Mike Laidlaw

Mike Laidlaw is a Canadian video game developer best known for his work at BioWare as the creative director for the "Dragon Age" fantasy role-playing video game franchise, and the lead designer and director on the first three games.
Early life.
Laidlaw grew up on a dairy farm. His parents bought him a Commodore 64 when he was seven years old, and he found himself creating his own levels in "Lode Runner", leading his parents to buy him a disk drive to support his passion. His favourite games before entering the game industry were "Star Control II", "Wasteland", and "Neuromancer". He later described "Star Control""II" as his favourite game of all time. Laidlaw earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Western Ontario.
Career.
Laidlaw reviewed video games at The Adrenaline Vault for three years. His early career included working at Bell Canada working in their call centre, eventually leading a team before he quit. Soon after, he applied for a job at BioWare after seeing an advertisement for a writing position.
Mike Laidlaw joined BioWare in 2003. Working on the action role-playing game "Jade Empire," he was promoted to co-lead writer after one year due to his ability to organize other writers. He was ultimately credited as the lead story developer and designer when it was released in 2005"." He then became a writer on "Mass Effect". Working under Drew Karpyshyn, he contributed writing to several pieces of the game, including two locations and three alien races. He briefly worked on a prototype for a sequel to "Jade Empire" before the project was cancelled.
Laidlaw's next role was lead designer for '. The core game design had been implemented, but the writing needed improvement to make it into a viable series. His work earned him a nomination for a British Academy Video Games Award for Best Story in 2010 (with BioWare cofounders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk). His success on "Dragon Age" earned him a promotion to creative director and then senior creative director for the franchise. However, Laidlaw credits other writers for coming up with the series lore and detail, including Dave Gaider and Ben Gelinas. Laidlaw participated extensively in promotional efforts for "Dragon Age II", where he has been interviewed about developmental information for the sequel to "Origins". Laidlaw was the director for an unreleased fourth entry in the "Dragon Age" series, code-named "Joplin", before the project was cancelled to reallocate staff to "Anthems development. As the fourth "Dragon Age" project was rebooted under the code name "Morrison," Laidlaw and several veteran "Dragon Age" staff decided to leave the company. Laidlaw formally announced his departure on October 13, 2017. Laidlaw felt this was the right time to minimize any disruptions to the development, and left the project in the hands of producer Mark Darrah.
In 2018, Laidlaw joined Ubisoft Quebec as creative director on an unspecified project. He ultimately left the company in early 2020 after 14 months. Later, details surfaced that Laidlaw worked on a now-cancelled project codenamed "Avalon", based on the fantasy of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The project faced conflicting visions with UbiSoft's Chief Creative Officer Serge Hascoët over the setting and themes. By late 2020, Laidlaw announced he was forming a new indie game studio called Yellow Brick Games, at which he serves as chief creative officer.


Nicholas G. Thacher

Nicholas Gilman Thacher (August 20, 1915 – March 11, 2002) was a United States diplomat.
Early life and career.
He was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1915 to John Hamilton Thacher and Edith Gilman Thacher. He had an older brother, John Jr., and an older sister, writer Edith Thacher Hurd. Thacher attended the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and graduated from Princeton University with a degree in economics. Upon graduation from Princeton, Thacher worked for Bankers Trust and simultaneously worked on a law degree from Fordham University. He entered officer training school and served aboard the USS "Pensacola" during World War II. He was discharged from the navy in January 1946.
Diplomatic career.
Thacher joined the United States Foreign Service in 1947. He served in Karachi, Jeddah, Calcutta, and Tehran, where he was deputy ambassador to Iran. He was named the United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia on September 8, 1970, and retired on September 19, 1973.
Later life.
In retirement, Thacher moved to San Francisco and worked for Wells Fargo. He also lectured at Stanford University.
Thacher was married to Jean-Louise Naffziger, daughter of Howard Christian Naffziger and Louise McNear Naffziger, from 1947 until his death in 2002 from pulmonary fibrosis. She died in 2010.


Hardware (TV series)

Hardware is a British sitcom that aired on ITV from 2003 to 2004. Starring Martin Freeman, it was written and created by Simon Nye, the creator of "Men Behaving Badly" and directed by Ben Kellett.
The show's opening theme was "A Taste of Honey" by Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass.
Plot.
"Hardware" is set in "Hamway's Hardware Store" in London, where main character Mike (Martin Freeman) works with Steve (Ryan Cartwright) and Kenny (Peter Serafinowicz) for shop owner Rex (Ken Morley). They relax at the next-door-but-one cafe, "Nice Day Cafe", where Mike's girlfriend Anne (Susan Earl) works with Julie (Ella Kenion). The series revolves around the store staff as they engage in a daily wisecrack battle with packs of DIY obsessed clients.
DVD releases.
The first series of "Hardware" is available on DVD in Region 4 (Australia). The complete series of "Hardware" was released in February 2009 in the UK on Region 2 from Network DVD.


Jim Olin

James Randolph Olin (February 28, 1920 – July 29, 2006) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Virginia. From 1983 to 1993, Olin, a Democrat, served in the United States House of Representatives for Virginia's 6th congressional district.
Early life and education.
Olin was born in Chicago, Illinois, the grandson of Swedish immigrants, and raised in Kenilworth, Illinois. He attended Deep Springs College, before moving on to Cornell University, from which he earned an electrical engineering degree in 1943. Then, until 1946, Olin served in the Signal Corps of the United States Army.
Politics.
Olin, a Democrat, made his first bid for political office in 1953, when he became Rotterdam, New York supervisor and served on the Schenectady County board of supervisors. For 35 years until retiring in January 1982, Olin worked in General Electric (GE) as corporate vice president and general manager of industrial electronics. Over the years, Olin's job at GE took him to Schenectady, Erie, Pennsylvania, and Salem, Virginia.
In 1982, Olin was elected to represent the 6th district of Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first Democrat to hold this seat since 1953. The 6th, stretching from Roanoke through the Shenandoah Valley, had been one of the first areas of Virginia to turn Republican. The district's six-term Republican incumbent, M. Caldwell Butler, hadn't even faced major-party opposition since 1974. However, Olin won a narrow victory.
Over the next two years, Olin worked this vast district well, and held onto his seat in 1984 even as Ronald Reagan carried the district in a landslide. He would never face another close race again, easily defeating Republican challengers in 1986 and 1988 and only facing an independent in 1990.
While in the House, Olin was considered to be a moderate member of the state's delegation. In 1990, he was one of the only three Democrats in the House to vote against Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. That same year, he clashed with President George H. W. Bush over his budget proposals. As a member of the United States House Committee on Agriculture, Olin advocated reducing milk price subsidies. In 1991, he opposed the Persian Gulf War.
Olin did not run for a sixth term in 1992. That same year he received an honorary LLD from Washington and Lee University. His preferred choice to replace him as the Democratic nominee lost at the district convention to Stephen Musselwhite, who was then handily defeated by Republican Bob Goodlatte, a former aide to Butler. Proving just how Republican this district was, no Democrat has crossed the 40 percent mark in the district since Olin left office.
He died at age 86 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Personal life.
Olin married Phyllis Olin and had five children with her: Richard, Thomas, Kathy (Milliken), James, and Trina (Santry). The Olin family settled in Roanoke, Virginia in 1968 and relocated to Charlottesville, Virginia in 2003. Jim and Phyllis Olin had eleven grandchildren: Jennifer Milliken Bartlett, Marc Dentico-Olin, Scott Milliken, Julia Milliken, John Olin, Chad Olin, Christine Milliken, Hannah Olin, Arthur Santry IV, Alexa Santry, and Richard Santry. They also had 2 great-grandsons: Aidan Bartlett & Nathan Bartlett as of 2012.


Frank Holl

Francis Montague Holl (London 4 July 1845 – 31 July 1888 London) was an English painter and royal portraitist.
Life.
Holl was born in London to family of noted engravers, being the son of Francis Holl , as well as a nephew of William Holl the Younger and a grandson of William Holl the Elder, whose profession he originally intended to follow. He was educated mainly at University College School. Entering the Royal Academy Schools as a probationer in painting in 1860, he rapidly progressed, winning silver and gold medals, and making his debut as an exhibitor in 1864 with "A Portrait," and "Turned out of Church," a subject picture. "A Fern Gatherer" (1865); "The Ordeal" (1866); "Convalescent" (the somewhat grim pathos of which attracted much attention), and "Faces in the Fire" (1867), succeeded. Holl gained the travelling studentship in 1868; the successful work was characteristic of the young painter's mood, being "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away."
In 1869 he was recruited as an artist by the wood-engraver and social reformer William Luson Thomas, to work on Thomas's newly founded newspaper, "The Graphic". In 1886, he produced a portrait of Millais as his diploma work, but his health rapidly declined and he died at Hampstead, north London, on 31 July 1888. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery. There is also a memorial to Holl at St Paul's Cathedral.
Works.
Overwork undermined Holl's health, but his reputation was assured by the studentship picture. In 1870 he painted "Better is a Dinner of Herbs where Love is, than a Stalled Ox and Hatred therewith"; "No Tidings from the Sea," a scene in a fisherman's cottage, in 1871—a story told with breath-catching pathos and power; "I am the Resurrection and the Life" (1872); "Leaving Home" (1873), "Deserted" (1874), both of which had great success; "Her First-born," girls carrying a baby to the grave (1876); and "Going Home" (1877). Van Gogh admired Holl's works and wrote enthusiastically to his brother Theo about them.
In 1877 he painted the two pictures "Hush" and "Hushed." "Newgate, Committed for Trial," first attested the breaking down of the painter's health in 1878. In this year he was elected A.R.A., and exhibited "The Gifts of the Fairies," "The Daughter of the House," "Absconded," and a portrait of Samuel Cousins the mezzotint engraver.
Holl was overwhelmed with commissions, which he would not decline. The consequences of this strain upon a constitution which was never strong were more or less, though unequally, manifest in "Ordered to the Front," a soldier's departure (1880); "Home Again," its sequel, in 1883 (after which he was made Royal Academician).
Holl's major portraits include likenesses of Lord Roberts, painted for Queen Victoria (1882); the Prince of Wales (1882–83); Lord Dufferin, the Duke of Cleveland (1885); Lord Overstone, John Bright, Mr Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain, John Tenniel, Earl Spencer, Viscount Cranbrook, and a score of others.


Boatman (surname)

Boatman is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:


Ami Miron

Ami Miron is an American Israeli entrepreneur and technology developer specializing in consumer electronics, the Internet, and television. He developed and patented the first commercially successful Picture In Picture (PIP) for Philips Electronics. Miron also worked to solve the problem of ghost images on television and led the development of the first high-definition television (HDTV) system in the U.S. He received two Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards for these last two innovations.
Early life and education.
Miron was born and grew up on Kibbutz Ruhama in southern Israel. Following service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the 1973 Yom Kippur War , he earned a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in electrical engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology He went on to receive a master's degree in electrical engineering (MSEE) from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and a professional degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University. He later completed an executive management program at Babson College.
Career.
Philips Electronics.
After working for Dutch electronics company Philips in the Netherlands, in 1981 Miron came to the U.S. in 1981 to work for them. Miron developed and patented the first Picture in Picture (PIP) system for Philips. He subsequently developed a system to solve the problem of ghost images on television. The FCC selected this Ghost Canceling System as the U.S. standard, which won Miron a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award. Miron won his second Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for leading the development of the first high-definition television (HDTV) system in the U.S., which the FCC then selected as the U.S. standard.
General Instrument Corporation.
In 1993, Miron joined Horsham, Pennsylvania-based General Instrument Corporation (later part of Motorola and now Google) as vice president to lead advanced technology and new products for the cable television, consumer and telecommunication markets.
MoreCom.
In 1997, Miron left General Instrument to found MoreCom Inc., a software networking company based in Horsham that provided digital entertainment and Internet content to televisions. In 2000, Liberate Technologies acquired the privately held firm in an all-stock deal.
Current ventures.
Miron is the founder and president of Philadelphia-based AM Partners, which works with entrepreneurs, start-ups, venture capital, and universities. He serves on the board of Ben Franklin Technology Partners and on the advisory board of Emerald Stage2 Ventures. Miron also serves as a senior advisor at the Wharton Small Business Development Center and an advisor to the Columbia University Entrepreneurship program.
Personal life.
Miron resides in Dresher, Pennsylvania and is the father to four children.


Erik Wolpaw

Erik Wolpaw is an American video game writer. He and Chet Faliszek wrote the pioneering video game website Old Man Murray. He subsequently worked for game developers Double Fine Productions and Valve, and is known for his work on video games including "Half-Life 2", "Psychonauts", "Portal", "Portal 2" and "".
Career.
As a high-school student Wolpaw wrote two type-in program games for the Atari 8-bit family that "Antic" published in 1983 and 1984. From 1997 to 2002, Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek wrote the video game-oriented website Old Man Murray. He also wrote for GameSpot. The site was highly influential in video game writing and game journalism.
He subsequently worked at Double Fine Productions as a writer for "Psychonauts". In 2006, he won the Game Developers Choice Award for Best Writing for his story and dialogue contributions to "Psychonauts". In 2004, Wolpaw joined Valve, where he and Faliszek wrote for games such as ', ', "Portal" and "Portal 2". He left Valve in February 2017 to write for "Psychonauts 2." In January 2019, he confirmed that he had returned to Valve as a part-time contractor on games such as "Artifact" and "".
Personal life.
In 2004, Wolpaw was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. Expecting his condition to require a departure from the company, he spoke with managing director Gabe Newell, who surprised him by offering an extended leave with pay. "Your job is to get better," Newell said. "That is your job description at Valve. So go home to your wife and come back when you are better."


Employment

Employment is a relationship between two parties, usually based on contract where work is paid for, where one party, which may be a corporation, for profit, not-for-profit organization, co-operative or other entity is the employer and the other is the employee. Employees work in return for payment, which may be in the form of an hourly wage, by piecework or an annual salary, depending on the type of work an employee does or which sector they are working in. Employees in some fields or sectors may receive gratuities, bonus payment or stock options. In some types of employment, employees may receive benefits in addition to payment. Benefits can include health insurance, housing, disability insurance or use of a gym. Employment is typically governed by employment laws, organisation or legal contracts.
Employees and employers.
An employee contributes labor and expertise to an endeavor of an employer or of a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCB) and is usually hired to perform specific duties which are packaged into a job. In a corporate context, an employee is a person who is hired to provide services to a company on a regular basis in exchange for compensation and who does not provide these services as part of an independent business.
An issue that arises in most companies, especially the ones that are in the gig economy, is the classification of workers. A lot of workers that fulfill gigs are often hired as independent contractors.
As a general principle of employment law, in the United States, there is a difference between an agent and an independent contractor. The default status of a worker is an employee unless specific guidelines are met, which can be determined by the ABC test. Thus, clarifying whether someone who performs work is an independent contractor or an employee from the beginning, and treating them accordingly, can save a company from trouble later on.
Provided key circumstances, including ones such as that the worker is paid regularly, follows set hours of work, is supplied with tools from the employer, is closely monitored by the employer, acting on behalf of the employer, only works for one employer at a time, they are considered an employee, and the employer will generally be liable for their actions and be obliged to give them benefits. In order to stay protected and avoid lawsuits, an employer has to be aware of that distinction.
Employer–worker relationship.
Employer and managerial control within an organization rests at many levels and has important implications for staff and productivity alike, with control forming the fundamental link between desired outcomes and actual processes. Employers must balance interests such as decreasing wage constraints with a maximization of labor productivity in order to achieve a profitable and productive employment relationship.
Labor acquisition / hiring.
The main ways for employers to find workers and for people to find employers are via jobs listings in newspapers (via classified advertising) and online, also called job boards. Employers and job seekers also often find each other via professional recruitment consultants which receive a commission from the employer to find, screen and select suitable candidates. However, a study has shown that such consultants may not be reliable when they fail to use established principles in selecting employees. A more traditional approach is with a "Help Wanted" sign in the establishment (usually hung on a window or door or placed on a store counter). Evaluating different employees can be quite laborious but setting up different techniques to analyze their skills to measure their talents within the field can be best through assessments. Employer and potential employee commonly take the additional step of getting to know each other through the process of a job interview.
Training and development.
Training and development refers to the employer's effort to equip a newly hired employee with the necessary skills to perform at the job, and to help the employee grow within the organization. An appropriate level of training and development helps to improve employee's job satisfaction.
Remuneration.
There are many ways that employees are paid, including by hourly wages, by piecework, by yearly salary, or by gratuities (with the latter often being combined with another form of payment). In sales jobs and real estate positions, the employee may be paid a commission, a percentage of the value of the goods or services that they have sold. In some fields and professions ("e.g.", executive jobs), employees may be eligible for a bonus if they meet certain targets. Some executives and employees may be paid in stocks or stock options, a compensation approach that has the added benefit, from the company's point of view, of helping to align the interests of the compensated individual with the performance of the company.
Under the faithless servant doctrine, a doctrine under the laws of a number of states in the United States, and most notably New York State law, an employee who acts unfaithfully towards his employer must forfeit all of the compensation he received during the period of his disloyalty.
Employee benefits.
Employee benefits are various non-wage compensation provided to employees in addition to their wages or salaries. The benefits can include: housing (employer-provided or employer-paid), group insurance (health, dental, life etc.), disability income protection, retirement benefits, daycare, tuition reimbursement, sick leave, vacation (paid and non-paid), social security, profit sharing, funding of education, and other specialized benefits. In some cases, such as with workers employed in remote or isolated regions, the benefits may include meals. Employee benefits can improve the relationship between employee and employer and lowers staff turnover.
Organizational justice.
Organizational justice is an employee's perception and judgement of employer's treatment in the context of fairness or justice. The resulting actions to influence the employee-employer relationship is also a part of organizational justice.
Workforce organizing.
Employees can organize into trade or labor unions, which represent the workforce to collectively bargain with the management of organizations about working, and contractual conditions and services.
Ending employment.
Usually, either an employee or employer may end the relationship at any time, often subject to a certain notice period. This is referred to as at-will employment. The contract between the two parties specifies the responsibilities of each when ending the relationship and may include requirements such as notice periods, severance pay, and security measures. In some professions, notably teaching, civil servants, university professors, and some orchestra jobs, some employees may have tenure, which means that they cannot be dismissed at will. Another type of termination is a layoff.
Wage labor.
Wage labor is the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer, where the worker sells their labor under a formal or informal employment contract. These transactions usually occur in a labor market where wages are market-determined. In exchange for the wages paid, the work product generally becomes the undifferentiated property of the employer, except for special cases such as the vesting of intellectual property patents in the United States where patent rights are usually vested in the original personal inventor. A wage laborer is a person whose primary means of income is from the selling of his or her labor in this way.
In modern mixed economies such as that of the OECD countries, it is currently the dominant form of work arrangement. Although most work occurs following this structure, the wage work arrangements of CEOs, professional employees, and professional contract workers are sometimes conflated with class assignments, so that "wage labor" is considered to apply only to unskilled, semi-skilled or manual labor.
Wage slavery.
Wage labor, as institutionalized under today's market economic systems, has been criticized, especially by both mainstream socialists and anarcho-syndicalists, using the pejorative term wage slavery. Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labor as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.
The American philosopher John Dewey posited that until "industrial feudalism" is replaced by "industrial democracy", politics will be "the shadow cast on society by big business". Thomas Ferguson has postulated in his investment theory of party competition that the undemocratic nature of economic institutions under capitalism causes elections to become occasions when blocs of investors coalesce and compete to control the state plus cities.
Employment contract.
Australia.
Australian employment has been governed by the Fair Work Act since 2009.
Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) is an association of national level with its international reputation of co-operation and welfare of the migrant workforce as well as its approximately 1200 members agencies in collaboration with and support from the Government of Bangladesh.
Canada.
In the Canadian province of Ontario, formal complaints can be brought to the Ministry of Labour. In the province of Quebec, grievances can be filed with the Commission des normes du travail.
Germany.
Two of the prominent examples of work and employment contracts in Germany are the Werksvertrag or the Arbeitsvertrag, which is a form of Dienstleistungsvertrag (service-oriented contract). An Arbeitsvertrag can also be temporary, whereas a temporary worker is working under Zeitarbeit or Leiharbeit. Another employement setting is Arbeitnehmerüberlassung (ANÜ).
India.
India has Contract Labor, Minimum Wage, Provident Funds Act and various other acts to comply with. Contract labor in India must be paid minimum wage and certain facilities are to be provided to labor. However, there is still a large amount of work that remains to be done to fully implement the Act.
Pakistan.
Pakistan has no contract Labor, Minimum Wage and Provident Funds Acts. Contract labor in Pakistan must be paid minimum wage and certain facilities are to be provided to labor. However, the Acts are not yet fully implemented.
Philippines.
In the Philippines, employment is regulated by the Department of Labor and Employment.
Sweden.
According to Swedish law, there are three types of employment.
There are no laws about minimum salary in Sweden. Instead, there are agreements between employer organizations and trade unions about minimum salaries, and other employment conditions.
There is a type of employment contract which is common but not regulated in law, and that is Hour employment ("swe: Timanställning"), which can be Normal employment (unlimited), but the work time is unregulated and decided per immediate need basis. The employee is expected to be answering the phone and come to work when needed, e.g. when someone is ill and absent from work. They will receive salary only for actual work time and can in reality be fired for no reason by not being called anymore. This type of contract is common in the public sector.
United Kingdom.
In the United Kingdom, employment contracts are categorized by the government into the following types:
United States.
For purposes of U.S. federal income tax withholding, 26 U.S.C. § 3401(c) provides a definition for the term "employee" specific to chapter 24 of the Internal Revenue Code:
"For purposes of this chapter, the term “employee” includes an officer, employee, or elected official of the United States, a State, or any political subdivision thereof, or the District of Columbia, or any agency or instrumentality of any one or more of the foregoing. The term “employee” also includes an officer of a corporation." This definition does not exclude all those who are commonly known as 'employees'. “Similarly, Latham’s instruction which indicated that under 26 U.S.C. § 3401(c) the category of ‘employee’ does not include privately employed wage earners is a preposterous reading of the statute. It is obvious that within the context of both statutes the word ‘includes’ is a term of enlargement not of limitation, and the reference to certain entities or categories is not intended to exclude all others.”
Employees are often contrasted with independent contractors, especially when there is dispute as to the worker's entitlement to have matching taxes paid, workers compensation, and unemployment insurance benefits. However, in September 2009, the court case of "Brown v. J. Kaz, Inc." ruled that independent contractors are regarded as employees for the purpose of discrimination laws if they work for the employer on a regular basis, and said employer directs the time, place, and manner of employment.
In non-union work environments, in the United States, unjust termination complaints can be brought to the United States Department of Labor.
Labor unions are legally recognized as representatives of workers in many industries in the United States. Their activity today centers on collective bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions for their membership, and on representing their members in disputes with management over violations of contract provisions. Larger unions also typically engage in lobbying activities and electioneering at the state and federal level.
Most unions in America are aligned with one of two larger umbrella organizations: the AFL-CIO created in 1955, and the Change to Win Federation which split from the AFL-CIO in 2005. Both advocate policies and legislation on behalf of workers in the United States and Canada, and take an active role in politics. The AFL-CIO is especially concerned with global trade issues.
American business theorist Jeffrey Pfeffer posits that contemporary employment practices and employer commonalities in the United States, including toxic working environments, job insecurity, long hours and increased performance pressure from management, are responsible for 120,000 excess deaths annually, making the workplace the fifth leading cause of death in the United States.
Age-related issues.
Younger age workers.
Young workers are at higher risk for occupational injury and face certain occupational hazards at a higher rate; this is generally due to their employment in high-risk industries. For example, in the United States, young people are injured at work at twice the rate of their older counterparts. These workers are also at higher risk for motor vehicle accidents at work, due to less work experience, a lower use of seat belts, and higher rates of distracted driving. To mitigate this risk, those under the age of 17 are restricted from certain types of driving, including transporting people and goods under certain circumstances.
High-risk industries for young workers include agriculture, restaurants, waste management, and mining. In the United States, those under the age of 18 are restricted from certain jobs that are deemed dangerous under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Youth employment programs are most effective when they include both theoretical classroom training and hands-on training with work placements.
In the conversation of employment among younger aged workers, youth unemployment has also been monitored. Youth unemployment rates tend to be higher than the adult rates in every country in the world.
Older age workers.
Those older than the statutory defined retirement age may continue to work, either out of enjoyment or necessity. However, depending on the nature of the job, older workers may need to transition into less-physical forms of work to avoid injury. Working past retirement age also has positive effects, because it gives a sense of purpose and allows people to maintain social networks and activity levels. Older workers are often found to be discriminated against by employers.
Working poor.
Employment is no guarantee of escaping poverty, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that as many as 40% of workers are poor, not earning enough to keep their families above the $2 a day poverty line. For instance, in India most of the chronically poor are wage earners in formal employment, because their jobs are insecure and low paid and offer no chance to accumulate wealth to avoid risks. According to the UNRISD, increasing labor productivity appears to have a negative impact on job creation: in the 1960s, a 1% increase in output per worker was associated with a reduction in employment growth of 0.07%, by the first decade of this century the same productivity increase implies reduced employment growth by 0.54%. Both increased employment opportunities and increased labor productivity (as long as it also translates into higher wages) are needed to tackle poverty. Increases in employment without increases in productivity leads to a rise in the number of "working poor", which is why some experts are now promoting the creation of "quality" and not "quantity" in labor market policies. This approach does highlight how higher productivity has helped reduce poverty in East Asia, but the negative impact is beginning to show. In Vietnam, for example, employment growth has slowed while productivity growth has continued. Furthermore, productivity increases do not always lead to increased wages, as can be seen in the United States, where the gap between productivity and wages has been rising since the 1980s.
Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute argue that there are differences across economic sectors in creating employment that reduces poverty. 24 instances of growth were examined, in which 18 reduced poverty. This study showed that other sectors were just as important in reducing unemployment, such as manufacturing. The services sector is most effective at translating productivity growth into employment growth. Agriculture provides a safety net for jobs and economic buffer when other sectors are struggling.
Models of the employment relationship.
Scholars conceptualize the employment relationship in various ways. A key assumption is the extent to which the employment relationship necessarily includes conflicts of interests between employers and employees, and the form of such conflicts. In economic theorizing, the labor market mediates all such conflicts such that employers and employees who enter into an employment relationship are assumed to find this arrangement in their own self-interest. In human resource management theorizing, employers and employees are assumed to have shared interests (or a unity of interests, hence the label “unitarism”). Any conflicts that exist are seen as a manifestation of poor human resource management policies or interpersonal clashes such as personality conflicts, both of which can and should be managed away. From the perspective of pluralist industrial relations, the employment relationship is characterized by a plurality of stakeholders with legitimate interests (hence the label “pluralism), and some conflicts of interests are seen as inherent in the employment relationship (e.g., wages v. profits). Lastly, the critical paradigm emphasizes antagonistic conflicts of interests between various groups (e.g., the competing capitalist and working classes in a Marxist framework) that are part of a deeper social conflict of unequal power relations. As a result, there are four common models of employment:
These models are important because they help reveal why individuals hold differing perspectives on human resource management policies, labor unions, and employment regulation. For example, human resource management policies are seen as dictated by the market in the first view, as essential mechanisms for aligning the interests of employees and employers and thereby creating profitable companies in the second view, as insufficient for looking out for workers’ interests in the third view, and as manipulative managerial tools for shaping the ideology and structure of the workplace in the fourth view.
Academic literature.
Literature on the employment impact of economic growth and on how growth is associated with employment at a macro, sector and industry level was aggregated in 2013.
Researchers found evidence to suggest growth in manufacturing and services have good impact on employment. They found GDP growth on employment in agriculture to be limited, but that value-added growth had a relatively larger impact. The impact on job creation by industries/economic activities as well as the extent of the body of evidence and the key studies. For extractives, they again found extensive evidence suggesting growth in the sector has limited impact on employment. In textiles, however, although evidence was low, studies suggest growth there positively contributed to job creation. In agri-business and food processing, they found impact growth to be positive.
They found that most available literature focuses on OECD and middle-income countries somewhat, where economic growth impact has been shown to be positive on employment. The researchers didn't find sufficient evidence to conclude any impact of growth on employment in LDCs despite some pointing to the positive impact, others point to limitations. They recommended that complementary policies are necessary to ensure economic growth's positive impact on LDC employment. With trade, industry and investment, they only found limited evidence of positive impact on employment from industrial and investment policies and for others, while large bodies of evidence does exist, the exact impact remains contested.
Researchers have also explored the relationship between employment and illicit activities. Using evidence from Africa, a research team found that a program for Liberian ex-fighters reduced work hours on illicit activities. The employment program also reduced interest in mercenary work in nearby wars. The study concludes that while the use of capital inputs or cash payments for peaceful work created a reduction in illicit activities, the impact of training alone is rather low.
Globalization and employment relations.
The balance of economic efficiency and social equity is the ultimate debate in the field of employment relations. By meeting the needs of the employer; generating profits to establish and maintain economic efficiency; whilst maintaining a balance with the employee and creating social equity that benefits the worker so that he/she can fund and enjoy healthy living; proves to be a continuous revolving issue in westernized societies.
Globalization has affected these issues by creating certain economic factors that disallow or allow various employment issues. Economist Edward Lee (1996) studies the effects of globalization and summarizes the four major points of concern that affect employment relations:
What also results from Lee's (1996) findings is that in industrialized countries an average of almost 70 per cent of workers are employed in the service sector, most of which consists of non-tradable activities. As a result, workers are forced to become more skilled and develop sought after trades, or find other means of survival. Ultimately this is a result of changes and trends of employment, an evolving workforce, and globalization that is represented by a more skilled and increasing highly diverse labor force, that are growing in non standard forms of employment (Markey, R. et al. 2006).
Alternatives.
Subcultures.
Various youth subcultures have been associated with not working, such as the hippie subculture in the 1960s and 1970s (which endorsed the idea of "dropping out" of society) and the punk subculture, in which some members live in anarchist squats (illegal housing).
Postsecondary education.
One of the alternatives to work is engaging in postsecondary education at a college, university or professional school. One of the major costs of obtaining a postsecondary education is the opportunity cost of forgone wages due to not working. At times when jobs are hard to find, such as during recessions, unemployed individuals may decide to get postsecondary education, because there is less of an opportunity cost.
Workplace democracy.
Workplace democracy is the application of democracy in all its forms (including voting systems, debates, democratic structuring, due process, adversarial process, systems of appeal) to the workplace.
Self-employment.
When an individual entirely owns the business for which they labor, this is known as self-employment. Self-employment often leads to incorporation. Incorporation offers certain protections of one's personal assets. Individuals who are self-employed may own a small business. They may also be considered to be an entrepreneur.
Social assistance.
In some countries, individuals who are not working can receive social assistance support (e.g., welfare or food stamps) to enable them to rent housing, buy food, repair or replace household goods, maintenance of children and observe social customs that require financial expenditure.
Volunteerism.
Workers who are not paid wages, such as volunteers who perform tasks for charities, hospitals or not-for-profit organizations, are generally not considered employed. One exception to this is an internship, an employment situation in which the worker receives training or experience (and possibly college credit) as the chief form of compensation.
Indentured servitude and slavery.
Those who work under obligation for the purpose of fulfilling a debt, such as indentured servants, or as property of the person or entity they work for, such as slaves, do not receive pay for their services and are not considered employed. Some historians suggest that slavery is older than employment, but both arrangements have existed for all recorded history. Indentured servitude and slavery are not considered compatible with human rights or with democracy.


Maurice Karnaugh

Maurice Karnaugh (; born 4 October 1924) is an American physicist, mathematician and inventor known for the Karnaugh map used in Boolean algebra.
Career.
Karnaugh studied mathematics and physics at City College of New York (1944 to 1948) and transferred to Yale University to complete his B.Sc. (1949), M.Sc. (1950) and Ph.D. in physics with a thesis on "The Theory of Magnetic Resonance and Lambda-Type Doubling in Nitric-Oxide" (1952).
Karnaugh worked at Bell Labs (1952 to 1966), developing the Karnaugh map (1954) as well as patents for PCM encoding and magnetic logic circuits and coding. He later worked at IBM's Federal Systems Division in Gaithersburg (1966 to 1970) and at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center (1970 to 1989), studying multistage interconnection networks.
Karnaugh was elected an IEEE Fellow in 1976, and held an adjunct position at Polytechnic University of New York (now New York University Tandon School of Engineering) at the Westchester campus from 1980 to 1999.
He has been married to the former Linn Blank Weil since 1970. He has two grown sons, Robert and Paul, from his first marriage.


Blue Meanies (Apple Computer)

The Blue Meanies of Apple Computer were an engineering group primarily responsible for the architecture of System 7 during the early and mid 1990s.
The name, a reference to the evil characters of Pepperland in the movie "Yellow Submarine", originated with the "Pink"/"Blue" split in Apple's operating system planning. "Pink" was to be the further-out project that ultimately became Taligent, and "Blue" designated incremental improvements to the shipping Mac OS. "Meanies" describes the group's architectural role, which frequently entailed instructing or negating engineers in other groups.
While the Meanies have sometimes been characterized as the "coders of System 7", the Mac OS was by then sufficiently large that major subsystems such as QuickDraw and QuickTime were developed and maintained by specialized groups, and the Meanies primarily focused on orchestrating the components together.
The name appeared outside of Apple as an Easter egg starting in System 7.0.1, where the texts "Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a system software factory!" and "The Blue Meanies:" were followed by a list of names. Subsequent releases were updated to track the comings and goings of people in the group.
The nickname became well known, because many of the Meanies were also the senior engineers interacting with developers at venues such as the Worldwide Developers Conference (especially on the Stump the Experts panel) and MacHack.
A number of notables of the Macintosh world were in the Blue Meanies, including these:


Keith Edelman

Keith Edelman (born June 1950) is an English businessman. He was managing director of Arsenal Football Club between 2000 and 2008.
Biography.
Business.
Keith Edelman graduated from UMIST in 1971 with a BSc (Hons) in management sciences. He then worked for Rank Xerox, IBM and Fiat before joining Bank of America in 1978. Starting as Planning Manager, EMEA Division and then Finance Director, UK and Nordic Region, he eventually became managing director of Bank of America Finance.
In 1983, he joined Grand Metropolitan as a UK strategic director/director of finance, Foods Division. In 1985, he joined the Ladbroke Group as Corporate Planning Director and completed the major acquisitions and disposals for the Group these included the acquisitions of Hilton International, Texas Homecare Plc, Thomson T Line Plc and Gable House Properties Plc. Following the acquisition of Hilton he became chair of Texas Homecare, a chain of DIY stores. In 1991, he left to become managing director of Carlton Communications and in 1993 group chief executive of Storehouse plc which included Mothercare and BHS.
He has also held a number of non-executive appointments, including Eurotunnel (Audit & Remuneration Committees 1994–2004), Haberdashers' Aske's School (Governor 1994–2005), where he was a pupil from prep school through A Levels, Include (Director (Charity) 1997–2001), Glenmorangie (Chairman 2002–2005), Qualceram Shires plc (Director 2005 to 2009) and Arnotts Holdings (2009–2010), Chairman Goals Soccer Centres plc (2013-2016), Senior Independent Director of Supergroup (2009-2018),Non Executive Director of Safestore (2009-2016), Senior Independent Director of Thorntons Plc(2012-2015). Currently he is Chairman Revolution Bars Group Plc, Chairman Pennpetro Group plc, Senior Independent Director Headlam Group Plc, Non Executive Director Altitude Group Plc and a Director of the London Legacy Development Corporation.
Arsenal Football Club.
In 2000, he joined Arsenal Football Club as managing director, bringing his financial and business experience to the club. Edelman, was responsible for all commercial and administrative activities at the club. In a period of increased commercialization of football he completed the first strategic partnership the Club entered into since its formation, selling a 10 percent stake to Granada Media for £77 million. He has overseen the club's re-branding and crest redesign to limit copyright breaches, and was subsequently involved in a sponsorship deal with Nike, valued at £130 million over 10 years.
He was instrumental in the club's development of its new stadium and Keith Edelman arranged all the funding raising the £380 million of banking facilities. He also completed one of the largest football sponsorship deals with Emirates Airlines for over £100 million, including naming rights to the Emirates Stadium. He opened the stadium in August 2006 both on time and on budget and set up all the operational aspects of the stadium that has made Emirates so successful. He signed a controversial sponsorship deal between the club and the Israeli Tourism Ministry, as Arsenal's main sponsor, Emirates Airlines, are the national carrier of Dubai (which does not have diplomatic ties with Israel) and do not fly to Israel. The club, however, denied any rift with Emirates Airlines stemming from the agreement. He oversaw the development of Highbury Square and pre sold over 90% of all units and brought the project in on time and on budget.
In 2007 Keith became club President of the Arsenal Ladies team, a position previously held by David Dein until he left Arsenal FC in April of that year. Edelman was always pragmatic about the club's future and did not rule out the club eventually going public or the major shareholders eventually deciding to sell their stakes. He resigned as a Director at Arsenal Holdings plc on 1 May 2008 and continued until May 2009 as a consultant.


Thomas R. Watjen

Thomas R. Watjen (born c. 1955) is an American businessman. He is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Unum.
Early life.
Watjen was born circa 1955. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1976, and he earned a master in business administration from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business in 1981.
Career.
Watjen first worked at Aetna, followed by Conning & Company. He was a managing director of Morgan Stanley from 1987 to 1994.
Watjen served as the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Provident Companies from 1994 to 1999, when it merged with Unum. He succeeded J. Harold Chandler as the chief executive officer of Unum in 2003, and he served until 2015. He was also the chairman from 2015 to 2017.
Watjen has served on the board of directors of SunTrust Banks since April 2010. He has also served on the board of Prudential plc since July 2017.


Jeff Robbin

Jeffrey L. "Jeff" Robbin is the vice president of consumer applications at Apple, Inc. He is a US computer engineer and entrepreneur notable for creating the MP3 player SoundJam MP with Bill Kincaid that was eventually bought by Apple and renamed iTunes. He remains the lead software designer for iTunes.
Robbin and Kincaid worked for Apple in the 1990s as system software engineers on their operating system project Copland; the project was later abandoned. Both left Apple, where Robbin created Conflict Catcher and Kincaid worked at a startup.
After listening to a show on the radio channel NPR, Kincaid created hardware and device driver support for the Diamond Rio line of digital audio players. He then enlisted Jeff Robbin to develop the front-end for an MP3-playing software they named SoundJam MP. Dave Heller completed the core team. The three chose Casady & Greene as distributor, whom Robbin had previously worked with to distribute Conflict Catcher.
The software saw early success in the Mac music player market, competing with Panic's Audion. "We got [SoundJam] to pretty much be the premiere MP3 player on the Mac," said Robin Casady, co-owner of Casady & Greene.
In early 2000 Apple was looking to purchase an MP3 player and approached both Casady & Greene (SoundJam) and Panic (Audion). Because Panic was caught up in negotiations with AOL, their meeting with Apple never took place. Instead, Apple purchased SoundJam MP in a deal covered by a two-year secrecy clause.
SoundJam MP was renamed iTunes. Robbin, Kincaid, and Heller moved to Apple as the founding developers of iTunes. All three continue to work at Apple, with Robbin as the current lead developer of iTunes.
Robbin was also involved in developing the iPod, as co-lead of the initial iPod team with Tony Fadell and acting as lead developer of the initial iPod firmware.
Although Robbin's role has been published in a number of articles that have disclosed his name and role, an October 16, 2005 article in "TIME" claimed that Steve Jobs had prohibited the magazine from publishing Robbin's last name, explaining that Steve was worried about competitors "poaching his talent".


Percy Lowe

Percy Roycroft Lowe (2 January 1870 – 18 August 1948) was an English surgeon and ornithologist.
Life.
Lowe was born at Stamford, Lincolnshire and studied medicine at Jesus College, Cambridge. He served as a civil surgeon in the Second Boer War, and it was whilst in South Africa that he became interested in ornithology. On his return he became private physician to Sir Frederick Johnstone, 8th Baronet. During World War One he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps; he was Officer in Command on Princess Christian Ambulance Train for which he was awarded the OBE in 1920.
Lowe worked with Dorothea Bate on fossil ostriches in China.
In November 1919 he succeeded William Robert Ogilvie-Grant as Curator of Birds at the Natural History Museum, retiring on his sixty-fifth birthday in 1935. He was succeeded by Norman Boyd Kinnear.
He was editor of the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club from 1920 to 1925 and president of the British Ornithologists' Union from 1938 to 1943. In 1933 he was one of eleven people involved in the appeal that led to the foundation of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), an organisation for the study of birds in the British Isles. His 1936 publication "The finches of the Galapagos in relation to Darwin's conception of species" introduced the term "Darwin's finches".
In 1939 he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union and in 1946 was awarded the Godman-Salvin Medal of the British Ornithological Union


William Carruthers (botanist)

William C Carruthers (29 May 1830 – 2 June 1922) was a Scottish botanist and paleobotanist.
Life.
Carruthers was the keeper of the Botanical Department at the Natural History Museum from 1871 to 1895. He was a consulting botanist to the Royal Agricultural Society (1871–1909).
He was born in Moffat, Dumfriesshire, the son of merchant Samuel Carruthers. Educated at Moffat Academy, he graduated from the University of Edinburgh. As a student he supported himself by working as a tutor. In 1854 he began to study for the Presbyterian Ministry at New College, Edinburgh, but then decided to specialise in natural sciences. He became a lecturer in Botany at the New Veterinary College in Edinburgh, and served as assistant secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He became assistant in the botany department of the British Museum in 1859, becoming Keeper of Botany in 1871 and retiring in 1895. He oversaw the transfer of the British Museum botany collections from Bloomsbury to South Kensington, and saw off an attempt to have them moved to Kew.
He married in 1865 Jeanie, daughter of William Moffat, architect, of Edinburgh. They had three children.
Carruthers published scientific work on oaks, diatoms, mosses, fossil ferns, fossil Cycads, Calamites, and Lepidodendron. He was an expert on graptolites and in 1867 he contributed an article on them to the fourth edition of Roderick Murchison's "Siluria".
He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1871. He was President of the Geologist's Association from 1875–1877. He was president of the Linnean Society from 1886 to 1890, and a member of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh. He was awarded a PhD by the University of Uppsala in 1907.
Religious views.
William Carruthers was actively involved in the Presbyterian Church throughout his life. He was on its Committee on Publications (1880-1920) and edited the "Messenger for Children" (1876-1921). He was keenly interested in the history of Puritanism.
Views on evolution.
Carruthers was skeptical about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. In his 1876 presidential address to the Geologist's Association he argued that "the facts of palaeontological botany are opposed to evolution". He argued that intermediate forms are absent in the plant fossil record, and that the plant fossil record is characterized by "sudden and simultaneous" appearances of a great diversity of flowering plants. This lecture was widely publicised and may have contributed to Darwin terming the origin of the higher plants an "abominable mystery" in 1879. Although we have made much progress in our understanding of evolution and the fossil record, there is no continuous fossil evidence showing how flowers evolved, and botanists still regard this as a mystery. In 1886, as President of the Biological Section of the British Association, he gave an address that argued for lack of evolution in plants based on comparisons of modern plants with those from Egyptian tombs.
Archives.
Carruthers' papers are held in multiple archive collections. His administrative records from his role as keeper of the Botanical Department are held at the Natural History Museum Library and Archives. A series of Carruthers' notes and illustrations are held at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham. Letters concerning Carruthers are held at the University of Edinburgh.


J. Michael Evans

John Michael Evans (born August 16, 1957) is a Canadian technology executive and the President of Alibaba Group. He previously spent 20 years working for U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs and is a former Olympic rower.
Early life, family and education.
Evans was born to Dr. John Robert Evans and his wife Jean. Besides his twin brother Mark, he has four other siblings: Derek, Gillian (Gill), Timothy (Tim), and Willa. He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto and received his bachelor's degree from Princeton University. He later studied at University College, Oxford where he rowed at the stroke oar for Oxford in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race. Alongside his twin brother Mark, Evans went on to join the Canadian Olympic team, where he won a gold medal in rowing at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
Career.
In 2015, Evans was appointed President of Alibaba Group, where he leads Alibaba Group’s international growth strategy outside of China and reports to CEO Daniel Zhang. Evans has served on the board of Alibaba Group since its September 2014 IPO, and has known Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma since 1999 when Ma first approached Goldman Sachs regarding an early investment in the company. Evans was named as one of the National Retail Federation’s Power Players in 2019 for his work at Alibaba Group. In addition, Evans is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Barrick Gold Corporation and several not-for-profit organizations. He is also a trustee of the Asia Society and a member of the Advisory Council for the Bendheim Center for Finance at Princeton University.
Before Alibaba Group, Evans was vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia and spent 19 years as a Partner after joining the firm in 1993. In the high-profile IPO, Goldman was one of six lead underwriters with Mark Schwartz, chairman of Goldman Asia Pacific, named as lead banker for Goldman in a lead-up New York "Times" report. In 2019 Evans was charged for his involvement in the 1MDB scandal, which took place during his time at Goldman Sachs, which was settled.
Philanthropy.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Evans was personally involved in several philanthropic efforts to donate personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers in New York. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo acknowledged in a press briefing that Alibaba Group’s and Evans’ assistance had been “very helpful to us.”


Mark A. Patterson

Mark A. Patterson is an American lobbyist, former Vice President and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs, and former Chief of Staff to the United States Secretary of the Treasury. In 2018, he was hired as general counsel for Senator Chuck Schumer, overseeing investigations and appropriations and leaving his position at law firm Perkins Coie.
Early life and education.
Patterson was born in New York City. His mother was a librarian while his father was a high school English teacher. He graduated from the University at Albany in 1984 and was the Special Assistant of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan from 1984 to 1988. He received his law degree from The Catholic University of America in 1990.
Career.
Patterson later served as Moynihan's Legislative Director (1993-1995), and as Democratic Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the Senate Finance Committee (1995-1999). From 1999 to 2004 Patterson was the Policy Director for Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle.
In 2004 Patterson became a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, with the position of Vice President (2004-2007), and Managing Director (2007-2008). Patterson left Goldman Sachs in April 2008, after which he served as a volunteer for the Obama-Biden presidential campaign, and as the Senate Confirmation Coordinator for the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Project. Upon the confirmation of Barack Obama as President, Patterson was in February 2009 appointed chief of staff to the Secretary of the Treasury. In 2013, the recently appointed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced Patterson's replacement as Treasury chief of staff. Patterson worked as a partner in Perkins Coie's Washington, D.C. office before joining Senator Schumer's team in May 2018.
Personal life.
Patterson is married to Jennifer S. Leete, an Assistant Director in the Enforcement Division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia and of the Supreme Court of the United States.


Middleware analyst

Middleware analysts are computer software engineers with a specialization in products that connect two different computer systems together. These products can be open-source or proprietary. As the term implies, the software, tools, and technologies used by Middleware analysts sit "in-the-middle", between two or more systems; the purpose being to enable two systems to communicate and share information.
Roles and Responsibilities.
Middleware analysts look at the system of systems. They solve technical problems which involve large scale inter-disciplinary objectives with multiple, heterogeneous, distributed systems that are embedded in networks at multiple levels.
Middleware analysts hold and maintain proficiency in middleware technologies. Middleware is computer software that connects software components or applications. A central theme in most middleware analyst roles is being able to articulate why Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is important to the business.
Best practices for implementations.
Middleware best practices promote usability and maintainability among the systems served. A few examples of best practices are included here to provide some insight as to how middleware addresses key principles of standards-based computing.
One common problem for middleware is the manner in which user-defined applications are configured so that queue references bypass queue alias definitions referring directly to the queue local or queue remote definition. Such a bypass of queue alias deviates best practices and should be corrected when the administrator and/or programmer can correct it within time and scope parameters. All references from user-defined applications should point to queue aliases. Then the queue aliases should point to the defined queue local or queue remote.
Queue aliases allow flexibility for middleware administrators to resolve or relieve production problems quickly. By using queue aliases, middleware administrators can redirect message flow, in the event of a service problem, without changes to the user-defined application. For example, if a queue local were overflowing, a middleware admin could change the queue alias to point to a temporary queue local, thereby allowing the user-defined application to continue its processing without interruption while the underlying root cause is corrected.
By pointing all user-defined application references to queue aliases, it preserves the flexibility that middleware admins would have to help with production issues that may occur. If the best practice of queue aliases were not followed, the ability of a middleware admin to help with a production outage would be hindered.
Skills.
Message queuing (“MQ”) is a middleware technology that greatly simplifies communication between the nodes of a system and between the nodes that connect systems together. Information system consultants use message queuing as their skill base. Upon this base, information system consultants add workflow management, message brokering, and J2EE implementations using java virtual machines (JVMs) and Message Driven Beans (MDBs).
Arguably the most important skill a middleware analyst uses is not technical, it is surely cultural. SOA does require people to think of business and technology differently. Instead of thinking of technology first, middleware analysts must first think in terms of business functions, or services. It is expected that adoption of SOA will change business IT departments, creating service-oriented (instead of technology-oriented) IT organizations. Middleware analysts perform crucial evangelization of this concept.
The enterprise service bus is a core element of any SOA. ESBs provide the "any to any" connectivity between services within a company, and beyond that company to connect to the company's trading partners. Therefore, middleware analysts need to be skilled in SOA and enterprise service bus concepts first and foremost. Middleware analysts rely on an SOA reference architecture to lay out an SOA environment that meets the company's needs and priorities. The ESB is part of this reference architecture and provides the backbone of an SOA but is not considered an SOA by itself.
Security concerns.
Generic common practices.
Because middleware is a cross-platform tool, the sophistication of your middleware analysts are expected to be acute. People that are designing and implementing the middleware message flow need to fully understand how the security model on each target platform works. This may include Windows, Unix, z/OS or AS/400.
Middleware protects data in transit through PKI and SSL technology. Security certificates are procured from a certification authority and regularly deployed and updated on servers. This protects data while it is in transit as it leaves one Server and arrives on the next server in the chain. It does not protect data while data is at rest.
Supplemental transmission security can augment the primary SSL measures that exist on your server. These are SSL client authentication, DN filtering, CRL check by LDAP, and cryptographic hardware (IPSEC-level encryption). This type of security is called "border-level security" because it only protects the data from when it leaves your borders until it gets to your trading partner's borders. It does not protect data once data has entered the border. IPSEC is the most efficient and least costly protection method. SSL is the middle ground, with a balance between flexibility, resource consumption, and transmission time.
When data is at rest in queues, it is not protected by MQ. That is, data is in "plain text". Therefore, if the data contained in messages is sensitive, then it is essential that application-level data encryption be used. Examples of data which could be protected by this strategy include banking data (account numbers, banking transactions, etc.) Application-level transaction security is the most secure form of protection but also the most costly in terms of CPU and I/O bandwidth consumption of both the sending and receiving servers. It is also the least efficient.
Middleware data channels can be set up to provide varying degrees of protection. A sender/receiver channel pair could be configured to provide IPSEC transport-level security not using SSL. A second sender/receiver pair could be configured to provide SSL border-to-border level security not using IPSEC. A third sender/receiver channel pair could be set up to provide application-level encryption. Using this scheme, you provision a wide selection of protection mechanisms from which your applications can choose at runtime. This offers applications the ability to achieve best security when needed or more efficient security when data is not quite so sensitive.
HIPAA-specific considerations.
If your enterprise handles HIPAA ePHI data, then your middleware analysts need to know and understand the requirements set forth by law. Failure to protect data at-rest may subject your organization to fines and penalties levied by the Federal government or other authority. This requires application-level data encryption prior to delivering the data to the queuing system for transport.
System administrators, including middleware analysts, are not permitted to view unprotected ePHI data. Therefore, whenever ePHI data is present in any information system, it must be protected from the ability of an administrator to view it. It is not permissible to allow ePHI data to be kept in a queue unprotected.


Rao Remala

Rao Remala is an Indian former software developer, now angel investor, and philanthropist. He was the first Indian to be hired at Microsoft in 1981. He was one of the lead developers of the first version of Microsoft Windows. He holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from NIT Warangal. Prior to joining Microsoft, he worked at HCL.
Life.
Rao Remala was born in T. Kothapalem village Nagayalanka Mandalam in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh to a peasant family. He has a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from NIT Warangal and master's degree from IIT Kanpur.


Roger Bland

Roger Farrant Bland, (born 3 April 1955) is a British curator and numismatist. At the British Museum, he served as Keeper of the Department of Portable Antiquities and Treasure from 2005 to 2013, Keeper of the Department of Prehistory and Europe from 2012 to 2013, and Keeper of the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory from 2013 to 2015. Since 2015, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Leicester and a Senior Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge.
Honours.
On 6 May 1993, Bland was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA). In the 2008 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to Heritage". In 2014, he was awarded the Medal of the Royal Numismatic Society. In 2016, he was awarded the President's Medal by the British Academy "for his contribution to the protection, and academic and public understanding, of Britain’s cultural heritage".


Unfair dismissal (Australia)

In Australian industrial law, unfair dismissal refers to an unlawful act of employment termination due to it being an unfair action on the employee by the employer.
History.
The ability for an individual to seek relief from unfair dismissal was first established in a statutory scheme in South Australia in 1972, followed thereafter by Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria in the early 1990s.
Protection from unfair dismissal at the Commonwealth level was enhanced in 1984 by the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission with its ruling in the "Termination, Change and Redundancy Case", that awards should contain a provision that dismissal "shall not be harsh, unjust or unreasonable" and subsequent awards following it were upheld by the High Court of Australia. The Parliament of Australia later extended the reach of protection from unfair dismissal with the passage of the "Industrial Relations Reform Act 1993", which relied upon the external affairs power and the ILO "Termination of Employment Convention, 1982".
Contemporary law.
Commonwealth jurisdiction.
Unfair dismissal findings.
Unfair dismissal will be found to have occurred where the Fair Work Commission, acting under section 385 of the "Fair Work Act 2009", determines that:
If the Fair Work Commission determines that a dismissal was unfair, the Commission must decide whether to order reinstatement or compensation. The Commission is required to first consider whether reinstatement is appropriate and can only order compensation (capped at 6 months pay) if it is satisfied that reinstatement is inappropriate.
Coverage.
In general, people covered by unfair dismissal laws are those who have worked more than six months for an employer (or more than one year for a small business employer), for which one or more or the following conditions must apply:
The scope of coverage is quite broad. The Commonwealth has declared that all employers falling within its jurisdiction are subject to the scheme, including:
In addition, the States have delegated certain classes of employers by virtue of the Constitution's referral power:
State jurisdiction.
Where the "Fair Work Act" does not apply, relief from unfair dismissal may arise under State laws. In Western Australia, recourse may be available from the Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission.


Peter Aman

Peter Aman is an American consultant and politician who was a candidate for mayor of Atlanta in the 2017 mayoral election.
Education.
Aman graduated from Duke University with honors in 1988 with a bachelor's degree in public policy and history. He went on to attend the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1994, where he earned a Master of Business Administration with distinction.
Career.
A former partner at the Atlanta office of the consulting firm Bain and Company, Aman worked pro bono for Shirley Franklin, the then-mayor of Atlanta, in the 2000s. Initially signing up to do several months of work, Bain ended up giving the city three years of Aman's time. During that time, he led the team that wrote the "Bain Report," in which he and his teammates recommended that Franklin and the Atlanta City Council implement certain policy changes, such as creating a realistic budget. Franklin's successor as mayor, Kasim Reed, chose Aman to be the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the city of Atlanta initially for a year, later extending his tenure as COO to two years. In 2011, he left his job as Atlanta's COO to resume working at Bain. He retired from the firm in June 2016 so that he could focus on running for mayor.
Aman has served on the board of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the Atlanta Committee for Progress, the Atlanta Police Foundation, and The Galloway School.
2017 Atlanta mayoral campaign.
Aman officially entered the race on April 21, 2016. He started the race polling at 1.8%, within the poll's margin of error in March 2017. , he was polling at 12.6%, placing him in third place, 9.5 points behind the front-runner Mary Norwood, and 6.3 points ahead of fourth place, Cathy Woolard. He lost the mayoral race on November 7, 2017.


Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange (born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn; May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs influenced the development of documentary photography and humanized the consequences of the Great Depression.
Early life.
Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey to second-generation German immigrants Johanna Lange and Heinrich Nutzhorn. She grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side and attended PS 62 on Hester Street, where she was "one of the only gentiles—quite possibly the only—in a class of 3000 Jews." She had a younger brother, Martin.
Lange's father abandoned the family when she was 12 years old—the second severe trauma of her childhood. Later she dropped her father's family name and assumed her mother's maiden name. At age seven she had contracted polio, which left her with a weakened right leg and a permanent limp. "It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me, and humiliated me," Lange once said of her altered gait. "I've never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it."
Career.
Lange graduated from the Wadleigh High School for Girls, New York City; by this time, even though she had never owned or operated a camera, she had already decided that she would become a photographer. She began her study of photography at Columbia University under the tutelage of Clarence H. White, and later gained informal apprenticeships with several New York photography studios, including that of the famed Arnold Genthe.
In 1918, she left New York with a female friend intending to travel the world, but her plans were disrupted upon being robbed. She settled in San Francisco where she found work as a 'finisher' in a photographic supply shop; there she became acquainted with other photographers and met an investor who backed her in establishing a successful portrait studio. In 1920, she married the noted western painter Maynard Dixon, with whom she had two sons, Daniel, born in 1925, and John, born in 1930. Lange's studio business supported her family for the next fifteen years.
Lange's early studio work mostly involved shooting portrait photographs of the social elite in San Francisco. At the onset of the Great Depression, she turned her lens from the studio to the street. Her photographs during this period bear kinship with John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath".
In the depths of the worldwide Depression, 1933, some fourteen million people in the U.S. were out of work; many were homeless, drifting aimlessly, often without enough food to eat. In the midwest and southwest drought and dust storms added to the economic havoc. During the decade of the 1930s some 300,000 men, women, and children migrated west to California, hoping to find work. Broadly, these migrant families were called by the opprobrium "Okies" (as from Oklahoma) regardless of where they came from. They traveled in old, dilapidated cars or trucks, wandering from place to place to follow the crops. Lange began to photograph these luckless folk, leaving her studio to document their lives in the streets and roads of California. She roamed the byways with her camera, portraying the extent of the social and economic upheaval of the Depression. It is here that Lange found her purpose and direction as a photographer. She was no longer a portraitist; but neither was she a photojournalist. Instead, she became known as one of the first of a new kind, a "documentary" photographer.
Her photographic studies of the unemployed and homeless—starting with "White Angel Breadline (1933)", which depicted a lone man facing away from the crowd in front of a soup kitchen run by a widow known as the White Angel—captured the attention of local photographers and media, and eventually led to her employment with the federal Resettlement Administration (RA), later called the Farm Security Administration (FSA).
Lange developed personal techniques of talking with her subjects while working, putting them at ease and enabling her to document pertinent remarks to accompany the photography. The titles and annotations often revealed personal information about her subjects.
Resettlement Administration.
Lange and Dixon divorced in December 1935; she then married economist Paul Schuster Taylor, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. For the next five years they traveled the California coast as well as the midwest documenting rural poverty in general and the exploitation of sharecroppers and migrant laborers in particular. Taylor interviewed subjects and gathered economic data while Lange produced photographs and accompanying data. They lived and worked from Berkeley for the rest of her life.
Working for the Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration, Lange's images brought to public attention the plight of the poor and forgotten—particularly sharecroppers, displaced farm families, and migrant workers. Distributed to newspapers across the country, Lange's poignant images became icons of the era.
One of Lange's most recognized works is "Migrant Mother", published in 1936. The woman in the photograph is Florence Owens Thompson. In 1960, Lange spoke about her experience taking the photograph:
Lange reported the conditions at the camp to the editor of a San Francisco newspaper, showing him her photography. The editor informed federal authorities and published an article that included some of the images. In response, the government rushed aid to the camp to prevent starvation.
According to Thompson's son, while Lange got some details of the story wrong, the impact of the photograph came from an image that projected both the strengths and needs of migrant workers. Twenty-two of Lange's photographs produced for the FSA were included in John Steinbeck's "The Harvest Gypsies" when it was first published in 1936 in "The San Francisco News". According to an essay by photographer Martha Rosler, "Migrant Mother" became the most reproduced photograph in the world.
Japanese American internment.
In 1941, Lange was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for achievement in photography. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor, she gave up the fellowship in order to go on assignment for the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to document the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans from the west coast of the US. She covered the internment of Japanese Americans and their subsequent incarceration, traveling throughout urban and rural California to photograph families required to leave their homes and hometowns on orders of the government. Lange visited several temporary assembly centers as they opened, eventually fixing on Manzanar, the first of the permanent internment camps, (located in eastern California some 300 miles from the coast).
Much of Lange's work focused on the waiting and anxiety caused by the forced collection and removal of people: piles of luggage waiting to be sorted; families waiting for transport, wearing identification tags; young-to-elderly individuals, stunned, not comprehending why they must leave their homes, or what their future held. (See Exclusion, removal, detention). To many observers, Lange's photography—including one photo of American school children pledging allegiance to the flag shortly before being removed from their homes and schools and sent to internment—is a haunting reminder of the travesty of incarcerating people who aren't charged with committing a crime.
Sensitive to the implications of her images, authorities impounded most of Lange's photography of the internment process—these photos were not seen publicly during the war. Today her photography of the evacuations and internments are available in the National Archives on the website of the Still Photographs Division and at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
California School of Fine Arts and San Francisco Art Institute.
In 1945, Ansel Adams invited Lange to teach at the first fine art photography department at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), now known as San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). Imogen Cunningham and Minor White also joined the faculty.
Aperture.
In 1952, Lange co-founded the photography magazine "Aperture". In the mid-1950s, "Life" magazine commissioned Lange and Pirkle Jones to shoot a documentary about the death of the town of Monticello, California, and the subsequent displacement of its residents by the damming of Putah Creek to form Lake Berryessa. After "Life" decided not run the piece, Lange devoted an entire issue of "Aperture" to the work. The collection was shown at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1960.
Another series for "Life", begun in 1954 and featuring the attorney Martin Pulich, grew out of Lange's interest in how poor people were defended in the court system, which by one account, grew out of personal experience associated with her brother's arrest and trial.
Death and legacy.
Lange's health declined in the last decade of her life. Among other ailments she suffered from was what later was identified as post-polio syndrome. She died of esophageal cancer on October 11, 1965, in San Francisco, at age seventy. She was survived by her second husband, Paul Taylor, two children, three stepchildren, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Three months after her death, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City mounted a retrospective of her work that Lange had helped to curate. It was MoMA's first retrospective solo exhibition of the works of a female photographer. In February 2020, MoMA exhibited her work again, with the title "Dorothea Lange: Words and Pictures," prompting critic Jackson Arn to write that "the first thing" this exhibition "needs to do — and does quite well — is free her from the history textbooks where she’s long been jailed." Contrasting her work with that of other twentieth century photographers such as Eugène Atget and André Kertész whose images "were in some sense context-proof, Lange’s images tend to cry out for further information. Their aesthetic power is obviously bound up in the historical importance of their subjects, and usually that historical importance has had to be communicated through words." That characteristic has caused "art purists" and "political purists" alike to criticize Lange's work, which Arn argues is unfair: "The relationship between image and story," Arn notes, was often altered by Lange's employers as well as by government forces when her work did not suit their commercial purposes or undermined their political purposes. In his review of this exhibition, critic Brian Wallis also stressed the distortions in the "afterlife of photographs" that often went contrary to Lange's intentions. Finally, Jackson Arn situates Lange's work alongside other Depression-era artists such as Pearl Buck, Margaret Mitchell, Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck, Frank Capra, Thomas Hart Benton, and Grant Wood in terms of their role creating a sense of the national "We".
In 2003, Lange was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 2006, an elementary school was named in her honor in Nipomo, California, near the site where she had photographed "Migrant Mother". In 2008, she was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. Her son, Daniel Dixon, accepted the honor in her place. In October 2018, Lange's hometown of Hoboken, New Jersey honored her with a mural depicting Lange and two other prominent women from Hoboken's history, Maria Pepe and Dorothy McNeil.


Jim Ziolkowski

Jim Ziolkowski is the founder, president and CEO of buildOn, an international nonprofit organization that runs youth service learning programs in urban U.S. high schools and constructs schools and promotes literacy in developing countries. He is the best-selling author of “Walk in Their Shoes: Can One Person Change the World?”
Early life.
Ziolkowski was raised in Jackson, Michigan. He grew up in a Roman Catholic family and has credited his faith with influencing his later humanitarian work.
In 1989, Ziolkowski graduated cum laude from Michigan State University with a bachelor's degree in Finance. Ziolkowski spent a significant part of the next year traveling the world and witnessing extreme poverty and the suffering caused by it. While backpacking in Nepal, he came upon an isolated village celebrating the opening of a new school. Ziolkowski credited the hope he witnessed in this community from increased access to education as an experience that led him to later found buildOn.
After returning to the United States, Ziolkowski began a career in corporate finance with General Electric (GE) as part of its Financial Management Professionals program, an intensive two-year program that grooms recent college grads for GE leadership roles.
Inspired by his own travels to some of the world's most economically impoverished countries, Ziolkowski soon quit his job at GE to found Building with Books (which later became buildOn) with the objective of building schools in developing countries and creating youth service learning programs in America's underserved urban neighborhoods. Building with Books constructed its first school in 1991 in Bairro Liberdade, Brazil, followed by schools in Malawi and Nepal.
In 1997, after returning from a school building project in Malawi in which he narrowly survived malaria, Ziolkowski decided to put an increased focus on Building with Books’ U.S. service learning programs. Seeking to identify with urban U.S. students in a more meaningful way, Ziolkowski spent the next three years living in Harlem, New York.
buildOn.
Ziolkowski has stated that his personal goal and the mission of buildOn, the international service learning organization he founded, is to break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy and low expectations through service and education. According to buildOn's website, the organization currently constructs schools in seven developing countries on four continents - Burkina Faso, Haiti, Malawi, Mali, Nepal, Nicaragua and Senegal.
buildOn also organizes youth service learning programs in seven urban areas in the United States: Boston; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Detroit; Chicago; New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area. Students participating in these programs volunteer in their own communities serving in direct service projects, such as feeding the homeless and caring for the elderly and people with disabilities, and indirect service projects, such as boarding blighted buildings and cleaning up public spaces. Some students in buildOn's service learning programs are also given the opportunity to participate in the building of an international school, through buildOn's “Trek for Knowledge" program.
In 2010, Brandeis University conducted a study of one of buildOn's programs in the Bronx, New York. buildOn subsequently published these findings, which support a causal link between the personal skills buildOn's service learning programs focus on and improved academic achievement.
buildOn is based in Stamford, Connecticut, and has a four-star rating from Charity Navigator.
"Walk in Their Shoes: Can One Person Change the World?".
Ziolkowski authored the New York Times bestselling education book “Walk in their Shoes: Can One Person Change the World?” in 2013. The book tells the story of Ziolkowski and buildOn's mission to change the world one community at a time by building schools in developing countries and empowering youth from challenging urban areas through service learning programs in the U.S, as well as stories of the people who have been affected by buildOn's work.
Walk in Their Shoes received a 2014 Christopher Award and ranked on the New York Times Education list. Ziolkowski has shared his story with numerous corporations including Google, Microsoft and General Electric and presented at TED Long Beach. He has also spoken at numerous high schools and universities including St. John's University, where the book was read by all incoming freshmen during the 2013-14 school year.
Awards and Acknowledgements.
Ziolkowski has been featured on NBC's TODAY Show, MSNBC's Morning Joe, PBS, Fast Company, and CBS Evening News. In fall of 2010, Ziolkowski was named one of Catholic Digest's Catholic Heroes.


Wayne Westerman


Nicholas Wheeler

Nicholas Charles Tyrwhitt Wheeler (born 20 January 1965 in Ludlow, Shropshire) is an English businessman. He attempted a number of different businesses, including a photography venture and a Christmas tree delivery service. In 1986, he established the Charles Tyrwhitt company and shirt brand, which he owns.
Life and career.
Wheeler grew up in Ludlow and was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, Eton College, and the University of Bristol, where he studied geography. His first job was as a management consultant for Bain & Company.
In November 1986, he set up Charles Tyrwhitt, now a well-known shirt brand in the United Kingdom. It has grown to be the UK’s largest mail order shirt business, and it also has several brick and mortar locations (as of October 2014, 17 in the United Kingdom, seven in the United States, and one in France).
In 2008, he was a regional judge for the "Entrepreneur Challenge" in the UK.
Wheeler is married to Chrissie Rucker, founder of The White Company. They have four children: Tom, Ella, India and Bea. His sister, Susie Cummings, is founder and CEO of Nurole, the online head-hunting platform.
In 2020, Wheeler and his wife's collective wealth was estimated at £427 million by the "Sunday Times Rich List". They live in Buckinghamshire and also own a chalet in Klosters, Switzerland, named "Haus Alpina".
In 2020, Wheeler invested in Dash Water, a producer of naturally flavoured spring water.


James Francis Stephens

James Francis Stephens (16 September 1792 – 22 December 1852) was an English entomologist and naturalist. He is known for his 12 volume "Illustrations of British Entomology" (1846) and the "Manual of British Beetles" (1839).
Early life.
Stephens was born in Shoreham-by-Sea and studied at Christ's Hospital. His father was a navy captain William James Stephens (d. 1799) and his mother was Mary Peck (later Mrs Dallinger). He went to school at the Blue Coat School, Hertford and later at Christ's Hospital, London. He was then sent to study under Shute Barrington (1734–1826), the bishop of Durham in 1800. He left in 1807 and worked as a clerk in the Admiralty office, Somerset House, from 1807 to 1845 thanks to his uncle Admiral Stephens.
Entomology.
Stephens took an interest in natural history even as a schoolboy. He wrote a manuscript "Catalogue of British Animals" in 1808. He was elected fellow of the Linnean Society on 17 February 1815, and of the Zoological Society of London in 1826. From 1815 to 1825 he took a great interest in ornithology and contributed to the work of George Shaw (1751-1813). He was granted leave from office to assist William Elford Leach in 1818 to arrange the insect collection at the British Museum. He returned to the Admiralty but troubles with his superiors led him to retire early leading to loss of part of his pension. He then worked unpaid in the British Museum until his death and described as many as 2800 British insect species. He often used a pocket lens rather than a microscope and used a killing bottle with crushed laurel leaves rather than pinning specimens directly as was the practice then.
In 1833, he was a founder of what became the Royal Entomological Society of London. Stephens made a large insect collection, which included many type specimens. In 1822 he married Sarah, daughter of a Captain Roberts. Their children died young. Stephens died at Kennington on 22 December 1852 and was survived by his wife. After his death his insect collection was purchased by the British Museum. His library was bought by Henry Tibbats Stainton (1822–1892) who continued to keep Stephen's tradition of keeping the books available to other entomologists on Wednesday evenings. Stainton also published a catalogue of these books "Bibliotheca Stephensiana" (1853).
Works.
Stephens was the author of
Disputes.
Stephens reported that James Rennie (1787–1867) pirated his illustrations in his 1832 "Conspectus of the Butterflies and Moths Found in Britain" and went to court. He however lost and most of his earnings from his book were lost to legal fees. Stephen's "Illustrations of British Entomology", often entitled simply "British Entomology" was in immediate competition with John Curtis' "British Entomology" (1824–1839). This gave rise to an acrimonious dispute which split the British entomological establishment into opposing factions for over thirty years. They were never reconciled despite Stephen's close friend John Obadiah Westwood's attempt to heal the rift.
Charles Darwin.
While at the University of Cambridge, the student Charles Darwin became an enthusiastic insect collector. He sent Stephens records of the rarer insects he had captured, and was delighted when "Illustrations of British entomology" gave him credit for capturing insects described in 33 entries, quoting his words in all but two of the cases. Darwin recalled in his autobiography "No poet ever felt more delight at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing in Stephen's "Illustrations of British Insects" the magic words, 'captured by C. Darwin, Esq.' ", though the closest wording as published actually appeared slightly differently, as "captured by the Rev. F. W. Hope and C. Darwin, Esq., in North Wales" and "Taken in North Wales by C. Darwin, Esq.".