Fireman Sam

Fireman Sam is an animated comedy children's television series about a fireman called Sam, his fellow firefighters, and other townspeople in the fictional Welsh rural town of Pontypandy (a portmanteau of two real towns, Pontypridd and Tonypandy, which are situated approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) apart in the South Wales valleys). The original idea for the show came from two ex-firemen from Kent, who took their idea to artist and writer Rob Lee who developed the concept, and the show was later commissioned by S4C.

Fireman Sam first appeared in Welsh on S4C as Sam Tân in 1987, and later that year in English on BBC1. The original series finished in 1994, and a new series that expanded the character cast commenced in 2005. The series was also shown in Gaelic in Scotland, where it was known as Sam Smalaidh. The series was sold to over 40 countries and has been used across the United Kingdom to promote fire safety.

Development

The original idea came about from two ex-firemen from Kent – Dave Gingell and David Jones. They approached Mike Young, creator of SuperTed in Barry, Wales, and asked them to further develop their concept. The idea was then brought to S4C's Director of Animation, Chris Grace, who saw potential in the idea and commissioned the series. Grace had previously commissioned Superted, which had achieved success across the United Kingdom and worldwide. The characters and storylines were created by Rob Lee, an illustrator from Cardiff, and the program was produced using stop-motion. It could take up to 4 days to produce 1 minute of this form of puppet animation. Fireman Sam has to this day been translated into over 25 different languages including Mandarin. In the first four series, all the character voices were performed by John Alderton (in English) and Gareth Lewis (in Welsh). The later series used several actors' voices. Voice direction in Welsh was by Pat Griffiths.

Norman

Norman or Normans may refer to:

Places

Norman Wisdom

Sir Norman Joseph Wisdom,OBE (4 February 1915 – 4 October 2010) was an English actor, comedian, and singer-songwriter best known for a series of comedy films produced between 1953 and 1966 featuring his hapless onscreen character Norman Pitkin. Wisdom gained celebrity status in lands as far apart as South America, Iran and many Eastern Bloc countries, particularly in Albania where his films were the only ones by Western actors permitted by dictator Enver Hoxha to be shown.Charlie Chaplin once referred to Wisdom as his "favourite clown".

Wisdom later forged a career on Broadway in New York and as a television actor, winning critical acclaim for his dramatic role of a dying cancer patient in the television play Going Gently in 1981. He toured Australia and South Africa. After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, a hospice was named in his honour. In 1995 he was given the Freedom of the City of London and of Tirana. The same year he received an OBE.

Wisdom was knighted in 2000 and spent much of his later life on the Isle of Man. His later appearances included roles in Last of the Summer Wine and Coronation Street, and he retired from acting at the age of 90 after his health deteriorated.

Gender

Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity.

Sexologist John Money introduced the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role in 1955. Before his work, it was uncommon to use the word gender to refer to anything but grammatical categories. However, Money's meaning of the word did not become widespread until the 1970s, when feminist theory embraced the concept of a distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender. Today, the distinction is strictly followed in some contexts, especially the social sciences and documents written by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, in many other contexts, including some areas of social sciences, gender includes sex or replaces it. Although this change in the meaning of gender can be traced to the 1980s, a small acceleration of the process in the scientific literature was observed in 1993 when the USA's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started to use gender instead of sex. In 2011, the FDA reversed its position and began using sex as the biological classification and gender as "a person's self representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions based on the individual's gender presentation." In non-human animal research, gender is also commonly used to refer to the physiology of the animals.

Tommy Norman

Tommy Norman (born August 22, 1972 in the Levy section of North Little Rock, Arkansas) is a longtime patrolman/officer who has worked in the North Little Rock Police Department since 1998. Norman has patrolled some of the toughest neighborhoods in North Little Rock.

Born to parents Modena and Dean Norman, Norman Graduated from Ole Main High School in 1990. Between 1991 and 1998, he worked many jobs in the nursing & mental health field. He worked as a Certified Nursing Assistant at Riley's Oak Hill Manor Nursing Home. Norman was also a mental health worker at Pinnacle Pointe Hospital (courtesy of interview with Mr. Norman).

Norman is known for building relationships within the communities he works in as it’s called positive community policing. For years Norman has amassed a positive reputation for police officers in North Little Rock, central Arkansas and beyond. Norman’s unorthodox approach to policing includes thousands of video posts, pictures and daily interactive engagement at the Boys & Girls Clubs and the Police Athletic League with those that he protects and serves. He uses social media [Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram] and a variety of ways to inspire the world, a world where too often police are seen in a negative light with brutality, abuse of force and poor relationships with citizens. He is credited for doing things like presenting 50 NLRSD students with backpacks and $50 gift cards from Shoe Carnival in August to purchase shoes, starting the “Shop with a Cop” program to help financially struggling students or just dancing with the children.