages, the hosts usually provided them food and drinks to enjoy, hence the verse "Asking for a cup of tea, asking for a cup of alcohol, their faces are 3.3 inches thick (they are really cheeky)." However, these "visiting payments" were tiny compared to the payment they receive for a successful marriage. The visiting payment was always measured by "wen" or cash. Whereas the final payment was measured by "liang" or taels, and one tael was equivalent to a thousand wen. Therefore, the brokers would spend most of their time travelling back and forth between the two households to persuade them of the marriage. In addition, the matchmakers receive payments for introducing young girls to wealthy men. In Zhang Dai's diary "The Dream Collection of Tao'an" (Tao'an Meng Yi), he described a scene in which matchmakers brought young beautiful girls to the houses of wealthy customers to choose. Even if the customer was not satisfied he would reward the matchmaker several hundreds wen.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: As marriage brokers, these grannies also possessed the "guilty knowledge" of secret affairs. In "The Golden Lotus" (Jing Ping Mei), the matchmaker Wang speculated that Ximen Qing was fond of the married woman Pan Jinlian, so she introduced Pan to Ximen, helped them to have an affair and hide the secret for them. According to the law married woman must be loyal to her husband, and anyone who discovered an affair of the woman should report her immediately. Although, the matchmakers were licensed to keep secrets about affairs because keeping privacy of their clients was their obligation. Even so, they were usually criticized for doing so. In "The Golden Lotus" Wang was blamed for egging ladies on having improper affairs.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Chinese marriage became a custom between 402 and 221 BC. Despite China's long history and many different geographical areas, there are essentially six rituals, generally known as the three letters and six etiquettes (三書六禮). Unfortunately for some traditional families, the wife's mother cannot go to her son-in-law's family until one year (according to the Chinese lunar calendar or Chinese Lunar New Year) after the wedding has elapsed. However, during this one year the daughter can go back at any time.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: The wedding ceremony consisted of six basic procedures: making a proposal of marriage (nacai), requesting the bride's name and date of birth(wenming), sending news of divination results and betrothal gifts (naji), sending wedding presents to the bride's house (nazheng), requesting the date of the wedding (qingqi), and fetching in the bride in person (qinying). The details of each ritual could vary.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Since the late 1990s, it has become popular to create an elaborate wedding album, often taken at a photography studio. The album usually consists of many pictures of the bride and groom taken at various locations with many different outfits. In Singapore, these outfits often include wedding outfits belonging to different cultures, including Arab and Japanese wedding outfits. In contrast to Western wedding pictures, the Chinese wedding album will not contain pictures of the actual ceremony and wedding itself.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: In Mandarin Chinese, a "mang nian" (盲年), or 'blind year', when there are no first days of spring, such as in year 2010, a Year of the Tiger, is considered an ominous time to marry or start a business. In the preceding year, there were two first days of spring.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: In recent years, Confucian wedding rituals have become popular among Chinese couples. In such ceremonies, which are a recent innovation with no historic antecedent, the bride and groom bow and pay respects to a large portrait of Confucius hanging in the banquet hall while wedding attendants and the couple themselves are dressed in traditional Chinese robes.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Before the bride and groom enter the nuptial chambers, they exchange nuptial cups and perform ceremonial bows as follows:


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: The first one is no-fault divorce. According to the Tang Code, the legal code of the Tang Dynasty (618–907), a marriage may be dissolved due to personal incompatibility, provided that the husband writes a divorce note.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: The second way (義絕) is through state-mandated annulment of marriage. This applies when one spouse commits a serious crime (variously defined, usually more broadly for the wife) against the other or his/her clan. If the couple does not take the initiative to divorce when arose the situation of (義絕), the state will intervene to force them to divorce. If one side refused to divorce, the law must investigate the criminal liability of the party with a one-year prison sentence. Once a divorce is adjudged, they must not be reunited.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: The third way of Chinese divorce process is mutual divorce (和離). It is a way that both husband and wife can have the power to divorce. However, It requires both of their agreement. In Chinese Marriage, this way of divorce is to ensure both husband and wife have the equal power to protect themselves, such as their property. It also enhanced the concept of responsibility in Chinese marriage. Divorce is a responsibility to each other. So, the country or the government won't intervene the divorce most of the time.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Finally, the husband may unilaterally declare a divorce. To be legally recognized, it must be based on one of the following seven reasons (七出):


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: There are, however, three clearly defined exceptions (三不去), under which unilateral divorce is forbidden despite the presence of any of the seven aforementioned grounds:


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: The above law about unilateral divorce was in force from Tang Dynasty up to its final abolition in the Republic of China's Civil Code (Part IV) Section 5, passed in 1930.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: After the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, the country's new Marriage Law also explicitly provided for lawful divorces. Women were permitted to divorce their husbands and many did, sparking resistance from rural males especially. Kay Ann Johnson reported that tens of thousands of women in north central China were killed for seeking divorces or committed suicide when blocked from doing so.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Divorce was rare during the Mao era (1949–1976), but it has become easier and more commonplace in the post-reform era. A USC U.S.-China Institute article reports that the divorce rate in 2006 was about 1.4/1000 people, about twice what it was in 1990 and more than three times what it was in 1982. Still, the divorce rate in China is less than half what it is in the United States. One of the most important breakthroughs in the marriage institution were amendments added to the Marriage Law in 2001, which shortened the divorce-application procedure and added legitimate reasons for divorce, such as emphasizing the importance of faithfulness within a married couple, a response to rising failure of marriages due to unfaithful affairs during marriages that have come into public knowledge. With the rising divorce rates nowadays, public discussions and governmental organs often criticize the lack of effort in marriage maintenance which many couples express. This is evident, for example in the new 'divorce buffer zones' established in the marriage registration offices in certain provinces, which is a room where the couples wait, as a stage within the divorce application procedure, and are encouraged to talk things over and consider giving their marriage another chance. However, such phenomena don't contradict the increasing permissiveness of the systems and of married couples which lead to the constant growth in divorce rates in China.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Amendments have also been made to Article 32 of the revised 2001 Marriage Law. Parties to a marriage can apply for Divorce under, and by showing, the following grounds:


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: In ancient China, women's social status was not as good as men. A woman could only obey and rely on her husband. She shared her husband's class, whether he was a peasant, merchant, or official; accordingly, the clothes she could wear and the etiquette she was expected to display depended on her husband's background and achievements. If her husband was dead, she could remarry but would be seen as not decent. The neo-Confucian opposition to widow remarriage was expressed in an oft-quoted aphorism of Zhu Xi: "It is a small matter to starve to death, but a large matter to lose one's virtue." Moreover, the government has also issued measures against widow remarriage. For example，"The state reinforced the neo-Confucian attitude against widow remarriage by erecting commemorative arches to honour women who refused to remarry. In 1304, the Yuan government issued a proclamation declaring that all women widowed before they were thirty who remained chaste widows until they were fifty were to be so honoured. The Ming and Qing continued the practice."


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: The virtues of chaste widowhood were extolled by instructions for women, such as the Nu Lun Yu (Analects for Women). While a man could have though only one wife but many concubines and marry someone else as new wife if the wife died before him. The general dignitaries also had only one wife but many concubines.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Sororate marriage is a custom in which a man marries his wife's sister(s). Later it is expanded to include her cousins or females from the same clan. The Chinese name is 妹媵 (妹=younger sister, 媵=co-bride/concubinage). It can happen at the same time as he marries the first wife, at a later time while the wife is still alive, or after she dies. This practice occurred frequently among the nobility of the Zhou Dynasty (1045 BC – 256 BC), with cases occurring at later times.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Beside the traditional desire for male children to carry on the family name, this allowance partially resolves a dilemma created by the emperor himself. He had recently banned all non-patrilineal forms of inheritance, while wanting to preserve the proper order in the Chinese kinship. Therefore, a couple without son cannot adopt one from within the extended family. They either have to adopt from outside (which was regarded by many as passing the family wealth to unrelated "outsiders"), or become heirless. The multiple inheritance marriages provided a way out when the husband's brother has a son.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: The custom of "ruzhui" (入贅) applied when a relatively wealthy family had no male heirs, while a poorer family had multiple male children. Under these circumstances, a male from the poorer family, generally a younger sibling, will marry into the wealthier family in order to continue their family line. In a "ruzhui" (lit., 'the [man] becoming superfluous') marriage, the children will take on the surname of the wife.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: In ancient China, concubinage was very common, and men who could afford it usually bought concubines and took them into their homes in addition to their wives. The standard Chinese term translated as "concubine" means "concubine: my and your servant. In the family hierarchy, the principal wife (diqi) ranked second only to her husband, while a concubine was always inferior to the wife, even if her relations with the husband were more intimate. Women in concubinage (妾) were treated as inferior, and expected to be subservient to the wife (if there was one). The women were not wedded in a whole formal ceremony, had less right in the relationship, and could be divorced arbitrarily. They generally came from lower social status or were bought as slaves.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Women who had eloped may have also become concubines since a formal wedding requires her parents' participation.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: The number of concubines was sometime regulated, which differs according to the men's rank. In ancient China, men of higher social status often supported several concubines, and Chinese emperors almost always had dozens of, even hundreds of royal concubines.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: Polyandry, the practice of a woman having multiple husbands, is traditionally considered by Han as immoral, prohibited by law, and uncommon in practice. However, historically there have been instances in which a husband in poverty rents or pawns his wife temporarily. However amongst other Chinese ethnicities polyandry existed and exists, especially in mountainous areas.


title: Traditional Chinese marriage

text: In a subsistence economy, when available land could not support more than one family, dividing it between surviving sons would eventually lead to a situation in which none would have the resources to survive; in such a situation the sons of a family would wed a woman together. Polyandry in certain Tibetan autonomous areas in modern China remains legal. This however only applies to the ethnic minority Tibetans of the region and not to other ethnic groups.


title: Cobalt therapy

text: Cobalt therapy is the medical use of gamma rays from the radioisotope cobalt-60 to treat conditions such as cancer. Beginning in the 1950s, cobalt-60 was widely used in external beam radiotherapy (teletherapy) machines, which produced a beam of gamma rays which was directed into the patient's body to kill tumor tissue. Because these "cobalt machines" were expensive and required specialist support, they were often housed in "cobalt units". Cobalt therapy was a revolutionary advance in radiotherapy in the post-World War II period but is now being replaced by other technologies such as linear accelerators.


title: Cobalt therapy

text: Before the development of medical linear accelerators in the 1970s, the only artificial radiation source used for teletherapy was the x-ray tube. Researchers found ordinary x-ray tubes, which used voltages of 50-150 keV, could treat superficial tumors, but did not have the energy to reach tumors deep in the body. To have the penetrating ability to reach deep-seated tumors without subjecting healthy tissue to dangerous radiation doses required rays with energy around a million electron volts (MeV), called "megavoltage" radiation. To produce a significant amount of MeV x-rays required potentials on the tube of 3-5 million volts (3-5 megavolts), necessitating huge, expensive x-ray machines. By the late 1930s these were being built, but they were available at only a few hospitals.


title: Cobalt therapy

text: Radioisotopes produced gamma rays in the megavolt range, but prior to World War II virtually the only radioisotope available for radiotherapy was naturally occurring radium (producing 1-2 MeV gamma rays), which was extremely expensive due to its low occurrence in ores. In 1937 the price of radium pergram, and the total worldwide supply of radium available for beam radiotherapy (teletherapy) was 50grams.


title: Cobalt therapy

text: The invention of the nuclear reactor in the Manhattan Project during World War II made possible the creation of artificial radioisotopes for radiotherapy. Cobalt-60, produced by neutron irradiation of ordinary cobalt metal in a reactor, is a high activity gamma-ray emitter, emitting 1.17 and 1.33 MeV gamma rays with an activity of . The main reason for its wide use in radiotherapy is that it has a longer half-life, 5.27 years, than many other gamma emitters. However, this half-life still requires cobalt sources to be replaced about every 5 years.


title: Cobalt therapy

text: In 1949, Dr. Harold E. Johns of the University of Saskatchewan sent a request to the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada asking it to produce cobalt-60 isotopes for use in a cobalt therapy unit prototype. Two cobalt-60 apparatuses were then built, one in Saskatoon in the cancer wing of the University of Saskatchewan and the other in London, Ontario. Dr. Johns collected depth-dose data at the University of Saskatchewan which would later become the world standard. The first patient to be treated with cobalt-60 radiation was treated on October 27, 1951, at the War Memorial Children's Hospital in London, Ontario. In 1961 cobalt therapy was expected to replace X-ray radiotherapy. In 1966, Walt Disney's lung cancer was treated with this procedure, but could not prevent his death.


title: Cobalt therapy

text: Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Nobel Prize winner and former chancellor of the University of California, dedicated the first cobalt facility of the new Radiation Therapy and Nuclear Medicine Wing of the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on January 11, 1963 supervised by Dr. Henry L. Jaffe, Director of the new department. A pioneer in the use of the nicknamed "cobalt bomb" the Cedars unit was licensed in 1948 by the Atomic Energy Commission.


title: Cobalt therapy

text: The role of the cobalt unit has partly been replaced by the linear accelerator, which can generate higher-energy radiation, and does not produce the radioactive waste that radioisotopes do with their attendant disposal problems. Cobalt treatment still has a useful role to play in certain applications and is still in widespread use worldwide, since the machinery is relatively reliable and simple to maintain compared to the modern linear accelerator.


title: Cobalt therapy

text: As used in radiotherapy, cobalt units produce stable, dichromatic beams of 1.17and1.33 MeV, resulting in an average beam energy of 1.25MeV. Cobalt-60 has a half-life of 5.2713years.


title: Ka (pharaoh)

text: Ka, also (alternatively) Sekhen, was a Predynastic pharaoh of Upper Egypt belonging to Dynasty 0. He probably reigned during the first half of the 32nd century BC. The length of his reign is unknown.


title: Ka (pharaoh)

text: The correct reading of Ka's name remains uncertain. There are vessel inscriptions which show a serekh with a typical "Ka"-symbol, both written upright correctly, but there are also inscriptions presenting an upright serekh with an upside-down "Ka"-symbol inside. The second form of that writing indicates a reading as Sekhen (meaning "to embrace someone") rather than "Ka". It was also thought to be the birth name of Narmer. Because the reading of the name is so uncertain, Egyptologists and writing experts such as Ludwig David Morenz prefer a neutral reading as "King Arms".


title: Ka (pharaoh)

text: Ka ruled over Thinis in the first half of the 32nd century BC and was buried at Umm el-Qa'ab. He most likely was the immediate successor to Iry-Hor and was succeeded either by Narmer or by Scorpion II. He is the earliest known Egyptian king with a "serekh" inscribed on a number of artifacts. This may thus be an innovation of his reign. Ka is one of the best attested predynastic kings with Narmer and Scorpion II. Beyond Abydos, he is attested in the predynastic necropolis of Adaima in Upper Egypt and in the north in Tarkhan, Helwan, Tell Ibrahim Awad, Wadi Tumilat and as far north as Tel Lod in the Southern Levant.


title: Ka (pharaoh)

text: The number of artifacts bearing Ka's serekh found outside Abydos is much greater than that of his predecessor. This may be the sign of an increasing influence and perhaps conquest of larger portions of Egypt by the Thinite kings.


title: Ka (pharaoh)

text: Two underground chambers, B7 and B9, in the Umm el-Qa'ab necropolis of Abydos are believed to be part of the tomb of King Ka. Each chamber is 1.90 m deep, B.7 is 6.0 × 3.2 m while B.9 is slightly smaller at 5.9 x 3.1 m; the two chambers are 1.80 m apart.


title: Ka (pharaoh)

text: Ka's tomb was first excavated by Flinders Petrie in 1902. The excavations yielded fragments of flint knife and pottery. In the southernmost chamber B7, more than forty inscriptions have been found on tall jars and cylinder vessels as well as a seal impression. The tomb of Ka (B7, B9) is close to that of Iry-Hor (B1, B2) and Narmer (B17, B18). Furthermore, it is located within a sequential order linking the older "U" cemetery with the First Dynasty tombs, thus suggesting that Ka succeeded Iry-Hor and preceded Narmer on the throne.


title: Indian filter coffee

text: Indian filter coffee is a coffee drink made by mixing frothed and boiled milk with the infusion obtained by percolation brewing of finely ground coffee powder in a traditional Indian filter. Internationally, the drink is referred to as Madras filter coffee or South Indian filter coffee to distinguish it from drip brew coffee, which is normally known as filter coffee.


title: Indian filter coffee

text: Popular Indian lore says that on a pilgrimage to Mecca in the 16th century Baba Budan, a revered Sufi saint from Karnataka state, discovered the wonders of coffee. Eager to grow coffee at home, he smuggled seven coffee beans from the Yemeni port of Mocha in his garments. Returning home, he planted the beans on the slopes of the Chandragiri Hills in Chickmagaluru district, Mysore State (present-day Karnataka). This hill range was later named after him as the Baba Budan Hills. His tomb is near Chikmagalur.


title: Indian filter coffee

text: Rev. Edward Terry, chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe who was an ambassador at the court of Emperor Jehangir, provides a detailed account of its usage (1616):many of the people there (in India), who are strict in their religion, drink no wine at all; but they use a liquor, more wholesome than pleasant, they call coffee, made by a black seed boiled in water, which turns it almost into the same colour, but doth very little alter the taste of the water. Notwithstanding it is very good to help digestion, to quicken the spirits, and to cleanse the blood.The British East India Company brought in fresh influences. David Burton, a food historian based in New Zealand writes in his book "The Raj at Table" (1993):India's first coffee house opened in Calcutta after the battle of Plassey in 1780. Soon after, John Jackson and Cottrell Barrett opened the original Madras Coffee House, which was followed in 1792 by the Exchange Coffee Tavern at the Muslim, waited at the mouth of the Madras Fort. The enterprising proprietor of the latter announced he was going to run his coffee house on the same lines as Lloyd's in London, by maintaining a register of the arrival and departure of ships, and offering Indian and European newspapers for his customers to read. Other houses also offered free use of billiard tables, recovering their costs with the high price of one rupee for a single dish of coffee.Indian filter coffee was popularized by the India Coffee Houses run by the Coffee Board of India since the mid-1940s. It became the drink of millions after the emergence of more popular Indian Coffee Houses in the mid-1950s.


title: Indian filter coffee

text: Indian filter coffee migrated overseas in the early 20th century to Malaysia and Singapore, where "kopi tarik" (pulled coffee) is a close cousin of the Madras filter coffee-by-the-yard / metre, and was introduced at roadside "kopi tiams" run originally by Tamil Muslims.


title: Indian filter coffee

text: Coffee has been grown in India since the 1600s, when it was first brought to India from Yemen by Muslim saint Baba Budan. The most commonly used coffee beans are arabica and robusta. These are grown in different states of South India, such as in the hills of Karnataka (Kodagu, Chikkamagalur and Hassan), Tamil Nadu (Nilgiris District, Yercaud and Kodaikanal), Kerala (Malabar region) and Andhra Pradesh (Araku Valley). The beans are usually medium-roasted and finely ground and blended with roasted chicory. The final coffee powder composition is typically equal quantities of regular Plantation A (washed Arabica) beans and Peaberry beans with between 10% and 30% chicory added, producing a distinct aroma, thickness and colour in the resulting brewed coffee.


title: Indian filter coffee

text: South Indian filter coffee is brewed with a metal device that resembles two cylindrical cups, one of which has a pierced bottom that nests into the top of the 'tumbler' cup, leaving ample room beneath to receive the brewed coffee. The upper cup has two removable parts: a pierced pressing disc with a central stem handle and a covering lid. (A similar device is used to brew Vietnamese coffee.)


title: Indian filter coffee

text: The upper cup is loaded with freshly ground coffee. The grounds are then compressed (tamped) with the stemmed disc into a uniform layer across the cup's pierced bottom. The coarser the coffee grinds, the more one must tamp the coffee to obtain the same extraction. With the press disc remaining in place, the upper cup is nested into the top of the tumbler; boiling water is poured in. The lid is placed on top, and the appliance is left to slowly drip the brewed coffee into the bottom. The chicory retains the hot water longer, letting the water dissolve and extract more of the ground coffee.


title: Indian filter coffee

text: The resulting brew is generally much stronger than Western drip/filter coffee, and often stronger than espresso.


title: Indian filter coffee

text: Traditionally, the coffee is consumed by adding 1–2 tablespoons of the brew to a cup of boiling milk with the preferred amount of sugar. The coffee is drunk from the tumbler (although a word of English origin, it seems to be the most commonly used name for this vessel), but is often cooled first with a "dabarah" (also pronounced in some regions as 'davarah'), a wide metal saucer with lipped walls.


title: Indian filter coffee

text: Coffee is typically served after pouring back and forth between the dabara and the tumbler in huge arc-like motions of the hand. This serves several purposes: mixing the ingredients (including sugar) thoroughly; cooling the hot coffee to a sipping temperature; and most importantly, aerating the mix without introducing extra water (such as with a steam wand used for frothing cappuccinos). An anecdote related to the distance between the pouring and receiving cup leads to another name for the drink, "Meter Coffee".


title: Indian filter coffee

text: Coffee is something of a cultural icon in all the South Indian states of India like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu , Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala. It is customary to offer a cup of coffee or tea to any visitor. Coffee became very popular under British rule. Until the middle of the 20th century, traditional households would not use granulated sugar but jaggery or honey in coffee.


title: Private Media Group

text: Private Media Group, Inc. is a Swedish production and distribution company that distributes adult entertainment via print publications, DVDs, the internet, and mobile.


title: Private Media Group

text: "Private" magazine was established in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1965 as the world's first full-color hardcore magazine by Berth Milton Sr. In the early 1990s, his son Berth Milton Jr. took over and moved the company's headquarters to Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain, although the company is incorporated in Nevada. Milton also started to produce movies and internet content, taking Private public soon after.


title: Private Media Group

text: The firm provides content through DVD, Video on Demand (VOD), Internet Protocol television (IPTV), PSP, mobile and magazines. It supplies adult entertainment films to thousands of major hotels around the world through their Hotel Pay Per View services. The company also runs the adult channels Private TV (Europe) and Private Gold (Latin America)


title: Private Media Group

text: In 1998 the company launched Private Circle, a designer clothing label, at the Cannes Film Festival. The label would later be changed to Private Clothing and a boutique would be opened in Los Angeles.


title: Private Media Group

text: In August 2008 Private Media Group announced it had established an alliance with Marc Dorcel to collaborate in the home video market. The collaboration started with a three-year DVD distribution agreement for France and it's expected that other territories will be added, explore additional opportunities in other territories. It's also expected that Private and Dorcel will join forces in distribution platforms including Internet and IPTV/VOD in both France and across the EU.


title: Private Media Group

text: The firm's 2009 acquisitions of video on demand companies Gamelink LLC and Sureflix, and the ecommerce technology firm eLine LLC established it as a leading adult content and distribution company in the digital media sector.


title: Private Media Group

text: In June 2014 the firm announced the released of its full archive of images and (film and video) scenes dating back to the 1960s when Private magazine launched in Sweden. The material is available via a website, PrivateClassics.com.


title: Private Media Group

text: Private is known for high-budget, adult movies, such as the two-part series "Millionaire", directed by Alessandro del Mar, with a reported budget of $1.9 million. In the last few decades, Private has earned more than 130 adult industry awards. The film "Millionaire" alone earned 16 Venus Award nominations in 2004. Best-selling releases include the "Private Gladiator" series, "Cleopatra", "Millionaire" and "Chateau".


title: Private Media Group

text: In 1999, Private released "The Uranus Experiment," a three-part pornographic science fiction video that is notable for part of it having being shot in microgravity during a parabolic flight, representing the first time a sex act had been carried out in zero-g conditions.


title: Dinner for One

text: Dinner for One, also known as The 90th Birthday (), is a two-hander comedy sketch, written by British author Lauri Wylie for the theatre. After featuring on the stage, the German TV broadcaster, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) recorded the sketch in 1962 as an 18-minute black-and-white videotape recording, performed by British comedians Freddie Frinton and May Warden.


title: Dinner for One

text: It has become traditional viewing on New Year's Eve in European countries such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Estonia, or on 23 December in Norway, and, as of 1995, was the most frequently repeated television programme in Germany ever. Despite starting on the British stage, the sketch has only recently started to gain recognition in the UK. It was broadcast on New Year's Eve in Britain on Sky Arts from 2018 to 2020.


title: Dinner for One

text: In other parts of the world, the sketch is broadcast in Australia and South Africa. Apart from a few satires, "Dinner for One" is not known in the United States, where the comic premise had already been made famous by Red Skelton and Lucille Ball. The article "Dinner for One: The greatest cult film you've never heard of", published in 2018, investigates the reason for its obscurity.


title: Dinner for One

text: In 2003, Danish TV producer Paul Anthony Sørensen directed and produced a documentary about the sketch that includes interviews with relatives of Freddie Frinton and May Warden. It was nominated for the Rose d'Or 2004.


title: Dinner for One

text: Heinz Piper introduces the story as the conferencier: Miss Sophie (Warden) is celebrating her 90th birthday. As every year, she has invited her four closest friends to a birthday dinner: Sir Toby, Admiral von Schneider, Mr. Pomeroy, and Mr. Winterbottom. However, she has outlived all of them, requiring her butler James (Frinton) to impersonate the guests.


title: Dinner for One

text: James not only must serve Miss Sophie the four courses "à la russe" – mulligatawny soup, North Sea haddock, chicken and fruit – but also serve the four imaginary guests the drinks chosen by Miss Sophie (sherry, white wine, champagne and port wine for the respective courses), slip into the role of each guest and drink a toast to Miss Sophie. As a result, James becomes increasingly intoxicated and loses his dignified demeanour; he pours the drinks with reckless abandon, breaks into "Sugartime" by the McGuire Sisters for a brief moment, and at one point accidentally drinks from a flower vase, which he acknowledges with a grimace and exclaims "Oooh! I'll kill that cat!"


title: Dinner for One

text: Finally, Miss Sophie concludes the evening with an inviting "I think I'll retire", to which James and Sophie repeat their exchange concerning the "same procedure". James takes a deep breath, turns to the audience with a sly grin and says "Well, I'll do my very best" before the pair retreat to the upper rooms.


title: Dinner for One

text: Lauri Wylie debuted "Dinner for One" as a sketch in his London stage revue "En Ville Ce Soir" in 1934.


title: Dinner for One

text: Frinton and Warden performed "Dinner for One" on stage on Britain's seaside piers as early as 1945; Frinton inherited the rights to the sketch in 1951 after Wylie's death. The sketch was also staged elsewhere, for example in 1953 in "John Murray Anderson's Almanac" at the Imperial Theatre with Hermione Gingold playing Miss Sophie, Billy DeWolfe as the butler, and four dead friends.


title: Dinner for One

text: In 1962, German entertainer Peter Frankenfeld and director Heinz Dunkhase discovered "Dinner for One" in Blackpool. The sketch was staged in Frankenfeld's live show soon afterwards, and recorded on 8 July 1963 at the "Theater am Besenbinderhof", Hamburg, in front of a live audience. The sketch was recorded in English with a short introduction in German. The introductory theme, Charmaine, was composed by Lew Pollack and recorded by the Victor Silvester orchestra. According to the NDR, Frinton and Warden were each paid DM 4,150. The show was re-run occasionally until it gained its fixed spot on New Year's Eve in 1972.


title: Dinner for One

text: The comic premise of the skit—a man consuming multiple rounds of alcohol and becoming comically drunk—is generally credited to American actor Red Skelton, who included a similar sketch as part of his vaudeville routines beginning in 1928 (and allowed the premise to be used by Lucille Ball in the famed "I Love Lucy" episode "Lucy Does a TV Commercial"). There is no definitive evidence of when Wylie wrote the sketch; the first evidence there is of the "Dinner for One" sketch being performed is from 1934, and as neither Skelton nor Wylie were internationally famous at the time, neither one likely knew of the other's work.


title: Dinner for One

text: The sketch has become a viewing tradition on New Year's Eve in German-speaking countries, where up to half the population may watch it every year on New Year's Eve. Some die-hard fans even copy the meal served in the sketch. The full 18-minute version is typically aired in Germany on Das Erste in the afternoon, and the regional third channels several times throughout the afternoon and evening. In Austria, ORF 1 airs the full sketch around 11:30 pm. Swiss public broadcaster SRF shows its own 11-minute version around 7:00 pm on SRF 1 and at 11:50 pm on SRF zwei.


title: Dinner for One

text: It is also a New Year tradition in Scandinavian countries. In Finland, the show is viewed by 400,000 viewers each New Year's Eve.


title: Dinner for One

text: In Sweden, the show was suspended for six years after its first screening, deemed unsuitable because of James' heavy drinking. However, the TV network finally capitulated to popular demand and brought it back. It has been broadcast every year since 1976 in Sweden, with the exception of 2004 in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.


title: Dinner for One

text: In 1985, the Danish television network, DR, decided not to broadcast the sketch, but received so many complaints that it returned the following year. With this single exception, "Dinner for One" has been shown on DR every 31 December since 1980.


title: Dinner for One

text: In Norway, the show is broadcast on 23 December, also since 1980. In 1992, it was aired 15 minutes early, and the resulting audience uproar caused it to be re-broadcast later that night.


title: Dinner for One

text: It is broadcast annually on New Year's Eve in Australia (since 1989) and South Africa, though it is not as well known as in Europe. It was shown briefly in the US (by HBO) in the 1970s.


title: Dinner for One

text: The sketch is almost completely unknown in the United Kingdom, and its first national British television airing did not come until Sky Arts broadcast the film on New Year's Eve 2018 (although a year before, the film had been screened on Grimsby local channel Estuary TV). The Sky Arts broadcast included English subtitles for the German-language introduction, the end of which briefly faded out followed by a fade in on Frinton, cutting out the moment when the German announcer introduces James.


title: Dinner for One

text: Although the sketch is most popular in European countries, it is usually shown in the original English without dubbing or subtitles. It is easy to understand with even a basic knowledge of English due to the physical nature of the comedy. British people are often perplexed by fans' ability to quote dialogue.


title: Dinner for One

text: The NDR television channel recorded several other versions in 1963. Danish TV shows a version in which no audience is heard.


title: Dinner for One

text: A third, 11-minute version was recorded by Schweizer Fernsehen (Swiss Television) with less alcohol drunk.


title: Dinner for One

text: In 1977, the Dutch public broadcasting system created a Dutch language version starring Joop Doderer, but this never achieved the same popularity.


title: Dinner for One

text: In Denmark, a parody of the sketch was filmed, subtitled "The 80th Birthday", in which Miss Sophie's friends are still at the table (though the NDR version mentions that the last of Miss Sophie's friends died 25 years ago). Other versions have been produced in different German dialects, including one in Low German (this version, "Dinner for One Up Platt," is also aired on NDR in rotation annually along with the original), various re-enactments or parodies by different comedians, and a version featuring the German glove puppet character Bernd das Brot ("Bernd the Bread") named "dinner for brot".


title: Dinner for One

text: In 1992 a color version was filmed in the Frankfurt festival hall with Bodo Maria and Macha Stein. The resulting VHS cassette/DVD was dedicated to the Frankfurt UFA GmbH star Camilla Horn. Camilla Horn had originally been meant to play the role of Miss Sophie. However, she had to withdraw due to illness.


title: Dinner for One

text: On 24 December 2011, a digitally-edited satirical version entitled "The 90th Euro rescue summit, or, Euros for No One", produced by Udo Eling and German state broadcaster ARD, was uploaded to YouTube. It features German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Miss Sophie and French President Nicolas Sarkozy as her servant and has new German (and some French) dialogue about the Eurozone debt crisis.


title: Dinner for One

text: In 2016, Netflix made a parody in which the guests are replaced with characters from Netflix shows, specifically Saul Goodman from "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul", Frank Underwood from "House of Cards", Pablo Escobar from "Narcos", and Crazy Eyes from "Orange is the New Black".


title: Dinner for One

text: The line "Same procedure as every year" (in the original English) has become a very popular catchphrase in Germany. The phrase has entered everyday vocabulary, and is used in newspaper headlines and advertisements. This is also the case in Norway, Denmark and Sweden.


title: Dinner for One

text: The sketch resonated strongly with Norwegian, Luxembourgish and German audiences. The sketch is one of the most widely-known pieces of English-language media in Europe despite its relatively minimal impact in Britain.


title: Dinner for One

text: In January 2021, Google added an easter egg to their Knowledge Panel for the film. The panel included a tiger's head, which when clicked showed James running across the screen and tripping over said tiger. It also featured sound clips from the film, chiefly the line "Same procedure as every year, James."


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: The Omphalos hypothesis is one attempt to reconcile the scientific evidence that the Earth is billions of years old with a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative, which implies that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. It is based on the religious belief that the universe was created by a divine being, within the past six to ten thousand years (in keeping with flood geology), and that the presence of objective, verifiable evidence that the universe is older than approximately ten millennia is due to the creator introducing false evidence that makes the universe appear significantly older.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: The idea was named after the title of an 1857 book, "Omphalos" by Philip Henry Gosse, in which Gosse argued that for the world to be "functional", God must have created the Earth with mountains and canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with fully grown hair, fingernails, and navels (ὀμφαλός "omphalos" is Greek for "navel"), and all living creatures with fully formed evolutionary features, etc., and that, therefore, "no" empirical evidence about the age of the Earth or universe can be taken as reliable.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: Various supporters of Young Earth creationism have given different explanations for their belief that the universe is filled with false evidence of the universe's age, including a belief that some things needed to be created at a certain age for the ecosystems to function, or their belief that the creator was deliberately planting deceptive evidence.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: The idea was widely rejected in the 19th century, when Gosse published his aforementioned book. It saw some revival in the 20th century by some Young Earth creationists, who extended the argument to include visible light that appears to originate from far-off stars and galaxies (addressing the "starlight problem").


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: Stories of the beginning of human life based on the creation story in Genesis have been published for centuries. The 4th-century theologian Ephrem the Syrian described a world in which divine creation instantly produced fully grown organisms:


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: By the 19th century, scientific evidence of the Earth's age had been collected, and it disagreed with a literal reading of the biblical accounts. This evidence was rejected by some writers at the time, such as François-René de Chateaubriand. Chateaubriand wrote in his 1802 book, "Génie du christianisme" (Part I Book IV Chapter V) that "God might have created, and doubtless did create, the world with all the marks of antiquity and completeness which it now exhibits." In modern times, Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb supported a similar position, saying that the objective scientific evidence for an old universe is strong, but wrong, and that the traditional Jewish calendar is correct.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: In the middle of the 19th century, the disagreement between scientific evidence about the age of the Earth and the Western religious traditions was a significant debate among intellectuals. Gosse published "Omphalos" in 1857 to explain his answer to this question. He concluded that the religious tradition was correct. Gosse began with the earlier idea that the Earth contained mature organisms at the instant they were created, and that these organisms had false signs of their development, such as hair on mammals, which grows over time. He extended this idea of creating a single mature organism to creating mature systems, and concluded that fossils were an artifact of the creation process and merely part of what was necessary to make creation work. Therefore, he reasoned, fossils and other signs of the Earth's age could not be used to prove its age.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: Other contemporary proposals for reconciling the stories of creation in Genesis with the scientific evidence included the "interval theory" or gap theory of creation, in which a large interval of time passed in between the initial creation of the universe and the beginning of the Six Days of Creation. This idea was put forward by Archbishop John Bird Sumner of Canterbury in "Treatise on the Records of Creation". Another popular idea, promoted by the English theologian John Pye Smith, was that the Garden of Eden described the events of only one small location. A third proposal, by French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, held that the six "days" of the creation story were arbitrary and large ages rather than 24-hour periods.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: Theologians rejected Gosse's proposal on the grounds that it seemed to make the divine creator tell lies – either lying in the scriptures, or lying in nature. Scientists rejected it on the grounds that it disagreed with uniformitarianism, an explanation of geology that was widely supported at the time, and the impossibility of testing or falsifying the idea.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: Some modern creationists still argue against scientific evidence in the same way. For instance, John D. Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research wrote in 1990 about the "appearance of age", saying that: "...what [God] created was functionally complete right from the start—able to fulfill the purpose for which it was created".


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: He does not extend this idea to the geological record, preferring to believe that it was all created in the Flood, but others such as Gerald E. Aardsma go further, with his idea of "virtual history". This appears to suggest that events after the creation have changed the "virtual history" we now see, including the fossils:


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: Although Gosse's original Omphalos hypothesis specifies a popular creation story, others have proposed that the idea does not preclude creation as recently as five minutes ago, including memories of times before this created "in situ". This idea is sometimes called Last Thursdayism by its opponents, as in "the world might as well have been created last Thursday."


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: Scientifically, the concept is both unverifiable and unfalsifiable through any conceivable scientific study—in other words, it is impossible to conclude the truth of the hypothesis, since it requires the empirical data itself to have been arbitrarily created to look the way it does at every observable level of detail.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: From a religious viewpoint, it can be interpreted as God having created a "fake" universe, such as illusions of light emitted from supernovae that never really happened, or volcanic mountains that were never really volcanoes in the first place and that never actually experienced erosion.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: In a rebuttal of the claim that God might have implanted a false history of the age of the universe to test our faith in the truth of the Torah, Rabbi Natan Slifkin, an author whose works have been banned by several Haredi rabbis for going against the tenets of the Talmud, writes:


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: Redshift in light refers to a larger wavelength as measured by a receiver, compared to the wavelength of the same light as measured by the emitter. Scientists interpret the redshift in light received from other galaxies as evidence that the space between us and the galaxies is expanding, that some galaxies are billions of light years distant from the Milky Way, and that therefore the light has been traveling for billions of years, requiring a universe billions of years in age.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: According to the Omphalos hypothesis, God created the redshift in light received from other galaxies to fool humans (beginning in the 20th century, but not before that time) into thinking that the universe is billions of years old. Among the many problems with this hypothesis (including lack of any evidence and lack of reference to the phenomenon in the Bible) is that it would require that God adjusted the shift in exquisitely precise ways for each of the billions of individual galaxies, and did so to deceive humans about the age of the universe in a way that was not detectable by humans until the 20th century.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: The five-minute hypothesis is a skeptical hypothesis put forth by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, that proposes that the universe sprang into existence five minutes ago from nothing, with human memory and all other signs of history included. It is a commonly used example of how one may maintain extreme philosophical skepticism with regard to memory and trust in evidentially derived historical chronology.


title: Omphalos hypothesis

text: Jorge Luis Borges, in his 1940 work, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", describes a fictional world in which some essentially follow as a religious belief a philosophy much like Russell's discussion on the logical extreme of Gosse's theory: