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Jerry Reed
Quick Facts
|American recording artist; country music singer, actor
|Jerry Reed Hubbard
|Actor Singer Songwriter Musician Composer Guitarist Film actor Television actor Film producer
|United States of America
|Film, TV, Stage & Radio Music
|20 March 1937, Atlanta, USA
|1 September 2008, Nashville, USA (aged 71 years)
|Star sign
Jerry Reed Hubbard (March 20, 1937 – September 1, 2008) was an American country music singer, guitarist, composer, and songwriter, as well as an actor who appeared in more than a dozen films. His signature songs included "Guitar Man", "U.S. Male", "A Thing Called Love", "Alabama Wild Man", "Amos Moses", "When You're Hot, You're Hot" (which garnered a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male), "Ko-Ko Joe", "Lord, Mr. Ford", "East Bound and Down" (the theme song for the 1977 blockbuster Smokey and the Bandit, in which Reed co-starred), "The Bird", and "She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)".
Reed was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum.
Reed was announced as an inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame on April 5, 2017, and was officially inducted by Bobby Bare on October 24.
Early life
Reed was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Robert and Cynthia Hubbard. Reed's grandparents lived in Rockmart and he would visit them from time to time. He was quoted as saying as a small child while running around strumming his guitar, "I am gonna be a star. I'm gonna go to Nashville and be a star." Reed's parents separated four months after his birth, and he and his sister spent seven years in foster homes or orphanages. Reed was reunited with his mother and stepfather in 1944.
Jerry Reed graduated from O'Keefe High School, an Atlanta city school. The O'Keefe H.S. building still exists today, but was sold to Georgia Tech and is now part of its campus. By high school, Reed was already writing and singing music, having picked up the guitar as a child. At age 18, he was signed by publisher and record producer Bill Lowery to cut his first record, "If the Good Lord's Willing and the Creek Don't Rise". At Capitol Records, he recorded both country and rockabilly singles to little notice until label mate Gene Vincent covered his "Crazy Legs" in 1958. By 1958, Lowery signed Reed to his National Recording Corporation, and he recorded for NRC as both an artist and as a member of the staff band, which included other NRC artists Joe South and Ray Stevens.
Reed married Priscilla "Prissy" Mitchell in 1959. They had two daughters, Seidina Ann Hubbard, born April 2, 1960, and Charlotte Elaine (Lottie) Hubbard, born October 19, 1970. Priscilla Mitchell was a member of folk group the Appalachians ("Bony Moronie", 1963), and was co-credited with Roy Drusky on the 1965 Country No. 1 "Yes Mr. Peters".
In 1959, Reed hit the Billboard "Bubbling Under the Top 100", also known as Roar and Cashbox Country chart with the single "Soldier's Joy". After serving two years in the United States Army, Reed moved to Nashville in 1961 to continue his songwriting career, which had continued to gather steam while he was in the Army, thanks to Brenda Lee's 1960 cover of his "That's All You Got to Do". He also became a popular session and tour guitarist. In 1962, he scored some success with two singles "Goodnight Irene" (as by Jerry Reed & the Hully Girlies, featuring a female vocal group) and "Hully Gully Guitar", which found their way to Chet Atkins at RCA Victor, who produced Reed's 1965 "If I Don't Live Up to It".
Reed is particularly noted and respected by his musical contemporaries and new generation alike for his unique and intricate picking technique, as seen in his composition "The Claw". As of December 2017, this highly challenging technique is both admired and attempted on numerous video instructional sites throughout YouTube by pros and amateurs alike.
"Guitar Man"
In July 1967, Reed had his best showing on the country charts (#53) with his self-penned "Guitar Man", which Elvis Presley soon covered. Reed's next single was "Tupelo Mississippi Flash", a comic tribute to Presley. Recorded on September 1, the song became his first Top 20 hit, going to No. 15 on the chart. Coincidentally, Presley came to Nashville to record nine days later on September 10, 1967, and one of the songs he became especially excited about was "Guitar Man".
Reed recalled how he was tracked down to play on the Presley session: "I was out on the Cumberland River fishing, and I got a call from Felton Jarvis (then Presley's producer at RCA Victor) He said, 'Elvis is down here. We've been trying to cut "Guitar Man" all day long. He wants it to sound like it sounded on your album.' I finally told him, 'Well, if you want it to sound like that, you're going have to get me in there to play guitar, because these guys [you're using in the studio] are straight pickers. I pick with my fingers and tune that guitar up all weird kind of ways.'"
Jarvis hired Reed to play on the session. "I hit that intro, and [Elvis's] face lit up and here we went. Then after he got through that, he cut [my] 'U.S. Male' at the same session. I was toppin' cotton, son." Reed also played the guitar for Elvis Presley's "Big Boss Man" (1967), recorded in the same session.
On January 15 and 16, 1968, Reed worked on a second Presley session, during which he played guitar on a cover of Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business", "Stay Away", and "Goin' Home" (two songs revolving around Presley's film Stay Away, Joe), as well as another Reed composition, "U.S. Male" (Reed's quoted recollection of "U.S. Male" being recorded at the same session as "Guitar Man" being incorrect).
Presley also recorded two other Reed compositions: "A Thing Called Love" in May 1971 for his He Touched Me album, and "Talk About The Good Times" in December 1973, for a total of four.
Johnny Cash would also release "A Thing Called Love" as a single in 1971, which would reach No. 2 on the Billboard Country Singles Chart for North America. It was also successful in Europe. It would become the title track for a studio album that he released the following spring.
After releasing the 1970 crossover hit "Amos Moses", a hybrid of rock, country, funk, and Cajun styles, which reached No. 8 on the U.S. pop charts, Reed teamed with Atkins for the duet LP Me & Jerry. During the 1970 television season, he was a regular on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and in 1971, he issued his biggest hit, the chart-topper "When You're Hot, You're Hot", which is a story song, with the majority of the lyrics being talked out rather than sung. The song concerns the singer's near success shooting dice, a police raid, and a judge who is supposedly a fishing buddy of the singer, but who nevertheless sends him down for gambling. Aside from being a major crossover hit, "When You're Hot, You're Hot" earned Reed the Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male.
"When You're Hot, You're Hot" was the title track of Reed's first solo album, reaching No. 9 Pop and No. 6 on Billboard's Easy Listening charts. The singles from the album, "Amos Moses" and "When You're Hot, You're Hot" sold over one million copies, and were awarded gold discs by the R.I.A.A. The album also features songs such as Reed's version of "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town " and John D. Loudermilk's free-wheeling song "Big Daddy (Alabami Bound)".
–Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)
A second collaboration with Atkins, Me & Chet, followed in 1972, as did a series of Top 40 singles, which alternated between frenetic, straightforward country offerings and more pop-flavored, countrypolitan material. A year later, he scored his second number one single with "Lord, Mr. Ford" (written by Dick Feller), from the album of the same name.
Atkins, who frequently produced Reed's music, remarked that he had to encourage Reed to put instrumental numbers on his own albums, as Reed always considered himself more of a songwriter than a player. Atkins, however, thought Reed was a better fingerstyle player than he himself was; Reed, according to Atkins, helped him work out the fingerpicking for one of Atkins's biggest hits, "Yakety Sax". Reed, one of only five people to have the title of Certified Guitar Player (an award bestowed only to those who have completely mastered guitar), was given this title by Chet Atkins.
Reed was featured in animated form in a December 9, 1972, episode of Hanna–Barbera's The New Scooby-Doo Movies, "The Phantom of the Country Music Hall" (prod. No. 61-10). He sang and played the song "Pretty Mary Sunlight". The song is played throughout the episode as Scooby and the gang search for Reed's missing guitar.
In the mid-1970s, Reed's recording career began to take a back seat to his acting aspirations. In 1974, he co-starred with his close friend Burt Reynolds in the film W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings. While he continued to record throughout the decade, his greatest visibility was as a motion picture star, almost always in tandem with headliner Reynolds; after 1976's Gator, Reed appeared in 1978's High-Ballin' and 1979's Hot Stuff. He also co-starred in all three of the Smokey and the Bandit films; the first, which premiered in 1977, landed Reed a No. 2 hit with the soundtrack's "East Bound and Down".
In 1977, Reed joined entrepreneur Larry Schmittou and other country music stars, such as Conway Twitty, Cal Smith, Larry Gatlin, and Richard Sterban, as investors in the Nashville Sounds, a minor league baseball team of the Double-A Southern League that began play in 1978.
He made two guest appearances on the sitcom Alice, in 1978 and 1981.
When asked who he considered the best actor, Burt Reynolds credited Reed.
Reed also took a stab at hosting a TV variety show, filming two episodes of The Jerry Reed Show in 1976.
Scottish rockers The Sensational Alex Harvey Band released a version of "Amos Moses" in 1976.
In 1979, he released a record comprising both vocal and instrumental selections titled, appropriately enough, "Half & Half". It was followed one year later by Jerry Reed Sings Jim Croce, a tribute to the late singer/songwriter. He also starred in a TV movie in that year entitled Concrete Cowboys.
1980s and 1990s
In January 1980, Reed began work on the "Guitar Man" re-recording being produced by Elvis's producer Felton Jarvis. With a new "hopped up" guitar line, and Elvis on lead vocals, Reed and the band gave the song an adrenaline punch that shot it straight to No. 1 on the country charts.
In 1982, Reed"s career as a singles artist was revitalized by the chart-topping hit "She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)", followed by "The Bird", which peaked at No. 2. His last chart hit, "I'm a Slave", appeared in 1983. That same year, he co-starred with Robin Williams and Walter Matthau in the Michael Ritchie comedy The Survivors. Reed guest-starred in the October 13, 1983, episode of Mama's Family, "The Return of Leonard Oates" (Episode 13, Season 2), as Naomi Harper's ex-husband.
He accepted the invitation to open for the British group Dexys Midnight Runners in the US in 1984, yet left the tour early to appear on the country music comedy TV show Hee-Haw.
After an unsuccessful 1986 LP, Lookin' at You, Reed focused on touring until 1992 when he and Atkins reunited for the album Sneakin' Around before he again returned to the road. In the meantime, Reed appeared in several interviews and commercial spots for Mid-South Wrestling.
Reed had a role as a commander/Huey pilot for Danny Glover's character in the 1988 movie Bat*21 starring Gene Hackman. He also acted as executive producer and screenwriter on this film.
Reed starred in the 1998 Adam Sandler film, The Waterboy, as Red Beaulieu, the movie's chief antagonist and the head coach for the University of Louisiana Cougars football team.
He teamed up with country superstars Waylon Jennings, Mel Tillis, and Bobby Bare in the group Old Dogs. They recorded one album, in 1998, entitled Old Dogs, with songs written by Shel Silverstein. (Reed sang lead on "Young Man's Job" and "Elvis Has Left The Building", the latter possibly in deference to Elvis' helping launch his career.)
In 1998, the American rock band Primus covered the Reed song "Amos Moses" on the EP titled Rhinoplasty.
In October 2004, "Amos Moses" was featured on the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas soundtrack, playing on fictional radio station K-Rose. In 2007, UK band Alabama 3 (Known as A3 in the United States) covered his hit "Amos Moses" on their album M.O.R..
In June 2005, American guitarist Eric Johnson released his album Bloom, which contained a track titled "Tribute to Jerry Reed" in commemoration of his works.
Reed appeared as a guest on the fishing television series Bill Dance Outdoors. In one memorable appearance, Reed caught a particularly big largemouth bass and planned to have it preserved and mounted by a taxidermist. Host Bill Dance objected to this plan and freed the fish when Reed wasn't looking. Reed became enraged when he discovered what had happened and chased Dance off the boat and to shore. This incident was also mentioned in one of Jeff Foxworthy's stand-up comedy routines.
"She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)" was used in the 2010 film, The Bounty Hunter during the scene where Milo (Gerard Butler) searches Nicole's (Jennifer Aniston) apartment.
"You Took All the Ramblin' Out of Me" was used in the 2013 video game Grand Theft Auto V, on the radio station Rebel Radio. Jerry's song "Amos Moses" was also covered by the band County Road 5.
Personal life and death
Reed married country singer Priscilla Mitchell on July 9, 1959; they had two daughters, who also became country singers.
Reed died in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 1, 2008, of complications from emphysema at the age of 71. One week later, during their debut at the Grand Ole Opry, Canadian Country Rockers The Road Hammers performed "East Bound and Down" as a tribute. In a tribute in Vintage Guitar Magazine, Rich Kienzle wrote that "Reed set a standard that inspires fingerstyle players the way Merle and Chet inspired him." He was survived by Mitchell and their two daughters. Mitchell died following a short illness on September 24, 2014, at the age of 73.
Reed was a smoker for many years. Thom Bresh, son of Merle Travis and a close friend of Reed's, produced a 1990s video with Reed acting out his desire to quit smoking the addictive cigarettes ("Jerry Reed-Another Puff") that serves as a public service video from Reed himself on the dangers of smoking cigarettes.
Country Music Association
- 1970 CMA Instrumentalist of the Year
- 1971 CMA Instrumentalist of the Year
Grammy Awards
- 1971 Best Country Instrumental Performance -
- 1972 Best Country Vocal Performance, Male -
- 1993 Best Country Instrumental Performance -


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HFVS Science & Education Episode with Danny Weinkauf of They Might Be Giants (Radio Show/Podcast)
Science & Education Episode with Danny Weinkauf of They Might Be Giants
Danny Weinkauf guest DJs this week, demonstrating though song examples and commentary his love of science and education, and how it has influenced his favorite songs and personal writing style. − www.dannyweinkauf.com
Saturday from 9-10am & Sunday from 7-8am
May 10th & 11th, 2014
WXOJ LP – 103.3 FM – Valley Free Radio
Northampton, MA
Featured video: "I am a Paleontologist" from They Might Be Giants album Here Comes Science.
Archived Podcasts ♦Radio ♦ Facebook ♦ Twitter
- The Beatles – "Help!" (Help!)
- Danny Weinkauf – "Archaeology" (No School Today)
- Fountains of Wayne – "Hat and feet" (Fountains of Wayne)
- They Might Be Giants – "Meet the Elements" (Here Comes Science)
- The Okee Dokee Brothers – "Haul Away Joe" (A Mississippi River Adventure Album)
- Danny Weinkauf – "Champion of the Spelling Bee" (No School Today)
- Queen – "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon" (A Night at the Opera)
- Danny Weinkauf – "ice Cream" (No School Today)
- They Might Be Giants – "Alphabet Lost and Found" (Here Come the ABCs)
- Justin Roberts – "Recess" (Recess)
- The White Stripes – "My Doorbell" (Get Behind Me Satan)
- They Might Be Giants – "Electric Car" (Here Comes Science)
- Danny Weinkauf – "Marsupial" (No School Today)
- Caspar Babypants – "Kangaroo" (I Found You)
- Laurie Berkner – "Fireflies" (Laurie Berkner Lullabies)
- Lincoln "To Build a House" (Lincoln)
- The Ramones " I Want to be Sedated" (Road to Ruin)
- They Might Be Giants – "I am a Paleontologist" (Here Comes Science)

subset: commoncrawl


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In a bid to compete more directly with Apple, Samsung has announced that in the coming months it will open 1,400 Samsung Experience shops within Best Buy stores around the US.
Following an agreement made by Sammy and Best Buy in December, the venture will see 900 stores open across the country by May, with many of the stores opening for business as soon as this month. It's hoped that the entire project will be rolled out by the end of June, reports All Things D.
It's that kind of speed and scale which prompted Samsung to abandon initial plans of opening its own chain of stores, instead joining forces with Best Buy. While it might not carry the same prestige as a Samsung-only store, the ease of roll-out makes up for it. And, as Ketrina Dunagan, the Samsung VP heading the retail effort, explains, "seventy percent of consumers live within 10 miles of a Best Buy."
So, what can you expect to see when you get there? Depending on the store, between two and four tables of Samsung tablets, phones, cameras and laptops, plus a wall of accessories and a help desk. The stores will be manned by Best Buy employees, along with specialist Samsung hires who will be able help with some, but not all, hardware and software issues.
In essence, then, they'll be like Apple Store-lites, offering a similar, but scaled-down, version of the services that Jobs and co currently offer. But for a first dabble in the world of physical retails, perhaps that's no bad thing. [All Things D]


text: by David Crane [email protected] This article's content and links have been updated as of 7/31/06. The HG85 fragmentation grenade, a.k.a. HG85 hand grenade, made by RUAG Ammotec (formerly RUAG Munition), is currently regarded by many experts to be the best hand grenade currently in service, in the world. The British Army apparently agrees, since they've acquired the RUAG HG-85 fragmentation/hand …Read More »


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If customers or employees often complain that your business' Wi-Fi is too slow, you aren't alone as wireless demands have been higher than ever, and don't show any signs of abating. But solving that problem may not just be about upgrading your wireless routing devices, or analyzing for interference of the signal. Instead, slow Wi-Fi might stem from the fact that customers just have too many devices, and your company needs more wireless access points to help them all get online.
At least, that's the solution to improving business Wi-Fi speeds offered by the people at Xirrus, a large-scale-wireless networking company. The company announced its new modular XR wireless array this week– a unit that's meant to solve slow Internet problems for high-traffic areas like warehouses, arenas, and hotels.
Shaped like a large disc, the XR wireless array's modular design allows for businesses to easily increase their wireless capacity by simply adding antennae to the wireless array (Xirrus hints that it's array's modules may even support cellular radios in the future), and reflects the exponential growth in demand for wireless in public places and businesses. According to a forecast measured by Cisco, a leader in the networking industry, the average U.S. citizen will own seven connected wireless devices by 2015. Needless to say, savvy business owners will have to find a way to accommodate all of that traffic.
Dirk Gates, the CEO at Xirrus, says they've gone about trying to solve the wireless problem for high-traffic areas by taking hints from cellular companies. "All you have to do is look at a cell tower– they put a bunch of radios in in the air, point them in different directions and get more radios but fewer bases. We took that idea and brought it indoors, so you get the same coverage and better reception than with traditional Wi-Fi."
The new wireless array may also say something about how IT planners and managers will measure Wi-Fi needs in a given area. Traditionally, Wi-Fi units have been installed depending on the square footage of the business, rather than by the number of mobile units customers and employees will carry around. Today, the number of devices an average person carries is suddenly becoming important. "The iPad has been the best thing to happen to Wi-Fi in a decade," Gates says, "most college students are at 3 devices and climbing."
While many businesses have addressed this increase in mobile devices with a temporary solution– adding more Wi-Fi units to an enclosed space– this can be expensive and complicated to orchestrate for IT managers. Rather, Xirrus suggests that having one larger array with up to 16 access points could sufficiently address the needs of data-using customers and employees. Currently the company is offering their fully-loaded 16-access point XR chassis for $4000, although Xirrus says the chassis' modular structure will help potential buyers afford a model with fewer access points, in case small business owners would prefer to gradually grow into a fully capable Wi-Fi unit.


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Nigeria is rich is solid mineral resources, such as: Kaolin, gypsum, mica, clay, tantalite, iron ore, gemstone, silica sand, barite, zinc, quartz, feldspar, coal, tungsten, copper, talc, etc. CCM Mechanical has very mature markets in Nigeria and set oversea office there already.
One customer from Nigeria, who would like to produce granite-aggregates for his clients that work in road construction, concrete and asphalt industry,. But now, he just has one two-stage crushing plants that consisted of one 24×36"jaw crusher and two 12×51" finer jaw crusher. It is difficult to meet the popular aggregate size of 0~3/16" (stone dust), 3/16~1/2", 1/2~3/4" and 3/4~1" in local market. Also, the capacity of existing plant is only 60~70 tons per hour, it was far from the customer's requirements.


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Mary Wollstonecraft's "I have a dream" speech from 1792
Found in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) dreams of the day when women are capable of acting like rational creatures and are not treated like so many slaves or brutes:
These may be termed utopian dreams. – Thanks to that Being who impressed them on my soul, and gave me sufficient strength of mind to dare to exert my own reason, till, becoming dependent only on him for the support of my virtue, I view, with indignation, the mistaken notions that enslave my sex.
I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man. In fact, the conduct of an accountable being must be regulated by the operations of its own reason; or on what foundation rests the throne of God?
This work is one of the founding documents of the modern feminist movement and came out of a spirited debate with conservatives like Edmund Burke who denounced the idea of natural rights and the corollary right to seek redress in a revolution if need be when the government refused to acknowledge those rights. What is intriguing about Wollstonecraft is that she continued the discussion in this later book in order to apply for the first time these ideas about individual liberty to women as well as men. Having established this to be the case to her satisfaction she then asked the further question why were women in the subordinate position they were in vis-à-vis men? Her answer was that they were held in this position by a combination of force (laws which discriminated against them in terms of property ownership, education, and marriage) and established opinion regarding the proper role of women in the home and in society. Her solution was to equalize women before the law and to encourage parents to devote the same effort in educating their daughters as they did their sons. Only when legal discrimination was ended and educational opportunities made available to young girls would women be able to find their true level in society. Wollstonecraft also argued that traditional ideas about education and the proper roles for each gender handicapped young boys as much as it it did young girls. Whereas young women were encouraged to be good wives and mothers, young men were encouraged to be heroic and obedient soldiers. Neither set of stereotypes encouraged individuals to find their own calling in life.


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Writing system
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form of information storage and transfer.[1] Writing systems require shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters that make up a script. Writing is usually recorded onto a durable medium, such as paper or electronic storage, although non-durable methods may also be used, such as writing on a computer display, on a blackboard, in sand, or by skywriting. Reading a text can be accomplished purely in the mind as an internal process, or expressed orally.
|Predominant national and selected regional or minority scripts
Hanzi [L]
Hanja [L]
|Writing systems
|Major current examples
|Related topics
Writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies, although any particular system may have attributes of more than one category. In the alphabetic category, a standard set of letters represent speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllable or mora. In a logography, each character represents a semantic unit such as a word or morpheme. Abjads differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, and in abugidas or alphasyllabaries each character represents a consonant–vowel pairing. Alphabets typically use a set of less than 100 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have several hundred, and logographies can have thousands of symbols. Many writing systems also include a special set of symbols known as punctuation which is used to aid interpretation and help capture nuances and variations in the message's meaning that are communicated verbally by cues in timing, tone, accent, inflection or intonation.
Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and express a full range of thoughts and ideas. The invention of writing systems, which dates back to the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic Era of the late 4th millennium BC, enabled the accurate durable recording of human history in a manner that was not prone to the same types of error to which oral history is vulnerable. Soon after, writing provided a reliable form of long distance communication. With the advent of publishing, it provided the medium for an early form of mass communication.
General properties
Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that a writing system is always associated with at least one spoken language. In contrast, visual representations such as drawings, paintings, and non-verbal items on maps, such as contour lines, are not language-related. Some symbols on information signs, such as the symbols for male and female, are also not language related, but can grow to become part of language if they are often used in conjunction with other language elements. Some other symbols, such as numerals and the ampersand, are not directly linked to any specific language, but are often used in writing and thus must be considered part of writing systems.
Every human community possesses language, which many regard as an innate and defining condition of humanity. However, the development of writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven and slow. Once established, writing systems generally change more slowly than their spoken counterparts. Thus they often preserve features and expressions which are no longer current in the spoken language. One of the great benefits of writing systems is that they can preserve a permanent record of information expressed in a language.
All writing systems require:
- at least one set of defined base elements or symbols, individually termed signs and collectively called a script;[2]
- at least one set of rules and conventions (orthography) understood and shared by a community, which assigns meaning to the base elements (graphemes), their ordering and relations to one another;
- at least one language (generally spoken) whose constructions are represented and can be recalled by the interpretation of these elements and rules;
- some physical means of distinctly representing the symbols by application to a permanent or semi-permanent medium, so they may be interpreted (usually visually, but tactile systems have also been devised).
Basic terminology
In the examination of individual scripts, the study of writing systems has developed along partially independent lines. Thus, the terminology employed differs somewhat from field to field.
Text, writing, reading and orthography
The generic term text[3] refers to an instance of written or spoken material with the latter having been transcribed in some way. The act of composing and recording a text may be referred to as writing,[4] and the act of viewing and interpreting the text as reading.[5] Orthography refers to the method and rules of observed writing structure (literal meaning, "correct writing"), and particularly for alphabetic systems, includes the concept of spelling.
Grapheme and phoneme
A grapheme is a specific base unit of a writing system. They are the minimally significant elements which taken together comprise the set of "building blocks" out of which texts made up of one or more writing systems may be constructed, along with rules of correspondence and use. The concept is similar to that of the phoneme used in the study of spoken languages. For example, in the Latin-based writing system of standard contemporary English, examples of graphemes include the majuscule and minuscule forms of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet (corresponding to various phonemes), marks of punctuation (mostly non-phonemic), and a few other symbols such as those for numerals (logograms for numbers).
An individual grapheme may be represented in a wide variety of ways, where each variation is visually distinct in some regard, but all are interpreted as representing the "same" grapheme. These individual variations are known as allographs of a grapheme (compare with the term allophone used in linguistic study). For example, the minuscule letter a has different allographs when written as a cursive, block, or typed letter. The choice of a particular allograph may be influenced by the medium used, the writing instrument, the stylistic choice of the writer, the preceding and following graphemes in the text, the time available for writing, the intended audience, and the largely unconscious features of an individual's handwriting.
Glyph, sign and character
The terms glyph, sign and character are sometimes used to refer to a grapheme. Common usage varies from discipline to discipline; compare cuneiform sign, Maya glyph, Chinese character. The glyphs of most writing systems are made up of lines (or strokes) and are therefore called linear, but there are glyphs in non-linear writing systems made up of other types of marks, such as Cuneiform and Braille.
Complete and partial writing systems
Writing systems may be regarded as complete according to the extent to which they are able to represent all that may be expressed in the spoken language, while a partial writing system is limited in what it can convey.[6]
Writing systems, languages and conceptual systems
Writing systems can be independent from languages, one can have multiple writing systems for a language, e.g., Hindi and Urdu;[7] and one can also have one writing system for multiple languages, e.g., the Arabic script. Chinese characters were also borrowed by other countries as their early writing systems, e.g., the early writing systems of Vietnamese language until the beginning of the 20th century.
To represent a conceptual system, one uses one or more languages, e.g., mathematics is a conceptual system[8] and one may use first-order logic and a natural language together in representation.
Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols. The best-known examples are:
- "Token system", a recording system used for accounting purposes in Mesopotamia c. 9000 BC[9]
- Jiahu symbols, carved on tortoise shells in Jiahu, c. 6600 BC
- Vinča symbols (Tărtăria tablets), c. 5300 BC
- Proto-cuneiform c. 3500 BC[10]
- Possibly the early Indus script, c. 3500 BC, as its nature is disputed[11]
- Nsibidi script, c. before 500 AD
The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age (following the late Neolithic) in the late 4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script closely followed by the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. It is generally agreed that the historically earlier Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of Sumerian, or was a case of cultural diffusion.[12]
A similar debate exists for the Chinese script, which developed around 1200 BC.[13][14] The Chinese script is probably an independent invention, because there is no evidence of contact between China and the literate civilizations of the Near East,[15] and because of the distinct differences between the Mesopotamian and Chinese approaches to logography and phonetic representation.[16]
The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among others Olmec and Maya scripts) are generally believed to have had independent origins.
A hieroglyphic writing system used by pre-colonial Mi'kmaq, which was observed by missionaries from the 17th to 19th centuries, is thought to have developed independently. There is some debate over whether or not this was a fully formed system or just a series of mnemonic pictographs.
It is thought that the first consonantal alphabetic writing appeared before 2000 BC, as a representation of language developed by Semitic tribes in the Sinai Peninsula (see History of the alphabet). Most other alphabets in the world today either descended from this one innovation, many via the Phoenician alphabet, or were directly inspired by its design.
The first true alphabet is the Greek script which consistently represents vowels since 800 BC.[17][18] The Latin alphabet, a direct descendant, is by far the most common writing system in use.[19]
Functional classification
Several approaches have been taken to classify writing systems, the most common and basic one is a broad division into three categories: logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic (or segmental); however, all three may be found in any given writing system in varying proportions, often making it difficult to categorise a system uniquely. The term complex system is sometimes used to describe those where the admixture makes classification problematic. Modern linguists regard such approaches, including Diringer's[20]
- pictographic script
- ideographic script
- analytic transitional script
- phonetic script
- alphabetic script
as too simplistic, often considering the categories to be incomparable. Hill[21] split writing into three major categories of linguistic analysis, one of which covers discourses and is not usually considered writing proper:
- discourse system
- iconic discourse system, e.g. Amerindian
- conventional discourse system, e.g. Quipu
- morphemic writing system, e.g. Egyptian, Sumerian, Maya, Chinese
- phonemic writing system
- partial phonemic writing system, e.g. Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic
- poly-phonemic writing system, e.g. Linear B, Kana, Cherokee
- mono-phonemic writing system
- phonemic writing system, e.g. Ancient Greek, Old English
- morpho-phonemic writing system, e.g. German, Modern English
Sampson draws a distinction between semasiography and glottography
- semasiography, relating visible marks to meaning directly without reference to any specific spoken language
- glottography, using visible marks to represent forms of a spoken language
- logography, representing a spoken language by assigning distinctive visible marks to linguistic elements of André Martinet's "first articulation" (Martinet 1949), i.e. morphemes or words
- phonography, achieving the same goal by assigning marks to elements of the "second articulation", e.g. phonemes, syllables
DeFrancis,[22] criticizing Sampson's[23] introduction of semasiographic writing and featural alphabets stresses the phonographic quality of writing proper
- pictures
- nonwriting
- writing
- rebus
- syllabic systems
- pure syllabic, e.g. Linear B, Yi, Kana, Cherokee
- morpho-syllabic, e.g. Sumerian, Chinese, Mayan
- consonantal
- morpho-consonantal, e.g. Egyptian
- pure consonantal, e.g. Phoenician
- alphabetic
- pure phonemic, e.g. Greek
- morpho-phonemic, e.g. English
- syllabic systems
- rebus
Faber[24] categorizes phonographic writing by two levels, linearity and coding:
- logographic, e.g. Chinese, Ancient Egyptian
- phonographic
- syllabically linear
- segmentally linear
- complete (alphabet), e.g. Greco-Latin, Cyrillic
- defective, e.g. Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Old South Arabian, Paleo-Hebrew
|Each symbol represents
|word or morpheme as well as syllable
|Chinese characters
|Japanese kana
|Abjad (consonantary)
|Arabic alphabet
|consonant or vowel
|Latin alphabet
|consonant accompanied by specific vowel,
modifying symbols represent other vowels
|Indian Devanagari
|Featural system
|distinctive feature of segment
|Korean Hangul
Logographic systems
A logogram is a single written character which represents a complete grammatical word. Most traditional Chinese characters are classified as logograms.
As each character represents a single word (or, more precisely, a morpheme), many logograms are required to write all the words of language. The vast array of logograms and the memorization of what they mean are major disadvantages of logographic systems over alphabetic systems. However, since the meaning is inherent to the symbol, the same logographic system can theoretically be used to represent different languages. In practice, the ability to communicate across languages only works for the closely related varieties of Chinese, as differences in syntax reduce the crosslinguistic portability of a given logographic system. Japanese uses Chinese logograms extensively in its writing systems, with most of the symbols carrying the same or similar meanings. However, the grammatical differences between Japanese and Chinese are significant enough that a long Chinese text is not readily understandable to a Japanese reader without any knowledge of basic Chinese grammar, though short and concise phrases such as those on signs and newspaper headlines are much easier to comprehend.
While most languages do not use wholly logographic writing systems, many languages use some logograms. A good example of modern western logograms are the Arabic numerals: everyone who uses those symbols understands what 1 means whether they call it one, eins, uno, yi, ichi, ehad, ena, or jedan. Other western logograms include the ampersand &, used for and, the at sign @, used in many contexts for at, the percent sign % and the many signs representing units of currency ($, ¢, €, £, ¥ and so on.)
Logograms are sometimes called ideograms, a word that refers to symbols which graphically represent abstract ideas, but linguists avoid this use, as Chinese characters are often semantic–phonetic compounds, symbols which include an element that represents the meaning and a phonetic complement element that represents the pronunciation. Some nonlinguists distinguish between lexigraphy and ideography, where symbols in lexigraphies represent words and symbols in ideographies represent words or morphemes.
The most important (and, to a degree, the only surviving) modern logographic writing system is the Chinese one, whose characters have been used with varying degrees of modification in varieties of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and other east Asian languages. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Mayan writing system are also systems with certain logographic features, although they have marked phonetic features as well and are no longer in current use. Vietnamese speakers switched to the Latin alphabet in the 20th century and the use of Chinese characters in Korean is increasingly rare. The Japanese writing system includes several distinct forms of writing including logography.
Syllabic systems: syllabary
Another type of writing system with systematic syllabic linear symbols, the abugidas, is discussed below as well.
As logographic writing systems use a single symbol for an entire word, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary typically represents a consonant sound followed by a vowel sound, or just a vowel alone.
In a "true syllabary", there is no systematic graphic similarity between phonetically related characters (though some do have graphic similarity for the vowels). That is, the characters for /ke/, /ka/ and /ko/ have no similarity to indicate their common "k" sound (voiceless velar plosive). More recent creations such as the Cree syllabary embody a system of varying signs, which can best be seen when arranging the syllabogram set in an onset–coda or onset–rime table.
Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple syllable structure, such as Japanese. The English language, on the other hand, allows complex syllable structures, with a relatively large inventory of vowels and complex consonant clusters, making it cumbersome to write English words with a syllabary. To write English using a syllabary, every possible syllable in English would have to have a separate symbol, and whereas the number of possible syllables in Japanese is around 100, in English there are approximately 15,000 to 16,000.
However, syllabaries with much larger inventories do exist. The Yi script, for example, contains 756 different symbols (or 1,164, if symbols with a particular tone diacritic are counted as separate syllables, as in Unicode). The Chinese script, when used to write Middle Chinese and the modern varieties of Chinese, also represents syllables, and includes separate glyphs for nearly all of the many thousands of syllables in Middle Chinese; however, because it primarily represents morphemes and includes different characters to represent homophonous morphemes with different meanings, it is normally considered a logographic script rather than a syllabary.
Other languages that use true syllabaries include Mycenaean Greek (Linear B) and Indigenous languages of the Americas such as Cherokee. Several languages of the Ancient Near East used forms of cuneiform, which is a syllabary with some non-syllabic elements.
Segmental systems: alphabets
An alphabet is a small set of letters (basic written symbols), each of which roughly represents or represented historically a segmental phoneme of a spoken language. The word alphabet is derived from alpha and beta, the first two symbols of the Greek alphabet.
The first type of alphabet that was developed was the abjad. An abjad is an alphabetic writing system where there is one symbol per consonant. Abjads differ from other alphabets in that they have characters only for consonantal sounds. Vowels are not usually marked in abjads. All known abjads (except maybe Tifinagh) belong to the Semitic family of scripts, and derive from the original Northern Linear Abjad. The reason for this is that Semitic languages and the related Berber languages have a morphemic structure which makes the denotation of vowels redundant in most cases. Some abjads, like Arabic and Hebrew, have markings for vowels as well. However, they use them only in special contexts, such as for teaching. Many scripts derived from abjads have been extended with vowel symbols to become full alphabets. Of these, the most famous example is the derivation of the Greek alphabet from the Phoenician abjad. This has mostly happened when the script was adapted to a non-Semitic language. The term abjad takes its name from the old order of the Arabic alphabet's consonants 'alif, bā', jīm, dāl, though the word may have earlier roots in Phoenician or Ugaritic. "Abjad" is still the word for alphabet in Arabic, Malay and Indonesian.
An abugida is an alphabetic writing system whose basic signs denote consonants with an inherent vowel and where consistent modifications of the basic sign indicate other following vowels than the inherent one. Thus, in an abugida there may or may not be a sign for "k" with no vowel, but also one for "ka" (if "a" is the inherent vowel), and "ke" is written by modifying the "ka" sign in a way that is consistent with how one would modify "la" to get "le". In many abugidas the modification is the addition of a vowel sign, but other possibilities are imaginable (and used), such as rotation of the basic sign, addition of diacritical marks and so on. The contrast with "true syllabaries" is that the latter have one distinct symbol per possible syllable, and the signs for each syllable have no systematic graphic similarity. The graphic similarity of most abugidas comes from the fact that they are derived from abjads, and the consonants make up the symbols with the inherent vowel and the new vowel symbols are markings added on to the base symbol. In the Ge'ez script, for which the linguistic term abugida was named, the vowel modifications do not always appear systematic, although they originally were more so. Canadian Aboriginal syllabics can be considered abugidas, although they are rarely thought of in those terms. The largest single group of abugidas is the Brahmic family of scripts, however, which includes nearly all the scripts used in India and Southeast Asia. The name abugida is derived from the first four characters of an order of the Ge'ez script used in some contexts. It was borrowed from Ethiopian languages as a linguistic term by Peter T. Daniels.
Featural systems
A featural script represents finer detail than an alphabet. Here symbols do not represent whole phonemes, but rather the elements (features) that make up the phonemes, such as voicing or its place of articulation. Theoretically, each feature could be written with a separate letter; and abjads or abugidas, or indeed syllabaries, could be featural, but the only prominent system of this sort is Korean hangul. In hangul, the featural symbols are combined into alphabetic letters, and these letters are in turn joined into syllabic blocks, so that the system combines three levels of phonological representation.
Many scholars, e.g. John DeFrancis, reject this class or at least labeling hangul as such. The Korean script is a conscious script creation by literate experts, which Daniels calls a "sophisticated grammatogeny". These include stenographies and constructed scripts of hobbyists and fiction writers (such as Tengwar), many of which feature advanced graphic designs corresponding to phonologic properties. The basic unit of writing in these systems can map to anything from phonemes to words. It has been shown that even the Latin script has sub-character "features".[26]
Ambiguous systems
Most writing systems are not purely one type. The English writing system, for example, includes numerals and other logograms such as #, $, and &, and the written language often does not match well with the spoken one. As mentioned above, all logographic systems have phonetic components as well, whether along the lines of a syllabary, such as Chinese ("logo-syllabic"), or an abjad, as in Egyptian ("logo-consonantal").
Some scripts, however, are truly ambiguous. The semi-syllabaries of ancient Spain were syllabic for plosives such as p, t, k, but alphabetic for other consonants. In some versions, vowels were written redundantly after syllabic letters, conforming to an alphabetic orthography. Old Persian cuneiform was similar. Of 23 consonants (including null), seven were fully syllabic, thirteen were purely alphabetic, and for the other three, there was one letter for /Cu/ and another for both /Ca/ and /Ci/. However, all vowels were written overtly regardless; as in the Brahmic abugidas, the /Ca/ letter was used for a bare consonant.
The zhuyin phonetic glossing script for Chinese divides syllables in two or three, but into onset, medial, and rime rather than consonant and vowel. Pahawh Hmong is similar, but can be considered to divide syllables into either onset-rime or consonant-vowel (all consonant clusters and diphthongs are written with single letters); as the latter, it is equivalent to an abugida but with the roles of consonant and vowel reversed. Other scripts are intermediate between the categories of alphabet, abjad and abugida, so there may be disagreement on how they should be classified.
Graphic classification
Perhaps the primary graphic distinction made in classifications is that of linearity. Linear writing systems are those in which the characters are composed of lines, such as the Latin alphabet and Chinese characters. Chinese characters are considered linear whether they are written with a ball-point pen or a calligraphic brush, or cast in bronze. Similarly, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Maya glyphs were often painted in linear outline form, but in formal contexts they were carved in bas-relief. The earliest examples of writing are linear: the Sumerian script of c. 3300 BC was linear, though its cuneiform descendants were not. Non-linear systems, on the other hand, such as braille, are not composed of lines, no matter what instrument is used to write them.
Cuneiform was probably the earliest non-linear writing. Its glyphs were formed by pressing the end of a reed stylus into moist clay, not by tracing lines in the clay with the stylus as had been done previously.[27][28] The result was a radical transformation of the appearance of the script.
Braille is a non-linear adaptation of the Latin alphabet that completely abandoned the Latin forms. The letters are composed of raised bumps on the writing substrate, which can be leather (Louis Braille's original material), stiff paper, plastic or metal.
There are also transient non-linear adaptations of the Latin alphabet, including Morse code, the manual alphabets of various sign languages, and semaphore, in which flags or bars are positioned at prescribed angles. However, if "writing" is defined as a potentially permanent means of recording information, then these systems do not qualify as writing at all, since the symbols disappear as soon as they are used. (Instead, these transient systems serve as signals.)
Scripts are graphically characterized by the direction in which they are written. Egyptian hieroglyphs were written either left to right or right to left, with the animal and human glyphs turned to face the beginning of the line. The early alphabet could be written in multiple directions:[29] horizontally (side to side), or vertically (up or down). Prior to standardization, alphabetical writing was done both left-to-right (LTR or sinistrodextrally) and right-to-left (RTL or dextrosinistrally). It was most commonly written boustrophedonically: starting in one (horizontal) direction, then turning at the end of the line and reversing direction.
The Greek alphabet and its successors settled on a left-to-right pattern, from the top to the bottom of the page. Other scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, came to be written right-to-left. Scripts that incorporate Chinese characters have traditionally been written vertically (top-to-bottom), from the right to the left of the page, but nowadays are frequently written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, due to Western influence, a growing need to accommodate terms in the Latin script, and technical limitations in popular electronic document formats. Chinese characters sometimes, as in signage, especially when signifying something old or traditional, may also be written from right to left. The Old Uyghur alphabet and its descendants are unique in being written top-to-bottom, left-to-right; this direction originated from an ancestral Semitic direction by rotating the page 90° counter-clockwise to conform to the appearance of vertical Chinese writing. Several scripts used in the Philippines and Indonesia, such as Hanunó'o, are traditionally written with lines moving away from the writer, from bottom to top, but are read horizontally left to right; however, Kulitan, another Philippine script, is written top to bottom and right to left. Ogham is written bottom to top and read vertically, commonly on the corner of a stone.
Left-to-right has the advantage that, given that most people are right-handed, the hand won't interfere with the just written text which might not have dried yet, since the hand is on the right side of the pen. For partially this reason, left-handed children were historically in Europe and America often taught to use the right hand for writing.
On computers
In computers and telecommunication systems, writing systems are generally not codified as such, but graphemes and other grapheme-like units that are required for text processing are represented by "characters" that typically manifest in encoded form. There are many character encoding standards and related technologies, such as ISO/IEC 8859-1 (a character repertoire and encoding scheme oriented toward the Latin script), CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and bi-directional text. Today, many such standards are re-defined in a collective standard, the ISO/IEC 10646 "Universal Character Set", and a parallel, closely related expanded work, The Unicode Standard. Both are generally encompassed by the term Unicode. In Unicode, each character, in every language's writing system, is (simplifying slightly) given a unique identification number, known as its code point. Computer operating systems use code points to look up characters in the font file, so the characters can be displayed on the page or screen.
A keyboard is the device most commonly used for writing via computer. Each key is associated with a standard code which the keyboard sends to the computer when it is pressed. By using a combination of alphabetic keys with modifier keys such as Ctrl, Alt, Shift and AltGr, various character codes are generated and sent to the CPU. The operating system intercepts and converts those signals to the appropriate characters based on the keyboard layout and input method, and then delivers those converted codes and characters to the running application software, which in turn looks up the appropriate glyph in the currently used font file, and requests the operating system to draw these on the screen.
See also
- Artificial script
- Calligraphy
- Defective script
- Digraphia
- Epigraphy
- Formal language
- Grammatology
- International phonetic alphabet
- Orthography
- Pasigraphy
- Penmanship
- Paleography
- Phonemic orthography
- Phonetic transcription
- Numeral system
- Transliteration
- Transcription (linguistics)
- Writing
- Written language
- "Definitions of writing systems". Omniglot: The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2013-06-29.
- Coulmas, Florian. 2003. Writing systems. An introduction. Cambridge University Press. pg. 35.
- David Crystal (2008), A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th Edition, p. 481, Wiley
- Hadumod Bußmann (1998), Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics, p. 1294, Taylor & Francis
- Hadumod Bußmann (1998), Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics, p. 979, Taylor & Francis
- Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer (2012), The Anthropology of Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology, p. 194, Cengage Learning
- "Is it plausible to have two written forms of one spoken language that are so different as to be indecipherable?". Worldbuilding Stack Exchange.
- Metaphor and Analogy in the Sciences, p. 126, Springer Science & Business Media (2013)
- Denise Schmandt-Besserat, "An Archaic Recording System and the Origin of Writing." Syro-Mesopotamian Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1–32, 1977
- Woods, Christopher (2010), "The earliest Mesopotamian writing", in Woods, Christopher (ed.), Visible language. Inventions of writing in the ancient Middle East and beyond (PDF), Oriental Institute Museum Publications, 32, Chicago: University of Chicago, pp. 33–50, ISBN 978-1-885923-76-9
- https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14371450/indus-valley-civilization-ancient-seals-symbols-language-algorithms-ai
- Geoffrey Sampson, Writing Systems: a Linguistic Introduction, Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 78.
- Robert Bagley (2004). "Anyang writing and the origin of the Chinese writing system". In Houston, Stephen (ed.). The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process. Cambridge University Press. p. 190. ISBN 9780521838610. Retrieved 3 April 2019.
- William G. Boltz (1999). "Language and Writing". In Loewe, Michael; Shaughnessy, Edward L. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC. Cambridge University Press. p. 108. ISBN 9780521470308. Retrieved 3 April 2019.
- David N. Keightley, Noel Barnard. The Origins of Chinese civilization. Page 415-416
- Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature. Gwendolyn Leick, p. 3.
- Coulmas, Florian (1996). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. ISBN 0-631-21481-X.
- Millard 1986, p. 396
- Haarmann 2004, p. 96
- David Diringer (1962): Writing. London.
- Archibald Hill (1967): The typology of Writing systems. In: William A. Austin (ed.), Papers in Linguistics in Honor of Leon Dostert. The Hague, 92–99.
- John DeFrancis (1989): Visible speech. The diverse oneness of writing systems. Honolulu
- Geoffrey Sampson (1986): Writing Systems. A Linguistic Approach. London
- Alice Faber (1992): Phonemic segmentation as an epiphenomenon. Evidence from the history of alphabetic writing. In: Pamela Downing et al. (ed.): The Linguistics of Literacy. Amsterdam. 111–134.
- Daniels and Bright 1996, p. 4 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFDaniels_and_Bright1996 (help)
- See Primus, Beatrice (2004), "A featural analysis of the Modern Roman Alphabet" (PDF), Written Language and Literacy, 7 (2): 235–274, doi:10.1075/wll.7.2.06pri, retrieved 2015-12-05
- Cammarosano, Michele. "Cuneiform Writing Techniques". cuneiform.neocities.org. Retrieved 2018-07-18.
- Cammarosano, Michele (2014). "The Cuneiform Stylus". Mesopotamia. XLIX: 53–90 – via https://osf.io/dfng4/.
- Threatte, Leslie (1980). The grammar of Attic inscriptions. W. de Gruyter. pp. 54–55. ISBN 3-11-007344-7.
- Cisse, Mamadou. 2006. "Ecrits et écritures en Afrique de l'Ouest". Sudlangues n°6, https://web.archive.org/web/20110720093748/http://www.sudlangues.sn/spip.php?article101
- Coulmas, Florian. 1996. The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Coulmas, Florian. 2003. Writing systems. An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Daniels, Peter T, and William Bright, eds. 1996. The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0.
- DeFrancis, John. 1990. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1068-6
- Haarmann, Harald (2004). Geschichte der Schrift [History of Writing] (in German) (2nd ed.). München: C. H. Beck. ISBN 3-406-47998-7.
- Hannas, William. C. 1997. Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1892-X (paperback); ISBN 0-8248-1842-3 (hardcover)
- Millard, A. R. (1986). "The Infancy of the Alphabet". World Archaeology. 17 (3): 390–398. doi:10.1080/00438243.1986.9979978.
- Nishiyama, Yutaka. 2010. The Mathematics of Direction in Writing. International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol.61, No.3, 347-356.
- Rogers, Henry. 2005. Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-23463-2 (hardcover); ISBN 0-631-23464-0 (paperback)
- Sampson, Geoffrey. 1985. Writing Systems. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-1756-7 (paper), ISBN 0-8047-1254-9 (cloth).
- Smalley, W. A. (ed.) 1964. Orthography studies: articles on new writing systems. London: United Bible Society.
External links
- Writing Systems Research Free first issue of a journal devoted to research on writing systems
- Arch Chinese (Traditional & Simplified) Chinese character writing animations and native speaker pronunciations
- Sensible Chinese A practical guide to approaching the Chinese writing system
- decodeunicode Unicode Wiki with all 98,884 Unicode 5.0 characters as gifs in three sizes
- African writing systems
- Omniglot: The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages
- Ancient Scripts Introduction to different writing systems
- Alphabets of Europe
- Elian script a writing system that combines the linearity of spelling with the free-form aspects of drawing.


text:
ContourGlobal inaugurates innovative KivuWatt energy facility in Rwanda and announces 25% increased production capacity from first phase
16 May, 2016, 17:01 ET
- KivuWatt gas extraction and power generating facility successfully operational since December 2015
- Operation exceeding expectations and will reach 100 MW by 2019 with 9 additional MW being made available from the existing facility by year end
- Ground-breaking facility reduces the risk of release of toxic gases and sets Rwanda on the road to double its energy production by 2020
KIBUYE, Rwanda and NEW YORK, May 16, 2016 /CNW/ -- ContourGlobal, the US-based energy corporation, has inaugurated its KivuWatt power plant in Kibuye, Rwanda, on the shores of Lake Kivu, in the presence of Rwanda's H.E. President Paul Kagame, James Musoni, Minister of Infrastructure and Jean Bosco Mugiraneza, CEO Rwanda Energy Group. ContourGlobal was represented by its President & Chief Executive Officer, Joseph C. Brandt, Karl Schnadt, Executive Vice-President & Chief Operating Officer, Cheick-Oumar Sylla, Executive Vice President Business Development Africa, and Jarmo Gummerus, Director of KivuWatt Ltd. Also in attendance were Ambassadors from the United States of America, the Netherlands, Belgium, China and the European Union, and representatives from Wartsila and other partners in the project.
The KivuWatt project is the only gas/water extraction project currently operating in the world. The innovative project utilizes methane gas found in Lake Kivu's deep waters to generate low carbon emission electricity, and by reducing the amount of methane in the Lake also reduces the risk of the methane's catastrophic release.
The world's leading development banks joined the KivuWatt project in 2011 when the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), the Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) and Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries (BIO) extended debt financing to the project.
Joseph C. Brandt, President and Chief Executive Officer of ContourGlobal said: "In 2008 we entered into a partnership with the Government of Rwanda to transform the menace of Lake Kivu's unique gas deposits into the source of something good for the people of Rwanda. The hard fought KivuWatt project has realized the Lake's potential envisioned by President H.E. Paul Kagame. We are proud to have catalyzed his vision into a substantial operating project that is mitigating the threat of environmental catastrophe while providing clean, reliable electricity to Rwanda."
Karl Schnadt, ContourGlobal's Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer: "We have successfully brought into operation this unique project and overcome the many challenges posed by this unprecedented attempt at large-scale gas extraction on the lake. Our design and technology are performing even better than expected and we are pleased to announce today that the gas extraction facility will support at least an additional 9 MW of power generation. We are undertaking the works to transform this unexpected gas into additional electricity for Rwanda's grid by year-end."
KivuWatt's Technology and Process
The gas extraction process brings gas-laden waters from 35 bars to 2 bars of pressure via a gas separator where gas bubbles are extracted from the water. Raw gas is then washed in four wash towers, ultimately producing clean methane gas. This gas is then transported to the power plant through a pipeline where combustion engines generate electricity to be supplied to the Rwanda energy grid. KivuWatt's gas extraction facility sits on a barge anchored 13 km off-shore. Phase 2 of the project will add two or three barges to this configuration on the lake to generate an additional 75 MW. In addition to gas extraction and power generation, ContourGlobal is also engaging with the local population, training and developing local workers and funding charitable projects such as providing a library and computers to Kibuye schools.
ContourGlobal in Africa
ContourGlobal began operating in Africa in 2008 when it developed and constructed its flagship power plant in Lome, Togo. The ContourGlobal Togo plant, winner of the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation's 2014 "Impact Award for Critical Infrastructure," was placed into commercial operation in 2010 and has been a reliable producer of electricity for the country ever since.
In 2013, ContourGlobal acquired an existing brownfield thermal power plant in Senegal and began developing and constructing a new 53 MW thermal energy facility. The facility began operation in April 2016 and will be the lowest-cost liquid-fuel power plant in Senegal and can easily be converted to burn clean natural gas. In December 2015, ContourGlobal announced an expansion of the project to include an additional 33 MW of installed capacity to be constructed at the existing site by October 2016. The combined 86 MW Cap des Biches power plant will significantly boost power supply to the people and industry of Senegal. ContourGlobal also provides efficient tri-generation in Nigeria to three of CocaCola Hellenic Bottling Company's bottling plants and has nearly 2,000 MW of projects under development throughout Africa.
About ContourGlobal
ContourGlobal is a developer and operator of electric power generation facilities. The Company owns and operates a portfolio of 62 power plants in both thermal and renewable technologies, with approximately 4,000 MW of installed gross capacity in operation. The projects are located in 20 countries on 3 continents, utilizing a wide range of fuel types, technology and equipment. 1,800 people work for ContourGlobal around the globe.
SOURCE ContourGlobal
For further information: ContourGlobal Media Contact: Heidi Gluck, Tel: +43 1 512 43 21, +43 664 4416240, [email protected], http://www.contourglobal.com


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DURHAM - Hardly a single day has gone by when I haven't thought about how lucky I was to have followed Duke all the way to Indianapolis where they, of course, won the 2010 national championship. It was a magical season and, for me, it was almost surreal seeing the whole scene up close and personal. David Bradley runs Duke Blue Planet, the team's official website, and he was there every step of the way alongside me with one exception. As great as my access was, Dave's was better, for he was truly on the inside. Every time I turned around Bradley was documenting every team move, coaches and all. This allowed him to produce a new book commemorating the championship, called "Worthy Champions." The Sports Illustrated Special Edition was pretty cool but other offerings were not that impressive, which led me to wonder why someone didn't put out a really good edition, full of illustrations, from, again, a truly magical season. As it turns out, Bradley had been working on doing just that. The end product is a success and a must for Duke fans of all ages. Want to relive that championship run? Then check out this book and read on as BDN chatted with Bradley about the finished product and where you can purchase a copy.
Give a general background on how the project got started?
Basically I was working on the next issue of Blue Planet magazine and realized the 2010 team was too good of a story to do just one issue. I had so many photos and content from the tourney run and throughout the year. Obviously Sports Illustrated and a few other media outlets put something out there, but I wanted to do something that really captured the essence of the 2010 team and their unique journey. I banged out the 212 pages and showed our internal staff here. They were on board and I got some great feedback from Coach and Mrs. K and we went from there.
Can you talk about the layout and what readers can expect from the book?
It has a different feel than a traditional book because I wanted to take advantage of the access and relationships I have, and I knew that people would be more interested in hearing the story from the players and coaches as opposed to just me. I was lucky that everyone I asked to help and contribute was more than willing. As a result, the book has contributions and articles from the entire starting five, Coach Collins, Coach Wojo, Jay Bilas, Chris Carrawell, Jamie Spatola, Debbie Savarino, Eric Skeffington (our senior manager), Zach White (diehard Cameron Crazie), and even the Blue Devil. So the story of the 2010 team is told by individuals who lived it, loved it and were excited to share their memories and thoughts.
Yeah – I saw that Kyle Singler had some art in there too...
For the book, Kyle designed the inside cover, a Crazies graphic, an ACC champs graphic, and wrote the foreword. The 17-0 logo he made on Senior Night is also in there. Kyle really has a creative mind and enjoys playing around on Photoshop even when it's not for a class project. It's pretty cool to see him merge his passion for basketball and art in a publication dedicated to a season that Duke fans will never forget. And, obviously, I really appreciate his skills and willingness to contribute.
What's the story behind the title?
Coach K talks often about being a deserving winner and paying the price to become a worthy champion. That means competing every day, representing Duke at the highest level and taking pride in the name on the front of the jersey. I am not sure people realize just how much these guys went through, especially our veterans, behind the scenes working extraordinarily hard. When April 5th, 2010 rolled around, our team was absolutely deserving of what happened next. They were "worthy champions" without a doubt.
This is an extensive book — how long did it take to put everything together?
Well, I started about a week after we won the whole thing and I finished in mid-August. In that time period, I worked on it every day and there were some late nights involved in addition to some text messages from my mom suggesting I sleep more. However, the team was such a joy to be around from the jump and I had a blast reliving the year on a daily basis. Our players and coaches invested so much and the team gave Duke everything they had, bringing so much positive emotion to our entire community and fans all over the world. Hopefully the book reflects that, and our fans will be proud to leave it on their coffee tables for awhile.
Where can fans find this book?
It's for sale exclusively by Duke Stores online and at the Duke Bookstore.
You can buy it here: Worth Champions at Duke Stores Online
And if you want to browse the online version first, visit the book's website at


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It was hard to believe that the stone balls could have been manufactured without some mechanical aid, but no instruments of any kind were found to give us a clue.
If the conquering Spaniards ever witnessed the process, which seems unlikely, they made no record of it. As there were no stone quarries in the neighborhood, we asked Armando, who had a life-long knowledge of the surrounding country, whether he had ever seen one.
"Never," he answered. "There are none anywhere near here."
"You're sure?" Sam insisted.
"Sure," said Armando, and added, "Nuts to you."
This time, by pure chance, he had picked the right phrase.
Others we asked agreed that there were no quarries within miles, and we ourselves conducted a fruitless search. The balls must therefore have been manufactured at some remote spot, as the rough blocks could never have been moved any distance. The largest ones must have weighed a great many tons.
It is hard enough to imagine how the Indians managed to roll the finished spheres through overgrown jungle and to the tops of adjacent mountains, where some of them have been found.
"In fact, it's impossible," I said to Sam. "I believe they are some sort of cosmic phenomenon like meteors. Maybe they dropped from the sky."
"If so, it's lucky they didn't hit anyone," said Sam without a smile.
"But seriously," I insisted, "even Man Mountain Dean couldn't have transported one of these enormous things on dry land. And as for crossing the rivers. . . . "
Sam interrupted my eloquence and put me in my scientific place. "The Indians undoubtedly built rafts for carrying them over the rivers in the rainy season when the water was deep."
"But why was it so important to get them here?" I asked. "And why did the Indians bother to make them? It must have taken a man a lifetime just to turn out one, and what could he do with it when it was finished?"
And so, not having done very well with our first problem, we found ourselves up against our second.
The stone balls were obviously of great importance to the people who made them, though they could have had no practical purpose. I spent my time trying to think of every possible use to which they might have been put, even entertaining the notion of games for the kiddies or bowling contests. Some did weigh only a couple of pounds, but most of them would have required an army of men just to set them in place.
"I have come to the conclusion," I finally pontificated, "that the balls had no useful purpose." Which of course Sam had known all along.
"Could they have been for decoration?" I asked.


text:
There are various issues widely reported when the trace process runs with excessive I/O (reads/writes) to
the ...\ProgramData\McAfee\MCLOGS\ETW\mclogs.etl, and worse, it's of considerable duration.
On my system it interferes with other processes for example it blocks midi input via a usb
midi device while it's running.
1. Is this trace necessary?
2. Can it be suppressed? Or
3. Since many are have reported issues, is there a fix or a workaround?
Any info would be appreciated...
It looks like extended log collection is enabled on your PC. Please follow the below steps and see if it helps
Thanks for the reply but... It hasn't happened for a while and when it does it's easy to detect via the resource monitor on high disk activity, which is the symtom it's running, and I found a workaround which cancels the trace.
Before I download & run any tools with which I'm not familiar, I've got 3 questions:
1. Exactly what is the purpose of the exercise?
2. How will this help?
3. Is there simple direct way to determine if extended log collection is enabled, or is this a McAfee internal only revealed by support tools?
Forgive my reticence, but past experience gives me pause, no software is perfect, and the info would be helpful since at the moment there's no urgency.
Many thanks again...
Below are few information about ETW log collection
1.Exactly what is the purpose of the exercise :-
Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) provides the ability to start and stop event tracing sessions, instrument an application to provide trace events.
2.How will this help :-
We can use the events to debug an application and perform capacity and performance analysis.
3. Is there simple direct way to determine if extended log collection is enabled, or is this a McAfee internal only revealed by support tools?
Unfortunately there is no direct method due to the nature of log collection.
Thanks and regards,
@siddharth_r wrote:
It looks like extended log collection is enabled on your PC. Please follow the below steps and see if it helps
- Run Mclogcollect.exe using the link http://us.mcafee.com/apps/supporttools/mctrace/mclogcollect.asp
- If you notice the tool tracing the logs, click STOP button to stop the tracing
- Wait for logs to be dumped in Desktop. Once complete you can delete the MCLOGS.zip file from Desktop
- Again, attempt to run the Mclogcollect.exe. You will see a list of option, uncheck enable verbose and click on red X at the top right to close
- Observe the PC for a while and post back the status
I appreciate your help but the exercise is not entirely clear to me.
Step 1. Is there an option that needs to be selected, if so what? I beleive there are 3 : Trace, Boot Trace and Collect logs (no trace)? Also what initiates the collection session?
Step 2. I assume checking for log file tracing is via the resource monitor?
Step 3. Is obvious... but I presume only if the Mclogcollect.exe is run from the desktop?
Step 4. I assume The Options screen launches when you click Options from the main user interface screen of Mclogcollect.exe tool?
Step 5. By "Observe the PC for a while" do you mean prior to clicking the "STOP button", and what do you mean by "status", the single .zip file MCLOGS.zip?
It would be nice if there was formal documentation for the tool with screen shots, but I couldn't find any just an article. I can only run this tool if I know precisely what steps should be taken.
Thanks again,
You might find the below articles helpful
TS102057 McLogCollect and Process Monitor overview
TS101980 How to collect logs for McAfee Windows Security Suites
Thank you Selvan, I have a printed copy of the first article, the second is highly illuminating it definitely indicates that the tool should be used with caution, for specific scenarios, and has the potential to change the state of the system, which if not properly restored could have a negative impact, for example a failure to disable verbose logging if enabled for a session.
Moreover the original issue doesn't appear to conform to any of the scenarios as it concerns the ETW trace performance, and I'm not sure of the relevance of this tool for this issue. Further to suggest arbitrarily running this tool without prior expertise or very precise steps to be taken in the context of a specific issue, which in this case may not be appropriate, seems to me extreamly ill advised.
In light of this I'm grateful you gave the reference to the second article...
Generally we Tech Support makes extensive use of log collection tools to troubleshoot an unknown issue. The logs collected will help us to narrow down the root cause of a problem. The general practice here is to disable the tools and/or changes that were made to the PC post troubleshooting. On that note do you recall working with Tech Support earlier? It will help us understand the situation better.
Thankyou Selvan, I do appreciate the necessity for logs, having used them for toubleshooting in a professional capacity many, many moons ago! Any McAfee Tech Support help received earlier, did not require any tool use, or to provide any logs.
As previously mentioned for this "particular issue" the ETW trace itself, it is not clear what steps precisely, pre and post toubleshooting , should be taken. For example on the main screen there are 3 options, which one should be selected, Trace? This would be a first time run on a 64-bit w10 system, will it prompt a reboot? Is verbose logging on by default or is this an artifact of the issue? And so on...
Regardless as prevoiusly mentioned I found a workaround which cancels the ETW trace, when I detect it during the course of other activities engaged in, that the ETW trace interferes with.
Issues with thie ETW trace have been widely reported and should be able to be independently investigated without any logs I could provide, and as at the moment there's no urgency, I have no intention to arbitrily run this tool on my system with any potential risks it might involve.
Regardless once again thanks for your response...
New to the forums or need help finding your way around the forums? There's a whole hub of community resources to help you.
Thousands of customers use the McAfee Community for peer-to-peer and expert product support. Enjoy these benefits with a free membership:


text:
Products used: Nielsen Massey Madagascar Pure Vanilla Extract, Stainless Scooper/ Disher, La Rochere Amitie Red Wine Glass
2 1/4 cups whole milk
1/3 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar, divided
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (recommended: Pernigotti)
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
4 extra-large egg yolks
2 tablespoons Mexican coffee flavor liqueur (recommended: Kahlua)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Large pinch kosher salt
8 chocolates, roughly chopped, optional (recommended: Baci)
Heat the milk, cream, and 1/2 cup sugar in a 2-quart saucepan, until the sugar dissolves and the milk starts to simmer. Add the cocoa powder and chocolate and whisk until smooth. Pour into a heat-proof measuring cup.
Place the egg yolks and the remaining 1/4 cup sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until light yellow and very thick. With the mixer on low speed, slowly pour the hot chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. Pour the egg and chocolate mixture back into the 2-quart saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. A candy thermometer will register about 180 degrees F. Don't allow the mixture to boil!
Pour the mixture through a sieve into a bowl and stir in the coffee liqueur, vanilla, and salt. Place a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of the custard and chill completely.
Pour the custard into the bowl of an ice cream maker and process according to the manufacturer's directions. Stir in the roughly chopped chocolate, if using, and freeze in covered containers. Allow the gelato to thaw slightly before serving.
2008, Ina Garten, All Rights Reserved


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At our submitter's office in Fort Worth, the third-floor ladies room has an ongoing problem. "Every single day," our submitter explains, one particular person uses the facilities and then sprays enough perfume to kill a cow…as if you could cover that smell."
And yet, given the abundance of pro-sprayers in charge of office ladies' rooms, I'm afraid this is bound to remain another one of those never-ending workplace disagreements.
related: Have you tried Giant Migraine™ scented air freshener?


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eBay has a history of releasing tools and widgets that make it easier for buyers to find items and for sellers to make money. Between the Firefox Companion and blog-compatible eBay widgets, the site has gone out of its way to provide a number of tools that make using the online auction site so easy that anyone can sign up, buy items, and sell their old stuff.
This week, eBay unveiled eBay Desktop. eBay Desktop uses Adobe's AIR platform, offering you complete control over the auctions you're watching, those you've bid on, and the items that you've won. You can't sell items through eBay Desktop yet, but that's likely coming soon.
In addition to being fully featured, eBay Desktop sports a gorgeous interface and a few surprises not available on the Website.
eBay Desktop is absolutely gorgeous. It may be in beta, but it's extremely polished. The app is well built and easy to use. Navigating around feels like you're using a desktop app and windows and panes transition smoothly between what you're looking at and what you just clicked on. Shopping using eBay Desktop is a completely different experience than using the Website. When you download eBay Desktop, you'll be prompted to install Adobe AIR as well. Even if you have an old version of the AIR framework, you'll need to install the newest release (also a beta) before you can install eBay Desktop. Once it's installed, simply sign in with your eBay account to get started.
The first thing that I noticed when using eBay Desktop was how simple it was to navigate. The app is designed with some of the common features of a browser window, so you can click back and forward to move between what you're looking at now and what you saw a moment ago. Additionally, clicking on menu options and panes give you instant feedback, sometimes completely reorganizing the window so you can better see the items for sale, the details of an item that you clicked on, or even bid on something you want. When viewing a list of items, eBay Desktop actually counts down the time in minutes and seconds to when the auction ends, so you can pick up those last second items.
The app also provides you desktop alerts when you've been outbid on an item or when you've won an auction. The search bar provides popular searches as soon as you begin to type, and saves searches that you've made in the past. You can subscribe to seller feeds, get reminders for items that you've been watching, or create filters that take you directly to the type of item that you want without having to wade through the junk you don't.
As beautiful as eBay Desktop is, I'd love to see more, and there are a few kinks to work out. Because the app is in beta, expect to see a bug here or there (which you can report with a button at the bottom of the window). Those I saw all came when I was trying to install the app and upgrade Adobe AIR, which admittedly makes an excellent platform for an application like this.
At the same time, AIR is as much a weakness as it is a strength. Until it is ubiquitous, many people might shrug at downloading an entire framework or plugin just to run this app. I happened to have it installed already because I'm a fan of Pownce, but the installation is a little clunkier than something like Flash. Even so, AIR works well and blends in beautifully with the desktop. If there's a tool that might convince more people to download and install AIR, this might be it.
As eBay Desktop matures, the developers behind it will likely introduce the ability to sell items from eBay Desktop as well. I understand why they left it out of the first public beta, but I can easily see sellers as the primary audience for a tool like this. As easy as it is to find items using eBay Desktop, it could be just as easy and painless to sell them, upload photos already on your desktop, write descriptions, and select the best item categories if there were a custom interface for it. I hope we'll see those abilities in future versions. Also, the public beta only works for US eBayers, although global eBay sites will be added soon.
Even so, eBay Desktop is a great utility, especially for a beta. It's available for Windows (XP and Vista only) and Mac (10.4 only), and it's free. The number of tools that the desktop app offers outweighs the Website by far, and the ability to interact instantly with item listings and with the auctions you're watching and bidding on beats waiting for e-mail notifications and clicking refresh hands-down.


text:
By Admin
Our crazy silly friends from "Silly Ways to Die" are back and they definitely can't stop hurting each other or themselves. This time they bring you a cool difference game where you have get the highest score possible by finding all the differences before the time runs out!
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text:
Many-Winged Angel
Special Containment Procedures
Subject is to be kept in an airtight, soundproof containment chamber, 15.24m x 15.24m x 15.24m (50ft x 50ft x 50ft) until a viable termination method is available. All personnel who enter SCP-469's chamber (Class D Only) must wear standard Sound-Proofing Anti-Resonance (SPAR) suits at all times while inside the chamber, and communicate only through written notes, hand gestures or text messaging. Absolutely no-one is to touch or even approach the subject with anything other than probing instruments.
All equipment taken into SCP-469's containment chamber must make as little noise as possible, or none at all. Cell phones are permitted for communication between personnel as long as they are muted.
At first glance, SCP-469 appears to be a gargantuan pile of white feathers measuring 8.84m (29ft) in diameter and weighing several tons. Upon closer inspection however, subject is actually a vast array of enormous white avian wings, tightly curled up into a dense mound. Each wing varies in size and span, ranging from a few centimetres to several metres, but all are covered with glossy white feathers.
X-rays have revealed the wings to possess a hollow bone structure underneath similar to other birds, though these bones are very soft and flexible, allowing the wings to bend and coil up at angles other birds, and indeed other vertebrates, are incapable of. At the center of the mass is a large humanoid creature, curled up into a fetal position, to which all the wings are attached at its spine.
SCP-469 seems to feed exclusively on sounds and sound waves, using the energy gained from sound to grow newer and bigger wings and feathers. The louder the sound and/or the higher the frequency, the faster SCP-469 grows. Though it can be sustained by any sound, it seems to have a preference for rhythmic/musical noises, especially those produced by bells (see addendum). SCP-469 itself, however, seems to make no noise whatsoever due to the sound-absorbing structure of its plumage.
Any human or animal that touches or gets too close to the surface of the creature will be quickly enveloped by the outstretching wings and drawn inside. Despite the feathers' soft appearance, each hair has a sharp point that quickly pierces through clothing and into bare flesh, releasing a neurotoxin that immediately stimulates all the pain receptors in the body, as well as other stimulants to keep the victim from passing out too quickly. This is to make the victim scream loudly, thus feeding SCP-469 even more until the victim eventually goes into shock. SCP-469 is responsible for the loss of four personnel this way. Touching SCP-469 with dead or nonliving objects has no effect.
All termination methods of SCP-469 have been unsuccessful. Flamethrowers were initially used, but the noise from the discharging propellant as well as the crackling flames gave SCP-469 the energy to grow faster than it could be destroyed. Cutting and slicing instruments, due to their close range, resulted in failure and the loss of two agents. Acid immersion is being suggested.
Addendum: No bells are to be rung anywhere near SCP-469 (No less than 15.24m), including alarms and recordings of bells. The sound of ringing bells causes the humanoid in the center to "wake up", unfurling its wings and proceeding to [DATA EXPUNGED].


text:
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- Approximate burn time of 15-20 hours
- Fragrance Notes: French Tuberose; Heady White Florals; Fresh Green Notes
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In case you missed it, here's another gem from EconStories.tv …
In an article reprinted at Mises.org, John Papola explains:
Each year, our attention turns to the holidays… and to holiday consumer spending! We're told repeatedly that, because consumer spending is 70 percent of measured GDP, such spending is vital to economic growth and job creation. This must mean that savings, the opposite of consumption, is bad for growth.
This view of macroeconomics was first popularly asserted by Thomas Malthus in 1820, nearly 200 years ago. Malthus believed recessions were caused by "underconsumption" because there was a "general glut" of goods unsold. To recover from a recession and grow, we needed to stop all the saving and spend more to buy up all the goods on store shelves. Savers are like the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge. If you want a happy holiday, you've got to clear those shelves and give people a reason to produce more and create jobs. Or so Malthus thought.
John Maynard Keynes resurrected this approach and built on it with his influential "General Theory", which now underpins much of our government policy and public discussion of spending and economic growth. Keynesians believe aggregate spending drives the economy and savings is a "leak" out of the flow of spending. Indeed, this economic philosophy underpins many people's widespread obsession with retail sales each holiday season. Keynesian Macro Santa's sack is filled with spending.
But there is another view on recessions, recoveries and growth.
Classical and Austrian economists such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say and Friedrich Hayek viewed savings as the vital lifeblood of economic growth and production as the means by which we live better and consume more in the long term. Our savings aren't simply taken out of the economic system, but become the source of capital that entrepreneurs use to create new goods and increase productivity. These economists believe this increased productivity is the key to a wealthier world. Before we consume, we must effectively produce what others value — at prices that cover the costs. This fundamental idea, that our demand for goods is enabled and constituted by our supply of other goods came to be known as the "Law of Markets" and later "Say's Law". For classical and Austrian economics, recessions happen when producers make mistakes. They create goods that can't be sold at a profit. These malinvestments tend to cluster in a recession as a result of systematic problems, such as disruptions in the financial system and often government interventions in the economy.
Recovery and growth in the classical and Austrian view is driven by restructuring production so that entrepreneurs discover again the best — i.e. the most valuable and sustainable — ways to serve customers. That process is led by new entrepreneurs and driven by savers who make capital available to fund new investments and new ventures. Sustainable saving and investment means creating more value for others while using fewer resources. This process lies at the core of healthy economic growth, including better job opportunities and a rising standard of living.


text:
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