The Crimson Permanent Assurance
''The Crimson Permanent Assurance'' is a 1983 British swashbuckling comedy short film that plays as the beginning of the feature-length motion picture ''Monty Python's The Meaning of Life''. Having originally conceived the story as a six-minute animated sequence in ''Monty Python's The Meaning of Life'', intended for placement at the end of Part V, Terry Gilliam convinced the other members of Monty Python to allow him to produce and direct it as a live action piece instead. According to Gilliam, the film's rhythm, length, and style of cinematography made it a poor fit as a scene in the larger movie, so it was presented as a supplementary short ahead of the film. It was a common practice in British cinemas to show an unrelated short feature before the main movie, a holdover from the older practice of showing a full-length "B" movie ahead of the main feature. By the mid-1970s the short features were of poorer quality (often Public Information Films), or simply banal travelogues. A ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance Gilliam (; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British filmmaker, comedian, animator, actor and former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam has directed 13 feature films, including ''Time Bandits'' (1981), ''Brazil'' (1985), ''The Adventures of Baron Munchausen'' (1988), ''The Fisher King'' (1991), '' 12 Monkeys'' (1995), ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' (1998), ''The Brothers Grimm'' (2005), '' Tideland'' (2005), and ''The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'' (2009). Being the only Monty Python member not born in Britain, he became a naturalised British subject in 1968 and formally renounced his American citizenship in 2006. Gilliam was born in Minnesota, but spent his high school and college years in Los Angeles. He started his career as an animator and strip cartoonist. He joined Monty Python as the animator of their works, but eventually became a full member and was given acting roles. He became a feature film director in the 1970s. Most of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Travel Documentary
A travel documentary is a documentary film, television program, or online series that describes travel in general or tourist attractions without recommending particular package deals or tour operators. A travelogue film is an early type of travel documentary, serving as an exploratory ethnographic film. Ethnographic films have been made for the spectators to see the other half to relate with the world in relative relations. These films are a spectacle to see beyond the cultural differences as explained by the Allison Griffith in her journal. Before 1930s, it was difficult to see the importance of documentary films in Hollywood cinema but 1930s brought about a change in the history of these films with the popularity of independent filmmakers. The genre has been represented by television shows such as ''Across the Seven Seas'', which showcased travelogues produced by third parties, and by occasional itinerant presentations of travelogues in theaters and other venues. The British ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Flat Earth
The flat-Earth model is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat-Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period (5th century BC), the Bronze and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period (31 BC), and China until the 17th century. The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in ancient Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC). However, most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC) retained the flat-Earth model. In the early 4th century BC, Plato wrote about a spherical Earth. By about 330 BC, his former student Aristotle had provided strong empirical evidence for a spherical Earth. Knowledge of the Earth's global shape gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world. By the early period of the Christian Church, the spherical view was widely held, with some notable exceptions. It is a historical myth or modern misconception that medieval ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sea Shanty
A sea shanty, chantey, or chanty () is a genre of traditional Folk music, folk song that was once commonly sung as a work song to accompany rhythmical labor aboard large Merchant vessel, merchant Sailing ship, sailing vessels. The term ''shanty'' most accurately refers to a specific style of work song belonging to this historical Musical repertoire, repertoire. However, in recent, popular usage, the scope of its definition is sometimes expanded to admit a wider range of repertoire and characteristics, or to refer to a "maritime work song" in general. From Latin ''cantare'' via French ''chanter'', the word ''shanty'' emerged in the mid-19th century in reference to an appreciably distinct genre of work song, developed especially on merchant vessels, that had come to prominence in the decades prior to the American Civil War although found before this. Shanty songs functioned to synchronize and thereby optimize labor, in what had then become larger vessels having smaller crews and o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carronade
A carronade is a short, smoothbore, cast-iron cannon which was used by the Royal Navy. It was first produced by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, and was used from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range, anti-ship and anti-crew weapon. The technology behind the carronade was greater dimensional precision, with the shot fitting more closely in the barrel thus transmitting more of the propellant charge's energy to the projectile, allowing a lighter gun using less gunpowder to be effective. Carronades were initially found to be very successful, but they eventually disappeared as naval artillery advanced, with the introduction of rifling and consequent change in the shape of the projectile, exploding shells replacing solid shot, and naval engagements being fought at longer ranges. History The carronade was designed as a short-range naval weapon with a low muzzle velocity for merchant ships, b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Filing Cabinet
A filing cabinet (or sometimes file cabinet in American English) is a piece of office furniture for storing paper documents in file folders. In the most simple context, it is an enclosure for drawers in which items are stored. The two most common forms of filing cabinets are vertical files and lateral files. A vertical file cabinet has drawers that extend from the short side (typically ) of the cabinet. A lateral file cabinet has drawers that extend from the long side (various lengths) of the cabinet. These are also called side filers in Great Britain. There are also shelf files, which go on shelves. In the United States, file cabinets are usually built to accommodate 8.5 × 11 paper, and in other countries, filing cabinets are often designed to hold other sizes of paper, such as A4 paper. Construction Office filing cabinets are typically made of sheet metal or wood. The drawers usually use a drawer slide to facilitate opening the drawer which includes an "outstop" to preven ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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City Of London
The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London from its settlement by the Romans in the 1st century AD to the Middle Ages, but the modern area named London has since grown far beyond the City of London boundary. The City is now only a small part of the metropolis of Greater London, though it remains a notable part of central London. Administratively, the City of London is not one of the London boroughs, a status reserved for the other 32 districts (including Greater London's only other city, the City of Westminster). It is also a separate ceremonial county, being an enclave surrounded by Greater London, and is the smallest ceremonial county in the United Kingdom. The City of London is widely referred to simply as the City (differentiated from the phrase "the city of London" by ca ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pirate Ship
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, vessels used for piracy are pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean civilization, Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Piracy in the Strait of Malacca, Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Piracy off the coast of Somalia, Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. The term ''piracy'' generally refers to maritime piracy, although the term has been generalize ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Edwardian Architecture
Edwardian architecture is a Neo-Baroque architectural style that was popular in the British Empire during the Edwardian era (1901–1910). Architecture up to the year 1914 may also be included in this style. Description Edwardian architecture is generally less ornate than high or late Victorian architecture, apart from a subset – used for major buildings – known as Edwardian Baroque architecture. The Victorian Society campaigns to preserve architecture built between 1837 and 1914, and so includes Edwardian as well as Victorian architecture within its remit. Characteristics The characteristic features of the Edwardian Baroque style were drawn from two main sources: the architecture of France during the 18th century and that of Sir Christopher Wren in England during the 17th—part of the English Baroque (for this reason Edwardian Baroque is sometimes referred to as "Wrenaissance"). Sir Edwin Lutyens was a major exponent, designing many commercial buildings in what he ter ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Firing
Dismissal (also called firing) is the termination of employment by an employer against the will of the employee. Though such a decision can be made by an employer for a variety of reasons, ranging from an economic downturn to performance-related problems on the part of the employee, being fired has a strong stigma in some cultures. To be dismissed, as opposed to quitting voluntarily (or being laid off), is often perceived as being the employee's fault. Finding new employment may often be difficult after being fired, particularly if there is a history of being terminated from a previous job, if the reason for firing is for some serious infraction, or the employee did not keep the job very long. Job seekers will often not mention jobs that they were fired from on their resumes; accordingly, unexplained gaps in employment are often regarded as a red flag. Usage While the main formal term for ending someone's employment is "dismissal", there are a number of colloquial or euphemistic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as '' Londinium'' and retains its medieval boundaries.See also: Independent city § National capitals The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which largely comprises Greater London, governed by the Greater London Authority.The Greater London Authority consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The London Mayor is distinguished fr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Assurance Services
Assurance service is an independent professional service, typically provided by Chartered Accountant, Chartered or Certified Public Accountants or Chartered Certified Accountants, with the goal of improving information or the context of information so that decision makers can make more informed, and presumably better, decisions. Assurance services provide independent and professional opinions that reduce information risk (risk from incorrect information). Definition and distinction from other services The technical definition of assurance requires five components set out in theInternational Framework for Assurance Engagements # A three-party relationship – the responsible party who prepares the information to be assured; the independent practitioner who assures the information; and the users who are expected to rely on the information. In the case of an audit, the responsible party is the management of the company, the practitioner is the audit firm and the users are primarily ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |