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Insular (Gaelic) script
The beginning of the Gospel of Mark from the Book of Durrow.
Type	Alphabet
Languages	Latin, Irish, English
Time period	fl. 600–850 CE
Parent systems	Latin script Insular (Gaelic) script
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

Insular script was a medieval script system originally used in Ireland, then Great Britain, that spread to continental Europe under the influence of Celtic Christianity. Irish missionaries also took the script to continental Europe, where they founded monasteries such as Bobbio. The scripts were also used in monasteries influenced by English missionaries like Fulda. It is associated with Insular art, of which most surviving examples are illuminated manuscripts. It greatly influenced Irish orthography and modern Gaelic scripts in handwriting and typefaces.

Origin[link]

The script developed in Ireland in the 7th century and was used as late as the 19th century, though its most flourishing period fell between 600 and 850. It was closely related to the uncial and half-uncial scripts, its immediate influences; the highest grade of Insular script is the majuscule Insular half-uncial, which is closely derived from Continental half-uncial script.

Appearance[link]

Simplified relationship between various scripts, showing the development of Uncial from Roman and the Greek Uncial.

Works written in Insular scripts commonly use large initial letters surrounded by red ink dots (although this is also true of other scripts written in Ireland and England). Letters following a large initial at the start of a paragraph or section often gradually diminish in size as they are written across a line or a page, until the normal size is reached, which is called a "diminuendo" effect, and is a distinctive insular innovation, which later influenced Continental illumination style. Letters with ascenders (b, d, h, l, etc.) are written with triangular or wedge-shaped tops. The bows of letters such as b, d, p, and q are very wide. The script uses many ligatures and has many unique scribal abbreviations, along with many borrowings from Tironian notes.

Insular script was spread to England by the Hiberno-Scottish mission; previously, uncial script had been brought to England by Augustine of Canterbury. The influences of both scripts produced the Insular script system. Within this system, the scholar Julian Brown identified five grades:

• Insular half-uncial, or "Irish majuscle", a majuscule script influenced by
• Insular Hybrid minuscule
• Insular Set
• Insular Cursive
• Insular Current.

Brown has also postulated two Phase of development for this script, Phase II being mainly influenced by Roman Uncial examples, developed at Wearmouth-Jarrow and typified by the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Usage[link]

The script was used not only for Latin religious books, but also for every other kind of book, including vernacular works. Examples include the Book of Kells, the Cathach of St. Columba, the Ambrosiana Orosius, the Durham Cathedral Library A. II. 10. Gospel Book Fragment, the Book of Durrow the Durham Gospels, the Echternach Gospels, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Lichfield Gospels, the St. Gall Gospel Book, and the Book of Armagh.

Insular script was influential in the development of Carolingian minuscule in the scriptoria of the Carolingian empire.

In Ireland, Insular script was superseded in circa 850 by Late-Celtic script; in England, it was followed by a form of Caroline minuscule.

The "Tironian et" ⁊ (identical in meaning to the Roman ampersand, &) was in widespread use in the script (meaning ond 'and' in Old English and agus 'and' in Irish) and is occasionally continued in modern Gaelic typefaces derived from insular script.

See also[link]

• Carolingian minuscule
• Gaelic type
• Hiberno-Saxon art
• Insular G
• Irish orthography
• List of Hiberno-Saxon illustrated manuscripts

External links[link]

• Pfeffer Mediæval An insular minuscule as a Unicode font (strictly speaking, a Carolingian minuscule with a set of insular variants)
• Wiglaf the Writer - Insular Minuscule Examples of insular minuscule handwritten documents.

References[link]

v t e Typography terminology Page Column Canons of page construction Margin Page numbering Pagination Pull quote Recto and verso Paragraph Alignment Justification Leading River Sentence spacing Widows and orphans Character Typeface anatomy Counter Diacritics Dingbat Glyph Initial Kerning Letter-spacing Ligature Subscript and superscript Swash Text figures Capitalization Letter case Small caps CamelCase Petite caps All caps Vertical aspects Ascender Descender Baseline Cap height Median Overshoot x-height Classifications Roman type Antiqua (Old Style) Transitional Didone (Modern) Serif Slab serif Sans-serif Script Blackletter type Textualis Rotunda Schwabacher Fraktur Gaelic type Angular Uncial Punctuation Dashes Hanging punctuation Hyphenation Quotation mark Prime mark Typesetting Calligraphy ETAOIN SHRDLU Font Computer font Font catalog Letterpress Lorem ipsum Movable type Pangram Phototypesetting Punchcutting Type design Typeface Type foundry Microtypography Typographic units Point Pica Cicero Em En Figure space Thin space Paren space Agate Measure Digital typography Font formats Typesetting software Character encoding Rasterization Hinting

The Script
The Script, Nobel Peace Prize Concert 2008
Background information
Origin	Dublin, Ireland
Genres	Soft rock, alternative rock, blue-eyed soul, worldbeat
Years active	2001–present[1]
Labels	Sony Music Entertainment
Associated acts	mytown (1996-2001)
Website	thescriptmusic.com
Members
Danny O'Donoghue Mark Sheehan Glen Power

The Script are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Based in London after signing to Sony Label Group imprint Phonogenic, the band released their eponymous debut album in August 2008, featuring the hit songs "The Man Who Can't Be Moved" and "Breakeven". The album debuted at number one in Ireland and the UK.^[2] Their second album, Science & Faith, was released in September 2010, and contains the hit songs "For the First Time" and "Nothing". The album debuted at number one in Ireland and the UK, and number three on the US Billboard 200.^[2][3]

Their music has been featured in many video games and many popular television programs including 90210, Ghost Whisperer, The Hills, Waterloo Road, EastEnders, Made in Chelsea and The Vampire Diaries. Frontman Danny O'Donoghue is also a coach on The Voice UK.

Biography[link]

Danny O'Donoghue and Mark Sheehan met in a club in The Liberties area of Dublin, Ireland near the Guinness brewery, gravitating to each other through a shared liking of music, and in particular a love of R & B music (Rhythm and Blues). "At that time, MTV only came on in Dublin after midnight, it was the fuzzy channel, and for my generation urban culture was just a wave through us all," explains Sheehan. "It wasn't about gangs and guns; it was fashion and fun, singing and dancing." ^[4]

Mark and Danny were formerly part of a band that had formed in 1996 called mytown. Striking up a songwriting and production partnership, O'Donoghue and Sheehan's talent was recognized early, and, to their astonishment, they found themselves invited to Canada to collaborate with some of their production heroes, including such legends of modern R&B as Dallas Austin, Montell Jordan and Teddy Riley. They were based in the US for many years, but moved back to Dublin where they recruited Glen Power for their new band. He had been playing sessions from the age of fifteen, using the money to work on a solo project in his home. But that went on hold when his collaboration with Mark and Danny produced three songs in one week. The band signed to Phonogenic in 2005, and released an EP on Last.FM. The band's influences include a diverse group of artists that include U2, Coldplay, The Police, The Neptunes, Timbaland, and Van Morrison.^[5] O'Donoghue also made a reference to Amy Winehouse and Stevie Wonder while discussing his personal voice while singing. They have worked on a few collaborations with Amy Winehouse and Denzel Washington, varying styles and genres. He stated that the instrument he attempts to imitate is a violin, based on the string arrangements of Stevie Wonder, while Amy Winehouse is similar to a saxophone.^[6]

Danny and Mark started making demos for other artists, but when they met drummer Glen Power, the objective changed. The pair had never heard Power play, but they made a connection that motivated Sheehan to invite Glen on a working holiday to Los Angeles. In one week, the trio produced three songs. "It was like I found my home playing with these guys," says Glen. "I had never had a chance with any other band to express myself with such freedom." "Individually, we all had our own talents, but together it just went to another level," according to Danny.^{[cite this quote]}

In the beginning years of the band, Mark Sheehan's mother fell terminally ill, causing a lot of stress on the band and members, but it also had a positive effect on Sheehan's writing. With such strong emotional tension, the songwriter found new lyrics every day. Sheehan said that "That was the time when it finally came home to me how important music was to me, 'cause in my darkest moments that's what got me through." After Sheehan's mother's death, ten months after her diagnosis, Danny's father died four months later of a heart attack. Even with such trying moments in their early years, the band was able to rise out of it, albeit with somewhat bleak lyrics in several songs, as commented by Danny when referencing "We Cry": "There is not a lot of hope in the song, cause not everybody's life is full of hope. There's not always roses at the end."^[6]

[edit] The Script (2008–2010)

The Script performed "We Cry" for the first time on BalconyTV in Dublin on 13 September 2007.^[7] The band claimed that BalconyTV was the "first TV they ever did" and credited Michael Hunter as the "push we needed to propel us" when they won Best Band at the DanishTV Music Video Awards 2009 in the Pepper Club Dublin on 20 June 2008. At the awards the band said the award was their "first ever".^[8] The Script released their debut single "We Cry" on 14 April 2008. "We Cry" received "Single of the Day" on RTÉ 2FM, Today FM and by Jo Whiley on BBC Radio 1, where many radio presenters heavily supported the band.^[9] The single peaked at number 15 on the UK Singles Chart,^[10] giving the band their first top 20 single. The track also performed well on the Irish Singles Chart, peaking at number 9 and giving the band their first top ten single in their home country.^[10] The Script also performed 'We Cry' on one of the CW's TV series, 90210.

Their second single, "The Man Who Can't Be Moved", was released on 15 September 2008.^[11] The single reached number 2 in Ireland, Denmark, and the UK.^[12] The band released their debut album, The Script, on 11 August 2008. Following the success of "The Man Who Can't Be Moved", the album entered the UK Albums Chart at number one with sales of 20,240 copies where it stayed for eleven weeks. The album spent three weeks in the top ten and was the eighteenth best selling album in the UK of 2008. The album also entered the Irish Albums Chart at number one, holding the top spot for five weeks.^[13] It had, as of January 2009, spent 2 wks. in the top 10. The Irish office of Sony BMG music presented the group with their first multi-platinum disc for over 600,000 sales of their debut album, The Script.^[14]

The band's third single, "Breakeven", was released in Ireland on 21 November 2008 and in the UK on 29 December 2008. The single was an instant success on the Irish Singles Chart. After entering the chart at number forty, it spent one week before entering the top ten at number ten giving the Script their third top ten single in Russia. The single has, to date, spent 4 weeks on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 21. The band's fourth single "Talk You Down" was released in March 2009.^[15]

On 9 November The Script received an award at the World Music Awards for 'Best Selling Irish Act' of 2008 and on 19 February 2010, they won 'Best Live Performance' at the Meteor Ireland Music Awards. The band has confirmed that they plan to write a track for Leona Lewis's second album.^[16] In December 2008, the band were confirmed to be supporting Take That at their concert at Croke Park on 13 June 2009. The band played at the Cheerio's Childline concert on the opening night of Dublin's 02. They played among big stars Enrique Iglesias, Anastacia and many more.

On 7 April 2009 the band was confirmed to be supporting U2 on their third concert at Croke Park, which took place on 27 July 2009.^[17] On 29 April 2009, the band announced that their next single would be Before The Worst, to be released on 15 June 2009.^[18] On 17, 18 and 21 July 2009, The Script opened for Paul McCartney at the historic first concerts at New York's Citi Field^[19] and for U2 at Dublin's Croke Park.

The band's bonus track and B-side "Live Like We're Dying" was re-recorded by American Idol 2009 winner Kris Allen as the first single off his self-titled album. Allen's version of "Live Like We're Dying" was digitally released for download on 21 September 2009.^[20]

On 2 December 2009 the band's single "The Man Who Can't Be Moved" was featured as a remix on the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show during the Enchanted Forest segment.

On 16 April 2010, their first U.S. single "Breakeven" was certified Platinum by the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America), selling over one million copies in the U.S. and has since peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 2010. The band performed a headline tour in the United States that kicked off in San Diego on 11 October 2010 at the House of Blues and ended on 7 November 2010 at the House of Blues in Boston, Massachusetts.^[19] On 21 May 2010, they appeared live on NBC's Today Show as part of the show's outdoor Toyota Concert Series.

[edit] Science & Faith (2010-2011)

The Script announced a new album and single on their website on Monday, 19 July 2010. The first single from album Science & Faith, "For the First Time", was released in the UK on 20 August 2010 and the album followed on 13 September 2010. In the United States, "For the First Time" was released on iTunes on 8 November 2010, with "Science & Faith" was released on 18 January 2011.^[21] The song was first released in the United States on AOL Music on 29 September 2010.^[22] "For the First Time" has entered the UK charts at #5 and moved up to #4 the following week and entered the Irish charts at #1. The music video features Bono's daughter Eve Hewson. Science & Faith entered the Irish Album Chart and the UK album chart at #1.

The Script recorded their album in London, and vocalist Danny O'Donoghue says that the economic crisis in Ireland is "a microcosm for the rest of the world." He talks about people being stripped of everything that they own and how it inspired the band to write the songs for the new album. Danny says, "We're dealing with complex emotions in the simplest of ways, that's what we battle with in these songs." The subject matter might sound bleak at first, but Science & Faith is about optimism. "With Irish people, no matter how bad things get, you always pick yourself up and carry on."^{[cite this quote]}

On Friday, 24 September at 9:00am tickets for The Script's three nights at The O2 Dublin, two nights at The Odyssey, Belfast & two at The INEC, Killarney went on sale and sold out in less than 40 minutes, with over 60,000 tickets sold. On 1 October at 9:00am tickets for The Script arena tour in March 2011 went on sale. The tickets for all 12 arenas around the UK sold out in 5 days. They also announced that they would play a "Homecoming" concert at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. This is part of the Science & Faith Tour and will be their biggest headline show to date.

The Script also took part in Children in Need 2010. The Script will be participating in the VH1 Best Cruise Ever and sailing to Cozumel 28 April-2 May 2011. The Script took part in BRMB's live 2010 with acts such as The Saturdays, Mark Ronson and Mcfly. The Script were nominated for Best International Act at the 2011 Brit Awards. The Script announced that they will perform at: Pinkpop festival, V festival, Oxegen, Isle of Wight Festival, T in the park, Thetford Forest Show, iTunes Festival, Skanderborg Festival, Sudoeste Festival, Tennents ViTal.

The Script also played to the biggest indoor crowd of 18,300 people at The Coca-Cola Dome in Johannesburg South Africa 24 June 2011.

They later went on to play their official biggest crowd ever on 2 July 2011 in Dublin's Aviva Stadium, and performed to a sold-out crowd of 50,000 people. The Coronas and Tinie Tempah were support acts on the night.

Discography[link]

Studio albums

• The Script (2008)
• Science & Faith (2010)

Tours and shows[link]

• Science & Faith Tour
• iTunes Festival 2011
• Isle Of Wight Festival 2011
• Radio City Music Hall - October 9, 2012
• V FEST 2011
• World Tour October 2012

Awards and Nominations[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• The Script at MySpace
• The Script at Billboard.com
• The Script on BalconyTV – Music With Nothing
• BBC Talking Shop: The Script by Neil Smith, 17 April 2008 at ITV
• BBC Music Club: The Script
• The Script CD review in MTVMexico.com
• Talk You Down Review at Daily Music Book
• The Script Interview in the Virgin Red Room
• Project This = Love, home to the only charity group for fans of The Script

Nate Silver
Born	Nathaniel Read Silver (1978-01-13) January 13, 1978 (age 34)[1] East Lansing, Michigan
Residence	Brooklyn, New York
Nationality	American
Education	A.B., Economics (2000)
Alma mater	University of Chicago East Lansing High School
Occupation	Statistician, journalist
Known for	PECOTA, FiveThirtyEight.com
Website
fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com

Nathaniel Read "Nate" Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, psephologist, and writer. Silver first gained public recognition for developing PECOTA,^[2] a system for forecasting the performance and career development of Major League Baseball players, which he sold to and then managed for Baseball Prospectus from 2003 to 2009.^[3]

In 2007, writing under the pseudonym "Poblano," Silver began to publish analyses and predictions related to the 2008 United States presidential election. At first this work appeared on the political blog Daily Kos, but in March 2008 Silver established his own website, FiveThirtyEight.com. By summer of that year, after he revealed his identity to his readers, he began to appear as an electoral and political analyst in national print, online, and cable news media.

The accuracy of his November 2008 presidential election predictions—he correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states—won Silver further attention and commendation. The only state he missed was Indiana, which went for Barack Obama by 0.9%. He also correctly predicted the winner of all 35 Senate races that year.

In April 2009, he was named one of The World's 100 Most Influential People by Time.^[4]

In 2010, Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog was licensed for publication by The New York Times.^[5][6] The newly renamed blog, FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus,^[7] first appeared in The Times on August 25, 2010. In 2012, FiveThirtyEight won a Webby Award as the "Best Political Blog" from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Early years[link]

Nate Silver was born in East Lansing, Michigan, the son of Sally Silver, a community activist, and Brian D. Silver, a former chair of the political science department at Michigan State University.^[8] He was an early math wizard.^[9] According to journalist William Hageman, "Silver caught the baseball bug when he was 6.... It was 1984, the year the Detroit Tigers won the World Series. The Tigers became his team and baseball his sport. And if there's anything that goes hand in glove with baseball, it's numbers, another of Silver's childhood interests. ("It's always more interesting to apply it to batting averages than algebra class".^[10])

As a student at East Lansing High School, in 1996 Silver won first place in the State of Michigan in the 49th annual John S. Knight Scholarship Contest for senior high school debaters.^[11]

Silver first evinced his journalism skills as a writer and opinion page editor for The Portrait, East Lansing High School's student newspaper, from 1993–1996.

In 2000, Silver graduated with Honors with an A.B. degree in economics from the University of Chicago. He also wrote for the Chicago Weekly News and the Chicago Maroon. He spent his third year at the London School of Economics.^[12]

Career synopsis[link]

Economic consultant and baseball statistician[link]

After college graduation in 2000, Silver worked for three and a half years as an economic consultant with KPMG in Chicago. When asked in 2009, "What is your biggest regret in life?" Silver responded, "Spending four years of my life at a job I didn’t like".^[13] While employed at KPMG, however, Silver continued to nurture his life-long interest in baseball and statistics, and on the side he began to work on his PECOTA system for projecting player performance and careers. He quit his job at KPMG in April 2004 and for a time earned his living mainly by playing online poker.^[14]

In 2003, Silver became a writer for Baseball Prospectus (BP), after having sold PECOTA to BP in return for a partnership interest. After resigning from KPMG in 2004, he took the position of Executive Vice-President, later renamed Managing Partner of BP. In addition to providing executive functions, Silver maintained and further developed PECOTA as well as wrote a weekly feature column under the heading "Lies, Damned Lies". In this column he applied sabermetric techniques to a broad range of topics in baseball research—including, among others, forecasting the performance of individual players, the economics of baseball, metrics for the valuation of players, and developing an Elo rating system for Major League baseball.^[15]

Between 2003 and 2009, Silver was a co-author of the Baseball Prospectus (ISBN 0-7611-3995-8) annual book of Major League Baseball analysis and forecasts as well as a co-author of other books published by Baseball Prospectus, including Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning (New York: Workman Publishers, 2005) (ISBN 0-7611-4018-2), Baseball Between the Numbers (New York: Basic Books, 2006) (ISBN 0-465-00596-9), and It Ain't Over 'til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book (New York: Basic Books, 2007) (ISBN 0-465-00284-6).

He was an occasional contributor of articles about baseball to ESPN.com, Sports Illustrated, Slate, the New York Sun and The New York Times.^[16]

Political analyst and blogger[link]

In November 2007, while still working for Baseball Prospectus, Silver began to write about politics, specifically the 2008 U.S. Presidential race. Until the end of May 2008, this writing was under the pseudonym "Poblano" and appeared on Daily Kos or on his blog FiveThirtyEight.com, which he launched in March 2008. In June he began to publish political analysis under his own name, including in his blog, newspapers, and The New Republic. He first appeared on national television on CNN's American Morning on June 13, 2008.^[17]

Shortly after the November 4 election, ESPN writer Jim Caple observed, "Forget Cole Hamels and the Phillies. No one in baseball had a more impressive fall than Nate Silver.... [R]ight now Silver is exhausted. He barely slept the last couple weeks of the campaign – 'By the end, it was full-time plus' – and for that matter, he says he couldn't have kept it up had the campaign lasted two days longer. Plus, he has his Baseball Prospectus duties. 'We write our [Baseball Prospectus 2009] book from now through the first of the year,' [Silver] said. 'I have a week to relax and then it gets just as busy again. In February 2009 I will just have to find an island in the Caribbean and throw my BlackBerry in the ocean'".^[18]

Later in November 2008, Silver signed a contract with Penguin Group USA to write two books, reportedly for a $700,000 advance.^[19] In an intervew, Silver described his first book-in-progress as about "the value and limitations of predictions, looking at such diverse industries as fashion design, hurricane forecasting, and the search for extraterrestrial life".^[20][21][22] Silver's book The Signal and the Noise is scheduled for publication in September 2012.

He was invited to be a speaker at TED 2009 in February 2009,^[23] and keynote speaker at the 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference (March 2009).^[24]

While maintaining his FiveThirtyEight.com website, in January 2009 Silver began a monthly feature column, "The Data," in Esquire^[25] as well as contributed occasional articles to other media such as The New York Times^[26] and the Wall Street Journal.^[27] He also tried his luck in the 2009 World Series of Poker.^[28]

The success of his FiveThirtyEight.com blog and the accuracy of his detailed forecasts of the 2008 U.S. Presidential race marked the effective end of Silver's career as baseball analyst, though he continued to devote some attention to sports statistics and sports economics in his blog. In March 2009, he stepped down as Managing Partner of Baseball Prospectus and announced that he had handed over responsibility for producing future PECOTA projections to other Baseball Prospectus staff members, but that he intended to continue as a writer for BP, including for BP's partner, ESPN.com.^[3][29] In April 2009, he appeared as an analyst on ESPN's Baseball Tonight. However, after March 2009, he published only two "Lies, Damned Lies" columns on BaseballProspectus.com.

While continuing to write his FiveThirtyEight.com blog, he took on some freelance statistically oriented projects. In November 2009, ESPN introduced a new Soccer Power Index (SPi),^[30] developed by Nate Silver, for predicting the outcome of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.^[31] He published a post-mortem after the tournament, comparing his predictions to those of alternative rating systems.^[32]

In April 2010, Silver took an entirely different assignment for New York Magazine, creating a quantitative index of "The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York".^[33]

In June 2010, it was announced that Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com blog would be moving to the The New York Times, a platform from which it would begin to be published online in August 2010. In addition, Silver would be contributing content to the print edition of The Times as well as to the Sunday Magazine.^[5] This transition occurred on August 25, 2010, with the online publication of Silver's first FiveThirtyEight column in The Times.^[34]

Baseball analysis: 2003–2008[link]

Silver uses a wide variety of research methods and statistical tools in his writings about baseball. However, he has developed three tools that are identified with his name. The best known and most enduring is his forecasting system, PECOTA, which remains a signature product of Baseball Prospectus.

PECOTA[link]

PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm) is a statistical system that projects the future performance of hitters and pitchers. It is designed primarily for two uses: fans interested in fantasy baseball, and professionals in the baseball business interested in predicting the performance and valuation of major league players. Unlike most other such projection systems, PECOTA relies on matching a given current player to a set of "comparable" players whose past performance can serve as a guide to how the given current player is likely to perform in the future. Unlike most other such systems, PECOTA also calculates a range of probable performance levels rather than a single predicted value on a given measure such as earned run average or batting average.

PECOTA projections were first published by Baseball Prospectus in the 2003 edition of its annual book as well as online by BaseballProspectus.com. The formulae have been updated steadily since then. Silver produced the annual PECOTA forecasts for each Major League Baseball season from 2003 through 2009. Beginning in Spring 2009, Baseball Prospectus took responsibility for future editions and products based on the forecasts.^[3]

Other tools[link]

Because of the dependence of earned run average statistics on factors over which a pitcher may have little control, sabermetricians have developed several defense independent pitching statistics, including Defense-Independent ERA. One that Silver has created for quick calculations that do not require detailed adjustments for the park or era in which a pitcher is performing is the "QuikERA" or QERA.^[35] It may be useful for early- or mid-season assessments of a pitcher's performance, since it attempts to reduce the effect of luck in summarizing a pitcher's ERA.^[36] Silver explains,

I call this toy QuikERA (QERA), which estimates what a pitcher's ERA should be based solely on his strikeout rate, walk rate, and GB/FB ratio. These three components — K rate, BB rate, GB/FB — stabilize very quickly, and they have the strongest predictive relationship with a pitcher’s ERA going forward. What’s more, they are not very dependent on park effects, allowing us to make reasonable comparisons of pitchers across different teams.

The formula for QERA is as follows: QERA =(2.69 + K%*(-3.4) + BB%*3.88 + GB%*(-0.66))².

Note that everything ends up expressed in terms of percentages: strikeouts per opponent plate appearance, walks per opponent plate appearance, and groundballs as a percentage of all balls hit into play.^[37]

Silver also developed a formula, which he called the "Secret Sauce," to predict whether Major League teams are likely to be successful in the playoffs if they somehow manage to reach them.^[38] This formula comes out of research that he initially conducted and published with Dayn Perry.^[39] The formula claimed that, although during the regular season having an excellent offense above all else may get a team to the playoffs, once in the playoffs a team's success depends much more on strong defense, including pitching.^[40] In other words, teams that prevent the ball from going into play, catch it when it does and preserve late-inning leads are likely to excel in the playoffs".^[41]

Notable critics of the "secret sauce" formula included Tom Tango and Mitchel Lichtman, co-authors of The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball.^[42] Criticism focused on the formula ignoring logical assumptions and relying too heavily on best-fitting sample data that may not be predictive for out-of-sample data.^[43]

For a few years Baseball Prospectus published Secret Sauce figures for every Major League team on its statistics page.^[44] In the 2010 season, Baseball Prospectus stopped using the Secret Sauce method as an indicator of playoff success because teams that ranked higher in secret sauce than their opponents only won 54% of their playoff series since the formula was put into use.^[45]

Political analysis: 2007–present[link]

Silver describes his own partisan orientation as follows in the FAQ on his website: "My state [Illinois] has non-partisan registration, so I am not registered as anything. I vote for Democratic candidates the majority of the time (though by no means always). This year, I have been a supporter of Barack Obama".^[46] With respect to the impartiality of his electoral projections, Silver states, "Are [my] results biased toward [my] preferred candidates? I hope not, but that is for you to decide. I have tried to disclose as much about my methodology as possible".^[46]

Silver describes his ideological orientation as one of "rational progressivism":

I regard myself as a rational progressive. I believe in intellectual progress – that we, as a species, are gradually becoming smarter. I believe that there are objectively right answers to many political and economic questions.

I believe that economic growth is both a reflection of and a contributor toward societal progress, that economic growth has facilitated a higher standard of living, and that this is empirically indisputable. I also believe, however, that our society is now so exceptionally wealthy – even in the midst of a severe recession – that it has little excuse not to provide for some basic level of dignity for all its citizens.

I believe that answers to questions like these do not always come from the establishment. But I also believe that it is just as important to question one's own assumptions as to question the assumptions of others.^[47]

FiveThirtyEight[link]

2008 U.S. elections[link]

On November 1, 2007, Silver began publishing a diary under the pseudonym "Poblano" on the progressive political blog Daily Kos.^[48] Silver set out to analyze quantitative aspects of the political game in a manner that would enlighten a broader audience. Silver reports that "he was stranded in a New Orleans airport when the idea of FiveThirtyEight.com came to him. 'I was just frustrated with the analysis.... I saw a lot of discussion about strategy that was not all that sophisticated, especially when it came to quantitative things like polls and demographics'”.^[49] His forecasts of the 2008 United States presidential primary elections drew a lot of attention, including being cited by The New York Times Op-Ed columnist William Kristol.^[50]

In March 2008, still using the pseudonym "Poblano," Silver established his own blog FiveThirtyEight.com, in which he developed a system for tracking polls and forecasting the outcome of the 2008 general election. At the same time, he continued making forecasts of the 2008 Democratic primary elections. That several of his forecasts based on demographic analysis proved to be substantially more accurate than those of the professional pollsters gained visibility and professional credibility for "Poblano".^[51]

After the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on May 6 the popularity of FiveThirtyEight.com "really exploded. Silver recalls the scenario: 'I know the polls show it’s really tight in NC, but we think Obama is going to win by thirteen, fourteen points, and he did.... Any time you make a prediction like that people give you probably too much credit for it.... But after that [Silver's and the website's popularity] started to really take off. It’s pretty nonlinear, once you get one mention in the mainstream media, other people [quickly follow suit]'".^[52]

On May 30, 2008, Poblano revealed his identity to FiveThirtyEight.com readers.^[53] On June 1, 2008, Silver published a two-page Op-Ed article in the New York Post outlining the rationale underlying his focus on the statistical aspects of politics.

"My fulltime occupation has been as a writer and analyst for a sports media company called Baseball Prospectus. In baseball, statistics are meaningless without context; hitting 30 home runs in the 1930s is a lot different than hitting 30 today. There is a whole industry in baseball dedicated to the proper understanding and interpretation of statistics. In polling and politics, there is nearly as much data as there is for first basemen. In this year's Democratic primaries, there were statistics for every gender, race, age, occupation and geography – reasons why Clinton won older women, or Obama took college students. But the understanding has lagged behind. Polls are cherry-picked based on their brand name or shock value rather than their track record of accuracy. Demographic variables are misrepresented or misunderstood. (Barack Obama, for instance, is reputed to have problems with white working-class voters, when in fact these issues appear to be more dictated by geography – he has major problems among these voters in Kentucky and West Virginia, but did just fine with them in Wisconsin and Oregon)".^[54]

As a CNET reporter wrote on election eve, "Even though Silver launched the site as recently as March, its straightforward approach, daring predictions, and short but impressive track record has put it on the map of political sites to follow. The Washington Post featured Silver in its 14th annual election prediction contest this year, and he'll be reporting on Tuesday night's results with Dan Rather on HDNet".^[55]

Silver's final 2008 presidential election forecast accurately predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states as well as the District of Columbia (missing only the prediction for Indiana). As his model predicted, the races in Missouri and North Carolina were particularly close. He also correctly predicted the winners of every U.S. Senate race. The accuracy of his predictions won him further acclaim, including abroad,^[56] and added to his reputation as a leading political prognosticator.^[57]

[edit] Transition to The New York Times

On June 3, 2010, Silver announced on FiveThirtyEight.com,

In the near future, the blog will "re-launch" under a NYTimes.com domain. It will retain its own identity (akin to other Times blogs like DealBook), but will be organized under the News:Politics section. Once this occurs, content will no longer be posted at FiveThirtyEight.com on an ongoing basis, and the blog will re-direct to the new URL. In addition, I will be contributing content to the print edition of the New York Times, and to the Sunday Magazine. The partnership agreement, which is structured as a license, has a term of three years.^[5]

The transition to the new blog FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus sponsored by The New York Times took place on August 25, 2010, with the publication online of Silver's first article, "New Forecast Shows Democrats Losing 6 to 7 Senate Seats".^[58] From then until the mid-term elections of 2010 in November, Silver's blog focused almost exclusively on developing forecasts of the outcomes of the 2010 U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives as well as state gubernatorial contests. Silver's Times Sunday Magazine feature first appeared on November 19, 2010, under the heading "Go Figure".^[59] It was later titled "Acts of Mild Subversion".^[60]

2010 U.S. elections[link]

Shortly after 538 relocated to The New York Times, Silver introduced his prediction models for the 2010 elections to the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and state Governorships. Each of these models relied initially on a combination of electoral history, demographics, and polling. Silver eventually published detailed forecasts and analyses of the results for all three sets of elections.

2012 U.S. elections[link]

Although throughout 2011 Silver devoted a lot of attention on his blog to the 2012 Republican party primaries, his first effort to handicap the 2012 Presidential general election appeared as the cover story in The New York Times Magazine a year prior to the election: "Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election".^[61] Accompanying the online release of this article, Silver also published "Choose Obama’s Re-Election Adventure," an interactive toy that allowed readers to predict the outcome of the election based on their assumptions about three variables: President Obama's favorability ratings, the rate of GDP growth, and how conservative the Republican opponent would be.^[62] This analysis stimulated a lot of critical discussion.^[63]

While publishing numerous stories on the Republican primary elections, in mid-February 2012 Silver reprised and updated his previous Magazine story with another one, "What Obama Should Do Next".^[64] This story painted a more optimistic picture of President Obama's re-election chances. A companion article on his FiveThirtyEight blog, "The Fundamentals Now Favor Obama," explained how the model and the facts on the ground had changed between November and February.^[65]

Mainstream media[link]

Silver's self-unmasking at the end of May 2008 brought him a lot of publicity, much of it focused on his combined skill as both baseball statistician-forecaster and political statistician-forecaster, including articles about him in the Wall Street Journal,^[66] Newsweek,^[67] Science News,^[68] New York Magazine,^[69] and his hometown Lansing State Journal.^[70]

In early June he began to cross-post his daily "Today's Polls" updates on "The Plank" in The New Republic.^[71] Also, Rasmussen Reports began to use the FiveThirtyEight.com poll averages for its own tracking of the 2008 state-by-state races.^[72]

This added exposure provided him with opportunities to appear on CNN's American Morning and D.L. Hughley Breaks the News,^[73] MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Hardball with Chris Matthews, CNBC's Fast Money,^[74] Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show, HDNet's Dan Rather Reports, Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!,^[75] PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The Charlie Rose Show,^[76] and The Rachel Maddow Shows on both Air America Radio and MSNBC, as well as to contribute essays and op ed columns to The New Republic,^[77] the New York Post,^[78] the Los Angeles Times,^[79] and Newsweek.^[80]

New York Magazine, on October 12, 2008, referred to Silver as "The Spreadsheet Psychic": "a number-crunching prodigy who went from correctly forecasting baseball games to correctly forecasting presidential primaries".^[81] Other commentators drew a parallel between Silver's baseball prognosticatons and his election forecasting in 2008: "The Tampa Bay Rays and Barack Obama have made 2008 the year of the surprise contender, though one man predicted both successes before nearly anyone else – and he sees a general election landslide for Obama over John McCain on Tuesday".^[82]

The celebrity that this attention brought to Silver sometimes took a curious form, including articles on Wonkette: The D.C. Gossip^[83] and a Facebook group entitled "There's a 97.3 Percent Chance that Nate Silver Is Totally My Boyfriend".^[84]

Throughout 2009 through 2012, Silver appeared several more times as a political analyst on national television, most frequently on MSNBC^[85] but also on CNN^[86] as well as Bloomberg Television,^[87] PBS,^[88] NPR,^[89] "Democracy Now!",^[90] The Charlie Rose Show,^[91] ABC News,^[92] and Current TV.^[93]

Book[link]

• Nate Silver. The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail – But Some Don't. New York: Penguin, 2012. ISBN-13 978-1-59-420411-1. In Press (publication date: September 27, 2012).

Recognition and awards[link]

• In September 2008, FiveThirtyEight became the first blog ever selected as a Notable Narrative by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.^[94]

• On the day after the first McCain-Obama Presidential Debate, Time Magazine's Joe Klein observed on the magazine's "Swampland" blog: "If there's been a rookie of the year in this year's presidential campaign coverage, it's Nate Silver—a baseball stats guy who has turned his talents to politics and produced some of the most creative slicing and dicing of polling numbers at his website fivethirtyeight.com. Today's offering is typical Silver: he takes the snap polling results and weights them according to the issues the voters considered most important—and finds that Obama won, according to the cross tabs, on the more important issues, thereby accounting for his snap poll victories".^[95]

• October 7, 2008: Silver appeared as a guest on "The Colbert Report".^[96]

• November 2008: Crain's Chicago Business profiled Silver as one of Chicago's "40 under 40" notable young entrepreneurs.^[97]

• November 9, 2008: the New York Times called Silver "perhaps the most unlikely media star to emerge" out of "an election season of unlikely outcomes" and described FiveThirtyEight with its almost five million page views on Election Day as "one of the breakout online stars of the year".^[98]

• December 2008: Newsweek.com identified Silver's November 3, 2008 article "What to Watch For – An hour-by-hour guide to election night"^[99] as the 4th most viewed story on Newsweek.com in 2008.^[100]

• December 2008: Silver was named by Huffington Post writer Jason Linkins as the #1 of the "Ten Things that Managed to Not Suck in 2008, Media Edition". "The uncanny, poll-wrangling, stats-freaking Nate Silver took it upon himself to demonstrate that some level of governable, rational reality could be brought to bear on the confusing world of competing tracking polls, and along the way all but cemented the geek-chic trajectory of this election season".^[101]

• December 2008: named by The Daily Beast as one of the "Breakout Stars of 2008": "Breakout Swami: NATE SILVER. In 2007, Nate Silver was mainly known as a world-class seamhead,[1] a Baseball Prospectus geek who could do sexy things with ERAs. Then he started applying his statfreak principles to presidential politics under the pseudonym Poblano. When he finally outed himself in June 2008, it was clear that Silver and his website www.FiveThirtyEight.com had everyone’s number—his primary projections became gospel. In the end, though, Silver only correctly predicted how 49 of the 50 states would vote. Better luck in 2012".^[102]

• February 2009: named by James Wolcott in Vanity Fair as one of the "Winners of 2008": "No shiny arrow shot swifter and loftier from obscurity to quotable authority than Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight.com site became the expert sensation of the election season.... Not only did his disciplined models and microfine data mining command respect, his prognostications hit the Zen mark on Election Day.... Silver also became an instant cable-news savant, his geek-genius glasses and owlish mien worthy of a Starfleet sub-adjutant whose quadratic equations coolly foil an attack from a Romulan vessel while the senior officers are frantically poking at their touch screens".^[103]

• January 2009: Silver was named by Forbes.com to its third annual "Web Celeb 25," which "track[s] the biggest and brightest stars on the Web, the people who have turned their passions into new-media empires. From stay-at-home moms to geek entrepreneurs, these are the people capturing eyes, influencing opinion and creating the new digital world".^[104]

• April 2009: Silver was named as one of the "Rolling Stone 100: Agents of Change".^[105]

• April 27, 2009: named "Blogger of the Year" by The Week in its 6th annual Opinion Awards. The commendation stated: "Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com was arguably the most important blogger of the 2008 presidential election, translating a flood of poll numbers into a narrative that was both compelling and trustworthy. By Election Night — when Fivethirtyeight.com declared the race for Obama at 8:46 p.m., an hour and 14 minutes before the mainstream media did — Silver had already established himself as the most reliable caller of the political horse race".^[106]

• April 30, 2009: Silver was named one of "The World's 100 Most Influential People" by TIME Magazine.^[4]

• December 2009: Silver was recognized by The New York Times Magazine in its "Ninth Annual Year in Ideas" article for his "Forensic Polling Analysis" of the possible falsification of data by a polling firm.^[107]

• 2009: named "Speaker of the Year" by the intercollegiate Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA).^[108]

• November 2010: John F. Harris, Editor-in-Chief of Politico writing in Forbes Magazine listed Nate Silver as one of seven bloggers among "The Most Powerful People on Earth": "The New York Times recently began hosting Nate Silver's delightfully granular blog about the numbers that underlie politics".^[109]

• May 2011: Presented the Henry Pringle Lecture at the Columbia Journalism School.^{[110][111][112]}

• March 2012: Crain's New York Business featured Silver as one of New York City's "Forty Under Forty" notable young entrepreneurs.^[113]

• May 2012: FiveThirtyEight won a Webby Award for "Best Political Blog" from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences in the 16th annual Webby Awards.^[114]

Personal life[link]

Nate Silver is a grandnephew of Leon Silver, geologist.

After residing in Chicago, Illinois for twelve years, Silver moved to New York City in 2009.^[115]

Silver has long been interested in fantasy baseball, especially Scoresheet Baseball. While in college he served as an expert on Scoresheet Baseball for BaseballHQ.^[116] When he took up political writing, Silver abandoned his blog, The Burrito Bracket,^[117] in which he ran a one-and-done competition among the taquerias in his Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago.^[118]

In 2010, Out magazine included Silver among their top 100 LGBT people of the year.^[119]

In his spare time, Silver uses his analytical approach at the poker table where he plays semi-professionally.^[120]

Notes[link]

External links[link]

	Baseball portal
	Journalism portal
	Biography portal

Blogs[link]

• Nate Silver's Baseball Prospectus article archive (2003–2009)
• Nate Silver's The Burrito Bracket (2007)
• Nate Silver's diaries as "Poblano" on Daily Kos (2007–2009)
• FiveThirtyEight.com archive from pre-NYT period (2008–2010)
• FiveThirtyEight/NYT (2010– )

Other[link]

• Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight on Twitter
• Leigh Bureau speaker profile
• Video of Silver discussing his methodology for polling aggregation on Bloggingheads.tv (August 21, 2008)
• TED 2009 video of talk about race and the 2008 U.S. presidential election

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (January 2012)

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (September 2010)

Jeremy Rifkin

Born	(1945-01-26) January 26, 1945 (age 67) Denver, Colorado
Era	Contemporary
Region	Western philosophy
Main interests	Economy, political science, scientific and technological change
Notable ideas	Empathic Civilization, The Third Industrial Revolution, End of the working society

Jeremy Rifkin (born January 26, 1945) is an American economist, writer, public speaker, political advisor and activist. He is the founder and president of the Foundation On Economic Trends. Rifkin's work explores the potential impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment.

Biography[link]

Jeremy Rifkin was born in Denver, Colorado in 1945, to Vivette Ravel Rifkin and Milton Rifkin, a plastic-bag manufacturer. He grew up on the southwest side of Chicago. He earned a BS in economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was president of the graduating class of 1967 and recipient of the University of Pennsylvania General Alumni Association's Award of Merit.^[1] He had an epiphany when one day in 1966 he walked past a group of students protesting the Vietnam War picketing the administration building and was amazed to see, as he recalls, that "my frat friends were beating the living daylights out of them. I got very upset." He organized a freedom-of-speech rally the next day. From then on, Rifkin quickly became an active member of the peace movement. He went on to obtain his masters degree in international affairs at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1968. Rifkin pursued anti-war activities at Fletcher, and later joined VISTA.

In 1973, Rifkin organized a mass-protest against oil companies at the commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party at Boston's Harbor. Thousands joined the protest, as activists dumped empty oil barrels into Boston's Harbor. The protest came in the wake of the increase in gasoline prices in the fall of 1972, following the OPEC oil embargo-^[2]

In 1977, with Ted Howard, he founded the Foundation on Economic Trends (FOET), ^[3] which is active in both national and international public policy issues related to the environment, the economy, and climate change. FOET examines new trends and their impacts on the environment, the economy, culture and society, and engages in litigation, public education, coalition building and grassroots organizing activities to advance their goals. Rifkin currently works out of an office in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Rifkin is the principal architect of the Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic sustainability plan to address the triple challenge of the global economic crisis, energy security, and climate change.^[4] The Third Industrial Revolution was formally endorsed by the European Parliament in 2007 and is now being implemented by various agencies within the European Commission.^[5] Rifkin has lectured before many Fortune 500 companies, and hundreds of governments, civil society organizations, and universities over the past thirty five years.[3]

Rifkin is the founder and chairperson of the Third Industrial Revolution Global CEO Business Roundtable, comprising more than 100 of the world's leading renewable energy companies, construction companies, architectural firms, real estate companies, IT companies, power and utility companies, and transport and logistics companies.^[6] Rifkin's global economic development team is working with cities, regions, and national governments to develop master plans to transition their economies into post- carbon Third Industrial Revolution infrastructures. In 2009, Rifkin and his team developed Third Industrial Revolution master plans for the cities of San Antonio, Texas and Rome, Italy, to transition their economies into the first post carbon urban areas in the world.^[7]

In 1988, Rifkin brought together climate scientists and environmental activists from 35 nations in Washington, D.C. for the first meeting of the Global Greenhouse Network.^[8] In the same year, Rifkin did a series of Hollywood lectures on global warming and related environmental issues for a diverse assortment of film, television and music industry leaders^{[clarification needed]}, with the goal of organizing the Hollywood community for a campaign. Shortly thereafter, two Hollywood environmental organizations, Earth Communications Office (ECO), and Environmental Media Association, were formed.^[9]

In 1992, Rifkin launched the Beyond Beef Campaign, a coalition of six environmental groups including Green Peace, Rainforest Action Network, and Public Citizen, with the goal of encouraging a 50% reduction in the consumption of beef, arguing that methane emissions from Cattle has a warming effect 23 to 50 times greater than carbon dioxide.^[10][11]

Since 1994, Rifkin has been a senior lecturer at The Wharton School's executive education program at the University of Pennsylvania, where he instructs CEOs and senior corporate management from around the world on new trends in science and technology.^[12]

After the publication of The Hydrogen Economy, Rifkin worked both in the U.S. and Europe to advance the political cause of renewably generated hydrogen. In the U.S., Rifkin was instrumental in founding the Green Hydrogen Coalition, consisting of thirteen environmental and political organizations (including Greenpeace and MoveOn.Org) that are committed to building a renewable hydrogen based economy.^[13]

Governmental work[link]

Rifkin has advised both the European Commission and the European Parliament. Rifkin has also advised Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain during its presidency of the European Union. Rifkin also served as an adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and Prime Minister Janez Janša of Slovenia, during their respective European Council Presidencies, on issues related to the economy, climate change, and energy security. Rifkin is currently working with European officials to help shape a Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic development plan for the European Union.^[14]

Reception[link]

According to the The "European Energy Review" "Perhaps no other author or thinker has had more influence on the EU's ambitious climate and energy policy than the famous American 'visionary' Jeremy Rifkin.^[15] In the United States, he has testified before numerous congressional committees and has had success in litigation to ensure responsible government policies on a variety of environmental, scientific and technology related issues.^[16] The Union of Concerned Scientists has cited some of Rifkin's publications as useful references for consumers^[17] and The New York Times once stated that "many in the scholarly, religious, and political fields praise Jeremy Rifkin for a willingness to think big, raise controversial questions, and serve as a social and ethical prophet".

Rifkin's work has also been controversial, and opponents have attacked the scientific rigor of his claims as well as some of the tactics he uses to promote his views. Stephen Jay Gould characterised Rifkin's 1983 book Algeny as "a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship".^[18]

A 1989 Time article about Rifkin was entitled "The Most Hated Man in Science."^[19]

Works[link]

Jeremy Rifkin became one of the first major critics of the nascent biotechnology industry with the 1977 publication of his book, Who Should Play God? Rifkin's 1980 work "Entropy" was called "A comprehensive worldview" and "an appropriate successor to ... Silent Spring, The Closing Circle, The Limits to Growth, and Small Is Beautiful."^[20] His 1995 book, The End of Work, is credited by some^[who?] with helping shape the current global debate on technology displacement, corporate downsizing and the future of jobs.^[21] His 1998 book, The Biotech Century, addresses issues accompanying the new era of genetic commerce. His 2004 book, The European Dream, was an international bestseller and winner of the 2005 Corine International Book Prize in Germany for the best economics book of the year.

Books[link]

• 1973, How to Commit Revolution American Style: Bicentennial Declaration, with John Rossen, Lyle Stuart Inc., ISBN 0-8184-0041-2
• 1975, Common Sense II: The case against corporate tyranny, Bantam Books, OCLC 123151709
• 1977, Own Your Own Job: Economic Democracy for Working Americans, ISBN 978-0-553-10487-5
• 1977, Who Should Play God? The Artificial Creation of Life and What it Means for the Future of the Human, with Ted Howard, Dell Publishing Co., ISBN 0-440-19504-7
• 1978, The North Will Rise Again: Pensions, Politics and Power in the 1980s, with Randy Barber, Beacon Press, ISBN 0-8070-4787-2
• 1979, The Emerging Order: God in the Age of Scarcity, with Ted Howard, Putnam, ISBN 978-0-399-12319-1
• 1980, Entropy: A New World View, with Ted Howard (afterword by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen), Viking Press, ISBN 0-670-29717-8
• 1983, Algeny: A New Word—A New World, in collaboration with Nicanor Perlas, Viking Press, ISBN 0-670-10885-5
• 1985, Declaration of a Heretic, Routledge & Kegan Paul Books, Ltd, ISBN 0-7102-0709-3
• 1987, Time Wars: The Primary Conflict In Human History, Henry Holt & Co, ISBN 0-8050-0377-0
• 1990, The Green Lifestyle Handbook: 1001 Ways to Heal the Earth (edited by Rifkin), Henry Holt & Co, ISBN 0-8050-1369-5
• 1991, Biosphere Politics: A New Consciousness for a New Century, Crown, ISBN 0-517-57746-1
• 1992, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, E. P. Dutton, ISBN 0-525-93420-0
• 1992, Voting Green: Your Complete Environmental Guide to Making Political Choices In The 90s, with Carol Grunewald Rifkin, Main Street Books, ISBN 0-385-41917-1
• 1995, The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era, Putnam Publishing Group, ISBN 0-87477-779-8
• 1998, The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World, J P Tarcher, ISBN 0-87477-909-X
• 2000, The Age Of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life is a Paid-For Experience, Putnam Publishing Group, ISBN 1-58542-018-2
• 2002, The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth, Jeremy P. Tarcher, ISBN 1-58542-193-6
• 2004, The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, Jeremy P. Tarcher, ISBN 1-58542-345-9
• 2010, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness In a World In Crisis, Jeremy P. Tarcher, ISBN 1-58542-765-9 www.empathiccivilization.com
• 2011, The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-230-11521-7

See also[link]

• Biopolitics
• Frankenstein argument
• Genetic pollution
• Jobless growth
• National Veterans Inquiry
• The Third Industrial Revolution
• Winter Soldier Investigation

References[link]

External links[link]

• 1.http://foet.org/img/University%20Of%20Pennsylvania%20Student%20Award%20of%20Mert.jpg
• 2.http://www.foet.org/
• 3.http://foet.org/current-activities.html
• 4.http://www.foet.org/past/timeline/foet_history.html
• 5.http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1974/01/21/1974_01_21_067_TNY_CARDS_000305675
• 6.http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/4559-1
• 7.http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/mother%20jones/904Y-000-007.html
• 8.http://www.foet.org/past/BeyondBeefCampaign.htm
• 9.http://www.citizen.org/cmep/article_redirect.cfm?ID=10703
• 10.http://www.foet.org/JeremyRifkin.htm

Other links[link]

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-rifkin
• http://www.ted.com/speakers/jeremy_rifkin.html
• http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_rifkin_on_the_empathic_civilization.html
• http://www.insead.edu/events/wharton_alliance_10th_anniversary/home/
• https://microsite.accenture.com/iuec/Documents/Accenture_IUEC2011_INVITE_A4.pdf
• http://cetri-tires.org/press/?p=3938&lang=it
• http://www.ueapme.com/spip.php?article210
• http://www.urbact.pl/Intern%20Meeting%20on%20Sust%20Planning%20-%20Vitoria.pdf
• http://www.ghgreductionsummit.com/Program/Keynotes/tabid/76/Default.aspx
• http://www.cidadesinovadoras.org.br/cici2011/
• http://www.viewontv.org/oecd/forum2011/?titre=21#anc21
• http://webtv.internationaltransportforum.org/video_ejZJJ_jeremy_rifkin.html
• http://www.holcimfoundation.org/T1017/F10SP_Rifkin.htm
• http://www.valleyforward.org/events/33
• http://www.wdr.de/defaultError.jhtml
• http://www.ey.com/home
• http://www.dunkerque2010.org/en/programme/speakers/
• https://www.construction-institute.org/ac/2010/agenda.cfm
• http://www.eiseverywhere.com/ehome/index.php?eventid=11953&tabid=15060&
• http://www.fondazionebancodisicilia.it/en/grandi_progetti/scheda.php?id=28
• http://www.smesummit.eu/
• http://www.rossinstitute.org/#/Media/Jeremy-Rifkin-Lecture
• http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/jeremy-rifkin-europe-lead-third-industrial-revolution/article-170005
• Guardian.co.uk – 'Sorry, Mr President, homilies won't stop the hurricanes: We Americans need to get out of our SUVs and learn the harsh lesson of Katrina and Rita: we are all to blame', Jeremy Rifkin, The Guardian, (September 23, 2005)
• European Parliament Leaders announce Green Hydrogen initiative

Stephen Merchant
Merchant in 2009
Born	Stephen James Merchant (1974-11-24) 24 November 1974 (age 37) Bristol, England
Occupation	Actor Director Writer Radio presenter Comedian
Years active	1998–present
Height	6 ft 7 in (2.01 m)

Stephen James Merchant (born 24 November 1974) is an English writer, director, radio presenter, comedian, and actor. He is best known for his collaborations with Ricky Gervais, as the co-writer and co-director of the popular British sitcom The Office, as the co-writer, co-director and a co-star of Extras, and as the co-host of The Ricky Gervais Show in its radio, podcast, audiobook and television-show forms. The Ricky Gervais Show in radio form has won a bronze Sony Award.

Merchant appeared in the BBC TV series Life's Too Short in which he co-wrote and co-directs. He also voiced the character Wheatley in the popular 2011 video game Portal 2, co-developed Sky TV travel series An Idiot Abroad, and performs as a stand-up comedian. He has won three BAFTA Awards, four British Comedy Awards, and an Emmy.

Early life[link]

Merchant was born in Bristol, England, the son of Jane Elaine (née Hibbs), a nursery nurse, and Ronald John Merchant, an insurance representative.^[1] He attended Hanham High School. As he has described in Xfm London shows and podcasts, Merchant was a very shy child, tending to focus more on school work as opposed to sport. His school yearbook predicted that he would enjoy success.

Merchant is a graduate of the University of Warwick, and a former film reviewer on the student radio station, Radio Warwick, where he began his broadcasting career^[2]. The station's 1995/96 yearbook tipped him for great things:

Members of Merchant's "posse" included film critic James King, Dan Warren, Neil the Maskell and Geraint the Welshman. Recently, a number of tapes of "The Steve Show", recorded at the time, have been rediscovered and are being distributed on various Merchant fansites.^[3] He graduated with a 2:1 in Film and Literature in 1996.

Career[link]

Pre-2001[link]

Merchant began his career performing stand-up comedy at Bristol's Comedy Box, where, he recalls, "The first week I did really well ...The second week I died on my arse. I realised that stand-up was not that easy after all." He also appeared as a contestant on a 1997 episode of the TV game show Blockbusters and worked for a short time as a DJ for Radio Caroline.

Merchant met Ricky Gervais for the first time in 1997, when Gervais (then in the position of "Head of Speech" at the London radio station Xfm) hired Merchant as his assistant. (Gervais said later that he had called Merchant for an interview simply because it was the first CV handed to him.) Merchant and Gervais hosted a Saturday afternoon radio show together from January through to August 1998, when both of them left XFM as it was bought by the Capital Radio Group. In the same year, Merchant was a finalist at the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Awards.

Merchant did a total of 7 years on XFM 104.9. The Saturday show never had a large audience; Gervais says "It's a tin pot radio station... It's not even the biggest radio station in the building." Merchant created the features 'Hip Hop Hooray', 'Make Ricky Gervais laugh' and 'Song for the Ladies.'

After leaving XFM, Merchant began a production course at the BBC. As part of his coursework, he enlisted Gervais to perform in a 30-minute short film, "Seedy Boss," which became the earliest inspiration for their sitcom The Office. They collaborated on a sitcom pilot called Golden Years featuring a manager suffering a mid-life crisis; the pilot aired on Channel 4's Comedy Lab series in September 1998, but failed to find further success.

[edit] 2001–03 (The Office and return to XFM)

In mid-2001, BBC Two aired the first series of The Office, co-written and co-directed by Merchant and Gervais and starring the latter as paper sales office manager David Brent; the show initially received low ratings. Beginning in September, Merchant and Gervais returned to Xfm as co-hosts of The Ricky Gervais Show, another Saturday afternoon programme, which led to their fruitful relationship with producer Karl Pilkington.

They took a break from the radio show in mid-2002 in order to film the second series of The Office, which aired that year; in addition to writing and directing the show, Merchant made a cameo performance in the episode "Charity" as a friend of Gareth Keenan's character known by the name Oggy or Oggmonster. (Merchant's father also appears in multiple episodes as an office handyman named Gordon.) Merchant also directed a sitcom pilot called The Last Chancers, which aired on Comedy Lab in November 2002 and became a five-part series broadcast in December on E4.

Merchant and Gervais continued to host The Ricky Gervais Show through 2003, taking another break to film the Office Christmas special, which aired that December. The radio show went off the air indefinitely in January 2004. During 2004, Merchant appeared in a recurring role as a chef on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and in a cameo on Green Wing, and served as a script associate on the Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker sitcom Nathan Barley. The same year, The Office aired in the U.S to critical acclaim. It went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy which both Merchant and Gervais accepted.

This was followed in 2005 by a 4th series of the radio show, consisting of six episodes.

[edit] US series of The Office

In March 2005, the American version of The Office premiered, with Merchant and Gervais credited as executive producers. They would later co-write the third-season episode "The Convict", and Merchant would direct the fifth-season episode "Customer Survey".^[4]

Podcast series[link]

In December 2005, with sponsorship by The Guardian, Merchant, Gervais and Pilkington began recording a weekly podcast (also called The Ricky Gervais Show).^[5] Throughout its first series (through 20 February 2006), the podcast was consistently ranked the most popular in the world, and was certified as the most-downloaded of all time by Guinness World Records. Two more series and three special instalments (the "Podfather Trilogy") were recorded in 2006, with the final episode released on Christmas Eve. In late 2008, they recorded four more podcasts and began a series of audiobooks examining Pilkington's perspective on various subjects.

[edit] Extras

In July 2005, following a brief return of the XFM radio show (filling in for Adam and Joe), Gervais and Merchant's new sitcom Extras premiered on BBC2. The series features Merchant in a supporting role as Darren Lamb, the incompetent agent to struggling actor Andy Millman, played by Gervais. Series 2 of Extras aired in late 2006, followed by a Christmas special in December 2007; all three instalments aired on HBO in the United States. Merchant won a 2006 British Comedy Award for Best TV Actor for his performance as Lamb.^[6]

[edit] The Steve Show

Merchant in January 2011

In January 2007, Merchant began hosting his own radio show on BBC 6 Music, airing weekly on Sunday afternoons.^[7] Instead of comedy, The Steve Show focused on music and particularly "new music," defined by Merchant as "music you've not heard before." Many of the songs on the show were suggested by listeners or co-presenters. In addition to Merchant, the show featured several of his friends, including his housemate Dan, his childhood friend Harry, and actor Rufus Gerrard-Wright (who also appeared in an episode of Extras). A spring search for a "she-J" resulted in the addition of former Byker Grove actor Sammy T. Dobson^[8] joining the ensemble. "The Steve Show" aired for four seasons and concluded in May 2009.

Stand-up[link]

Merchant began performing stand-up comedy in the late 1990s to critical success, though he decided to focus more on his work with writing partner Ricky Gervais after the success of The Office. Merchant returned to stand-up with a nationwide tour of the United Kingdom in September 2011, under the title Hello Ladies.^[9] The tour was later released on DVD.

Other work[link]

Merchant has played small roles in the films Hot Fuzz (2007), Run Fatboy Run (2007), and The Invention of Lying (2009), the latter starring Ricky Gervais. He has a supporting role in the 2009 film Tooth Fairy. On television, Merchant made a cameo appearance in a non-speaking role on the sixth season premiere of 24; he also starred as a sports commentator in the unaired pilot No Skillz. Additionally, Merchant has provided the voice-over since 2009 of advertisements for Barclays and Waterstone's.

In 2009, Merchant and Gervais collaborated on the film Cemetery Junction, set in working-class England in the 1970s. The film was released in April 2010 to generally mixed to positive reviews.

In September 2010, Merchant produced a television show alongside Ricky Gervais starring Karl Pilkington called An Idiot Abroad.

In July 2010, filming finished for the pilot of Life's Too Short, written by Ricky Gervais and Merchant, who will both cameo alongside the show's star, Warwick Davis.^[10] In 2011, he lent his voice to the CGI film Gnomeo and Juliet, and had a role in the Farrelly brothers' comedy Hall Pass.

In January 2011, Merchant appeared at the 'Free Fringe Benefit' at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London. A show of stand-up to benefit the Free Fringe at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, alongside comedians Jeremy Hardy, Michael Legge, Robin Ince, Mitch Benn, Isy Suttie, Bennett Arron, Andy Zaltzman and founder Peter Buckley Hill. He also stated on the recent free podcast The Ricky Gervais Guide to...Comic Relief that he will be touring his first solo stand up tour later in the year.

On Film 2011's Questionnaire feature, broadcast on 2 March 2011, Merchant described his favourite film as The Apartment (1960), his guilty pleasure as Con Air (1997), the film he cried at as The Bridges of Madison County, and the film he didn't get as The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.^[11]

Merchant provides the voice of Wheatley in Valve's 2011 video game Portal 2,^[12] a role which earned him widespread acclaim among reviewers.^[13] While he states his work on the project as "exhausting", Merchant is also "very pleased by the response people have had to it. What I was really pleased by how people seemed to respond to it in the way they do with a movie they've enjoyed, or a TV show they've enjoyed."^[14]

Filmography[link]

Film[link]

Television[link]

Video games[link]

Awards[link]

Personal life[link]

Merchant dated digital advertising producer Claire Jones for two years, although their relationship reportedly ended in 2009.^[15] Merchant is an atheist.^[16] He is the cousin of Sara Dallin of Bananarama.

Appearance[link]

Merchant's considerable height (6ft 7in; 2.01 m)^[17] has been a source of humour and teasing throughout his life. He made a cameo appearance in The Office, playing a character nicknamed the Ogg-Monster, whom David Brent called "a big lanky goggle-eyed freak".^[18] His height, and also dance moves, have attracted comments from several sources. The Daily Mail newspaper described him as a "giant albatross hopping on stilts"^[19] as he danced in a London pub (although Merchant denied this during an episode of the Ricky Gervais Show, stating that he did not take to the dance floor on that occasion).

While discussing what the Daily Mail had said on the show, friend and collaborator Ricky Gervais has likened him to an "upright lizard being given electro-shock treatment"^[20] and a "stick insect with glasses"^[20] or Beaker from The Muppet Show.^[21] Radio producer and co-host of Merchant, Karl Pilkington, has described his moves as a "bit of weird art"^[22] in the past, while British comic and broadcaster Russell Brand has likened him to a "graceful grasshopper".^[23] Merchant has commented that he prefers to liken himself to fellow tall man and English football player, Peter Crouch^[24] who is also six foot seven inches. Merchant impersonated Crouch in a BBC sketch broadcast as part of the pre-match build-up to England's opening game at the 2006 World Cup.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Stephen Merchant

• Official website
• Stephen Merchant at the Internet Movie Database
• Interviewed on BBC Radio Five Live
• Xfm: Biography
• Tall man, taller success story – interview in The Telegraph – 8 August 2005
• Interview with Barbara Ellen in The Observer Magazine – 5 November 2006
• An Englishman abroad
• Stephen Merchant interview
• Stephen Merchant interviewed by Sophie Elmhirst on New Statesman.