English Feudalism
Harold Sacramentum Fecit Willelmo Duci (Harold makes an oath to Duke William) King Harold becomes the vassal of Duke William of Normandy (Bayeux Tapestry)
Fief
Overlord, Vassal
Enfeoffment
Subinfeudation
Feoffee
Feudal land tenure
Fealty, Homage
Feudalism in England
Feudalism
v t e

An oath of fealty, from the Latin fidelitas (faithfulness), is a pledge of allegiance of one person to another. Typically the oath is made upon a religious object such as a Bible or saint's relic, often contained within an altar, thus binding the oath-taker before God.

In medieval Europe, fealty was sworn between two people, the obliged person (vassal) and a person of rank (lord). This was done as part of a formal commendation ceremony to create a feudal relationship.

Fealty and homage are a key element of feudalism.

The term is also used by English-speakers to refer to similar oaths of allegiance in other feudal cultures, as with medieval Japan, as well as in modern political contexts.

See also[link]

Look up fealty in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• feudalism
• homage (medieval)
• fidelity

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Tom Vasel (born on September 8, 1976) is a well known podcaster and reviewer of board games.^[1][2] Vasel co-hosts a long-running and popular^[3] gaming podcast titled The Dice Tower, and as of 2011^[update] has posted over 1200 reviews on the internet database BoardGameGeek.^[4]

As of August 2003^[update], Vasel taught mathematics at the International Christian School in Uijeongbu. He assumed the role of Pastor of Uijongbu Baptist Church, succeeding Pastor Rick Kelley in March 2007. After leaving South Korea, he has worked as a teacher in Florida.

The Dice Tower[link]

Since May 2005, Vasel has co-hosted The Dice Tower, a podcast about board games and wargames. Originally, Vasel represented players who prefer designer games, while Joe Steadman advocated for those who prefer wargames. Steadman left the show in May 2006 after the 50th episode. Vasel, hosting alone with occasional input from Sam Healey for a few shows, rearranged the format to include recorded segments by guest reviewers and players. Gradually Healey began to take a larger role and was eventually promoted to co-host. Healey has since left the show and been replaced by the show's voice-over man, Eric Summerer.

Each episode of the podcast includes several regular segments and several occasional segments. The core of every episode is the "Gaming Top Ten", where Vasel and Summerer provide their top ten games in a particular category. Most shows start with Vasel and Summerer discussing the games that they have recently played. News from the boardgaming world usually follows, which is in turn followed by a segment from German contributor Moritz Eggert. The podcast also features frequent contests, where listeners can enter to win one or more games from a sponsoring company.

The Dice Tower web site features past top-ten lists and Vasel's in-depth reviews of boardgames. Vasel's reviews are also used by board game publishers and retailers for promotion of their games.^[5][6]

The Jack Vasel Memorial Fund[link]

Following the loss of his infant son Jack Vasel at the end of 2010, Tom Vasel established the Jack Vasel Memorial Fund, at www.jackvasel.org. The fund is a not-for-profit with a simple goal: raising and distributing funds to help gamers in their hour of need.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Tom Vasel's blog at The Dice Tower
• Tom Vasel at BoardGameGeek

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This biographical article about a United States activist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (March 2008)

Mick Fealty (born 1959) is a blogger and communications consultant and founding editor of the Northern Ireland-based blog Slugger O'Toole.

Fealty was born in Belfast and grew up in Holywood, County Down, but now lives in Dorset, England. He was blogger in residence for The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper and is an occasional contributor to the The Guardian newspaper's Comment is Free site.

He has also written for The Irish Times, The Financial Times, The Observer, Prospect Magazine, the Sunday Independent and Belfast Telegraph. He was a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Governance at Queen's University Belfast between December 2004 and August 2008.

He works as a consultant on online engagement and works with a range of public, voluntary and private sector organisations. He has given talks for London-based Editorial Intelligence, the US Institute of Medicine, the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, and the UTV.

Publications include: A Long Peace: the future of Unionism in Northern Ireland (2003); Public Diplomacy, Cultural Interventions & the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California (2009).

Awards[link]

• Longlisted for the Orwell Blog Prize in 2012
• "Best Political Blog" in the Galway at the Irish Blog Awards in 2010.^[1]
• Winner the Peace Through Media Award 2009 from the International Council for Press and Broadcasting BBC Report:^[2]
• Shortlisted for Politics Online's "The Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics" 2006 and 2009.^[3]
• "Best Website of the Month" and specially commended in the "Website of the Year Award" at the BT GoldenEye T Awards in May 2006.
• First in the "Best Political Blog" section in the Irish Blog Awards in 2006.
• In 2005 it won "Best European Political Weblog" in the first Satin Pajamas competition held by A Fistful of Euros. [2].
• It won the New Statesman "New Media Award" for community and information in 2004.^[4]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Personal website
• Profile at Guardian Comment is Free
• Daily Telegraph

This Northern Ireland biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

This is an article about the Scottish musician. For the American ice hockey player, see Patrick Kane

Pat Kane (born Patrick Mark Kane, 10 March 1964, Glasgow) is a Scottish musician, and half of the pop duo Hue and Cry with his younger brother Greg.^[1][2] Independently of Hue & Cry, lead singer Kane writes on politics and culture. He was an outspoken activist for Scottish self-government in the late 1980s and 1990s, and was instrumental in forming the organization Artists For An Independent Scotland.^[1] In 1990 he was elected Rector of the University of Glasgow (defeating veteran Labour MP Tony Benn) for three years.^[1][2] He had studied English there, graduating with an MA in 1985.^[2]

Also during the 1990s he began working as an arts journalist,^[1] presenting several live discussion shows for Channel 4 and BBC2, and came third with BBC Radio Scotland series, Kane Over America for a Sony Award, in a category won by Allan Little. In 1999, Kane was one of the founding editors of the Sunday Herald newspaper. He currently writes occasionally for The Guardian.^[3]

As co-director (with partner Indra Adnan) of the human potential consultancy New Integrity, Kane is developing a comprehensive "play audit" for organisations, institutions and enterprises, based on his research into the past, present and future of ludic culture. Related to this is his 2004 book The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living, published by Macmillan Publishers.^[4]

Kane was formerly married to journalist Joan McAlpine, with whom he has two daughters.^[5]

He was a Scottish delegate at the European Writers Parliament in Istanbul

References[link]

External links[link]

• http://theplayethic.typepad.com/patkane/
• http://www.theplayethic.com/

John Aravosis (born 27 November 1963) is an American Democratic political consultant, writer, gay activist and blogger. Aravosis, an attorney who lives in Washington, D.C., is the founder of AMERICAblog and a co-founder of StopDrLaura.com.

Aravosis is a lawyer and worked on Capitol Hill as a foreign policy adviser for Ted Stevens, a Republican senator in the late 1980s and early 1990s before becoming a Democrat. He subsequently worked at the World Bank, the Children's Defense Fund, and then started his own political Internet consulting business in 1997 and AMERICAblog, a liberal news blog dealing in politics (because, according to its masthead, "a great nation deserves the truth"),^[1] in 2004. He has also written as a stringer for The Economist and Radar^{[citation needed]}. He has a joint law degree and masters in foreign service from Georgetown,^[2] where he studied under former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

In June 2009, The Advocate listed AMERICAblog on its list of top fifteen gay blogs.^[3] The blogs were not ranked.

Activism[link]

In 1998, Aravosis defended U.S. sailor Timothy R. McVeigh (not to be confused with the terrorist Timothy McVeigh), who was being kicked out of the military because he had engaged in homosexual activity. Nine days before McVeigh was to be discharged, Aravosis came to his defense and launched an online campaign that got McVeigh and his case on ABC News' World News Tonight, Time, Newsweek and beyond.^[4] The publicity Aravosis generated for McVeigh in this pro bono campaign got a lawyer interested in helping the sailor, and he won his case against the military and was able to get an honorable discharge and reportedly large settlement with AOL.^[5]

In 2000, Aravosis and a small group of friends launched StopDrLaura.com, the first-ever successful boycott of a TV show.^[6] StopDrLaura, a one-year long pro bono campaign, got 170 of Dr. Laura Schlessinger's television advertisers to pull their endorsements after Dr. Laura called gays and lesbians "biological errors", compared gay men to pedophiles,^[7] and routinely denigrated women^{[citation needed]} and abortion.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Aravosis launched a campaign against vice presidential daughter Mary Cheney in 2004 for accepting a US$100,000 a year job running the vice president's re-election campaign. ^[12] Aravosis' website, dearmary.com, was immediately profiled in Newsweek and the Washington Post, and his image of Mary on a milk carton "Have you seen me?" was reproduced widely.^[13]

Aravosis outed Jeff Gannon as "a conservative operative and as an alleged male prostitute" while Gannon (real name James Guckert) was working as a White House reporter for the Talon News.^[14] }}

In response to complaints from the religious groups, Microsoft pulled its support for a Washington state gay rights bill and then said it was rethinking its support for civil rights nationwide.^[15] Aravosis launched a campaign to highlight Microsoft's change of heart.

Aravosis took on the Ford Motor Company when, in response to a boycott from a conservative organization, Ford was pulling its support for gay advertising and gay organizations.^[16] Ford maintained that it was re-structuring its advertising for business reasons unrelated to any social agenda, and, indeed, Ford continued to buy advertising space in gay media for its Volvo division.^[17] Aravosis launched a campaign on his blog to get Ford to recommit itself to the gay market, even though Volvo pulled advertisements, Ford never left the gay market.^[18]

Aravosis started hosting his own Internet television show, DemsTV. As of February 2006, DemsTV became PoliticsTV, restructured its programming, and added many specials.^[19]

References[link]

• The Advocate. "The Top 15 Gay(ish) Blogs." 9 June 2009. (accessed June 14, 2009).

Notes[link]

1. ^ Quoted in The Advocate 2009.
2. ^ John Aravosis bio at Wired Strategies
3. ^ The Advocate (2009-06-08). "The Top 15 Gay(ish) Blogs". Retrieved 2009-06-18.
4. ^ Wired Strategies - Master Chief Timothy R. McVeigh
5. ^ McVeigh
6. ^ StopDrLaura.com
7. ^ News & Politics
8. ^ AlterNet: Stopping Dr. Laura
9. ^ E! News - GLAAD Not Happy with Dr. Laura
10. ^ Adubato, Steve PhD (2000-03-16). "Dr. Laura is Dangerous ". Caucusnj.org. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
11. ^ Schlessinger, Laura (1999-04-19). "Legal abortion not the salvation that feminists claim", Jewish World Review. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
12. ^ Sean Bugg (26 February 2004). "Hailing Mary: Vice President Cheney's lesbian daughter becomes target in gay marriage debate". Metro Weekly. http://www.metroweekly.com/feature/?ak=885. Retrieved 2008-03-16. 
13. ^ Wolfe, Elizabeth (2004-02-19). "Mary Cheney's View on Gay Marriage Sought ". Washington Post. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
14. ^ Mary Ann Akers, Roll Call, April 5, 2005.
15. ^ Kaushik, Sandeep (April 2005). "Microsoft Caves on Gay Rights". The Stranger. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
16. ^ Sean Bugg (8 December 2005). "Roll Over: Ford puts itself at the center of the latest battle over gays and corporate America". Metro Weekly. http://www.metroweekly.com/feature/?ak=1875. Retrieved 2008-03-16. 
17. ^ CNN (2005-12-06). "Ford can't please anybody". CNNMoney.com. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
18. ^ Daily Kos: Ford makes the right decision
19. ^ Gupta, Shankar (2006-03-07). "Left-Wing PoliticsTV.com Debuts Online". Online Media Daily. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.

External links[link]

• AMERICAblog
• Aravosis questions transgendered inclusion in the gay movement on Salon
• Politics TV
• StopDrLaura.com
• Democrats.com (On Aravosis's advocacy)
• DailyKos.com (Markos on Aravosis's blogging)
• Geek Philosophy (Aravosis named "Geek of the Week")
• Vanity Fair on Aravosis's role in Jeff Gannon story