Amin Rahmani

# Amin Rahmani

## Abstract

Amin Rahmani (Born: 15 November 2006 - Balochistan) is a football player from United Arab Emirates and a talent of Balochistan Football Academy.


1993 in Germany

# 1993 in Germany

## Abstract

Events in the year 1993 in Germany.

## Incumbents

- President - Richard von Weizsäcker

- Chancellor – Helmut Kohl

## Events

- January 18: Focus publishes its first issue.

- February 11: A man hijacks Lufthansa Flight 592.

- April 23: The 1993 World Horticultural Exposition begins in Stuttgart.

- May 28: Solingen arson attack of 1993.

- June 25-27: The first annual Düsseldorfer Jazz-Rally is held.

### Elections

- Hamburg state election, 1993

## Film

- 43rd Berlin International Film Festival

- 6th European Film Awards

## Music

- Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest 1993

## Births

- 17 August - Cinta Laura, Indonesian-German actress and singer

- 22 June - Loris Karius, footballer

- 22 August - Laura Dahlmeier, biathlete

## Deaths

- January 15 – Annemarie von Gabain, German linguist (born 1901)

- January 21 – Leo Löwenthal, German sociologist (born 1900)

- January 26 – Baron Axel von dem Bussche, German military officer, member of the anti- Hitler Resistance (born 1919)

- February 5 – Hans Jonas, German philosopher (born 1903)

- March 20 – Polykarp Kusch, German-born American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1911)

- June 7 – Dražen Petrović, Croatian professional basketball player (born 1964)

- June 12 – Wilhelm Gliese, astronomer (born 1915)

- September 20 – Erich Hartmann, German World War II fighter pilot, highest-scoring fighter ace in world history (born 1922)

- November 18 – Fritz Feld, German actor (born 1900)

- December 7 – Wolfgang Paul, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics laureate (born 1913)


The Piano

# The Piano

## Abstract

The Piano is a 1993 historical drama film written and directed by New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion. It stars Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, and Anna Paquin in her first major acting role. The film focuses on a mute Scottish woman who travels to a remote part of New Zealand with her young daughter after her arranged marriage to a settler. The plot has similarities to Jane Mander 's 1920 novel, The Story of a New Zealand River, but also substantial differences. Campion has cited the novels Wuthering Heights and The African Queen as inspirations.

An international co-production between New Zealand, Australia, and France, The Piano was a critical and commercial success, grossing US$140.2 million worldwide (equivalent to $ 295.7 million in 2023) against its US$7 million budget (equivalent to $ 14.8 million in 2023). It was noted for its crossover appeal beyond the arthouse circuit to attracting mainstream popularity, largely due to rave reviews and word of mouth.

Hunter and Paquin both received high praise for their performances. In 1993, the film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making Campion the first female director to receive the award. It won three Academy Awards out of eight total nominations in March 1994: Best Actress for Hunter, Best Supporting Actress for Paquin, and Best Original Screenplay for Campion. Paquin was 11 years old at the time and remains the second-youngest actor to win an Oscar in a competitive category.

## Plot

In the mid-1800s, Ada McGrath, a Scottish woman with elective mutism, is sold by her father into marriage with New Zealand settler Alisdair Stewart, along with her daughter Flora. Ada has not spoken since the age of six, and the reason for this as well as the identity of Flora's father remain unknown. She communicates through playing the piano and sign language, with Flora acting as her interpreter.

Ada and Flora, along with their handcrafted piano, are stranded on a New Zealand beach by a ship's crew. The next day, Alisdair arrives with his Māori crew and neighbour George Baines, a retired sailor who's adapted to Maori customs, including facial tattoos. Alisdair tells Ada that they don't have enough bearers for the piano and then refuses to go back for it, claiming that they all need to make sacrifices. Desperate to retrieve her piano, Ada seeks George's help. While at first saying no, he appears to give in due to her keenness on recovering the piano. Once at the beach, he is entranced by her music and appears charmed by her happy ways when she is playing, in contrast to her stern behaviour when in the farm. George offers Alisdair the land he's been coveting in exchange for the piano and Ada's lessons. Alisdair agrees, oblivious to George's attraction to Ada. Ada is enraged by George's proposition but agrees to trade lessons for piano keys. She restricts the lessons to the black keys only and resists George's demands for more intimacy. Ada continues to rebuff Alisdair's advances while exploring her sensuality with George. George eventually realizes that Ada will never commit to him emotionally and returns the piano to her, confessing that he wants Ada to care for him genuinely.

Although Ada has her piano back, she longs for George and returns to him. Alisdair overhears them having sex and watches them through a crack in the wall. Furious, he confronts Ada and tries to force himself on her despite her strong resistance. He then coerces Ada into promising she will no longer see George.

Shortly after, Ada instructs Flora to deliver a package to George, which contains a piano key with a love declaration engraved on it. Flora delivers it to Alisdair instead. Enraged after reading the message, Alisdair cuts off Ada's index finger, depriving her of the ability to play the piano. He sends Flora to George with the severed finger, warning him to stay away from Ada or he will chop off more fingers. Later, while touching Ada as she sleeps, Alisdair hears what he thinks is her voice in his head, asking him to let George take her away. He goes to George's house and asks if Ada has ever spoken to him, but George says no. George and Ada leave together with her belongings and piano tied onto a Māori canoe. As they row to the ship, Ada asks George to throw the piano overboard. She allows her leg to be caught by the rope attached to the piano and is dragged underwater with it in an attempt to drown herself. As she sinks, she appears to change her mind and struggles free before being pulled to safety.

In the epilogue, Ada describes her new life with George and Flora in Nelson, New Zealand, where she gives piano lessons in their new home. George has made her a metal finger to replace the one she lost, and Ada has been practicing and taking speech lessons. She sometimes dreams of the piano resting at the bottom of the ocean with her still tethered to it.

## Cast

- Holly Hunter as Ada McGrath

- Harvey Keitel as George Baines

- Sam Neill as Alisdair Stewart

- Anna Paquin as Flora McGrath

- Kerry Walker as Aunt Morag

- Genevieve Lemon as Nessie

- Tungia Baker as Hira

- Ian Mune as the Reverend

- Peter Dennett as the head seaman

- Cliff Curtis as Mana

- Pete Smith as Hone

- Te Whatanui Skipwith as Chief Nihe

- Mere Boynton as Nihe's daughter

- George Boyle as Ada's father

- Rose McIver as Angel

- Mika Haka as Tahu

- Gordon Hatfield as Te Kori

- Bruce Allpress as the blind piano tuner

- Stephen Papps as Bluebeard

## Production

The film was originally titled The Piano Lesson, but the filmmakers could not obtain the rights to use the title because of the American play of the same name, and it was changed to The Piano.

Casting the role of Ada was a difficult process. Sigourney Weaver was Campion's first choice, but she was not interested. Jennifer Jason Leigh was also considered, but had a conflict with her commitment to Rush (1991). Isabelle Huppert met with Jane Campion and had vintage period-style photographs taken of her as Ada, and later said she regretted not fighting for the role as Hunter did.

The casting for Flora occurred after Hunter had been selected for the part. They did a series of open auditions for girls age 9 to 13, focusing on girls who were small enough to be believable as Ada's daughter (as Holly Hunter is relatively short at 157 cm; 5 ft 2 in tall). Anna Paquin ended up winning the role of Flora over 5,000 other girls.

Alistair Fox has argued that The Piano was significantly influenced by Jane Mander 's The Story of a New Zealand River. Robert Macklin, an associate editor with The Canberra Times newspaper, has also written about the similarities. The film also serves as a retelling of the fairytale " Bluebeard ", itself depicted as a scene in the Christmas pageant. Campion has cited the novels Wuthering Heights and The African Queen as inspirations.

In July 2013, Campion revealed that she originally intended for the main character to drown in the sea after going overboard after her piano.

Principal photography took place over 12 weeks from February to mid-May 1992.

Campion was determined to market the film to appeal to a larger audience than the limited audiences many art films attracted at the time. Simona Benzakein, the publicist for The Piano at Cannes noted: "Jane and I discussed the marketing. She wanted this to be not just an elite film, but a popular film."

## Reception

### Critical reception

Reviews for the film were overwhelmingly positive. Roger Ebert wrote: " The Piano is as peculiar and haunting as any film I've seen" and "it is one of those rare movies that is not just about a story, or some characters, but about a whole universe of feeling". Hal Hinson of The Washington Post called it an "evocative, powerful, extraordinarily beautiful film".

The Piano was named one of the best films of 1993 by 86 film critics, making it the most acclaimed film of 1993.

In his 2013 Movie Guide, Leonard Maltin gave the film three and half out of four stars, calling the film a "haunting, unpredictable tale of love and sex told from a woman's point of view" and went on to say "writer-director Campion has fashioned a highly original fable, showing the tragedy and triumph erotic passion can bring to one's daily life".

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 71 reviews, and an average rating of 8.50/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Powered by Holly Hunter's main performance, The Piano is a truth-seeking romance played in the key of erotic passion." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 89 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

### Box office

The film was the highest-grossing New Zealand film of all-time surpassing Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tale (1986) with a gross of $NZ3.8 million.

It grossed over US$140 million worldwide, including $7 million in Australia, $16 million in France, and $39 million in the United States and Canada.

### Accolades

The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture), winning three for Best Actress (Holly Hunter), Best Supporting Actress (Anna Paquin) and Best Original Screenplay (Jane Campion). At age 11, Anna Paquin became the second youngest competitive Academy Award winner (after Tatum O'Neal in 1973).

At the Cannes Film Festival, the film won the Palme d'Or (sharing with Chen Kaige 's Farewell My Concubine), with Campion becoming the first woman to win the honour, as well as the first filmmaker from New Zealand to achieve this. Holly Hunter also won Best Actress.

In 2019, the BBC polled 368 film experts from 84 countries to name the 100 best films by women directors, and The Piano was named the top film, with nearly 10% of the critics polled giving it first place on their ballots.

## Soundtrack

The score for the film was written by Michael Nyman, and included the acclaimed piece "The Heart Asks Pleasure First"; additional pieces were "Big My Secret", "The Mood That Passes Through You", "Silver Fingered Fling", "Deep Sleep Playing" and "The Attraction of the Pedalling Ankle". This album is rated in the top 100 soundtrack albums of all time and Nyman's work is regarded as a key voice in the film, which has a mute lead character.

## Home media

The film was released on VHS on May 25, 1994. Initial fears in leadup to its release were in relation to the films status as "arty" and "non-mainstream," however its nominations and success at the Academy Awards guaranteed it profitability in the home video market. It finished in the top 30 video rentals of 1994 in the United States. It was released on DVD in 1997 by LIVE Entertainment and on Blu-ray on 31 January 2012 by Lionsgate, but already released in 2010 in Australia.

On 11 August 2021, the Criterion Collection announced their first 4K Ultra HD releases, a six-film slate, will include The Piano. Criterion indicated each title would be available in a 4K UHD+Blu-ray combo pack, including a 4K UHD disc of the feature film as well as the film and special features on the companion Blu-ray. The Piano was released on January 25, 2022.


# List of Paramount Pictures films (2020–2029)

## Abstract

The following is a list of films produced by Paramount Pictures and released (or scheduled to be released) in the 2020s.

All films listed are theatrical releases unless specified.

- A ‡ signifies a streaming release exclusively through Paramount+.

- A § signifies a simultaneous release to theaters and on Paramount+.

- A * signifies a streaming release through a third-party streaming service.

## Upcoming


Jeff McInerney

# Jeff McInerney

## Abstract

Jeff McInerney (born June 22, 1960) is an American professional football coach and former player who is the current defensive quality control and special teams coordinator for the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League (USFL). He served as head football coach at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) from 2006 to 2013, compiling a record of 48–41.

## Coaching career

McInerney is an alumnus of Slippery Rock University. He began his coaching career at his alma mater as an undergraduate in 1981, followed by one season as a graduate assistant coach in 1982. McInerney subsequently served as an assistant coach at Troy University, Georgia Southern University, the University of Tulsa, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Oregon State University, Duke University, the University of Southern California and the University of Rhode Island.

In January 2006, McInerney was named the head coach at Central Connecticut State University located in New Britain, Connecticut, becoming the 12th football coach at the school. He held that position for eight seasons, until his resignation in November 2013. His coaching record at Central Connecticut was 48–41 (.539). He resigned his position at the end of the season, citing a desire to move on to another opportunity, adding "There are things, at 53, that I want to do".

In 2014, McInerney became the defensive line and special teams coach for Henderson State. In 2015 he served as the co-Defensive Coordinator. In 2016, McInerney became a Quality Control assistant for the Indiana Hoosiers.

In 2018, McInerney was named as the defensive line and special teams coach for the San Antonio Commanders of the Alliance of American Football.

McInerney joined the New York Guardians of the XFL in 2019.


List of UConn Huskies in the NFL draft

# List of UConn Huskies in the NFL draft

## Abstract

The University of Connecticut (UConn) Huskies football team has had 43 players selected in the National Football League (NFL) Draft. Two of those selections were in the first round of the draft, both with the 27th overall pick: running back Donald Brown in 2009 and cornerback Byron Jones in 2015. A Connecticut football alumnus had been selected in every NFL draft from 2007 to 2015 and in fourteen of the last eighteen NFL drafts.

Each NFL franchise seeks to add new players through the annual NFL draft. The draft rules were last updated in 2009. The team with the worst record the previous year picks first, the next-worst team second, and so on. Teams that did not make the playoffs are ordered by their regular-season record with any remaining ties broken by strength of schedule. Playoff participants are sequenced after non-playoff teams, based on their round of elimination (wild card, division, conference, and Super Bowl).

Before the merger agreements in 1966, the American Football League (AFL) operated in direct competition with the NFL and held a separate draft. This led to a bidding war over top prospects between the two leagues. As part of the merger agreement on June 8, 1966, the two leagues would hold a multiple round " common draft ". Once the AFL officially merged with the NFL in 1970, the "common draft" simply became the NFL draft.

The first Connecticut player to be taken in the NFL draft was Walt Trojanowski in the sixth round of the 1946 NFL draft. From 1946 – 1994, the Huskies had fourteen players drafted into the NFL over the span of forty-eight years. The rate at which UConn alumni were selected would significantly increase following the Huskies' upgrade from Division I-AA to Division I-A in 2000. Beginning in 2005 and continuing through 2015, Connecticut has had twenty-five players picked over eleven NFL drafts. In 2009 four UConn alumni were taken in the first two rounds of the draft. The most Connecticut players to be selected in a single NFL draft was five in 2013, including three in the third round, one in the fourth round, and one in the sixth round.

## Selections


SpongeBob SquarePants season 2

# SpongeBob SquarePants season 2

## Abstract

The second season of the American animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants, created by Stephen Hillenburg, aired on Nickelodeon from October 20, 2000, to July 26, 2003, and consists of 20 half-hour episodes. The series chronicles the exploits and adventures of the title character and his various friends in the fictional underwater city of Bikini Bottom. The season was executive produced by series creator Hillenburg, who also acted as the showrunner.

During the season's run, SpongeBob SquarePants became Nickelodeon's No. 2 children's program, behind Rugrats. Nearly 40 percent of SpongeBob ' s audience of 2.2 million were aged 18 to 34. The show signed a marketing deal with Target Corporation and Burger King, expanding its merchandising, and SpongeBob's popularity translated well into sales figures. In 2002, the show was nominated at the Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Children's Program. Tom Kenny and Mary Jo Catlett were individually nominated at the 29th Annie Awards for their voice performances as SpongeBob and Mrs. Puff, respectively. Peter Straus and Paul Tibbitt were also nominated at the ceremony for their work on the " Christmas Who? " special. The episodes "The Secret Box" and " Band Geeks " won at the 2002 Golden Reel Awards for Best Sound Editing in Television—Animation, while the episodes "Jellyfish Hunter" and "The Fry Cook Games" received a nomination for Best Sound Editing in Television Animation—Music category.

Several compilation DVDs that contained episodes from the season were released. The SpongeBob SquarePants: The Complete 2nd Season DVD was released in Region 1 on October 19, 2004, Region 2 on October 23, 2006, and Region 4 on November 30, 2006.

## Production

The season aired on Nickelodeon, which is owned by Viacom, and was produced by United Plankton Pictures and Nickelodeon Animation Studio. The season's executive producer was series creator Stephen Hillenburg, who also functioned as the series' showrunner. During production of the previous season, Nickelodeon picked up a second season for SpongeBob SquarePants on August 31, 1999. The season premiered more than a year later, on October 20, 2000. Season production assistant Derek Iversen commented, "We hoped it would go one season. We hoped it would go two seasons. I figured you do the best you can and you hope."

In this season, production switched from cel animation, used during the first season, to digital ink and paint. Executive producer Paul Tibbitt, in 2009, said "The first season of SpongeBob was done the old-fashioned way on cells, and every cell had to be part-painted, left to dry, paint some other colours. It's still a time-consuming aspect of the process now, but the digital way of doing things means it doesn't take long to correct." The animation was handled overseas in South Korea at Rough Draft Studios. Animation directors credited with episodes in the second season included Sean Dempsey, Edgar Larrazabal, Larry Leichliter, Andrew Overtoom, Leonard Robinson, Frank Weiss, and Tom Yasumi. The season was storyboarded by Walt Dohrn, C.H. Greenblatt, Chris Headrick, Chuck Klein, Carson Kugler, Jay Lender, Caleb Meurer, Dan Povenmire, William "Bill" Reiss, Octavio Rodriguez, Jim Schumann, Aaron Springer, Paul Tibbitt, and Erik Wiese.

Episodes were written by a team of writers, which consisted of Dohrn, David Fain, Greenblatt, Mr. Lawrence, Lender, Mark O'Hare, Povenmire, William Reiss, Springer, Tibbitt, and Merriwether Williams. During the season, the writing staff used their individual childhood experiences as inspirations to come up with much of the story lines for individual episodes. For example, in the episode " Sailor Mouth ", SpongeBob learns profanity. The idea for the episode was inspired by creative director Derek Drymon 's experience " I got in trouble for saying the f-word in front of my mother." Drymon said, "The scene where Patrick is running to Mr. Krabs to tattle, with SpongeBob chasing him, is pretty much how it happened in real life." The end of the episode, where Mr. Krabs uses more profanity than SpongeBob and Patrick, was also inspired "by the fact that my mother has a sailor mouth herself." In "The Secret Box", SpongeBob wants to see what is inside Patrick's secret box. The idea came to Drymon because he too had a secret box as a child. Creator Hillenburg said, " started telling us about it. We wanted to make fun of him and use it."

## Cast

The second season featured Tom Kenny as the voice of the title character SpongeBob SquarePants and his pet snail Gary. SpongeBob's best friend, a starfish named Patrick Star, was voiced by Bill Fagerbakke, while Rodger Bumpass played the voice of Squidward Tentacles, an arrogant and ill-tempered octopus. Other members of the cast were Clancy Brown as Mr. Krabs, a miserly crab obsessed with money and SpongeBob's boss at the Krusty Krab; Mr. Lawrence as Plankton, a small green copepod and Mr. Krabs' business rival; Jill Talley as Karen, Plankton's sentient computer sidekick; Carolyn Lawrence as Sandy Cheeks, a squirrel from Texas; Mary Jo Catlett as Mrs. Puff, SpongeBob's boating school teacher; and Lori Alan as Pearl, a teenage whale who is Mr. Krabs' daughter.

Season two introduced various characters that would recur throughout the series. Mr. Krabs' mother, Mama Krabs, debuted in the episode " Sailor Mouth " and was voiced by writer Paul Tibbitt. However, voice actress Sirena Irwin overtook Tibbitt's role as the character reappeared in the fourth season episode "Enemy In-Law" in 2005. In the Christmas special "Christmas Who?", SpongeBob's voice actor, Tom Kenny, portrayed Patchy the Pirate, the president of the fictional SpongeBob SquarePants fan club, while series creator Hillenburg voiced the character of Potty the Parrot. After Hillenburg's departure from the show as showrunner in 2004, Tibbitt was given the role voicing Potty the Parrot.

In addition to the regular cast members, episodes feature guest voices from many ranges of professions, including actors, athletes, authors, musicians, and artists. American rock band Ween guest starred as themselves in "Your Shoe's Untied". The band performed "Loop de Loop", a song they wrote for the episode. Before SpongeBob SquarePants aired on television in 1999, Hillenburg had approached band guitarist Dean Ween to compose a song for the show. Dean Ween said " called me and told me was a marine biologist who was starting a cartoon about underwater sea creatures and that The Mollusk was a big reference point for him creatively and would we like to do a song for the show." The band conceived the song and wrote it in about three minutes. Ween's 1997 song " Ocean Man " would also be used four years later during the end credits sequence in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, and as part of the film's soundtrack. In the episode "Bossy Boots", American band The Capsules performed the song "Bossy Boots", which was later released on SpongeBob SquarePants: The Yellow Album in 2005. In "Bubble Buddy", professional American surfer Corky Carroll made a vocal cameo as Grubby Grouper, a famous surfer. It also stars Brad Abrell as titular character Bubble Buddy. "Grandma's Kisses" features Marion Ross as SpongeBob's grandmother. She would reprise her role throughout the series, including the fifth-season episode "BlackJack". In the entry "Pre-Hibernation Week", where Sandy and SpongeBob play extreme sporting games, American heavy metal band Pantera appeared as themselves for a special musical performance. McHale's Navy actors Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway returned in the episode "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy III", reprising their roles as Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, respectively. John Rhys-Davies also guest starred in the same episode as the heroes' nemesis, Man Ray. Brian Doyle-Murray reprised his role as the Flying Dutchman for "Your Shoe's Untied" and " Shanghaied ". Various other characters were voiced by voice acting veterans Dee Bradley Baker, Thomas F. Wilson and Clea Lewis.

## Reception

Since SpongeBob SquarePants made its debut in 1999, the show had flourished into Nickelodeon's number 2 children's program, after Rugrats. Nearly 40 percent of the show's audience of 2.2 million were aged 18 to 34. As a result, Nickelodeon moved the show from Saturday morning to a much more valuable timeslot: almost- prime time, appearing at 6 p.m., from Monday through Thursday. In 2001, Nickelodeon took the "Saturday-morning ratings crown" for the fourth straight season, grabbing a 4.8 rating/21 share (1.9 million viewers) in two- to eleven-year-olds, jumping 17% from the previous year.

SpongeBob SquarePants signed a marketing deal with Target Corporation and Burger King, expanding its merchandising. Furthermore, the popularity of SpongeBob translated well into sales figures. In 2002, SpongeBob SquarePants dolls sold at a rate of 75,000 per week, which was faster than Tickle Me Elmo dolls were selling at the time. Nickelodeon's parent company Viacom purposefully targeted women in Japan as a way of marketing the SpongeBob SquarePants brand. Skeptics initially doubted that SpongeBob could be popular in Japan, as the character's design is very different from popular designs for Hello Kitty and Pikachu, but SpongeBob has gained popularity in Japan among women. Ratings and merchandise sales showed SpongeBob SquarePants had caught on with parents and with the college audience. In a promotion, college-oriented website Music.com gave away 80,000 SpongeBob T-shirts, four times more than during a similar promotion for Comedy Central 's South Park.

Like the first season, the second season received widespread critical acclaim from critics and fans. In 2002, the show itself was nominated at the Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Children's Program. At the 29th Annie Awards, the series was nominated three times, including Outstanding Individual Achievement for Voice Acting by a Female and Male Performer in an Animated Television Production categories for Mary Jo Catlett for her role as Mrs. Puff in "No Free Rides" and Tom Kenny for his role as SpongeBob SquarePants in "Wormy", respectively. Peter Straus and Paul Tibbitt were nominated for Outstanding Individual Achievement for a Song in an Animated Production for their song "The Very First Christmas" that was featured in "Christmas Who?" In 2002, the episodes "The Secret Box" and "Band Geeks" won at the Golden Reel Awards for Best Sound Editing in Television—Animation, while the episodes "Jellyfish Hunter" and "The Fry Cook Games" received a nomination for Best Sound Editing in Television Animation—Music category.

In his review for The Spokesman-Review, Isamu Jordan said, "I'll be honest. I dig the little yellow dude who lives in a pineapple under the sea quite a bit for his absurdity À la Ren and Stimpy." He said that "season two is worth having in your or your kid's SpongeBob collection" given that the episodes "Krusty Love", "Squid's Day Off", and "Mermaidman and Barnacleboy III" are on the set. Jason Bovberg of the DVD Talk wrote that the season release is "recommended." He said "Let me state up front that I adore this show. I get a total kick out of watching it with my 4-year-old daughter. We laugh uproariously at SpongeBob's adventures and I'm helplessly reduced to a boy about her age as I beam and giggle at the screen." However, Bovberg called the included audio commentaries "downright boring." Various celebrities—including Lance Bass of 'N Sync, Will Ferrell of Saturday Night Live, singer-songwriter Tom Waits, and Jerry Lewis —admitted they were fans of the show.

During the 2001–02 television season, the Parents Television Council (PTC), a watchdog media group, named SpongeBob SquarePants among the best programs on cable television. However, according to a report titled Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, which documents the increase in potentially violent, profane, and sexual content in children's programming, the PTC and fans believed the episode " Sailor Mouth ", which originally aired during the 2001–02 season, was an implicit attempt to promote and satirize use of profanity among children. The report cited a repeat broadcast of the episode from 2005 to prove its point that it promoted use of profanity among children. In a later report, several members of the PTC listed "Sailor Mouth" as an example of how levels of profane, sexual, and violent activity has increased in children's television programming. Nickelodeon, in response to the incident, said "It's sad and a little desperate that they stooped to literally putting profane language in the mouths of our characters to make a point. Has the FCC looked at this?" Richard Huff of the New York Daily News criticized the report for misinterpreting the episode over its intent to satirize profanity implicitly.

## Episodes

The episodes are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order.

## DVD release

The DVD boxset for season two was released by Paramount Home Entertainment and Nickelodeon in the United States and Canada on October 19, 2004, one year after the season had completed broadcast on television. The DVD release features bonus materials including audio commentaries, storyboards, and featurettes. In 2005, the DVD compilation was nominated at the 9th Golden Satellite Awards for Best Youth DVD, although did not win.


Katharine Viner

# Katharine Viner

## Abstract

Katharine Sophie Viner (born January 1971) is a British journalist and playwright. She became the first female editor-in-chief at The Guardian on 1 June 2015, succeeding Alan Rusbridger. Viner previously headed The Guardian ' s web operations in Australia and the United States, before being selected for the editor-in-chief 's position.

## Early life and education

Viner was raised in Yorkshire, the daughter of teachers and she attended Ripon Grammar School where she became headgirl. Her grandfather, Vic Viner, was an able seaman involved in the Dunkirk evacuation. As a teenager, she joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, the nearest groups were 25 miles away, and read Spare Rib. Her first newspaper article, published in The Guardian in 1987 while she was still in school, was on the ending of the GCE O-level examinations, which were being replaced in the UK by the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). "Cramming five years of knowledge into two and a half hours does not seem to be a fair system," she wrote. Around 1988, Viner had a period of work experience at the Ripon Gazette, her local newspaper.

After A-levels Viner studied English at Pembroke College, Oxford. Just before her finals, Viner won a competition organised by The Guardian ' s women's page and was advised by Louise Chunn, then Guardian women's editor, to pursue a career in journalism. "I honestly thought journalism wasn't for me, I thought it was for men in suits in London," she remembered in 2005. During her 20s, Viner spent most of her holidays in the Middle East, a region in which she has a particular interest, spending time in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, West Bank and other locations.

## Career beginnings

For work experience, Viner joined Cosmopolitan, a women's monthly magazine. The magazine retained her afterwards and she became features assistant, then news and careers editor; earlier, she had won another student competition involving a submission to the magazine. After three years at The Sunday Times, working as a commissioning editor and writer for its magazine. Viner joined The Guardian in 1997. Following a period on the staff of the women's page, she became editor of the Saturday Weekend supplement in 1998. She became features editor in 2006 and deputy editor in 2008 at the same time as Ian Katz. Viner edited the Saturday edition of The Guardian from 2008 to 2012.

Laura Slattery in The Irish Times, reviewing Viner's career up to March 2015, noted that she "has almost always been the person who does the commissioning, provided the byline". Several Guardian pieces by Viner published during this period are reprinted in an anthology drawn from the Guardian archive entitled Women of the Revolution: Forty Years of Feminism (2010), edited by Kira Cochrane.

## Australia and New York

In January 2013, Viner's relocation to Sydney to supervise a new Guardian digital edition in Australia was announced; this venture was launched in May 2013.

Viner delivered the A. N. Smith Lecture in Journalism at the University of Melbourne in October 2013. D. D. Guttenplan, London correspondent of the American Nation magazine, wrote in March 2015 that "there is no one on either side of the Atlantic Ocean who has thought as deeply as Viner about the relationship between readers, technology and the future of journalism." Guttenplan was not totally convinced by Viner's "eagerness to transcend print" in the move to digital media, but commenting about her 2013 speech in Australia, he wrote that "her arguments for the importance of reader engagement, and for sustained, original reporting of information that someone, somewhere, wants to keep secret are compelling and convincing."

In the summer of 2014, Viner moved to New York City and became the new head of The Guardian ' s American website in succession to Janine Gibson while remaining deputy editor of Guardian News & Media. While based in New York, Viner expanded Guardian US ' s coverage from a limited range of subjects, into areas such as the arts and sport; she also increased US staffing.

## Editor-in-chief of The Guardian

### Appointment

In March 2015, Viner won a majority in the ballot of Guardian and Observer editorial staff as the favoured successor of Alan Rusbridger as The Guardian ' s editor-in-chief. Viner received 53% of first-choice votes from the 964 staff who participated, and was thus shortlisted for selection. Former deputy editor and rival, Ian Katz (editor of the BBC's Newsnight television programme 2013-2017), was also on the final short list of two.

Viner was appointed editor-in-chief on 20 March 2015, the first woman to be the editor of The Guardian in its 194-year history, and assumed her new post on 1 June 2015. She announced her intention to make the "media organisation" a "home for the most ambitious journalism, ideas and events" which is able to reach "out to readers all around the world."

It has been suggested by author and former Guardian columnist Michael Wolff that another of Viner's rivals to succeed Rusbridger, Janine Gibson, suffered because of internal disquiet over the internal impact on The Guardian of the Edward Snowden revelations which Gibson edited in New York. Wolff said Gibson aligned herself with Snowden, promising more of the same, while Viner "pitched decidedly against Gibson and, in a sense, against Snowden". Peter Wilby, writing in the New Statesman, preferred a different explanation: "Viner is a more charming, more inclusive and less threatening figure than Janine Gibson, who started as the bookies’ and Rusbridger's favourite."

### Later developments

In March 2016, Viner and Guardian News and Media chief executive David Pemsel announced cost-cutting measures, leading to the projected loss of 250 jobs, to reduce unsustainable losses in order to break even within three years. The following month, The Times reported internal tensions within the organisation as Rusbridger prepared to become Chairman of the Scott Trust, the ultimate overseer to ensure The Guardian survives "in perpetuity". Rusbridger's expansion of the company's operations was reportedly seen by staff as responsible for the decisions which Viner and Pemsel have made. Viner and David Pemsel successfully opposed Rusbridger becoming Chair of the Scott Trust Ltd and he dropped plans to take up the post.

Appeals to readers for donations have been successful. "We now get about the same amount of money from membership and paying readers as we do from advertising", Viner told the Financial Times in May 2017. By the time The Guardian and sister title The Observer relaunched as a tabloid in January 2018, part of the cost-cutting exercise, revenue from readers exceeded advertising and the group expects to break even in 2018/19, for the first time since the 1980s, rather than continue to sustain heavy losses. As of 2018 this approach was considered successful, having brought more than 1 million subscriptions or donations, with the paper hoping to break even by April 2019. Industry specialists consulted by the Financial Times have continued to doubt whether the donation and membership model is financially viable in the long term.

In May 2021 The Daily Telegraph reported that there was serious conflict between Viner and chief executive of The Guardian Media Group Annette Thomas about finances and the direction the newspaper should take. The previous year The Guardian announced 180 job cuts. Thomas had earlier said at a media industry conference "we have quality content in spades... the job at hand is to now go further by strengthening the growing elements of our business". Viner wanted renewed investment after better than feared financial results in 2020. On 9 June 2021, it was announced that Thomas would leave The Guardian Media Group at the end of the month.

In 2023, the New Statesman named her thirtieth most powerful left wing figure in the UK in their annual 'Left Power List'.

## Other work

Viner is known for My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a play she co-edited with actor Alan Rickman from the writings and emails of Rachel Corrie, an American activist who was killed by a bulldozer operated by the Israeli Army in Rafah, Gaza in 2003. The play was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 2005. After Rickman died of cancer in January 2016, Viner wrote that their collaboration had been initially difficult, but "on the opening night we each admitted that we couldn’t have done justice to Rachel’s words without the other".

Viner was a judge in the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2004 and was on the board of the Royal Court Theatre for 13 years.

## Political positions

In 2002, Viner criticised the planned invasion of Iraq and wrote that George W. Bush "bombed Afghanistan to liberate the women from their burkas (or, as he would have it, to free the "women of cover"), and sent out his wife Laura to tell how Afghans are tortured for wearing nail varnish".

Viner opposed Brexit. In 2016, she wrote: "At the end of a campaign that dominated the news for months, it was suddenly obvious that the winning side had no plan for how or when the UK would leave the EU – while the deceptive claims that carried the leave campaign to victory suddenly crumbled."

## Personal life

Viner married broadcaster, documentary maker and writer Adrian Chiles in 2022. Chiles, speaking on BBC Radio 4 "Saturday Live," said 150 guests attended their wedding ceremony.


Commanders–Giants rivalry

# Commanders–Giants rivalry

## Abstract

The Commanders–Giants rivalry between the Washington Commanders, formerly known as the Redskins, and the New York Giants of the National Football League began in 1932 with the founding of Washington's predecessors, the Boston Braves, and is the oldest rivalry in the NFC East Division. This rivalry has seen periods of great competition such as the Giants and Redskins' competition for conference and division titles in the late 1930s, early 1940s and 1980s. Experts deem the 1980s as the most hotly contested period between these teams, as the Redskins under Joe Gibbs and the Giants under Bill Parcells competed for division titles and Super Bowls. During this span the two teams combined to win 7 NFC East Divisional Titles, 5 Super Bowls and competed in the 1986 NFC Championship Game with the Giants winning 17–0. This rivalry is storied and Wellington Mara, long time owner of the Giants, always said that he believed the Redskins were the Giants' truest rival.

Currently, the Giants have 108 regular season wins against Washington, the most wins any team has against another team.

## Notable rivalry moments

- In 1937, their first season in Washington, D.C., the Washington Redskins were set to meet the New York Giants in the season finale in New York City at the Polo Grounds with the winner earning the right to play in the NFL Championship. The owner of the Washington Redskins, George Preston Marshall, loaded 12,000 fans and a 150 piece marching band onto trains and had them march an impromptu parade through New York City, all the while belting out "Hail to the Redskins". The tactic appeared to work as the Redskins went on to beat the Giants 49–14, going on to defeat the Chicago Bears in the 1937 NFL Championship.

- The Giants paid the Redskins back in 1938 with a 36–0 victory of their own, a win which propelled them to their own victory in the 1938 NFL Championship.

- In 1939 the Giants and Redskins again met in the last game of the season. Having tied in their first meeting 0–0 and having identical records (8–1–1) the two teams were playing for a spot in the NFL Championship game. The game was very competitive and the Redskins trailed 9–7 in the final moments. The Redskins attempted a field goal in the last seconds, seemingly giving them a victory. However, the field goal was called no good allowing the Giants to escape with a victory. The Redskins were irate, with one player even punching referee Bill Haloran. The outcome was so controversial that rumor has it George Preston Marshall, the Redskins owner, tried to pull strings to get Haloran fired from his day job as post master of Providence R.I., unsuccessfully. The Giants went on to lose the NFL Championship to the Green Bay Packers 27–0.

- On November 27, 1966 the Giants and Redskins participated in the highest combined scoring game in NFL history. The two teams combined for 16 touchdowns, 9 of which were of 30 yards or more. While the game was an offensive frenzy, the most memorable score was a Redskins field goal attempted with a few seconds remaining and the Giants trailing 69–41. Otto Graham, the Redskins head coach, claimed it was called merely to allow his kicker practice, but some claim that the field goal was ordered by Redskins middle linebacker and former Giant Sam Huff out of spite. In either case the final score was 72–41 and with 113 combined points the matchup remains the highest scoring game in league history.

- On November 18, 1985 in a Monday Night Football contest, the Redskins defeated the Giants 23–21. However, the win did not come without a loss as on one play the Redskins ran a flea-flicker, the Giants defense was not fooled by the play and Lawrence Taylor came from the outside and sacked quarterback Joe Theismann. The play is famous as that the sack injured Theismann's leg and effectively ended his career in the NFL. The Redskins missed the playoffs that season.

- The Giants and Redskins met in the playoffs for only second time in the 1986 NFC Championship game. The Giants were coming off a convincing victory over the 49ers in the previous round while the Redskins beat the Bears in the previous week. On a cold and windy day at Giants Stadium, the Giants scored 10 points in the first 10 minutes of the game and never were threatened. The Giants won 17-0, the first time a Joe Gibbs team had been shut out.

- On September 11, 2011 was opening day for the Giants' Super Bowl XLVI championship season of 2011. It also coincided with tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks; hence the NFL scheduled the Giants and the Redskins to meet that day, as the cities they represent were two metropolitan areas attacked on that day. FedExField was a patriotically and emotionally charged atmosphere as the two rivals took the field. Led by Eli Manning, the Giants took an early 7–0 lead in the first quarter. Washington responded on a Tim Hightower touchdown run in the second. The two teams took a 14–14 tie into halftime. Washington took the lead in the third after Ryan Kerrigan intercepted a pass from Manning and scored. Washington's defense prevented New York from scoring in the second half and the Redskins ended a six-game losing streak to the Giants. The Redskins defeated the Giants at MetLife Stadium in Week 15, their first season sweep of the Giants since 1999.

- In 2012 the rivalry intensified significantly after a special NFL commission headed by Giants owner John Mara imposed a $36 million salary cap penalty on the Redskins (and a smaller one on the Dallas Cowboys) for the organization's approach to structuring contracts in the 2010 NFL season. After beating the Giants, Redskins owner Daniel Snyder within earshot of numerous media personnel, told a team employee that "I hate those motherf***ers" in the victorious locker room after the game.

- On September 25, 2016, the winless Redskins visited the undefeated Giants. This game was significant due to the ongoing feud between star wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and cornerback Josh Norman. In the previous season, Norman and Beckham had many on-field scrums during a game when Norman played for the Carolina Panthers. The Redskins won by a score of 29–27, sealing the win on an interception by Su'a Cravens. Beckham had an impressive 7 receptions and 121 yards, but was noticeably frustrated by Norman, and was especially apparent when he took his helmet and hit the kicker's practice net on the sidelines, causing it to fall on him. Giants center Weston Richburg was the first to ever be ejected by the new rule of being ejected after two unsportsmanlike penalties, one of which costed Beckham and the Giants a significant play.

- On November 23, 2017, the Redskins hosted the Giants in their first home Thanksgiving game in franchise history. The game was very defensive throughout, with both teams struggling to get anything going offensively in the first half. In the 3rd quarter, with the game tied 3–3, Kirk Cousins threw a 15-yard touchdown to Jamison Crowder to give the Redskins a 10–3 lead. The Giants tied the game later in the quarter after Janoris Jenkins returned a Cousins' interception 53-yards for a touchdown. The Redskins pulled away late in the fourth quarter with 10 straight points to win 20–10.

- The Giants got their 100th regular season victory over the Redskins on December 9, 2018, winning 40–16 at FedExField.


Venus Verticordia

# Venus Verticordia

## Abstract

Venus Verticordia ("Changer of Hearts" or "Heart-Turner") was an aspect of the Roman goddess Venus conceived as having the power to convert either virgins or sexually active women from dissolute desire (libido) to sexual virtue (pudicitia). Under this title, Venus was especially cultivated by married women, and on 1 April she was celebrated at the Veneralia festival with public bathing.

Venus Verticordia was one of several goddesses whose new or reinterpreted theology or cult practice was meant to inform the conduct of women as a response to wartime upheaval and social crisis during the Roman Republic.

The epithet Verticordia derives from the Latin words verto, "turn", and cor, the heart as "the seat of subjective experience and wisdom". The conversion, however, was thought of as occurring in the mind – the mens or "ethical core". Women were thus viewed as having the moral agency necessary for shaping society, albeit in roles differing from men.

## In Roman state religion

The cult of Venus Verticordia was established with the installation of a statue (simulacrum) around the time of the Second Punic War, before 204 BC, possibly 220 BC or 214 BC, or as early as 237 or 224 BC. Its initial location is uncertain – generally, in the Vallis Murcia, between the northern slope of the Minor Aventine and the farther end of the Circus Maximus. The founding statue was possibly dedicated in the shrine of either Venus Obsequens or Venus Erycina, or it may have been placed in an open-air precinct (templum) where her temple was later erected.

The official process behind the dedication was similar to the establishing of other women-centered cults such as that of Fortuna Muliebris or the religious reparations owed to Juno Regina in 207 BC. A list was compiled of one hundred matronae – respectable married women – eligible to make the dedication, then their number was narrowed to ten by sortition (drawing lots). The ten women themselves nominated a Sulpicia, wife of a consul, as the most worthy of the honor among them. Pliny the Elder implies that it was the first time a woman was selected for a religious task on behalf of the state in this way, and says that this process was followed again for the importation of the cult of the Magna Mater by Claudia Quinta.

The Temple of Venus Verticordia (aedes) was one of several established by the Roman Republic in response to perceived outbreaks of female debauchery, in this instance incestum, the violation of religious chastity by three of the six women serving as "professionally chaste" Vestals. The women were tried and convicted, and the Sibylline Books were consulted. Verticordia's temple was the last of eight the Romans built in accordance with Sibylline authority, dedicated to ten different deities, seven of them goddesses. The earlier cult statue of Verticordia would have been moved there.

Work on the temple started in 114 BC. It was located in the Vallis Murcia, possibly near the shrine of Murcia at the Circus Maximus, but the proximity of functionally overlapping temples to Murcia, Obsequens, and Verticordia leaves uncertainties in interpreting the ancient texts. Coarelli assumed that the Temple of Venus Verticordia physically replaced that of the archaic Fortuna Virilis; the two deities shared a feast day. No traces of the buildings in this area have been detected in the archaeological record. Other than the annual feast day when the statue was bathed, nothing is known of the shrine's quotidian operations; since Verticordia was cultivated only by women, it seems likely that temple personnel included priestesses and female attendants.

## Founding narratives

The narratives that explain the founding of Venus Verticordia's cult blend history and myth, as is characteristic of Roman mythology and its focus on human actions within a divine order that supports the Roman state. Ancient sources indicate that both the dedication of the statue and the building of the temple were religious responses during a time of military and social crisis.

### Statue dedication

In consultation with the Sibylline Books in the latter 3rd century BC, the decemviri (a commission of ten men) had determined that a statue of Venus Verticordia was required in response to the impudicitia of Roman matrons. After a sort of " real virtue contest " among the ten finalists, the honor of making the dedication went to a Sulpicia, who is likely a historical figure. Valerius Maximus says that Sulpicia was the daughter of a Paterculus and the wife of a Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, presumably the consul of 237 BC. She is described in superlatives as sanctissima ("most holy"), elevated above all others in castitas ("purity"), and pudicissima, of utmost sexual integrity. The French sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann imagined Sulpicia herself as the model for the statue, since she embodied the desired virtues.

### Prodigy of the temple

About a hundred years after the statue was dedicated, as tensions in North Africa were mounting for the Iugurthine War, the Temple of Venus Verticordia was built in response to a prodigy (prodigium). The protagonist in the story was a virgin, Greek parthenos in Plutarch and virgo in Latin sources, named as Elbia, Elvia, or Helvia. Plutarch (early 2nd century AD) says Elbia was out horseback riding when she was struck dead by a lightning bolt. She was found naked, with her dress (chiton) pulled up as if on purpose, and with her shoes, rings, and headdress torn off and scattered around. Her mouth was open, and the tongue was hanging out. Her horse was also found dead and stripped of its trappings. The haruspices (manteis) immediately connected the incident to a disgrace among the Vestals, probably issuing their response in September 114 BC, and an investigation was launched.

Julius Obsequens (late 4th/early 5th century AD), who compiled a collection of prodigies and drew on now-lost parts of the Augustan -era historian Livy 's work, dates the incident to the consulship of Manius Acilius Balbus and Gaius Porcius Cato in 114 BC. He identifies the virgin as the daughter of a Publius Elvius, a member of the equestrian order. While Plutarch has her out riding alone and her body later discovered, in Obsequens' account she is traveling in the company of her father from the Roman Games to Apulia when the incident occurs in the ager Stellas, the Stellate Plain. She is left dead by the lightning strike, with her garment pulled up to expose her genitals and her tongue hanging out, as if fire had flashed from the "lower places" (per inferiores locos) to her mouth. While the death of the horse is not explicitly reported, its trappings (ornamenta) are said to have been scattered about.

In the version of the Christian writer Orosius (died ca. 420 AD), the equestrian Lucius Helvius was returning to Apulia from Rome with his wife and daughter when a storm struck the traveling party. Seeing that his daughter was upset by the storm, he decided to leave the vehicles behind and to proceed more quickly on horseback to seek shelter. But when the girl rode into the middle of the caravan, she was struck dead by lightning, which caused her clothing to be pulled off without being torn – the bindings at her breast and feet were undone, and her necklaces and rings yanked off. She was left lying "in an obscene manner", naked but with no injury apparent, and her tongue hanging out "just a little". As with Plutarch, the horse is struck dead too, and its bridle and harnessing unfastened and scattered. The wife, unmentioned in the other versions, plays no role in the story.

Outside the taking of official auspices, an unsought sign that violated the predictable orderliness of the physical world occasioned alarm. The prodigium was a sign of divine displeasure, and the religious offense that provoked it had to be identified and expiated. The frequency of recorded prodigies seems to have been especially intense during the Second Punic War, and these were often accompanied by lightning, a speciality of Etruscan divination. The forensic techniques for interpreting lightning accounted for elements such as the direction from which the strike came and what kind of damage it left. For instance, Jullius Obsequens traced the path of the strike from "lower places" to the mouth – lightning from below being one of the standard signifying types. The scattering of the horse trappings, according to Obsequens, was a sign that pointed to the involvement of the equestrian order.

The Sibylline books were consulted, and an official pronouncement (responsum) formalized the accusation against members of the equestrian order along with three Vestals in the disgrace, which Obsequens labels infamia. The consultation with the Sibylline books may have been the source for the epithet Verticordia, modeled after the Greek cult of Aphrodite Apostrophia, who turned away (from apo -, "away," and stroph-, "turn") disordered acts of sexuality. Danielle Porte saw apotropaism in the powers of Venus Verticordia, as suggested by the prodigy's imagery of exposed genitals (like the anasyrma gesture) and the protruding tongue characteristic of gorgoneia.

#### Trial of the Vestals

The prodigy was linked to Vestals committing repeated acts of sexual misconduct with several members of the equestrian order. The Augustan poet Ovid more generally blames a decline in sexual morality (pudicitia) in Rome at the time, four generations before hm. The trial before the pontiffs started in December 114 BC; the proceedings have been described as "exceptional and no doubt politically motivated."

#### Human sacrifice

The founding of Verticordia's temple and the punishment of the Vestals for sacrilegious inchastity were deemed insufficient to avert the panic, and these expiations were supplemented by a rare human sacrifice in ancient Rome — of two couples, one Greek and the other Celtic. Livy calls the practice "hardly Roman", but it seems to have been the second time this particular rite was enacted, the first carried out during the Hannibalic War. According to Plutarch, it was the last human sacrifice carried out in Rome.

## The Veneralia and the calendar

The feast day of Venus took place on 1 April (the Kalends). Verticordia may have supplanted or been a refinement of an older form of Venus originally honored on the Kalends, and she shares the day with Fortuna Virilis, an older instantiation of the goddess Fortuna whose origins are unknown. The Kalends of April was one of the three days during the year when a woman expected to receive a gift from her male romantic partner, the other two being her birthday and the Sigillaria in December. No games (ludi) were held as they were for many other religious festivals.

The whole month of April, Latin Aprilis, was under the guardianship (tutela) of Venus, and Ovid and others took Aphrodite, the name of her Greek counterpart, as the origin of the word Aprilis. The more common view among the Romans was that Aprilis derived from the verb aperire, "to open", according to Verrius Flaccus because it was the month when "fruits and flowers and animals and seas and lands do open". April and June were the most propitious months for weddings, as they were presided over by Venus and then Juno as a goddess of marriage. The April religious calendar was dominated by female rites, with major festivals for Magna Mater ("Great Mother") and Ceres as well as days for Venus. The Kalends is not named as the Veneralia until the Calendar of Filocalus in AD 354, which illustrates the month of April with a scene from the theatrical ludi of Magna Mater.

The most detailed source on the Veneralia is the Kalends of April section in Book 4 of Ovid's poem about the Roman calendar, the Fasti, but the word Verticordia is metrically impossible in elegiac couplets and thus can't be used as an epithet for Venus in the poem. Ovid refers to Verticordia, however, in a line that plays on the etymology of the epithet: inde Venus verso nomina corde tenet, "and from her change of heart Venus holds her title."

According to Ovid, the cult image of Venus was bathed and redressed in the ritual act of lavatio. The goddess's rich adornments and gold necklaces were removed, and after she had been washed head to toe and polished dry, she was decked with not only her jewellery but also fresh roses and other flowers. Rose adornment was also part of the Vinalia, the wine festival on 23 April when Venus Erycina was celebrated. Ovid is the only source for Verticordia's lavatio, and the earliest for the bathing of the cult statue of the Magna Mater, which was carried to the river Almo during her festival 4–10 April, the Megalensia. Statue-bathing was not characteristic of early Roman religion; it may have served a practical purpose that was ritualized to preserve the sanctity of the image, or even been reconceptualized as an annual cleansing of offenses committed against the goddesses.

At the Veneralia, matrons and brides were to supplicate Verticordia, seeking physical beauty, socially approved behaviors, and a good reputation, while women of lesser standing (mulieres humiliores) celebrated Fortuna Virilis by burning incense. The celebrants of Verticordia bathed communally, crowned in wreaths of myrtle, a plant especially associated with Venus and eroticism but not used in bridal wreaths. Ovid explains the origin (aetion) of myrtle-wearing with a brief version of the myth of Venus Anadyomene rising naked from the sea, recognizable as such in the poem by the "hair-drying pose" he describes. As she is wringing out her dripping hair on the shore, she becomes aware of a rowdy band of satyrs watching her. Unlike the usual myth in which an enraged goddess punishes the man who has seen her, Ovid's Venus simply covers herself with myrtle and goes about her pleasurable business. "Nakedness, baths, and female sexuality" form a kind of "expressive module" for the holiday. "The nakedness that lies at the center of this celebration is no taboo," Alessandro Barchiesi observed of Ovid's reassembling of the religious materials, but "is a public gesture" emulating the ancestress of the Romans as Aeneadae, descendants of Aeneas, son of Venus.

Participants also emulated Venus in consuming cocetum, a slurry of poppy seed, milk, and honey that served a ceremonial purpose similar to the kykeon of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The festival of Ceres – Greek Demeter for whom poppy was emblematic – began 12 April with games and performances in the Circus Maximus and concluded 19 April with the Cerialia. The poppy beverage may have helped relax or sedate anxious virgin brides, or had an aphrodisiac or more strongly narcotic or hallucinatory effect, depending on the opiate content of the poppy. Ovid offers another origin story for brides consuming the cocetum, saying that Venus herself drank it on her wedding night. But he undermines an image of Venus as a model wife with the sexuality of Venus as a woman, framing her feast day with reminders of Mars, her regular consort to whom she was not married; she drank the cocetum to endure her arranged marriage to the unattractive but eager bridegroom Vulcan, and her son Aeneas, father of the Roman people, was born from her adulterous desire for the mortal Anchises.

Ovid's artistic intermingling of Verticordia and Fortuna Virilis and his social commentary on the division of the celebrants is "notoriously controversial" and "puzzlingly paradigmatic" as a historical source. The name Fortuna Virilis means something closer to "Good Luck in Men" than "Manly Fortune", or "Lucky Guy" if the women's actions are meant as a "privileged exhibition" for the men – the women may be hesitant that taking off their clothes exposes physical imperfection, but that isn't what Fortuna Virilis lets men see. Her origins are no later than the 4th century BC, predating the dedication of Verticordia's statue, and Plutarch traces a temple of Fortuna Virilis back to the semilegendary king Servius Tullius, to whom many such foundings were attributed in myth. In the late 4th century BC, public bathing might have taken place at the public pool (piscina publica), but the appearance of the women at the men's public baths has to be a later development, since these were not in use until the 2nd century BC.

The 1 April feast day was celebrated widely, perhaps universally, by Roman women, but ancient sources seem to indicate social stratification in what aspects they might participate in. The bathing and adornment of Verticordia's statue could involve only a limited number of women, and selectivity of merit was inherent in the establishment of her cult. The women who attended on her wore the respectable attire of the matron. Women of lesser status attended to Fortuna Virilis, and then they – or perhaps all women – crowned themselves in myrtle like Venus and went to share a "fecundating" bath in public view of men, who watch as the satyrs did. Earlier in the Fasti, Ovid had used the word iuventus ("the youth" as a collective), which in this period often meant an elite troop of young men of the equestrian order, to refer to a band of satyrs subject to Venus, and T. P. Wiseman conjectured that in the 4th century BC, the rites on the Kalends of April may even have involved men dressing as satyrs.

The mutual desire of Mars and Venus being fundamental to the Roman state, the role of Verticordia was not to inhibit sexuality but to promote libido within marriage, which Cicero described as "the seedbed of the republic" (seminarium rei publicae). About nine months later, the Carmentalia that celebrated the goddess of childbirth was for all women giving birth, a festival unusually without social segregation.

### In the era of Christianization

By the early second century AD, the rituals of Fortuna Virilis had been absorbed into the cult of Venus Verticordia. By late antiquity the drinking of cocetum and practices associated with Fortuna Virilis seem to have fallen into disuse. The name Veneralia for the festival on the Kalends of April first appears in AD 354 in the Calendar of Filocalus, the work of a Christian illustrator and chronographer that integrates Christian elements into the traditional Roman calendar.

The Veneralia may have been the setting Augustine of Hippo had in mind in a sermon on Mary and Martha, dated around AD 393, when he writes that "we" should not get carnally distracted by "banquets of Venus" (epulae venerales) but practice moderate behavior (modestia). Augustine advised forbearance, not passion, as a way to approach the secular banquet of Venus, which he seems to regard as "rather a respectable affair in 'celebration of a life of harmony and fullness'". The 6th-century antiquarian Ioannes Lydus, writing in Greek, says that women of higher rank had worshipped Aphrodite on 1 April "to achieve concord (homonoia) and a modest life", with no mention of Fortuna Virilis.

## Relation to other goddesses

The first Roman shrine (aedes) to an instantiation of Venus had been built during the Third Samnite War in 295 BC, located near the racetrack of the Circus Maximus. Funded by fines imposed by the curule aedile Fabius Gurges on matronae for engaging in sexual misconduct (stuprum), it was dedicated to Venus Obsequens – "Compliant" Venus. During the wars of the Middle Republic that expanded Rome's presence throughout the Mediterranean world, and especially during the Punic Wars (264–146 BC), social and economic power among Roman women of the propertied classes increased, as they stepped in to manage domestic matters in the absence of men deployed at war. At the same time, anxieties about untethered women led to regulation of their behaviors in relation to men through both legislation and religious cultivation, counterbalancing their contributions to the Roman state and relative autonomy on the home front with expectations of loyalty and self-discipline expressed sexually. The "turning" or conversion of Venus Verticordia is not a suppression of sexual desire but a purposing of its power for social benefit in a display of personal excellence.

### Venus Erycina and the cults of Pudicitia

In the month of Venus, on 23 April, a day comparable to the Greek Aphrodisia festival was devoted to Venus Erycina extra portam Collinam, "Venus of Eryx outside the Colline Gate " and hence outside the sacred boundary of Rome (pomerium) as foreign rites traditionally were. Sex workers (meretrices) attended while socially respectable women celebrated the same goddess with "cleaned up" rites at the Vinalia festival on the Capitoline. The lower-class women (mulieres humiliores) who celebrated Fortuna Virilis on the Kalends of April would have included prostitutes as well. Sarah Pomeroy believed that the humiliores comprised only prostitutes, but this is not standard usage of the word, and Ovid undermines even the usual social distinction between the humiliores and women of the upper social orders in the inclusivity of the 1 April festivities.

Venus Erycina was a Punic cult imported from Sicily, and her temple was built as the result of a wartime vow, most likely in 212 BC at the close of the Siege of Syracuse which gave Rome control of the island. At her second temple on the Capitoline, Erycina was eventually assimilated to Venus Genetrix, Venus as the generative mother of the Roman people, a moral amelioration of Erycina that indicates "prostitution was not the only item in her portfolio." The development of Erycina's cult shows the counterbalancing of an ideation of sexual women as whores by advancing the more self-controlled form of sexuality (pudicitia) for women within marriage, which Verticordia also embodied.

The social separation between Fortuna Virilis and Venus Verticordia, and between the two temples of Venus Erycina, had played out earlier in similar dynamic tension as the Conflict of the Orders sought resolution. A patrician woman had married a plebeian and consequently was deemed ineligible to participate in the cult of Pudicitia Patricia, "Pudicitia for Patricians". In response, she established a shrine to Pudicitia Plebeia as an alternative for socially aspiring plebeians in 295 BC. Pudicitia was the public moral arena in which women competed as men did in virtus, "manly" excellence. Only univirae, married women who had been with only one man, could be admitted to either cult of Pudicitia, emphasizing a woman's success at the self-management of her own sexuality beyond social expectations or male desire. The shrines of both Pudicitia Plebeia and Venus Verticordia were established in response to prodigies at a time of crisis in the Roman state; it is a frequent pattern that repairing social disorder required the public demonstration of the sexual and moral integrity of Roman women.

### Murcia and the myrtle

The location of the Temple of Venus Verticordia in the Vallis Murcia also raises questions about her relation to the obscure goddess Murcia, the varied spelling of whose name led to her identification with Venus Murtea or Myrtea, "Venus of the Myrtle Grove". Servius says that Verticordia's temple precinct (fanum) was near the Circus Maximus in a former myrtle grove, which was also the site of the Rape of the Sabine Women. As a pretext for the founding act of bride abduction, Romulus had invited the Sabine families to a festival in honor of the god named by Plutarch as Poseidon Hippios ("Horse Poseidon"), Latinized as Neptunus Equester ("Equestrian Neptune ") and identified with the archaic god Consus. The underground altar of Consus was located at one of the two points of the Circus Maximus where the chariots turned, the meta Murciae, near the myrtle grove. In earliest times, the site was largely flooded by the Tiber river in April, a terrain supporting the conceptualization of Venus rising from the "sea" among the myrtles, but in the driest months, the area was devoted to horse races, especially in August, when Venus's second Vinalia of the year was held on the 19th, two days before the horse-racing festival of Consus.

### Demeter, Bona Dea, and Aphrodite Apostrophia

The Greek equivalent of Verticordia, Aphrodite Apostrophia ("Aphrodite of Turning Away") was complementary to Demeter Erinys. The April rites of Roman Ceres were not based on the primary Greek myth of Demeter – the abduction of her daughter Persephone to serve as the bride of Pluto – and yet Ovid chooses to narrate it at disproportionate length in his treatment of April in the Fasti. This choice may have been motivated by the complex nexus in Greek myth and cult between Demeter Erinys and Aphrodite Apostrophia. Demeter Erinys ("Furious Demeter") represents the rightful anger the goddess felt after she herself was raped during her search for her daughter, having turned herself into a mare to try to evade Poseidon only to have him transform into a stallion to mount her. Erinys is the drive for vengeance, rendered into lawfulness by Demeter Thesmophoros ("Bringer of Laws", thesmoi) who preserves family order and the state. Although Demeter's Thesmophoria is framed broadly as an all-female "fertility" festival, the second day became a "forum for crime detection and dispute resolution" pervaded by the complaint of the wronged goddess.

The animalizing potential of desire is "turned away" by Aphrodite Apostrophia (from apo -, "away" and strophein, "to turn") – so called because she diverted the human race from acting on desires that were contrary to nomos (ἐπιθυμίας τε ἀνόμου) and from unholy deeds (ἔργων ἀνοσίων), such as the incestuous union that produced Adonis, the beautiful youth unsatisfactorily loved by both Aphrodite and Persephone.

Incest plays a role in one version of how the Roman Bona Dea, whose rites seem most comparable to the Thesmophoria, became a goddess. In most tellings, she is deified after her husband, Faunus, beats her with a myrtle branch when he finds her drinking wine – in one account, to death – but Macrobius has her as his daughter, whom he beats with myrtle when she refuses sex even though he has plied her with wine. In the hands of Faunus, who in the later tradition is often depicted with satyr-like features, the myrtle of Venus becomes an instrument for "excessive erotic desire"; it was banned from Bona Dea's temple on the slope of the Aventine, above the "Valley of Myrtle".

In Verticordia's mythology, the threat of bestial sexuality is represented by the satyrs in Ovid's account of Venus's bath, and by the prodigy of the horse-riding virgin, whose body is found with signs that ordinarily might be interpreted as rape. The German philologist Carl Koch suggested that the Sibylline consultation calling for a temple to Venus Verticordia might have directly prescribed the model of Apostrophia, as was the case with some other transferrals of Greek or other deities to Rome.

### The nudity of Venus

The feast day of Venus Verticordia was one of two April holidays featuring the public nudity of women, the second being stage performances at the Floralia that started at the end of the month and continued into May. For the Floralia, however, the bodies of entertainers and prostitutes were on display; on the Kalends, even respectable matrons removed the garments that marked them as such, the long dress (stola) that covered them to their feet and the headbands (vittae) that bound their hair. Valerius Maximus attributed a kind of inviolability to the stola, stating that it was not to be subjected to the touch of an "alien" hand – meaning someone outside the family – even if the matron came under arrest. The unwilling removal of the protective garment would be a violation, but its willing removal and the reclaiming of the nude body held power: "Like the Gorgon's eye, it can paralyze or protect." Although female nudity among the Archaic and Classical Greeks had been taboo, "respectable female nudity" was imported into Italy via the Etruscans and took the form of Hellenistic Aphrodite.

The Venus Pudica statuary type displays the goddess naked, and the placement of her hands is not obviously defensive but rather instructs the viewer toward the erogenous zones of the female body. The sometime presence of a cloth or drapery is ambiguous as to whether Pudica has just removed her garment or is about to put it on, and in some versions, such as the Mazarin Venus (at the top of this article), suggests a striptease. The apparent erasure of social rank was renegotiated by the practice of wearing jewellery in the baths, as modeled by the bejewelling of nude Venus statues and documented by archaeological finds in drains.

Both the Venus Anadyomene and Pudica types are associated with rising from the water, sometimes indicated by a hydria (water vessel) or dolphin, with bathing a reenactment of the goddess's birth from the sea. Ovid's description of Venus with dripping hair for the Kalends of April may have been inspired by a painting in the anaydomene pose that Augustus had exhibited in the Temple of the Deified Julius. Pudica, however, is well coiffed. Roman matrons were not portrayed with the loose, wet locks of Anadyomene, which released an eroticism that might not be fully under control; elaborately bound-up hairstyles were not simply ornamental but "upright" in the moral sense. The polymath Varro said that the piled-up hairstyle of Roman matrons was called a tutulus from the word tutus, "safe", and was also nicknamed an arx, like the citadel of the city – just as functionally the cult of Verticordia was established to safeguard the city. And just as women reenacted the role of Venus in the rites of 1 April, they were portrayed quite literally as Venus in sculpture, with their own portrait head placed on a conventional body type of the goddess – a costly form of self-expression available only to those who could afford it, from the wives of emperors to successful freedwomen. Although nude, their portraits exhibit "flawless reserve and self-possession".


Rice Stadium (Rice University)

# Rice Stadium (Rice University)

## Abstract

Rice Stadium is an American football stadium located on the Rice University campus in Houston, Texas. It has been the home of the Rice Owls football team since its completion in 1950, and hosted John F. Kennedy 's " We choose to go to the Moon " speech in 1962 and Super Bowl VIII in early 1974.

Architecturally, Rice Stadium is an example of modern architecture, with simple lines and an unadorned, functional design. The lower seating bowl is located below the surrounding ground level. Built solely for football, the stadium has excellent sightlines from almost every seat. To achieve this, the running track was eliminated so that spectators were closer to the action and each side of the upper decks was brought in at a concave angle to provide better sightlines. It is still recognized in many circles as the best stadium in Texas for watching a football game. Entrances and aisles were strategically placed so that the entire stadium could be emptied of spectators in nine minutes.

In 2006, Rice University upgraded the facility by switching from AstroTurf to FieldTurf and adding a modern scoreboard above the north concourse. Seating in the upper deck is in poor condition, which led the university to move home games for which large crowds were expected to nearby NRG Stadium.

High school football games, especially neutral-site playoff games, are frequently played at Rice Stadium. It can also be used as a concert venue.

## History

Rice Stadium replaced Rice Field (now Wendel D. Ley Track and Holloway Field), which had a total capacity of less than 37,000, in 1950. The new stadium was subsidized by the City of Houston, and it was designed by Hermon Lloyd & W. B. Morgan and Milton McGinty and built by Brown and Root.

In addition to Rice, the University of Houston Cougars played at Rice Stadium from 1951 through 1964, and the former Bluebonnet Bowl was played there from 1959 to 1967, and in 1985 and 1986. The Houston Oilers of the American Football League (AFL) played in the stadium for three seasons (1965 – 1967), then moved to the Astrodome in 1968.

In January 1974, the venue hosted Super Bowl VIII, the first played in Texas, in which the defending champion Miami Dolphins defeated the Minnesota Vikings 24 – 7 with 68,142 in attendance. The game returned to Houston thirty years later in February 2004, for Super Bowl XXXVIII at Reliant Stadium.

### John F. Kennedy speech

On September 12, 1962, Rice Stadium hosted the speech in which President John F. Kennedy challenged Americans to meet his goal, set the previous year, to send a man to the Moon by the end of the decade. In the Wednesday afternoon speech, he used a reference to Rice University football to help frame his rhetoric:

"But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas ? We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

Kennedy's comments implied Rice had a history of losing to Texas; however, the two football teams had split 5 – 5 in their previous ten meetings and tied the following month. On the other hand, Kennedy's comments about Rice-Texas might have been as forward-looking as his statements about going to the Moon (which did occur in 1969): Since 1963, Rice has gone just 2–43 (.044) against Texas, including 28 straight losses between 1966 and 1993 and twenty straight from 1995 to the present.

### Monsters of Rock Tour 1988

On July 2, 1988, Rice Stadium hosted a stop on the Monsters of Rock tour. The tour was headlined by Van Halen and also featured Metallica, Scorpions, Dokken, and Kingdom Come. This was also the Texas World Music Festival.

## Year by year

### Capacity reduction

As originally built, Rice Stadium seated 70,000, the second-largest stadium in the Southwest Conference (behind the Cotton Bowl). Rice Stadium was built before professional football came to Houston and while Rice was still competitive in the Southwest Conference. It was reasonable to expect 70,000 fans to attend a college football game there. However, as Rice declined on the field from the 1960s onward, the Owls found it increasingly difficult to fill the stadium. Even crowds of 30,000 were swallowed up in the environment.

In 2006, the end zone seats were covered with tarps, reducing the regular seating capacity to 47,000. The northern end zone was later demolished. As of 2023, school continues exploring options for a modern seating arrangement with a reduced capacity.

## Features

### Brian Patterson Sports Performance Center

Around July 2015, construction began on the Brian Patterson Sports Performance Center. This building makes up the north end of the stadium, and contain a weight room, a home team locker room, coaching and staff offices. This replaced the north end seating that consisted of crude concrete steps and was unused. The building was named for donor and former Rice University football player and alumnus Brian Patterson.

### Robert L. Waltrip Training Center

On May 9, 2019, the Rice University Board of Trustees approved a proposal for an air-supported multipurpose facility on the west side of Rice Stadium that will offer climate-protected space for varsity athletics training, campus recreation and Rice student events, activities and community partner events. The 80,000 square foot inflatable structure rose up from the infield area of the bike track west of Rice Stadium for the first time in late July 2020, creating a facility to house practices, intramurals and other events when weather put those events in peril.


Vigil (TV series)

# Vigil (TV series)

## Abstract

Vigil is a British police procedural drama television series created by Tom Edge and produced by World Productions. The series premiered on BBC One on 29 August 2021. The first series stars Suranne Jones, Rose Leslie, Shaun Evans, Paterson Joseph, Gary Lewis and Martin Compston, and is set in Scotland, primarily onboard HMS Vigil, a ballistic missile submarine of the Royal Navy.

The second series premiered on 10 December 2023. It replaces the nautical setting of the first series with a land-based drama that focuses on prototype drone technology. Jones, Leslie and Lewis reprise their roles with Dougray Scott and Romola Garai joining the main cast.

## Plot

### Series 1

Detective Chief Inspector Amy Silva of Police Scotland is sent to HMS Vigil, a nuclear-powered Vanguard -class ballistic missile submarine, to investigate a death on board, which takes place shortly after the mysterious disappearance of a Scottish fishing trawler. Her investigations, and those of her colleagues ashore, bring the police into conflict with the Royal Navy and MI5, the British Security Service.

The loss of the trawler Mhairi Finnea in the series bears similarities to the sinking of the FV Antares by Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarine HMS Trenchant in the Firth of Clyde in 1990. Families of the Antares' s crew expressed upset at scenes of the Mhairi Finnea foundering; however, the BBC denied that the drama was inspired by or based on a specific real-life event.

### Series 2

When a Royal Air Force prototype combat drone is compromised and kills several soldiers during a joint demonstration in Scotland, Silva’s team are tasked with finding the perpetrator. She travels to joint Al-Shawka Air Base in the Kingdom of Wudyan, a controversial ally in the Persian Gulf, and discovers a wider conspiracy intertwined with the current regime's collaboration with the British government and private enterprise on drone development.

## Cast

### Main

- Suranne Jones as Detective Chief Inspector Amy Silva

- Rose Leslie as Detective Sergeant / Inspector Kirsten Longacre

- Gary Lewis as Detective Superintendent / Chief Superintendent Colin Robertson

- Orla Russell as Poppy Torrens, Silva's adopted daughter from a previous relationship

### Recurring

#### Series 1

- Shaun Evans as Warrant Officer Class One Elliot Glover, the coxswain of HMS Vigil

- Martin Compston as Chief Petty Officer Craig Burke, a sonar mapping expert on HMS Vigil

- Paterson Joseph as Commander Neil Newsome, the Captain of HMS Vigil

- Adam James as Lieutenant Commander Mark Prentice, the Executive Officer of HMS Vigil

- Lauren Lyle as Jade Antoniak, a peace activist

- Therese Bradley as Laura Michaels, an MI5 officer

- Parth Thakerar as Jay Kohli, an MI5 officer

- Stephen Dillane as Rear Admiral Shaw, Head of the Royal Navy Submarine Service

- Lolita Chakrabarti as Lieutenant Commander Erin Branning, Shaw's aide

- Dan Li as Lieutenant Commander Hennessy, the Weapons Engineer Officer on HMS Vigil

- Lorne MacFadyen as Chief Petty Officer Matthew Doward, a sonar mapping expert transferred from HMS Virtue

- Connor Swindells as Lieutenant Simon Hadlow, an engineering officer on HMS Vigil

- Lois Chimimba as Chief Petty Officer Tara Kierly, a sonar mapping expert of HMS Vigil

- Daniel Portman as Chief Petty Officer Gary Walsh, an engineer on HMS Vigil

- Anjli Mohindra as Surgeon Lieutenant Tiffany Docherty, the medical officer on HMS Vigil

- Anita Vettesse as Petty Officer Jackie Hamilton, chef on HMS Vigil

- Reuben Joseph as Detective Sergeant Porter

- Cal MacAninch as Ben Oakley, peace activist

- Tom Gill as Petty Officer Adams

#### Series 2

- Dougray Scott as Air Vice Marshal Marcus Grainger, a senior officer in charge of the R-PAS drone project

- Romola Garai as Acting Squadron Leader Eliza Russell, interim leader of British forces stationed at Al-Shawka Air Base

- Chris Jenks as Flight Lieutenant Callum Barker, a drone pilot stationed in Wudyan

- Anders Hayward as Flying Officer Colin Dixon, a drone pilot stationed in Dundair

- Shannon Hayes as Flight Lieutenant Nicole Lawson, a drone pilot stationed in Wudyan

- David Elliot as Ross Sutherland, a disturbed ex-soldier

- Oscar Salem as Captain Sattam Abdul "Sam" Kader, a Royal Wudyani Air Force drone pilot

- Nebras Jamali as Colonel Ali Bilali, commander of Al-Shawka Air Base in Wudyan

- Amir El-Masry as Daniel Ramsey, an MI5 officer

- Noof Ousellam as Paul Townsend, Silva and Longacre's junior police colleague

- Steven Elder as Derek McCabe, Senior Vice President of Alban-X, the Scottish manufacturer of R-PAS drones

- Jonathan Ajayi as Wes Harper, an American citizen employed as chief software engineer at Al-Shawka Air Base

- Alastair MacKenzie as Wing Commander Anthony Chapman, former leader of British forces stationed at Al-Shawka Air Base

- Hiba Medina as Sabiha Chapman, Anthony’s daughter

- Dominic Mafham as Sir Ian Downing, Ramsay's superior in MI5

- Tommy Sim'aan as Firas Zaman, a Wudyani journalist and dissident living in Scotland

- Khalid Laith Nicole as Abdullah Ghazali, leader of Jabhat Al-huriya

- Kamal Mustaffai as Mutaz, one of Ghazali's henchmen

## Production

In a 2021 interview, writer Edge was approached by development producer George Aza-Selinger to develop a submarine project for television. It was inspired by the UK's Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD) and the life of its submarine crews. The show was filmed and primarily set in Scotland. Production designer Tom Sayer created elaborate studio sets to represent the interior of the submarine.

The first series received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for the writing, pace, acting, visual style, set design, tone, and atmosphere, but it was criticised for the dialogue, plot, and inaccuracies. In March 2022, Vigil was renewed for a second series, which premiered on 10 December 2023.

Filming for series 2 took place during spring 2023, across Scotland, in locations including Glasgow, Coatbridge, Motherwell, Cumbernauld, Luss, Lanark, Blantyre and North Ayrshire.

Scenes were filmed in Casablanca and Rabat in Morocco to portray the country of Wudyan.

## Music

The programme's theme music is the song "Fuel to Fire" from the 2013 album Aventine by Danish singer, songwriter and musician Agnes Obel. Other music included in the series is composed by Afterhere (Berenice Scott and Glenn Gregory). Episode 4 includes the song "Anchor" by Welsh singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Novo Amor, released as a single in 2015 and included on his 2017 EP Bathing Beach.

## Episodes

## Reception

### Ratings

Series 1 Episode 1 attracted an audience of 10.2 million viewers across its first seven days, making Vigil the BBC's most watched new drama of the year.

### Series 1

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the first series an 85% approval rating, with an average rating of 6.6/10, based on 20 reviews. The critical consensus reads, "Vigil is ludicrous just as often as it is suspenseful, but a committed cast and pulpy pace make it worth diving in”. On Metacritic, the series has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100 based on five reviews.

Lucy Mangan of The Guardian found the first episode intriguing, awarding it five out of five and describing it as "solid, old-fashioned entertainment". The Independent gave the first episode four out of five, praising the cast and Edge's writing. In a four-starred review for London's Evening Standard, Katie Rosseinsky said: "Even scenes set in the depths of the sub are visually striking, lit up in reds and blues. Add in some jump scares, a handful of near-catastrophes and a couple of cliffhangers and you have all the makings of a taut mystery with intriguingly murky depths. Sunday nights are stressful again – I wouldn’t have it any other way." In a five-starred review, Empire magazine described Vigil as " relentless conspiracy drama bursting with performers who know how to keep their cards close to their chests. British TV doesn’t get more thrilling than this." Hugo Rifkind in The Times described "etting a whodunnit on a submarine" as "a masterstroke". Giving the programme four stars, Suzy Feay of the Financial Times said that "The submarine setting has the welcome effect of pressure-cooking some fairly standard ingredients into a tasty concoction".

Other reviewers were less complimentary, citing the unrealistic sets and other technical inaccuracies, the implausibility of elements of the plot, and its political bias. James Delingpole in The Spectator described it as "amateurish and implausible", noting that "the uniforms are wrong; the ceilings are too high and the sub generally far too spacious" and criticised "the hackneyed dialogue, the implausible plotting and the box-ticking". Anita Singh in The Telegraph described the series as "so bad it could be Russian propaganda", and her colleague Ed Power noted that "the story was nonsense" and that "the premise was wasted". The Telegraph also reported that the naval advisor working on the series was an SNP councillor and anti-nuclear campaigner, leading to accusations of bias. Carol Midgley in The Times said that "this subpar ocean drama made my heart sink", and described it as "stultifying".

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet said the series was "effective" in the beginning but more and more became like an "unnecessary under-water version of Line of Duty ".

### Series 2

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the second series a 58% approval rating, based on 12 reviews. The critic consensus read, "Taking Vigil out of its original submarine relieves the cabin pressure but also much of the suspense, although Suranne Jones and Rose Leslie's rapport still provides intrigue."

Jack Seale of The Guardian awarded the second series four out of five, describing it as a "pacy, extremely good crime drama tackling murder on a military base" that was full of "political truth bombs". He also praised Jones's performance.

Rebecca Cook of Digital Spy regarded the second series as inferior to the first, because it lacked the intrigue of the first series and settled "for something which feels far more ripped from the headlines". Cook however praised the second series for exploring the romantic human drama between Jones and Leslie.

Paul Stacey of the Irish Independent gave the second series a critical review, describing it as a "daft and implausible cop thriller" with an "unlikeable lead". Stacey criticised Jones's performance as Silva as "drab... with little colour or depth".

GQ pointed out serious flaws in the realism of the drones, but praised the imaginative way that the programme represented multiple drone technologies in one rather fantastical concept for dramatic effect.

### Accolades

## International distribution

Peacock acquired the show and the first series was released in the United States on 19 December 2021. The second series was released on Peacock on 15 February 2024.


Kuala Kapuas

# Kuala Kapuas

## Abstract

Kuala Kapuas (abbreviated: KLK) is the regency seat of Kapuas Regency and also one of the major towns in Central Kalimantan. This town is at a distance of 137 km northeast of Palangka Raya city, the capital of Central Kalimantan Province. The area of this town is mainly situated within six urban villages (kelurahan) and two rural districts (desa) in the district of Selat i.e. the kelurahan of Selat Barat, Selat Dalam, Selat Tengah, Selat Hulu, Selat Hilir and Selat Utara, and the desa of Pulau Telo (Telo Island), and Pulau Telo Baru (New Telo Island). The total population of Kuala Kapuas as of 2019 was approximately 55,573 people

## Demographics

As of 2019, the total population of Kuala Kapuas is about 55,573 inhabitants which represents 91% of the population of Selat district and 15.6% of the entire population of Kapuas Regency. The population density of this town is approximately 1,209/km which one of the highest amongst towns in Central Kalimantan. This town has 14,142 households and the average household size of this town is roughly 3.9 people. The sex ratio of this town is 104 which means there are 104 males to every 100 females.

## Geography

Kuala Kapuas is located at the southeastern part of Central Kalimantan. This town is precisely located at 3.008572 south and 114.387883 east which makes it the second most southern town in Central Kalimantan after Kuala Pembuang, the regency seat of Seruyan Regency. Kuala Kapuas is also located at the southern portion of the Kapuas Regency. Kuala Kapuas is located at a distance of ±130 km to the southeast of Palangka Raya City, the capital of Central Kalimantan. However, Kuala Kapuas is closer to Banjarbaru, the capital of neighboring province South Kalimantan at a distance of ±88 km. The total area of this town is roughly 46 km² which makes it approximately 75% of the whole area of Selat district and 0.31% of the total area of Kapuas Regency.

Kuala Kapuas is settled at the confluence of Kapuas and Murung Rivers. This town is also situated on the lowlands of the southeastern portion of Central Kalimantan with the altitude being only between 1 and 15 meters above sea level. As any other towns in Central Kalimantan, Kuala Kapuas experiences tropical rainforest climate (Af) with relatively high precipitation most of the year, constantly high humidity, and persistent warm-to-hot temperature.