"Home nation" (common noun) redirects here; home nation is also used to refer to the host country of multi-sport events (eg. the Olympics), or other international sports championships.
Home Nations (often written as the common noun home nations) is a term used to refer to the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — collectively but as separate entities, distinct from the United Kingdom as a state.

Sporting events
The term is often used when referring to sporting events in which each Home Nation competes separately, such as the now defunct British Home Championship in football. When the term came into use is not known, but it is fair to assume that before the partition of Ireland into the still-British Northern Ireland and the independent Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland) in 1922, all of Ireland was considered to be a Home Nation (as all of it was part of the UK). This traditional usage is still seen today in the context of sports such as rugby union; the Ireland national rugby union team represents both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It is still common in Britain and elsewhere, for the team to be referred to as a Home Nation team. Examples of such usage can also be found in the media in the Republic of Ireland

Harold Newhouser (May 20, 1921 – November 10, 1998) was a professional Major League Baseball pitcher of the 1940s and 1950s.
Newhouser was a schoolboy star in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan, signed by the hometown Detroit Tigers in 1939 at the age of 18. He went up to the major league club before the end of the season and made his debut on September 29 of that year. In 1940, he earned a spot on the Tigers out of spring training and remained with the team until 1953.
In his first two full big-league seasons, the young left-hander was plagued with control problems, walking more batters than he struck out while posting records of 9-9 and 9-11. He improved in 1942 and 1943, posting excellent ERAs, but still losing more than he won on a team with a weak offense.
As World War II got under way, the Tigers moved up in the standings because several of their top players, including Newhouser, were classified as 4-F (ineligible to the drafted). Newhouser was 4-F due to a leaky heart valve; he attempted to join the service anyway but was turned down several times.
He blossomed all at once in 1944, becoming a dominant pitcher in wartime baseball. That season, Newhouser rang up a 29-9 record while leading the league in wins and strikeouts (187). His 2.22 ERA was second in the league, as were his 25 complete games and six shutouts. Not coincidentally, the Tigers jumped into contention, finishing second in the American League. Newhouser ended the season by being named MVP.
In 1945, he repeated as MVP with what was arguably an even better season. This time, he won the pitcher's Triple Crown, leading the American League in wins (25, against nine losses), ERA (1.81) and strikeouts (212). He also led the league in innings pitched, games started, complete games and shutouts. Newhouser pitched four innings of relief on the season's final day as Detroit rallied for the pennant. He then won two games in the World Series to help his team to the World Championship, including the deciding seventh game.
A year later, many stars came back from the war, and critics predicted that Newhouser wouldn't be as dominant against the "real" major leaguers. But he proved his 1944-45 performance was legitimate by duplicating it in 1946. He went 26-9 with a 1.94 ERA, again leading the league in wins and ERA. He didn't win a third MVP, but he was close, finishing a close second to Ted Williams.
Newhouser continued to rate among the game's best pitchers for the next five years. He won 17 games in 1947, led the AL with 21 wins in 1948 and rung up an 18-11 mark in 1949. After a 15-13 season in 1950, he hurt his arm and his workload was cut significantly.
After being released by the Tigers following the 1953 season, Newhouser signed on with the powerful Cleveland Indians and was their top long reliever in 1954, when Cleveland won the pennant. In his final big-league hurrah, he posted a 7-2 mark with an excellent 2.54 ERA, and got to pitch in his second World Series.
He ended his career with a record of 207-150 and a 3.06 ERA, marks well in line with many baseball Hall of Fame pitchers. In fact, he is the only pitcher ever to win two consecutive MVP awards. But he was passed over for decades because voters discounted his wartime records. But in the late 1980s, the tide turned and more attention was focused on his outstanding record in the five years after the war ended. Finally, in 1992, he was chosen for the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
After retirement, Newhouser worked as a scout for the Houston Astros, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, and the Tigers: while with the Astros, Newhouser was credited with discovering Derek Jeter; however, the Astros passed on Jeter, taking Phil Nevin instead. He had also discovered, as a scout with the Orioles, a Detroit high schooler named Milt Pappas, who would win 209 games in his career—two more than Newhouser, and Dean Chance, of Wooster, Ohio. who would also have a long career. The Tigers retired his number 16 in 1997, and he died a year later following a long illness.

Detroit Tigers (1939-1953)
Cleveland Indians (1954-1955)
American League MVP in 1944 & 1945
American League Pitching Triple Crown: 1945
7-time American League All-Star
Led American League in wins 4 times
Led American League in ERA twice
Led American League in strikeouts twice

The Mighty Boosh is a British cult comedy about two friends who go on magical adventures. It appeared initially as a series of stage shows, then a BBC radio series and subsequently a BBC Three TV series. The Mighty Boosh was created by Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, who play Howard Moon and Vince Noir respectively. Both series have now aired on SBS Australia and Finland's YLE Extra channel. Series one has aired on BBC America, Swedish channel ZTV, Danish channel DR 2, Portuguese channel RTP2 and New Zealand music channel C4 (TV channel).
The stage show has no strict setting, but the radio series and first television series are based around a zoo called Bob Fossil's Funworld and later The Zooniverse. Though the episodes would invariably begin and end in the zoo, the main characters would tend to leave the zoo for more bizarre realms, such as the arctic tundra and limbo. The second series had an even looser setting, based in a flat in Dalston. Fielding and Barratt are currently working on a third series to be aired in November 2007 , which will be set in a shop owned by Naboo, who is played by Noel Fielding's brother, Michael. It was recently revealed in NME Magazine that Garage Rock band The Horrors would be appearing in the third series, along with Razorlight.

Characters
Howard Moon (Julian Barratt) is one of the two main characters of The Mighty Boosh. He is insecure, awkward, uptight and pretentious, and claims to be a professional in music, acting, poetry, novel writing, and photography. Although confident in his ability, he is usually shown to be incompetent in these areas. He has a passion for jazz and jazz-funk fusion.

Howard Moon
Vince Noir (Noel Fielding) is the other main character. Unlike Howard, Vince is laid back, well-loved by the rest of the characters and takes pride in his appearance to the point of narcissism. His favourite feature is clearly his hair (a prominent motif throughout the series, as are mirrors), and he is determined to keep up with the latest fashions as defined within each show. Because of his fabulous hair and "glam", androgynous appearance, Vince is repeatedly mistaken for a woman in both television series. He also has many nicknames including the King of Mods and the Shoreditch Vampire. He can also talk to animals, thus making him a gifted zoo keeper.

Vince Noir
American Bob Fossil (Rich Fulcher) is the ill-tempered, eccentric owner of Bob Fossil's Funworld in the radio series and head-zookeeper of The Zooniverse in the television series (with Dixon Bainbridge as the owner). He gives the appearance of being in love with Bainbridge. He often shows affection towards Vince and hatred towards Howard, however on many occasions shows disdain for both of them apart from when he reminds Howard of their times of "violent love". He does not know any of the correct names of the animals and refers to them through obscure names e.g. "bear" (which Fossil regards as the Latin term) a "Russian carpet guy" and a python a "windy man" or "long mover" The elephant "the grey leg face man" and the pandas are "the Chinese guys who eat sticks." During the memorial service for Howard Moon, Fossil is unable to remember the word "gorilla" and is forced to use a cassette recorder to insert the word into his speech.

Bob Fossil
Bollo (Peter Elliott for television series 1, Dave Brown for television series 2 and the radio series) is a gorilla that leaves the zoo to become a DJ and lives in a flat with Howard, Vince and Naboo. He is Naboo's incompetent Familiar; although he predicts trouble, he rarely gets anything else right, and often inadvertently reveals Naboo's magical secrets to Howard and Vince. He dies in the episode named Bollo, but returns in the next episode. In Fountain of Youth, Bollo reveals to Vince that he is actually forty years old, but because he is a DJ, he says that he is twenty-nine. In the radio-series he is referred to as a "hundred-year-old ape". As a running gag, whenever Vince and Howard are about to get in trouble (as in every episode) he says, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Bollo
Naboo (Michael Fielding) is a shaman, and is friends with Vince and Howard. In the first series, he works in the Zooniverse's fortune telling kiosk. In the second series, he lives with Howard, Vince and Bollo in a flat in London, though still maintains his shamanic pursuits. Fielding's character is typically deadpan in humour. He regularly rescues Vince and Howard from dire situations. Although often relied on to sort out their problems, Naboo is always stoned and often seen smoking a hookah. He often maintains he will one day go and work in Dixons. Naboo is also known for turning his back on you as a punishment.

Naboo
Vince: Are you really a ghost? That is genius... [pokes Howard roughly in the chest] Howard: What're you doing? Vince: Sorry, I thought I could put my hand through you. Howard: No, we spent all the budget on your hair, remember? Vince: Sorry about that. [leering at camera] It is looking good.

Vince and Howard make little effort to hide that The Mighty Boosh is a production with budget constraints (though the budget itself is not negligible). For example, in Bollo, when Howard is supposedly haunting Vince from beyond the grave:
Much of the artwork created by Noel Fielding for the series features Polo mints in some form or another. This ranges from appearances as graphics (in the opening credits the show's logo is displayed amidst a field of swirling polos) or as subtle addition costumes e.g. the hitcher has a polo mint for one eye. Also, in Bollo, the Ape of Death and his minions appear to be wearing large polos as part of their outfits. Polos can also be seen around the masks of the shaman in Killeroo, and on the performance outfits of the band 'Kraftwerk Orange' in Electro. As well as this, in an episode in the second series, entitled The Call of The Yeti, the characters wear face paint resembling mint polos. The 'Yeti's also have eyes that resemble the popular sweet.
Both Vince and Howard are shown to have very distinct musical tastes. Howard takes pride in being a multi-instrumentalist with a passion for jazz since his youth. This is in contrast to Vince's taste for more contemporary, yet pre-1990s genres such as electronic or rock-based music, particularly Gary Numan. He is supposed to have converted many of the animals into fans of this artist. Youth subcultures associated with these styles of music are also touched upon, with the two leading characters often trying to cast themselves into certain stereotypes (goth, mod, rocker, et cetera), sometimes to attract members of the opposite sex.
Mrs. Gideon (played by Victoria Wicks) is the centre of Howard's failing love life. However hard he tries, Vince always seems to get far more attention and recognition than him. This comes to a climax when, after returning Mrs. Gideon's prize python, Tony, she cannot remember Howard's name, despite his having worked there for "10 years". Vince has to hold up a giant placard with "HOWARD" scrawled on it to aid her memory. A character in the radio series, Graham the security guard, had similar trouble remembering who Howard was, and denied him access to the zoo as he did not believe he worked there in the episode Stolen. However, this is apparently because Graham has a poor memory anyway, later being unable to identify himself in a photograph, whereas Mrs. Gideon only has problems remembering Howard.
The show has had a few particularly memorable moments when inanimate objects in a scene have been replaced by a person dressed as the object, personifying it. A character tells the others to "gather round" so he can inform them of something, and all characters will lean in, including a prop from the scene, now replaced by an actor dressed to resemble the prop. The 'prop' is then told to go away again. The line heard runs similar to "Gather round everyone... Not you, naan bread." and "Gather round everyone... Not you, fire."
Vince has sometimes helped a supporting character in some way or another and as a show of their thanks they give him a horn to blow in case he is in danger. When he uses the horn, they are preoccupied in an odd manner. For example, "Sandstorm" in the series 2 episode The Fountain of Youth, is seen masturbating to pictures in DIY catalogues when Vince sounds his horn. In the series 1 episode The Hitcher, Bryan Ferry cannot hear the horn over his hoovering.
Vince is often mistaken for a woman due to his somewhat androgynous appearance. Dixon refers to the pair as "Howard Moon and his ugly girlfriend" and Kodiak Jack refers to Vince as a "young, nubile princess", while the Ape of Death believes Vince is Howard's wife. Within the second series, the characters played by Rich Fulcher often take an interest in Vince, believing him to be a woman. In The Legend of Old Gregg, Fulcher's Fisherman constantly remarks on how pretty he thinks Vince is.
Howard is often mistaken for Vince's father. In the live stage show, Vince opens a fan-letter that reads "Dear Vince, I think you are so amazing and brilliant, and your hair is so big and tall and nice and I really like you. The only thing is, is why do have to have your dad in the show?" Also, in The Fountain of Youth, a clip shows Vince and Howard as children in school, but Vince appears to be 10 years old and Howard still looks around 40. Another boy asks Vince "Is that your dad?", to which Howard angrily replies "We're the same age!".
Whenever faced with life-threatening danger, Howard often says "Don't kill me, I've got so much to give!". Faced with similar danger, characters played by Rich Fulcher often say "A little to the left!"
Vince's friend Leroy is often mentioned, but never actually seen. In Electro, he and Vince have a GlamFolk band, but both are in such thick makeup, Leroy can't be seen. In Mutants, he takes Howard's light blue trousers and Howard walks off to remonstrate, but again he is not seen by the audience.
Howard often finds himself in trouble, and Vince comes to rescue him. Vince finds his way out of problems with ease, and "falls on his feet", while Howard when faced with danger becomes scared and desperate. This is joked about in Hitcher, when Vince tells Bryan Ferry "thats kinda how the show works". Recurring themes

History

Stage shows

Main article: The Mighty Boosh (1998 Stage show) The Mighty Boosh

Main article: Arctic Boosh (1999 Stage show) Arctic Boosh

Main article: Autoboosh (2000 Stage show) Autoboosh

Main article: The Mighty Boosh (2006 Stage show) The Mighty Boosh

Main article: The Mighty Boosh (Radio series) Radio series

Television series

Main article: List of The Mighty Boosh episodes Episode List
The title of the show apparently comes from a comment Noel heard about his brother's (Michael Fielding) hair by a Portuguese friend.

Awards

The show credits as executive producers comedians Steve Coogan and Henry Normal, the owners of the producing company Baby Cow Productions. Steve Coogan had also expressed interest to guest star in the episode 'The Call of the Yeti' of the Mighty Boosh as the character of Kodiak Jack as revealed by the audio commentary, however Barratt and Fielding had to decline as the character had been promised to Rich Fulcher.
Fielding's parents have both had parts in the television show. Noel's mother played a witch on the board of shamans (along with Barratt's father who played another member of the board), while his father played Chris de Burgh. Fielding's father also appeared on Vince's t-shirt throughout the season one episode 'Hitcher'.
Also a member of the board of Shamans, was Noel's six year old cousin, who plays Kirk, described by Saboo as 'an erotic adventurer of the most deranged kind'. This line was an improvisation by Richard Ayoade playing Saboo. In the DVD commentary Noel Fielding proudly states that his cousin responded well to the improvisations, and also that he feels he may have created a 'luvvie' because the child has now joined a drama club.
In the first episode of Series One ("Killeroo"), the opening part of the Dies Irae from Mozart's Requiem is played when Howard appears to be losing the boxing match. When he falls to the ground, the opening of the last chorus from Bach's St. Matthew Passion is played.
The official fanclub members are known as Modwolves, in reference to characters from the 'Jungle' episode in series one.
In 'The Priest and the Beast' (series 2), Razorlight and Roger Daltrey guest star.
In 'Electro' (series 1) and 'Nanageddon' (series 2), Sue Denim and Dee Plume of Robots In Disguise guest star.
In 'Call of the Yeti' (Season Two) IAMX singer Chris Corner can be seen on the front cover of one of the "Cheekbone" issues.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Charlie Musselwhite (born January 31, 1944 in Kosciusko, Mississippi) is an American blues-harp player and bandleader, one of the non-African-American bluesmen who came to prominence in the early 1960s, along with Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield. Though he has often been identified as a "white bluesman", he claims Native American and Thai heritage.

Childhood
In true bluesman fashion, Musselwhite then took off in search of the rumored "big-paying factory jobs" up the "Hillbilly Highway", legendary Highway 51 to Chicago, where he continued his education on the South Side, making the acquaintance of even more legends including Lew Soloff, Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson, Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and Big Walter Horton. Musselwhite immersed himself completely in the musical life, living in the basement of, and occasionally working at Jazz Record Mart (the record store operated by Delmark Records founder Bob Koester) with Big Joe Williams and working as a driver for an exterminator, which allowed him to observe what was happening around the city's clubs and bars. He spent his time hanging out at the Jazz Record Mart at the corner of State and Grand and the nearby bar, Mr. Joe's, with the city's blues musicians, and sitting in with Big Joe Williams and others in the clubs, playing for tips. There he forged a lifelong friendship with John Lee Hooker; though Hooker lived in Detroit, Michigan, the two often visiting each other, and Hooker serving as best man at Musselwhite's wedding. Gradually Musselwhite became well known around town.
In time, Musselwhite led his own blues band, and, after Elektra Records' success with Paul Butterfield, he released the classic
His past two albums, Sanctuary and Delta Hardware have both been released on Real World Records.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

William Babcock Hazen (September 27, 1830 – January 16, 1887) was a career U.S. Army officer who served in the Indian Wars, as a Union general in the American Civil War, and as Chief Signal Officer of the U.S. Army. His most famous service was defending "Hell's Half Acre" at the Battle of Stones River in 1862.

Civil War
As the U.S. Army was drawn down following the war, Hazen was redesignated as colonel of the 38th U.S. Infantry in July 1866 and transferred to the 6th U.S. Infantry in March 1869. He served primarily on the Western frontier, but also visited Europe as an observer during the Franco-Prussian War. He offered testimony in one of the procurement corruption scandals that rocked the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, which resulted in the resignation of Grant's Secretary of War, William W. Belknap.
On December 15, 1880, President Rutherford B. Hayes promoted Hazen to brigadier general and appointed him Chief Signal Officer of the U.S. Army, a post he held until his death. One of the duties of the U.S. Army Signal Corps at the time was the management of the Weather Service and Hazen came under indirect criticism for the government's lack of response to the distress of the 1881 Alaska expedition under Lieutenant Adolphus Greely.
Hazen married Mildred McLean, daughter of Washington McLean, the owner of The Washington Post.
Hazen died in Washington, D.C., and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Hazen Bay in Alaska is named in his honor.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

An analytic language is any language where syntax and meaning are shaped more by use of particles and word order than by inflection. The opposite of an analytic language is a synthetic language.
A related, often-confused concept is that of an isolating language. An isolating language is any language where the vast majority of morphemes are free morphemes and are considered to be full-fledged "words". The degree of isolation is defined by the morphemes-per-word ratio. By contrast, in a synthetic language, words are composed of agglutinated or fused morphemes that denote their syntactic meanings.

Features of analytic languages
Analytic languages often express abstract concepts using independent words, while synthetic languages tend to use adpositions, affixes and internal modifications of roots for the same purpose.
Analytic languages have stricter and more elaborate syntactic rules. Since words are not marked by morphology showing their role in the sentence, word order tends to carry a lot of importance; for example, Chinese and English make use of word order to show subject-object relationship. Chinese also uses word order to show definiteness (where English uses "the" and "a"), topic-comment relationships, the role of adverbs (whether they are descriptive or contrastive), and so on.
Analytic languages tend to rely heavily on context and pragmatic considerations for the interpretation of sentences, since they don't specify as much as synthetic languages in terms of agreement and cross-reference between different parts of the sentence.
Chinese (of all varieties) is perhaps the best-known analytic language. To illustrate:
As can be seen, each syllable (or sometimes two) corresponds to a single concept; comparing the Chinese to the English translation, one sees that while English itself is still fairly isolating, it contains synthetic features, such as the bound morpheme -/s/ to mark either possession (in the form of a clitic) or number (in the form of a suffix). Further, note that the English verb is independently conjugated into a tense ("will make") indicating that the action will happen in the future. In contrast, the Chinese verb (zuò) is not inflected, and relies on other words to indicate tense (in this case the words míngtīan [tomorrow] and hui [will]).
"zuò" (do) remains the same in the present tense:
Outside of China, the majority of mainland Southeast Asian languages are analytic languages with the exception of Malay. Mainland Southeast Asia is home to much of eastern Asia's analytic language families including Tibeto-Burman, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien and Mon-Khmer. Even some Malayo-Polynesian languages such as Cham are more analytic than the rest of their respective family. Burmese, Thai, Khmer, Lao and Vietnamese are all major analytic languages spoken in mainland southeast Asia.
When compared with a synthetic language, such as German, the contrast becomes clear:
Note that the morpheme "der" corresponds to four separate concepts simultaneously, and the morpheme "die" refers to three concepts (German does not distinguish gender in the plural), but the rules relating "der" and "die" in this manner are quite arbitrary, making this set of morphemes fusional in nature. It is worth mentioning that both "der" and "die" can function as a feminine singular definite article, depending on the grammatical case. Furthermore, the word "Männer" corresponds to two concepts and relates to "Mann" through both the plural marker /-er/ and a process of umlaut that changes "a" to "ä" in many German plurals. Thus, the formation of German plurals is a simple, rule-governed inflectional pattern.
As a result, German can be said to lie between the agglutinative and fusional areas of the spectrum of linguistic typology.

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