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Re: @WIJ
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| 15 Dec 2014 09:47 PM |
Lake Nicaragua, despite being a freshwater lake, has sawfish, tarpon, and sharks. Initially, scientists thought the sharks in the lake belonged to an endemic species, the Lake Nicaragua Shark (Carcharhinus nicaraguensis). In 1961, following comparisons of specimens, the Lake Nicaragua Shark was synonymized with the widespread Bull shark (C. leucas), a species also known for entering freshwater elsewhere around the world. It had been presumed that the sharks were trapped within the lake, but this was found to be incorrect in the late 1960s, when it was discovered that they were able to jump along the rapids of the San Juan River (which connects Lake Nicaragua and the Caribbean Sea), almost like salmon. As evidence of these movements, bull sharks tagged inside the lake have later been caught in the open ocean (and vice versa), with some taking as little as 7–11 days to complete the journey. Numerous other species of fish live in the lake, including at least 16 species of endemic cichlids. A non-native cichlid, a tilapia, is used widely in aquaculture within the lake. Owing to the large amount of waste they produce, and the risk of introducing diseases to which the native fish species have no resistance, they are potentially a serious threat to the lake's ecosystem.
Nicaraguans call the Lake Lago Cocibolca or Mar Dulce (literally, Sweet Sea; in Spanish, freshwater is agua dulce). The lake has sizeable waves driven by the easterly winds blowing west to the Pacific Ocean. The lake holds Ometepe and Zapatera which are both volcanic islands, as well as the archipelago of the Solentiname Islands. The lake has a reputation for periodically powerful, unnavigable storms.
In the past 37 years, considerable concern has been expressed about the ecological condition of Lake Nicaragua. In 1981 the Nicaraguan Institute of Natural Resources and the Environment (IRENA) conducted an environmental assessment study and found that half of the water sources sampled were seriously polluted by sewage. It was found that 32 tons (70,000 pounds) of raw sewage were being released into Lake Nicaragua daily. Industry located along the lake's shore had been dumping effluent for an extended period of time. Pennwalt Chemical Corporation was found to be the worst polluter. Nicaragua's economic situation has hampered the building of treatment facilities nationwide (see: Water supply and sanitation in Nicaragua).
The country's worst drought in 32 years (as of August 2014) is taking its toll on the lake, the Nicaraguan government has recommended citizens grow and eat iguanas over chickens to reduce water consumption, yet plans for the Nicaragua canal through the lake are still unhampered, the lake is the nation's largest source of freshwater, in which the water quality during construction as well as during ship transits will be subjected to environmental accidents. |
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tahtdude1
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| Joined: 10 Apr 2012 |
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L1611
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| Joined: 14 May 2009 |
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| 15 Dec 2014 09:50 PM |
| he's more like rektangle taht |
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mike1291
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| 15 Dec 2014 09:51 PM |
A machine that administers sedatives recently began treating patients at a Seattle hospital. At a Silicon Valley hotel, a bellhop robot delivers items to people’s rooms. Last spring, a software algorithm wrote a breaking news article about an earthquake that The Los Angeles Times published.
Although fears that technology will displace jobs are at least as old as the Luddites, there are signs that this time may really be different. The technological breakthroughs of recent years – allowing machines to mimic the human mind – are enabling machines to do knowledge jobs and service jobs, in addition to factory and clerical work.
And over the same 15-year period that digital technology has inserted itself into nearly every aspect of life, the job market has fallen into a long malaise. Even with the economy’s recent improvement, the share of working-age adults who are working is substantially lower than a decade ago – and lower than any point in the 1990s.
Economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories, technology would create as many jobs as it destroyed. Now many are not so sure.
Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary, recently said that he no longer believed that automation would always create new jobs. “This isn’t some hypothetical future possibility,” he said. “This is something that’s emerging before us right now.”
Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist at M.I.T., said, “This is the biggest challenge of our society for the next decade.”
Mr. Brynjolfsson and other experts believe that society has a chance to meet the challenge in ways that will allow technology to be mostly a positive force. In addition to making some jobs obsolete, new technologies have also long complemented people’s skills and enabled them to be more productive – as the Internet and word processing have for office workers or robotic surgery has for surgeons.
More productive workers, in turn, earn more money and produce goods and services that improve lives. “It is literally the story of the economic development of the world over the last 200 years,” said Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist and an inventor of the web browser. “Just as most of us today have jobs that weren’t even invented 100 years ago, the same will be true 100 years from now.”
Yet there is deep uncertainty about how the pattern will play out now, as two trends are interacting. Artificial intelligence has become vastly more sophisticated in a short time, with machines now able to learn, not just follow programmed instructions, and to respond to human language and movement.
At the same time, the American work force has gained skills at a slower rate than in the past – and at a slower rate than in many other countries. Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 are among the most skilled in the world, according to a recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Younger Americans are closer to average among the residents of rich countries, and below average by some measures.
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MissCloud
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| Joined: 03 Jul 2009 |
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| 15 Dec 2014 09:55 PM |
In early 1923, Kansas City, Missouri, animator Walt Disney created a short film entitled Alice's Wonderland, which featured child actress Virginia Davis interacting with animated characters. After the bankruptcy in 1923 of his previous firm, Laugh-O-Gram Films,[ChWDC 1] Disney moved to Hollywood to join his brother, Roy O. Disney. Film distributor Margaret J. Winkler of M.J. Winkler Productions contacted Disney with plans to distribute a whole series of Alice Comedies purchased for $1,500 per reel with Disney as a production partner. Walt and Roy Disney formed Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio that same year. More animated films followed after Alice.[4] In January 1926, with the completion of the Disney studio on Hyperion Street, the Disney Brothers Studio's name was changed to the Walt Disney Studio.[ChWDC 2]
After the demise of the Alice comedies, Disney developed an all-cartoon series starring his first original character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit,[4] which was distributed by Winkler Pictures through Universal Pictures.[ChWDC 2] The distributor owned Oswald, so Disney only made a few hundred dollars.[4] Disney completed 26 Oswald shorts before losing the contract in February 1928, when Winkler's husband Charles Mintz took over their distribution company. After failing to take over the Disney Studio, Mintz hired away four of Disney's primary animators (the exception being Ub Iwerks) to start his own animation studio, Snappy Comedies.[ChWDC 3]
1928–1934: Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies[edit]
Original poster for Flowers and Trees (1932) In 1928, to recover from the loss of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Disney came up with the idea of a mouse character named Mortimer while on a train headed to California, drawing up a few simple drawings. The mouse was later renamed Mickey Mouse (Disney's wife, Lillian, disliked the sound of 'Mortimer Mouse') and starred in several Disney produced films. Ub Iwerks refined Disney's initial design of Mickey Mouse.[4] Disney's first sound film Steamboat Willie, a cartoon starring Mickey, was released on November 18, 1928[ChWDC 3] through Pat Powers' distribution company.[4] It was the first Mickey Mouse sound cartoon released, but the third to be created, behind Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho.[ChWDC 3] Steamboat Willie was an immediate smash hit, and its initial success was attributed not just to Mickey's appeal as a character, but to the fact that it was the first cartoon to feature synchronized sound.[4] Disney used Pat Powers' Cinephone system, created by Powers using Lee De Forest's Phonofilm system.[ChWDC 3] Steamboat Willie premiered at B. S. Moss's Colony Theater in New York City, now The Broadway Theatre.[5] Disney's Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho were then retrofitted with synchronized sound tracks and re-released successfully in 1929.[ChWDC 3]
Disney continued to produce cartoons with Mickey Mouse and other characters,[4] and began the Silly Symphonies series with Columbia Pictures signing on as Symphonies distributor in August 1929. In September 1929, theater manager Harry Woodin requested permission to start a Mickey Mouse Club which Walt approved. In November, test comics strips were sent to King Features, who requested additional samples to show to the publisher, William Randolph Hearst. On December 16, the Walt Disney Studios partnership was reorganized as a corporation with the name of Walt Disney Productions, Limited with a merchandising division, Walt Disney Enterprises, and two subsidiaries, Disney Film Recording Company, Limited and Liled Realty and Investment Company for real estate holdings. Walt and his wife held 60% (6,000 shares) and Roy owned 40% of WD Productions. On December 30, King Features signed its first newspaper, New York Mirror, to publish the Mickey Mouse comic strip with Walt's permission.[ChWDC 4]
In 1932, Disney signed an exclusive contract with Technicolor (through the end of 1935) to produce cartoons in color, beginning with Flowers and Trees (1932). Disney released cartoons through Powers' Celebrity Pictures (1928–1930), Columbia Pictures (1930–1932), and United Artists (1932–1937).[6] The popularity of the Mickey Mouse series allowed Disney to plan for his first feature-length animation.[4]
The feature film Walt Before Mickey based on the book by Diane Disney Miller featured these moments in the studio's history.[7]
1934–1945: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and World War II[edit] Deciding to push the boundaries of animation even further, Disney began production of his first feature-length animated film in 1934. Taking three years to complete, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, premiered in December 1937 and became highest-grossing film of that time by 1939.[8] Snow White was released through RKO Radio Pictures, which had assumed distribution of Disney's product in July 1937,[ChWDC 5] after United Artists attempted to attain future television rights to the Disney shorts.[9]
Using the profits from Snow White, Disney financed the construction of a new 51-acre (210,000 m2) studio complex in Burbank, California. The new Walt Disney Studios, in which the company is headquartered to this day, was completed and open for business by the end of 1939.[ChWDC 6] The following year on April 2, Walt Disney Productions had its initial public offering.[ChWDC 7]
The studio continued releasing animated shorts and features, such as Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942).[4] After World War II began, box-office profits declined. When the United States entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, many of Disney's animators were drafted into the armed forces. The U.S. and Canadian governments commissioned the studio to produce training and propaganda films. By 1942 90% of its 550 employees were working on war-related films.[10] Films such as the feature Victory Through Air Power and the short Education for Death (both 1943) were meant to increase public support for the war effort. Even the studio's characters joined the effort, as Donald Duck appeared in a number of comical propaganda shorts, including the Academy Award-winning Der Fuehrer's Face (1943).
1946–1954: Post-war and television[edit]
The original Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios With limited staff and little operating capital during and after the war, Disney's feature films during much of the 1940s were "package films," or collections of shorts, such as The Three Caballeros (1944) and Melody Time (1948), which performed poorly at the box-office. At the same time, the studio began producing live-action films and documentaries. Song of the South (1946) and So Dear to My Heart (1948) featured animated segments, while the True-Life Adventures series, which included such films as Seal Island (1948) and The Vanishing Prairie (1954), were also popular. Eight of the films in the series won Academy Awards.[11]
The release of Cinderella in 1950 proved that feature-length animation could still succeed in the marketplace. Other releases of the period included Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953), both in production before the war began, and Disney's first all-live action feature, Treasure Island (1950). Other early all-live-action Disney films included The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), The Sword and the Rose (1953), and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). Disney ended its distribution contract with RKO in 1953, forming its own distribution arm, Buena Vista Distribution.[12]
In December 1950, Walt Disney Productions and The Coca-Cola Company teamed up for Disney's first venture into television, the NBC television network special An Hour in Wonderland. In October 1954, the ABC network launched Disney's first regular television series, Disneyland, which would go on to become one of the longest-running primetime series in history. Disneyland allowed Disney a platform to introduce new projects and broadcast older ones, and ABC became Disney's partner in the financing and development of Disney's next venture, located in the middle of an orange grove near Anaheim, California. It was the first phase of a long corporate relationship which, although no one could have anticipated it at the time, would culminate four decades later in the Disney company's acquisition of the ABC network, its owned and operated stations, and its numerous cable and publishing ventures.[citation needed]
1955–1965: Disneyland[edit]
Walt Disney opens Disneyland, July 1955. In 1954, Walt Disney used his Disneyland series to unveil what would become Disneyland, an idea conceived out of a desire for a place where parents and children could both have fun at the same time. On July 18, 1955, Walt Disney opened Disneyland to the general public. On July 17, 1955, Disneyland was previewed with a live television broadcast hosted by Art Linkletter and Ronald Reagan. After a shaky start, Disneyland continued to grow and attract visitors from across the country and around the world. A major expansion in 1959 included the addition of America's first monorail system.
For the 1964 New York World's Fair, Disney prepared four separate attractions for various sponsors, each of which would find its way to Disneyland in one form or another. During this time, Walt Disney was also secretly scouting out new sites for a second Disney theme park. In November 1965, "Disney World" was announced, with plans for theme parks, hotels, and even a model city on thousands of acres of land purchased outside of Orlando, Florida.
Disney continued to focus its talents on television throughout the 1950s. Its weekday afternoon children's television program The Mickey Mouse Club, featuring its roster of young "Mouseketeers", premiered in 1955 to great success, as did the Davy Crockett miniseries, starring Fess Parker and broadcast on the Disneyland anthology show.[4] Two years later, the Zorro series would prove just as popular, running for two seasons on ABC.[13] Despite such success, Walt Disney Productions invested little into television ventures in the 1960s,[citation needed] with the exception of the long-running anthology series, later known as The Wonderful World of Disney.[4]
Disney's film studios stayed busy as well. Averaging five or six releases per year during this period. While the production of shorts slowed significantly during the 1950s and 1960s, the studio released a number of popular animated features, like Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959) and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), which introduced a new xerography process to transfer the drawings to animation cels.[14] Disney's live-action releases were spread across a number of genres, including historical fiction (Johnny Tremain, 1957), adaptations of children's books (Pollyanna, 1960) and modern-day comedies (The Shaggy Dog, 1959). Disney's most successful film of the 1960s was a live action/animated musical adaptation of Mary Poppins, which was one of the all time highest grossing movies[4] and received five Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Julie Andrews.[15]
The theme park design and architectural group became so integral to the Disney studio's operations that the studio bought it on February 5, 1965, along with the WED Enterprises name.[16][17][18][19]
1966–1971: The deaths of Walt and Roy Disney and the opening of Walt Disney World[edit] On December 15, 1966, Walt Disney died of complications relating to lung cancer,[4] and Roy Disney took over as chairman, CEO, and president of the company. One of his first acts was to rename Disney World as "Walt Disney World" in honor of his brother and his vision.[20]
In 1967, the last two films Walt actively supervised were released, the animated feature The Jungle Book[4] and the musical The Happiest Millionaire.[21] The studio released a number of comedies in the late 1960s, including The Love Bug (1969's highest grossing film)[4] and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), which starred another young Disney discovery, Kurt Russell. The 1970s opened with the release of Disney's first "post-Walt" animated feature, The Aristocats, followed by a return to fantasy musicals in 1971's Bedknobs and Broomsticks.[4] Blackbeard's Ghost was another successful film during this period.[4]
On October 1, 1971, Walt Disney World opened to the public, with Roy Disney dedicating the facility in person later that month. On December 20, 1971, Roy Disney died of a stroke. He left the company under control of Donn Tatum, Card Walker, and Walt's son-in-law Ron Miller, each trained by Walt and Roy.
1972–1984: Theatrical malaise and new leadership[edit] While Walt Disney Productions continued releasing family-friendly films throughout the 1970s, such as Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)[4] and Freaky Friday (1976), the films did not fare as well at the box office as earlier material. However, the animation studio saw success with Robin Hood (1973), The Rescuers (1977), and The Fox and the Hound (1981).
As head of the studio, Miller attempted to make films to drive the profitable teenage market who generally passed on seeing Disney movies.[22] Inspired by the popularity of Star Wars, the Disney studio produced the science-fiction adventure The Black Hole in 1979 that cost $20 million to make, but was lost in Star Wars' wake.[4] The Black Hole was the first Disney production to carry a PG rating in the United States.[22][N 1] Disney dabbled in the horror genre with The Watcher in the Woods, and financed the boldly innovative Tron; both films were released to minimal success.[4]
Disney also hired outside producers for film projects, which had never been done before in the studio's history.[22] In 1979, Disney entered a joint venture with Paramount Pictures on the production of the 1980 film adaptation of Popeye and Dragonslayer (1981); the first time Disney collaborated with another studio. Paramount distributed Disney films in Canada at the time, and it was hoped that Disney's marketing prestige would help sell the two films.[22]
Finally, in 1982, the Disney family sold the naming rights and rail-based attractions to the Disney film studio for 818,461 shares of Disney stock then worth $42.6 million none of which went to Retlaw. Also, Roy E. Disney objected to the overvalued purchase price of the naming right and voted against the purchase as a Disney board director.[23] The 1983 release of Mickey's Christmas Carol began a string of successful movies, starting with Never Cry Wolf and the Ray Bradbury adaptation Something Wicked This Way Comes.[4] In 1984, Disney CEO Ron Miller created Touchstone Pictures as a brand for Disney to release more major release motion pictures. Touchstone's first release was the comedy Splash (1984), which was a box office success.[24]
With The Wonderful World of Disney remaining a prime-time staple, Disney returned to television in the 1970s with syndicated programing such as the anthology series The Mouse Factory and a brief revival of the Mickey Mouse Club. In 1980, Disney launched Walt Disney Home Video to take advantage of the newly emerging videocassette market. On April 18, 1983, The Disney Channel debuted as a subscription-level channel on cable systems nationwide, featuring its large library of classic films and TV series, along with original programming and family-friendly third-party offerings.
Walt Disney World received much of the company's attention through the 1970s and into the 1980s. In 1978, Disney executives announced plans for the second Walt Disney World theme park, EPCOT Center, which would open in October 1982. Inspired by Walt Disney's dream of a futuristic model city, EPCOT Center was built as a "permanent World's Fair", complete with exhibits sponsored by major American corporations, as well as pavilions based on the cultures of other nations. In Japan, the Oriental Land Company partnered with Walt Disney Productions to build the first Disney theme park outside of the United States, Tokyo Disneyland, which opened in April 1983.
Despite the success of the Disney Channel and its new theme park creations, Walt Disney Productions was financially vulnerable. Its film library was valuable, but offered few current successes, and its leadership team was unable to keep up with other studios, particularly the works of Don Bluth, who defected from Disney in 1979.
By the early 1980s, the parks were generating 70% of Disney's income.[4]
In 1984, financier Saul Steinberg's Reliance Group Holdings launched a hostile takeover bid for Walt Disney Productions,[4] with the intent of selling off some of its operations.[25] Disney bought out Reliance's 11.1% stake in the company. However, another shareholder filed suit claiming the deal devaluated Disney's stock and for Disney management to retain their positions. The shareholder lawsuit was settled in 1989 for a total of $45 million from Disney and Reliance.[4] |
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nahom007
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| Joined: 05 Mar 2011 |
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MissCloud
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| Joined: 03 Jul 2009 |
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| 15 Dec 2014 09:57 PM |
hail themed down with mike! |
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