text: Kat Bein of "Billboard" opined that the song is "relatively sparse with cute, lively flourishes", writing that it has "definite sonic similarities" to Zedd's previous song "Stay". "Rolling Stone"s Brittney McKenna deemed the song "an infectious earworm" in which Morris "strays from her country roots". She felt that the "Nineties R&B-indebted, vocoder-driven chorus" recalls the sound of "Stay", and that Morris "deftly occupies the new, poppy space". Hugh McIntyre of Fuse found Morris' appearance on the track surprising, "considering the genres she primarily works in", as he praised Morris for "supplying vocals perfectly". He felt that it "leans a lot more pop than electro", which makes the song more appealing to a broader variety of listeners. Regarding the song "an easy-to-love electronic smash" and "a slightly reductive mix" of "Stay" and "Starving", he noted that it is "not entirely original" due to its "reminiscence of what the musicians have delivered before". Similarly, Madeline Roth of MTV News called the song "a poppy earworm" and a combination of "Stay" and "Starving", which is "catchy as hell and practically destined for radio domination". Mike Nied of Idolator wrote that the song "blends elements of country and EDM" and praised Morris for providing "impassioned vocals". Billy Dukes of Taste of Country described the song as "an unlikely combination of EDM, '90s pop and modern country music".


title: The Middle (Zedd, Maren Morris and Grey song)

text: The song's music video, directed by Dave Meyers, was premiered via Target's commercial space during the 60th Annual Grammy Awards. On 25 April, Zedd released a vertical video on YouTube. The dancing was choreographed by Nadine "Hi-Hat" Ruffin, with 50 dancers featured including Lele Pons, Jade Chynoweth, and Willdabeast Adams. More than 400 extras worked on the video.


text: On 28 April 2018, Zedd and Maren Morris performed the song live for the first time at the Omnia nightclub in Las Vegas. On 20 May 2018, all three artists performed the song at the 2018 "Billboard" Music Awards. Morris performed the song with Taylor Swift at the Arlington stop of Swift's Reputation Stadium Tour on 5 October 2018. On 26 October 2019, Jess Moskaluke and The Hunter Brothers performed the song at the opening ceremonies of the 2019 NHL Heritage Classic in Regina, Saskatchewan, located roughly midway between the home cities of the participating Calgary Flames and Winnipeg Jets along the Trans-Canada Highway.


text: The song reached No. 5 on "Billboard" Hot 100. As of February 2019, it had sold 771,000 copies in the United States. In January 2021, "The Middle" surpassed 1 billion streams on Spotify, the first song to do so for all three artists.


title: Modern Family (season 3)

text: The third season of the comedy television series "Modern Family" aired on ABC from September 21, 2011 to May 23, 2012. "Modern Family" was officially renewed for a third season on January 10, 2011. The season was produced by Lloyd-Levitan Productions in association with 20th Century Fox Television, with creators Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd as show runners.


title: Modern Family (season 3)

text: This season like the previous seasons won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for Eric Stonestreet (third consecutively and second for Stonestreet), Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Julie Bowen (second consecutive), along with Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for Steven Levitan, among the fourteen nominations it earned. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy.


title: Modern Family (season 3)

text: The third season of the show was produced by 20th Century Fox Television and Lloyd-Levitan Productions and aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). "Modern Family" is produced by co-creators Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan who serve as executive producers and show runners with Bill Wrubel as co-executive producer. The season premiere was filmed at a dude ranch according to "Modern Family" star Eric Stonestreet. The top choice for the setting for the dude ranch was Jackson, Wyoming. Other cities that were under consideration were Tucson, Arizona and Bozeman, Montana. The premiere will also be the first one-hour episode for the series. The season featured the second Christmas episode and the first Thanksgiving episode. The season also added new writers including Cindy Chupack as co-executive producer and Ben Karlin as consulting producer. On February 29, 2012, the cast filmed an episode on location at Disneyland. The episode aired on May 9, 2012.


title: Modern Family (season 3)

text: "Modern Family" employs an ensemble cast. The series is set in Los Angeles and focuses on Jay Pritchett (Ed O'Neill), his daughter Claire Dunphy (Julie Bowen), and his son Mitchell Pritchett (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). Claire is a homemaker mom married to Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell); they have three children, Haley (Sarah Hyland), the typical teenager, Alex (Ariel Winter), the smart middle child and Luke (Nolan Gould), the offbeat only son. Jay is married to a much younger Colombian woman, Gloria (Sofía Vergara), and is helping her raise her pre-teen son, Manny (Rico Rodriguez). Mitchell and his partner Cameron Tucker (Eric Stonestreet) have adopted a Vietnamese baby, Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons). The kids are only required to appear in 22 episodes.


title: Modern Family (season 3)

text: Near the end of the second season, there were rumors of the producers recasting the role of Lily, and changing her age from a baby to a toddler. In July 2011, a casting call for a "3- to 4-year-old daughter of Mitchell and Cameron" was put out by the producers. They eventually cast Aubrey Anderson-Emmons to replace Jayden and Ella Hiller. The season will also feature the developing of Lily's character. There is a possibility of Cameron and Mitchell adopting another baby although it is not definite. The season will also feature Haley's senior year of high school, and her being shown at least one prospect for college. The season will also feature several guest stars. In the season premiere, Tim Blake Nelson guest starred as a cowboy who "intimidates the guys and sends the girls' hearts a-twitter". Benjamin Bratt is currently slated to guest star as Manny's biological father and Gloria's ex-husband. This will mark Bratt's second appearance on the series. David Cross will also have a recurring role on the series as a city councilman who becomes enemies with Claire.


title: Modern Family (season 3)

text: The season has received an overall mixed reception, most of which stated that the series had lost some of its originality and wit while falling prey to comedy clichés. "Slant Magazine" reviewer Peter Swanson wrote that while the first episode was "the type of wacky-location stunt that's usually reserved for the fifth or sixth season of a dying sitcom", the following episodes "have been better [...] but they're still uneven". He also criticized the writers for relying too much on "stunt episodes and celebrity cameos, like David Cross". He ultimately gave the season 3 out of 4 stars. "HitFix" reviewers Alan Sepinwall and Daniel Feinberg considered the season uneven and Feinberg criticized the season for the multitude of guest stars like David Cross. Sepinwall also criticized the writing for Bowen's character for being "shrill and angry". Despite this, they both complimented the performance of the kids. James Parker of "The Atlantic" said, at the beginning of the third season that ""Modern Family" is very, very funny, almost ruthlessly so," [It's] a bit of a master class in pace and brevity ... The writing is "Vorsprung durch Technik": hectically compressed but dramatically elegant, prodigal in its zingers and snorters but austere in its construction." He found it an exception to his dislike for sitcoms that eschew a laugh track.


title: Modern Family (season 3)

text: Despite the recent criticism from some critics, the third season won its first Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy, beating out two-time winner "Glee".


title: Modern Family (season 3)

text: Like the previous two seasons, "Modern Family" aired Wednesday at 9:00pm and is coupled with "Happy Endings". Aided by winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for the second time, ratings for the one-hour season premiere, "Dude Ranch" / "When Good Kids Go Bad", rose up 18% compared to the previous season premiere, "The Old Wagon" making it the highest rated episode for the series and the highest rated ABC premiere in six years. "Dude Ranch" / "When Good Kids Go Bad" finished first in the ratings with a 6.2 rating among adults between the ages of 18 and 49. The high ratings have led to a rise in cost for an ad, with an average of $249,388 per 30-second commercial, making it one of the highest costing shows of the season.


title: Modern Family (season 3)

text: Despite the mixed reviews, the third season received 14 Primetime Emmy Award nominations, the most nominations for a comedy, and won five of them.


title: Infusion

text: Infusion is the process of extracting chemical compounds or flavors from plant material in a solvent such as water, oil or alcohol, by allowing the material to remain suspended in the solvent over time (a process often called steeping). An infusion is also the name for the resultant liquid. The process of infusion is distinct from both decoction—a method of extraction involving boiling the plant material—and percolation, in which water is passed through the material (as in a coffeemaker).


title: Infusion

text: The first recorded use of essential oils was in the 10th or 11th century by the Persian polymath Avicenna, possibly in "The Canon of Medicine".


title: Infusion

text: Infusion is a chemical process that uses botanicals (typically dried herbs, flowers or berries) that are volatile and release their active ingredients readily in water, oil, or alcohol. In this process, a liquid is typically boiled (or brought to another appropriate temperature) and poured over the herb. After the herb has been allowed to steep in the liquid for an appropriate period of time, it is removed (possibly by straining) leaving "an infusion". Unless the infusion is to be consumed immediately, it is bottled and refrigerated for future use.


title: Infusion

text: The amount of time the herbs are left in the liquid depends on the kind of infusion. Infusion times can range from seconds (for some kinds of Chinese tea) to hours, days, or months (for liqueurs like Sloe Gin).


title: Infusion

text: There are several accessories and techniques for removing the steeped or leftover botanicals that were used to infuse liquids, including metal steepers (which look like clamps), tea infusers (which act as strainers), and french presses (which are commonly used to infuse water with various teas and coffee). The most commonly used technique is the teabag, which is made with filter paper and filled with various tea flavors.


title: Neck pain

text: Neck pain, also known as cervicalgia, is a common problem, with two-thirds of the population having neck pain at some point in their lives.


title: Neck pain

text: Neck pain, although felt in the neck, can be caused by numerous other spinal problems. Neck pain may arise due to muscular tightness in both the neck and upper back, or pinching of the nerves emanating from the cervical vertebrae. Joint disruption in the neck creates pain, as does joint disruption in the upper back.


title: Neck pain

text: The head is supported by the lower neck and upper back, and it is these areas that commonly cause neck pain. The top three joints in the neck allow for most movement of the neck and head. The lower joints in the neck and those of the upper back create a supportive structure for the head to sit on. If this support system is affected adversely, then the muscles in the area will tighten, leading to neck pain.


title: Neck pain

text: Neck pain may come from any of the structures in the neck including: vascular, nerve, airway, digestive, and musculature / skeletal, or be referred from other areas of the body.


title: Neck pain

text: Although the causes are numerous, most are easily rectified by either professional help or using self help advice and techniques.


title: Neck pain

text: Carotidynia, congenital cervical rib, mononucleosis, rubella, certain cancers, ankylosing spondylitis,


title: Neck pain

text: cervical spine fracture, esophageal trauma, subarachnoid hemorrhage, lymphadenitis, thyroid trauma, and tracheal trauma.


title: Neck pain

text: Treatment of neck pain depends on the cause. For the vast majority of people, neck pain can be treated conservatively. Recommendations in which it helps alleviate symptoms include applying heat or cold. Other common treatments could include medication, body mechanics training, ergonomic reform, and physical therapy. Treatments may also include patient education, but existing evidence shows a lack of effectiveness.


title: Neck pain

text: Analgesics such as acetaminophen or NSAIDs are generally recommended for pain. A 2017 review, however found that paracetamol was not efficacious and that NSAIDs are minimally effective.


title: Neck pain

text: Muscle relaxants may also be recommended. However, one study showed that one muscle relaxant called cyclobenzaprine was not effective for treatment of acute cervical strain (as opposed to neck pain from other etiologies or chronic neck pain).


title: Neck pain

text: Surgery is usually not indicated for mechanical causes of neck pain. If neck pain is the result of instability, cancer, or other disease process surgery may be necessary. Surgery is usually not indicated for "pinched nerves" or herniated discs unless there is spinal cord compression or pain and disability have been protracted for many months and refractory to conservative treatment such as physical therapy.


title: Neck pain

text: Exercise plus joint manipulation has been found to be beneficial in both acute and chronic mechanical neck disorders. In particular, specific strengthening exercise may improve function and pain. Motor control using cranio-cervical flexion exercises has been shown to be effective for non-specific chronic neck pain. Both cervical manipulation and cervical mobilization produce similar immediate-, and short-term changes. Multiple cervical manipulation sessions may provide better pain relief and functional improvement than certain medications at immediate to long-term follow-up. Thoracic manipulation may also improve pain and function. Low-level laser therapy has been shown to reduce pain immediately after treatment in acute neck pain and up to 22 weeks after completion of treatment in patients that experience chronic neck pain. Low quality evidence suggests that cognitive-behavioural therapy may be effective at reducing pain in the short-term. Massaging the area may provide immediate and short-lived benefits, but long term effects are unknown. There is a lack of high-quality evidence to support the use of mechanical traction, and side effects include headaches, nausea and injury to tissue. Radiofrequency denervation may provide temporary relief for specific affected areas in the neck. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), the noninvasive use of electrical stimulation on the skin, is of unclear benefit in chronic neck pain.


title: Neck pain

text: Neck pain affects about 330 million people globally as of 2010 (4.9% of the population). It is more common in women (5.7%) than men (3.9%). It is less common than low back pain.


title: Neck pain

text: Prevalence of neck pain in the population suggests it is a common condition. For cervicalgia associated with bad posture the treatment is usually corrective in nature (i.e. ensure shoulders are in one line above the hips) and relating to interventions that provide ergonomic improvement. There is also growing research in how neck pain caused by mobile devices (see iHunch) can be prevented using embedded warning systems.


title: Pass laws

text: In South Africa, pass laws were a form of internal passport system designed to segregate the population, manage urbanization and allocate migrant labor. Also known as the natives' law, pass laws severely limited the movements of not only black African citizens, but other people as well by restricting them to designated areas. Before the 1950s, this legislation largely applied to African men; attempts to apply it to women in the 1910s and 1950s were met with significant protests. Pass laws were one of the dominant features of the country's apartheid system until it was effectively ended in 1986.


title: Pass laws

text: The first internal passports in South Africa were introduced on 27 June 1797 by the Earl Macartney in an attempt to prevent Africans from entering the Cape Colony. The Cape Colony was merged with the two Afrikaners republics in Southern Africa to form the Union of South Africa in 1910. By this time, versions of pass laws existed elsewhere. A major boost for their utilization was the rise of the mining sector from the 1880s: pass laws provided a convenient means of controlling workers' mobility and enforcing contracts.


title: Pass laws

text: In 1896 the South African Republic brought in two pass laws which required Africans to carry a metal badge. Only those employed by a master were permitted to remain on the Rand. Those entering a "labour district" needed a special pass which entitled them to remain for three days.


title: Pass laws

text: Pass laws date “back to 1760 in the Cape when slaves moving between urban and rural areas were required to carry passes authorizing their travel”. The pass laws, “had entitled police at any time to demand that Africans show them a properly endorsed document or face arrest”, hindering their freedom of movement. This meant that it restricted where they could live, which in turn then “tied them to their white employers, underpinning a system of cheap labor and humiliating subjection”. Their implementation over time arose from two contradictory needs. The white population in South Africa utilized these laws as “an ‘exclusionary’ need to obtain political security by controlling and policing the number of Africans in “white” areas, and an ‘inclusionary’ need to ensure a supply of cheap labor within these areas”. The legislation and practices associated with the pass laws have changed over time.


title: Pass laws

text: As these demands and beliefs changed, so did the rights of the black population in South Africa. When the pass laws were implemented at the turn of the century, they “encouraged the flow of labor into ‘white’ agriculture and industry and to redistribute labor into geographical areas where it was needed”. This process would last until the 1950s, when the government opted to change the paradigm. This meant, “from 1950 onward the emphasis of the pass laws has been overtly exclusionary and directed to ‘relocating’ Africans from ‘white’ areas and containing them within the Bantustans”. Therefore, there has always been a tension between the white and black community in South Africa. This stemmed from the “efforts to use the pass system to balance white needs for security and labor”, while also creating laws that would allow for the control of “African employment, housing, access to land, and citizenship”. Due to these laws, “over 17,745,000 Africans have been arrested or prosecuted” between 1916 and 1984. The policing of Africans has allowed for the whites to maintain dominance over the black population for the greater part of the 20th century.


title: Pass laws

text: Not only did the focus on how to control change over time, but also whom to control. Initially and “historically the use of passes in South Africa as a form of labour control applied only to men”. This happened because “whenever attempts were made to extend the system to black women, mass protests quickly resulted”. There vociferous opposition to the pass laws are of no surprise, considering the “fact that black women in South Africa have traditionally taken a more active role in mass popular protest”, in comparison to men. The biggest manifestation was a phenomenon that occurred “during the 1950s when black women throughout the nation fiercely resisted official efforts to make them carry passes for the first time”. The history of the application of pass laws towards women was intertwined with the belief that it would benefit the black female population. The “municipal authorities argued that passes for women were necessary to combat illegal brewing and prostitution”. They hypothesized that if a woman could prove that they made an honest living with legal employment then they would not be allowed to resort to illegal activities since they would be evicted. This proved to be a futile system since it was easier for the women in illegal practices to get around the laws than the home-based workers. Regardless of the reasons and the people that these laws affected, they could never be truly justified, and could only be seen as a scheme to control the black population in South Africa.


title: Pass laws

text: As the years passed by, pass laws would be used less and less to prosecute people. There was a “decline in pass law prosecutions over the period 1968-1981”, which is not surprising considering “the new forms of tight influx controls”. There had been a radical change when the Riekert Commission recommended “that ‘unlawful occupation of accommodation by persons’, together with ‘unlawful employment’, be grounds for ‘repatriation’ of persons from the white area”, which meant that they changed their enforcement to “being taken off the streets and into housing and factories”. Pass laws were repealed in 1986.


title: Pass laws

text: The Natives (Urban Areas) Act of 1923 deemed urban areas in South Africa as "white" and required all black African men in cities and towns to carry around permits called "passes" at all times. Anyone found without a pass would be arrested immediately and sent to a rural area. It was replaced in 1945 by the Natives (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act, which imposed "influx control" on black men and also set up guidelines for removing people deemed to be living idle lives from urban areas. This act outlined requirements for African peoples' "qualification" to reside legally in white metropolitan areas. To do so, they had to have Section 10 rights, based on whether


title: Pass laws

text: The Black (Natives) Laws Amendment Act of 1952 amended the 1945 Native Urban Areas Consolidation Act, stipulating that all black people over the age of 16 were required to carry passes and that no black person could stay in an urban area more than 72 hours unless allowed to by Section 10. The Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act of 1952, commonly known as the Pass Laws Act, repealed the many regional pass laws and instituted one nationwide pass law, which made it compulsory for all black South Africans over the age of 16 to carry the "passbook" at all times within white areas. The law stipulated where, when, and for how long a person could remain.


title: Pass laws

text: The document was similar to an internal passport, containing details on the bearer such as their fingerprints, photograph, the name of his/her employer, his/her address, how long the bearer had been employed, as well as other identification information. Employers often entered a behavioural evaluation, on the conduct of the pass holder.


title: Pass laws

text: An employer was defined under the law and could only be a white person. The pass also documented permission requested and denied or granted to be in a certain region and the reason for seeking such permission. Under the terms of the law, any government employee could strike out such entries, basically cancelling the permission to remain in the area.


title: Pass laws

text: A passbook without a valid entry then allowed officials to arrest and imprison the bearer of the pass. These passes often became the most despised symbols of apartheid. The resistance to the Pass Law led to many thousands of arrests and was the spark that ignited the Sharpeville Massacre on March 21, 1960, and led to the arrest of Robert Sobukwe that day.


title: Pass laws

text: Colloquially, passes were often called the "dompas", literally meaning the "dumb pass" or domestic passport.


title: Pass laws

text: Apart from discrimination against black people, there was also discrimination against the so-called "coloured people." The "coloured" included all Indians, Chinese and Arabs, as well as those of "mixed" black/white ethnicity. Indian people, for example, were barred from the Orange Free State.


title: Pass laws

text: These discriminatory regulations fueled growing discontent from the black population. The 1910s saw significant opposition to pass laws being applied to black women.


title: Pass laws

text: In 1919, the revolutionary syndicalist International Socialist League (South Africa), in conjunction with the syndicalist Industrial Workers of Africa and the early African National Congress, organised a major anti-pass campaign.


title: Pass laws

text: The 1950s saw the ANC begin the Defiance Campaign to oppose the pass laws. This conflict climaxed at the Sharpeville Massacre, where the anti-pass protestors led by the rival breakaway Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) surrounded the Sharpeville police station, prompting the police to open fire, killing 69 people and injuring over 180. Subsequent protests and strikes were met with major repression and the ANC and PAC were both banned.


title: Pass laws

text: On July 24, 1986, as part of a process of removing some apartheid laws, the South African government lifted the requirement to carry passbooks, although the pass law system itself was not yet repealed. The system of pass laws was formally repealed retroactive on April 23, 1986, with the Abolition of Influx Control Act. Helen Suzman (MP) mentioned the act as the most eminent reform a government had ever introduced.


title: Nica Pierce

text: Nica Pierce is a fictional character in the "Child's Play" franchise. She was created by Don Mancini and is portrayed by Fiona Dourif. She is the protagonist in two of the seven films, first appearing in "Curse of Chucky" (2013) and subsequently in "Cult of Chucky" (2017). She is also featured in the USA Network and Syfy produced "Chucky" television series.


title: Nica Pierce

text: In "Curse of Chucky", Nica Pierce is a paraplegic woman with an unspecified heart disease triggered by stress. She lives with her mother Sarah in a large house with a cage elevator she uses to move between the levels. One day a package arrives containing a Good Guy doll. Later that night she finds her mother dead and her death is ruled a suicide. She is later visited by her sister Barb, her sister's husband Ian, her niece Alice, their live-in nanny Jill and Father Frank. That night, Nica begins to investigate the doll she received on the internet, and discovers the doll's link to serial killer Charles Lee Ray. But Barb ignores Nica's warning, suspecting the 'secret' that Barb refers to is the hidden webcamera which Ian had planted in Chucky's overalls to spy on Barb.


title: Nica Pierce

text: Chucky soon begins killing off Nica's guests and when she hears Barb's screams, Nica crawls up the stairs, unable to use the elevator due to the electricity going out. When she gets to the top she finds Barb dead, and discovers that Chucky is alive. Chucky flees and Nica wakes up Ian, who then takes Nica to the garage where she has a heart attack as Ian accuses her of being a murderess as Chucky is behind him stealing the car keys.


title: Nica Pierce

text: She wakes up taped to her wheelchair, restrained by Ian. Nica tells him that Chucky is responsible for the murders. Ian ignores this, but looks at footage from the camera he had placed on Chucky to catch his wife having an affair on him with Jill. Just as he begins to know the truth about the doll, Chucky murders him with an axe. Nica manages to break the restraints and attack Chucky but gets pushed over the balcony. Nica begs to know his motive, and Chucky reveals himself as a family friend who was secretly in love with Nica's mother Sarah. He says he killed Nica's father and kidnapped Sarah. When Sarah contacted the police and staged his arrest (which is revealed to be the backdrop of Chucky, in his human form as Charles Lee Ray, transferring his soul to a doll), he stabbed her in the stomach, causing Nica's disability.


title: Nica Pierce

text: Nica fights off Chucky before he can kill her but when a police officer walks in and sees Barb's corpse with Nica holding a bloody knife, she gets blamed for the murders and committed to a mental hospital.


title: Nica Pierce

text: Nica returned in the seventh installment with Fiona Dourif reprising her role. She subsequently becomes possessed by Chucky at the end of the film, and he/she escapes the mental hospital with Tiffany.


title: Nica Pierce

text: Two weeks after the events of "Cult of Chucky", Nica is still possessed by Chucky and staying with Tiffany in a hotel room in Hackensack, New Jersey, where Chucky and Tiffany are originally from. Nica is able to regain control of her body temporarily, usually at the sight of blood. During one incident she attempts to free a victim Chucky and Tiffany have tied to a chair but he becomes scared and hits her, allowing Chucky to take control and slit the man's throat. She later tries pretending to be Chucky to trick Tiffany but Tiffany isn't fooled and knocks Nica out with a frying pan.


title: Nica Pierce

text: Tiffany ties Nica up and leaves her trapped inside Charles Lee Ray's childhood home. Later Devon Evans breaks into the house and discovers Nica who begs him to set her free, he does but it turns out it's actually Chucky pretending to be Nica and tasers Devon unconscious. After Chucky splits his soul into an army of dolls, Nica/Chucky gets into a fight with Tiffany who slaps her to the ground, allowing Nica to regain control. One of the Chuckys tells Tiffany to kill her but Tiffany having developed feelings for Nica decapitates the doll and knocks Nica out with a sedative. When Nica awakens she is horrified to discover that Tiffany (to protect herself from Chucky) has amputated her arms and legs.


title: Nica Pierce

text: Nica returns in season two of the series where she remains under supervision by Tiffany for over a year and has been declared missing. She eventually escapes with the help of Glen and Glenda, Tiffany's twin children who give Nica new metal arms; Chucky Prime, the Chucky who is possessing her; and Andy Barclay's sister Kyle. Nica, Glenda, and Kyle travel to the School of the Incarnate Lord with the intention of freeing her from Chucky Prime. Nica successfully performs the ritual to move Chucky Prime into another doll's body, who Andy then kills. Tiffany and Glen arrive at the school and Nica attempts to get revenge by shooting Tiffany, but Glen jumps in the path of the bullet. She looks on in horror as Tiffany and Glenda take Glen away to get help. Several weeks later, Tiffany has moved to New York with Caroline Cross, a young girl whose mind has been corrupted by Chucky. Nica has followed them to New York; she calls Tiffany and, after admitting she has been in regular contact with G.G. (the combined personalities of Glen and Glenda, now in doll form), she promises to follow through with her threat of revenge.


title: Nica Pierce

text: Joey Keogh noted how she is different from other final girls stating that "she is confined to a wheelchair throughout and thus completely unable to revert to typical Final Girl conventions, like running around, screaming her head off. Nica is a remarkably resourceful young woman, who is more than a match for Chucky, even though his main focus is on a younger, more vulnerable charge entirely." Clark Douglas praised Dourif's performance in "Curse of Chucky", saying:


title: Nica Pierce

text: Matt Molgaard praised the character saying "Handicapped, forever wheelchair-bound, Dourif's character, Nica, doesn't look too imposing or powerful. In fact, initially she looks a bit fragile. And then shit gets crazy in the film and Nica's defensive mindset spins 180 degrees. Survival instinct takes over, and whether handicapped or not, she's not going down without a fight for the ages." Adam Frazier, who gave the film a mixed review, praised Fiona's performance, stating "Aside from Fiona Dourif, who makes a solid Final Girl, many of the performances are amateurish."


title: Nica Pierce

text: John Atkinson has argued that the treatment of Nica in the "Chucky" series had undermined her "former progressive and heroic glory" by subjecting her to unremitting torture such that "even Andy Barclay's experiences seemed like a walk in the park compared to hers".


title: Highbrow

text: Used colloquially as a noun or adjective, "highbrow" is synonymous with intellectual; as an adjective, it also means elite, and generally carries a connotation of high culture. The term, first recorded in 1875, draws its metonymy from the pseudoscience of phrenology, which teaches that people with large foreheads are more intelligent.


title: Highbrow

text: "Highbrow" can be applied to music, implying most of the classical music tradition; to literature—i.e., literary fiction and poetry; to films in the arthouse line; and to comedy that requires significant understanding of analogies or references to appreciate. The term "highbrow" is considered by some (with corresponding labels as 'middlebrow' 'lowbrow') as discerning or selective; and "highbrow" is currently distanced from the writer by quotation marks: "We thus focus on the consumption of two generally recognised 'highbrow' genres—opera and classical". The first usage in print of "highbrow" was recorded in 1884. The term was popularized in 1902 by Will Irvin, a reporter for "The Sun" of New York City, who adhered to the phrenological notion of more intelligent people having high foreheads.


title: Highbrow

text: The opposite of highbrow is lowbrow, and between them is middlebrow, describing culture that is neither high nor low; as a usage, middlebrow is derogatory, as in Virginia Woolf's unsent letter to the "New Statesman", written in the 1930s and published in "The Death of the Moth and Other Essays" (1942). According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", the word "middlebrow" first appeared in print in 1925, in "Punch": "The BBC claims to have discovered a new type—'the middlebrow'. It consists of people who are hoping that some day they will get used to the stuff that they ought to like". The term had previously appeared in hyphenated form in "The Nation", on 25 January 1912:


title: Highbrow

text: In spite of their wide-reaching differences, Virginia Woolf describes the highbrow as intimately reliant on the lowbrow. For instance, she considers Prince Hamlet to be a highbrow lacking orientation in the world once he had lost the lowbrow Ophelia with her grip on earthly realities: this, she thought, explained why in general highbrows "honour so wholeheartedly and depend so completely upon those who are called lowbrows".


title: Highbrow

text: It was popularized by the American writer and poet Margaret Widdemer, whose essay "Message and Middlebrow" appeared in the "Review of Literature" in 1933. The three genres of fiction, as American readers approached them in the 1950s and as obscenity law differentially judged them, are the subject of Ruth Pirsig Wood, "Lolita in Peyton Place: Highbrow, Middlebrow, and Lowbrow Novels", 1995.


title: Millhouse Capital

text: Millhouse Capital is a British registered company. It was created in 2001 to manage assets owned by the Russian businessman Roman Abramovich and his partners.


title: Millhouse Capital

text: The chairman of the company is Russian-American businessman Eugene Shvidler. Its assets under management included major stakes in oil company Sibneft (now Gazprom Neft), Russian Aluminum, Aeroflot, and RusPromAvto, as well as investments in electricity, pulp and paper processing, insurance and banking.


title: Millhouse Capital

text: Millhouse Capital's shareholders sold their 26 percent holding in OAO Aeroflot in 2003 and a 50 percent stake in OAO Russian Aluminum (UC RUSAL), now the world's largest aluminum producer, in two deals spanning 2003 and 2004. The sale prices were not disclosed.


title: Millhouse Capital

text: In October 2005, Millhouse Capital sold a 72% stake in Sibneft to Gazprom for more than US$13 billion.


title: Millhouse Capital

text: Millhouse Capital was initially based at Abbey House in Weybridge, a large two storey office building on the edge of the St. George's Hill estate, before moving to Stamford Bridge following Abramovich's acquisition of Chelsea Football Club in 2003. It had a larger representative office in Moscow.


title: Millhouse Capital

text: In a reorganization following the sale of Sibneft, the Moscow office of Millhouse Capital was closed and a new company, Moscow-based Millhouse LLC, was formed in April 2006 to manage the assets of Abramovich and his partners. The London office of Millhouse Capital was closed in August 2008 and its functions rolled into a new firm, MHC (Services) Ltd.


title: Durupınar site

text: The Durupınar site () is a 164-meter-long (underground) structure made of limonite adjacent to the village of Üzengili in eastern Turkey. The site is north of the Iranian border, southeast of Doğubeyazıt in the Ağrı Province, and south of the Greater Mount Ararat summit, at an elevation of above sea level.


title: Durupınar site

text: The size and shape of the structure led to its promotion by some believers as the petrified ruins of the original Noah's Ark. Geologists assert that it is an entirely natural formation but have nominated it as (geological) heritage. The site is near several officially unnamed peaks, though locals call one of the nearby peaks "Cudi Dağı" in Turkish, and "Çîyaye Cûdî" in Kurdish, which David Fasold linked to "Al-Ǧūdī", the place named in the Quran as the final resting place of Noah's Ark. Some researchers place Mount Judi in another location farther south, near the Turkish/Iraqi border.


title: Durupınar site

text: According to local reports, heavy rains combined with three earthquakes exposed the formation from the surrounding mud on May 19, 1948. It was discovered by a Kurdish shepherd named Reshit Sarihan. It was subsequently identified by Turkish Army Captain Ilhan Durupınar ()—for whom it was subsequently named—in a Turkish Air Force aerial photo while on a mapping mission for NATO in October 1959. Durupınar informed the Turkish government of his discovery and a group from the Archeological Research Foundation which included George Vandeman, Ilhan Durupınar, and Arthur Brandenberger, professor of photogrammetry, surveyed the site in September 1960. After two days of digging and dynamiting inside the "boat-shaped" formation, the expedition members found only soil and rocks. Their official news release concluded that "there were no visible archaeological remains" and that this formation "was a freak of nature and not man-made".


title: Durupınar site

text: The site was then ignored until 1977, when it was rediscovered and promoted by self-styled archaeologist and amateur explorer Ron Wyatt. Throughout the 1980s, Wyatt repeatedly tried to interest other people in the site, including ark hunter and former astronaut James Irwin and creationist John D. Morris, neither of whom was convinced the structure was the Ark. In 1985, Wyatt was joined by David Fasold and geophysicist John Baumgardner for the expedition recounted in Fasold's "The Ark of Noah". As soon as Fasold saw the site, he exclaimed that it was a shipwreck. Fasold brought along state-of-the-art ground-penetrating radar equipment and a "frequency generator", set it on the wavelength for iron, and searched the formation for internal iron loci (the latter technique was later compared to dowsing by the site's detractors). Fasold and the team states that the ground penetration radar revealed a regular internal structure and measured the length of the formation as , close to the 300 cubits (157 m, 515 ft) of the Noah's Ark in the Bible if the royal Ancient Egyptian cubit of is used. Fasold believed the team found the fossilized remains of the upper deck and that the original reed substructure had disappeared. In the nearby village of Kazan (formerly Arzap), they examined so-called drogue (anchor) stones that they believed were once attached to the ark.


title: Durupınar site

text: Creationist commentators, such as Andrew Snelling in the Creation Ministries International journal "Creation", wrote that "there are no scientific principles employed" in the "so-called frequency generator" used by Wyatt's team. He called it a "gadget, which is generally advertised in treasure-hunting magazines, not scientific journals" with "brass welding rods being used in essence, as divining rods, similar to the use of a forked stick to search for water."


title: Durupınar site

text: Fasold asserted in his 1988 book that locals call one of the peaks near to the Durupınar site al Cudi (Turkish "Cudi Dagi", Kurdish "Çîyaye Cûdî") and linked this to the Mount Judi named in the Quran as the final resting place of Noah's Ark. The assertion is controversial and not well supported by local toponymy. After a few expeditions to the Durupınar site that included drilling and excavation in the 1990s, Fasold began to have doubts that the Durupınar formation was Noah's ark. He visited the site in September 1994 with Australian geologist Ian Plimer and concluded that the structure was not a boat. He surmised that ancient peoples had erroneously believed the site was the ark. In 1996, Fasold co-wrote a paper with geologist Lorence Collins titled "Bogus 'Noah's Ark' from Turkey Exposed as a Common Geologic Structure", which concluded that the boat-shaped formation was a natural stone formation that merely resembled a boat. The same paper pointed out that the "anchors" were local volcanic stone. The abstract reads:


title: Durupınar site

text: A natural rock structure near Dogubayazit, Turkey, has been misidentified as Noah's Ark. Microscopic studies of a supposed iron bracket show that it is derived from weathered volcanic minerals. Supposed metal-braced walls are natural concentrations of limonite and magnetite in steeply inclined sedimentary layers in the limbs of a doubly plunging syncline. Supposed fossilized gopherwood bark is crinkled metamorphosed peridotite. Fossiliferous limestone, interpreted as cross cutting the syncline, preclude the structure from being Noah's Ark because these supposed "Flood" deposits are younger than the "Ark." Anchor stones at Kazan (Arzap) are derived from local andesite and not from Mesopotamia.


title: Durupınar site

text: In April 1997, in sworn testimony at an Australian court case, Fasold repeated his doubts and noted that he regarded the claim that Noah's ark had been found as "absolute BS".


title: Durupınar site

text: Others, such as fellow ark researcher David Allen Deal, reported that before his death, Fasold returned to a belief that the Durupınar site might be the location of the ark. His close Australian friend and biographer June Dawes wrote:


title: Durupınar site

text: He [Fasold] kept repeating that no matter what the experts said, there was too much going for the Durupınar site for it to be dismissed. He remained convinced it was the fossilized remains of Noah's Ark.


title: Durupınar site

text: In 2011, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey granted jurisdiction over Noah's ark works specifically to a 5-professor Cultural Center Board of Directors from Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen University, as having precedence at the Durupınar site, overriding the Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s Immovable Cultural and Natural Assets High Council. In 2014 and 2019, ground penetrating radar surveys discovered that walls made of limonite stones form several right angles.


title: Durupınar site

text: The Arzap drogue stones are a number of large standing stones found near the Durupınar site by amateur archaeologist Ron Wyatt with the aid of David Fasold and others. Fasold interpreted the artifacts as drogues, stone weights used to stabilize the Ark in rough seas, because they all have a chamfered hole cut at one end as if to fasten a rope to them, and his reading of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Babylonian mythical account of the flood, suggested to him that such stones were used.


title: Durupınar site

text: Drogue stones were the equivalent of a storm anchor on ancient ships. They have been found in the Nile and elsewhere in the Mediterranean area, and like the stones found by Wyatt and Fasold, they are heavy and flat with a hole for tying a line at one end. Their purpose was to create drag in the water or along shallow sandy bottoms: the stone was attached to one end of a boat, and the drag produced would cause the bow or stern to face into the wind and wind-blown waves.


title: Durupınar site

text: A geological investigation of samples from the stones, published by geologist Lorence Collins in co-authorship with their original discoverer David Fasold, found that they are of local rock and thus could not have been brought from Mesopotamia, the Ark's supposed place of origin. Similar stones found throughout ancient Armenia are recognised as pagan "holy stones" converted to Christian use by the addition of crosses and other Christian symbols. Many are found in Christian cemeteries, as these were.


title: Chris Difford

text: Christopher Henry Difford (born 4 November 1954) is an English singer, musician, songwriter and record producer. He is a founding member and songwriter of the rock group Squeeze.


title: Chris Difford

text: Born in Greenwich, London, Difford has written lyrics for over 40 years, most notably in partnership with Glenn Tilbrook. The two were primary members in Squeeze and Difford & Tilbrook. According to Difford, he stole 50p from his mother's purse to put a card in a local sweetshop window advertising for a guitarist to join his band, although he did not have one at the time. Tilbrook was the only person who responded to the advert and they met for the first time shortly afterwards. Some of their best-known songs are "Tempted", "Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)", "Black Coffee in Bed", "Cool for Cats", "Up the Junction" and "Annie Get Your Gun".


title: Chris Difford

text: After the break-up of Squeeze in 1983 Difford continued writing songs for artists such as Jools Holland, Helen Shapiro, Billy Bremner and Elvis Costello. He has also written lyrics for music by Jools Holland, Elton John, Wet Wet Wet, Marti Pellow and others. He was involved with Tilbrook and John Turner in the creation of a musical, "Labelled with Love", which was created using the songs of Squeeze. The 1983 musical performed in Deptford was short-lived. In 1984 the pair released the album "Difford and Tilbrook" and had a minor hit in the UK with "Love's Crashing Waves" which reached 57 in the UK charts. In 1985 Squeeze reunited, having hits in the US with "Babylon and On", "Hourglass" and "853-5937". Difford left the group in 1999 launching a solo career in 2003 with his album "I Didn't Get Where I Am". Difford was also manager of Bryan Ferry and The Strypes. Squeeze reunited again in 2007, and Difford maintains a concurrent solo career alongside his work with the band.


title: Chris Difford

text: In March 2010, Difford curated "Songs in the Key of London", an evening of music dedicated to the capital at the Barbican Centre, London.


title: Chris Difford

text: Since 2014, Chris has been running the annual Chris Difford Songwriting Retreat, under the auspices of the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation, providing an opportunity for artists to collaborate with one another to write new songs and create new friendships in a relaxed setting in the English countryside.


title: Chris Difford

text: Difford was raised in Greenwich. He lived in New York with his first wife and their two children. He then lived in Rye, Sussex, with the mother of his two youngest children. Currently, he lives just outside Brighton, Sussex with his wife, Louise, whom he married in April 2013.


title: Shannon Larkin

text: James Shannon Larkin (born April 24, 1967) is an American musician, best known as the drummer of rock band Godsmack. He replaced the previous drummer Tommy Stewart in June 2002. Prior to Godsmack, he was a member of Amen, Candlebox, Ugly Kid Joe, and Souls at Zero (formerly Wrathchild America).


title: Shannon Larkin

text: Shannon played drums for Godsmack for their albums "Faceless", "IV", "The Other Side EP", "The Oracle", "1000hp", and their latest album "When Legends Rise".


title: Shannon Larkin

text: He formed Wrathchild America in 1978, recording two albums for Atlantic Records before being dropped by the label. The group disbanded and later reformed as Souls at Zero, signing with Energy Rekords and releasing an eponymous debut album that was well received by critics. He went on to record two albums with Ugly Kid Joe and two more with Amen.


title: Shannon Larkin

text: He joined Godsmack in 2003, replacing departing drummer Tommy Stewart. He has since appeared on their albums "Faceless", "IV", "The Other Side", "The Oracle", "1000hp", "When Legends Rise".


title: Shannon Larkin

text: His numerous side projects have included hardcore punk and thrash metal band Kiddie Porn with fellow Wrathchild guitarist Jay Abbene and bassist John "Tumor" Fahnestock, MF Pitbulls with members of Snot, and The Apocalypse Blues Revival with Tony Rombola.


title: Shannon Larkin

text: He has appeared as a session musician on such albums as "Strait Up" by Snot and Glenn Tipton's "Baptizm of Fire". He has played for Vanilla Ice, Glassjaw, and Stone Sour.


title: Shannon Larkin

text: Larkin has been tattooed by artists all over the world. In addition to a full sleeve on his left arm and tattoos on his right arm, Larkin has Amen tattooed across his knuckles and a hand ripping into the skin on his stomach.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: , born , was a Japanese poet active during the early Shōwa period. Originally shaped by Dada and other forms of European (mainly French) experimental poetry, he was one of the leading renovators of Japanese poetry. Although he died at the young age of 30, he wrote more than 350 poems throughout his life. Many called him the "Japanese Rimbaud" for his affinities with the French poet whose poems he translated in 1934.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: Chūya Nakahara was born in Yamaguchi, where his father, Kensuke Kashimura, was a highly decorated army doctor. Kensuke married Fuku Nakahara and was adopted by the Nakahara family shortly after the birth of their son, officially changing their last name to Nakahara. In Nakahara's earliest years, his father was sent to Hiroshima and Kanazawa where the family followed, only returning to Yamaguchi in 1914. In 1917, Kensuke established his own clinic in the location where nowadays stands the Nakahara Chūya Memorial Hall.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: Since his parents had not been blessed with children for six years after their marriage, and because they had no children in the Nakahara family's hometown, they were delighted with the birth of their first son and celebrated it for three days.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: As the eldest son of a prominent doctor, Nakahara was expected to become one himself. Due to the high expectations of his father, Nakahara was given a very strict education, which also prevented him from enjoying an ordinary childhood. Worried about the public morals of the town, Kensuke forbid his son from playing outside with children from a different class to their own. Another example of these restrictions is that, unlike his younger brothers, he was not allowed to bathe in the river for fear that he would drown. As he grew up, severe punishments were inflicted upon him; a common one was being made to stand upright facing the wall. Any sudden move would cause to receive a burn in the heel with a cigarette ember. However, the biggest punishment was being confined to sleep in the barn, which Chūya received dozens of times compared to his brothers. This was intended to prepare him to follow Kensuke's footsteps and to become the head of the family.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: As a primary schooler, Nakahara had excellent grades and was called a prodigy child. It was the death of his younger brother Tsugurō in 1915, when he was 8-years-old, which awakened him to literature. Grief-driven, he turned to composing poetry. He submitted his first three verses to a women's magazine and local newspaper in 1920, when he was still in elementary school. In the same year, he passed the entrance examination to Yamaguchi Junior High School with brilliant results. It was from this point onwards when he started to rebel against his father's strictness. He no longer studied and his grades began to drop as he became increasingly absorbed by literature. Kensuke was extremely afraid of the influence of literature on his son. Once, having found a work of fiction Nakahara had hidden, he severely scolded him and, once again, confined him in the barn. It was around this time when Nakahara also began to drink and smoke, making his grades go even lower.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: In 1923, he failed his third-year examination. It is said that Nakahara invited a friend to his study room, broke the answer sheet and chanted "hurrah". The failure seems to have been deliberate. For as long as he did not fail, he was bound to remain under his strict parents' surveillance. On the other hand, Kensuke received the news with utter shock at what meant to him a deep humiliation. He resorted once more to striking his son and keeping him in the barn in the cold night of March. Regardless of this, Nakahara insisted on not going back to this school. This culminated in his father's defeat, which ultimately led to an apology for his “educational policy”. In the light of these events, he was transferred to the Ritsumeikan Middle School in Kyoto, where Nakahara begin to live alone but still, and until the end of his days, at the expense of his family.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: In Kyoto he found many of the influences that would ultimately shape him as a poet. He read Shinkichi Takahashi's Dadaist poetry, which shocked him into starting to write again. This artistic movement became a part of his poetic and life styles and later earned him the nickname “Dada-san”. In winter he met the actress Yasuko Hasegawa, three years his senior, and in April 1924 they began living together. It is also in this very year when Chūya became friends with fellow poet Tominaga Tarō. After completing Junior High School, Chūya and Yasuko decided to follow Tominaga to Tokyo, on the basis of attending university there. As he was unable to take the exam due to lack of documents or being late, he was sent out by his family on the condition that he would go to a preparatory school instead.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: After dropping the preparatory course in 1926, of which his parents were not informed, he started studying French at the Athénée Français.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: His verse has been considered somewhat obscure, confessional and giving a general impression of pain and melancholy, emotions which were a constant throughout the poet's life.<br>


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: Initially, Nakahara favored poetry in the Japanese traditional tanka format, but he was later (in his teens) attracted to the modern free verse styles advocated by Dadaist poet Takahashi Shinkichi and by Tominaga Tarō. After he moved to Tokyo, he met Kawakami Tetsutaro and Shōhei Ōoka, with whom he began publishing a poetry journal, Hakuchigun (Group of Idiots). He was befriended by the influential literary critic Kobayashi Hideo, who introduced him to the French symbolist poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, whose poems he translated into Japanese. The influence of Rimbaud went beyond just his poetry, and Nakahara came to be known for his "bohemian" lifestyle.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: Nakahara adapted the traditional counts of five and seven used in Japanese haiku and tanka, but frequently tripped these counts with variations, in order to obtain a rhythmical, musical effect. Several of his poems were used as lyrics in songs, so this musical effect may have been carefully calculated from the start. Chūya's works were rejected by many publishers, and he found acceptance primarily with the smaller literary magazines, including Yamamayu, which he launched together with Hideo Kobayashi, (although on occasion Shiki and Bungakukai would condescend to publish one of his works). He remained close friends with Kobayashi all of his life, despite the fact that in November 1925 Yasuko Hasegawa left Nakahara and began living with Kobayashi Hideo instead. This event took place right after the loss of his friend Tominaga. In December 1927, he met composer Saburō Moroi, who later adapted a number of his verses to music, such as "Asa no Uta" (, "Morning Song") and "Rinjū" (, "Deathbed"). In April 1931, Chūya was admitted to the Tokyo Foreign Language College in Kanda to study the French language, where he remained until March 1933.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: Nakahara married Takako Ueno (a distant relative) in December 1933, and his first son, Fumiya, was born in October 1934. However, the death of his son in November 1936, due to tuberculosis, sent him into a nervous breakdown. Nakahara never fully recovered from this, despite the birth of his second son in December. Many of his later poems seem like remembrances and attempts to mitigate this enormous pain.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: Nakahara was hospitalized in Chiba sanatorium in January 1937. In February, he was released and moved back to Kamakura, as he could not stand to continue living in the house which contained the memories of Fumiya. He left a number of his works with Kobayashi, and was making plans to return to his home town of Yamaguchi when he died in October 1937, at the age of 30, of tubercular meningitis. Shortly after, his second son died of the same illness.


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: His grave is at his hometown of Yamaguchi. This is the very family grave which appears in his uncollected poem "Cicadas" (, "Semi").


title: Chūya Nakahara

text: Only one of his poetry anthologies, "Yagi no Uta" (, "Goat Songs", 1934) was published while he was alive (in a self-financed edition of two hundred copies). He had edited a second collection, "Arishi Hi no Uta" (, "Songs of Bygone Days", 1938) just before his death. During his lifetime, Nakahara was not counted among the mainstream of poets. However, the emotional and lyrical nature of his verses have a wide and increasing following even to this day, especially among young people. Nakahara is now a subject of classroom study in Japanese schools, and his portrait in a hat with a vacant stare is well known. Kobayashi Hideo, to whom Nakahara entrusted the manuscript for "Arishi Hi no Uta" on his deathbed, was responsible for the posthumous promotion of his works. So was Ooka Shohei for collecting and editing "The Complete Works of Nakahara Chūya", a collection containing the poet's uncollected poems, his journals, and many letters.


title: Krutika Desai Khan

text: Kruttika Desai is an Indian film, theatre and television actress. In the 90s, she gained initial fame in the serial BUNIYAD and later for her role of Vishkanya in popular fantasy series "Chandrakanta", and later in the next 2 decades, she went on to earn huge recognization for portraying a wide range of characters in television soap operas like Kismet, Dewaar, NOORJAHAN, Junoon, Lipstick, Tumhari Disha, hosted many shows like Mansi, Suprerhit Muqabla, Super hit Hangama.


title: Krutika Desai Khan

text: First Television actress to go bald for a show, UTTARAN. In recent times, "Ram Milaayi Jodi", "Uttaran", "Mere Angne Mein", "Shakti" and "Pandya Store".


title: Krutika Desai Khan

text: Krutika is involved in "Akansha", a theatre workshop for street children and has also acted in some Gujarati plays including "Shodh Pratishodh". The actress went on to shave her head for the serial "Uttaran", making her the first woman to go bald in the history of Indian Television. Krutika played many popular roles in Indian soap operas, most notably "Ram Milaayi Jodi", and also "Uttaran" etc. In 2015, she played the pivotal role of Shanti Devi in the Star Plus serial "Mere Angne Mein" which became one of the most successful and long-running shows. The show ended in August 2017 after a successful run of 2 years.


title: Krutika Desai Khan

text: Krutika Desai's husband Imtiaz Khan is the brother of actor Amjad Khan. The couple have a daughter named Ayesha Khan. Their nephews Seemaab Khan and Shadaab Khan are actors in the industry.


title: Runaway truck ramp

text: A runaway truck ramp, runaway truck lane, escape lane, emergency escape ramp, or truck arrester bed is a traffic device that enables vehicles which are having braking problems to safely stop. It is typically a long, sand- or gravel-filled lane connected to a steep downhill grade section of a main road, and is designed to accommodate large trucks or buses. It allows a moving vehicle's kinetic energy to be dissipated gradually in a controlled and relatively harmless way, helping the operator stop it safely.


title: Runaway truck ramp

text: Emergency escape ramps are usually located in mountainous areas which cause high construction costs and present difficult site selection. A ramp may cost US$1 million. Designs include:


title: Runaway truck ramp

text: Emergency escape ramps are usually located on steep, sustained grades, as in mountainous areas. Long descending grades can allow high vehicle speeds to be reached, and truck brakes can overheat and fail through extensive use. The ramps are often built before a critical change in the radius of curvature of the road, or before a place that may require the vehicle to stop, such as before an intersection in a populated area.


title: Torajan people

text: The Torajans are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as "aluk" ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognised this animistic belief as "Aluk To Dolo" ("Way of the Ancestors").


title: Torajan people

text: The word "Toraja" comes from the Buginese language term "to riaja", meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people "Toraja" in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as "tongkonan", and colourful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.


title: Torajan people

text: Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism development and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model—in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo—to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.


title: Torajan people

text: The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonisation and Christianisation, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' "to", meaning people; and "riaja", uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders—such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi—than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups—the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).


title: Torajan people

text: From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called "Tana Toraja" ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a "regentschap", and it was recognised in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.


title: Torajan people

text: Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.


title: Torajan people

text: In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to Christianity.


title: Torajan people

text: Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognised religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief ("aluk") was not legally recognised, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make "aluk" accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, "Aluk To Dolo" ("the way of ancestors") was legalised as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.


title: Torajan people

text: Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the "tongkonan", a traditional Torajan house. Each "tongkonan" has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin)—except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.


title: Torajan people

text: Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.


title: Torajan people

text: Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses ("tongkonan"), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.


title: Torajan people

text: In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.


title: Torajan people

text: Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in "tongkonans", while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called "banua"). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's "tongkonan". Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.


title: Torajan people

text: Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women—a crime punishable by death.


title: Torajan people

text: Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called "aluk", or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with "Puang Matua", the Creator. The cosmos, according to "aluk", is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include "Pong Banggai di Rante" (god of Earth), "Indo' Ongon-Ongon" (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), "Pong Lalondong" (god of death), and "Indo' Belo Tumbang" (goddess of medicine); there are many more.


title: Torajan people

text: The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called "to minaa" (an "aluk" priest). "Aluk" is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. "Aluk" governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of "aluk" may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important.


title: Torajan people

text: The decline of the Toraja religion began with the Christianization under rule of the Dutch. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.


title: Torajan people

text: Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan "tongkon" ("to sit").


title: Torajan people

text: Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the "tongkonan" represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first "tongkonan" was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.


title: Torajan people

text: The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of "tongkonan". The "tongkonan layuk" is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The "tongkonan pekamberan" belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the "tongkonan batu". The exclusivity to the nobility of the "tongkonan" is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger "tongkonan".


title: Torajan people

text: Architecture in the style of a tongkonan is still very common. Various administration buildings were built in this style in recent years, e.g. the "Kecamatan" building in Rantepao.


title: Torajan people

text: To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it "Pa'ssura" (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.


title: Torajan people

text: Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolise some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolise fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. Torajan wood carvings are composed of numerous square panels, each of which can represent various things, for example buffaloes as a wish of wealth for the family; a knot and a box, symbolizing the hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony; aquatic animals, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water.


title: Torajan people

text: Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.


title: Torajan people

text: On 24 March 2022, about 125 patterns were given communal intellectual property copyright sertificates by the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, in order for protecting of traditional culture expressions.


title: Torajan people

text: In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the "aluk" religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called "rante", is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased's family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.


title: Torajan people

text: The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward "Puya" (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the "tongkonan". The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to "Puya".


title: Torajan people

text: Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at "Puya" if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.


title: Torajan people

text: There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called "Tau tau", is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. Whilst a coffin of a baby is embedded into a burrow of a living tree, so called "baby tree".


title: Torajan people

text: In the ritual called "Ma'Nene", that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes.


title: Torajan people

text: Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called "Ma'badong"). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the "Ma'randing" warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The "Ma'randing" dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the "rante", the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the "Ma'katia" dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The "Ma'akatia" dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called "Ma'dondan".


title: Torajan people

text: As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The "Ma'bugi" dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the "Ma'gandangi" dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the "Manimbong" dance performed by men, followed by the "Ma'dandan" dance performed by women. The "aluk" religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called "Ma'bua" can be performed only once every 12 years. "Ma'bua" is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.


title: Torajan people

text: A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a "Pa'suling" ("suling" is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance "Ma'bondensan", where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the "Pa'pelle" (made from palm leaves) and the "Pa'karombi" (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The "Pa'pelle" is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.


title: Torajan people

text: Among the Saʼadan (eastern Toraja) in the island of Sulawesi (Celebes), Indonesia, there are homosexual male toburake tambolang shamans; although among their neighbors the Mamasa (western Toraja) there are instead only heterosexual female toburake shamanesses.


title: Torajan people

text: The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.


title: Torajan people

text: Language varieties of Toraja, including "Kalumpang", "Mamasa", "Tae", "Talondo", "Toala", and "Toraja-Sa'dan", belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages.


title: Torajan people

text: A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterised their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.


title: Torajan people

text: Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market.


title: Torajan people

text: With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies—to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.


title: Torajan people

text: Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s—including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi—tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.


title: Torajan people

text: Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by "National Geographic" and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.


title: Torajan people

text: In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the "prima donna" of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.


title: Torajan people

text: Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure—an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the "tongkonan" and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialised. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.


title: Torajan people

text: A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their "tongkonans" and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.


title: Torajan people

text: Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles ("puang") and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.


title: While loop

text: In most computer programming languages, a while loop is a [[control flow]] [[statement (programming)|statement]] that allows code to be executed repeatedly based on a given [[Boolean datatype|Boolean]] condition. The "while" loop can be thought of as a repeating [[Conditional (programming)|if statement]].


title: While loop

text: The "while" construct consists of a block of code and a condition/expression. The condition/expression is evaluated, and if the condition/expression is "true", the code within all of their following in the block is executed. This repeats until the condition/expression becomes [[False (logic)|false]]. Because the "while" loop checks the condition/expression before the block is executed, the control structure is often also known as a pre-test loop. Compare this with the [[do while loop|"do while" loop]], which tests the condition/expression "after" the loop has executed.


title: While loop

text: For example, in the [[C (programming language)|C programming language]] (as well as [[Java (programming language)|Java]], [[C Sharp (programming language)|C#]], [[Objective-C]], and [[C++]], which [[Polyglot (computing)|use the same syntax]] in this case), the code fragment


title: While loop

text: first checks whether x is less than 5, which it is, so then the {loop body} is entered, where the "printf" function is run and x is incremented by 1. After completing all the statements in the loop body, the condition, (x < 5), is checked again, and the loop is executed again, this process repeating until the [[Variable (programming)|variable]] x has the value 5.


title: While loop

text: Note that it is possible, and in some cases desirable, for the condition to "always" evaluate to true, creating an [[infinite loop]]. When such a loop is created intentionally, there is usually another control structure (such as a [[Control flow|break]] statement) that controls termination of the loop.


title: While loop

text: Go does not have a while statement, but it has the function of a for statement if you omit some elements of the for statement.


title: While loop

text: Pascal has two forms of the while loop, while and repeat. While repeats one statement (unless enclosed in a begin-end block) as long as the condition is true. The repeat statement repetitively executes a block of one or more statements through an until statement and continues repeating unless the condition is false. The main difference between the two is the while loop may execute zero times if the condition is initially false, the repeat-until loop always executes at least once.


title: While loop

text: "While" loops are frequently used for reading data line by line (as defined by the codice_1 line separator) from open filehandles:


title: While loop

text: In Racket, as in other [[Scheme (programming language)|Scheme]] implementations, a "named-let" is a popular way to implement loops:


title: While loop

text: Using a macro system, implementing a "while" loop is a trivial exercise (commonly used to introduce macros):


title: While loop

text: Contrary to other languages, in Smalltalk a "while" loop is not a [[language construct]] but defined in the class codice_2 as a method with one parameter, the body as a [[Closure (computer science)|closure]], using self as the condition.


title: While loop

text: The While programming language is a simple programming language constructed from assignments, sequential composition, conditionals and while statements, used in the theoretical analysis of imperative [[semantics (computer science)|programming language semantics]].


title: Chicken tax

text: The Chicken Tax is a 25 percent tariff on light trucks (and originally on potato starch, dextrin, and brandy) imposed in 1964 by the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson in response to tariffs placed by France and West Germany on importation of U.S. chicken. The period from 1961–1964 of tensions and negotiations surrounding the issue was known as the "Chicken War", taking place at the height of Cold War politics.


title: Chicken tax

text: Eventually, the tariffs on potato starch, dextrin, and brandy were lifted, but since 1964 this form of protectionism has remained in place to give US domestic automakers an advantage over imported competitors. Though concern remains about its repeal, a 2003 Cato Institute study called the tariff "a policy in search of a rationale."


title: Chicken tax

text: As an unintended consequence, several importers of light trucks have circumvented the tariff via loopholes, known as tariff engineering. For example, Ford, which was one of the main beneficiaries of the tax, also evaded it by manufacturing first-generation Transit Connect light trucks for the US market in Turkey; these Transits were fitted-out as passenger vehicles, which allowed Ford to evade the Chicken tax when the vehicles passed customs in the US. The Transits were stripped pre-sale of their rear seats and seatbelts, at a Ford warehouse near Baltimore.


title: Chicken tax

text: Similarly, to import cargo vans built in Germany, Mercedes disassembled fully-completed vehicles and shipped the components to "a small kit assembly building" in South Carolina, where they were reassembled. The resulting vehicles emerged as locally manufactured, free from the tariff.


title: Chicken tax

text: Largely because of post-World War II intensive chicken farming and accompanying price reductions, chicken, once internationally synonymous with luxury, became a staple food in the U.S. Prior to the early 1960s, not only had chicken remained prohibitively expensive in Europe, but it had also remained a delicacy. With imports of inexpensive chicken from the U.S., chicken prices fell quickly and sharply across Europe, radically affecting European chicken consumption. In 1961, per capita chicken consumption rose up to 23% in West Germany. U.S. chicken captured nearly half of the imported European chicken market.


title: Chicken tax

text: Subsequently, the Dutch accused the U.S. of dumping chickens at prices below cost of production. The French government banned U.S. chicken and raised concerns that hormones could affect male virility. German farmers' associations accused U.S. poultry firms of fattening chicken artificially with arsenic.


title: Chicken tax

text: Coming on the heels of a "crisis in trade relations between the U.S. and the Common Market," Europe moved ahead with tariffs, intending that they would encourage Europe's postwar agricultural self-sufficiency. European markets began setting chicken price controls. France introduced the higher tariff first, persuading West Germany to join them—even while the French hoped to win a larger share of the profitable German chicken market after excluding U.S. chicken. Europe adopted the Common Agricultural Policy, imposing minimum import prices on all imported chicken and nullifying prior tariff bindings and concessions.


title: Chicken tax

text: Beginning in 1962, the U.S. accused Europe's Common Market of unfairly restricting imports of American poultry. By August 1962, U.S. exporters had lost 25% of their European chicken sales. Losses to the U.S. poultry industry were estimated at million (equivalent to $$ million in ).


title: Chicken tax

text: Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Democratic Senator from Arkansas, a chief U.S. poultry-producing state, interrupted a NATO debate on nuclear armament to protest trade sanctions on U.S. chicken, going so far as to threaten cutting U.S. troops in NATO. Konrad Adenauer, then Chancellor of Germany, later reported that President John F. Kennedy and he had a great deal of correspondence over a period of two years, about Berlin, Laos, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, "and I guess that about half of it has been about chickens."


title: Chicken tax

text: Diplomacy failed after 18 months, and on December 4, 1963, President Johnson imposed a 25% tax (almost 10 times the average U.S. tariff) by executive order (Proclamation 3564) on potato starch, dextrin, brandy, and light trucks, effective from 7 January 1964.