text:
Devouring the Oscars--Actor in a Leading Role
So, who will join the men who came before in the most coveted of acting awards? That's the question offered to me by the great people over at The LAMB. This year's nominees are all, first, perfectly cast, brought in and allowed to shine as full collaborators in the passions of some of our finest filmmakers, even if one of them didn't quite work itself out as a great film.
It was a great year for leading men, in general, with only two of these gentlemen making my personal lineup of the year's best five leading male performances. Chalamet is my personal choice. Day-Lewis would likewise make my list. It's a shame a few performances from smaller films missed. Adam Sandler's work in Noah Baumbach's "The Meyerowitz Stories..." got on my ballot in the film's first five minutes. Nobody did fiercely flawed anywhere close to the level of Robert Pattinson in "Good Time." And where is Jake Gyllenhaal? His work as Boston Marathon victim Jeff Bauman in David Gordon Green's "Stronger" is a masterclass in exhibiting both the most tenderness of love and the intensity of extreme fear and pain.
That's not to say that Daniel K. and Denzel and Gary didn't do great work. All would make my top 10 or 12. But that's the way it is... We don't always line up with Oscar, but Oscar has certainly named five of the year's best performances to the pantheon of America's beloved cinema.
Here are the nominees for Best Actor in a Leading Role:
Timothée Chalamet in "Call Me By Your Name"
Fully committed, lived-in work by a young actor totally inhabiting youthful lust and wonder in a film that seems to take those things as its primary themes. Chalamet contorts his body, wearing his own discomfort, the pain of desire and uncertainty permeating each long hour of the long buzzing summer of his experience. The way he reacts to Armie Hammer's Oliver, the range of emotions as he wavers among curiosity, attraction, need, is impressive in its authenticity. It informs the way he smokes that cigarette, hard, passionate, his obscure object dancing to the Psychedelic Furs. Timothée Chalamet's Elio is a character we love because he understands those of us who have felt that sort of longing that comes only when we're young. And his face in the final moment is the face of the young man who would get my vote if I picked a Best Actor in Leading Role this year.
Daniel Day-Lewis in "Phantom Thread"
What more could we possibly get out of Daniel Day-Lewis at this point? Answer. The most. This is the performance of a true master in perhaps his swan song, a reunion with Paul Thomas Anderson in which he plays a 1950s London dressmaker angry with routine. It's a performance fully in tune with his director's vision, a portrait of the artist as an older man with certain needs he can't quite fill, demands no partner could manage, and the sort of negative idiosyncrasies only the strongest woman possible (or just the right one) could crack. Two women shape the narrative of Reynolds Woodcock, a fierce enabler of a sister Cyril, played by Supporting Actress nominee Leslie Manville, and Alma, played by an inexplicably un-nominated Vicky Krieps, his equal in every way. Daniel Day-Lewis' Woodcock is a difficult man, the sort of routined older man we all hope-we-don't-but-probably-will become, viciously annoyed by the forks on teeth, knives on toast, tea when its not time. And his ability to manner that anger is case and point for his place as the Best Actor maybe ever...and a perfectly deserving nominee.
Daniel Kaluuya in "Get Out"
There's a tentativeness to Kaluuya's work as Chris, the unwitting, if a tad suspicious, boyfriend to Allison Williams' Rose. And he carries that guard through the entirety of Jordan Peele's surprising debut. Kaluuya keeps us in lockstep through every shift in tone, every mind-blowing development. He seems always a bit on edge, like a boyfriend meeting the parents for the first time or a man trapped in a house of horrors unimaginable. There's also a lot to his face, now forever burned in the collective movie memory, tears flow from eyes wide open, memory, pain, and fear, quite literally "sinking" into his circumstance, trapped. "Get Out" is something. It's a movie that still eludes me to some extent, one that demands endless re-watches and seems to change in subtle ways each time I watch it. On first watch, Kaluuya didn't seem to do much at all, just as the film didn't. On re-watch, it seems this movie becomes something else entirely, and Kaluuya's performance likewise becomes the gift that keeps on giving, Best Actor work in a film nobody saw coming and that we may never get again.
Gary Oldman in "Darkest Hour"
The outlier is also the loudest, the biggest, the heaviest, the clear winner. A lifetime achievement award for one of the most interesting actors of my lifetime. We often praise actors in terms of how well they disappear into the role. Oldman quite literally disappears (fat suit and prosthetics and makeup galore) into the larger-than-life Winston Churchill in his first days as Prime Minister. And so I dismissed it all as this year's "Iron Lady" and waited and waited to get to it. Then, I got to it. And it is proof of at least two things: 1.) Director Joe Wright is great at making movies; and 2.) Gary Oldman is a maniac casting choice that so works. He's got the loud, maybe drunk, cigar clouded thing down. He's got the loud, demanding, staunchly correct, speech-making thing down. And, and this is the very best, he has the small moments of pain, silent fear creeping in, despair for the loss of his country's sons, desire to find his way back to the people, his people. These are too the moments where you see Oldman's face buried in there, and you see how well that works just the same. Despite all that, I prefer nearly every other nominated performance, but I can live in a world where this performance wins Best Actor.
Denzel Washington in "Roman J. Israel, Esq."
If all of this movie was as good as its first act, I might champion this performance as the best of the year. Alas, Dan Gilroy's screenplay or whatever it got turned into after filming and editing is epically flawed, manipulative, and turns what seems to be the perfect activist hero for our collective now into a man that doesn't resemble anyone that anyone knows. But Washington brings out the tics, the inner-workings of a man like Roman J. Israel, Esq. are fully brought to life, a man of massive intelligence, socially inept, too intense in his convictions to ever be more than a law office's chief researcher. And that's the first act, and, when the movie tries to make him more, so it loses us little by little. Even so, Washington never wavers and takes this character to that point and past. It's a committed performance from one of the greats that could never be played by anyone else. And there's something to be said for that, even if this performance has no chance of winning Best Actor. A shame too. I'd like to see Denzel get another statue, especially on the heels of such stellar work in 2016's "Fences."
So, to rank them (according to my personal taste):
4. Oldman
3. Kaluuya
2. Day-Lewis
1. Chalamet
Gary Oldman (I'd say that's all but a done deal...of course, if last year's show is any indication, anything can happen.)
Happy Oscars!
Labels: 2017 in Film, 2017 Movies, 90th Academy Awards, Academy Awards, Actors, Best Actor, Devouring the Oscars, Leading Role, Oscars
Birgit February 25, 2018 at 5:03 PM
I have not seen any other Oscar performances here except for Oldman's. I find that too many seem to not like The Drakest Hour and I don't know why. It seems to be the "in" thing and I wonder if that's because of my age and that my parents were part of WW2 and Churchill was my dad's favourite politician. I really like this film and found Oldman's performance excellent just like when he played Dracula and when he played Beethoven....both times he should have been up for Oscar noms in my opinion. I do like Daniel Day Lewis so it will be interesting once I see the rest
Kevin March 2, 2018 at 5:50 PM
Oldman is great, and the movie itself is quite good. People, I think, just get tired of the bait-y historical biopic. This is actually a really well-made one that is quite entertaining. Oldman is the reason for that.
Sonia Cerca February 26, 2018 at 7:18 AM
My favourites (Franco, Jackman and Pattinson) were snubbed so I don't really care about who wins this year. That said, I'd love if it was Daniel Kaluuya. His is my favourite performance of the bunch. I didn't like Chalamet's that much but I'd take his win over Oldman's. He was great as Churchill but he doesn't deserve the award and I'd love to see him lose to a younger actor.
I liked Franco fine, but that movie just didn't totally work for me and that lost him some steam for me. Jackman is great, but I just don't see it as Oscar-worthy. Kaluuya would be cool. Chalamet would be GREAT. Oldman just has it on lock.
Daniel February 26, 2018 at 10:47 AM
This is a strong lineup even if it's not the five I would choose (which is true of most of the categories this year). I respect Oldman's work but liked it the least - it's all far too easy, and I almost never got anything that wasn't in the script to begin with. The speechifying and physicality are all good, but there's precious little else there. I didn't get much out of DDL's performance either, but I think that's much more a failing of the script, which keeps certain realities of Woodcock's life a mystery (or merely offscreen) when the film would be so much more interesting if they were addressed. Of course, he's also COMPLETELY overshadowed by Manville and Krieps, so there's that.
The other three would make my personal shortlist easily. Kaluuya's face is so expressive - even and perhaps especially in its non-expressiveness - and he's the key to making Get Out work as well as it does. For once, a protagonist in a horror film that is truly worth rooting for. Washington's performance is a wonder, so quiet and subtle where most other actors would go big and loud, and even though the film lets him down spectacularly, he goes a long way towards making it believable.
None of them can touch Chalamet's work, though. What a freaking beautiful performance in a beautiful film. I continue to be unable to form coherent sentences about Call Me By Your Name and how I feel about it, but his work is just tremendous.
Chalamet is far and away the best male performance of the year. I've honestly never seen anything quite like it. I think Phantom Thread is just about as perfect as movies get. I knew all I needed to know about Woodcock. I would say more matched by the female performances than overshadowed. Krieps is unreal. She got hosed.
Cameron Kanachki February 26, 2018 at 6:26 PM
If I had a ballot for Best Actor, only 3 of the actual Best Actor nominees would make my ballot (Chalamet, Day-Lewis & Oldman). Kaluuya just misses the cut, & Washington is not too far behind him. In their places, I would nominate Steve Carell for Last Flag Flying & Ryan Gosling for Blade Runner 2049.
(I will say, that after rewatch, Roman J. Israel, Esq. is a much better film than when I first saw it).
Here, I'd go Day-Lewis (as my personal winner), followed by Chalamet, Oldman, Kaluuya & Washington. Oldman will probably win, but I hope Day-Lewis pulls off an Adrien Brody & takes home his 4th Oscar.
Gosling would be an interesting choice. Never got to Last Flag Flying. I'd be fine with Day-Lewis. Oldman will win this though.
Brittani Burnham February 27, 2018 at 5:08 AM
I think Chalamet should be winning the Oscar this year, tbh. In terms of range of emotion, I think he just had more to do than the other nominees. (Though Kaluuya is my favorite because of Get Out) I still haven't seen Washington's movie yet. I'm still bitter about Franco missing out.
Agreed. He is unreal. Franco was great, but that movie just didn't work like I hoped it would.
Alex Withrow February 28, 2018 at 7:09 AM
Nice breakdown! I love what you said about Day-Lewis' character... "angry with routine..." I've heard that before but it is absolutely perfect. And I agree that Oldman has this on lock, which I'm not mad about at all.
Thanks! "Angry with routine" is how I would describe by late paternal grandfather. He didn't like to be fucked with and made it well-known. He could also be the most charming guy ever. I connect with DDL's work there. I'm actually good with Oldman too. It's great owrk.
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I have been working daily with a WD My Book Studio Edition II drive for the past eight months (since April '08). I mentioned it back in July in my popular "What's on my desk" post. It is a quad interface (USB 2.0, FW400, FW800, eSATA) 2TB drive that can run in RAID 0 (2TB total space) or RAID 1 (1TB total space). My review can be summed up in these three words: it works great.
I should say here, just as I said in my other two reviews of the My Book Pro Edition drive (see paragraph below for links), that this drive was given to me by WDC as a replacement for my faulty My Book Pro drive. I didn't purchase it, but at the same time, I am under no obligation to anyone to praise it needlessly. I do so because it has really worked for me.
After all these months of heavy use, I have nothing bad to say about this drive. I have put it through its paces, transferring terabytes of data back and forth from it to my laptop and to my other drives, I have used it daily, I have put it through sustained data writes of several hundred gigabytes at a time, and it has not failed me yet. In stark contrast to my experience with the WD My Book Pro Edition II drive, this drive has outshined all of my other external storage devices, including my Drobo.
True, while nothing beats the Drobo when it comes to sheer storage space and flexibility in terms of its building blocks (the drives themselves), the My Book Studio Edition II drive has been faster than the Drobo when it came to working with my photos in Lightroom, in both RAID 0 and RAID 1 modes, and it has also been faster when it comes to data transfers (writing to the drive itself).
I did not have a chance to use the drive through the eSATA interface. I used it mostly through the FW800 interface, and, briefly, through the FW400 and USB interfaces. Given that it can transfer data at up to 3GB/s through eSATA, I might just buy an adaptor for my MacBook Pro in the future. I was pretty happy with the FW800 speeds though (up to 800 Mb/s).
My feelings about this drive are somewhat harder to understand for those of you that have not had to deal with a My Book Pro Edition drive. If you did not have to put up with constant overheating, data loss, fan noises, disconnects and computer resets while using that drive, then you can't possibly appreciate how WDC managed to get things so right with the My Book Studio Edition drive.
Somehow, they have, and for me, it's a pleasure to use this drive. It suffers from none of the problems of its predecessor. It works reliably, each and every time. It's fast. It's quiet. It doesn't overheat. It doesn't cause my computer to crash. It doesn't lose any of my data. The enclosure looks even better. The white LED on its front is much less annoying than the blue LED on the My Book Pro. It has greater capacity. It has more interfaces. It has a 5-year warranty, which amazes me when I consider that most tech products have a 3-year projected lifespan. The list goes on and on, and I have only good things to say about it.
The drive uses the new GreenPower drives from WD, which use 30% less energy and do not get as hot as older hard drives. This means the new enclosure doesn't need a fan. Another cool thing is that it's much easier to replace the hard drives, since you won't need a screwdriver. The enclosure opens easily, and the hard drives pull out with the aid of tabs. Having needed to open the enclosure for the My Book Pro Edition drive, I can tell you it was a lot more convoluted than this.
The wonderful thing about this drive is that it's such a great deal right now. As I pointed out in a previous how to article entitled "A look at hard drives: finding the best deals", it's always a good idea to compare the price of the hard drives themselves to the price of the enclosure plus the hard drives, to see how much you're paying for the packaged, branded product, and whether it's worth it. Well, 1TB hard drives are anywhere from $100-140 at the moment (there are two of them in the My Book Studio Edition II), and the product itself costs about $280-290 right now. That means, if you factor in the best price scenario for the hard drives, that you're getting a quad-interface enclosure which is quiet and it actually works on most computers (which isn't something I can say about other off-the-shelf DIY enclosures) for about $80-90. That's a great deal in my book.
Detailed specs for the My Book Studio Edition II drive are available from the WDC website. You can buy it from Amazon or from B&H Photo.
Photos used courtesy of Western Digital Corporation.
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RAID 1 is rather important to me; for what if the drive enclosure fails, at least with RAID 1 one can transplant the drive into a normal enclosure and retrieve the data.
Well, heck you guys. I've spent five hours trying to get my Studio 11 up and running to no avail. It doesn't show on my desktop nor does that included software seem to do anything at all. Nothing. I'm not very happy about this. I'm using FW800 and a 2.2gig intel core 2 duo Mac 10.6.3 and nothing what so ever seems to be working for me. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.
Michael, you may need to format it first, so open up Disk Utility and see if it shows up in there. And switch to USB to see if that makes a difference.
How does the WD Studio Edition II compare with 2T WD My studio released in 2009 with a single 2T drive?
The Studio Edition II is a RAID-enabled device, which means it can run in RAID 0 or RAID 1. The My Studio Personal Editition, which I'm guessing is what you have, with a single 2 TB drive, has no raid. It's a drive in an external enclosure.
Willie, I compare FAT32 to HFS+ in this article, so I encourage you to read through it if you want to get the details, but the bottom line is that HFS+ is much better than FAT32, so use it on your drive. You can also use the internal drive of your iMac, but generally speaking, it's better to work with large files, particularly when doing video editing, on an external drive.
Eric Mercer – did You set My Book Studio Edition II as JBOD? Is it possible?
Sounds like you did your homework on it! 🙂 Hope it works out great for you!
I was considering the Addonics until I'd stumbled on the PogoPlug.
It's true that the Addonics is packed full of nice features for not too much money. (I love the Bit Torrent client). But the extra $45 gets you quite a lot more than you might think.
For one thing, you can only attach a single drive to the Addonics whereas the PogoPlug's limit is well over 100. Plus I believe that the Addonics only supports FAT32 files while the pogo: HFS, NTFS, FAT and linux ext types. It also lets you mount drives over the internet to your local system as if they were locally attached to your Mac or PC. You can also share password protected files over the net while using the same drive locally at Gigabit speeds.
The PogoPlug is actually a dressed up linux computer with a 1.2 GHz processor, 1 GB memory, Gigabit ethernet (I believe the Addonics is only 100baseT, which is a serious fail for a networked drive).
The PogoPlug is based on a ShevaPlug plug computer by Marvel, the first in the plug computer trend. PogoPlug will soon be getting its very own API's, so I'm sure it's going to be an interesting ride once the SIG's and hackers get their hands on it.
In a ridiculous attempt to sort of get back on topic: I was hoping to connect the Studio II to it, but the pogo doesn't support HFS journalling yet –They're working on it… Meanwhile I'll attach something else to it. The Drobo's been tested and works fine with it too, btw.
I reviewed a product like the PogoPlug recently, in an edition of Gadget Monday. It's called the Addonics NAS Adapter. Scroll down to it in the article. The Addonics gadget doesn't tout iPhone access, but it does have a built-in FTP server, SAMBA support, and can be used as a print server or Bit Torrent client. And it's $55, not $99.
Not sure about the dissimilarly sized drives. Remember, the Studio enclosure has a RAID card inside, and RAID cards want to see identical drives. But feel free to experiment once you get it, and do let me know if it does all you wanted it to do.
The reviews of the DroboPro and the Qnap might have to wait a while. I'm staying in Romania for the time being, and it's a serious hassle to ship stuff here from the US. The customs fees are horribly high — basically, the cost of entry into the EU — so I don't think either Data Robotics or Qnap would be inclined to ship stuff here and cover the customs fees, unless they know of a way to get around them.
Keep in mind the Qnap is a RAID array, and you will need to use identical drives in it (all 6 of them). The DroboPro will let you use drives of different sizes, so you may want to take that into consideration. As for Synology, I haven't used them, only heard about them from you, but they're also RAID, so again, you'd run into the requirement for using identical drives.
The nature of the Western Digital enclosures make the two drives indistinguishable to the OS, and the computer will recognize it as 1 physical disk. If you choose for the disk to be mirrored (RAID 1) or stripped (RAID 0) – not recommended in my opinion. Since the Western Digital Drive manager handles the hard disk raid setup it wouldn't be possible to use this device as anything but an external harddrive. Even if you used an external hard disk docking station, when you inserted those drives into the Western Digital, they would probably have to be reformatted to meet the WD drive manger striping or mirroring raid scheme. I think these drives are affordable, but I don't think they are as robust as a g technology solution that allows for hotswapable drives. I'm actually curious what the process would be for replacing one of the drives in a mirrored setup. Would it automatically sync the data from the existing good drive to the new 'blank disk' of same size, spec, etc.
Does the Studio II allow the 2 disks to also mount as 2 independent volumes rather than just striped vs mirrored?
If so, I wonder if this enclosure could alternatively be used as a **two-disk** quad-interface docking station allowing esata II speed disk-to-disk xfrs between two temporarily inserted 3.5″ drives.
The Studio II is going for about $240 right now and I'm about to pull the trigger thanks to your review. Great bargain if they're all as reliable as the one you reviewed given the My Book Series' dubious reputation. There's something about them that makes us want to keep taking the risk.
Can't wait for your hands-on review of the Drobo Pro. Any chance of a review for the Qnap 639 vs the Dobro Pro as well? I'm thinking I'd eventually like to use one or the other. The Pro looks great w/ 8 vs 6 drives and 2tb drive limit vs 1.5 for the Qnap. But the Qnap is reputed to function well in real-life vs specs. They also seem more robust than Synology products. Meanwhile, getting a Studio II should hold me over till the jury is in on these two new models.
I got a warranty replaced MyStudio drive from WD, and the top won't stay closed. But it did say that WD 'green' hardisks must be used most likely to keep the heat down. As Raoul wrote, you would need to use two drive of the same size in order for the western digital drive manager software or entire device to work properly.
I can't find the answer to these question anywhere on the net. Even WD doesn't specify capacity limits for the drive. Thanks all!
Eric, I don't think there's a capacity limit. I think you can safely assume that you can replace the 1TB drives with 2TB drives. After all, that's why WD made the enclosure easier to open and service than previous builds. You cannot, however, assume that you can operate in RAID 1 with different drive sizes. RAID, by its very nature, requires that you use two identical drives (same exact specs per drive). The only scenario where you can use different drives and get the benefits of RAID, is, to my knowledge, with the Drobo. Hope this helps, and btw, there is no et al, just me.
Disksomnia is the freeware app that you will want to keep those disks spinning. Great review Raoul!
Has anyone used one of these in Raid 1 with Final Cut Pro??
I hear there's an energy – saving function that can't be turned off. This would be wouldn't be good news for my render files if it is the case.
Hey! I had to buy this piece of hardware after reading your review, and I must say… i'm not regretting it one bit!
Hey! In the meantime, I downloaded the new firmware for the drive as well as the new drivers and it works like charm. Thanks anyways!
Hi! Did you manage to work with this HD and Firewire without any problems? I just bought it, connected it via FW and – in contrary to a connection through USB – the HD is not recognized by my less than a year old iMac. It does not even appear in the harddisc-utility. Do you have any ideas?
Michael, I had no problems whatsoever with the drive. What FW connection did you try? FW400 or FW800? Did you make sure to eject it properly from your iMac and disconnect the USB wire before connecting it via FW?


text:
(Redirected from Afghan)
The English used in this article or section may not be easy for everybody to understand. You can help Wikipedia by reading Wikipedia:How to write Simple English pages, then simplifying the article. (February 2012)
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
د افغانستان اسلامي جمهوریت (Pashto)
Da Afġānistān Islāmī Jumhoryat
جمهوری اسلامی افغانستان (Dari)
Jomhūrī-ye Eslāmī-ye Afġānestān
Motto: لا إله إلا الله، محمد رسول الله
"Lā ʾilāha ʾillā llāh, Muhammadun rasūlu llāh"
"There is no God but Allah; Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." (Shahada)
Anthem: Millī Surūd
ملي سرود
("National Anthem")
and largest city
33°N 65°E / 33°N 65°E / 33; 65Coordinates: 33°N 65°E / 33°N 65°E / 33; 65
• Pashto[1]
• Dari Persian
42% Pashtun
27% Tajik
9% Hazara
9% Uzbek
4% Aimaq
3% Turkmen
2% Baloch
4% others
99% Islam (official)
Afghan[Note 1][4][5]
Unitary presidential Islamic republic
Ashraf Ghani
• 1st Vice President
Amrullah Saleh
• 2nd Vice President
Sarwar Danish
• Upper house
House of Elders
• Lower house
House of the People
• Khalji Dynasty
• Lodi Dynasty
• Sur Empire
• Ghilzai Hotak Empire
• Durrani Empire
• Barakzai Emiri Emirate
• Recognised
• Kingdom Founded Muṣāḥiban Dynasty
• Declaration of Republic
• Admission into the UN
652,230 km2 (251,830 sq mi) (40th)
• Water (%)
• 2019 estimate
32,225,560 [6] (44th)
46/km2 (119.1/sq mi) (174th)
GDP (PPP)
2018 estimate
$72.911 billion[7] (96th)
• Per capita
$2,024[7] (169th)
GDP (nominal)
$21.657 billion[7] (111st)
$601[7] (177th)
Gini (2008)
low · 1st
0.511[9]
low · 169th
Afghani (افغانی) (AFN)
UTC+4:30 Solar Calendar (D†)
Internet TLD
.af افغانستان.
Afghanistan (/æfˈɡænɪstæn, æfˈɡɑːnɪstɑːn/ ( listen), also pronounced /ævˈɡænᵻstæn, ævˈɡɑːnᵻstɑːn/;[10] Pashto/Dari: افغانستان, Pashto: Afġānistān [avɣɒnisˈtɒn, ab-], Dari: Afġānestān [avɣɒnesˈtɒn]), officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a country located in Central Asia and South Asia.[11][12] It has borders with Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast.[12]
In early times people passed through it with animals and other goods as it connected China and India with Central Asia and the Middle East. More recently, Afghanistan has been damaged by many years of war. This has resulted in there not being enough jobs.
The country is around 251,826 square miles (652,230 square kilometres) in size or area. There are 30 million people in Afghanistan. There are about 3 million Afghan refugees (people who had to leave the country) who are in Pakistan and Iran for some time. In 2011, its capital, Kabul, had about 3,691,400 people living in it.[13]
2 Plants and animals
3 People and culture
4.1 Prehistory
4.2 Ancient history
4.3 Medieval history
4.4 Recent history
Geography[change | change source]
Snow-capped Koh-i-Baba mountains in Bamyan Province of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan has many mountains. The mountains are called the Hindu Kush and Himalayas. The big mountain in Afghanistan is Mount Nowshak. There are plains (which have soil that is good for growing plants) and foothills. Part is also dry and called the Registan Desert.
Afghanistan has snow and glaciers in the mountains. Amu Darya is the big water stream, or river.
The country has a lot of a valuable stone called lapis lazuli, which was used to decorate the tomb of the Egyptian king Tutankhamun.[14]
Climate[change | change source]
Afghanistan has a continental climate with hot summers and cold winters. Having no water sometimes causes problems for farmers. Sandstorms happen a lot in the desert.[15]
Plants and animals[change | change source]
Endangered snow leopards live in the cold Hindu Kush, but they have thick fur to stay warm. Hunters sell the soft leopard skins in the markets in the capital Kabul.
Southern Afghanistan has not many plants because it is dry. There are more plants where there is more water. Mountains have forests of pine and fir, cedar, oak, walnut, alder, and ash trees.
Afghanistan's wild animals live in the mountains. There are wolves, foxes, jackals, bears, and wild goats, gazelles, wild dogs, camels, and wild cats such as the snow leopard in the country. The birds are falcons, eagles and vultures. The Rhesus Macaque and the red flying squirrel are also in Afghanistan.
Many years of war, hunting, and years of no water have killed animals in Afghanistan. There used to be tigers in Afghanistan, but now there aren't any. Bears and wolves are almost gone.[14]
People and culture[change | change source]
The 2011 Afghan Youth Voices Festival at the Gardens of Babur in Kabul
Many people have moved through or invaded the land of Afghanistan. Today's people of Afghanistan are known as Afghans. They have many traits passed down from these previous peoples.
The largest group of people are the Pashtuns. These make up about half the population.[16] Tajiks are the second-largest ethnic group, making up about one-fifth of the population.[17] Before the 20th century, Tajiks were called Sarts[18] and some come from the Iranian peoples.[19] Most Pashtuns are also related to the Iranian peoples. Some Pashtuns and Tajiks marry each other but at the same time they are rivals. The third-largest group are the Hazaras. They are native to the Hazaristan area in central Afghanistan. The country's other groups include the Uzbek, Aimaq, Turkmen, Nuristani, Baloch, Pashayi and a few others.[14]
Dari-Persian and Pashto are the official languages of Afghanistan. Many people speak both languages.[1] Both are Indo-European languages from the Iranian languages sub-family. They are usually written with the Arabic alphabet. Uzbek and Turkmen are widely spoken in the north and Nuristani and Pashai are spoken in the east.[1] Almost all Afghans follow the religion of Islam.
Afghanistan is a largely rural country. This means there are only a few major cities. About one fifth of the population live in cities. Kabul, the capital, is the largest city. It is south of the Hindu Kush range and alongside the Kabul River. Other cities in Afghanistan include Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e Sharif, and Jalalabad. The rural population is made up of farmers and nomads. The farmers live mainly in small villages along the rivers. The nomads live in tents while moving from place to place with their animals and belongings. Some people live in the high central mountains. Some live in the deserts in the south and southwest. Millions of people left Afghanistan to get away from the wars that happened in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Most of them lived in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.
History[change | change source]
Afghanistan is in the path of important trade routes that connect southern and eastern Asia to Europe and the Middle East. Because of this, many empire builders have decided to rule over the area. Signs that these emperors were near Afghanistan still exist in many parts of the country.[20] Afghanistan is near what used to be the Silk Road, so it has many cultures. From up to 8,000 years ago, the peoples of Afghanistan helped develop (create) major world religions, traded and exchanged many products, and sometimes controlled politics and culture in Asia.[21]
Prehistory[change | change source]
Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism, lived in Bactria, an ancient land in the north of today's Afghanistan.
Archaeologists digging a cave in what is now northeastern Afghanistan (in Badakhshan), discovered that people lived in the country as early as 100,000 years ago. They found the skull of a Neanderthal, or early human, as well as tools from about 30,000 years ago. In other parts of Afghanistan, archaeologists uncovered pottery and tools that are 4,000 to 11,000 years old—evidence that Afghans were among the first people in the world to grow crops and raise animals.[22]
A Stone Female Figurine, known as Bactrian Princess, from Bactria, north of Afghanistan, about 4,000 years ago
Farmers and herders settled in the plains surrounding the Hindu Kush as early as 7000 B.C. These people may have grown rich off the lapis lazuli they found along riverbeds, which they traded to early city sites to the west, across the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia. As farms and villages grew and thrived in Afghanistan, these ancient people eventually invented irrigation (digging ditches for water so it flows to crops) that allowed them to grow crops on the northern Afghanistan desert plains. This civilization (advanced state of organization) is today called BMAC (Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex), or the "Oxus civilization".[23]
The Oxus civilization expanded as far east as western edge of the Indus Valley during the period between 2200 and 1800 B.C.[24] These people, who were the ancestors of the Indo-Aryans, used the term "Aryan" to identify their ethnicity, culture, and religion. Scholars know this when they read the ancient texts of these people; the Avesta of Iranian people and the Vedas of Indo-Aryans.[25][26]
Zoroaster, the founder of the Zoroastrian religion, the world's earliest monotheistic religion, (meaning a religion believing in one god) lived in the area (somewhere north of today's Afghanistan), around 1000 B.C.[27]
Ancient history[change | change source]
Names of territories during the Caliphate in 750 CE. Khorasan was part of Persia (in yellowish).
Before the middle of the sixth century BCE, the land was held by the Medes. Then the Achaemenids took over control of the land and made it part of the Persian empire. Alexander the great defeated and conquered the Persian Empire in 330 BCE. He founded some cities in the area. The people used Greek culture and language. After Alexander, Greco-Bactrians, Scythians, Kushans, Parthians and Sassanians ruled the area.[28]
Kushans spread Buddhism from India in the 1st century BCE, and Buddhism remained an important religion in the area until the Islamic conquest in the 7th century CE.[29]
The Buddhas of Bamiyan were giant statues, a reminder of Buddhism in Afghanistan. They were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. There were international protests. The Taliban believe that the ancient statues were un-Islamic and that they had a right to destroy them.
Medieval history[change | change source]
Arabs introduced Islam in the 7th century and slowly began spreading the new religion. In the 9th and 10th centuries, many local Islamic dynasties rose to power inside Afghanistan. One of the earliest was the Tahirids, whose kingdom included Balkh and Herat; they established independence from the Abbasids in 820. The Tahirids were succeeded in about 867 by the Saffarids of Zaranj in western Afghanistan. Local princes in the north soon became feudatories of the powerful Samanids, who ruled from Bukhara. From 872 to 999, north of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan enjoyed a golden age under Samanid rule.[30]
In the 10th century, the local Ghaznavids turned Ghazni into their capital and firmly established Islam throughout all areas of Afghanistan, except the Kafiristan region in the northeast. Mahmud of Ghazni, a great Ghaznavid sultan, conquered the Multan and Punjab region, and carried raids into the heart of India. Mohammed bin Abdul Jabbar Utbi (Al-Utbi), a historian from the 10th century, wrote that thousands of "Afghans" were in the Ghaznavid army.[31][32] The Ghaznavid dynasty was replaced by the Ghorids of Ghor in the late 12th century, who reconquered Ghaznavid territory in the name of Islam and ruled it until 1206. The Ghorid army also included ethnic Afghans.[31]
Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the modern state of Afghanistan in 1747.
Afghanistan was recognized as Khorasan, meaning "land of the rising sun," which was a prosperous and independent geographic region reaching as far as the Indus River.[33][34]
All the major cities of modern Afghanistan were centers of science and culture in the past. The New Persian literature arose and flourished in the area. The early Persian poets such as Rudaki were from what is now Afghanistan. Moreover, Ferdowsi, the author of Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, and Rumi, the famous Sufi poet, were also from modern-day Afghanistan. It has produced scientists such as Avicenna, Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni, Omar Khayyám, Al-Khwarizmi, and many others who are widely known for their important contributions in areas such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, geography, and geology. It remained the cultural capital of Persia until the devastating Mongol invasion in the 13th century.[35] [36]
Timur, the Turkic conqueror, took over in the end of the 14th century and began to rebuild cities in this region. Timur's successors, the Timurids (1405–1507), were great patrons of learning and the arts who enriched their capital city of Herat with fine buildings. Under their rule Afghanistan enjoyed peace and prosperity.
Between south of the Hindu Kush and the Indus River (today's Pakistan) was the native land of the Afghan tribes. They called this land "Afghanistan" (meaning "land of the Afghans"). The Afghans ruled the rich northern Indian subcontinent with their capital at Delhi. From the 16th to the early 18th century, Afghanistan was disputed between the Safavids of Isfahan and the Mughals of Agra who had replaced the Lodi and Suri Afghan rulers in India. The Safavids and Mughals occasionally oppressed the native Afghans but at the same time the Afghans used each empire to punish the other. In 1709, the Hotaki Afghans rose to power and completely defeated the Persian Empire. Then they marched towards the Mughals of India and nominally defeated them with the help of the Afsharid forces under Nader Shah Afshar.
In 1747, after Nader Shah of Persia was killed, a great leader named Ahmad Shah Durrani united all the different Muslim tribes and established the Afghan Empire (Durrani Empire). He is considered the founding father of the modern state of Afghanistan[22] while Mirwais Hotak is the grandfather of the nation.
Recent history[change | change source]
During the 1800s, Afghanistan became a buffer zone between two powerful empires, British India and Russia. As British India advanced into Afghanistan, Russia felt threatened and expanded southward across Central Asia. To stop the Russian advance, Britain tried to make Afghanistan part of its empire but the Afghans fought wars with British-led Indians from 1839 to 1842 and from 1878 to 1880. After the third war in 1919, Afghanistan under King Amanullah gained respect and recognition as a completely independent state.
The Kingdom of Afghanistan was a constitutional monarchy established in 1926. It was the successor state to the Emirate of Afghanistan. On 27 September 1934, during the reign of Zahir Shah, the Kingdom of Afghanistan joined the League of Nations. During World War II, Afghanistan remained neutral. It pursued a diplomatic policy of non-alignment.
The creation of Pakistan in 1947 as its eastern neighbor created problems. In 1973, political crises led to the overthrow of the king. The country's new leader ended the monarchy and made Afghanistan a republic. In 1978, a Communist political party supported by the Soviet Union seized control of Afghanistan's government. This move sparked rebellions throughout the country. The government asked the Soviet Union for military assistance. The Soviets took advantage of the situation and invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.
Most people in Afghanistan opposed the sudden Soviet presence in their country. For nearly a decade, anti-Communist Islamic forces known as Mujahideen were trained inside neighboring Pakistan to fight the Soviets and the Afghan government. The United States and other anti-Soviet countries supported the Mujahideen. In the long war, over one million Afghan civilians were killed. The Soviet Army also lost more than 15,000 soldiers in that war. Millions of Afghans left their country to stay safe in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. In 1989 the Soviet Army withdrew the last of its troops.
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the 2011 Afghan Independence Day in Kabul.
After the Soviets left, different Afghan warlords began fighting for control of the country. The warlords received support from other countries, including neighboring Pakistan and Iran. A very conservative Islamic group known as the Taliban emerged in an attempt to end the civil war. By the late 1990s the Taliban had gained control over 95% of Afghanistan. A group known as the Northern Alliance, based in northern Afghanistan near the border with Tajikistan, continued to fight against the Taliban.
NATO-trained Afghan National Army (ANA).
NATO's military terminal at Kabul International Airport
The Taliban ruled Afghanistan according to their strict version of Islamic law. People whom the Taliban believed violated these laws were given cruel punishments. In addition, the Taliban completely restricted the rights of women. Because of such policies, most countries refused to recognize the Taliban government. Only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) accepted them as the official government.
The Taliban also angered other countries by allowing suspected terrorists to live freely in Afghanistan. Among them were Osama bin Laden and members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network. In September 2001, the United States blamed bin Laden for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. The Taliban refused to hand him over to the United States. In response, the United States and its allies launched a bombing campaign against al-Qaeda in October 2001. Within months the Taliban abandoned Kabul, and a new government led by Hamid Karzai came to power, but fighting between the Taliban and US-led armies continued. Taliban fighters have gone into Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan. Afghans accuse Pakistan's military of being behind the Taliban militants but Pakistan has rejected this and stated that a stable Afghanistan is in Pakistan's own interest.
In December 2004, Hamid Karzai became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan.[12] NATO began rebuilding Afghanistan, including its military and government institutions. Many schools and colleges were built. Freedom for women has improved. Women can study, work, drive, and run for office. Many Afghan women work as politicians, some are ministers while at least one is a mayor. Others have opened businesses, or joined the military or police. Afghanistan's economy has also improved dramatically, and NATO agreed in 2012 to help the country for at least another 10 years after 2014. In the meantime, Afghanistan improved diplomatic ties with many countries in the world and continues.
Government[change | change source]
Afghanistan is a newly formed democracy.[37] Under the new constitution, the president and two vice presidents are elected every five years.[38] The International Security Force Assistance (ISAF) helps the government maintain peace and rebuild the country.
The government still faces problems with the Taliban, internal security, and public services.
Provinces[change | change source]
As of 2004, there are thirty-four provinces. Each province is divided into districts. (For cities see List of cities in Afghanistan.)
Province map of Afghanistan
Provinces of Afghanistan[39]
Map #
ISO 3166-2:AF[40]
Population[41]
Area (km²)
U.N. Region
Badakhshan 30 AF-BDS Fayzabad 889,700 44,059 Dari (Persian), Pamiri, Pashto 29 districts [42] North East Afghanistan
Badghis 4 AF-BDG Qala i Naw 464,100 20,591 Dari, Pashto 7 districts [43] West Afghanistan
Baghlan 19 AF-BGL Puli Khumri 848,500 21,118 Dari, Uzbeki, Turkmeni, Pashto 16 districts [44] North East Afghanistan
Balkh 13 AF-BAL Mazari Sharif 1,219,200 17,249 Dari, Pashto 15 districts [45] North West Afghanistan
Bamyan 15 AF-BAM Bamiyan 418,500 14,175 Dari 7 districts [46] Central Afghanistan
Daykundi 10 AF-DAY Nili 431,300 8,088 Dari, Pashto 8 districts
Formed from Oruzgan in 2004 [47] South West Afghanistan
Farah 2 AF-FRA Farah 474,300 48,471 Pashto, Dari, Balochi 11 districts [48] West Afghanistan
Faryab 5 AF-FYB Maymana 931,800 20,293 Uzbek, Dari, Pashto, Turkmen 14 districts [49] North West Afghanistan
Ghazni 16 AF-GHA Ghazni 1,149,400 22,915 Pashto, Dari 19 districts [50] South East Afghanistan
Ghor 6 AF-GHO Chaghcharan 646,300 36,479 Dari, Pashto 10 districts [51] West Afghanistan
Helmand 7 AF-HEL Lashkar Gah 1,441,769 58,584 Pashto, Dari 13 districts [52] South West Afghanistan
Herat 1 AF-HER Herat 1,744,700 54,778 Dari, Pashto, Turkmeni 15 districts [53] West Afghanistan
Jowzjan 8 AF-JOW Sheberghan 503,100 11,798 Uzbeki, Turkmeni, Pashto, Dari 9 districts [54] North West Afghanistan
Kabul 22 AF-KAB Kabul 3,691,400 4,462 Dari, Turkmeni, Pashto, Uzbeki 18 districts [13] Central Afghanistan
Kandahar 12 AF-KAN Kandahar 1,127,000 54,022 Pashto, Dari 16 districts [55] South East Afghanistan
Kapisa 29 AF-KAP Mahmud-i-Raqi 413,000 1,842 Dari, Pashto, Pashai 7 districts [56] Central Afghanistan
Khost 26 AF-KHO Khost 537,800 4,152 Pashto 13 districts [57] South East Afghanistan
Kunar 34 AF-KNR Asadabad 421,700 4,942 Pashto 15 districts [58] North East Afghanistan
Kunduz 18 AF-KDZ Kunduz 935,600 8,040 Pashto, Dari, Uzbeki, Turkmeni 7 districts [59] North East Afghanistan
Laghman 32 AF-LAG Mihtarlam 417,200 3,843 Pashto, Pashai, Nuristani, Dari 5 districts [60] East Afghanistan
Logar 23 AF-LOW Pul-i-Alam 367,000 3,880 Pashto, Dari 7 districts [61] Central Afghanistan
Nangarhar 33 AF-NAN Jalalabad 1,409,600 7,727 Pashto, Dari 23 districts [62] East Afghanistan
Nimruz 3 AF-NIM Zaranj 153,900 41,005 Balochi, Pashto, Dari 5 districts [63] South West Afghanistan
Nuristan 31 AF-NUR Parun 138,600 9,225 Nuristani, Pashto 7 districts [64] North East Afghanistan
Oruzgan 11 AF-ORU Tarin Kowt 328,000 22,696 Pashto, Dari 6 districts [65] Central Afghanistan
Paktia 24 AF-PIA Gardez 516,300 6,432 Pashto 11 districts [66] South East Afghanistan
Paktika 25 AF-PKA Sharan 407,100 19,482 Pashto 15 districts [67] South East Afghanistan
Panjshir 28 AF-PAN Bazarak 143,700 3,610 Dari, Pashto 5 districts
Created in 2004 from Parwan Province [68] North East Afghanistan
Parwan 20 AF-PAR Charikar 620,900 5,974 Dari, Pashto 9 districts [69] Central Afghanistan
Samangan 14 AF-SAM Aybak 362,500 11,262 Dari, Uzbeki 5 districts [70] North West Afghanistan
Sar-e Pol 9 AF-SAR Sar-e Pol 522,900 16,360 Dari, Pashto, Uzbeki 7 districts [71] North West Afghanistan
Takhar 27 AF-TAK Taloqan 917,700 12,333 Dari, Uzbeki, Pashto 12 districts [72] North East Afghanistan
Wardak 21 AF-WAR Meydan Shahr 558,400 9,934 Pashto, Dari 9 districts [73] Central Afghanistan
Zabul 17 AF-ZAB Qalat 284,600 17,343 Pashto 9 districts [74] South East Afghanistan
Related pages[change | change source]
Afghanistan at the Olympics
Afghanistan national football team
List of rivers of Afghanistan
References[change | change source]
↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Article Sixteen of the Constitution of Afghanistan". 2004. Retrieved June 13, 2012. From among the languages of Pashto, Dari, Uzbeki, Turkmani, Baluchi, Pashai, Nuristani, Pamiri (alsana), Arab and other languages spoken in the country, Pashto and Dari are the official languages of the state.
↑ Dictionary.com. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Reference.com (Retrieved 13 November 2007).
↑ Dictionary.com. WordNet 3.0. Princeton University. Reference.com (Retrieved 13 November 2007). Archived 28 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine
↑ "Constitution of Afghanistan". 2004. Archived from the original on 20 September 2016. Retrieved 16 February 2013.
↑ Afghan | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. the Cambridge English Dictionary. ISBN 9781107660151.
↑ "Afghan Population Estimates 1398" (PDF). Central Statistics Organization. 2019. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 June 2019. Retrieved 4 July 2019.
↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 "Afghanistan". International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 14 November 2018.
↑ "Gini Index". World Bank. Archived from the original on 11 May 2014. Retrieved 2 March 2011.
↑ Human Development Report 2020 The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene (PDF). United Nations Development Programme. 15 December 2020. pp. 343–346. ISBN 978-92-1-126442-5. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
↑ These pronunciations involve assimilation, wherein /f/ becomes its assimilated allophone [v] before a voiced consonant.
↑ "Composition of macro geographical (continental) regions, geographical sub-regions, and selected economic and other groupings". United Nations. 26 April 2011. Archived from the original on 13 July 2011. Retrieved 13 July 2011.
↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 "Afghanistan". CIA - The World Factbook. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
↑ 13.0 13.1 http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/2-2.pdf
↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 "Afghanistan Facts and Pictures". National Geographic Kids. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
↑ "Afghanistan." Britannica Student Library. Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010.
↑ See:
"The World Factbok – Afghanistan". The World Factbook/Central Intelligence Agency. University of Missouri. October 15, 1991. Retrieved 2011-03-20. _#_Ethnic divisions: Pashtun 50%...
"Ethnic groups". BBC News. Retrieved 7 June 2013. Pashtun: Estimated to be in excess of 45% of the population, the Pashtuns have been the most dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan.
"Afghan Population: 30,419,928 [Pashtun 42%]". Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The World Factbook. 2012. Retrieved 2012-06-30.
Janda, Kenneth; Jeffrey M. Berry and Jerry Goldman (2008). The Challenge of Democracy: Government in America (9 ed.). Cengage Learning. p. 46 of 647. ISBN 0-618-81017-X. Retrieved 2010-08-22.
"Afghanistan's complex ethnic patchwork". The Asian Wall Street Journal. Tehran Times. March 10, 2011. Archived from the original on 20 November 2012. Retrieved 20 April 2012.
"Pathans". Faqs.org. 2003. Retrieved 2010-09-20.
"About Afghanistan - Ethnic Divisions". Retrieved 2010-09-24.
Christensen, Asger (1995). Aiding Afghanistan: the background and prospects for reconstruction in a fragmented society. NIAS Press. p. 46 of 170. ISBN 87-87062-44-5. Retrieved 2010-09-24.
Congressional Record. Government Printing Office. p. 10088. Retrieved 2010-09-24.
Taylor, William J. Jr.; Abraham Kim (2000). Asian Security to the Year 2000. DIANE Publishing. p. 58. ISBN 1-4289-1368-8. Retrieved 2010-09-24.
Brown, Keith; Sarah Ogilvie (2009). Concise encyclopedia of languages of the world. Elsevie. p. 845. ISBN 0-08-087774-5. Retrieved 2010-09-24. Pashto, which is mainly spoken south of the mountain range of the Hindu Kush, is reportedly the mother tongue of 60% of the Afghan population. More than one of |pages= and |page= specified (help)
Hawthorne, Susan; Bronwyn Winter (2002). 11 September 2001: feminist perspectives. Spinifex Press. p. 225 of 500. ISBN 1-876756-27-6. Retrieved 2010-09-24. Over 60 percent of the population in Afghanistan is Pashtun, known locally as Pathan, who by and large support the Taliban.
"The ethnic composition of afghanistan in different sources". Retrieved April 22, 2012.
↑ "Tajik". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 6, 2011. There were about 5,000,000 in Afghanistan, where they constituted about one-fifth of the population.
↑ John Leyden, Esq., M.D. and William Erskine, Esq., ed. (1921). "Events Of The Year 910 (1525)". Memoirs of Babur. Packard Humanities Institute. p. 5. Archived from the original on 2012-11-14. Retrieved 2012-06-30. CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
↑ "Tajik." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010.
↑ [Encyclopedia Britannica, Afghanistan History. Retrieved on 26 January 2009 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/7798/Afghanistan/129450/History#ref=ref261360]
↑ Hiebert, F., Cambon, P., 2008, AFGHANISTAN Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul, page 56, Washington, National Geographic, ISBN 978-1-4262-0295-7
↑ 22.0 22.1 "Afghanistan." Britannica Elementary Library. Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
↑ [R. Ghirshman, L'Iran et la migration des Indo-aryens et des Iraniens, Leiden, 1977.]
↑ [Encyclopedia Iranica, IRANIAN IDENTITY ii. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD. Retrieved on 14 October 2010 http://www.iranica.com/articles/iranian-identity-ii-pre-islamic-period]
↑ "ZOROASTER ii. GENERAL SURVEY – Encyclopaedia Iranica". www.iranicaonline.org.
↑ "ancient Iran". Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
↑ [Encyclopedia Iranica, BUDDHISM i. In Pre-Islamic Times. Retrieved on 12 September 2010 http://iranica.com/articles/buddhism-i]
↑ "Afghanistan." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010.
↑ 31.0 31.1 Houtsma, Martijn Theodoor (1987). E.J. Brill's first encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913–1936. 2. BRILL. p. 151. ISBN 90-04-08265-4. Retrieved 24 September 2010. More than one of |pages= and |page= specified (help)
↑ "Afghan and Afghanistan". Abdul Hai Habibi. alamahabibi.com. 1969. Retrieved 2012-07-01.
↑ "Khurasan", The Encyclopaedia of Islam, page 55. Brill. Retrieved 2010-10-22. In pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, the term "Khurassan" frequently had a much wider denotation, covering also parts of what are now Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan; early Islamic usage often regarded everywhere east of western Persia, sc. Djibal or what was subsequently termed 'Irak 'Adjami, as being included in a vast and ill-defined region of Khurasan, which might even extend to the Indus Valley and Sind.
↑ "Khorasan". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 2010-10-21. historical region and realm comprising a vast territory now lying in northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan. The historical region extended, along the north, from the Amu Darya (Oxus River) westward to the Caspian Sea and, along the south, from the fringes of the central Iranian deserts eastward to the mountains of central Afghanistan. Arab geographers even spoke of its extending to the boundaries of India.
↑ Lorentz, J. Historical Dictionary of Iran. 1995 ISBN 0-8108-2994-0 AFGHANISTAN
↑ From the Alleyways of Samarkand to the Mediterranean Coast (The Evolution of the World of Child and Adolescent Literature,Afghanistan, Poopak Niktalab , printed 2019 , Faradid Publishing
↑ "Afghanistan anti-corruption pledge at Bonn summit". BBC Website. 5 December 2011. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
↑ "The Constitution of Afghanistan". Afghanistan Online. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
↑ References and details on data provided in the table can be found within the individual provincial articles.
↑ ISO 3166-2:AF (ISO 3166-2 codes for the provinces of Afghanistan)
↑ http://cso.gov.af/en/page/6070
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Badakhshan.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Badghis.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Baghlan.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Balkh.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Bamyan.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Daykundi.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Farah.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Faryab.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Ghazni.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Ghor.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Helmand.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Herat.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Jawzjan.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Kandahar.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Kapisa.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Khost.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Kunarha.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Kunduz.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Laghman.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Logar.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Nangarhar.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Nimroz.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Nooristan.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Urozgan.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Paktia.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Paktika.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Panjsher.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/parwan.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Samangan.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Sar-e-pul.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Takhar.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Wardak.pdf
↑ http://cso.gov.af/Content/files/Zabul.pdf
↑ Incorrect names that have been used as demonyms are Afghani[2] and Afghanistani.[3]
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Written by Kate McDonald on 04 February 2016 .
The 670,000 or so consumers living within the boundaries of the North Queensland Primary Health Network (PHN) will receive a letter in the middle of March informing them that they're about to get a My Health Record created for them from the information held by Medicare.
Those who want to opt out of the system will have until May 27 to inform the PHN, but for those that want one, their records will be created and online by mid-June, and accessible by healthcare providers in mid-July.
Consumers living in the other trial site of Nepean Blue Mountains PHN will also receive a letter from the Department of Health in March, containing information on the ways they can opt out, with records for those that are opting in created in July.
According to a presentation by NQPHN given at a series of meetings with local healthcare providers in Cairns last week, consumers will be able to see their My Health Record through the my.gov.au website in June and will be able to customise it by choosing which Medicare information to include on it, add emergency contact details and add access controls.
Healthcare providers will be able to access their patients' records in July and start uploading documents.
According to the NQPHN presentation, consumers may be contacted in October to see what they think about it all.
Consulting firm Siggins Miller will evaluate the trials from July through to October. The firm has experience in evaluating programs such as the National Drug Strategy and the Fifth Community Pharmacy Agreement on behalf of the Department of Health, as well as programs promoting good mental health in young Aboriginal people and an extended aged care in the home project.
The Department of Health will consider the evaluation and make a recommendation to the Health Minister in 2017, including the budgetary requirements for a nationwide opt-out strategy. Legislation passed late last year allows the minister to make rules to enact an opt-out system.


March 1, 2018 - This mesmerizingly vivid octopus is more than just a flashy show—it's also one of the most venomous creatures of the sea. Blue-ringed octopuses, named for the iridescent blue rings that flash across their bodies when they're agitated or threatened are capable of gravely injuring and even killing humans with just one bite. Their saliva contains a powerful nerve toxin that causes respiratory failure. But don't fear; like most animals, they only attack when they feel their lives are in danger.
This mesmerizingly vivid octopus is more than just a flashy show—it's also one of the most venomous creatures of the sea.
are capable of gravely injuring and even killing humans with just one bite.
Their saliva contains a powerful nerve toxin that causes respiratory failure.
But don't fear; like most animals, they only attack when they feel their lives are in danger.


An electronic-book version of Conservancy: The Land Trust Movement in America by Richard Brewer has recently been made available by the University Press of New England.
It is available at various e-book retailers accessible on the web including Amazon.com (Kindle) and Barnes & Noble (Nook).
The paperback version of Conservancy is still in print and available at most web-based book stores and some brick-and-mortar ones.
After a cold March–very different from last year–there are a few signs of spring. Today, at the Oshtemo Township oak area I heard a few wood frogs call mid-afternoon. The day had gotten steadily warmer and it must have been in the high 50s by then. Air temperature. I didn't have a thermometer so I'm not sure what the water temperature was.
Looking back, I see that wood frogs first called here last year on 12 March. Not only that, I led a spring wild flower field trip to Harris Sanctuary on 7 April 2012. That corresponds to this coming weekend. I haven't been to Harris yet this spring, but at the beech-maple forest in Pavilion Township, about the only things up are spring beauty, wild leek, false mermaid weed, and harbinger of spring. The last is the only thing that was in bloom as of Monday (1 April). It came up a few days earlier, with flowers that looked like white pin-heads.
Here in the oak woods probably no native herbs are yet in bloom, but winter aconite, snow drops, and crocus are, and honey-bees were visiting the crocus in late afternoon with the air temperature at 59 degrees. Few native herbs are visible above ground, but the rosettes of rather heart-shaped leaves of golden ragwort were green and healthy a little upslope from the same pond where the wood frogs had been calling.
Save the Earth. Pitch In. Help Out. A very little goes a long way. If you're interested call. Don't stop trying.
This advice appears in the Stephanie Mills book In Praise of Nature (p.165). Mills mentions that sometime around 1990 four little girls who had learned that the Earth was endangered were visiting homes in her neighborhood to spread the alarm by handing out colored posters they had made. The one they gave her showed "our blue and green planet rising in a field of eight yellow stars" and included the quoted text.
Stephanie Mills attended college in California, where she made an environmental name for herself at a young age with the commencement address she gave in the spring of 1969 at her graduation. Under the influence of Paul Ehrlich's writings on human population, she told the other graduates and their parents that we were breeding ourselves out of existence and announced that "the most humane thing" for her to do was "to have no children at all." It made a media splash and Mills joined in the very active environmental movement around San Francisco. Along with many talks here and there around the country, she was involved with writing and editing such publications as Earth Times and the Whole Earth Catalog.
In the mid-1980s Mills became a Michigander, moving to the Traverse City area near the tip of the Lower Peninsula. A few years later, she began work on In Praise of Nature.
The book has a somewhat cumbersome format but manages to include brief reviews of and short selections from a good many books important in the 20th-century development of environmental thought. Included are pieces by serious students and thinkers such as Aldo Leopold, George Perkins Marsh, Rachel Carson, and John Muir plus other more journalistic contributions that summarized the current state of various environmental topics.
There is a plenty of good environmental prose to be found in the book, but as practical environmental advice, not much of it is as strong or useful as the admonitions of the four young Michigan girls.
Save the Earth! Pitch In. Help Out. A very little goes a long way! If you're interested, call. Don't stop trying!
The woods and meadows that so attracted [new residents] disappeared as soon as developers got around to building on them, and if the residents wanted to find what other nature features would be next to go, they had only to check the names of the subdivisions being planned. When a developer puts a woods into the name, or a vale, heights, forest, creek, or stream, he is not conserving; he is memorializing. Subdivisions are named for that which they are about to destroy.
William Hollingsworth Whyte, called "Holly," wrote those words in his 1968 book, The Last Landscape (Doubleday & Company). Whyte was many things–a keen and scientific student of human behavior, a planner and land conservationist, and an excellent writer. He was the primary architect of the conservation easement, currently the most widely used method of private land conservation.
Whyte may not have been the first person to notice that developments tend to be named after the natural features they damage or obliterate, but I'm pretty sure he was the first prominent conservationist to state it as a rule. Most of us can come up with local examples. If we saw an ad for lots in a new development called the Preserve at Eagle Knoll, we would win more often than we lost if we bet that the knoll had been flattened, the eagles were gone, and nothing was preserved.
Recently, I came across a related but slightly different approach to naming developments right here in Kalamazoo.
A good many years ago, Western Michigan University bought some property a little beyond the west edge of the campus. The property, sometimes held in the name of the WMU Foundation, adjoined a city well-field and the Arcadia plat and lay between Solon Street on the east and Drake Road on the west. WMU had bought the land thinking they were going to need a bigger, grander football stadium, but the need didn't materialize, and it turned out that the cost of such a project, especially the required utilities, was prohibitive.
The land, which for convenience can be referred to as the Arboretum, was mostly recovering agricultural fields but with a few relict patches of native vegetation. On the northwest side of the property grew a few bur oaks of various sizes. This was near the south edge of one of the eight tall-grass, black soil prairies of the county–Grand Prairie–and these trees were a heritage of the fringing bur oak plain.
Also on the north boundary but farther east was a small pocket, a little valley, of mesic forest, but an unusual type of mesic forest with few or no beeches or sugar maples, dominated instead by basswood trees. Part of this little valley was on the WMU property, the rest on the parcel adjacent to the north.
For a good many years the land abided, the plants and animals cycling through the seasons, visited by no one except walkers and joggers, bird-watchers and berry-pickers, and an occasional ecology class.
Several years ago, things began to change. Someone interested in the sequence and timing could probably work out the details from the Kalamazoo Gazette mlive archives if they wanted to spend the time. Here's a place to start. A quick synopsis is that WMU wanted to monetize their land holdings, and the city of Kalamazoo desperately wanted an east-west street in the region. Other business and governmental entities were or became involved. The Kalamazoo School system built a new middle school. The city built a road, which they called a parkway, crossing the property from Drake Road to Solon Street. I've never known just what a parkway is, but a prominent feature of this one is that there is no place to park along it. One result is that access to the arboretum for walkers is pretty much limited to some of the immediate neighbors.
The name of the new development: Walden Woods.
Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation…. All Walden Wood might have been preserved for our park forever, with Walden [pond] in its midst….
In Kalamazoo's case, the 180+ acres of the Arboretum could have been turned into a city park–badly needed in this area of the city–along with an adjoining nature preserve. Something of this sort is what most of the neighbors and many other Kalamazoo residents wanted. But, that, of course, is exactly what did not happen. Instead, we have what we have, which includes Walden Wood in the form of a condo development.
It's hard not to see this as another sad example of Whyte's rule. But perhaps we should try to take a little cheer from the situation. For example, if other developments follow in the arboretum, the names of dozens of other conservationists and conserved natural areas are waiting to serve. With Walden Woods honoring Thoreau, it would be only fair to have a Muir Woods for John Muir. One of these already exists, but California is a long way from here so probably there would be no confusion.
Among Teddy Roosevelt's many conservation achievements, he set aside the first-ever bird sanctuary, Pelican Island. How about Pelican Arboretum as a general name for the whole site?
In my last post I talked about how bland and uneventful the mesic forest is in late summer and early fall. I was giving my impression from a good many years of experience with such forests. But I spent a few hours on three days recently, actually looking at what was happening. Partly I was hoping to see Triphora trianthophora and partly I wanted to check my memory.
I didn't find three birds orchid, and not a lot was happening. Not a lot, but still more than I had remembered.
For one thing, I had forgotten how important the shedding of fruit is at this time of year. On 13 August, wild black cherry fruits were numerous on the ground, and there were more of them on visits in early and mid September. I have a feeling that birds that want black cherries eat the ripe–or green–fruit on the tree, but perhaps some mammals wanting the dried flesh or the stone wait for the cherries to drop. That 60-year-old (but still unsurpassed) manual, American Wildlife and Plants, by Alexander C. Martin and two co-authors, suggests that cherries are eaten by red foxes and gray squirrels, but doesn't comment on when they gather them.
By 20 September, there were lots of samaras, the small key-like fruits of sugar maple on the ground. Sugar maples are always the most common saplings in the mesic woods in Michigan. There may be a rare year when the seed crop is low, but I think seed supply is rarely a limiting stage in the maple's life cycle.
It's not noticeable when you're walking on the soft earth of the forest, but where the maple fruits have fallen on a hard surface, like a concrete walk, they snap when you step on them, like popping bubble-wrap. Great fun, almost like popping ripe touch-me-nots.
On the 20th of September also, there were many light tan, prickly beechnuts on the ground, and more were coming down. Some had one or two fruits inside and some were empty, but I had no way of knowing whether the two, sometimes three, fruits had been plucked out on the ground or in the tree or whether all had aborted.
There's no question about what animals eat beech fruits. The answer is everything. Well, not warblers, but wood ducks, grouse, grackles, jays, woodpeckers, bear, squirrels, fox, chipmunk, deer.
I thought there were especially large crops this year from all these trees–cherry, maple, beech. Whether some of this could be related to the unusual warmth of the summer is impossible to say. Tree crops do fluctuate, with one very good year rarely being followed by another.
There were other good things to be seen on my visits to the woods. Lots of herbaceous plants and shrubs were bearing ripe fruit–American poke, or pokeweed, had ripe fleshy fruits. Such things as Polygonum virginianum and Geum canadense had smallish, dry fruit. The fruits of red-berried elder were long gone, eaten by birds, but there on the stems, two at a node, were large flower buds ready for next spring.
As I've claimed before, not much was in bloom, although Geum canadense had a few flowers with two or three white rounded petals still clinging.
Aster lateriflorus. Photographed 20 September 2012 in Pavilion Township MI by Richard Brewer.
But one species was definitely blooming and near its peak. It wasn't three birds, which I didn't find. It was a little white aster, sometimes called calico aster. The scientific name situation in not very satisfactory, but for our purposes we can refer to it as Aster lateriflorus.
It's not showy, but it was blooming on August 13 and sill blooming on September 20, with no end to its season in sight.
It appears that the more-or-less satisfactory resolution (as of about this time last year) to the proposed wide trail through the Ott Preserve has fallen through. The issue is again before the Calhoun County Board of Commissioners.
Last year, the Board listened carefully to all sides and rejected the poorly conceived plan brought to it by the Calhoun County Trailways Alliance. In effect, the Board affirmed a compromise in which a route minimizing mileage and potential damage was to be sought.
I would have wished as part of the action at that time that a definite route had been chosen and agreed on or, if not, that the principles to be used in selecting a route be settled–no penetration near biologically sensitive areas, minimal alteration of ground contours, etc. None of this was done, but I–and I think most people–were left believing that the route would pretty much follow the Consumers Energy right-of way, an already disturbed section along the west side of the Preserve.
It now appears that choosing the route was left to the Trailways Alliance Board. Furthermore, negotiations seem to have been left to the Alliance, so that when the Alliance decided that the trail ought to cut across some private property, it was the Alliance negotiating easements with the owners.
It does not seem surprising that the negotiations failed.
Neither is it surprising that the Trailways Alliance is now back, wanting a long route through relatively undisturbed areas of Ott.
Evidently some new alternative has been suggested. Possibly it has merits. But I doubt that it should be accepted in the next week or month. The Board's stewardship of the Ott Preserve should include a real effort to let the public know exactly what is planned as to route, methods (construction, stewardship}, effects on vegetation and animals, hydrology, topography, and funding for all likely costs including ongoing remediation of damage produced by the trail traffic.
Essential to a final decision is a thorough ecological survey of the Preserve. That such a survey should be done has been clear since such a trail project was proposed. Up-to-date information is needed on what features most need protection and where they are. Baseline data is needed, so that the damage such a trail will do can be unambiguously detected.
Who would suppose that a large-scale project such as this could be started without such a survey? The survey should have been done a few years ago. It could have been done during the past year. Perhaps the Trail Alliance would prefer that no such survey ever be done.
This renewed attempt to run a trail through Ott has come up quickly. It should not be acted on quickly. People need well-advertised opportunities to question proponents–and opponents. People need to be able to walk any proposed route and judge for themselves. They need to be able to answer for themselves–Is this the route we want? Do we want a 14-foot-wide swath cut through the Ott Preserve at all?
The foregoing is a slightly modified version of a letter I emailed to all of the Calhoun County Commissioners having email addresses this morning. The Commission is scheduled to take up and perhaps vote on the new proposed route tomorrow night ( 3 May 2012) at their regular meeting. Information about the Preserve features, history including the 2011 attack and another still earlier incident are given here and in several other posts on my website around the same time.
I'm leading a field trip to a beech-sugar maple forest this spring. We'll look at the spring flowers and as we stroll around also talk about what mesophytic forests are like, why they are where they are, what the interactions among the organisms are, and other such natural history and ecology topics.
The specific site where we'll gather is the Mildred Harris Sanctuary north of Kalamazoo. It's owned by the Michigan Audubon Society and has been stewarded for many years by the Audubon Society of Kalamazoo.
The trip is sponsored by the Southwest Chapter of the Michigan Botanical Club as part of its 2012 project concentrating on natural features and conservation in Oshstemo Township (known to some as the Occupy Oshtemo movement.
I've led a trip along these lines several springs in past years, to one or another of the remaining examples of mesophytic forest in southwest Michigan. But there's a difference this year.
Most such trips for spring ephemerals led by me or others have been held in mid or late April or even early May. This year the president, Tyler Bassett, of the Southwest Chapter of the Botanical Club and I had agreed on Saturday April 21 as the date. Then the second week of March arrived. The beginning of March had temperatures fairly close to the historical averages–30s as highs and 20s as lows. March 6 started a run in which day after day had highs at least in the 60s and often the 70s. March 19 to 22, had a run of highs in the 80s. The last freezing temperatures came far back in February.
Looking at what was happening to the flora, Tyler and I decided to move the date of spring wild flower trip up by two weeks, to Saturday March 7.
One swallow doesn't make a summer, but seventeen days with temperatures between 60 and 85 in the middle of March may make it necessary for Michigan nature organizations to revise their field trip calendars.
Here's an idea, a sampling, of what's been happening this spring: As mentioned in my last post, I heard wood frogs in Oshtemo Township 12 March and by the next night, they were joined by a few spring peepers.
By the night of 15 March, both these species as well as chorus frogs were in full voice. On the 15th, the high temperature was 79 and the low 55, compared with historical averages of 45 and 27 degrees.
As to the plants, on a visit 14 March to Newton Woods at Russ Forest, two friends and I found spring beauty up, a broad-leaved sedge with flowering stalks, and harbinger of spring close to full bloom.
In Oshtemo Township, spice bush was in full bloom by 18 March, a golden haze over the edges of the kettles where the frogs had gathered. Bloodroot was in bloom 19 March.
Spring beauty, Dutchman's breeches, Yellow violet, harbinger of spring (nearly done), blue violet, Carex plantaginifolia (nearly done), toothwort, purple spring cress, wood anemone, and skunk cabbage.
Several other species were up and some had obvious flower buds.
So we'll gather this year April 7 at the Harris Sanctuary which is in the southwest corner of F Avenue and 8th Street. It's about 3 miles north of the trail-head of the Kal-Haven Trail (which is on 9th Street). F Avenue is a gravel road–a Natural Beauty road, in fact. Attendees should park on the north side of the road. Be there by 10 AM.
Harris is on the Kalamazoo moraine, so there will some mild hill climbing. We'll finish about noon. Bring a sandwich and have lunch sitting on a log if you wish.
The technically minded may notice that the Harris Sanctuary is not in Oshtemo Township. But it's pretty close.
Three-quarters of a mile north.
With temperatures in the 50s and 60s the last few days–and predicted as mid-70s today–spring is advancing fast. Wood frogs were calling in the larger pond Monday, March 12. By yesterday, they were in full chorus in both ponds and by last night, a few spring peepers had joined in.
Among the bird arrivals I've noticed (since we've been back), Red-winged Blackbirds were numerous Monday morning, and I saw two American Robins along our road, where none had been all winter.
Black-capped Chickadees were giving their spring, "fee-bee" song Tuesday morning.
But there has been little in the way of wild flower action, at least in the oak woods. Honey bees were visiting the non-native winter aconite, which is in full bloom.
Katy and I just returned from Panama. I'll write more about the trip later. This note is a short Panama addendum to the Turkey Vulture post of a few weeks ago.
In reading about Panama before we went down, I came across some of Frank M. Chapman's observations on Turkey Vultures in his 1938 book Life in an Air Castle. The observations were made at Barro Colorado Island in the Canal Zone where Chapman, Curator of Birds at the American Museum, spent a good many dry seasons beginning in 1925. He was one of the ornithologists who performed some field experiments that established that Turkey Vultures could readily find carrion without reliance on vision. One of his trials was "The Empty-House Test." In it, he and E. Thomas Gilliard placed the body of a coati on a shelf hidden from the outside in a vacant house. This was done the afternoon of 24 December 1935. No Turkey Vultures had been seen in the vicinity for at least a month.
Within the next three hours, five more Turkey Vultures and one Black Vulture (presumably attracted by the sight of the Turkey Vultures descending) made appearances.
A similar "Box on the Hill Test" plus many trials where carcasses securely wrapped in three layers of gunny sacking–burlap–were laid on the ground under forest cover gave similar results. The wrapped carcasses were monitored with flash cameras triggered by a wire attached to the bait. The resulting photos showed that the hidden carrion was quickly found, and always by Turkey Vultures.
The unanimity of these trials pretty much eliminates the idea that the Turkey Vultures must see the dead animal to find their food. The trials do not by themselves show that the sense of smell is involved, and in fact, two naturalists within a couple of years of one another suggested that vultures might be finding dead animals by noticing carrion-feeding insects (or even small mammals) attracted to corpses.
William B. Taber, Jr. was the first, writing in the Wilson Bulletin for 1928. He pointed out that Turkey Vultures can be attracted to carrion by seeing a cluster of crows on the ground (around a dead animal) and suggested that they might very well be similarly attracted to a bunch of brightly colored carrion beetles.
Maybe even hearing. Perhaps it's time for someone to do a well-designed test of whether the buzzing of blowflies or the clicking or squeaking sounds made by a gathering of carrion-eating beetles would pull vultures down from the sky.


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Summer League Creating NBA Roster Spots
Featured Stories, Free Agency, NBA Draft, Player Profiles 1,414 Views
The NBA Summer League tournament is much more than an opportunity for the future stars of the league to gain some professional experience.
July basketball is essentially a job audition for players trying to gain a place in the NBA, the NBA Developmental League or overseas.
With only 450 roster positions available in the NBA, earning a place in the league is an extremely difficult task, even for a player with plenty of name recognition.
Seth Curry, the younger brother of league MVP Stephen Curry, has been the most unstoppable scorer in Las Vegas.
In each of his four appearances for New Orleans, he has totaled at least 20 points in each game and is averaging 25.3 points per game, the most out of any player in the tournament.
While Curry has been a phenomenal scorer, he has been able to pile up the point by attacking the rim and creating mid-range jumpers for himself off the dribble.
Those skills have yet to translate into NBA success for Curry, as he has spent the majority of his professional career in the NBA Developmental League following brief stints with the Grizzlies and Cavaliers.
Last season, Curry earned an invitation to training camp in Orlando, but was assigned back to the D-League, where he ranked second in scoring. At the end of the season, he earned a call up from Phoenix, but wasn't able to secure a roster position.
During his time in Las Vegas, Curry has excelled at creating looks for himself off the dribble and attacking the rim.
The scoring binge from Curry may be enough to land him a permanent place in New Orleans, overcoming the long odds to secure a place in the NBA.
Curry is one of a few players to separate themselves enough to earn a contract in the NBA next season.
Below are a few players without guaranteed deals to likely earn a place in the league next season.
Willie Reed– Brooklyn Nets
Perhaps no player has ever come closer to playing in the NBA than Reed. During his career, he has spent time on the Grizzlies and Kings roster, but never checked into a game. Reed has bounced around the world playing basketball, spending time in Israel, Spain, the Dominican Republic, stints in the Developmental League with Springfield, Des Moines, Grand Rapids and Reno, then training camps with Sacramento, Memphis and Brooklyn. The Nets signed the 6-foot-10 forward/center to a contract, providing him a chance, with four other players, to compete for two roster spots.
2015 NBA Summer League stats (Las Vegas): 13.5 points on 54.8 percent shooting and 7.8 rebounds per game.
Scottie Wilbekin– Philadelphia 76ers
Playing both in Orlando and Las Vegas proved to be life changing for Wilbekin. The 6-foot-2 point guard signed a four-year deal with the 76ers. A year ago, the former Florida star spent his season in Australia, playing for the Cairns Taipans, becoming the first player in club history to earn team MVP and Defensive Player of the Year honors in the same season. Wilbekin will compete with Ish Smith, Isaiah Canaan, Pierre Jackson and Tony Wroten for minutes at point guard in Philadelphia.
2015 NBA Summer League stats (Las Vegas): 14.4 points, 2.0 assists and 2.0 rebounds per game.
Aaron Harrison– Charlotte Hornets
After not being selected in the 2015 NBA Draft, Harrison earned a roster invite in Charlotte for the NBA Summer League in Orlando, but with one caveat: he had to become a point guard. Harrison spent his entire basketball career playing shooting guard, not only was he forced to learn a new playbook, he had to run a completely different position. The Hornets believed he adjusted enough to earn a contract and will compete for playing time next summer behind Kemba Walker and Jeremy Lin.
2015 NBA Summer League stats: 13.4 points, 4.8 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.4 steals per game.
Branden Dawson– Los Angeles Clippers
Dawson played so much bigger than his 6-foot-6 frame would seem possible. During four games at the NBA Summer League tournament in Orlando, the former Michigan State star simply couldn't be boxed out on either end of the floor, as he grabbed 17 offensive rebounds, 24 defensive rebounds and averaged 10.3 per game, the second most of any participant. Along with his excellent rebounding numbers, he converted 52.2 percent of his shots in the tournament and closed out his summer campaign by swatting four shots against Miami, leading the Clippers to sign him to a contract.
2015 NBA Summer League stats: 12.8 points, 10.2 rebounds and 1.8 steals per game.
Alan Williams– Houston Rockets
The most dominant center at the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas isn't the highly touted Karl-Anthony Towns or Jahlil Okafor, but instead Williams, an undrafted, undersized free agent. The 6-foot-8 forward out of UC Santa Barbra destroyed the 76ers, totaling 22 points and 21 rebounds — with 12 coming on the offensive end — propelled him atop the Summer League leaders in both points and rebounds. Williams is leading all participants in Las Vegas with 11.8 rebounds per game and ranks fifth in scoring at 20.5 points. His performance hasn't generated a contract offer yet, but at the very least he will earn an invitation to training camp over the next few days.
2015 NBA Summer League stats: 20.5 points and 11.8 rebounds per game.
Aaron Harrison Alan Williams Branden Dawson NBA Summer League NBA Summer League 2015 Scottie Wilbekin Seth Curry Willie Reed	2015-07-19
Tags Aaron Harrison Alan Williams Branden Dawson NBA Summer League NBA Summer League 2015 Scottie Wilbekin Seth Curry Willie Reed
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Condensates.com
Suzanne Eaton
In memory of the wonderful friend, wife, mother, scientist, mentor, and colleague who also gave us our name, Dewpoint.
One evening in the late fall of 2018, Tony Hyman was at his home in Dresden, talking by speakerphone with his new startup co-founder Rick Young back in Cambridge. "Rick and I were discussing how to name the company," Hyman remembers. "I was walking around the room, and we were coming up with one terrible name after another. 'Phase Space' was something I was keen on, and Rick was like, 'That's terrible, Tony.' And then Suzanne came out of the kitchen and said, 'Why don't you call it Dewpoint?'"
Hyman and his wife Suzanne Eaton met in California when Hyman was a postdoc, then continued together to Heidelberg, where they both conducted research in cell biology at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. When Hyman and Eaton moved together to Dresden to start the Max Plank Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, her group used Drosophila fruit flies to study how morphogens, signaling proteins secreted by cells, dictate the shapes and patterns that cells take in the developing embryo.
In addition to being a leading scientific voice at MPI, Eaton was a Renaissance woman—an accomplished writer, chef, concert pianist, mother, and martial-arts practitioner who was also beloved by the MPI-CBG staff as a thoughtful and infinitely attentive listener and advisor. "She was the best of America in that way," Hyman says. "She'd been at Brown. She was very well educated and knowledgeable. She did The New York Times crossword every weekend before lunch. And she had a real mastery of language and words, a precision. And, you know, coming up with the name 'Dewpoint' represented that ability to think about language properly."
The dew point is the temperature below which water vapor will begin to condense out of the air, forming droplets; it's a function of relative humidity and barometric pressure. With a touch of poetry, the name evokes the moment of phase separation inside cells, when intrinsically disordered proteins and other biomolecules form condensates.
Just months after Dewpoint's founding, senseless tragedy struck the family. In early July, 2019, Eaton was on the Greek island of Crete to attend a scientific meeting at the Orthodox Academy, a conference center outside Chania. During a break in the program, she went out for a run—and never returned. Hyman and his sons Max and Luke buried Suzanne in a local Dresden friedhof, or graveyard, close to her daily running route.
"Suzanne, better than all of us, had unlocked the secret of how to live a happy and fulfilled life," Hyman said at a memorial service in California. "She had learned to leave rancor aside, and search for the good inside people, and had become reluctant to spend her time with people who did not share her sense that the world was a good place."
Dewpoint®
Careers We're hiring!
Phase Separation, LLPS
Dewpoint Therapeutics
451 D Street, Suite 104
info@dewpointx.com
© 2019–2023 Dewpoint Therapeutics


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TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – In the first compensation verdict following a string of food safety scandals, Ting Hsin International affiliate Cheng I Food Company was sentenced to pay NT$9.36 million (US$288,800) with interest Wednesday.
The Kaohsiung District Court ruled that the cooking oil manufacturer had harmed the health of 5,314 teachers and pupils in a civil case brought by the central government's Consumer Protection Committee on behalf of 96 schools. Appeals were still possible against the verdict, which came in far lower than demanded by the committee..
The issue found its origin in a series of major adulterated oil scandals which broke in 2014. Several producers, including Ting Hsin affiliates, were accused of having used low-quality products, sometimes even waste oil and oil reserved for industrial oil, to adulterate cooking oil destined for human consumption.
The court said Wednesday that though no evidence had been provided that teachers or pupils suffered health problems as a result of consuming Cheng I oil products, it was still clear that the company had damaged the "corporeal and health rights" of the consumers.
The link between the company's products and the health of the consumers was difficult to show, but the interests of the consumers still needed to be served, according to the court decision.
The judges also blamed negligence on the part of Cheng I, which had failed to identify unusable lard oil raw materials.
The total sum of the compensation payment was calculated as NT$2,000 (US$61) per person in "spiritual damages" and NT$1,000 (US$31) per person in fines for the company.
However, the Consumer Protection Committee had demanded NT$90,000 (US$2,775) per person for a total of more than NT$400 million (US$12.3 million), reports said. The request was rejected because some of the plaintiffs were unable to prove they had used Cheng I oil products, the court said.
In its reaction to the verdict, the company said it "respected consumers' rights to seek compensation" but would study the court document before deciding whether or not to file an appeal. Cheng I pointed out that it had been found not guilty in the criminal procedure of a similar case.