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Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick, also known under her pen name and virtual worlds pseudonym "Prokofy Neva", is a former human rights activist, Russian–English translator, former journalist, and a blogger and commentator. She has worked for several human rights NGOs, and is a former research director at Human Rights Watch, the former editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's radio magazine "(Un)Civil Societies," and the former Executive Director and Chief Representative to the United Nations of the International League for Human Rights. She has written on psychiatric abuse in the Soviet Union. She has translated 30 Russian books by authors such as Joseph Stalin, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, and several USSR Politburo members. Education She studied Slavic studies at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto from 1974 to 1978, and area studies at Leningrad State University from 1978 to 1979. Professional career She has worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Life
''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Francisco-based firm Linden Lab and launched on June 23, 2003, it saw rapid growth for some years and in 2013 it had approximately one million regular users. Growth eventually stabilized, and by the end of 2017 the active user count had declined to "between 800,000 and 900,000". In many ways, ''Second Life'' is similar to massively multiplayer online role-playing games; nevertheless, Linden Lab is emphatic that their creation is not a game: "There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective". The virtual world can be accessed freely via Linden Lab's own client software or via alternative third-party viewers. ''Second Life'' users, also called ' residents', create virtual representations of themselves, called ''avatars'', and are able to int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Area Studies
Area studies (also known as regional studies) are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular geographical, national/ federal, or cultural regions. The term exists primarily as a general description for what are, in the practice of scholarship, many heterogeneous fields of research, encompassing both the social sciences and the humanities. Typical area study programs involve international relations, strategic studies, history, political science, political economy, cultural studies, languages, geography, literature, and other related disciplines. In contrast to cultural studies, area studies often include diaspora and emigration from the area. History Interdisciplinary area studies became increasingly common in the United States and in Western scholarship after World War II. Before that war American universities had just a few faculty who taught or conducted research on the non-Western world. Foreign-area studies were virtually nonexistent. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Yakovlev (Russian Politician)
Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev (russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Я́ковлев; 2 December 1923 – 18 October 2005) was a Soviet and Russian politician, diplomat, and historian. A member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union throughout the 1980s, he was termed the "godfather of glasnost", and was the intellectual force behind Mikhail Gorbachev's reform programme of glasnost and perestroika. Born into a rural family, Yakovlev served as a platoon commander of a marine brigade during World War II, and became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union following the war. During the rule of Nikita Khrushchev, he became a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, before resigning to study abroad as part of the Fulbright Programme, returning in 1960. Under Leonid Brezhnev, he became Deputy Head of Agitprop and was placed in charge of a group on creating the 1977 Constitution of the Soviet Union. He was later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tatiana Mamonova
Tatyana Mamonova (born 10 December 1943), is a founder of the modern Russian women's movement, an internationally renowned democratic women's leader, author, poet, journalist, videographer, artist, editor and public lecturer. Early life Mamonova was born in the Soviet Union, and was raised in Leningrad after World War II. Career Mamonova was the first feminist dissident exiled from the Soviet Union in 1980 for re-igniting the Russian women's movement; initiating her organization, then called Woman and Russia, the first NGO promoting the human rights of women from the Soviet Union and connecting Russian speaking women's voices and needs with the international community; and editing and publishing the samizdat ''Woman and Russia Almanac'', now called ''Woman and Earth Almanac'', an art and literary journal containing the first collection of Soviet feminist writings, which has now been published in 11 languages and in over 22 countries. Prior to her exile from her native St. Pet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Founded in 1828, it was predominantly built by Martin Van Buren, who assembled a wide cadre of politicians in every state behind war hero Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party.M. Philip Lucas, "Martin Van Buren as Party Leader and at Andrew Jackson's Right Hand." in ''A Companion to the Antebellum Presidents 1837–1861'' (2014): 107–129."The Democratic Party, founded in 1828, is the world's oldest political party" states Its main political rival has been the Republican Party since the 1850s. The party is a big tent, and though it is often described as liberal, it is less ideologically uniform than the Republican Party (with major individuals within it frequently holding widely different political views) due to the broader list of unique voting blocs that compose it. The historical predecessor of the Democratic Party is considered to be th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic List of United States Democratic Party presidential tickets, nominee for the 2000 United States presidential election, 2000 presidential election, losing to George W. Bush in a very close race after a Florida recount. Gore was an elected official for 24 years. He was a United States House of Representatives, representative from Tennessee (1977–1985) and from 1985 to 1993 served as a United States Senate, senator from that state. He served as vice president during the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001, defeating incumbents George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle in 1992 United States presidential election, 1992, and Bob Dole and Jack Kemp in 1996 United States presidential election, 1996. The 2000 presidentia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ORCA (computer System)
ORCA was a mobile-optimized web application used as a component of the "get out the vote" (GOTV) efforts for Mitt Romney presidential campaign, 2012, Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. It was intended to enable volunteers in polling stations around the country to report which voters had turned out, so that "missing" Republican voters and underperforming precincts could be targeted for last-minute efforts to get voters to the polls. According to Romney himself, it would provide an "unprecedented advantage" to the campaign to "ensure that every last supporter makes it to the polls." The system had major technical problems during Election Day that prevented many volunteers from using it. It crashed periodically and at one point was intentionally taken down when a surge of traffic from campaign volunteers was misinterpreted as a denial of service attack. Frustrated volunteers reported being unable to access ORCA and criticised a lack of prior briefing, misleading instructions and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitt Romney Presidential Campaign, 2012
The 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney officially began on June 2, 2011, when former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney formally announced his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States, at an event in Stratham, New Hampshire. Having previously run in the 2008 Republican primaries, this was Romney's second campaign for the presidency. He filed his organization with the Federal Elections Commission as an exploratory committee and announced the organization in a video message on April 11, 2011. He became the party's presumptive nominee with his victory in the Texas primary on May 29, 2012. On August 11, 2012, in Norfolk, Virginia, Romney announced that Paul Ryan, the long-time U.S. Representative for , would be his running mate for vice president. (Later, in October 2015, Ryan was elected Speaker of the House.) On August 30, 2012, in Tampa, Florida, Romney formally accepted the Republican Party's nomination at the 2012 Republi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American politician, businessman, and lawyer serving as the junior United States senator from Utah since January 2019, succeeding Orrin Hatch. He served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party's nominee for president of the United States in the 2012 election, losing to Barack Obama. Raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, by George and Lenore Romney, he spent over two years in France as a Mormon missionary. He married Ann Davies in 1969; they have five sons. Active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) throughout his adult life, Romney served as bishop of his ward and later as a stake president for an area covering Boston and many of its suburbs. By 1971, he had participated in the political campaigns of both his parents. In 1971 Romney graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from Brigham Young University (BYU) and in 1975 he received a JD–MBA degree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, and previously worked as a civil rights lawyer before entering politics. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago. In 1988, he enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the '' Harvard Law Review''. After graduating, he became a civil rights attorney and an academic, teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Turning to elective politics, he represented the 13th district in the Illinois Senate from 1997 until 2004, when he ran for the U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sims Online
''The Sims Online'', also known as ''EA-Land'', was a massively multiplayer online variation on Maxis' computer game ''The Sims''. It was published by Electronic Arts and released in December 2002 for Microsoft Windows. The game was sold in retail stores in North America and Japan and could also be downloaded worldwide through the EA.com online store, though the game was English-only and had no official translations. The game charged a subscription fee of US $9.99 per month. In March 2007, EA announced that the product would be re-branded as ''EA-Land'' and major enhancements would be made. EA later announced that the game would shut down all activity on August 1, 2008. Gameplay Four cities had special rules: Dragon's Cove contained harder game objectives. For example, a Sim would lose energy when traveling long distances, and the virtual costs for items were doubled. Betaville was a city created for the purpose of testing new features, such as the ability to create a family of up ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virtual World
A virtual world (also called a virtual space) is a computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many users who can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities and communicate with others. These avatars can be textual, graphical representations, or live video avatars with auditory and touch sensations. Virtual worlds are closely related to mirror worlds. In a virtual world, the user accesses a computer-simulated world which presents perceptual stimuli to the user, who in turn can manipulate elements of the modeled world and thus experience a degree of presence. Such modeled worlds and their rules may draw from reality or fantasy worlds. Example rules are gravity, topography, locomotion, real-time actions, and communication. Communication between users can range from text, graphical icons, visual gesture, sound, and rarely, forms using touch, voice command, and balance senses. Massively multi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
