Hospitality
Contemporary usage seems different from historical uses that lend it personal connotations. Today's hospitality conjures images of throwing good parties, gracious hosts entertaining, etiquette, Martha Stewart or even talk shows, or, the hospitality services industry as it relates to the entertainment and tourism business. On the other hand, hospitality used to be, and still is, a serious duty, responsibility, or ethic. Hospitality ethics is a discipline that studies this usage of hospitality.
In the western context, with its dynamic tension between Athens and Jerusalem, two phases can be distinguished with a very progressive transition: a hospitality based on an individually felt sense of duty, and one based on "official" institutions for organized but anonymous social services: special places for particular types of "strangers" such as the poor, orphan(s), ill, alien, criminal, etc. Perhaps this progressive institutionalization can be aligned to the transition between Middle Ages and Renaissance (Ivan Illich, The Rivers North of the Future).

Contemporary usage
In Middle Eastern Culture, it was considered a cultural norm to take care of the strangers and foreigners living among you. These norms are reflected in many Biblical commands and examples, for instance: [1]
Perhaps the most extreme example is provided in Genesis. Lot provides hospitality to a group of angels (who he thinks are only men); when a mob tries to rape them, Lot goes so far as to offer his own daughters as a substitute, saying "Don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof." (Genesis 19:8, NIV).
The obligations of both guests are stern. The bond is formed by eating salt under the roof, and is so strict that an Arab story tells of a thief who tasted something to see if it was sugar, and on realizing it was salt, put back all that he had taken and left.

Biblical and Middle Eastern conceptions of hospitality
Hospitality as a cultural norm or value is an established sociological phenomenon that people study and write papers about (see references, and Hospitality ethics).

See also
Of Hospitality - Jacques Derrida, translated by Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  
Sandy railway station serves the town of Sandy in Bedfordshire, England. It is managed by First Capital Connect.

Lu Jiuyuan (Chinese: 陸九淵; Pinyin: Lù Jiǔyuān), or Lu Xiangshan (陆象山; Lù Xiàngshān) (1139-1192) was a Chinese scholar who used Confucian terminology in a very Buddhist spirit.
Later movements of Neo-Confucianism revolted against Lu Jiuyuan's metaphysics that regarded moral conduct as a consequence of intuitive insights into the essence of reality. A later Neo-Confucian movement, the Lu Wang School, is named after Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Yangming.
In more recent times, his philosophy has been revived by Liang Sou-ming with the book The Civilization and Philosophy of the East and the West (1921).

Erewash is a local government district and borough in Derbyshire, England, to the east of Derby. It contains the towns of Ilkeston, Sandiacre and Long Eaton, and fourteen civil parishes.
The borough was formed on April 1, 1974 by the merger of the borough of Ilkeston, the Long Eaton urban district and part of South East Derbyshire Rural District.
In the May 2005 General Election, the constituency seat was contested by, amongst others, Robert Kilroy-Silk of Veritas and R. U. Seerius of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.
Amber Valley • Ashfield • Bassetlaw • Blaby • Bolsover • Boston • Broxtowe • Charnwood • Chesterfield • Corby • Daventry • Derby • Derbyshire Dales • East Lindsey • East Northamptonshire • Erewash • Gedling • Harborough • High Peak • Hinckley and Bosworth • Kettering • Leicester • Lincoln • Mansfield • Melton • Newark and Sherwood • Northampton • North East Derbyshire • North Kesteven • North West Leicestershire • Nottingham • Oadby and Wigston • Rushcliffe • Rutland • South Derbyshire • South Holland • South Kesteven • South Northamptonshire • Wellingborough • West Lindsey
Counties with multiple districts: Derbyshire • Leicestershire • Lincolnshire • Northamptonshire • Nottinghamshire

Legacy

Bacchi Tempel (1783)
Fredmans Epistlar (1790)
Fredmans Sånger (1791) Works in English
Bellman's life inspired the Bellman joke, a type of joke told by Swedish schoolchildren. Since the jokes first appeared in the 19th century, however, they have evolved so that the Bellman of today's jokes has nothing to do with the poet.

A Chinese character or Han character (Simplified Chinese: 汉字; Traditional Chinese: 漢字; Pinyin: Hànzì) is a logogram used in writing Chinese, Japanese, sometimes Korean, and formerly Vietnamese.
The number of Chinese characters contained in the Kangxi dictionary is approximately 47,035, although a large number of these are rarely-used variants accumulated throughout history. Studies carried out in China have shown that full literacy requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters.
In Chinese tradition, each character corresponds to a single syllable. A majority of words in all modern varieties of Chinese are polysyllabic and thus require two or more characters to write. Cognates in the various Chinese languages/dialects which have the same or similar meaning but different pronunciations can be written with the same character. In addition, many characters were adopted according to their meaning by the Japanese and Korean languages to represent native words, disregarding pronunciation altogether. The loose relationship between phonetics and characters has thus made it possible for them to be used to write very different and probably unrelated languages.
Chinese characters are also known as sinographs, and the Chinese writing system as sinography. Non-Chinese languages which have adopted sinography — and, with the orthography, a large number of loanwords from the Chinese language — are known as Sinoxenic languages, whether or not they still use the characters. The term does not imply any genetic affiliation with Chinese. The major Sinoxenic languages are generally considered to be Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese.

History

Main article: Neolithic signs in China Written styles

Main articles: Chinese character classification and radical (Chinese character) Formation of characters
Contrary to popular belief, pictograms make up only a small portion of Chinese characters. While characters in this class derive from pictures, they have been standardized, simplified, and stylized to make them easier to write, and their derivation is therefore not always obvious. Examples include 日 (rì) for "sun", 月 (yuè) for "moon", and 木 (mù) for "tree".
There is no concrete number for the proportion of modern characters that are pictographic in nature; however, Xu Shen (c. 100 CE) estimated that 4% of characters fell into this category.

1. Pictograms (象形字 xiàngxíngzì)
Also called semantic-phonetic compounds, or phono-semantic compounds, this category represents the largest group of characters in modern Chinese. Characters of this sort are composed of two parts: a pictograph, which suggests the general meaning of the character, and a phonetic part, which is derived from a character pronounced in the same way as the word the new character represents.
Examples are 河 (hé) river, 湖 (hú) lake, 流 (liú) stream, 冲 (chōng) riptide, 滑 (huá) slippery. All these characters have on the left a radical of three dots, which is a simplified pictograph for a water drop, indicating that the character has a semantic connection with water; the right-hand side in each case is a phonetic indicator. For example, in the case of 冲 (chōng), the phonetic indicator is 中 (zhōng), which by itself means middle. In this case it can be seen that the pronunciation of the character has diverged from that of its phonetic indicator; this process means that the composition of such characters can sometimes seem arbitrary today. Further, the choice of radicals may also seem arbitrary in some cases; for example, the radical of 貓 (māo) cat is 豸 (zhì), originally a pictograph for worms, but in characters of this sort indicating an animal of any sort.
Xu Shen (c. 100 CE) placed approximately 82% of characters into this category, while in the Kangxi Dictionary (1716 CE) the number is closer to 90%, due to the extremely productive use of this technique to extend the Chinese vocabulary.

2. Pictophonetic compounds (形聲字/形声字, Xíngshēngzì)
Also called a simple indicative, simple ideograph, or ideogram, characters of this sort either add indicators to pictographs to make new meanings, or illustrate abstract concepts directly. For instance, while 刀 (dāo) is a pictogram for "knife", placing an indicator in the knife makes 刃 (rèn), an ideogram for "blade". Other common examples are 上 (shàng) for "up" and 下 (xià) for "down". This category is small, as most concepts can be represented by characters in other categories.

3. Ideograph (指事字, zhǐshìzì)
Also translated as associative compounds, characters of this sort combine pictograms to symbolize an abstract concept. For instance, 木 (mu) is a pictogram of a tree, and putting two 木 together makes 林 (lin), meaning forest. Combining 日 (rì) sun and 月 (yuè) moon makes 明 (míng) bright, which is traditionally interpreted as symbolizing the combination of sun and moon as the natural sources of light.
Xu Shen estimated that 13% of characters fall into this category.
Some scholars flatly reject the existence of this category, opining that failure of modern attempts to identify a phonetic in an alleged logical aggregate is due simply to our not looking at ancient so-called secondary readings.

4. Logical aggregates (會意字/会意字, Huìyìzì)
Characters in this category originally didn't represent the same meaning but have bifurcated through orthographic and often semantic drift. For instance, 考 (kǎo) to verify and 老 (lǎo) old were once the same character, meaning "elderly person", but detached into two separate words. Characters of this category are rare, so in modern systems this group is often omitted or combined with others.

5. Associate Transformation (轉注字/转注字, Zhuǎnzhùzì)

Main article: Jiajie 6. Borrowing (假借字, Jiǎjièzì)
Just as Roman letters have a characteristic shape (lower-case letters occupying a roundish area, with ascenders or descenders on some letters), Chinese characters occupy a more or less square area. Characters made up of multiple parts squash these parts together in order to maintain a uniform size and shape — this is the case especially with characters written in the Sòngtǐ style. Because of this, beginners often practise on squared graph paper, and the Chinese sometimes use the term "Square-Block Characters" (Simplified Chinese: 方块字; Traditional Chinese: 方塊字; Pinyin: fāngkuàizì).
The actual shape of many Chinese characters varies in different cultures. Mainland China adopted simplified characters in 1956, but Traditional Chinese characters are still used in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Singapore has also adopted simplified Chinese characters. Postwar Japan has used its own less drastically simplified characters since 1946, while South Korea has limited its use of Chinese characters, and Vietnam and North Korea have completely abolished their use in favour of romanized Vietnamese and Hangul, respectively.

Written variants
The nature of Chinese characters makes it very easy to produce allographs for any character, and there have been many efforts at orthographical standardization throughout history. The widespread usage of the characters in several different nations has prevented any one system becoming universally adopted; consequently, the standard shape of any given character in Chinese usage may differ subtly from its standard shape in Japanese or Korean usage, even where no simplification has taken place.
Usually, each Chinese character takes up the same amount of space, due to their block-like square nature. Beginners therefore typically practice writing with a grid as a guide. In addition to strictness in the amount of space a character takes up, Chinese characters are written with very precise rules. The three most important rules are the strokes employed, stroke placement, and the order in which they are written (stroke order). Most words can be written with just one stroke order, though some words also have variant stroke orders, which may occasionally result in different stroke counts; certain characters are also written with different stroke orders in different languages.

Orthography
There are two common typefaces based on the regular script for Chinese characters akin to serif and sans-serif fonts in the West. The most popular for body text is a family of fonts called the Song typeface (宋体), also known as Minchō (明朝) in Japan, and Ming typeface (明體) in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The names of these fonts come from the Song and Ming dynasties, when block printing flourished in China. Because the wood grain on printing blocks ran horizontally, it was fairly easy to carve horizontal lines with the grain. However, carving vertical or slanted patterns was difficult because those patterns intersect with the grain and break easily. This resulted in a typeface that has thin horizontal strokes and thick vertical strokes. To prevent wear and tear, the ending of horizontal strokes are also thickened. These design forces resulted in the current Song typeface characterized by thick vertical strokes contrasted with thin horizontal strokes; triangular ornaments at the end of single horizontal strokes; and overall geometrical regularity. This typeface is similar to Western serif fonts such as Times New Roman in both appearance and function.
The other common group of fonts is called the black typeface (黑体/體) in Chinese and Gothic typeface (ゴシック体) in Japanese. This group is characterized by straight lines of even thickness for each stroke, akin to sans-serif styles such as Arial and Helvetica in Western typography. This group of fonts, first introduced on newspaper headlines, is commonly used on headings, websites, signs and billboards.

Common typefaces
Main articles: Simplified Chinese character, Shinjitai

Reforms: Simplification
The use of traditional characters versus simplified characters varies greatly, and can depend on both the local customs and the medium. Because character simplifications were not officially sanctioned and generally a result of caoshu writing or idiosyncratic reductions, traditional, standard characters were mandatory in printed works, while the (unofficial) simplified characters would be used in everyday writing, or quick scribblings. Since the 1950s, and especially with the publication of the 1964 list, the PRC has officially adopted a simplified script, while Hong Kong, Macau, and the ROC retain the use of the traditional characters. There is no absolute rule for using either system, and often it is determined by what the target audience understands, as well as the upbringing of the writer. In addition there is a special system of characters used for writing numerals in financial contexts; these characters are modifications or adaptations of the original, simple numerals, deliberately made complicated to prevent forgeries or unauthorized alterations.
Although most often associated with the PRC, character simplification predates the 1949 communist victory. Caoshu, cursive written text, almost always includes character simplification, and simplified forms have always existed in print, albeit not for the most formal works. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. Indeed, this desire by the Kuomintang to simplify the Chinese writing system (inherited and implemented by the CCP) also nursed aspirations of some for the adoption of a phonetic script, in imitation of the Roman alphabet, and spawned such inventions as the Gwoyeu Romatzyh.
The PRC issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. A second round of character simplifications (known as erjian, or "second round simplified characters") was promulgated in 1977. It was poorly received, and in 1986 the authorities rescinded the second round completely, while making six revisions to the 1964 list, including the restoration of three traditional characters that had been simplified: 叠 dié, 覆 fù, 像 xiàng.
Many of the simplifications adopted had been in use in informal contexts for a long time, as more convenient alternatives to their more complex standard forms. For example, the traditional character 來 lái (come) was written with the structure 来 in the clerical script (隸書 lìshū) of the Han dynasty. This clerical form uses two fewer strokes, and was thus adopted as a simplified form. The character 雲 yún (cloud) was written with the structure 云 in the oracle bone script of the Shāng dynasty, and had remained in use later as a phonetic loan in the meaning of to say. The simplified form reverted to this original structure.

Simplification in China

Main article: Kanji Japanese kanji
Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification. These resulted in some simplifications that differed from those used in mainland China. It ultimately adopted the reforms of the PRC in their entirety as official, and has implemented them in the educational system.
Malaysia promulgated a set of simplified characters in 1981, which were also completely identical to the Mainland China simplifications; here, however, the simplifications were not generally widely adopted, as the Chinese educational system fell outside the purview of the federal government. However, with the advent of the PRC as an economic powerhouse, simplified characters are taught at school, and the simplified characters are more commonly, if not almost universally, used. However, a large majority of the older Chinese literate generation use the traditional characters. Chinese newspapers are published in either set of characters, with some even incorporating special Cantonese characters when publishing about the canto celebrity scene of Hong Kong.
Note: this table is merely a brief sample, not a complete listing.

Southeast Asian Chinese communities
Dozens of indexing schemes have been created for arranging Chinese characters in Chinese dictionaries. The great majority of these schemes have appeared in only a single dictionary; only one such system has achieved truly widespread use. This is the system of radicals.
Chinese character dictionaries often allow users to locate entries in several different ways. Many Chinese, Japanese, and Korean dictionaries of Chinese characters list characters in radical order: characters are grouped together by radical, and radicals containing fewer strokes come before radicals containing more strokes. Under each radical, characters are listed by their total number of strokes. It is often also possible to search for characters by sound, using pinyin (in Chinese dictionaries), zhuyin (in Taiwanese dictionaries), kana (in Japanese dictionaries) or hangul (in Korean dictionaries). Most dictionaries also allow searches by total number of strokes, and individual dictionaries often allow other search methods as well.
For instance, to look up the character where the sound is not known, e.g., 松 (pine tree), the user first determines which part of the character is the radical (here 木), then counts the number of strokes in the radical (four), and turns to the radical index (usually located on the inside front or back cover of the dictionary). Under the number "4" for radical stroke count, the user locates 木, then turns to the page number listed, which is the start of the listing of all the characters containing this radical. This page will have a sub-index giving remainder stroke numbers (for the non-radical portions of characters) and page numbers. The right half of the character also contains four strokes, so the user locates the number 4, and turns to the page number given. From there, the user must scan the entries to locate the character he or she is seeking. Some dictionaries have a sub-index which lists every character containing each radical, and if the user knows the number of strokes in the non-radical portion of the character, he or she can locate the correct page directly.
Another dictionary system is the four corner method, where characters are classified according to the "shape" of each of the four corners.
Most modern Chinese dictionaries and Chinese dictionaries sold to English speakers use the traditional radical-based character index in a section at the front, while the main body of the dictionary arranges the main character entries alphabetically according to their pinyin spelling. To find a character with unknown sound using one of these dictionaries, the reader finds the radical and stroke number of the character, as before, and locates the character in the radical index. The character's entry will have the character's pronunciation in pinyin written down; the reader then turns to the main dictionary section and looks up the pinyin spelling alphabetically.

Dictionaries
Besides Japanese and Korean, a number of Asian languages have historically been written using Han characters, with characters modified from Han characters, or using Han characters in combination with native characters. They include:
In addition, the Yi script is similar to Han, but is not known to be directly related to it.

Iu Mien language
Jurchen language
Khitan language
Miao language
Nakhi (Naxi) language (Geba script)
Tangut language [2], [3]
Vietnamese language (Chữ nôm)
Zhuang language (using Zhuang logograms, or "sawndip") Sinoxenic languages
The total number of Chinese characters from past to present remains unknowable because new ones are developed all the time. Chinese characters are theoretically an open set. The number of entries in major Chinese dictionaries is the best means of estimating the historical growth of character inventory.
Comparing the Shuowen Jiezi and Hanyu Da Zidian reveals that the overall number of characters has increased 577 percent over 1,900 years. Depending upon how one counts variants, 50,000+ is a good approximation for the current total number. This correlates with the most comprehensive Japanese and Korean dictionaries of Chinese characters; the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten has some 50,000 entries, and the Han-Han Dae Sajeon has over 57,000. The latest behemoth, the Zhonghua Zihai, records a staggering 85,568 single characters, although even this fails to list all characters known, ignoring the roughly 1,500 Japanese-made kokuji given in the Kokuji no Jiten as well as the Chu Nom inventory only used in Vietnam in past days.
Modified radicals and obsolete variants are two common reasons for the ever-increasing number of characters. There are about 300 radicals and 100 are in common use. Creating a new character by modifying the radical is an easy way to disambiguate homographs among xíngshēngzì pictophonetic compounds. This practice began long before the standardization of Chinese script by Qin Shi Huang and continues to the present day. The traditional 3rd-person pronoun tā (他 "he; she; it"), which is written with the "person radical," illustrates modifying significs to form new characters. In modern usage, there is a graphic distinction between tā (她 "she") with the "woman radical", tā (牠 "it") with the "animal radical", tā (它 "it") with the "roof radical", and tā (祂 "He") with the "deity radical", One consequence of modifying radicals is the fossilization of rare and obscure variant logographs, some of which are not even used in Classical Chinese. For instance, he 和 "harmony; peace", which combines the "grain radical" with the "mouth radical", has infrequent variants 咊 with the radicals reversed and 龢 with the "flute radical".

Number of Chinese characters
It is usually said that about 3,000 characters are needed for basic literacy in Chinese (for example, to read a Chinese newspaper), and a well-educated person will know well in excess of 4,000 to 5,000 characters. Note that Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words, as the majority of modern Chinese words, unlike their Ancient Chinese and Middle Chinese counterparts, are multi-morphemic and multi-syllabic compounds, that is, most Chinese words are written with two or more characters; each character representing one syllable. Knowing the meanings of the individual characters of a word will often allow the general meaning of the word to be inferred, but this is not invariably the case.
In the People's Republic of China, which uses Simplified Chinese characters, the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo (现代汉语常用字表; Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese) lists 2,500 common characters and 1,000 less-than-common characters, while the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Tōngyòng Zìbiǎo (现代汉语通用字表; Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese) lists 7,000 characters, including the 3,500 characters already listed above. GB2312, an early version of the national encoding standard used in the People's Republic of China, has 6,763 code points. GB18030, the modern, mandatory standard, has a much higher number. The Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì proficiency test covers approximately 5,000 characters.
In the ROC, which uses Traditional Chinese characters, the Ministry of Education's Chángyòng Guózì Biāozhǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (常用國字標準字體表; Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters) lists 4,808 characters; the Cì Chángyòng Guózì Biāozhǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (次常用國字標準字體表; Chart of Standard Forms of Less-Than-Common National Characters) lists another 6,341 characters. The Chinese Standard Interchange Code (CNS11643)—the official national encoding standard—supports 48,027 characters, while the most widely-used encoding scheme, BIG-5, supports only 13,053.
In Hong Kong, which uses Traditional Chinese characters, the Education and Manpower Bureau's Soengjung Zi Zijing Biu (常用字字形表), intended for use in elementary and junior secondary education, lists a total of 4,759 characters.
In addition, there is a large corpus of dialect characters, which are not used in formal written Chinese but represent colloquial terms in non-Mandarin Chinese spoken forms. One such variety is Written Cantonese, in widespread use in Hong Kong even for certain formal documents, due to the former British colonial administration's recognition of Cantonese for use for official purposes. In Taiwan, there is also an informal body of characters used to represent the spoken Hokkien (Min Nan) dialect.

Chinese

Main article: Kanji Japanese

Main article: Hanja Korean
Although now nearly extinct in Vietnamese, varying scripts of Chinese characters (hán tự) were once in widespread use to write the language, although hán tự became limited to ceremonial uses beginning in the 19th century. Similarly to Japan and Korea, Chinese (especially Classical Chinese) was used by the ruling classes, and the characters were eventually adopted to write Vietnamese. To express native Vietnamese words which had different pronunciations from the Chinese, Vietnamese developed the Chu Nom script which used various methods to distinguish native Vietnamese words from Chinese. Vietnamese is currently exclusively written in the Vietnamese alphabet, a derivative of the Latin alphabet.

Vietnamese
Often a character not commonly used (a "rare" or "variant" character) will appear in a personal or place name in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (see Chinese name, Japanese name, Korean name, and Vietnamese name, respectively). This has caused problems as many computer encoding systems include only the most common characters and exclude the less oft-used characters. This is especially a problem for personal names which often contain rare or classical, antiquated characters.
People who have run into this problem include Taiwanese politicians Wang Chien-shien (王建煊, pinyin Wáng Jiànxuān) and Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃, pinyin Yóu Xīkūn), ex-PRC Premier Zhu Rongji (朱镕基 Zhū Róngjī), and Taiwanese singer David Tao (陶喆 Táo Zhé). Newspapers have dealt with this problem in varying ways, including using software to combine two existing, similar characters, including a picture of the personality, or, especially as is the case with Yu Shyi-kun, simply substituting a homophone for the rare character in the hope that the reader would be able to make the correct inference. Japanese newspapers may render such names and words in katakana instead of kanji, and it is accepted practice for people to write names for which they are unsure of the correct kanji in katakana instead.
There are also some extremely complex characters which have understandably become rather rare. According to Bellassen (1989), the most complex Chinese character is 𪚥 (U+2A6A5) zhé listen (help·info) (pictured right, top), meaning "verbose" and boasting sixty-four strokes; this character fell from use around the 5th century. It might be argued, however, that while boasting the most strokes, it is not necessarily the most complex character (in terms of difficulty), as it simply requires writing the same sixteen-stroke character 龍 lóng (lit. "dragon") four times in the space for one.
The most complex character found in modern Chinese dictionaries is 齉 (U+9F49) nàng listen (help·info) (pictured right, middle), meaning "snuffle" (that is, a pronunciation marred by a blocked nose), with "just" thirty-six strokes. The most complex character that can be input using the Microsoft New Phonetic IMA 2002a for Traditional Chinese is 龘 tà "the appearance of a dragon in flight"; it is composed of the dragon radical represented three times, for a total of 16 × 3 = 48.
In Japanese, an 84-stroke kokuji exists [4]— it is composed of three "cloud" (雲) characters on top of the abovementioned triple "dragon" character (龘). Also meaning "the appearance of a dragon in flight", it is pronounced おとど otodo, たいと taito, and だいと daito.
The most complex Chinese character still in use may be biáng (pictured right, bottom), with 57 strokes, which refers to Biang biang noodles, a type of noodle from China's Shaanxi province. This character along with syllable biang cannot be found in dictionaries. The fact that it represents a syllable that does not exist in any Standard Mandarin word means that it could be classified as a dialectal character.
In contrast, the simplest character is 一 yī ("one") with just one horizontal stroke. The most common character in Chinese is 的 de, a grammatical particle functioning as an adjectival marker and as a clitic genitive case analogous to the English 's, with eight strokes. The average number of strokes in a character has been calculated as 9.8; Interestingly, being round, the character does not contain any traditional strokes.

Chinese calligraphy

List of langauges written in Chinese characters and derivatives of Chinese characters
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Romanization of Chinese
Wiktionary:Chinese total strokes index
Wiktionary:Chinese radical index
Chinese character encoding
Chinese input methods for computers
Chinese language
Chinese world
Han unification
Chinese written language
Transliteration into Chinese characters
Chinese characters for chemical elements
Xiandai Hanyu changyong zibiao (现代汉语常用字表, List of Frequently-Used Characters in Modern Chinese)
Stroke order
Eight Principles of Yong
Earthly Branches
Heavenly Stems
East Asian calligraphy
Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts
Blissymbols (an international auxiliary logographic script)
Sinoxenic
Devanagari
Hanja Test Wikipedia
Chu-Nom Test Wikipedia

2008年1月24日木曜日

Stirling and Falkirk is a lieutenancy area of Scotland. It consists of the local government areas of Stirling and Falkirk, which cover the same areas as the previous districts from 1975—1996.
Reference:
The Lord-Lieutenants (Scotland) Order 1996, Statutory Instrument 1996 No. 731 (S.83). http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1996/Uksi_19960731_en_1.htm

2008年1月23日水曜日

Not to be confused with Lamba, Shetland
The Lamb, sometimes called Lamb Island or just Lamb, is a small, uninhabited island between the islands of Fidra and Craigleith in the Firth of Forth, off the south-east coast of Scotland. The Lamb can be reached by boat from North Berwick, although there are no landing facilities and little to attract visitors when compared to Fidra and the Bass Rock.
The Lamb is flanked by two "sheep dogs" - North and South Dog Islands - which are basically small skerries.
Like the other islands off North Berwick, the Lamb is a result of ancient volcanic activity, millions of years ago.

2008年1月22日火曜日

Microsoft has interest in the following areas:

Investments

Lists of corporate assets
List of companies acquired by Microsoft Corporation

2008年1月21日月曜日

Operation PBSUCCESS was a CIA-organized covert operation that overthrew the democratically-elected President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954. Arbenz's government put forth a number of new policies that the US intelligence community deemed to be Communist in nature, and, suspecting that the Soviet Union was pulling the strings, subsequently fueled a fear of Guatemala becoming a "Soviet beachhead in the western hemisphere"

Note on naming
Main articles History of Guatemala, Decree 900
Under the regime of General Jorge Ubico, and Ubico's predecessor Manuel José Estrada Cabrera, Guatemala was widely opened up to foreign investment, with special favours being made from Ubico to the United Fruit Company (UFC) in particular. The UFC responded by pouring investment capital into the country, buying controlling shares of the railroad, electric utility, and telegraph, while also winning control over the majority of the country's best land and de facto control over its only Atlantic port facilities. As a result, the Guatemalan government was often subservient to the UFC's interests.
In the the "October Revolution" of 1944 General Jorge Ubico was overthrown. Juan José Arévalo Bermejo was elected. A new constitution allowed for the possibility of expropriating land. This, as well as Arévalo philosophy of "spiritual socialism", alarmed Guatemala's landed elite who began to accuse Arévalo of supporting Communism. In 1947 he signed a labor protection law that implicitly targeted the UFC. The American Embassy in Guatemala sent alarming messages that Arévalo was allowing Communists to organize and had reputedly provided known Communists with support. Arévalo supported the Caribbean Legion, a group of ostensibly reformist Latin Americans who plotted to overthrow dictatorships in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. A 1949 CIA analysis described it as a "destabilizing force".[1]
Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, who as an army Captain had played an important role in the "October Revolution" of 1944, won 65% of the vote in the 1950 election.
In the US McCarthyism caused of intense anti-Communist suspicions.

Background
Arbenz advocated social and political reforms, unionization, and land reform. For the latter, Arbenz secretly met with members of the Communist Guatemalan Labor Party (known by its Spanish acronym 'PGT') in order to establish an effective land reform program. Such a program was proposed by Arbenz as a means of remedying the extremely unequal land distribution within the country: in 1945, it was estimated that 2.2% of the country's population controlled 70% of all arable land, but with only 12% of it being utilized

Land Reform
Main article: Operation PBFORTUNE
As early as 1951, before the agrarian reform law had been be written or passed, CIA apprehension about a Communist takeover caused the agency to seriously explore options for Arbenz's overthrow. Arbenz's toleration for known Communists made him at best a "fellow traveler," and at worst a Communist himself.[2] The most viable option being considered was the covert backing of rebel groups and dissidents already active in Guatemala and the then CIA Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Walter B. Smith sent an agent to Guatemala City to investigate potential candidate individuals or organizations. At the time the state of the opposition to Arbenz was inert, divided, and increasingly fractious. The agent returned empty handed. Fortunately for the CIA, this roughly coincided with the first state visit of the President of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza. He informed them of Castillo Armas's small rebel group and stated that, with the CIA's support, he and Armas could unseat Arbenz. They also could expect financial backing from Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and, as Armas later claimed, from internal elements within the Guatemalan army. DCI Smith urged his subordinates to follow up on this and to establish contacts with Armas, which they did in June of the same year. At the CIA's request, Armas then relayed to them a plan for invasion, which was to launch from El Salvador, Mexico, and Honduras (from UFC land) and would be coordinated with simultaneous uprisings within Guatemala. Armas requested arms, money, aircraft, and boats and informed them that he would launch the invasion as planned regardless of the CIA's support if need be. In July the CIA secured arms, transport, and $225,000 (US) for Armas, and furnished a few WWII-era airplanes. In September the CIA secured State Department approval and Operation PBFORTUNE was set.
One of two major setbacks occurred shortly afterwards when, while preparing for the arms shipment, the operation had to be called off. Somoza had been speaking of the invasion plan with other Central American leaders and the operation's cover, which was very important due to the fragile diplomatic situation the United States had with the region, was blown. While Operation PBFORTUNE was officially terminated, the operation led a twilight existence with the arm shipment prepared prior still kept in waiting and with Armas being kept on a $3,000 a week retainer, which allowed him to hang on to his small troupe of rebels.

Operation PBFORTUNE
With the departure of President Truman and the arrival of Eisenhower hopes were again raised within the CIA about the possibility of reviving the invasion. Eisenhower expressed favor towards covert operations as a means of cheaply and covertly combating the Soviet Union. While working towards getting this support, anxiety within the Agency about the possibility of a premature coup attempt being enacted by over-eager rebel groups began to rise and was justified in early 1953 when a futile and poorly planned invasion was attempted by a rebel group marginally associated with Armas. The invasion precipitated exactly the reaction feared within the Agency: the Guatemalan government was provided with a justification for severely clamping down on anti-communist elements within their county -- jailing many -- and was supported by a popular backlash against the anti-communists amongst the people. With almost all of their local assets destroyed, the CIA was forced to rely solely on the much more fragmented exile groups.
After all but abandoning the project in mid-1953, the U.S. National Security Council revived the project in August of that year after a review of the situation in light of the success of the recent CIA-organized coup against Mossadegh in Iran. CIA officers involved included Tracy Barnes (CIA officer in charge), David Atlee Phillips, Jacob 'Jack' Esterline, E. Howard Hunt, David Sanchez Morales.
Re-naming the operation to "PBSUCCESS", the planners consolidated all of the successful elements of previous operations, combining psychological, diplomatic, economic, and paramilitary actions. Economically, the Agency enlisted the help of some top-ranking American businessmen who would be assigned to put covert economic pressures on Guatemala by creating shortages of vital imports and cutting export earnings. Diplomatically, the Agency planned to convene a meeting of Organization of American States (OAS) with the specific intention of using it to ostracize and alienate Guatemala from the other countries in the region, as well as increasing "aid" to neighboring countries Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador to win over their consent and, in the case of the latter two, to gain the use of their land as a staging area for the invasion. Once the building of pressure using diplomatic, economic, and propagandistic means reached its zenith, the CIA planned to then let Armas' rebels loose when the country was at its most unstable.
Upon establishing operation headquarters in Florida in December 1953, the Agency started recruiting pilots, oversaw the training of rebels, set up a radio station to use for propaganda purposes, and stepped up the diplomatic pressure on Guatemala. Although they couldn't halt the exports of coffee, a major industry in Guatemala at the time, they succeeded in foiling two deals to buy arms and ammunition from Canada and Germany. Faced with dwindling military supply and witnessing the build up of armaments in neighboring countries, Arbenz started to seriously take into account the possibility of an invasion, which had been rumored for months and finally confirmed when a defector from the Agency's stable of rebels informed the Arbenz regime of PBSUCCESS and its details, and began looking for potential sellers of crucial supplies. This brought Arbenz to conclude a secret deal with Communist Czechoslovakia for 2,000 tonnes of captured German arms that were left in storage since the end of World War II a decade ago. While the arms deal was met with a Soviet protectorate, their knowledge of it was limited and the deal was strictly cash-and-carry. When the arms shipment arrived the CIA took their opportunity and promoted the transaction as proof of the Soviet hand pulling the strings and it ended up being a major propaganda victory for the CIA insofar as winning the American public's support for regime change in Guatemala was concerned.
After the revelation of the Czech arms shipment and the domestic support it whipped up, the US drastically stepped up both its covert and overt campaigns. On May 20, 1954 the US Navy began air-sea patrols under the twin pretexts of arms interdiction and protection of Honduras from Guatemalan invasion.(http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/forces_cold.htm#table6 ;see entry #29.) On June 7, a "contingency evacuation" force, consisting of five amphibious assault ships plus an "anti-submarine warfare" (ASW) aircraft carrier was dispatched to the area. Embarked was a US Marine Battalion Landing Team (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion#United_States_Army_and_Marine_Corps); meanwhile the only utility of the ASW carrier in the situation could have been for helicopter assault (then under development by the US Marines).
These forces were used to implement a comprehensive sea blockade of Guatemala by the American Navy. Known as Operation HARDROCK BAKER, it also included the deployment of submarines - again, ostensibly to stop and inspect all incoming ships for arms (though submarines are not at all suited for this role). The de facto aggressive configuration of this naval force, and the disingenuous representations of its true purpose, had a decisive psychological impact within Guatemala, extinguishing the remaining hope of international law coming to the assistance of Guatemala and raising the very credible prospect of an American invasion.

Propaganda
At 8:00 p.m. on June 18 Castillo Armas's forces crossed the border. Divided into four groups, his roughly 480 strong party invaded at 5 key points along the Guatemalan-Honduran and the Guatemalan-Salvadorian border. This was done to give the impression of a massive forces invading along a wide front, and also to disperse the men so as to minimize the chance of the entire force being routed in a single unfavorable engagement. In addition to these regular troops, 10 trained saboteurs slipped in ahead and were given the task of blowing up key bridges and cutting telegraph lines. All of the invading forces were instructed to minimize actual encounters with the Guatemalan army, for many reasons but most of all to avoid giving reason for the uniting of the army against the invaders. The entire course of the invasion was specifically designed to sow panic and to give the impression of insurmountable odds in order to bring the populace and the military over to its side, rather than defeat them. During the invasion radio propaganda also assisted towards this end, transmitting false reports of huge forces joining the local populace in a popular revolution.
Almost immediately, Armas's forces met with decisive failure. Invading on foot and hampered by heavy equipment, it was in some cases days before the rebels reached their objectives. This weakened the psychological impact of the initial invasion, as local Guatemalans realized they were in no immediate danger. One of the first groups to reach its objective, the group of 122 rebels whose task it was to capture the city of Zacapa, were severely crushed by a small contingent of 30 Guatemalan army soldiers, leaving only 28 rebels who had escaped death or capture. An even larger defeat was handed to the group of 170 rebels who undertook the task of capturing the heavily guarded port city of Puerto Barrios. After the police chief spotted the invading force, he quickly armed local dock workers and assigned them defensive roles. In a matter of hours the vast majority of the rebels were killed or captured, with the remaining men fleeing back into Honduras. Within 3 days, two of Armas's four prongs were out of commission. Attempting to recover momentum, Armas ordered an air attack on the capital the following day. This too failed, as a single slow flying plane managed to bomb a small oil tank, creating a minor fire that was doused in 20 minutes.
After these rebel failures, Arbenz ordered his military commander to allow Armas's forces to advance deep into the country. Arbenz and his chief commander didn't fear Armas's ragtag army, but there was a concern that, were the rebels to be too severely crushed, it would provide a pretext for open American military intervention. This fear spread widely amongst the officer class, with no one wanting to engage and defeat Armas's increasingly decimated force. Rumors spread - fueled greatly by the presence of the American amphibious assault force - that a Honduran landing by US Marines was in progress; preparatory to an invasion of Guatemala. Arbenz began to fear that the officers would be cowed into striking a deal with Armas and so began to take actions (elaboration needed) to win back their confidence. Confirmation of Arbenz' fear was given when an entire army garrison surrendered to Armas a few days later in the town of Chiquimula. Arbenz summoned his cabinet to explain that the army was in revolt and on June 27 Arbenz announced his resignation.

Invasion
In the 11 days after Arbenz's resignation five successive juntas occupied the presidential palace, each more amenable to American demands than the last, with Armas himself finally taking office at the end. He proved to be embarrassingly inept and his corrupt and repressive policies renewed civil conflict unseen in the country since before the revolution of 1944. An unexpected result of the coup was the ferocious condemnation of it by the international press. Le Monde and The Times both attacked America's "modern form of economic colonialism." There was a widespread and long-lasting protest of the coup in Latin America, with Guatemala becoming a symbol of resistance to American designs for the region. United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold accused the US's actions of being at odds with the UN Charter and even West German papers, usually gentle to America, were condemning the coup.
According to Kate Doyle, director of the Mexico Project of National Security Archives and a regular contributor to Americas Program of the Interhemispheric Resource Center, most historians now agree that the military coup in 1954 was the definitive blow to Guatemala's young democracy. Over the next four decades, the succession of military rulers would wage counter-insurgency warfare destablizing Guatemalan society. The violence caused the deaths and disappearances of more than 140,000 Guatemalans, and some human rights activists put the death toll as high as 250,000.[3] At the later stages of this conflict the CIA tried with some success to lessen the human rights violations and in 1993 stopped a coup and helped restore the democratic government.
Following closely on the heels of the successful CIA-orchestrated coup which overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran to allow the Shah to rule autocratically in 1953 (see Operation Ajax), some argue that it employed ideas and methods that were relatively new at the time and, due to the ostensible success of the operation, led to Operation PBSUCCESS becoming the de facto model for the overthrow or destabilization of a defiant government for some time to come, including the abortive coup in Cuba in the early 1960s and Chile in the 70s.

Aftermath
After the campaign, the CIA sent a handful of agents to Guatemala in order to gather and analyze government documents that would, amongst other things, find evidence that would support the CIA's belief that Guatemala was a rising Soviet puppet state, in an operation that was known as Operation PBHISTORY. Despite amassing well over 150,000 pages, they found very little to substantiate the key premise of the invasion ; the socialism that gained influence under Arbenz's presidency in fact had no ties to the Soviet Union whatsoever. Nevertheless, some private sector leaders and the military began to believe that Arbenz represented a Communist threat and supported his overthrow despite most Guatemalans' attachment to the original ideals of the 1944 uprising.

Operation PBHISTORY

See also

Mr. Arbenz. Richard Bissell, a former Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence, says in an interview that there "is absolutely no reason to believe" the desire to help United Fruit played "any significant role" in reaching the decision.--Crisis in Central America on PBS Frontline, The New York Times April 9, 1985, Page 16

Note 1: Cullather, Nick (1999). Secret History: The CIA's classified account of its operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954. Standford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-3311-2. , pg 17, quoting Allen Dulles
Note 2: Stanley, Diane (1994). For the Record: United Fruit Company's Sixty-Six Years in Guatemala. Centro Impresor Piedra Santa. , pg 179
Note 3: A U.S. State Department report released in 2003 states that social unrest within Guatemala and Arbenz's alleged Communist ties were the reason the CIA first drew up a contingency plan to oust Arbenz, entitled Operation PBFORTUNE (later changed to Operation PBSUCCESS.) The plan was drafted in 1951, before the U.S.-based United Fruit Company's landholdings had been expropriated. [4]
Note 4: Cullather, Nick (1999). Secret History: The CIA's classified account of its operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954. Standford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-3311-2. , pg 90
Note 5: La Feber, Walter (1993). Inevitable Revolutions The United States in Central America. Norton Press. ISBN 0-393-03434-8. , pg 116-117, quoting Notes of Undersecretary's Meeting, 15 June 1951, FRUS, 1951, 2:1440-43, 1445

2008年1月20日日曜日

NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Chevy Trucks Challenge (1997-1998)
Walt Disney World Speedway is a racing facility located in Bay Lake, Florida on the grounds of the Walt Disney World resort, near Orlando. It was built in 1995 by IMS Events, Inc. a subsidiary of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Corporation, primarily as a venue for the Indy 200 at Walt Disney World, an Indy Racing League event. The plans for the track were announced on January 23, 1995.

History
Walt Disney World Speedway was constructed on a very limited budget. By design, permanent features of the facility were built at a minimum. The track plans called for only the track surface, retaining wall, and catch fence to be constructed. The remainder of the facility, such as seating areas, restrooms, and race support areas, would be built on a temporary, as-needed basis. This strategy had never been used on an oval race track, but had been widely successful for years in temporary street circuits (such as Long Beach). No permanent garages were built on the premises, however, this was not entirely unusual. Race teams would simply work out of their transporters, a practice used frequently at street circuits and other tracks without garages.
The initial savings in construction costs was significant. Temporary bleachers and restrooms would be erected each year beginning in November, in preparations for the January races. The lack of permanent grandstands also allowed track officials to adjust the configuration and capacity of seating annually, reflecting ticket demand. This practice, however, would prove to be inconvenient, and increasingly expensive in the long run, since the grandstand area encompassed portion of the Magic Kingdom parking lot. That area would be unusable for nearly three months, including during the busy Christmas and New Year's holiday season at the theme park.

Design
Initially, the track location, adjacent to the Magic Kingdom parking lot, was seen to be convenient. However, after a couple years, traffic control was overwheleming. Since the race spectators would be arriving at the same time and place as regular theme park visitors, overflow parking was required. In 1996–1997, Disney officials reacted by parking all race spectators in the Magic Kingdom parking lot, and sending all visitors to the Magic Kingdom to the Epcot parking lot. Race spectators would walk to the nearby Speedway, while all guests to the Magic Kingdom were required to take the Disney Monorail or a Disney bus from Epcot, a trip of several minutes. Several complaints surfaced. In 1997, the IRL race was shortened by a sudden rainstorm, and fans scurried to their cars. The resulting rush created a severe gridlock of World Drive and surrounding roads which lasted several hours.
Starting in 1998, spectators to the race events were diverted to park at Epcot, and were taken by shuttle bus to the Speedway. Visitors to the Magic Kingdom were directed to park as usual, in the Magic Kingdom parking lot. While this eased many guest complaints, it also was now inconvenient for race patrons, and resulted in a significant cost increase for operations. The Walt Disney World transportation infrastructure did not own enough buses to smoothly run the operation, and outside bus companies had to be hired to run the shuttle service.

Parking problems
In its first few years of operation, the track was used frequently as a year-round test facility, due to the warm winter weather in Orlando. However, the track suffered three major accidents. During a week of preseason testing, on January 11, 1997, IRL driver Eliseo Salazar crashed in turn one. He suffered a fracture of his lower back, and missed two races.. On January 6, 2000, IRL driver Sam Schmidt was paralyzed after a crash in preseason testing. The track was built before the SAFER barrier was introduced, which many feel may have lessened the injuries in all three cases.
After the 2000 IRL season, series officials and Walt Disney World were not able to come to an agreement for a race date for 2001. IRL officials were unsatisfied with the January date, as it was seen to be too early for most teams to be prepared for the season. There was typically a six week gap until the second race of the season. Disney officials also were concerned with the impending conflict with Super Bowl XXXV, to be held in Tampa presumably the same weekend. Initial talks planned to move the race date to Labor Day weekend, and ultimately to a new facility to be built near U.S. 192. The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series had already declined to renew their contract with the Speedway for similar reasons after 1998. The talks quietly ceased between the IRL and Disney, and the race was not scheduled for 2001. It was ultimately removed from the IRL schedule permanently.

End of professional racing

The date for the 1996 Indy 200 was announced during a press conference on April 13, 1995. The date was chosen as a Saturday, the day before the Super Bowl. In 1999, the race was held on a Sunday, during the bye week between the AFC/NFC Championship games and the Super Bowl.
On June 27, 1995, Indianapolis Motor Speedway Chairman of the Board Mari Hulman George took part in a groundbreaking ceremony. She presented the track with one of the original paving bricks from the famous "Brickyard."
Final paving was completed October 18, 1995.
The track was dedicated on November 28, 1995. Indy Racing League drivers Arie Luyendyk, Eddie Cheever, Eliseo Salazar, Lyn St. James and Davey Hamilton drove a five-car "Flying V" formation amongst fireworks.
Initial testing at the facility for the Indy Racing League took place November 27-December 9, 1995.
The one-mile track features ten miles of safety restraint cabling, two acres of fencing, 1,800 yards of concrete for outside walls, 2,300 feet of concrete for pit walls and 5,200 tons of asphalt for the track surface.
Despite 1995 having the wettest June-July in Orlando on record (75 inches of rain), including Hurricane Erin, the construction was completed on-time.
A one-lane automobile tunnel was built for the 1997 racing season. Tunnels are rare in the state of Florida.
The track began hosting the Richard Petty Driving Experience in 1997. That is now the track's primary function, year-round.
In the summer of 1999, a new visitor's center and gift shop was built to permanently house operations for the Richard Petty Driving Experience. A new modest garage facility was built for them also. The operation had previously worked out of trailers and tents, without significant utilities.
Three linked ponds in the track's infield are formed in the shape of Mickey Mouse. The pond, dubbed "Lake Mickey", was built a year after the track opened due to drainage concerns.
The nickname of the track, most notably mentioned in AutoWeek Magazine and the Orlando Sentinel, is The "Mickyard" (much like the nickname of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which is the "Brickyard.")
On February 19-20, 1999, the track hosted the 7th Annual SunDay Challenge Alternative Energy Vehicle Rally. The highlight of the meet featured the Formula Lightning teams of Ohio State, Kettering, and FAMU/FSU.
On April 9, 2002 the first test of the new Infiniti Pro Series was conducted at the track, with Robby McGehee driving over 100 miles. The series debuted later that season. Timeline

Indy Racing League

Past race results
See main article Delphi Indy 200

Indy Racing League
See main article Chevy Trucks Challenge

USAC Formula Ford 2000

1998 Brian Tyler
1999 Mike Bliss
2000 Brian Tyler

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