title: Ali Karimi

text: In 1998, Karimi joined Persepolis football club, which won the domestic double in 1999 and the championship again in 2000. He attended a trial with Perugia Calcio, but the transfer was aborted when Perugia deemed the transfer fee too high. There was also reportedly an offer from Spain's Atlético Madrid who were willing to pay Karimi £4.3 million in a four-year contract, but Karimi opted for United Arab Emirates side Al-Ahli because he wanted to stay close to home.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi signed with Al Ahli in the United Arab Emirates in 2001, for a reported salary of $1.3 million for two years. In that season, Al-Ahli managed to win its first trophy, when they became the Winners of the President Cup in 2001–02 season.


title: Ali Karimi

text: He scored a league-high 14 goals for Al Ahli in 2004. In June 2020, he was named the best foreign player in the UAE League as well.


title: Ali Karimi

text: On 3 May 2005, Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich's website announced that as its first new player for the 2005–06 season, it signed Karimi with a one-year contract, as the third Iranian player of this team, after Ali Daei (1998–99) and Vahid Hashemian (2004–05). After the friendly match between Iran and Germany in October 2004, Karimi was noticed by the Bayern Munich club. He received the best score in "Kicker" magazine after Jens Lehmann.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi entered the field in the second half of the first week of the Bundesliga against Borussia Mönchengladbach. In the second week's 5–2 victory against Bayer Leverkusen, he was recognized as the second best player of the match by scoring a goal and providing an assist. Six weeks into the league, Karimi scored his second goal assist in the Bundesliga, setting the stage for a 1–0 win against Eintracht Frankfurt and was recognized as the man of the match. In week 16 of the Bundesliga, he provided his third assist against Kaiserslautern. At the end of the half-season of the Bundesliga, which was accompanied by Bayern's 2-1 victory over Borussia Dortmund, Karimi scored again. He was also recognized as Bayern Munich's best player by scoring 2.5 points from "Kicker" magazine in the 22nd Bundesliga match, which ended with a 1-1 draw against Hannover.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi made his 25th appearance for Bayern on 4 March 2006 against Hamburg, which resulted in an automatic 12-month extension to his one-year contract that expired on 30 June 2007. But Karimi was injured in the same game, and missed all Bayern Munich matches until the end of the 2005-2006 season.


title: Ali Karimi

text: He played 3 times in the UEFA Champions League before getting injured, scoring in his first game against Rapid Vienna. By scoring against Rapid Vienna, Karimi became the only Iranian Bayern Munich player to score in the UEFA Champions League. Before the injury, Karimi played in 20 Bundesliga games, 2 DFB-Pokal games, 1 DFL-Ligapokal game and 3 UEFA Champions League games.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi's average scores in the Bundesliga and the UEFA Champions League in the 2005-2006 season are the best among the three Iranian players in the "Kicker" magazine.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi, who was still suffering from the injury of the previous season, was injured again before the start of the 2006-2007 season and missed the opening games of the season. By the end of the 2006–07 season, he played a total of 16 games (13 Bundesliga games - 2 UEFA Champions League games and 1 DFL-Ligapokal game).


title: Ali Karimi

text: In the 32nd week of the Bundesliga, Karimi became the foundation for Bayern's 1-1 draw against Borussia Mönchengladbach by sending a goal assist. In week 34 of the Bundesliga, he played his last game for Bayern in a 5–2 win against Mainz and scored for the last time in Bayern Munich. In this competition after Mehmet Scholl; Karimi was recognized as the second best player of Bayern together with Hasan Salihamidžić by scoring 2.5 from "Kicker" magazine.


title: Ali Karimi

text: In two seasons in Bayern Munich, Karimi played 42 games (33 Bundesliga games, 5 UEFA Champions League games, 2 DFB-Pokal games and 2 DFL-Ligapokal games) and became the record holder for the most number of games among the three Iranian players of this team. Karimi ended his career in Bayern Munich by scoring 4 goals and sending 4 assists. In 2017, the Transfermarkt website named Karimi among the best players who joined Bayern Munich from 1998 to 2017 as a free agent (a player who is eligible to sign a contract with any team and whose contract has expired with his previous team) and performed well. In this team have been placed.


title: Ali Karimi

text: After Karimi's position in support of the 2022 Iranian protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, FC Bayern Munich announced on 5 November 2022 that "due to concerns regarding the health condition of Ali Karimi and other Iranian players of Bayern Munich, we have long since been in touch with the German ambassador to Tehran. The club is aware of the current critical situation in Iran and is ready to provide any assistance in this matter".


title: Ali Karimi

text: On 3 July 2007, Karimi announced that he had signed a two-year deal with Qatar Sports Club. Karimi was believed to have signed a contract worth around £3.2 million, with a clause allowing him to return to Europe at any time.


title: Ali Karimi

text: On 13 July 2008, Karimi signed a two-year contract with Al-Sailiya that is said to be worth around £4.7 million.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Persepolis' then chairman, Dariush Mostafavi, reached an agreement with Karimi after a one-hour-long telephone conversation. Persepolis had to pay Al-Sailiyah to release Karimi from his contract. Mostafavi claimed the release fee was around US$310,000. Karimi joined Persepolis on a loan, and signed with Persepolis on a one-year contract on 6 September 2008.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi scored his first goal since his return to Persepolis in the Tehran derby. With Esteghlal leading 1–0, Karimi equalized for Persepolis two minutes from time. On 9 October 2008, Karimi scored a hat trick against Abumoslem but could not prevent Persepolis losing 4–3.


title: Ali Karimi

text: However, Karimi's contract was not extended, reportedly because of a strained relationship with Persepolis chief executive Abbas Ansarifard. While Ansarifard claimed that the club offered Karimi a contract but he did not show up, Karimi claimed that Persepolis kept him waiting for four weeks for nothing.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi joined newly promoted Steel Azin on 29 July 2009 on a one-year deal. He was reportedly to be paid US$400,000 for the season.


title: Ali Karimi

text: After joining Steel Azin, Karimi scored for four consecutive matches at the start of the season. On 14 August 2009, he scored the second goal in Steel Azin's 4–3 win over Saba. He scored a brace against Shahin in Steel Azin's 2–1 victory. On 4 December 2009, Karimi converted a penalty in the 52nd minute against Pas FC to score his 11th goal of the season. On 6 March 2010, during his team's match against Saipa, Karimi was sent off for pushing Majid Ayoubi after Ayoubi had fouled him.


title: Ali Karimi

text: In January 2010, it was reported that Al-Ahli made an offer of US$500,000 to sign Karimi on a loan deal until the end of the 2009–10 season, which was rejected by Steel Azin.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi was sacked by the club in August 2010 for failure to observe the requirement to fast during Ramadan, but was reinstated a few days later after paying a fine. The player maintained that he had not shown disrespect to Islam.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi signed a five-month deal for Schalke on 31 January 2011 upon passing a medical examination. He made his first appearance for the German club on 5 April 2011, coming on for Raúl in the second half in a Champions League quarter final match against Inter Milan before coming on as substitute against 1. FC Kaiserslautern in the German Bundesliga in his second and final match for Schalke. He won the German cup for the second time before the end of his contract.


title: Ali Karimi

text: On 15 June 2011, Persepolis chairman Habib Kashani announced that they reached an agreement with Karimi and he played for Persepolis in the 2011–12 Persian Gulf Cup and the 2011–12 Hazfi Cup. This was the second time that Karimi returned to his native club, Persepolis. Karimi was also appointed as Club captain. He made his debut in a match against Malavan and scored his first goal in the season for Persepolis in a match against Shahrdari Tabriz. He extended his contract with Persepolis for another season on 18 June 2012. He was injured a few times during the season and was not able to perform very well and at the end of the season he announced his retirement from football.


title: Ali Karimi

text: On 13 June 2013, Karimi returned from retirement and joined Tractor Sazi signing a one-year contract with Tractor Sazi. He made his first appearance for Tractor Sazi in Iran Pro League against former club Persepolis. Karimi scored his first goal in the Iran Pro League in Tractor's 4–2 win over Zob Ahan. He helped Tractor to win the season's Hazfi Cup, his first title in Iranian football after his return from European Football.


title: Ali Karimi

text: On 20 July 2014, Karimi announced his retirement through publishing a letter on his YouTube account. At the time, Karimi was aged 35 and played professional football for 18 years.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi made his debut for Iran national team in October 1998 in a match against Kuwait. That same year, he won the Gold Medal with Iran at the 1998 Asian Games. Karimi scored one of Iran's two goals in the final against Kuwait.


title: Ali Karimi

text: He was also one of Iran's main players in its 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification campaign. In 2001, after losing to Bahrain and drawing with Thailand, Iran finished second in their qualifying group and had to play a home-and-away play-off with the Republic of Ireland for a spot at the 2002 World Cup. Karimi started as an attacking midfielder in the first game in Dublin, and used his acceleration on the break and his dribbling to attack Ireland's defence. However, he was also off target on a number of occasions, and Iran lost the match 2–0. They won the return leg 1–0 but missed out on the final.


title: Ali Karimi

text: At the 2004 Asian Cup, Karimi scored five goals that made him joint top scorer. Iran finished third in the overall tournament, behind Japan and China. In the quarter final, Karimi scored a hat trick in Iran's 4–3 win over South Korea. Karimi was given the prestigious Asian Player of the Year award in 2004, joining his fellow Iranians, Mahdavikia in 2003, Ali Daei in 1999, and Khodadad Azizi in 1996. He also won the 2004 West Asian Football Federation Championship with "Team Melli".


title: Ali Karimi

text: His performance in the Iran–Germany friendly game for Bam victims held in Azadi Stadium in Tehran in October 2004 was said to be the reason behind Bayern's interest in the player.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Coming off a serious ankle injury, Karimi had a poor World Cup finals at Germany 2006. He was unable to exert much influence on proceedings as the Iranians lost 3–1 to Mexico and 2–0 to Portugal. He was substituted in the 65th minute of the Portugal game and kicked the team's sports bags by the dugout. Iran's then manager Branko Ivankovic said he may drop Karimi in the upcoming game due to disciplinary reasons. Karimi did not play in the 1–1 draw against Angola, but Ivankovic attributed Karimi's omission to his refusal to play because of an injury.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi played in the 2007 Asian Cup. In May 2008, Karimi was banned from playing in the national team after he made criticisms towards the IRIFF in the Ardebil training ground, but was reinstated in the national squad after intervention from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.


title: Ali Karimi

text: In October 2008, Karimi retired from Team Melli. Ali Daei, the then Iran football coach, said Karimi will never be called up again. In April 2009, Karimi announced that he was ready again to serve his country, if he was to be picked by Team Melli coach, Afshin Ghotbi.


title: Ali Karimi

text: He played in 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification for Iran and on 10 June 2009, Karimi scored in a 1–0 victory over U.A.E. to keep Iran's 2010 World Cup qualifying hopes alive. On 17 June 2009, he played in Iran's 1–1 draw with South Korea, a result that eliminated Iran from the 2010 World Cup finals. During the match, a number of Iranian players, including Karimi, wore green wristbands, which were interpreted to be a show of support for Iranian opposition leader Hossein Mousavi, who accused the Iranian government of vote rigging the election on 12 June. Western media reported after the game that the players who wore the green wristbands had been banned from the team for life, while a newspaper in Iran reported that the players concerned had retired. On 24 June 2009, FIFA wrote to Iran's football federation asking for clarification on the situation. The Iranian football federation replied that no disciplinary action had been taken against any player. On 3 March 2010, he returned for the 2011 AFC Asian Cup qualification match against Thailand.


title: Ali Karimi

text: He was invited to the national football team again by Carlos Queiroz in 2011 to play in the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualification and played for the team until his retirement in 2013. Queiroz later announced that Karimi is one of his best players during his coaching times. He is currently the third most capped player and the third highest scorer of Iran.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Ali Karimi's most famous football feature is his dribbling skills. In 2003, World Soccer described him as a player with "hypnotic movements and ball work". In 2004, "Kicker" magazine called Karimi the "Maradona of Asia" in a report: "He shoots well with both feet, changes direction very quickly and is a player who makes the opposing team dizzy."


title: Ali Karimi

text: During the coaching of Branko Ivankovic, when the Iran national team usually played with a 4-2-3-1 formation, Karimi played mostly in the attacking midfield position. FIFA magazine described Karimi as a professional playmaker in the April 2006 issue.


title: Ali Karimi

text: According to FIFA in 2009, Karimi's "stunning dribbles" are one of the characteristics of Karimi's game, and because of this, he is known as "Magician".


title: Ali Karimi

text: In a report in 2017, AFC called Karimi the "Maradona of Asia" and introduced him as "one of the Icons of Asian football history". In the continuation of this report, "magical dribbling skills" and "a knack for the unpredictable" are mentioned as characteristics of Karimi's game.


title: Ali Karimi

text: On 25 September 2014, Karimi was named as the assistant coach by Carlos Queiroz in the Iranian national team. However, he stepped down from his role shortly before the 2015 AFC Asian Cup. Later in June 2017, he was appointed Naft Tehran manager, but has not signed a contract with the team and left the team before the start of the league. However, Karimi was resigned with Naft in September. On 1 January 2018, he became the head coach of Sepidrood while Sepidrood was in bottom two but he kept this team in the Persian Gulf Pro League.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Ali Karimi married Sahar Davari in 1999, at the age of 21. The couple have a daughter named Hima and two sons named Hawsh and Hirsa.


title: Ali Karimi

text: Karimi publicly supported the Mahsa Amini protests against the government of Iran in late 2022. He posted on Instagram that not even holy water could "wash away this disgrace" of Amini's death. In addition to his criticism of the government, he used his platform of 14+ million followers to advise Iranians on how to bypass Internet censorship in their country. Based in Dubai, he was charged "in absentia" by Iran with "encouraging riots", and his house in Lavasan was seized by the Iranian state.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) is a set of security-related instruction codes that are built into some Intel central processing units (CPUs). They allow user-level and operating system code to define protected private regions of memory, called "enclaves". SGX is designed to be useful for implementing secure remote computation, secure web browsing, and digital rights management (DRM). Other applications include concealment of proprietary algorithms and of encryption keys.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: SGX involves encryption by the CPU of a portion of memory (the "enclave"). Data and code originating in the enclave are decrypted on the fly "within" the CPU, protecting them from being examined or read by other code, including code running at higher privilege levels such the operating system and any underlying hypervisors. While this can mitigate many kinds of attacks, it does not protect against side-channel attacks.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: A pivot by Intel in 2021 resulted in the deprecation of SGX from the 11th and 12th generation Intel Core Processors, but development continues on Intel Xeon for cloud and enterprise use.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: SGX was first introduced in 2015 with the sixth generation Intel Core microprocessors based on the Skylake microarchitecture.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: Support for SGX in the CPU is indicated in CPUID "Structured Extended feature Leaf", EBX bit 02, but its availability to applications requires BIOS/UEFI support and opt-in enabling which is not reflected in CPUID bits. This complicates the feature detection logic for applications.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: Emulation of SGX was added to an experimental version of the QEMU system emulator in 2014. In 2015, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology released an open-source simulator named "OpenSGX".


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: One example of SGX used in security was a demo application from wolfSSL using it for cryptography algorithms.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: Both in the 11th and 12th generations of Intel Core processors, SGX is listed as "Deprecated" and thereby not supported on "client platform" processors.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: On 27 March 2017 researchers at Austria's Graz University of Technology developed a proof-of-concept that can grab RSA keys from SGX enclaves running on the same system within five minutes by using certain CPU instructions in lieu of a fine-grained timer to exploit cache DRAM side-channels. One countermeasure for this type of attack was presented and published by Daniel Gruss et al. at the USENIX Security Symposium in 2017. Among other published countermeasures, one countermeasure to this type of attack was published on September 28, 2017, a compiler-based tool, DR.SGX, that claims to have superior performance with the elimination of the implementation complexity of other proposed solutions.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: The LSDS group at Imperial College London showed a proof of concept that the Spectre speculative execution security vulnerability can be adapted to attack the secure enclave. The Foreshadow attack, disclosed in August 2018, combines speculative execution and buffer overflow to bypass the SGX. A security advisory and mitigation for this attack, also called an L1 Terminal Fault, was originally issued on August 14, 2018 and updated May 11, 2021.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: On 8 February 2019, researchers at Austria's Graz University of Technology published findings, which showed that in some cases it is possible to run malicious code from within the enclave itself. The exploit involves scanning through process memory, in order to reconstruct a payload, which can then run code on the system. The paper claims that due to the confidential and protected nature of the enclave, it is impossible for antivirus software to detect and remove malware residing within it. However, since modern anti-malware and antivirus solutions monitor system calls, and the interaction of the application with the operating system, it should be possible to identify malicious enclaves by their behavior, and this issue is unlikely to be a concern for state-of-the-art antiviruses. Intel issued a statement, stating that this attack was outside the threat model of SGX, that they cannot guarantee that code run by the user comes from trusted sources, and urged consumers to only run trusted code.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: There is a proliferation of side-channel attacks plaguing modern computer architectures. Many of these attacks measure slight, nondeterministic variations in the execution of code, so the attacker needs many, possibly tens of thousands, of measurements to learn secrets. However, the MicroScope attack allows a malicious OS to replay code an arbitrary number of times regardless of the programs actual structure, enabling dozens of side-channel attacks. In July 2022, Intel submitted a Linux patch called AEX-Notify to allow the SGX enclave programmer to write a handler for these types of events.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: Security researchers were able to inject timing specific faults into execution within the enclave, resulting in leakage of information. The attack can be executed remotely, but requires


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: access to the privileged control of the processor's voltage and frequency. A security advisory and mitigation for this attack was originally issued on August 14, 2018 and updated on March 20, 2020.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: Load Value Injection injects data into a program aiming to replace the value loaded from memory which is then used for a short time before the mistake is spotted and rolled back, during which LVI controls data and control flow. A security advisory and mitigation for this attack was originally issued on March 10, 2020 and updated on May 11, 2021.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: SGAxe, an SGX vulnerability published in 2020, extends a speculative execution attack on cache, leaking content of the enclave. This allows an attacker to access private CPU keys used for remote attestation. In other words, a threat actor can bypass Intel's countermeasures to breach SGX enclaves' confidentiality. The SGAxe attack is carried out by extracting attestation keys from SGX's private quoting enclave that are signed by Intel. The attacker can then masquerade as legitimate Intel machines by signing arbitrary SGX attestation quotes. A security advisory and mitigation for this attack, also called a Processor Data Leakage or Cache Eviction, was originally issued January 27, 2020 and updated May 11, 2021.


title: Software Guard Extensions

text: In 2022, security researchers discovered a vulnerability in the Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC) that allows for an attacker with root/admin privileges to gain access to encryption keys via the APIC by inspecting data transfers from L1 and L2 cache. This vulnerability is the first architectural attack discovered on x86 CPUs. This differs from Spectre and Meltdown which uses a noisy side channel. This exploit currently affects Intel Core 10th, 11th and 12th, and Xeon Ice Lake microprocessors.


title: Halloween costume

text: Halloween costumes are costumes worn on Halloween, a festival which falls on October 31. An early reference to wearing costumes at Halloween comes from Scotland in 1585, but they may pre-date this. There are many references to the custom during the 18th and 19th centuries in the Celtic countries of Scotland, Ireland, Mann and Wales. It has been suggested that the custom comes from the Celtic festivals of Samhain and Calan Gaeaf, or from the practise of "souling" during the Christian observance of Allhallowtide. The Christian tradition of acknowledging the "danse macabre" is also suggested as the origin of dressing up on Halloween Dressing up is not strictly restricted to Halloween among Christians, with similar practices being observed on holidays like Christmas. Halloween costumes are traditionally based on frightening supernatural or folkloric beings. However, by the 1930s costumes based on characters in mass media such as film, literature, and radio were popular. Halloween costumes have tended to be worn mainly by young people, but since the mid-20th century they have been increasingly worn by adults also.


title: Halloween costume

text: The wearing of costumes at Halloween may come from the belief that supernatural beings, or the souls of the dead, roamed the earth at this time.


title: Halloween costume

text: The practice may have originated in a Celtic festival, held on 31 October to mark the beginning of winter. It was called "Samhain" in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, and "Calan Gaeaf" in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. The festival is believed to have pre-Christian roots. After the Christianization of Ireland in the 5th century, some of these customs may have been retained in the Christian observance of All Hallows' Eve in that region—which continued to be called "Samhain"/"Calan Gaeaf"—blending the traditions of their ancestors with Christian ones. It was seen as a liminal time, when the spirits or fairies (the "Aos Sí"), and the souls of the dead, could more easily come into our world. It was believed that the "Aos Sí" needed to be propitiated to ensure that the people and their livestock survived the winter.


title: Halloween costume

text: From at least the 16th century, the festival included mumming and guising, which involved people going house-to-house in costume (or in disguise), usually reciting verses or songs in exchange for food. It may have originally been a tradition whereby people impersonated the "Aos Sí", or the souls of the dead, and received offerings on their behalf. Impersonating these beings, or wearing a disguise, was also believed to protect oneself from them. It is suggested that the mummers and guisers "personify the old spirits of the winter, who demanded reward in exchange for good fortune". F. Marian McNeill suggests the ancient pagan festival included people wearing masks or costumes to represent the spirits, and that faces were marked (or blackened) with ashes taken from the sacred bonfire. In parts of southern Ireland, a man dressed as a "Láir Bhán" (white mare) led youths house-to-house reciting verses—some of which had pagan overtones—in exchange for food. If the household donated food it could expect good fortune from the 'Muck Olla'; not doing so would bring misfortune. In 19th century England , youths went house-to-house with masked, painted or blackened faces, often threatening to do mischief if they were not welcomed. In parts of Wales, men went about dressed as fearsome beings called "gwrachod", while in some places, young people cross-dressed. Elsewhere in Europe, mumming and costumes were part of other yearly festivals. However, in the Celtic-speaking regions they were "particularly appropriate to a night upon which supernatural beings were said to be abroad and could be imitated or warded off by human wanderers".


title: Halloween costume

text: It has also been suggested that the wearing of Halloween costumes developed from the custom of souling, which was practised by Christians in parts of Western Europe from at least the 15th century. At Allhallowtide, groups of poor people would go door-to-door, collecting soul cakes – either as representatives of the dead, or in return for saying prayers for them. One 19th century English writer said it "used to consist of parties of children, dressed up in fantastic costume, who went round to the farm houses and cottages, singing a song, and begging for cakes (spoken of as "Soal-cakes"), apples, money, or anything that the goodwives would give them". The soulers typically asked for "mercy on all Christian souls for a soul cake". The practice was mentioned by Shakespeare his play "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" (1593). Christian minister Prince Sorie Conteh wrote on the wearing of costumes: "It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day, and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving to the next world. In order to avoid being recognised by any soul that might be seeking such vengeance, people would don masks or costumes to disguise their identities". In the Middle Ages, statues and relics of martyred saints were paraded through the streets at Allhallowtide. Some churches who could not afford these things had people dress as saints instead. Some believers continue the practice of dressing as saints, biblical figures, and reformers in Halloween celebrations today. Many Christians in continental Europe, especially in France, believed that on Halloween "the dead of the churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival," known as the "danse macabre", which has often been depicted in church decoration. An article published by "Christianity Today" claimed the "danse macabre" was enacted at village pageants and at court masques, with people "dressing up as corpses from various strata of society", and suggested this was the origin of Halloween costume parties.


title: Halloween costume

text: The custom of guising at Halloween in North America is first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported children going "guising" around the neighborhood. In 19th century America, Halloween was often celebrated with costume parades and "licentious revelries". However, efforts were made to "domesticate" the festival to conform with Victorian era morality. Halloween was made into a private rather than public holiday, celebrations involving liquor and sensuality de-emphasized, and only children were expected to celebrate the festival. Early Halloween costumes emphasized the gothic nature of Halloween, and were aimed primarily at children. Costumes were also made at home, or using items (such as make-up) which could be purchased and utilized to create a costume. But in the 1930s, A.S. Fishbach, Ben Cooper, Inc., and other firms began mass-producing Halloween costumes for sale in stores as trick-or-treating became popular in North America. Halloween costumes are often designed to imitate supernatural and scary beings. Costumes are traditionally those of monsters such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, skeletons, witches, goblins, trolls, devils, etc. or in more recent years such science fiction-inspired characters as aliens and superheroes. There are also costumes of pop culture figures like presidents, athletes, celebrities, or characters in film, television, literature, etc. Another popular trend is for women (and in some cases, men) to use Halloween as an excuse to wear sexy or revealing costumes, showing off more skin than would be socially acceptable otherwise. Young girls also often dress as entirely non-scary characters at Halloween, including princesses, fairies, angels, cute animals and flowers.


title: Halloween costume

text: Halloween costume parties generally take place on or around October 31, often on the Friday or Saturday prior to the holiday. Halloween parties are the 3rd most popular type of party held in Western countries, falling behind only to Super Bowl & New Year's Eve parties.


title: Halloween costume

text: Researchers conducted a survey for the National Retail Federation in the United States and found that 53.3 percent of consumers planned to buy a costume for Halloween 2005, spending $38.11 on average (up $10 from the year before). They were also expected to spend $4.96 billion in 2006, up significantly from just $3.3 billion the previous year. The troubled economy has caused many Americans to cut back on Halloween spending. In 2009, the National Retail Federation anticipated that American households would decrease Halloween spending by as much as 15% to $56.31. In 2013, Americans spent an estimated $6.9 billion to celebrate Halloween, including a predicted $2.6 billion on costumes (with more spent on adult costumes than for children's costumes) and $330 million on pet costumes. In 2017 it was estimated that Americans would spend $9.1 billion on Halloween merchandise with $3.4 billion of that being on spend on Halloween costumes. Another survey by NRF showed that 67% of Halloween shoppers would buy Halloween costumes spending $3.2 billion in 2019. It is estimated that the Halloween spending in 2022 could reach $10.6 billion.


title: Halloween costume

text: Halloween costumes in the contemporary Western world sometimes depict people and things from present times and are sometimes read in terms of their political and cultural significance. Halloween costumes are sometimes denounced for cultural appropriation when they uncritically use stereotypical representations of other groups of people such as gypsies and Native Americans. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Secretary Julie Myers was involved in a scandal when she awarded "Best Costume" at the ICE Halloween party to an 'escaped Jamaican prisoner' dressed in dreadlocks and blackface.


title: Id Tech 5

text: id Tech 5 is a proprietary game engine developed by id Software. It followed its predecessors, id Tech 1, 2, 3 and 4, all of which had subsequently been published under the GNU General Public License. It was seen as a major advancement over id Tech 4. The engine was first demonstrated at the WWDC 2007 by John D. Carmack on an eight-core computer; however, the demo used only a single core with single-threaded OpenGL implementation running on a 512 MB 7000 class Quadro video card.<ref name="http://www.Gaminggroove.com posting"></ref> id Tech 5 was first used in the video game "Rage", followed by "", "The Evil Within" and "". It was followed up by id Tech 6.


title: Id Tech 5

text: The initial demonstration of the engine featured 20 GB of texture data (using a more advanced MegaTexture approach called "Virtual Texturing", which supports textures with resolutions up to 128,000 × 128,000 pixels), and a completely dynamic and changeable world. This technique allows the engine to automatically stream textures into memory as needed, meaning that developers need not concern themselves with memory restraints or texture limits. This has the advantage of simplifying the creation of content, by eliminating the need to adapt content for different platforms. The engine automatically optimizes resources for cross-platform development, making it possible to render the same models on different platforms, while creating them for only one platform, further simplifying cross-platform development.


title: Id Tech 5

text: One of the visually evident features the renderer included is a penumbra in the shadowing (soft edges), by using shadow maps. In contrast, id Tech 4, which featured volume-based shadows, had very sharply defined shadows. Numerous other advanced graphical effects such as various materials for lighting, high dynamic range rendering-centric effects, bloom, crepuscular rays (volumetric lighting), radiosity, soft particles, pixel shader effects, alpha to coverage, post processing, Screen Space Reflection, dynamic water surfaces, procedural animation, cloth simulation, depth of field, and motion blur, are contained. Multi-threaded processing on the CPU is done for many of its tasks, including rendering, game logic, AI, physics, and sound processing.


title: Id Tech 5

text: The engine comes with a content-creation tools package called id Studio, which is supposed to be much more user-friendly and polished than in earlier versions. Previously, content creation required artists to run various command-line tools beyond the level editor's own tools, while id Tech 5 allows for all work to be done 'in-engine'.


title: Id Tech 5

text: While id Software will be using the engine solely for creating shooter games, the engine also has the capability to operate outside of this genre. Steve Nix from id Software stated that "Not only do we think people can make games outside the action-shooter space with our technology, we encourage it. We'd actually like to see those games made."


title: Id Tech 5

text: The engine was first publicly shown during the 2007 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address, then was later shown privately to an audience of potential licensees at E3 2007. The first public demonstration focusing exclusively on the engine took place at QuakeCon in the same year during the annual keynote held by John Carmack.


title: Id Tech 5

text: An interview with John Carmack, the lead graphics engine developer at id (at the time), indicated that like its predecessors, id Tech 5 would eventually be released as open-source. The move to open source would likely come many years after id Tech 5's release as a proprietary engine. At QuakeCon 2007, Carmack told LinuxGames that he would integrate as little proprietary software as possible into id Tech 5, as "eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id, that the policy is that we’re not going to integrate stuff that’s going to make it impossible for us to do an eventual open source release." Carmack resigned from id in 2013, and no source code release followed the launch of id Tech 6 in 2016.


title: Id Tech 5

text: At QuakeCon 2010, id CEO Todd Hollenshead announced that while id Tech 5 could be shared with internal ZeniMax Media developers, the engine will not be available for external licensing. On November 10, 2010 it was announced that the first ZeniMax internal developer to work with the engine would be MachineGames.


title: WCW World Tag Team Championship

text: The WCW World Tag Team Championship (previously NWA (Mid-Atlantic) World Tag Team Championship) was a professional wrestling world tag team championship in World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and later the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). It was the original world tag team title of WCW and remained active until it was unified with the WWF Tag Team Championship.


title: WCW World Tag Team Championship

text: The WCW Tag Team Championship was originally known as the NWA World Tag Team Championship of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling (MACW) run by Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP). Following the title's introduction in 1975, the Minnesota Wrecking Crew became the inaugural champions on January 29. The title was renamed the WCW World Tag Team Championship in 1991 when Ted Turner bought JCP and it became World Championship Wrestling. Despite the title's name in MACW, the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) did not recognize its own NWA World Tag Team Championship until 1992, when the NWA held a tournament to crown the first tag team recognized by all of the NWA territories. Terry Gordy and Steve Williams won the tournament. As a result of Gordy and Williams being the WCW World Tag Team Champions when they became NWA World Tag Team Champions, both titles were defended together until WCW left the NWA in September 1993. On January 17, 2008, the NWA withdrew its recognition of every WCW World Tag Team Champion linked to the NWA World Tag Team Championship, officially stating that their titles were formed in 1995.


title: WCW World Tag Team Championship

text: In March 2001, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) purchased WCW. Soon after, "The Invasion" took place in which the WCW/ECW Alliance was ultimately dismantled. During this time, the title was referred to as the WCW Tag Team Championship, with WWF wrestlers winning WCW titles, and WCW wrestlers winning WWF titles. At SummerSlam, the title was unified with the WWF Tag Team Championship in a steel cage match when the WCW Tag Team Champions at that time, Kane and The Undertaker, defeated Chris Kanyon and Diamond Dallas Page for the WWF Tag Team Championship. The titles were only unified temporarily, as Kane and The Undertaker first lost the WWF Tag Team Championship on the September 17 episode of "Raw" to The Dudley Boyz (Bubba Ray Dudley and D-Von Dudley), followed by the loss of the WCW Tag Team Championship on the September 25 episode of "SmackDown!" to Booker T and Test. At Survivor Series in November 2001, then WCW Tag Team Champions, The Dudley Boyz, defeated then-WWF Tag Team Champions The Hardy Boyz (Jeff Hardy and Matt Hardy) to unify the WCW and WWF Tag Team Championships. The former was then retired and WWE (the former WWF) officially recognizes The Dudley Boyz as the final WCW Tag Team Champions.


title: Cody Rigsby

text: Cody Rigsby (born June 8, 1987) is an American fitness instructor, dancer, and television personality.


title: Cody Rigsby

text: Rigsby was born in California but raised in Greensboro, North Carolina. In his freshman year of college at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, he began attending ballet classes at a community theatre. He travelled to New York City after a friend told him about an internship at a dance school.


title: Cody Rigsby

text: Rigsby returned to Greensboro in the fall, where he came out as gay to his peers. He permanently moved to New York City in 2009.


title: Cody Rigsby

text: After graduating from college, Rigsby danced for multiple night clubs and gay bars; he also worked for Katy Perry, Pitbull, and "Saturday Night Live". He danced backup for Nicki Minaj during the 2011 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.


title: Cody Rigsby

text: While working at The Box Manhattan, a burlesque club, a choreographer told him about Peloton, a fitness company that was looking to hire performers. Rigsby sent in an application and was hired shortly after.


title: Cody Rigsby

text: On 19 September 2021, Rigsby was selected to compete on the 30th season of Dancing with the Stars and was paired with professional dancer Cheryl Burke. Rigsby and Burke ultimately placed third.


title: Paul Simon (album)

text: Paul Simon is the second solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Paul Simon. It was released in January 1972, nearly two years after he split up with longtime musical partner Art Garfunkel. His first solo album was recorded in England in 1965 but remained unreleased in the U.S. (except for a brief period in 1969) until 1981, when it appeared in the 5-LP "Collected Works" boxed set. Originally released on Columbia Records, "Paul Simon" was then issued under the Warner Bros. label and is now back with Columbia through Sony. The album topped the charts in the United Kingdom, Japan and Norway and reached No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard Pop Albums. In 1986 it was certified platinum.


title: Paul Simon (album)

text: Simon taught songwriting classes at New York University during the summer of 1971. Among the students he taught were two of the Roche sisters, Maggie and Terre, and singer-songwriter Melissa Manchester who remembers that Simon was nervous, listened to the students' songs and offered suggestions and criticism, often dissecting the lyrics and drawing comparisons with his own work while offering insights into his own work and sources of inspiration.


title: Paul Simon (album)

text: Simon traveled to San Francisco to record some demos and began to work with different musical styles for a proposed solo album, including Latin music, jazz, blues and reggae with the song "Mother and Child Reunion", recorded in Kingston, Jamaica. Guest musicians on the record included Stéphane Grappelli, Ron Carter, and Airto Moreira. The music reflects Simon's interest in world music.


title: Paul Simon (album)

text: Several songs on the album, such as "Run That Body Down" (in which both "Paul" and "Peg" are mentioned by name) and "Congratulations", make reference directly or indirectly to his rocky marriage to Peggy (née Harper), which ended in divorce in 1975. Other themes include drugs and adolescence.


title: Paul Simon (album)

text: Reviewing for "The Village Voice" in 1972, Robert Christgau said, "this is the only thing in the universe to make me positively happy in the first two weeks of February 1972." In "Rolling Stone" that year, Jon Landau called it Simon's "least detached, most personal and painful piece of work thus far — this from a lyricist who has never shied away from pain as subject or theme."


title: Paul Simon (album)

text: Critical praise was indeed widespread for this album, though some reviewers were put off by it. Noel Coppage, in "Stereo Review", called it "undistinguished" and added, "I gather...this album is merely Simon's way of keeping his hand in while Garfunkel makes movies...I'm now wondering if Garfunkel's arranging work doesn't include sending Simon back to rewrite some of his songs before recording them." Despite Coppage's panning, the other "Stereo Review" critics went on to give the album one of its "Record Of The Year" awards. It was ranked number 268 on "Rolling Stone"s 2012 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and was ranked number 425 in the 2020 update. It was ranked number 984 in "All-Time Top 1000 Albums" (3rd. edition, 2000).


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: The Mary Jane Girls were an American girl group formed in 1983, best known for their songs "In My House", "All Night Long", "Candy Man", and their cover version of "Walk Like a Man". They were protégées of musician Rick James and disbanded in 1987.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: Joanne "Jojo" McDuffie was the lead singer, the others filling out the group's style and appearance. On the studio recordings, McDuffie was backed by session vocalists rather than the other Mary Jane Girls. The group released two albums in the 1980s, and recorded a third – which was shelved for decades but finally released in 2014, as part of a larger retrospective of Rick James' work.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: Rick James was frequently backed in his studio recordings by vocalists Joanne "Jojo" McDuffie and the sisters Maxine and Julia Waters. For live performances, starting in 1979, James was backed by McDuffie along with Cheryl Bailey (who used the stage name Cheri Wells), Candice "Candi" Ghant and Kimberly "Maxi" Wuletich. Casually amongst the musicians, McDuffie, Wells, Ghant and Wuletich used the moniker Mary Jane Girls, a subgroup of James' backing band, the Stone City Band. The women learned choreographed dance routines and they practiced under a vocal coach.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: In 1983, James proposed to Motown that McDuffie be offered a solo career but miscommunication caused the label to sign an all-female group, which he determined would be the Mary Jane Girls. James filled the positions behind McDuffie with Wells, Ghant and Wuletich. He also wrote all the original songs and produced all the recordings. Often compared to the protégées of his rival Prince, Vanity 6, who debuted in 1982, James told "Jet" in 1983 that he had come up with the concept six years prior but shelved the idea for a lack of time. "I wanted there to be a Black female group in the industry that could express more reality with relationships to men. I wanted there to be Black girls who could really speak about love, the pain, money, power, hate and everything. Originally there were going to be three girls in negligees doing the punk thing."


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: The Waters sisters and McDuffie sang all the parts on the group's eponymous debut album, "Mary Jane Girls", released in April 1983. The album yielded their first R&B hits: "Candy Man", "All Night Long" (which was later included in the soundtrack of the 2002 video game ""), and "Boys". In live performances, the Mary Jane Girls were backed by the Stone City Band. The male band members also sang the background vocals to support McDuffie as lead vocalist. Cheri Wells left the group before the next album project was recorded. She was replaced by Yvette "Corvette" Marine.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: The name of the group referenced "mary jane", slang for marijuana; a favored recreational drug of James. (James wrote a hit song titled "Mary Jane".) The group's image was styled as containing a street-wise girl (McDuffie), a supermodel (Ghant), a cheerleader/valley girl (Wells, then Marine), and a dominatrix (Wuletich).


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: The group released their second album, "Only Four You", in February 1985. McDuffie was featured on most of the songs, and the Waters sisters were hired to provide background vocals, since the other members were vocally limited. The lead single "In My House" became the group's biggest hit, reaching number 3 on the R&B chart and then crossing over to the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart, where it reached number 7 and spent 12 weeks in the Top 40. It also charted on the Hot Dance Club Play chart, peaking at number 1 for two weeks in April 1985. "Wild and Crazy Love" was the second single from this album and it also fared well on the R&B (number 10) and dance charts (number 3). It barely missed the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 42. The last single, "Break It Up", only reached number 79 on the R&B chart and did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100, but it did hit number 39 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: A third album was recorded by the group, the project called "Conversation", but it was shelved for decades, finally released in 2014 as part of a larger retrospective of James' work. However, a single was released from the project in 1986, a cover of The Four Seasons hit "Walk Like a Man", which was heard in the film "A Fine Mess". This single charted at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100. Another single, "Shadow Lover", was also released in 1986, and the Mary Jane Girls appeared on "Soul Train" to lip sync to it, but the single was not promoted by the label. Ghant obtained other work in 1986 when James and Motown were in dispute, since the Mary Jane Girls had no label support. The Mary Jane Girls officially disbanded in 1987.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: Cheri Wells was recruited away from the Mary Jane Girls by Morris Day to be the lead singer for his all-female band the Day Zs, which released one album and one single on Reprise in 1990. These releases did not chart.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: In 1991, Marine sued Virgin Records, claiming that she had shared the lead vocals on the songs "Opposites Attract", "Knocked Out", and "I Need You" on Paula Abdul's debut album "Forever Your Girl." In 1993, a jury ruled against Marine.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: In 1995, the song "All Night Long" was remixed by Mike Gray and Jon Pearn subtitled "The Hustlers Convention Remixes", released on 12" vinyl and CD single. These remixes gained attention in dance clubs, and rose to number 51 in the UK. Also in 1995, McDuffie, Ghant and Wuletich performed on television on "The Jenny Jones Show", billing themselves as MJG. They continued performing occasionally for a year or two.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: McDuffie recorded with James on his 1997 "Urban Rapsody" album, on the torch song "Never Say You Love Me".


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: In 2001, Mary J. Blige reported that she had purchased the rights to the name "Mary Jane Girls" for the purpose of putting together a girl group composed of one Asian American, one African American, one Latina, and one white singer. Blige said she wanted the name because her own name was Mary Jane Blige. Blige did not pursue the project.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: In 2003, the Mary Jane Girls were featured on VH1 in a "Where Are They Now?" episode. Ghant, Wells, Wuletich and Marine were interviewed together. McDuffie, coming off of a concert tour backing Barry White in Europe, appeared in a separate interview.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: In 2009, McDuffie's husband Robert Funderburg applied for control of the trademark "Mary Jane Girls", but the application was abandoned in 2010. Later in 2010, Kimberly "Maxi" Wuletich applied for the trademark "MJG Starring Maxi and Cheri of the Original Mary Jane Girls", which she uses for performing with Cheri Wells. However, in 2013 the estate of Rick James sued Wuletich and Wells to stop them from performing under the name the Mary Jane Girls. The estate held that the group's name was owned by James, not the singers. In 2014, the Mary Jane Girls (Candice Ghant, Val Young, and Farah Melanson) received an honorary HAL Award.


title: Mary Jane Girls

text: The role of Julia and Maxine Waters as session singers on the group's albums was discussed in the documentary film "20 Feet from Stardom" (2013). Maxine and Julia have performed with their brothers Oren and Luther as "the Waters", and they supported Paul Simon in 1991 on the Born at the Right Time Tour. The Waters toured with Neil Diamond as backup singers starting in 2005. Maxine Waters Willard and Julia Waters-Tillman have appeared separately and together as singers in a dozen films including "The Lion King" and "Little Shop of Horrors".


title: Iron Harvest

text: Iron Harvest is a dieselpunk mecha real-time strategy video game developed by King Art Games and published by Deep Silver. The game was released for Windows on September 1, 2020. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 26, 2021.


title: Iron Harvest

text: The player can control mecha, infantry and hero units. The game is planned to feature over twenty missions and separate single-player storylines for each of the main three factions. The game has both multiplayer and skirmish modes.


title: Iron Harvest

text: The game is set in the 1920+ alternate history universe created by the Polish artist Jakub Różalski, which was popularized by the board game "Scythe". The 1920+ universe is inspired by the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921, and the game's theme has been described as "dieselpunk mecha". The story is focused on the conflict between three nations in Central and Eastern Europe — Polania, Rusviet and Saxony (based respectively on Poland, Imperial Russia, and Imperial Germany) that occurs sometime in the 1920s, in the aftermath of World War I. The Operation Eagle DLC released in May 2021 adds another playable nation, Usonia (based on the United States).


title: Iron Harvest

text: Anna Kos is a young girl who lives with her father Piotr in Polania, which has become occupied by the Rusviet army after a truce was signed with Saxony to end a massive war in which Anna's brother Janek was killed. One day, Rusviet troops raid Anna's village looking for a scientist, which turns out to be Piotr, who possesses a prosthetic arm capable of disabling military mechs. Piotr is captured by Colonel Lev Zubov, who intends to force him to access Nikola Tesla's factory. Anna recruits fighters from the Polanian Resistance to rescue her father. They are joined by Anna's uncle Lech, the leader of the Resistance, but they are too late to save Piotr, who is mortally wounded from Colonel Zubov stealing his arm. Piotr tells Anna to warn his colleague Heinrich Steinmetz in the city of Kolno before passing away.


title: Iron Harvest

text: Wanting to avenge her father, Anna joins Lech and the Resistance as they spearhead a relief train into Kolno. Upon reaching the city, Anna is shocked to discover that the Resistance not only shipped in much needed food supplies, but also weapons to arm the local populace with. Anna protests this move, and Lech reveals that he plans to arm the civilians and convince them to rise up, which will provoke Rusviet to purge the entire city, thus breaking their truce with Saxony and reigniting Polania's hatred of them. Anna balks at Lech's plan and knocks him out. She then meets Heinrich, who devises a plan to save the citizens of Kolno. As Heinrich evacuates civilians in an airship, Anna, Lech, and the Resistance stay behind to cover his escape. However, Colonel Zubov manages to capture Anna and Lech.


title: Iron Harvest

text: Zubov reveals that he manipulated the Resistance into attacking Kolno and breaking the truce, as he is part of a faction called Fenris, which seeks to restart the war. He executes Lech, but as he is about to execute Anna, the Polanian Army led by Commander Michał Sikorski attacks, forcing Colonel Zubov to retreat. While Colonel Zubov is able to escape, Anna is able to corner one of his lieutenants, who to her shock turns out to be Janek.


title: Iron Harvest

text: Janek reveals that four weeks prior, he was attending the peace negotiations as part of the Polanian security detail when the negotiations were attacked by insurgents. Working together with Rusviet officer Olga Morozova, they managed to rescue Tsar Nicholas from his burning palace, but the palace collapsed on top of him, presumably killing him. Realizing that Fenris was behind the attack, Tsar Nicholas tasked Olga with tracking down the group and eliminating them. Meanwhile, Janek, on the verge of death, was saved by Rusviet scientists working under Colonel Zubov, who used salvaged Tesla technology to turn him into a cyborg.


title: Iron Harvest

text: Olga infiltrated the facility and informed Janek that Tesla came out of hiding to warn the leaders of the world about the existence of Fenris, whose sole purpose is to overthrow the current world order. She also revealed that she had swapped Janek's identity with one of Colonel Zubov's soldiers so he would receive life saving treatment and become a mole within Colonel Zubov's inner circle. Olga then followed Colonel Zubov, discovering that he and Tsar Nicholas' advisor Rasputin are both members of Fenris. Olga left to warn Kaiser Friedrich of Saxony while Janek remained at Colonel Zubov's side as he searched for Heinrich, discovering a secret Saxonian missile project in the process. While Heinrich was not at the base, they did discover information about his and Piotr's locations in Polania.


title: Iron Harvest

text: Back in the present, Janek insists on staying by Colonel Zubov's side so he can continue to gather information about Fenris, even when Anna tells him about Piotr and Lech's deaths. Upon linking back up with Colonel Zubov, Janek helps track down and capture Heinrich. Heinrich reveals that they need a transponder to enter Tesla's factory, but that won't protect them from the "Icarus Protocol". Heinrich then commits suicide before he can be interrogated further. Colonel Zubov, however, reveals that Piotr's prosthetic arm can serve as the transponder. Using the transponder, Janek is able to disable the defenses around Tesla's factory. Colonel Zubov's forces press in and capture Tesla. Upon learning that Tesla can remove his cyborg suit, Janek attempts to kill Colonel Zubov but is disabled by the failsafe. However, before Colonel Zubov can execute Tesla, he is held at gunpoint by a Saxonian general.


title: Iron Harvest

text: Saxonian General Gunter von Duisburg recalls troubling memories of the war. At the start of the war, Gunter accompanied Prince Wilhelm in Saxony's offensive into Polania. While successful, the offensive suffered major setbacks due to unexpectedly strong Polanian resistance, and the number of casualties shocked Prince Wilhelm, who became increasingly disillusioned with the war and hateful towards Rusviet. This culminated in him disobeying orders and using chlorine gas against the Rusviets, a move Gunter criticized him for since it would invite similar retaliation from Rusviet. In another mission, Prince Wilhelm loses his nerve and massacres Rusviet prisoners, causing Gunter to strike him, which would disgrace his career and position.


title: Iron Harvest

text: In the present, Gunter is summoned to meet Kaiser Friedrich in Dresden, who has been warned about Fenris by Olga. However, bitter over how Kaiser Friedrich used him as a scapegoat for Prince Wilhelm's crimes, Gunter is reluctant to help him. Eventually, Gunter agrees to help due to their friendship, but Kaiser Friedrich is murdered by Prince Wilhelm, who wants to continue the war against Rusviet, and he frames Gunter. Gunter is forced to flee, and recovers his old mech Brunhilde with the help of engineer Frieda Ruete. With Saxony under Prince Wilhelm's control, Olga suggests that Gunter and his loyalists make their way to Tesla's factory, where they might find asylum.


title: Iron Harvest

text: When they reach Tesla's factory, they find it already under attack by Colonel Zubov's forces. Gunter teams up with the Polanian army, working together with Anna and Commander Sikorski. They manage to break through Colonel Zubov's forces and cause him to flee, but Tesla warns them that the Icarus Protocol has already been triggered, which is a giant automated mech designed to destroy all technology it comes across. The Polanian, Rusviet, and Saxonian forces all unite and work together to destroy the mech, saving the day. Tesla despairs that without the Icarus Protocol, his factory is now vulnerable to another Fenris attack. However, Anna, Olga, and Gunter point out the battle proved that people from the three nations can overcome their differences and work together for a common goal. Inspired, Tesla sets about rebuilding his factory while the others resolve to continue their battle against Fenris.


title: Iron Harvest

text: Shortly after Colonel Zubov's attack on Tesla's factory, revolution erupts in Rusviet as revolutionary forces seek to depose Tsar Nicholas while forces loyal to him try to suppress the revolt. Tsar Nicholas is forced to flee St. Petersburg and seek shelter at a safehouse in the countryside. Olga returns to Rusviet to assist Tsar Nicholas, saving him from a Revolutionary attack and convincing him that Rasputin and Fenris are behind the revolution. Tsar Nicholas decides to return to St. Petersburg to restore order to the country, but as he journeys there, he comes to realize that his Loyalist forces are just as cruel and ruthless towards Rusviet civilians as the Revolutionaries are. Vowing to reform Rusviet, Tsar Nicholas heads for a broadcast tower in St. Petersburg to make an address to the nation while Olga holds off Fenris forces. Unfortunately, Rasputin and Colonel Zubov ambush and kill Tsar Nicholas, declaring the Revolution victorious. With Rusviet now under Fenris' control, Olga is forced to retreat with as many loyal Rusviet soldiers as she can find.


title: Iron Harvest

text: In the midst of the Rusviet Revolution, Usonian businesses and interests in the Rusviet-held region of Alaska are put at risk. Admiral George Mason convinces the President to authorize a foreign intervention into Alaska and sends his son Captain William Mason to lead the effort. The campaign is successful and Alaska is occupied by the Usonian army. Admiral Mason then decides to send William to Arabia, which holds massive oil reserves that can benefit Usonian industry greatly. He explains that Arabia is currently occupied by Saxony, and with the previous king and his two sons having been assassinated, the time is ripe for Usonia to send a covert force to Arabia to intervene in the conflict and secure Arabia's oil supply. William however does not care for his father's business connections and is only interested in helping the Arabians overthrow their Saxonian oppressors.


title: Iron Harvest

text: Upon arriving in Arabia, William's airship is shot down and he is rescued by Princess Sita, who leads Arabia's Free Tribes. She explains the current king, her uncle, murdered her father and her brothers in order to secure a treaty with Saxony. They rescue a delegation from Tesla's alliance led by Gunter, who offers to supply Sita with Tesla's mechs in return for oil. Sita remains skeptical about Usonia's offer for help, but is assured by William he came as a liberator, not an occupier. William helps Sita seize the strategic port city of Aqaba, providing the Free Tribes with a major propaganda victory. However, Admiral Mason arrives with forces aligned with Sita's uncle, announcing that Sita's uncle has decided to betray Saxony and sign a treaty with Usonia instead. Sita, Gunter, and their followers are arrested while William and his men are returned to Admiral Mason, who promises to make William the President of Usonia in return for his cooperation. Furious that his father would betray Sita, William goes rogue with his men and stages a rescue mission, freeing Sita and Gunter and allowing them to escape to Tesla's factory. Despite risking being executed as a traitor, William returns to Usonia and exposes his father's secret operation and business ties to a military–industrial complex, causing a massive scandal.


title: Iron Harvest

text: The game was announced in 2016. The game had a successful crowdfunding phase in 2018 which raised over 1.5 million dollars. The 2018 schedule planned for the game release in the fourth quarter of 2019. However, in 2019, the release was pushed back to 2020. In March 2020 a beta version was made available, and in June a demo version of the game was released on Steam. The game was released for Windows on September 1, 2020. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 26, 2021.


title: Iron Harvest

text: Reviewing the March 2020 beta version, Colin Campbell of "Polygon" praised the game for "mak[ing] smart use of units, cover and terrain", positively comparing the game to the "Company of Heroes" franchise. Likewise, in the same month, Seth Macy of "IGN" called the game "awesome", praising in particular "detail given to the mechanics of the brick building's collapse". In another early review for "PCGamesN", Ian Boudreau commended the game for "staying close to its game design roots", also highlighting visuals, this time the realistic destruction of the wooden buildings.


title: Iron Harvest

text: Following the game release, Toby Arguello in a review for "Screen Rant" said that "Iron Harvest doesn't revolutionize the RTS genre, but an amazing setting and solid gameplay make it a great addition to an often-ignored genre". Robin Meyer-Lorey reviewing the game for "Game Rant" wrote that it is "a high-quality RTS with a satisfying amount of content, but gameplay doesn't break out of the standard RTS mold". Rick Lane in a review for "PC Gamer" concluded that "a worthy spiritual successor to one of the best RTS games ever made". Conversely, in a review for Russian "", Daniil Kortez disparaged the game for its apparent negative stereotyping of Russians.


title: Iron Harvest

text: All reviews also positively comment on the visuals related to Różalski's 1920+ dieselpunk and European scenery imaginary.


title: Iron Harvest

text: In January 2020 the game won the "Best German Game" award at the Deutscher Entwickler Preis, and the Developer King Art also won "Best Game Design" and "Best Sound Design" and was nominated for "Best Graphic" and "Best Story".


title: Brahmavihara

text: The brahmavihārās (sublime attitudes, lit. "abodes of brahma") are a series of four Buddhist virtues and the meditation practices made to cultivate them. They are also known as the four immeasurables (Sanskrit: अप्रमाण, "apramāṇa", Pāli: अप्पमञ्ञा, "appamaññā") or four infinite minds (Chinese: 四無量心). The "Brahma-viharas" are:


title: Brahmavihara

text: According to the "Metta Sutta", cultivation of the four immeasurables has the power to cause the practitioner to be reborn into a "Brahma realm" (Pāli: "Brahmaloka").


title: Brahmavihara

text: "Brahmavihāra" may be parsed as "Brahma" and "vihāra", which is often rendered into English as "sublime" or "divine abodes".


title: Brahmavihara

text: "Apramāṇa", usually translated as "the immeasurables," means "boundlessness, infinitude, a state that is illimitable". When developed to a high degree in meditation, these attitudes are said to make the mind "immeasurable" and like the mind of the loving "Brahma" (gods).


title: Brahmavihara

text: The "Brahma-vihara" are a pre-Buddhist Brahminical concept, to which the Buddhist tradition gave its own interpretation. The "Digha Nikaya" asserts the Buddha to be calling the Brahmavihara as "that practice", and he then contrasts it with "my practice" as follows:


title: Brahmavihara

text: According to Richard Gombrich, an indologist and scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli, the Buddhist usage of the "brahma-vihāra" originally referred to an awakened state of mind, and a concrete attitude towards other beings which was equal to "living with Brahman" here and now. The later tradition took those descriptions too literally, linking them to cosmology and understanding them as "living with Brahman" by rebirth in the Brahma-world. According to Gombrich, "the Buddha taught that kindness - what Christians tend to call love - was a way to salvation.


title: Brahmavihara

text: In the "Tevijja Sutta", "The Threefold Knowledge" in the "Digha Nikāya" or "Collection of the Long Discourses", a group of young Brahmins consulted Lord Buddha about the methods to seek fellowship/companionship/communion with Brahma. He replied that he personally knows the world of Brahma and the way to it, and explains the meditative method for reaching it by using an analogy of the resonance of the conch shell of the "aṣṭamaṅgala":


title: Brahmavihara

text: The Buddha then said that the monk must follow this up with an equal suffusion of the entire world with mental projections of compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity (regarding all beings with an eye of equality).


title: Brahmavihara

text: In the two "Metta Suttas" of the "Aṅguttara Nikāya," the Buddha states that those who practice radiating the four immeasurables in this life and die "without losing it" are destined for rebirth in a heavenly realm in their next life. In addition, if such a person is a Buddhist disciple (Pāli: "sāvaka") and thus realizes the three characteristics of the five aggregates, then after his heavenly life, this disciple will reach "nibbāna". Even if one is not a disciple, one will still attain the heavenly life, after which, however depending on what his past deeds may have been, one may be reborn in a hell realm, or as an animal or hungry ghost.


title: Brahmavihara

text: In another sutta in the Aṅguttara Nikāya, the laywoman Sāmāvatī is mentioned as an example of someone who excels at loving-kindness. In the Buddhist tradition she is often referred to as such, often citing an account that an arrow shot at her was warded off through her spiritual power.


title: Brahmavihara

text: The four immeasurables are explained in "The Path of Purification" ("Visuddhimagga"), written in the fifth century CE by the scholar and commentator Buddhaghoṣa. They are often practiced by taking each of the immeasurables in turn and applying it to oneself (a practice taught by many contemporary teachers and monastics that was established after the Pali Suttas were completed), and then to others nearby, and so on to everybody in the world, and to everybody in all universes.


title: Brahmavihara

text: "A Cavern of Treasures" () is a Bonpo "terma" uncovered by Shenchen Luga () in the early eleventh century. A segment of it enshrines a Bonpo evocation of the four immeasurables. Martin (n.d.: p. 21) identifies the importance of this scripture for studies of the Zhang-Zhung language.


title: Brahmavihara

text: Prior to the advent of the Buddha, according to Martin Wiltshire, the pre-Buddhist traditions of "Brahma-loka", meditation and these four virtues are evidenced in both early Buddhist and non-Buddhist literature. The Early Buddhist Texts assert that pre-Buddha ancient Indian sages who taught these virtues were earlier incarnations of the Buddha. Post-Buddha, these same virtues are found in the Hindu texts such as verse 1.33 of the "Yoga Sutras of Patanjali".


title: Brahmavihara

text: Three of the four immeasurables, namely Maitri, Karuna and Upeksha, are found in the later Upanishads, while all four are found with slight variations – such as "pramoda" instead of "mudita" – in Jainism literature, states Wiltshire. The ancient Indian "Paccekabuddhas" mentioned in the early Buddhist Suttas – those who attained nibbāna before the Buddha – mention all "four immeasurables."


title: Brahmavihara

text: According to British scholar of Buddhism Peter Harvey, the Buddhist scriptures acknowledge that the four "Brahmavihara" meditation practices "did not originate within the Buddhist tradition". The Buddha never claimed that the "four immeasurables" were his unique ideas, in a manner similar to "cessation, quieting, nirvana".


title: Brahmavihara

text: A shift in Vedic ideas, from rituals to virtues, is particularly discernible in the early Upanishadic thought, and it is unclear as to what extent and how early Upanishadic traditions and Sramanic traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism influenced each other on ideas such as "four immeasurables", meditation and Brahmavihara.


title: Brahmavihara

text: In an authoritative Jain scripture, the Tattvartha Sutra (Chapter 7, sutra 11), there is a mention of four right sentiments: Maitri, pramoda, karunya, madhyastha:


title: James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn

text: James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn, (born 4 July 1934), is a British nobleman, peer, and politician. He became Duke of Abercorn in the Peerage of Ireland on the death of his father in June 1979. He is the son of James Edward Hamilton, 4th Duke of Abercorn, and Kathleen Crichton. He is a former politician and Lord Steward of the Household.


title: James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn

text: Educated at Eton College and the Royal Agricultural College, in 1953 he was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards as Second Lieutenant Lord James Paisley, and then promoted to Lieutenant in 1955. He quit active service and was absorbed into the Regular Reserves a year later. In 1964 he became Ulster Unionist MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, succeeding his cousin, Lord Robert Grosvenor. He held his seat in the 1966 election but lost it to Frank McManus in 1970 by 1,423 votes. In 1970 he served as High Sheriff of Tyrone. In 1974 he joined the Ulster Defence Regiment, but left the regiment and remained in the British Army in the Volunteer List in 1980. From 1986 to 2009 he was the Lord Lieutenant of County Tyrone. In 1999, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Garter. He was Colonel of the Irish Guards from 2000 to 2008. Additionally, he was appointed Lord Steward of the Household in 2001, serving until 2009.


title: James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn

text: He owns more than . His seat is Baronscourt, near Newtownstewart, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. The Dukedom of Abercorn is in the Peerage of Ireland and did not carry an entitlement to a seat in the House of Lords, but until 1999 the Duke was entitled to sit there under his subsidiary title Marquess of Abercorn, in the Peerage of Great Britain. He was appointed Chancellor of the Order of the Garter on 17 October 2012.


title: James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn

text: In 1987, he served as a judge in Prince Edward's charity television special "The Grand Knockout Tournament".


title: James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn

text: On 20 October 1966, the then Lord Hamilton married Alexandra Phillips, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Harold Phillips and Georgina Wernher, herself the elder daughter and co-heiress of Sir Harold Wernher, 3rd Baronet, of Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire. Their wedding at Westminster Abbey was attended by members of the royal family, including Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother, and Prince Andrew was a pageboy.


title: James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn

text: The Duke was a first cousin of the 8th Earl Spencer, father of Diana, Princess of Wales. He attended Diana's 1981 wedding to Prince Charles at St Paul's Cathedral.


title: Lokmanya Tilak Terminus

text: Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (also known by its former name Kurla Terminus, station code: LTT) is a railhead and a major railway terminus in the Kurla suburb of Mumbai, India. LTT is managed by the Central Railway. The and suburban railway stations are located nearby. It is one of the five railway terminals within Mumbai, the others being Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, on the Central line, and and Bandra Terminus on the Western line.


title: Lokmanya Tilak Terminus

text: In 1996, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) approved a proposal to rename the Kurla Terminus station after Lokmanya Tilak, a popular leader of the Indian independence movement, and forwarded it to the Union Government through the Government of Maharashtra. Then Union Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani approved the proposal in 1999, at the request of Ram Naik, the then Minister of State of Railway. After the decision was announced, Gurudas Kamat, the Lok Sabha member from Mumbai North-East, met L. K. Advani and submitted a memorandum asking that the terminus be renamed after Babasaheb Ambedkar.


title: Lokmanya Tilak Terminus

text: In 2003, Central Railway (CR) decided to expand LTT to take on more rail traffic, as the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) had reached its saturation point, and was unable to handle any more express trains. In 2006, the Mumbai division of CR cleared the designs for the construction of a swanky station complex to replace the dilapidated terminus complex. The new station complex design was prepared by the architect P. K. Das. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) also agreed to construct a ramp from LTT to the flyover to be built nearby, as part of the Santa Cruz–Chembur Link Road (SCLR). The revamped LTT was inaugurated on 16 April 2013 by Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal. The revamp of the terminus took three years. The new station complex was built on 50,000 sq meter land and has a 3,300 sq meter concourse.


title: Lokmanya Tilak Terminus

text: In October 2012, CR announced plans to cease long-distance train services at Dadar Terminus within 5–6 years. The load would be transferred to LTT by upgrading the number of platforms at LTT from 5 to 12. CR plans to introduce connectivity with other modes of transport as well as build a mall, multi-story parking, escalators, restaurants, food courts, better signage and indicators, budget hotels and an aesthetically pleasing exterior and interior. The project will be implemented in public–private partnership (PPP) mode and is expected to cost 50–60 billion. The project will be executed by the Railway Land Development Authority on the 20 acres of land that CR possesses around LTT.


title: Lokmanya Tilak Terminus

text: LTT is located in the middle of two suburban railway stations, Tilak Nagar and Kurla, on the Harbour line. It is easily accessible through as a direct overhead bridge is made to LTT from Tilak Nagar. A share rickshaw service is available from to LTT via level crossing. The average opening of the level crossing gate is 20 minutes.


title: Lokmanya Tilak Terminus

text: Air-conditioned dormitories were inaugurated at LTT on 16 April 2013 by then Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal. The dorm at LTT is a 24-bed AC dorm exclusively for women.


title: Lokmanya Tilak Terminus

text: Central Railway (CR) completed the installation of a rainwater harvesting system at LTT in October 2012. The system cost and will conserve 700,000 liters of water, which is approximately 40% of the station's daily water requirement. The rainwater harvesting project will help in the percolation of water into the subsoil, which will reduce flooding in the vicinity during the monsoon. The project involved constructing a 2 km trench and filling it with crushed stones.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: The Mystery of the Blue Train is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by William Collins & Sons on 29 March 1928 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00. The book features her detective Hercule Poirot.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: The novel features the murder of an American heiress on Le Train Bleu, the titular "Blue Train". The novel's heroine, Katherine Grey, comes from the fictional village of St Mary Mead, which just happens to be the name of the hometown of Agatha Christie's second most famous crime-solving sleuth, Jane Marple, whose character was introduced after this novel was published.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: Poirot boards Le Train Bleu, bound for the French Riviera. So does Katherine Grey, who is having her first winter out of England, after recently receiving a relatively large inheritance. On board the train Grey meets Ruth Kettering, an American heiress leaving her unhappy marriage to meet her lover. The next morning, though, Ruth is found dead in her compartment, a victim of strangulation.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: The famous ruby, "Heart of Fire", which had recently been given to Ruth by her father, is discovered to be missing. Ruth's father, the American millionaire Rufus Van Aldin, and his secretary, Major Knighton, persuade Poirot to take on the case. Ruth's maid, Ada Mason, says that she saw a man in Ruth's compartment but could not see who he was. The police suspect that Ruth's lover, the Comte de la Roche, killed her and stole the ruby, but Poirot does not think that the Comte is guilty. He is suspicious of Ruth's husband, Derek Kettering, who was on the same train but claims not to have seen Ruth. Katherine says that she saw Derek enter Ruth's compartment. Further suspicion is thrown on Derek when a cigarette case with the letter "K" is found there.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: Poirot investigates and finds out that the murder and the jewel theft might not be connected, as the famous jewel thief "The Marquis" is connected to the crime. Eventually, the avaricious Mirelle, who was on the train with Derek -- with whom she had been having an affair but, now spurned, is seeking revenge against him -- tells Poirot she saw Derek leave Ruth's compartment around the time the murder would have taken place. Derek is then arrested. Everyone is convinced the case is solved, but Poirot is not sure. He does more investigating and learns more information, talking to his friends and to Katherine, eventually coming to the truth.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: He asks Van Aldin and Knighton to come with him on the Blue Train to recreate the murder. He tells them that Ada Mason is really Kitty Kidd, a renowned male impersonator and actress. Katherine saw what she thought was a boy getting off the train, but it was really Mason. Poirot realised that Mason was the only person who saw anyone with Ruth in the compartment, so this could have been a lie. He reveals that the murderer and Mason's accomplice is Knighton, who is really the ruthless "Marquis". He also says that the cigarette case with the K on it does not stand for 'Kettering', but for 'Knighton'. Since Knighton was supposedly in Paris, no one would have suspected him. Derek did go into the compartment to talk to Ruth once he saw she was on the train, but he left when he saw she was asleep. The police arrest Knighton and the case is closed.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: The novel's plot is based on the 1923 Poirot short story "The Plymouth Express" (later collected in book form in the US in 1951 in "The Under Dog and Other Stories" and in the UK in 1974 in "Poirot's Early Cases").


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: This novel features the first mention, in a novel, of the fictional village of St. Mary Mead, which had originally appeared in "The Tuesday Night Club" published in December 1927, which was the first short story of Christie's detective Miss Marple. It also features the first appearance of the minor recurring character, Mr Goby, who would later appear in "After the Funeral" and "Third Girl". The book also features the first appearance of Poirot's valet, George.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: Mere months after this novel was published, prolific French novelist Arthur Bernède published "Le mystère du train bleu" in late 1928. A murder mystery adventure featuring Bernède's own popular detective, Chantecoq, the story is set in Paris and the plot is completely different. It seems likely, however, that Bernède was hoping to benefit from Poirot's popularity.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: The "Times Literary Supplement" gave a more positive reaction to the book than Christie herself in its issue of 3 May 1928. After recounting the set-up of the story the reviewer concluded: "The reader will not be disappointed when the distinguished Belgian on psychological grounds declines to suspect the arrested husband and, by acting on the suggestion of an ugly girl who consistently derides her preposterous mother, builds up inferences almost out of the air, supports them by a masterly array of negative evidence and lands his fish to the surprise of everyone".


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: "The New York Times Book Review" of 12 August 1928 said, "Nominally Poirot has retired, but retirement means no more to him than it does to a prima donna. Let a good murder mystery come within his ken, and he just can't be kept out of it."


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: British crime writer and critic Robert Barnard declared: "Christie's least favourite story, which she struggled with just before and after the disappearance. The international setting makes for a good varied read, but there is a plethora of sixth-form schoolgirl French and some deleterious influences from the thrillers. There are several fruitier candidates for the title of 'worst Christie'."


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: One of the characters in "Death on the Nile" recognises Poirot because of his involvement in "The Mystery of the Blue Train": "Miss Van Schuyler said: ' I have only just realised who you are, Monsieur Poirot. I may tell you that I have heard of you from my old friend Rufus Van Aldin." That line was retained in the television film, even though "Death on the Nile" was broadcast first.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: The novel features a Wagon Lit conductor called Pierre Michel which is the same name of another Wagon Lit conductor who appears in "Murder on the Orient Express" — it is never revealed whether these two characters are one and the same or different.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: The titular Blue Train appears again in "Three Act Tragedy" where Poirot boards the train with Sir Charles Cartwright to return to England.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: The novel was televised in 2006 as a special episode of the series "Agatha Christie's Poirot", and was aired by ITV on 1 January starring David Suchet as Poirot, Roger Lloyd-Pack as Inspector Caux, James D'Arcy as Derek Kettering, Lindsay Duncan as Lady Tamplin, Alice Eve as Lenox and Elliott Gould as Rufus Van Aldin.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: The television film "The Mystery of the Blue Train" includes several changes from the original novel. To tie in with the rest of the series, the setting is changed to the late 1930s. Additionally, Ruth's lover is travelling on the train with her, and they are both fleeing her husband. Lady Tamplin, Corky and her daughter Lenox also travel on the blue train. Ruth becomes friends with Katherine Grey. They switch train compartments, and when Ruth is bludgeoned to death, making her features unrecognisable, Poirot speculates that the intended victim may have been Katherine. Rufus, Ruth's father, has a wife in the film, who became insane after Ruth's birth, and Rufus has ensured her (his wife's) safekeeping at a convent, where she has become a nun. The character of Mirelle is changed to be Rufus's mistress, who visits Rufus's wife. She is mistaken by Rufus's wife to be her daughter Ruth. Additional changes in the film include Ada Mason trying to kill Katherine (because Knighton had fallen in love with Katherine and Ada was jealous). Katherine is saved by Lenox jumping on Mason and biting her on the neck. At the end of the film, the murderer, Major Richard Knighton, commits suicide by having himself run over by an oncoming train, instead of just being arrested by the French police as in the novel. The television film also shows Lady Tamplin's fourth husband (Corky by name) acquiring a ruby for her. In the book, Lady Tamplin's fourth husband is named "Chubby", and he has nothing to do with the ruby.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: In the end, Katherine expresses a desire to travel, saying that she intends to take the Orient Express from Vienna. She asks Poirot if he has taken that train, and he says he has not. However, in a bit of foreshadowing, Poirot says that he would like to take the Orient Express someday, while Katherine talks about the romance of the train.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: "The Mystery of the Blue Train" was adapted for radio by BBC Radio 4, with Maurice Denham as Poirot. It was broadcast in six parts weekly, 29 December 1985 - 2 February 1986. This was the first of the adaptations of Poirot novels by BBC Radio.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: "The Mystery of the Blue Train" was released by HarperCollins as a graphic novel adaptation on 3 December 2007, adapted and illustrated by Marc Piskic (). This was translated from the edition first published in France by in 2005 under the title of "Le Train Bleu".


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: The writing of this book (part of which took place on the Canary Islands in early 1927 - rather than February 1928, as Morgan suggests - given that the serialisation started on 1 February 1928) was an ordeal for Christie. The events of 1926, with the death of her mother, her husband's infidelity, and her breakdown and ten-day disappearance, had left a deep psychological scar and, now separated from Archie Christie and in need of funds, she turned back to writing. The story did not come easily to her and she referred to this novel in her autobiography stating that she "always hated it". Her biography recounts how the total number of words in the book were carefully tallied up, showing what an ordeal Christie found it to be. It later had an effect on her in the midst of wartime when, nervous that at some future point she might be in need of funds and need a fallback, she wrote "Sleeping Murder" and locked it securely in a bank vault for future publication. "Curtain" was written at the same time and similarly locked away, but publication of this latter book would not be possible until the end of her writing career, as it recounts the death of Poirot.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: "The Mystery of the Blue Train" was first serialised in the London evening newspaper "The Star" in thirty-eight un-illustrated instalments from Wednesday 1 February to Thursday 15 March 1928. The entire first two chapters were omitted from the serialisation and it therefore contained only thirty-four chapters. There were slight amendments to the text, either to make sense of the openings of an instalment (e.g. changing "She then..." to "Katherine then..."), or omitting small sentences or words, especially in the opening instalment where several paragraphs were omitted. A reference to the continental "Daily Mail" at the start of chapter six (chapter eight in the book) was changed to "the newspaper" to avoid mentioning a competitor to "The Star". Three chapters were given different names: chapter nine (eleven in the book) was called "Something Good" instead of "Murder", chapter twenty-six (twenty-eight in the book) was called "Poirot hedges" instead of "Poirot plays the Squirrel" and chapter twenty-eight (chapter thirty in the book) was called "Katherine's letters" instead of "Miss Viner gives judgement". The final chapter, called "By the Sea" in the book, was unnamed in the serialisation.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: This is the only major work by Agatha Christie in which the UK first edition carries no copyright or publication date.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: Christie's dedication in the book reads: "To the two distinguished members of the O.F.D. – Carlotta and Peter".


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: This dedication is a direct reference to the events of 1926 which included the death of Christie's mother on 5 April, the breakdown of her marriage to Archibald Christie, and her famous ten-day disappearance in December that year. These were events which disturbed her for the remainder of her life and Christie learned that people she expected to be allies in her time of need turned away from her. One person who didn't was Charlotte Fisher (born c. 1901 – died 1976), who had been employed by Christie in 1924 as both her own secretary and as a governess to her daughter Rosalind. When the events of 1926 were starting to recede, Christie states that she "had to take stock of my friends". She and Fisher (to whom Christie referred affectionately as both "Carlo" and "Carlotta") divided her acquaintances into two separate categories; the Order of Rats and the Order of Faithful Dogs (O.F.D.) – chief among the latter group, Christie put Charlotte Fisher for her steadfast support. Also named in this latter group, and the second subject of the dedication of the book, is Peter, Christie's beloved terrier, who had been purchased for Rosalind in 1924. Peter's devotion to Christie at this time was never forgotten by her and she returned that affection, writing to her second husband, Max Mallowan, in 1930 that "You've never been through a "really" bad time with nothing but a dog to hold on to." Peter was also the subject of the dedication of "Dumb Witness" (on the dustjacket of which he is pictured), published in 1937, one year before his death. Charlotte Fisher, together with her sister Mary, also received a second dedication in a book in "And Then There Were None" in 1939.


title: The Mystery of the Blue Train

text: The blurb of the first edition (which is carried on both the back of the jacket and opposite the title page) reads:Since the beginning of history, jewels have exercised a baneful spell. Murder and violence have followed in their wake. So with the famous Heart of Fire ruby. It passes into the possession of the beautiful American woman, Ruth Kettering, and doom follows swift upon it. Whose hand was it that struck her down? Were the jewels the motive for the murder, or were they only taken as a blind? What part did the beautiful foreign dancer play? These are some of the questions that have to be answered, and the story tells also how these strange and dramatic happenings effect the life of a quiet English girl who has felt convinced that "nothing exciting will ever happen to "me"." She uses very nearly those words to a chance acquaintance on the Blue Train – a little man with an egg-shaped head and fierce moustaches whose answer is curious and unexpected. But even Hercule Poirot, for it is he, does not guess how soon he will be called upon to unravel a complicated and intricate crime when the Blue Train steams into Nice the following morning and it is discovered that murder has been done.


title: Wigner's friend

text: Wigner's friend is a thought experiment in theoretical quantum physics, first conceived by the physicist Eugene Wigner in 1961, and further developed by David Deutsch in 1985. The scenario involves an indirect observation of a quantum measurement: An observer formula_1 observes another observer formula_2 who performs a quantum measurement on a physical system. The two observers then formulate a statement about the physical system's state after the measurement according to the laws of quantum theory. However, in most of the interpretations of quantum mechanics, the resulting statements of the two observers contradict each other. This reflects a seeming incompatibility of two laws in quantum theory: the deterministic and continuous time evolution of the state of a closed system and the nondeterministic, discontinuous collapse of the state of a system upon measurement. Wigner's friend is therefore directly linked to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics with its famous Schrödinger's cat paradox.


title: Wigner's friend

text: Generalizations and extensions of Wigner's friend have been proposed. Two such scenarios involving multiple friends have been implemented in a laboratory, using photons to stand in for the friends.


title: Wigner's friend

text: Wigner introduced the thought experiment in a 1961 article "Remarks on the Mind-Body Question". He begins by noting that most physicists in the then-recent past had been thoroughgoing materialists who would insist that "mind" or "soul" are illusory, and that nature is fundamentally deterministic. He argues that quantum physics has changed this situation:


title: Wigner's friend

text: Observing a system causes its wave functions to change indeterministically, because "the entering of an impression into our consciousness" implies a revision of "the probabilities for different impressions which we expect to receive in the future".


title: Wigner's friend

text: Wigner presents two arguments for the thesis that the mind influences the body, i.e., that a human body can "deviate from the laws of physics" as deduced from experimenting upon inanimate objects. The argument that he personally finds less persuasive is the one that has become known as "Wigner's friend". In this thought experiment, Wigner posits that his friend is in a laboratory, and Wigner lets the friend perform a quantum measurement on a physical system (this could be a spin system). This system is assumed to be in a superposition of two distinct states, say, state 0 and state 1 (or formula_3 and formula_4 in Dirac notation). When Wigner's friend measures the system in the 0/1-basis, according to quantum mechanics, they will get one of the two possible outcomes (0 or 1) and the system will collapse into the corresponding state.


title: Wigner's friend

text: Now Wigner himself models the scenario from outside the laboratory, knowing that inside, his friend will at some point perform the 0/1-measurement on the physical system. According to the linearity of the quantum mechanical equations, Wigner will assign a superposition state to the whole laboratory (i.e. the joint system of the physical system together with the friend): The superposition state of the lab is then a linear combination of "system is in state 0/ friend has measured 0" and "system is in state 1/ friend has measured 1".


title: Wigner's friend

text: Let Wigner now ask his friend for the result of the measurement. Whichever answer the friend gives (0 or 1), Wigner would then assign the state "system is in state 0/ friend has measured 0" or "system is in state 1/ friend has measured 1" to the laboratory. Therefore, it is only at the time when he learns about his friend's result that the superposition state of the laboratory collapses.