Plot.

In 1998, the evil Rigelatins plan to enslave Earth, and they kidnap Duke Nukem, to use his brain to plot the attack for their forces. Duke breaks free to save the world again.

Gameplay.

The player's goal is to proceed through the levels collecting items, destroying enemies to the level exit and at the final level, defeat the super alien boss. In one level of each episode Duke needs to destroy radar dishes to progress.  Duke Nukem can pick up weapons along the way. There are four types of weapons: His regular default gun, the flamethrower (which can shoot through walls and launch him in the air), the laser (which can shoot through anything) and the rocket launcher. Duke can also get a rapid fire powerup. Health items can be collected to heal damage Duke receives or to boost score points at full health. Keycards need to be collected to access past the force fields and keys must be obtained to get past locked doors. A cloaking device makes Duke temporarily invincible and disables the super force fields.  Movement through the levels mainly consists of jumping onto platforms, climbing ladders, operating elevators, using teleporters, hovering over blowing fans and climbing hand-over-hand across pipes or girders. At the end of every level (with the exception of the last level in each episode), the player can receive up to seven 100,000 point bonuses, earned by making certain achievements in the level, such as destroying all cameras.

Development.

The game uses VGA and EGA graphics and draws two backgrounds ("dual-parallax scrolling"). The game took almost two years to create.

Game Boy Color version.

The Game Boy Color version of "Duke Nukem II" was titled "Duke Nukem". It was released on September 10, 1999 in North America. Several of the backgrounds closely resemble those of the earlier DOS version of the game. However, the Rigelatins have been replaced with the Zorgonites, the arsenal of weapons and items have been modified and the levels, graphics, music, vehicles, enemies and bosses are brand new. Furthermore, Duke has the ability to hang onto the edge of platforms in the Game Boy Color game. The game features 21 levels of play and eight save game slots.

Duke Nukem II: Escape From Alien Abductors! is a platform game developed by Apogee Software and released December 3, 1993. The game consists of four episodes (of eight levels each), the first available as shareware. It is the follow-up to 1991's "Duke Nukem", and followed by "Duke Nukem 3D" in 1996. Todd Replogle was the primary designer of all three games.

Duke Nukem II est un jeu de plate-forme sorti en 1993 et publié par Apogee Software. Il est le deuxième volet de la saga des "Duke Nukem".


In astronomy.

Most modern telescopes are reflectors, with the primary element being a very large mirror. Historically, primary mirrors were quite thick in order to maintain the correct surface figure in spite of forces tending to deform it, like wind and the mirror's own weight. This limited their maximum diameter to 5 or 6 metres (200 or 230 inches), such as Palomar Observatory's Hale telescope.  A new generation of telescopes built since the 1980s uses thin, lighter weight mirrors instead. They are too thin to maintain themselves rigidly in the correct shape, so an array of actuators is attached to the rear side of the mirror. The actuators apply variable forces to the mirror body to keep the reflecting surface in the correct shape over repositioning. The telescope may also be segmented into multiple smaller mirrors, which reduce the sagging due to weight that occurs for large, monolithic mirrors.  The combination of actuators, an image quality detector, and a computer to control the actuators to obtain the best possible image, is called "active optics".  The name "active" optics means that the system keeps a mirror (usually the primary) in its optimal shape against environmental forces such as wind, sag, thermal expansion, and telescope axis deformation. Active optics compensate for distorting forces that change relatively slowly, roughly on timescales of seconds. The telescope is therefore "actively" still, in its optimal shape.

Comparison with adaptive optics.

Active optics should not be confused with adaptive optics, which operates on a much shorter timescale to compensate for atmospheric effects, rather than for mirror deformation. The influences that active optics compensate (temperature, gravity) are intrinsically slower (1 Hz) and have a larger amplitude in aberration. Adaptive optics on the other hand corrects for atmospheric distortions that affect the image at 100–1000 Hz (the Greenwood frequency, depending on wavelength and weather conditions). These corrections need to be much faster, but also have smaller amplitude. Because of this, adaptive optics uses smaller corrective mirrors. This used to be a separate mirror not integrated in the telescope's light path, but nowadays this can be the second, third or fourth mirror in a telescope.

Other applications.

Complicated laser set-ups and interferometers can also be actively stabilized.  A small part of the beam leaks through beam steering mirrors and a four-quadrant-diode is used to measure the position of a laser beam and another in the focal plane behind a lens is used to measure the direction. The system can be sped up or made more noise-immune by using a PID controller. For pulsed lasers the controller should be locked to the repetition rate. A continuous (non-pulsed) pilot beam can be used to allow for up to 10 kHz bandwidth of stabilization (against vibrations, air turbulence, and acoustic noise) for low repetition rate lasers.  Sometimes Fabry–Pérot interferometers have to be adjusted in length to pass a given wavelength. Therefore, the reflected light is extracted by means of a Faraday rotator and a polarizer. Small changes of the incident wavelength generated by an acousto-optic modulator or interference with a fraction of the incoming radiation delivers the information whether the Fabry Perot is too long or too short. Long optical cavities are very sensitive to the mirror alignment. A control circuit can be used to peak power. One possibility is to perform small rotations with one end mirror. If this rotation is about the optimum position, no power oscillation occurs. Any beam pointing oscillation can be removed using the beam steering mechanism mentioned above.  X-ray active optics, using actively deformable grazing incidence mirrors, are also being investigated.

Active optics is a technology used with reflecting telescopes developed in the 1980s, which actively shapes a telescope's mirrors to prevent deformation due to external influences such as wind, temperature, mechanical stress. Without active optics, the construction of 8 metre class telescopes is not possible, nor would telescopes with segmented mirrors be feasible.

En astronomie, l'optique active désigne la technique qui consiste à corriger les déformations d'un miroir réflecteur, comme par exemple celles dues à son propre poids suivant son inclinaison, afin d'optimiser sa qualité d'image (mise au foyer), et corriger les différentes aberrations optiques (comme la coma, l'astigmatisme, le trèfle etc). L'optique active ne doit pas être confondue avec l'optique adaptative qui consiste à corriger les déformations de l'image due à la turbulence atmosphérique en temps réel (c’est-à-dire avec une fréquence de quelques centaines de hertz). L'optique active est utilisée, parmi d'autres, par les télescopes suivants : Nordic Optical Telescope, New Technology Telescope à l'Observatoire de La Silla, les télescopes du Very Large Telescope et les Télescopes Keck situés à Hawaï.


Early life.

Amis was born in Oxford, England. His father, noted English novelist Sir Kingsley Amis, was the son of a mustard manufacturer's clerk from Clapham, London; his mother, Kingston upon Thames-born Hilary "Hilly" A Bardwell, was the daughter of a Ministry of Agriculture civil servant. He has an older brother, Philip; his younger sister, Sally, died in 2000. His parents married in 1948 in Oxford and divorced when Amis was 12.  Amis attended a number of schools in the 1950s and 1960s including Bishop Gore School, and Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, where he was described by one headmaster as "unusually unpromising". The acclaim that followed his father's first novel "Lucky Jim" (1954) sent

Early writing.

According to Amis, his father showed no interest in his work. "I can point out the exact place where he stopped and sent "Money" twirling through the air; that's where the character named Martin Amis comes in." "Breaking the rules, buggering about with the reader, drawing attention to himself," Kingsley complained.  His first novel "The Rachel Papers" (1973) – written at Lemmons, the family home in north London – won the Somerset Maugham Award. The most traditional of his novels, made into an unsuccessful cult film, it tells the story of a bright, egotistical teenager (which Amis acknowledges as autobiographical) and his relationship with the eponymous girlfriend in the year before going to university.  He also wrote the screenplay for the film "Saturn 3", an experience which he was to draw on for his fifth novel "Money".  "Dead Babies" (1975), more flippant in tone, chronicles

Main career.

1980s and 1990s.

Amis's best-known novels are "Money", "London Fields", and "The Information", commonly referred to as his "London Trilogy". Although the books share little in terms of plot and narrative, they all examine the lives of middle-aged men, exploring the sordid, debauched, and post-apocalyptic undercurrents of life in late 20th-century Britain. Amis's London protagonists are anti-heroes: they engage in questionable behavior, are passionate iconoclasts, and strive to escape the apparent banality and futility of their lives. He writes, "The world is like a human being. And there’s a scientific name for it, which is entropy—everything tends towards disorder. From an ordered state to a disordered state."  "Money" (1984, subtitled "A Suicide Note") is a first-person narrative by John Self, advertising man and would-be film director, who is "addicted to the twentieth century". "[A] satire of Thatcherite amorality and greed," the novel relates a series of black comedic episodes as

2000s.

The 2000s were Amis's least productive decade in terms of full-length fiction since starting in the 1970s (two novels in ten years), while his non-fiction work saw a dramatic uptick in volume (three published works including a memoir, a hybrid of semi-memoir and amateur political history, and another journalism collection).  In 2000 Amis published a memoir called "Experience". Largely concerned with the strange relationship between the author and his father, the novelist Kingsley Amis, the autobiography nevertheless deals with many facets of Amis's life. Of particular note is Amis's reunion with his daughter, Delilah Seale, resulting from an affair in the 1970s, whom he did not see until she was 19. Amis also discusses, at some length, the murder of his cousin Lucy Partington by Fred West when she was 21. The book was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography.  In 2002 Amis published "", a devastating history of the crimes

2010s.

In 2010, after a long period of writing, rewriting, editing and revision, Amis published his long-awaited new long novel, "The Pregnant Widow", which is concerned with the sexual revolution. Originally set for release in 2008, the novel's publication was pushed back as further editing and alterations were being made, expanding it to some 480 pages. The title of the novel is based on a quote by Alexander Herzen:  The death of the contemporary forms of social order ought to gladden rather than trouble the soul. Yet what is frightening is that what the departing world leaves behind it is not an heir but a pregnant widow. Between the death of the one and the birth of the other, much water will flow by, a long night of chaos and desolation will pass.  The first public reading of the then just

Other works.

Amis has also released two collections of short stories ("Einstein's Monsters" and "Heavy Water"), five volumes of collected journalism and criticism ("", "", "The War Against Cliché", "The Second Plane" and "The Rub of Time"), and a guide to 1980s space-themed arcade video-game machines which

Current life.

Amis returned to Britain in September 2006 after living in Uruguay for two and a half years with his second wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca, and their two young daughters. Amis became a grandfather in 2008, when his daughter (by Lamorna Seale) Delilah gave birth to a son. He said, "Some strange things have happened, it seems to me, in my absence. I didn't feel like I was getting more rightwing when I was in Uruguay, but when I got back I felt that I had moved quite a distance to the right while staying in the same place." He reports that he is disquieted by what he sees as increasingly undisguised hostility towards Israel and the United States.  In late 2010 Amis bought a property in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, although it is unclear whether he will be permanently moving to New York or just maintaining another "sock" there. In 2012, Amis wrote in "The New Republic" that he was "moving house" from Camden Town in London to Cobble Hill.

Political views.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Amis was a strong critic of nuclear proliferation. His collection of five stories on this theme, "Einstein's Monsters", began with a long essay entitled "Thinkability" in which he set out his views on the issue, writing: "Nuclear weapons repel all thought, perhaps because they can end all thought."  He wrote in "Nuclear City" in "Esquire" of 1987 (re-published in "Visiting Mrs Nabokov") that: "when nuclear weapons become real to you, when they stop buzzing around your ears and actually move into your head, hardly an hour passes without some throb or flash, some heavy pulse of imagined supercatastrophe".  In comments on the BBC in October 2006, Amis expressed his view that North Korea was the most dangerous of the two remaining members of the Axis Of Evil, but that Iran was our "natural enemy", suggesting that we should not feel bad about having "helped Iraq scrape a draw with Iran" in the Iran–Iraq War, because a "revolutionary and rampant Iran would have been

Views on Muslims (2006 interview controversy).

Amis was interviewed by "The Times Magazine" in 2006, the day after the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot came to light, about community relations in Britain and the "threat" from Muslims, where he was quoted as saying: "What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There's a definite urge – don't you have it? – to say, 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children...It's a huge dereliction on their part".  The interview provoked immediate controversy, much of it played out in the pages of "The Guardian" newspaper. The Marxist critic Terry Eagleton, in the 2007 introduction to his work "Ideology", singled out and attacked Amis for this particular quote, saying that this view is "[n]ot the ramblings of a British National Party thug, [...] but the reflections of Martin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world". In a later piece, Eagleton added: "But there is something rather stomach-churning at the sight

Agnosticism.

In 2006, Amis said that "agnostic is the only respectable position, simply because our ignorance of the universe is so vast" that atheism is "premature". Clearly, "there's not going to be any kind of anthropomorphic entity at all", but the universe is "so incredibly complicated", "so over our heads", that we cannot exclude the existence of "an intelligence" behind it.  In 2010, he said: "I'm an agnostic, which is the only rational position. It's not

University of Manchester.

In February 2007, Amis was appointed as a Professor of Creative Writing at "The Manchester Centre for New Writing" in the University of Manchester, and started in September 2007. He ran postgraduate seminars, and participated in four public events each year, including a two-week summer school.  Of his position, Amis said: "I may be acerbic in how I write but...I would find it very difficult to say cruel things to [students] in such a vulnerable position. I imagine I'll be surprisingly sweet and gentle with them." He predicted that the experience might inspire him to write a new book, while adding sardonically: "A campus novel written by an elderly novelist, that's what the world wants." It was revealed that the salary paid to Amis by the university was £80,000 a year. The "Manchester Evening News" broke the story, claiming that according to his

Martin Louis Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. His best-known novels are "Money" (1984) and "London Fields" (1989). He has received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir "Experience" and has been listed for the Booker Prize twice (shortlisted in 1991 for "Time's Arrow" and longlisted in 2003 for "Yellow Dog"). Amis served as the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester until 2011. In 2008, "The Times" named him one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

Martin Amis, né le à Swansea, au pays de Galles, est un romancier britannique, fils de l’écrivain Kingsley Amis. Ses livres les plus connus sont "Money" (1984) et "London Fields" (1989). Il a reçu le prix James Tait Black Memorial Prize pour son livre autobiographique "Experience" (2000) et a été nommé deux fois pour le Booker Prize (en 1991 pour "Time's Arrow" et en 2003 pour "Yellow Dog"). Amis a été jusqu’en 2011 professeur d'écriture créative au Center for New Writing de l'université de Manchester. Le "Times" l’a désigné en 2008 comme étant l'un des cinquante plus grands écrivains britanniques depuis 1945.


History.

The cheese originates from the village of Cheddar in Somerset, south west England. Cheddar Gorge on the edge of the village contains a number of caves, which provided the ideal humidity and steady temperature for maturing the cheese. Cheddar cheese traditionally had to be made within of Wells Cathedral.  Cheddar has been produced since at least the 12th century. A pipe roll of King Henry II from 1170 records the purchase of at a farthing per pound (totalling £10.13s.4d). Charles I (1600–1649) also bought cheese from the village. Romans may have brought the recipe to Britain from the Cantal region of France.  Central to the modernisation and standardisation of Cheddar cheese was the 19th-century Somerset dairyman Joseph Harding. For his technical innovations, promotion of dairy hygiene, and volunteer dissemination of modern cheese-making techniques, he has been dubbed "the father of Cheddar cheese". Harding introduced new equipment to the process of cheese-making, including his "revolving breaker" for curd cutting, saving much manual effort. The "Joseph Harding method" was the first modern system for Cheddar production based upon scientific principles. Harding stated that Cheddar cheese is "not made in the field, nor in the byre, nor even in the cow, it is made in the dairy". His wife and he were behind the introduction of the cheese into Scotland and North America. His sons, Henry and William Harding, were responsible for introducing Cheddar cheese production to Australia and facilitating the establishment of the cheese industry in New Zealand, respectively.  During the Second World War, and for nearly a decade after, most milk in Britain was used for the making of one single kind of cheese nicknamed "Government Cheddar" as part of war economies and rationing. This almost resulted in wiping out all other cheese production in the country. Before the First World War, more than 3,500 cheese producers were in Britain; fewer than 100 remained after the Second World War.  According to a United States Department of Agriculture researcher, Cheddar cheese is the world's most popular variety of cheese, and the most studied type of cheese in scientific publications.

Process.

The curds and whey are separated using rennet, an enzyme complex normally produced from the stomachs of newborn calves (in vegetarian or kosher cheeses, bacterial, yeast or mould-derived chymosin is used).  "Cheddaring" refers to an additional step in the production of Cheddar cheese where, after heating, the curd is kneaded with salt, cut into cubes to drain the whey, and then stacked and turned. Strong, extra-mature Cheddar, sometimes called vintage, needs to be matured for 15 months or more. The cheese is kept at a constant temperature, often requiring special facilities. As with other hard cheese varieties produced worldwide, caves provide an ideal environment for maturing cheese; still, today, some Cheddar cheese is matured in the caves at Wookey Hole and Cheddar Gorge. Additionally, some versions of Cheddar cheese are smoked.

Character.

The ideal quality of the original Somerset Cheddar was described by Joseph Harding in 1864 as "close and firm in texture, yet mellow in character or quality; it is rich with a tendency to melt in the mouth, the flavour full and fine, approaching to that of a hazelnut".  Cheddar made in the classical way tends to have a sharp, pungent flavour, often slightly earthy. The "sharpness" of cheddar is associated with the levels of bitter peptides in the cheese. This bitterness has been found to be significant to the overall perception of the aged Cheddar flavour. The texture is firm, with farmhouse traditional Cheddar being slightly crumbly; it should also, if mature, contain large cheese crystals consisting of calcium lactate – often precipitated when matured for times longer than six months.  Cheddar can be a deep to pale yellow (off-white) colour, or a yellow-orange colour when certain plant extracts are added, such as beet juice. One commonly used spice is annatto, extracted from seeds of the tropical achiote tree. Originally added to simulate the colour of high-quality milk from grass-fed Jersey and Guernsey cows, annatto may also impart a sweet, nutty flavour. The largest producer of Cheddar cheese in the United States, Kraft, uses a combination of annatto and oleoresin paprika, an extract of the lipophilic (oily) portion of paprika.  Cheddar cheese was sometimes (and still can be found) packaged in black wax, but was more commonly packaged in larded cloth, which was impermeable to contaminants, but still allowed the cheese to "breathe".  The Slow Food Movement has created a Cheddar Presidium, arguing that only three cheeses should be called "original Cheddar". Their specifications, which go further than the "West Country Farmhouse Cheddar" PDO, require that Cheddar cheese be made in Somerset and with traditional methods, such as using raw milk, traditional animal rennet, and a cloth wrapping.

International production.

The Cheddar cheese name is used internationally; its name does not have a PDO, but the use of the name "West Country Farmhouse Cheddar" does. In addition to the United Kingdom, Cheddar cheese is also made in Australia, Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, Finland and the United States. Cheddars can be industrial or artisan cheeses. The flavour, colour, and quality of industrial cheese varies significantly, and food packaging will usually indicate a strength, such as mild, medium, strong, tasty, sharp, extra sharp, mature, old, or vintage; this may indicate the maturation period, or food additives used to enhance the flavour. Artisan varieties develop strong and diverse flavours over time.

Australia.

As of 2013, Cheddar accounts for over 55% of the Australian cheese market, with average annual consumption around per person. Cheddar is so commonly found that the name is rarely used: instead, Cheddar is sold by strength alone as e.g. "mild", "tasty" or "sharp".

Canada.

Following a wheat midge outbreak in Canada in the mid-19th century, farmers in Ontario began to convert to dairy farming in large numbers, and Cheddar cheese became their main exportable product, even being exported to England. By the turn of the 20th century, 1,242 Cheddar factories were in Ontario, and Cheddar had become Canada's second-largest export after timber. Cheddar exports totalled in 1904, but by 2012, Canada was a net importer of cheese. James L. Kraft grew up on a dairy farm in Ontario, before moving to Chicago. According to the writer Sarah Champman, "Although we cannot wholly lay the decline of cheese craft in Canada at the feet of James Lewis Kraft, it did correspond with the rise of Kraft’s processed cheese empire." Most Canadian Cheddar is produced in the provinces of Québec (40.8%) and Ontario (36%), though other provinces produce some and some smaller artisanal producers exist. The annual production is 120,000 tons. It is aged a minimum of three months, but much of it is held for much longer, up to 10 years.  Canadian Cheddar cheese soup is a featured dish at the Canada pavilion at Epcot, in Walt Disney World.  Percentage of milk fat must be labelled by the words "milk fat" or abbreviations "B.F." or "M.F."

New Zealand.

Much of the Cheddar cheese in New Zealand is factory produced. While most of it is sold young within the country, the Anchor dairy company ships New Zealand Cheddars to the UK, where the blocks mature for another year or so.

United Kingdom.

Only one producer of the cheese is now based in the village of Cheddar, the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Co. The name "cheddar" is not protected by the European Union, though the name "West Country Farmhouse Cheddar" has an EU protected designation of origin, and may only be produced in Somerset, Devon, Dorset and Cornwall, using milk sourced from those counties. Cheddar is usually sold as mild, medium, mature, extra mature or vintage. Cheddar produced in Orkney is registered as an EU protected geographical indication under the name "Orkney Scottish Island Cheddar".

United States.

The state of Wisconsin produces the most cheddar cheese in the United States; other centres of production include California, Idaho, New York, Vermont, Oregon, Texas, and Oklahoma. It is sold in several varieties, namely mild, medium, sharp, extra-sharp, New York-style, white, and Vermont. New York-style Cheddar is particularly "sharp"/acidic, but tends to be somewhat softer than the milder-tasting varieties. Cheddar that does not contain annatto is frequently labelled "white cheddar" or "Vermont cheddar" (regardless of whether it was actually produced there). Vermont's three creameries produce cheddar cheeses — Cabot Creamery, which produces the 16-month-old "Private Stock Cheddar"; the Grafton Village Cheese Company; and Shelburne Farms.  Some processed cheeses or "cheese foods" are called "Cheddar flavored". Examples include Easy Cheese, a cheese-food packaged in a pressurised spray can; also, as packs of square, sliced, individually-wrapped "process cheese", which is sometimes also pasteurised.  Cheddar is one of several products used by the United States Department of Agriculture to track the status of America's overall dairy industry; reports are issued weekly detailing prices and production quantities.

Record cheddars.

U.S. President Andrew Jackson once held an open house party at the White House at which he served a block of Cheddar cheese. The White House is said to have smelled of cheese for weeks.  A cheese of was produced in Ingersoll, Ontario, in 1866 and exhibited in New York and Britain; it was described in the poem "Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing over 7,000 Pounds" by Canadian poet James McIntyre.  In 1893, farmers from the town of Perth, Ontario, produced "The Mammoth Cheese", which weighed for the Chicago World's Fair. It was planned to be exhibited at the Canadian display, but the mammoth cheese fell through the floor and was placed on a reinforced concrete floor in the Agricultural Building. It received the most journalistic attention at the fair and was awarded the bronze medal. A larger, Wisconsin cheese of was made for the 1964 New York World's Fair. A cheese this size would use the equivalent of the daily milk production of 16,000 cows.  Oregon members of the Federation of American Cheese-makers created the largest Cheddar cheese in 1989. The cheese weighed.

Cheddar cheese is a relatively hard, off-white (or orange if colourings such as annatto are added), sometimes sharp-tasting, natural cheese. Originating in the English village of Cheddar in Somerset, cheeses of this style are now produced beyond the region and in several countries around the world.

Le cheddar est un fromage jaune pâle au goût prononcé au lait de vache. Il est originaire du village anglais de Cheddar dans le Somerset. Il se décline en différentes variétés dans plusieurs pays : Royaume-Uni, Irlande, Canada, États-Unis, Afrique du Sud, Nouvelle-Zélande, Australie et Suède. Il est le plus souvent produit en masse et sa qualité varie énormément de variété en variété. Le goût prononcé se développe avec le temps, suffisamment pour inciter les producteurs à mentionner sa « force » : doux, moyen, fort et extra-fort, ou sa période de maturation.


History.

The Workers' Party was launched by a heterogeneous group made up of militants opposed to Brazil's military government, trade unionists, left-wing intellectuals and artists and Catholics linked to the liberation theology on 10 February 1980 at Colégio Sion in São Paulo, a private Catholic school for girls. The party emerged as a result of the approach between the labor movements in the ABC Region such as the Conferência das Classes Trabalhadoras (Conclat), later developed into the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) which carried major strikes from 1978 to 1980; and the old Brazilian left-wing, whose proponents, many of whom were journalists, intellectuals, artists and union organizers, were returning from exile with the 1979 Amnesty law, many of them having endured imprisonment and torture at the hands of the military regime in addition to years of exile. Dilma Rousseff herself was imprisoned and tortured by the dictatorship.  PT was launched under a democratic socialism trend. After the 1964 coup d'état, Brazil's main federation of labor unions, the General Command of Workers ("Comando Geral dos Trabalhadores" – CGT), which since its formation gathered leaders approved by the Ministry of Labour, a practice tied to the fact that since Getúlio Vargas's dictatorship, unions had become quasi-state organs, was dissolved while unions themselves suffered intervention of the military regime. The resurgence of an organized labour movement, evidenced by strikes in the ABC Region on the late 1970s led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, enabled the reorganization of the labour movement without the direct interference of the state. The movement originally sought to act exclusively in union politics, but the survival of a conservative unionism under the domination of the state (evidenced in the refoundation of CGT) and the influence exercised over the trade union movement by leaders of traditional left-wing parties, such as the Brazilian Communist Party ("Partido Comunista Brasileiro –" PCB), forced the unionist movement of ABC, encouraged by anti-Stalinist leaders, to organize its own party in a strategy similar to that held by the Solidarność union movement in Poland.  Therefore, PT emerged rejecting the traditional leaders of official unionism and seeking to put into practice a new form of democratic socialism, trying to reject political models it regarded as decaying, such as the Soviet and Chinese ones. It represented the confluence between unionism and anti-Stalinist intelligentsia.  PT was officially recognized as a party by the Brazilian Supreme Electoral Court on 11 February 1982. The first membership card belonged to art critic and former Trotskyst activist Mário Pedrosa, followed by literary scholar Antonio Candido and historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. Holanda's daughter Ana de Holanda later became Minister of Culture in the Rousseff cabinet.

Electoral history.

Since 1988, the Workers' Party has grown in popularity on the national stage by winning the elections in many of the largest Brazilian cities, such as São Paulo, Fortaleza, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre and Goiânia as well as in some important states, such as Rio Grande do Sul, Espírito Santo and the Federal District. This winning streak culminated with the victory of its presidential candidate Lula in 2002 who succeeded Fernando Henrique Cardoso of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party ("Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira –" PSDB). For its defense of economic liberalism, PSDB is the party's main electoral rival as well as the Democrats, heir of the National Renewal Alliance ("Aliança Renovadora Nacional –" ARENA), ruling party during the military dictatorship. Along with the Popular Socialist Party ("Partido Popular Socialista –" PPS), a dissidence of PCB, they form the centre-right opposition to the Lula administration.  1989 presidential elections  In the 1989 general elections, Lula went to the second round with Fernando Collor de Mello. Even though all centrist and left-wing candidates of the first round united around Lula's candidacy, Collor's campaign was strongly supported by the mass media (notably Rede Globo as seen on the documentary "Beyond Citizen Kane") and Lula lost in the second round by a close margin of 5.7%.  1994 and 1998 general elections  Leading up to the 1994 general elections, Lula was the leading presidential candidate in the majority of polls. As a result, centrist and right-wing parties openly united for Fernando Henrique Cardoso's candidacy. As Minister of Economy, Cardoso created the Real Plan, which established the new currency and subsequently ended inflation and provided economic stability. As a result, Cardoso won the election in the first round with 54% of the votes. However, it has been noted that "the elections were not a complete disaster for PT, which significantly increased its presence in the Congress and elected for the first time two state governors". Cardoso would be re-elected in 1998.  2002 general elections  After the detrition of PSDB's image and as a result of an economic crisis that burst in the final years of Cardoso's government, Lula won the 2002 presidential election in the second round with over 52 million votes, becoming the most voted president in history, surpassing Ronald Reagan.  2006 general elections  On 29 October 2006, PT won 83 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 11 seats in the Federal Senate. Lula was re-elected with more than 60% of the votes, extending his position as President of Brazil until 1 January 2011.  PT is now the second largest party in the Chamber of Deputies, the fourth largest party in the Federal Senate and has 5 state governorships. However, it only gained control of one among the ten richest states (Bahia).  2010 general elections In the 2010 general elections held on 3 October, PT gained control of 17.15% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, a record for the party since 2002. With 88 seats gained, it became the largest party in the lower chamber for the first time ever. PT also became the second largest party in the Federal Senate for the first time after electing of 11 senators, making a total of 14 senators for the 2010–2014 legislature. Its national coalition gained control of 311 seats in the lower house and 50 seats in the upper house, a broad majority in both houses which the Lula administration never had. This election also saw the decrease in the number of seats controlled by the centre-right opposition bloc as it shrank from 133 to 111 deputies. The left-wing opposition, formed by PSOL, retained control of three seats.  The party was also expected to elect its presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff in the first round. However, she was not able to receive the necessary amount of valid votes (over 50%) and a second round in which she scored 56% of the votes took place on 31 October 2010. On 1 January 2011, she was inaugurated and thus became the first female head of government ever in the history of Brazil and the first "de facto" female head of state since the death in 1816 of Maria I, Queen of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.  In the 2010 elections, PT retained control of the governorships of Bahia, Sergipe and Acre, in addition to gaining back control of Rio Grande do Sul and the Federal District. Nevertheless, it lost control of Pará. Candidates supported by the party won the race in Amapá, Ceará, Espírito Santo, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Pernambuco, Piauí and Rio de Janeiro, which means that PT would participate in 13 out of 27 state governorships.

Cabinet representation.

PT enjoyed strong representation in the cabinets it led for most of the time that it was in office. PT held the majority of cabinet positions in the first two coalitions, with its occupation of ministerial positions comprising 60% in the first coalition, 54.8% in the second coalition and 46.5% in the third coalition.

Ideology.

Although PT deliberately never identified itself with a particular brand of leftism, it nevertheless "always defined itself as socialist" and espoused many radical positions. For example, at the Brazilian Constituent Assembly of 1988 it advocated repudiation of Brazil's external debt, nationalization of the country's banks and mineral wealth and a radical land reform. In addition, as a form of protest and as a signal that the party did not fully accept the "rules of the game" PT's delegates refused to sign the draft constitution.  Over the next few years, the party moderated a bit, but it never clearly shed its radicalism and undertook no major reforms of party principles even after Lula's defeat in the 1989 presidential elections. For example, the resolution from the party's 8th National Meeting in 1993 reaffirmed PT's "revolutionary and socialist character", condemned the "conspiracy" of the elites to subvert democracy, stated that the party advocated "radical agrarian reform and suspension of the external debt" and concluded that "capitalism and private property cannot provide a future for humanity".  In 1994, Lula ran for the presidency again and during his campaign dismissed Fernando Henrique Cardoso's recently implemented Real Plan as an "electoral swindle". The resolutions from the 1994 National Meeting condemned the "control by the dominant classes over the means of production" and reaffirmed the party's "commitment to socialism". PT's Program of Government that year also committed the party to "anti-monopolist, anti-latifúndio, and anti-imperialist change [...] as part of a long-term strategy to construct an alternative to capitalism", statements that "sent shivers down the spine of the international financial community". Thus, as of 1995 "little or nothing" had changed in PT's official ideology since the early 1990s.  After Lula's 1994 loss, the party began a slow process of self-examination. The resolution adopted at its 10th National Meeting in 1995 stated that "our 1994 defeat invites a cruel reflection about our image in society, about the external impact of our internal battles, [and] about our ideological and political ambiguities". The move from self-examination did not involve a clean break with the past as in other socialist parties after the end of the Cold War. The process was gradual, full of contradictions and replete with intra-party tension. By 1997, the National Meeting resolution redefined PT's version of socialism as a "democratic revolution", emphasizing a political rather than economic vision of socialism that aimed to make the state "more transparent and socially accountable".  Lula's third presidential campaign platform in 1998 cut socialist proposals and even the mention of a transition to a socialist society, but the party's self-definition remained highly ambiguous as the resolution from the party's Meeting that year affirmed that Lula's platform "should not be confused with the socialist program of PT". Thus, while PT had begun to distance itself from its original socialist rhetoric and proposals by 1998, a clearer shift did not occur until after Lula lost again that year and after Lula and his group had more fully digested the impact of Brazil's changing political context and of Cardoso's economic reforms.

Voter base.

Most of the Workers' Party votes in presidential elections since 2006 stems from the North and Northeast regions of Brazil. Nevertheless, the party has always won every presidential election in Rio de Janeiro from 1998 to 2014 and in Minas Gerais from 2002 to 2014 (these are two of the three largest states by number of voters and together they comprise 18.5% of voters). The party also maintains a stronghold in the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, where it has won continuously since the second round of 1989 until 2002. Originally an urban party, with ties to ABC Region's unionism, PT has recently seen a major increase of its support in smaller towns. Most of PT's rejection comes from São Paulo as it has won elections there only once in 2002 (both rounds). The historical PT rejection in São Paulo was more widespread in interior than the capital as PT won the 1988, 2000 and 2012 São Paulo mayoral election and was a major force in his homeland, the Greater São Paulo. Despite this, the party lost its support even in the region and has not won any electoral zone in the capital in 2016 municipal elections. Fernando Haddad, the candidate seeking reelection, stayed in a distant second place, with 36 percentual points below the winner João Doria. PT managed to win in only one city of the region, the small and distant municipality of Franco da Rocha. PT is also strongly rejected in other states of the Center-South, such as Rio de Janeiro, which until 2018 had voted in the Workers Party presidential candidates in all new republic elections except 1994, the party shows strong difficulties to make representatives in federal, state and municipal levels. The party never elected a mayor in the capital of the state, never elected a governor (Benedita da Silva, the sole governor of the state from the party, took over because the resignation of the titular Anthony Garotinho in 2002, which her party had broken some years early, and was massive defeated in the same year's election by the Garotinho's wife Rosângela Matheus) and is often overturned in elections by left-wing parties with much less weight in national elections. The triumphs in the state were more associated with a strong rejection of PSDB in the state (which is even more weak and rejected despite his national strength) than a support of PT's program. In 2018 presidential elections, PT lost in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo with similar percentages in both states, with a difference of only 0.02% less percent of valid votes to the party in São Paulo. Despite being a southeastern state, many regions of Minas Gerais, especially in the north region of the state, had strong economic, cultural and socially ties with the Northeast. São Francisco River, a symbol of the Northeast, has its source in a small city of Minas, Pirapora. With the exception of Rio Grande do Sul and Distrito Federal, PT never gets an elected governor in the Center-south until 2014, when Fernando Damata Pimentel was elected governor of Minas Gerais.  PT had a strong electoral stronghold in North Brazil and in the Amazonian region; The party triumphed in every state governorship in Acre from 1990 to 2018. However, the Acre section of the party is far more independent and moderate than the rest of the party and PT had only won the presidential election in the state twice in 2002 and 2006. PT also lost the governorship of Acre in 2018 to a candidate from right-wing Progressive Party. Roraima, which the impact of the controversy about the indigenous territory of Raposa Serra do Sol, which former President Lula gave strong support despite the opposition of the non-indigenous people; and Rondonia, which had a large population of evangelicals and south/southeastern migrants, also show reservations about the party. The electoral stronghold was also lost in 2018 elections; PT only triumphed in the states of Pará and Tocantins, the only states in the region which borders Brazilian Northeast and much of their culture is near from Northwest than the rest of Amazon. In Amazonas, the largest Brazilian states, PT lost in 2018 for the first time since 1998; PT lost in the capital of the state, Manaus, a free zone which concentrates more than the half of the population of the state; in the large, sparsely inhabited interior of the Amazonian state, PT win by a large margin but insufficient to guarantee the fifth triumph of the party in the state on presidential election.  PT, however, maintained and expanded his stronghold in Northeast Brazil, conquered in Lula first elections in 2002. Since 2002, the only time that a state other than these which did not vote in PT in a presidential election was Alagoas in both rounds of 2002 presidential elections. PT and its allies was able to make big gains in north and northeast regions of Brazil even in times which the party was in crisis, like in the last mayoral elections. PT's most loyal party PCdoB and former allies Brazilian Socialist Party ("Partido Socialista Brasileiro" − PSB) and Democratic Labour Party ("Partido Democrático Trabalhista" − PDT) made huge gains in region together with PT in the Lula−Rouseff era. PCdoB is now the strongest party in Maranhão state and was able to elect the mayor of Aracaju, Sergipe; PSB is now the strongest party in the states of Pernambuco and Paraíba; and PDT was able to triumph in three capitals of the northeastern. Despite losing all capitals in northwest, PT had the governorships of three northwestern states, Piauí, Bahia and Ceará. The governorship of Bahia, conquered in 2006, is symbolical. The party was a stronghold of Liberal Front Party ("Partido da Frente Liberal" − PFL), now Democrats ("Democratas" − DEM), the greatest ideological rival of PT in national level. PSDB is a strongest party and headed all presidential tickets which PFL/DEM participated since 1994, but the origin of PSDB resembling with the origins PT as a leftist opposition to the dictatorship, and the parties had strong links until PSDB broke with PT and join in a coalition with PFL, a right-wing party with strong fiscal conservative views, associated with the Brazilian military regime in 1993 and the homeland of Antônio Carlos Magalhães, the strongest leadership of PFL and a fierce foe of PT. Bahia is now the main stronghold of PT, the most reliable state for the Petismo and is considered a governance model to the party. Despite this, the state's capital Salvador is governed by ACM Neto, a leading member of DEM and grandson of Antonio Carlos Magalhães.  The party is often accused of exploit the North–South divide in Brazil to gain votes in the northeast. The party denies the claims and accuses the opposition to do the same in the South and Southeast.  According to a poll conducted by IBOPE on 31 October 2010, during the second round voting PT's candidate Dilma Rouseff had an overwhelming majority of votes among the poorest Brazilians. Her lead was of 26% among those who earned a minimum wage or less per month. Rouseff also had the majority of votes among Catholics (58%), blacks (65%) and mixed-race Brazilians (60%). Amongst whites and Protestants, she was statistically tie to José Serra and her lead was of only 4% on both demographic groups. Even though she was the first female candidate in a major party, her votes amongst men was wider than amongst women.

Controversies.

2003–2007 internal crisis and split.

The changes in the political orientation of PT (from a left-wing socialist to a centre-left social-democratic party) after Lula was elected President were well received by many in the population, but as a historically more radical party PT has experienced a series of internal struggles with members who have refused to embrace the new political positions of the party. These struggles have fueled public debates, the worst of which had its climax in December 2003, when four dissident legislators were expelled from the party for voting against Social Insurance Reform. Among these members were congressman João Batista Oliveira de Araujo (known as Babá) and senator Heloísa Helena, who formed the Socialism and Liberty Party ("Partido Socialismo e Liberdade" − PSOL) in June 2004 and ran for President in 2006, becoming at the time the woman who had garnered the most votes in Brazilian history.  In another move, 112 members of the radical wing of the party announced they were abandoning PT in the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre on 30 January 2005. They also published a manifesto entitled "Manifesto of the Rupture" that states that PT "is no longer an instrument of social transformation, but only an instrument of the status quo", continuing with references to the International Monetary Fund and other economic and social issues.

BANCOOP scandal.

This scandal, called the BANCOOP case, included João Vaccari Neto and four other directors of the housing cooperative. The cooperative received government contracts and had multi-million reais in revenue. The cooperative was found to have illegally padded the service contracts by 20%, with many of the contracts going unfulfilled. The cooperative eventually folded with a deficit of over R$100 million, requiring liquidation of assets to minimize the loss by members.

2006 electoral scandal.

This scandal unfolded around September 2006, just two weeks before general elections. As a result, Berzoini left the coordination of Lula's re-election after allegedly using PT's budget (which is partially state-funded through party allowances) to purchase from a confessed fraudster a dossier that would be used to attack political adversaries. On 25 April 2007, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal unanimously cleared Lula of any responsibility for this scandal.

Mensalão scandal.

In July 2005, members of the party suffered a sequence of corruption accusations, started by a deputy of the Brazilian Labour Party ("Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro –" PTB), Roberto Jefferson. Serious evidence for slush funding and bribes-for-votes were presented, dragging PT to the most serious crisis in its history, known colloquially as the "Mensalão". José Genoíno resigned as president of the party and was replaced by Tarso Genro, former mayor of Porto Alegre. A small minority of party members defected as a result of the crisis. Most of them went to PSOL.

Lava Jato scandal.

The investigation of a series of crimes, such corruption and money laundering, led to the arrest of the party's treasurer João Vaccari Neto and his sister-in-law. José Genoino, José Dirceu, Delcídio do Amaral, André Vargas and Delúbio Soares were also arrested in the process. Most recently, former President Lula was arrested in April 2018.

Organization.

Since its inception the party has been led by the following:

Factions.

There are about thirty factions ("tendências") within PT, ranging from Articulação, the centre-left group that Lula is a part of, to Marxists and Christian socialists.

Tendencies integrating the Building a New Brazil field.

Considered the right-wing of the party, i.e. going from centre to centre-left.

Famous members.

Its members are known as "petistas", from the Portuguese acronym PT.

The Workers' Party (, PT) is a political party in Brazil. Some scholars classify its ideology as social democracy. Founded in 1980, it is one of the largest parties in Latin America. PT governed at the federal level in a coalition government with several other parties from 1 January 2003 to 31 August 2016. After the 2002 parliamentary election, PT became the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies and the largest in the Federal Senate for the first time With the highest approval rating in the history of the country, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is PT's most prominent member. His successor Dilma Rousseff, also a member of PT, took office on 1 January 2011 and was impeached in 2016.

Le Parti des travailleurs (, PT) est un parti politique brésilien de centre gauche fondé en 1980. Le Parti des travailleurs est membre de la COPPPAL.


Early political career (1961-1989).

Dutra graduated in Grammar school and became an employee of Banrisul, Rio Grande do Sul's then state owned bank, on 1961. In that position, he became familiarized with the Porto Alegre Bank Workers Union. He was elected president of the organization in 1975. On 1979 he organized a major strike of the government employees. For that reason, he was arrested by the political police of the military dictatorship and lost his term as the union's president.  During the redemocratization of Brazilian politics, Dutra participated of the foundation of the Workers' Party section in his state, of which he was the president from 1980 to 1986. On the 1982 gubernatorial elections, the first in over twenty years, he was released as the Workers' Party candidate. He received unexpressive voting, coming in last place with more than 50,000 votes. In 1986, Dutra was elected Constitutional Congressman with over 55,000 votes. During the time in which he lived in Brasília, Dutra shared an apartment with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also a Congressman and the future President of Brazil. Since then, they are close friends.

Mayor of Porto Alegre (1989–1993).

In 1988, contradicting all opinion polls, Dutra was elected mayor of Porto Alegre with 34% of the votes. Differently from nowadays, at that time Brazilian electoral law did not allow the dispute of a second round if any of the candidates failed to achieve more than half of the valid votes. According to the polls, Congressman Antônio Britto from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party was the favorite candidate among the population by a large margin. Britto ended up the dispute in third place, underneath fellow Congressman Carlos Araújo (then husband of Dilma Rousseff) of the Democratic Labour Party. Araújo belonged to the same party as the city's mayor at the time, Alceu Collares, but failed to gather his electorate.  Dutra's term as mayor of Porto Alegre, starting in 1989 and ending in 1992, was the first of four consecutive terms of the Workers' Party in the city, totaling 16 years of administration. Because of that, Porto Alegre became a sort of display cabinet for the party in the rest of Brazil: A place where it experimented successful and innovative initiatives. Nevertheless, Dutra's administration was criticized for its intervention on the public transportation system, what generated bad relations between the City Hall and the bus concessionaire companies, forcing the government to pay them an indemnification.  After his term as mayor had ended, in 1994, Dutra tried the governorship for a second time. He obtained 35% of the votes on the first round and 47.79% on the second. He lost the office to Britto by a margin of less than 5% of the valid votes.

Governor of Rio Grande do Sul (1999-2003).

In 1998, Britto tried the re-election and faced Dutra for a third time. Dutra's campaign focused on criticizing Britto's actions perceived as neoliberal politics, such as the privatization of the state owned telephony and energy companies. This time, Dutra won the election on second round by a small margin of only 97 thousand votes.  Dutra's term as governor, from 1999 to 2003, was marked by the suspension of a deal established by Britto's administration concerning the opening of two car manufacturing companies in the state (General Motors and Ford). The deal included high tax exemption and flotation with interest rate below the market for the companies. The renegotiation proposed by Dutra was only accepted by GM. Other accomplishments of his administration include the creation of a State University and the introduction of the participatory budgeting at state level, following the previous experience of its implementation in Porto Alegre by his party.  Suffering from a large defamation campaign, promoted mainly by RBS media conglomerate (Rede Globo's local affiliate), as soon as a corruption scandal involving the Workers' Party and the Jogo do Bicho erupted, and without the majority in the State Assembly, where he faced major defeats, Dutra was politically worn out near his term's end. As a result, Dutra's reelection campaign was rejected in the Workers' Party primaries, where then Mayor of Porto Alegre Tarso Genro was selected to represent the party. Genro would be defeated by a margin of 5% in the second round by Germano Rigotto from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party.

Recent political activity (2003-present).

In 2002, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president, and appointed Dutra as Minister of Cities, a then recently created office. He would remain on this job until 2005, when Lula needed to reorganize the Brazilian cabinet to suit the Progressive Party in it. Dutra was then replaced by Márcio Fortes in a negotiation of the government with then President of the Congress Severino Cavalcanti.  In 2006, Dutra was the Workers' Party gubernatorial candidate for Rio Grande do Sul for a fourth time. He was defeated by then Congresswoman Yeda Crusius of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party on a second round by a margin of 7.88% of the votes.

Olívio de Oliveira Dutra (born 10 June 1941 in Bossoroca, Rio Grande do Sul) is a Brazilian politician. He is a founding member of the Workers' Party.

Olívio Dutra (né le à Bossoroca, Rio Grande do Sul, Brésil - ) est un homme politique brésilien, ayant pour base politique l'État du Rio Grande do Sul (RS), le plus méridional des États du Brésil. Il a été maire de Porto Alegre, à deux reprises, et gouverneur du Rio Grande do Sul. En 2003 il a été nommé ministre de la ville dans le gouvernement du Président Lula.


Chinese equivalent.

The Chinese shi or dan is equal to 10 "dou" () "pecks", 100 "sheng" () "pints". While the current "shi" is 103 liters in volume, the "shi" of the Tang Dynasty period equalled 59.44 liters.

Modern unit.

The exact modern "koku" is calculated to be 180.39 liters, 100 times the capacity of a modern "shō". This modern "koku" is essentially defined to be the same as the "koku" from the Edo Period, namely 100 times the "shō" equal to 64827 cubic "bu" in the traditional "shakkanhō" measuring system.

Origin of the modern unit.

The, the semi-official one "shō" measuring box since the late 17th century under Nobunaga, began to be made in a different (larger) size in the early Edo Period, sometime during the 1620s. Its dimensions, given in the traditional Japanese "shaku" length unit system, were 4 "sun" 9 "bu" square times 2 "sun" 7 "bu" depth. Its volume, which could be calculated by multiplication was: 1 koku = 100 "shō"= 100 × (49 "bu"×49 "bu"×27 "bu") = 100 × 64827 cubic "bu" Although this was referred to as "shin kyō-masu" or the "new" measuring cup in its early days, its use supplanted the old measure in most areas in Japan, until the only place still left using the old cup (""edo-masu"") was the city of Edo, and the Edo government passed an edict declaring the "kyō-masu" the official nationwide measure standard in 1669 (Kanbun 9).

Modern measurement enactment.

When the 1891 Japanese was promulgated, it defined the "shō" unit as the capacity of the standard "kyo-masu" of 64827 cubic "bu". The same act also defined the "shaku" length as 10/33 metre. Thus the metric equivalent of the modern "shō" can be calculated arithmetically, and the result is 2401/1331000m. The modern "koku" is therefore 2401/1331 litres, or 1.8039 litres.  The modern "shaku" defined here is set to equal the so-called "setchū-shaku" ("setchū-jaku" or "compromise shaku"), measuring 302.97 mm, a middle-ground value between two different "kane-jaku" standards. A researcher has pointed out that the ("shin") cups ought to have used "take-jaku" which were 0.2% longer. However, the actual measuring cups in use did not quite attain the "take shaku" metric, and when the Japanese Ministry of Finance had collected actual samples of "masu" from the (measuring-cup guilds) of both eastern and western Japan, they found that the measurements were close to the average of "take-jaku" and "kane-jaku".

Lumber koku.

The "lumber "koku"" or "maritime "koku"" is defined as equal to 10 cubic "shaku" in the lumber or shipping industry, compared with the standard "koku" measures 6.48 cubic "shaku". A lumber "koku" is conventionally accepted as equivalent to 120 board feet, but in practice may convert to less. In metric measures 1 lumber "koku" is about.

Historic use.

The exact measure now in use originates in, devised around the 1620s, but not officially adopted for all of Japan until the Kanbun era (1660s).

Feudal Japan.

Under the Tokugawa shogunate of the Edo period (1603–1868) of Japanese history, each feudal domain had an assessment of its potential income known as "kokudaka" which in part determined its order of precedence at the Shogunal court. The smallest "kokudaka" to qualify the fief-holder for the title of "daimyō" was 10,000 "koku" (worth ¥705,528,600 in 2016) and Kaga han, the largest (other than that of the "shōgun"), was called the "million-"koku" domain". Its holdings totaled around 1,025,000 "koku" (worth ¥72.3 billion in 2016). Many samurai, including "hatamoto", received stipends in "koku", while a few received salaries instead.  The production yield ("koku-daka") was reported in terms of brown rice ("genmai") in most places, with the exception of Satsuma clan which reported in terms of unhusked or non-winnowed rice (). Since this practice had persisted, past Japanese rice production statistics need to be adjusted for comparison with other countries that report production by milled or polished rice.  Even in certain parts of the Tōhoku region or Ezo (Hokkaidō) where rice could not be grown, the economy was still measured in terms of "koku", with other crops and produce converted to their equivalent value in terms of rice. The "kokudaka" was not adjusted from year to year, and thus some fiefs had larger economies than their nominal "koku" indicated due to land reclamation and new rice field development, which allowed them to fund development projects.

As measure of cargo ship class.

"Koku" was also used to measure how much a ship could carry when all its loads were rice. Smaller ships carried 50 "koku" () while the biggest ships carried over 1,000 "koku" (). The biggest ships were larger than military vessels owned by the Shogunate.

In popular culture.

The Hyakumangoku Matsuri (Million-"Koku" Festival) in Kanazawa, Japan celebrates the arrival of "daimyō" Maeda Toshiie into the city in 1583, although Maeda's income was not raised to over a million "koku" until after the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600.

The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume, 1 koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately, or about 5 bushels. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1000 gō. One "gō" is the volume of the "rice cup", the plastic measuring cup that is supplied with commercial Japanese rice cookers.

Le koku (石) est une unité de mesure japonaise traditionnelle de volume, encore en usage dans certains cas. En 1891, le Japon est passé au système international d'unité et a redéfini le "koku" à précisément 240100⁄1331 =, subdivisé en 10 "to", 100 "shō", et. Mais cela correspond à un peu plus des 2/3 de la définition ancienne.


A new start.

Nabokov's first major work in English was written hastily in Paris while the author sat in the bathroom, his valise set across a bidet as a writing desk. It had been preceded by nine earlier novels in Russian, written under the pen name V. Sirin, and shares with them a preoccupation with the problems of living in exile and of adaptation. This, Nabokov’s first novel under his own name, was published by New Directions Publishers in 1941 and sold slowly. After the success of "Lolita" it was republished in 1959, this time to wide critical acclaim.

Plot summary.

The narrator, V., is absorbed in the composition of his first literary work, a biography of his half-brother, the Russian-born English novelist Sebastian Knight (1899–1936). In the course of his quest he tracks down Sebastian's contemporaries at Cambridge and interviews other friends and acquaintances. In the course of his work V. also surveys Sebastian's books (see below) and attempts to refute the views of the "misleading" "The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight", a biography by Knight's former secretary Mr. Goodman, who maintains that Knight was too aloof and cut off from real life.  V. concludes that, after a long-running romantic relationship with Clare Bishop, Sebastian's final years were embittered by a love affair with another woman — a Russian whom he presumably met at a hotel in Blauberg, where Sebastian spent time recuperating from a heart ailments in June 1929. V. leaves for Blauberg, where, with the help of a private detective, he acquires a list of the names of four women who were staying at the hotel at the same time as Sebastian and tracks down each to interview them. After dismissing the possibility of Helene Grinstein in Berlin, his search leads him to Paris and the list narrows to two candidates: Mme de Rechnoy and Mme von Graun.  V. first suspects Mme de Rechnoy of being the mystery woman, based on a compelling description from her ex-husband, Pahl Palich Rechnoy. Mme de Rechnoy has left her husband and cannot be located, leaving V. unsatisfied. However, after meeting Mme von Graun's friend, Mme Nina Lecerf, and hearing stories of von Graun's unflattering affair with a Russian, V. becomes convinced that Helene von Graun is the woman in question. Nina invites V. to visit her in the country, where Helene von Graun will be staying with her. Finding that Helene has not yet arrived, V. mentions to Nina a letter introducing himself to Mme von Graun, which angers her. By chance, V. learns that it is Nina Lecerf herself, and not Helene, who was Sebastian's final romance. Nina was, in fact, the Mme de Rechnoy whom V. had originally suspected but never met.  The final chapters of the narration deal with "The Doubtful Asphodel", Sebastian's final novel, which is centered on a dying man and his slow decay. V.'s description of the novel reveals similarities and coincidence not only with Sebastian's life, but with V.'s own investigative adventures. V. tries to account for Sebastian's final years, including a last letter from Sebastian asking V. to visit him at a hospital outside Paris. As V. makes the trip (from Marseilles, where he is temporarily stationed by his firm), his ties to his own life become increasingly visible for their tenuousness: his employer hampers his ability to travel, he struggles to remember necessary details such as the hospital name, he even lacks sufficient money to travel efficiently. V. finally arrives at the hospital and listens to his sleeping brother's breathing from a separate room, only to discover that the sleeping man is not his brother, but another man. Sebastian Knight had died the night before.  The novel concludes with a philosophical reconciliation of Sebastian's life and a final implication that V. himself is Sebastian Knight, or at least his incarnation.

Composition.

"The Real Life of Sebastian Knight" is a biographical metafiction which is in some ways an anticipation of postmodernism. Although there are elements of the detective story in its description of a quest to ascertain facts about a very private and evasive novelist, its subject cannot be grasped through the medium of language, even though Sebastian Knight is only knowable through his own medium. Instead, the book spins “a texture of words around an empty point, an absence”, according to Giorgio Manganelli. By the end of the second chapter it has become clear, anyway, that the projected book will not be about Knight’s life but his brother V’s attempt to write it.  What complicates the process of getting to know the real Sebastian Knight is the interlayering of a subjective account of the quest with a variety of texts. There is firstly the hastily written and poorly researched biography by Mr Goodman, Knight’s ignominiously dismissed secretary, largely written to fit a simplistic thesis. Then there is Knight’s own “memoir”, supported by passages from his novels, both as stylistic demonstrations and illustrative of V’s subjective reading of their biographical significance. Finally there are V’s own novelistic interpolations, making clear the difference between Knight’s linguistic mastery and the literary devices used by hack authors. “Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight?” asks a sudden voice in the Cambridge mist at the end of chapter 5, only to be disavowed immediately. In a similar way, V prepares a speech to unmask the deception of Madame Lecerf at the end of chapter 17 but then refrains. “She will be sent a copy of this book and will understand.”  Such tricks continue the perception in Nabokov’s earlier novel "Despair" that “the first person is as fictitious as all the rest”. It is also open to the reader to play the detective himself, noting in what ways the novel reflects Nabokov’s own biography. He too was a Russian émigré who was educated at Cambridge, his relationship with his brother Sergei was always at arm’s length, and an unwise emotional entanglement had just endangered his domestic arrangements.

Books by Sebastian Knight.

The narrator discusses the following (fictitious) works by Knight:

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is the first English language novel by Vladimir Nabokov, written from late 1938 to early 1939 in Paris and first published in 1941. A work centred on language and its inability to convey any satisfactory definition, it has been identified as a forerunner of the postmodernist novel.

La Vraie Vie de Sebastian Knight est un roman écrit par Vladimir Nabokov en 1940 et qui inaugure la carrière d'écrivain anglophone de l'auteur.


United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest

Royaume-Uni au Concours Eurovision de la chanson

History.

1950s to 1970s.

It was alleged that the United Kingdom were expected to take part in the first contest in 1956, and that they missed the submission deadline and therefore could not take part. This was later revealed by the EBU in January 2017 to be a myth created by fans of the contest. The EBU further went on to explain that the "Festival of British Popular Song", a contest created by the BBC for the United Kingdom, was the inspiration that brought in format changes to the contest elements from the Eurovision Song Contest 1957 onwards. Patricia Bredin was the first performer to represent the UK at Eurovision, finishing seventh in 1957. The UK was the first choice to stage the third contest in 1958, however following a failure to get an agreement from various artistic unions, the BBC withdrew their bid in the summer of 1957 and the UK did not enter for the second and last time to date.  At their second attempt in the contest in 1959, the UK achieved the first of their record fifteen runner-up positions, when Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson sang "Sing, Little Birdie". The UK would achieve four more second-place finishes with Bryan Johnson in 1960, The Allisons in 1961, Matt Monro in 1964 and Kathy Kirby in 1965, before eventually winning for the first time in 1967. Sandie Shaw was already a successful performer, having twice topped the UK singles chart and she comfortably won in Vienna with "Puppet on a String", which became her third UK number one and topped the charts all around Europe. In 1968, another successful performer was selected to represent the UK with the song "Congratulations". In London, Cliff Richard gave the UK their sixth second-place finish, losing to Spain's Massiel. "Congratulations" remains one of only two non-winning UK Eurovision songs to top the UK charts. The UK's second victory was provided by the Scottish singer Lulu, who won with the song "Boom Bang-a-Bang" in 1969, in a four-way tie with France, Spain and the Netherlands. Another established performer, she had reached the US #1 spot with "To Sir with Love" in 1967.  Having finished second on three further occasions in the 1970s, with Mary Hopkin in 1970, The New Seekers in 1972 and The Shadows in 1975. The UK achieved their third victory in 1976 with Brotherhood of Man and "Save Your Kisses for Me", who won with 164 points, which would remain the highest points total for ten years. In 1977, the UK finished second for the tenth time represented by singer-songwriters Lynsey de Paul and Mike Moran.

1980s and 1990s.

The UK's fourth victory came in 1981, with Bucks Fizz and "Making Your Mind Up". The group was created especially for the UK televised selection contest, "A Song for Europe" (a programme which in later years would be renamed to "Making Your Mind Up"). At Eurovision in Dublin, they defeated Germany's Lena Valaitis by four points. The group went on to continued success, with 13 UK top 40 hits over the next five years. This would be the last UK win for 16 years, although the country continued to be competitive at the contest with four more second-place results during this time. In 1988, Scott Fitzgerald lost to Celine Dion, who was representing Switzerland, by just one point. In 1989, Live Report lost out to Yugoslavia by seven points. Michael Ball in 1992, also finished second, behind Linda Martin of Ireland. The 1993 entry, Sonia, had already had 10 UK top 30 hits, including a 1989 number one with "You'll Never Stop Me Loving You", when she was selected to represent the UK in Millstreet. With one country (Malta) left to vote, Ireland's Niamh Kavanagh led Sonia by 11 points. By the time it got to the announcement of the 12 points, neither the UK or Ireland had been mentioned. If the UK had received the 12, they would have won by one point. In the end Ireland received the top marks and won by 23 points. Despite only finishing eighth in the 1996 contest, Gina G went on to huge success with her entry "Ooh Ah Just a Little Bit", which became only the second non-winning UK entry to top the UK Singles chart. It also reached the US top 20 and received a Grammy nomination. The UK's fifth victory finally came in 1997, when Katrina and the Waves, famous for their 1980s hit "Walking on Sunshine", comfortably won the contest with the song "Love, Shine a Light". They scored 227 points, which would remain the highest points total of the pre semi-final era. At the 1998 contest in Birmingham, Imaani achieved the UK's 15th second-place finish and 20th top two result, with the song "Where Are You?", losing to Israel's Dana International. The UK, as of 2019, has not finished in the top two since.

21st century.

The UK has fared less well in the contest in the 21st century. Since girl-group Precious finished 12th in 1999, the UK has failed to reach the top ten in all but two of the last 21 contests (1999–2019) – the exceptions being Jessica Garlick, who finished joint third in 2002 with the song "Come Back" (the UK's only top three result of the century), and Jade Ewen. Ewen in particular, was praised for ending the country's poor run of results for much of the decade, by finishing fifth in 2009 with the song "It's My Time", written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Diane Warren. In 2003, the UK finished last for the first time with the duo Jemini, who received the infamous "nul points". This remains the only time the UK has failed to score a single point. The country has finished last on three further occasions, with Andy Abraham, who received 14 points in 2008, Josh Dubovie, who received 10 points in 2010, and Michael Rice who received 11 points in 2019.  In 2011, the BBC chose the boy band Blue to represent the UK, they finished 11th with 100 points. In 2012, the UK were facing calls to quit the contest when the UK entry, Engelbert Humperdinck, finished 25th (out of 26) with only 12 points. However, the UK confirmed their participation in the 2013 contest, with the Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, most famous for her 1983 US and UK number one hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart", who would perform the song "Believe in Me". In Malmö, she finished 19th with 23 points. She went on to win two internationally voted Eurovision Song Contest radio awards for Best Female Singer and Best Song.  In 2014, the BBC internally selected unknown singer Molly Smitten-Downes, through BBC Introducing, which supports new and unsigned acts. She represented the UK in Copenhagen under her artist name Molly. In the final, she performed the song "Children of the Universe", which she co-wrote with Anders Hansson and finished in 17th place with 40 points, having been regarded as one of the favourites to win the contest. In October 2014, Guy Freeman stated that the BBC are still engaging with record companies and the BBC Introducing platform in order to find an entry for the 2015 contest via the internal selection process, but announced that in addition, for the first time since 2008, they are giving the general public the option to submit an entry for consideration. Ultimately, the entry for 2015 came through open submission, with the song "Still in Love with You" performed by the duo Electro Velvet. The song finished in 24th place, with only five points, the UK's worst performance in terms of points tally since the infamous "nul points" of 2003.  On 30 September 2015, the BBC confirmed the national selection show would return in 2016. Six acts competed in the national final on 26 February and the winner was selected entirely through a public vote, consisting of televoting and online voting. "You're Not Alone" performed by Joe and Jake won the national final broadcast live on BBC Four. At the final they came 24th with 62 points in total. Of these only 8 were from the public vote, the second lowest public score, following 0 to the Czech Republic. In spite of the latest disappointing result, the BBC announced that the national final format would be retained for 2017. Six acts again participated in the final, which was held on 27 January 2017. It was broadcast on BBC Two as opposed to BBC Four the previous year, and the winner was determined by a combination of scores from a professional jury and televoting (including votes cast online). Former "X Factor" contestant Lucie Jones won the show and earned the right to represent the UK at the 2017 contest in Kiev, with the song "Never Give Up on You", becoming the 60th UK Eurovision entry. The song was praised for its impressive staging, and finished 15th in the final with a combined score of 111 points, finishing 10th in the jury vote with 99 points and 20th in the televote with 12 points.  After the 2020 contest was cancelled, the BBC announced that BBC Studios would produce "Eurovision: Come Together", a replacement show for BBC One featuring classic Eurovision performances, interviews and a look at the entries that would have taken part in 2020. The show is part of the BBC's plan to "entertain the nation in time of need".

United Kingdom and the "Big Four/Five".

In 1999, a rule change allowed the United Kingdom, along with France, Germany and Spain, to automatically qualify for the Eurovision Song Contest final (irrespective of their recent scores and without entering a semi-final), due to being the biggest financial contributors to the EBU. Due to their untouchable status in the contest, these countries became known as the "Big Four" (which became the "Big Five" in 2011 following the return of Italy to the contest).  In 2008, it was rumoured that the "Big Four" would lose their automatic qualification, and would have to compete in the semi-finals for the first time. However, it was announced by the EBU that this would not be the case and the four countries would still automatically qualify for the final of the 2009 contest without having to enter a semi-final, and this has remained as of 2019.  In 2008, the BBC defended using money from TV licence fee payers for the contest when Liberal Democrat MP Richard Younger-Ross had tabled a Commons motion which called on the corporation to withdraw its £173,000 funding for the annual contest. That same year, former Eurovision commentator Sir Terry Wogan claimed that the show is "no longer a music contest" after the result was announced.  Since the introduction of the Big Four/Five, the United Kingdom has finished last in the contest four times, with Germany finishing last three times. The United Kingdom also has the fewest top ten results of the Big Five in the 21st century, but has achieved more top five results than Spain, having reached the top five in 2002 and 2009, while Spain has not reached the top five since the 1995 contest.

National selection ("You Decide").

As well as broadcasting the contest each year, the BBC also organises the selection process for the entry with a televised national final (historically titled "A Song For Europe"). The process has varied between selecting both performer and song, or just the song, with the artist being selected internally.  For most years the public has been able to vote for the winner, in the past with postcard voting, where the viewers sent postcards with their vote to the BBC, but more recently televoting and online. In 2009 and 2010, the singer was chosen by a public vote and the song internally selected. From 2011 to 2015, there was no televised selection, and both the artist and song were selected internally by the BBC. This resulted in the national selection process being suspended; however, this returned in 2016, re-titled "", with viewers once again choosing which song to enter into the contest. Since 2017, the votes from a professional jury panel have been combined with the public vote to select the winner.  In September 2019, it was announced that the BBC would not hold a public selection for the 2020 contest, and that BBC Studios would partner with record label BMG to produce and release its entry.

Contestants.

Below is a list of all songs and their respective performers that have represented the United Kingdom in the contest:

Congratulations: 50 Years of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Although the United Kingdom was entered twice into "", with Cliff Richard's 1968 runner-up entry "Congratulations" and Brotherhood of Man's 1976 winning song "Save Your Kisses for Me", the BBC decided not to air the event or participate in the voting, but instead aired an hour-long special programme entitled "" hosted by Terry Wogan.

Eurovision Come Together.

Following the cancellation of the 2020 contest due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the BBC decided to host an All Stars contest on the night of what would have been the cancelled 2020 Grand Final. The show broadcast just before the EBU's main replacement show Eurovision Shine A Light. 19 entries were chosen by a panel of experts. Four of them were entries from the United Kingdom.

Hostings.

The United Kingdom has hosted the Eurovision Song Contest a record eight times. The United Kingdom stepped in and hosted the contest for the in, in, in and in due to the winning countries' financial and capacity issues. In four occasions (1968, 1977, 1982 and 1998) the UK was given the right to host as a result of a victory. The BBC offered to joint host the contest in Belfast, Northern Ireland with Irish broadcaster RTÉ if were to win for a fourth year in a row.

Eurovision Song Contest's Greatest Hits.

In 2015, London hosted "Eurovision Song Contest's Greatest Hits", an event to commemorate the 60th anniversary, which was recorded for television on 31 March 2015 and was shown in 26 countries, starting with the UK and Ireland on 3 April 2015.

Related involvement.

Commentators and spokespersons.

Over the years BBC commentary has been provided by several experienced radio and television presenters, including Tom Fleming, David Vine, David Jacobs, Dave Lee Travis, Pete Murray, John Dunn and Michael Aspel. However, Terry Wogan provided BBC TV commentary every year from 1980 to 2008. It was confirmed on 12 August 2008 that Terry Wogan would no longer present the Eurovision Song Contest for the UK. The BBC Radio 2 DJ, who had fronted the BBC's coverage for 37 years, said it was "time for someone else to take over". He was replaced in 2009 by Graham Norton for the final. Norton has continued in the role ever since.  The final of the contest has been broadcast by BBC One (previously BBC Television Service and BBC TV) since the first contest in 1956, the first live colour transmission of the contest in the United Kingdom was the Eurovision Song Contest 1970, the first high definition broadcast of the contest began in 2007 when the contest was simulcast on BBC HD. The final is also broadcast on radio, initially on BBC Light Programme until the 1967 contest. From 1968 it was broadcast on BBC Radio 1 (simulcast on Radio 2), moving to BBC Radio 2 from the 1971 contest where it has remained ever since (except for 1983–1985). Between 1963 and 1976 and from 1980 until 1985 the contest was also broadcast on BFBS Radio. From 2004 to 2015 both semi-finals were broadcast on BBC Three. Since BBC Three became an online only channel in February 2016, semi-final coverage is now broadcast on BBC Four.  In the contest, hosted in Birmingham, Terry Wogan acted as both commentator and on-stage presenter (together with Ulrika Jonsson). In the contest, each song was introduced by a presenter from its country, the United Kingdom entry being introduced by Noel Edmonds.  No British-born broadcaster has either presented or commentated on the live television final for over thirty years, the last being Jan Leeming, host of the contest.  In recent years, the dual-commentator format during the semi-finals has allowed for the broadcaster to incorporate additional segments, interviews and live viewer interaction during the programme's live airing.  In 2019 the BBC launched "Eurovision Calling", a weekly BBC Sounds podcast hosted by Mills and comedian Jayde Adams.

Separate entrants.

For several years the Scottish National Party (SNP) has campaigned for a place in Eurovision for Scotland but had been rejected numerous times because Scotland is represented as a part of the British entry and is represented by the BBC.  On 11 February 2008 the EBU stated that a Scottish broadcaster could apply for EBU membership, but under the current rules could not enter the Eurovision Song Contest as the BBC currently has exclusive rights to represent the entire United Kingdom. It was announced in late May 2008 that the UK would be participating in the 2009 Contest and, therefore, Scotland was not represented in 2009 as a separate entrant.  Scotland could be represented by STV, ITV Border or BBC Scotland. MEP Alyn Smith has said in the European Parliament: "Other small countries have done it [entered the competition] and I will be happy to help any of the broadcasting companies through the progress."  In 2011 the European Broadcasting Union stated that there was nothing to prevent Scotland from submitting its own entry, although STV stated that there were no current plans for a separate entry.  If Scotland were to participate it is unknown whether or not England, Wales and Northern Ireland would show any interest in entering the Eurovision Song Contest independently as well, although S4C (the Welsh language media channel) has expressed an interest and, in addition, already holds a yearly national song contest called "Cân i Gymru" "(Song for Wales)". S4C also considered a bid for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2008 but decided not to go ahead. In 2009 MEP for Wales Jillian Evans stated her interest in securing Wales a place in the Eurovision Song Contest 2010, Wales could be represented by either BBC Cymru Wales, ITV Wales & West or S4C. There is a small campaign in Northern Ireland for a separate entrant and it could be represented by UTV or BBC Northern Ireland. There are no plans currently for England to enter separately.  However, to date, these proposed changes have not occurred, and the United Kingdom still participates in the Eurovision Song Contest as a single entrant. It was unknown what would happen if Scotland were to become an independent country. However, on 25 November 2013, the Scottish Government released a referendum blueprint which detailed plans for the transfer of BBC Scotland into the Scottish Broadcasting Service (SBS) and joining the EBU, as well as partaking in competitions, including Scottish entries in the Eurovision Song Contest. However, the referendum result on 18 September 2014 was to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the aforementioned BBC retains exclusive rights to represent the United Kingdom, including Scotland.  Since 2006, Gibraltarian broadcaster Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) has been attempting to gain EBU membership and thus participate independently in the Eurovision Song Contest. However GBC cannot obtain EBU membership due to the British Overseas Territory not being independent from the United Kingdom. Gibraltar broadcast the contest and the final of the contest.

The United Kingdom has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 62 times. They first participated in the second contest in 1957. The UK has entered every year since 1959, and along with Sweden and the Netherlands, is one of only three countries with Eurovision victories in four different decades. The United Kingdom is one of the "Big 5", along with France, Germany, Italy and Spain who are automatically allowed to participate in the final as they are the five biggest financial contributors to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The British public broadcaster, the BBC, broadcasts the event each year and organises the national selection for the entry. The UK has won the contest five times, and has finished second on a record fifteen times.

Le Royaume-Uni participe au Concours Eurovision de la chanson, depuis sa deuxième édition, en 1957 et l'a remporté à cinq reprises : en 1967, 1969, 1976, 1981 et 1997.


Types.

There are many different kinds of fractal images and can be subdivided into several groups.  Fractal Expressionism is a term used to differentiate traditional visual art that incorporates fractal elements such as self-similarity for example. Perhaps the best example of fractal expressionism is found in Jackson Pollock's dripped patterns. They have been analysed and found to contain a fractal dimension which has been attributed to his technique.

Techniques.

Fractals of all kinds have been used as the basis for digital art and animation. High resolution color graphics became increasingly available at scientific research labs in the mid-1980s. Scientific forms of art, including fractal art, have developed separately from mainstream culture. Starting with 2-dimensional details of fractals, such as the Mandelbrot Set, fractals have found artistic application in fields as varied as texture generation, plant growth simulation and landscape generation.  Fractals are sometimes combined with evolutionary algorithms, either by iteratively choosing good-looking specimens in a set of random variations of a fractal artwork and producing new variations, to avoid dealing with cumbersome or unpredictable parameters, or collectively, as in the Electric Sheep project, where people use fractal flames rendered with distributed computing as their screensaver and "rate" the flame they are viewing, influencing the server, which reduces the traits of the undesirables, and increases those of the desirables to produce a computer-generated, community-created piece of art.  Many fractal images are admired because of their perceived harmony. This is typically achieved by the patterns which emerge from the balance of order and chaos. Similar qualities have been described in Chinese painting and miniature trees and rockeries.

Landscapes.

The first fractal image that was intended to be a work of art was probably the famous one on the cover of "Scientific American", August 1985. This image showed a landscape formed from the potential function on the domain outside the (usual) Mandelbrot set. However, as the potential function grows fast near the boundary of the Mandelbrot set, it was necessary for the creator to let the landscape grow downwards, so that it looked as if the Mandelbrot set was a plateau atop a mountain with steep sides. The same technique was used a year after in some images in "The Beauty of Fractals" by Heinz-Otto Peitgen and Michael M. Richter. They provide a formula to estimate the distance from a point outside the Mandelbrot set to the boundary of the Mandelbrot set (and a similar formula for the Julia sets). Landscapes can, for example, be formed from the distance function for a family of iterations of the form formula_1.

Artists.

Notable fractal artists include Desmond Paul Henry, Hamid Naderi Yeganeh and musician Bruno Degazio. The British artist William Latham, has used fractal geometry and other computer graphics techniques in his works. Greg Sams has used fractal designs in postcards, T-shirts and textiles. American Vicky Brago-Mitchell has created fractal art which has appeared in exhibitions and on magazine covers. Scott Draves is credited with inventing flame fractals. Carlos Ginzburg has explored fractal art and developed a concept called "homo fractalus" which is based around the idea that the human is the ultimate fractal. Merrin Parkers from New Zealand specialises in fractal art. Kerry Mitchell wrote a "Fractal Art Manifesto", claiming that  According to Mitchell, fractal art is not computerized art, lacking in rules, unpredictable, nor something that any person with access to a computer can do well. Instead, fractal art is expressive, creative, and requires input, effort, and intelligence. Most importantly, "fractal art is simply that which is created by Fractal Artists: ART."  More recently, American artist Hal Tenny was hired to design environment in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

Exhibits.

Fractal art has been exhibited at major international art galleries. One of the first exhibitions of fractal art was "Map Art", a travelling exhibition of works from researchers at the University of Bremen. Mathematicians Heinz-Otto Peitgen and Michael M. Richter discovered that the public not only found the images aesthetically pleasing but that they also wanted to understand the scientific background to the images.  In 1989, fractals were part of the subject matter for an art show called "Strange Attractors: Signs of Chaos" at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. The show consisted of photographs, installations and sculptures designed to provide greater scientific discourse to the field which had already captured the public's attention through colourful and intricate computer imagery.  In 2014, emerging British fractal artist Vienna Forrester created an exhibition held at the I-node of the Planetary Collegium, Kefalonia, entitled "IO. Fragmented Myths and Memories: A Fractal Exploration of Kefalonia", part of the 2013-14 international arts festival "Stone Kingdom Kefalonia" commemorating the devastating 1953 Ionian earthquake. Her works were created by using geographical coordinates and photographs from parts of the island which still bear the scars.

Fractal art is a form of algorithmic art created by calculating fractal objects and representing the calculation results as still images, animations, and media. Fractal art developed from the mid-1980s onwards. It is a genre of computer art and digital art which are part of new media art. The mathematical beauty of fractals lies at the intersection of generative art and computer art. They combine to produce a type of abstract art.

L'art fractal est une forme d'art algorithmique qui consiste à produire des images, des animations et même des musiques à partir d'objets fractals. L'art fractal s'est développé à partir du milieu des années 1980.