Archive.today
Archive.today is an archive site which stores snapshots of web pages. It retrieves one page at a time similar to WebCite, smaller than 50MB each, but with support for modern sites such as Google Maps and Twitter. Archive.is uses headless browsing to record what embedded resources need to be captured to provide a high-quality memento, creates a PNG image to provide a static and non-interactive visualization of the representation. Archive.today can capture individual pages in response to explicit user requests. Since July 2013, archive.is supports the Memento Project application programming interface. Archive.today was founded in 2012. The site branded itself as archive.today, but in May 2015 changed the primary mirror to archive.is. In January 2019, it began to deprecate the archive.is domain in favor of the archive.today mirror. In March 2019 the site was blocked by several Australian internet providers in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shootings in an attempt to limit distribution of the footage of the attack.
According to GreatFire.org, archive.is has been blocked in China since March 2016, archive.li since September 2017, archive.fo since July 2018. On July 21, 2015, the operators blocked access to the service from all Finnish IP addresses, stating on Twitter that they did this in order to avoid escalating a dispute they had with the Finnish government. In Russia, only HTTP access is possible. CloudFlare's 1.1.1.1 does not resolve archive.is domains. Archive.is records only text and images, excluding video, xml and other non-static content. It keeps track of the history of snapshots saved, returning to the user a request for confirmation before adding a new snapshot of an saved Internet address; the research toolbar enables advanced keywords operators. A couple of quotation marks address the search to an exact sequence of keywords present in the title or in the body of the webpage, whereas the insite operator restricts it to a specific Internet domain. Once a web page is archived, it cannot be deleted directly by any Internet user.
Nevertherless, archive.is controls or deletes web pages saved some days before, without any policy or right of discussion and appeal. While saving a dynamic list, archive.is searchbox shows only a result that links the previous and the following section of the list. The other web pages saved are filtered, sometimes may be found by one of their occurrences. Digital preservation Internet Archive Link rot Perma.cc Wayback Machine Web archiving WebCite WP:Link rot Official website "Offline blog"
Buddhism
Buddhism is the world's fourth-largest religion with over 520 million followers, or over 7% of the global population, known as Buddhists. Buddhism encompasses a variety of traditions and spiritual practices based on original teachings attributed to the Buddha and resulting interpreted philosophies. Buddhism originated in ancient India as a Sramana tradition sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, spreading through much of Asia. Two major extant branches of Buddhism are recognized by scholars: Theravada and Mahayana. Most Buddhist traditions share the goal of overcoming suffering and the cycle of death and rebirth, either by the attainment of Nirvana or through the path of Buddhahood. Buddhist schools vary in their interpretation of the path to liberation, the relative importance and canonicity assigned to the various Buddhist texts, their specific teachings and practices. Observed practices include taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, observance of moral precepts, monasticism and the cultivation of the Paramitas.
Theravada Buddhism has a widespread following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia such as Myanmar and Thailand. Mahayana, which includes the traditions of Pure Land, Nichiren Buddhism and Tiantai, is found throughout East Asia. Vajrayana, a body of teachings attributed to Indian adepts, may be viewed as a separate branch or as an aspect of Mahayana Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism, which preserves the Vajrayana teachings of eighth-century India, is practiced in the countries of the Himalayan region and Kalmykia. Buddhism is an Indian religion attributed to the teachings of the Buddha born Siddhārtha Gautama, known as the Tathāgata and Sakyamuni. Early texts have his personal name as "Gautama" or "Gotama" without any mention of "Siddhārtha," which appears to have been a kind of honorific title when it does appear; the details of Buddha's life are mentioned in many Early Buddhist Texts but are inconsistent, his social background and life details are difficult to prove, the precise dates uncertain. The evidence of the early texts suggests that he was born as Siddhārtha Gautama in Lumbini and grew up in Kapilavasthu, a town in the plains region of the modern Nepal-India border, that he spent his life in what is now modern Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Some hagiographic legends state that his father was a king named Suddhodana, his mother was Queen Maya, he was born in Lumbini gardens. However, scholars such as Richard Gombrich consider this a dubious claim because a combination of evidence suggests he was born in the Shakyas community – one that gave him the title Shakyamuni, the Shakya community was governed by a small oligarchy or republic-like council where there were no ranks but where seniority mattered instead; some of the stories about Buddha, his life, his teachings, claims about the society he grew up in may have been invented and interpolated at a time into the Buddhist texts. According to the Buddhist sutras, Gautama was moved by the innate suffering of humanity and its endless repetition due to rebirth, he set out on a quest to end this repeated suffering. Early Buddhist canonical texts and early biographies of Gautama state that Gautama first studied under Vedic teachers, namely Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta, learning meditation and ancient philosophies the concept of "nothingness, emptiness" from the former, "what is neither seen nor unseen" from the latter.
Finding these teachings to be insufficient to attain his goal, he turned to the practice of asceticism. This too fell short of attaining his goal, he turned to the practice of dhyana, which he had discovered in his youth, he famously sat in meditation under a Ficus religiosa tree now called the Bodhi Tree in the town of Bodh Gaya in the Gangetic plains region of South Asia. He gained insight into the workings of karma and his former lives, attained enlightenment, certainty about the Middle Way as the right path of spiritual practice to end suffering from rebirths in Saṃsāra; as a enlightened Buddha, he attracted followers and founded a Sangha. Now, as the Buddha, he spent the rest of his life teaching the Dharma he had discovered, died at the age of 80 in Kushinagar, India. Buddha's teachings were propagated by his followers, which in the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE became over 18 Buddhist sub-schools of thought, each with its own basket of texts containing different interpretations and authentic teachings of the Buddha.
The Four Truths express the basic orientation of Buddhism: we crave and cling to impermanent states and things, dukkha, "incapable of satisfying" and painful. This keeps us caught in saṃsāra, the endless cycle of repeated rebirth and dying again, but there is a way to liberation from this endless cycle to the state of nirvana, namely following the Noble Eightfold Path. The truth of dukkha is the basic insight that life in this mundane world, with its clinging and craving to impermanent states and things is dukkha, unsatisfactory. Dukkha can be translated as "incapable of satisfying," "the unsatisfactory nature and the general insecurity of all conditioned phenomena". Dukkha is most translated as "suffering," but this is inaccurate, since it refers not to episodic suffering, but to the intrinsically unsat
Swiss Reformed Church
The Swiss Reformed Church is the Reformed branch of Protestantism in Switzerland started in Zürich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basel, Bern, St. Gallen, to cities in southern Germany and via Alsace to France. Switzerland is the birthplace of the Reformed tradition as it was Zwingli who first preached it in 1519. Since 1920, the Swiss Reformed Churches have been organized in 26 member churches of the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches; as of 2017, 2,150,387 people are registered members of a Reformed cantonal church. The Reformation spread into the cities of Switzerland, composed of loosely connected cantons. Breakthrough began in the 1520s in Zurich under Zwingli, in Bern in 1528 under Berchtold Haller, in Basel in 1529 under Johannes Oecolampadius. After the early death of Zwingli in 1531, the Reformation continued; the French-speaking cities Neuchâtel and Lausanne changed to the Reformation ten years under William Farel and John Calvin coming from France. The Zwingli and Calvin branches had each their theological distinctions, but in 1549 under the lead of Bullinger and Calvin they came to a common agreement in the Consensus Tigurinus, 1566 in the Second Helvetic Confession.
The German Reformed ideological center was Zurich, the French speaking Reformed movement bastion was Geneva. A distinctive feature of the Swiss Reformed churches in the Zwinglian tradition is their almost symbiotic link to the state, only loosening in the present. In cities where the Reformed faith became leading theology, several confessions were written, some of them: The 67 Articles of Zurich Theses of Berne 1528 Berne Synodus 1532 Confession of Geneva 1537 Second Helvetic Confession written by Bullinger in 1566In the mid 19th century, opposition to liberal theology and interventions by the state led to secessions in several cantonal churches. One of these secessionist churches still exists today, the Evangelical Free Church of Geneva, founded in 1849, while a couple of others have reunited with the Swiss Reformed Church in 1943 and 1966. An important issue to liberal theologians was the Apostles' Creed, they questioned its binding character. This caused a heated debate; until the late 1870s, most cantonal reformed churches stopped prescribing any particular creed.
In 1920 the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches, with 24 member churches — 22 cantonal churches and 2 free churches, was formed to serve as a legal umbrella before the federal government and represent the church in international relations. Like many European Protestant denominations, several of the Swiss Reformed churches have welcomed gay and lesbian members to celebrate their civil unions within a church context; as early as 1999, the Reformed Churches in St. Gallen and Lucerne had permitted prayer and celebration services for same-sex couples to recognize their civil unions. Since the Reformed Church in Aargau has allowed for prayer services to celebrate same-sex couples. To date, seven other Swiss Reformed churches, including Bern-Jura-Solothurn, Graubünden, Ticino, Vaud, Zürich, have allowed prayer or blessing services for same-sex civil unions. Organizationally, the Reformed Churches in Switzerland remain cantonal units; the German churches are more in the Zwinglian tradition. They are governed synodically and their relation to the respective canton ranges from independent to close collaboration, depending on historical developments.
Reformed Churches in the Swiss cantons: Reformed Church of Aargau Evangelical-Reformed Church of Appenzell Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton Basel-Landschaft Evangelical-Reformed Church of the Canton Basel-Stadt Reformed Churches of the Canton Bern-Jura-Solothurn Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton Freiburg Protestant Church of Geneva Evangelical Free Church of Geneva Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Glarus Evangelical Reformed Church of Graubünden Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Lucerne Reformed Church of the Canton of Neuchâtel Evangelical-Reformed Church of Nidwalen Association of Evangelical Reformed Churches in the Canton of Obwalden Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of St. Gallen Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Schaffhausen Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Schwyz Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Solothurn Evangelical Reformed Church of Ticino Evangelical Church of the Canton of Thurgau Evangelical Reformed Church of Uri Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Vaud Evangelical Reformed Church in Valais Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Zürich Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Zug
Historical Dictionary of Switzerland
The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland is an encyclopedia on the history of Switzerland that aims to take into account the results of modern historical research in a manner accessible to a broader audience. The encyclopedia is published by a foundation under the patronage of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Swiss Historical Society and is financed by national research grants. Besides a staff of 35 at the central offices, the contributors include 100 academic advisors, 2500 historians and 100 translators; the encyclopedia is being edited in three national languages of Switzerland: German and Italian. The first of 13 volumes was published in 2002; the last volume was published in 2014. The 36,000 headings are grouped in: Biographies Articles on families and genealogy Articles on places Subject articles The on-line edition has been available since 1998, it makes accessible, for free, but no illustrations. It lists all 36,000 topics that are to be covered. Lexicon Istoric Retic is a two volume version with a selection of articles published in Romansh.
It includes articles not available in the other languages. The first volume was published in 2010, the second in 2012. An on-line version is available. Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, Schwabe AG, Basel, ISBN 3-7965-1900-8 Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse, Editions Gilles Attinger, Hauterive, ISBN 2-88256-133-4 Dizionario storico della Svizzera, Armando Dadò editore, Locarno, ISBN 88-8281-100-X Lexicon Istoric Retic, Kommissionsverlag Desertina, Chur, ISBN 978-3-85637-390-0, ISBN 978-3-85637-391-7 Media related to Historical Dictionary of Switzerland at Wikimedia Commons DHS/HLS/DSS online edition in German and Italian Lexicon Istoric Retic online edition in Romansh
Coat of arms
A coat of arms is a heraldic visual design on an escutcheon, surcoat, or tabard. The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central element of the full heraldic achievement which in its whole consists of shield, supporters and motto. A coat of arms is traditionally unique to an individual person, state, organization or corporation; the Roll of Arms is a collection of many coats of arms, since the early Modern Age centuries it has been a source of information for public showing and tracing the membership of a noble family, therefore its genealogy across time. The ancient Greek hoplites used individual insignia on their shields; the ancient Romans used similar insignia on their shields. Heraldic designs came into general use among western nobility in the 12th century. Systematic, heritable heraldry had developed by the beginning of the 13th century. Who had a right to use arms, by law or social convention, varied to some degree between countries. Early heraldic designs were personal. Arms become hereditary by the end of the 12th century, in England by King Richard I during the Third Crusade.
Burgher arms are used in Northern Italy in the second half of the 13th century, in the Holy Roman Empire by the mid 14th century. In the late medieval period, use of arms spread to the clergy, to towns as civic identifiers, to royally chartered organizations such as universities and trading companies; the arts of vexillology and heraldry are related. The term coat of arms itself in origin refers to the surcoat with heraldic designs worn by combattants in the knightly tournament, in Old French cote a armer; the sense is transferred to the heraldic design itself in the mid-14th century. Despite no widespread regulation, heraldry has remained consistent across Europe, where tradition alone has governed the design and use of arms; some nations, like England and Scotland, still maintain the same heraldic authorities which have traditionally granted and regulated arms for centuries and continue to do so in the present day. In England, for example, the granting of arms has been controlled by the College of Arms.
Unlike seals and other general emblems, heraldic "achievements" have a formal description called a blazon, which uses vocabulary that allows for consistency in heraldic depictions. In the present day, coats of arms are still in use by a variety of institutions and individuals: for example, many European cities and universities have guidelines on how their coats of arms may be used, protect their use as trademarks. Many societies exist that aid in the design and registration of personal arms. Heraldry has been compared to modern corporate logos; the French system of heraldry influenced the British and Western European systems. Much of the terminology and classifications are taken from it. However, with the fall of the French monarchy there is not a Fons Honorum to enforce heraldic law; the French Republics that followed have either affirmed pre-existing titles and honors or vigorously opposed noble privilege. Coats of arms are considered an intellectual property of municipal body. Assumed arms are considered valid unless they can be proved in court to copy that of an earlier holder.
In the heraldic traditions of England and Scotland, an individual, rather than a family, had a coat of arms. In those traditions coats of arms are legal property transmitted from father to son. Undifferenced arms are used only by one person at any given time. Other descendants of the original bearer could bear the ancestral arms only with some difference: a colour change or the addition of a distinguishing charge. One such charge is the label, which in British usage is now always the mark of an heir apparent or an heir presumptive; because of their importance in identification in seals on legal documents, the use of arms was regulated. This has been carried out by heralds and the study of coats of arms is therefore called "heraldry". In time, the use of arms spread from military entities to educational institutes, other establishments. In Scotland, the Lord Lyon King of Arms has criminal jurisdiction to control the use of arms. In England, Northern Ireland and Wales the use of arms is a matter of civil law and regulated by the College of Arms and the High Court of Chivalry.
In reference to a dispute over the exercise of authority over the Officers of Arms in England, Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Anglesey, Lord Privy Seal, declared on 16 June 1673 that the powers of the Earl Marshal were "to order and determine all matters touching arms, ensigns of nobility and chivalry. It was further declared that no patents of arms or any ensigns of nobility should be granted and no augmentation, alteration, or addition should be made to arms without the consent of the Earl Marshal. In Ireland the usage and granting of coats of arms was regulated by the Ulster King of Arms from the office's creation in 1552. After Irish independence in 1922 the office was still working out of Dublin Castle; the last Ulster King of Arm
Voter turnout
Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election. Eligibility varies by country, the voting-eligible population should not be confused with the total adult population. Age and citizenship status are among the criteria used to determine eligibility, but some countries further restrict eligibility based on sex, race, or religion. After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1980s. In general, low turnout is attributed to indifference, or a sense of futility. According to Stanford University political scientists Adam Bonica and Michael McFaul, there is a consensus among political scientists that "democracies perform better when more people vote."Low turnout is considered to be undesirable. As a result, there have been many efforts to increase voter turnout and encourage participation in the political process. In spite of significant study into the issue, scholars are divided on the reasons for the decline.
Its cause has been attributed to a wide array of economic, cultural and institutional factors. Different countries have different voter turnout rates. For example, turnout in the United States 2012 presidential election was about 55%. In both Belgium, which has obligatory attendance, Malta, which does not, participation reaches about 95%. In Belgium there is obligatory attendance, misinterpreted as compulsory voting The chance of any one vote determining the outcome is low; some studies show that a single vote in a voting scheme such as the Electoral College in the United States has an lower chance of determining the outcome. Other studies claim that the Electoral College increases voting power. Studies using game theory, which takes into account the ability of voters to interact, have found that the expected turnout for any large election should be zero; the basic formula for determining whether someone will vote, on the questionable assumption that people act rationally, is P B + D > C, where P is the probability that an individual's vote will affect the outcome of an election, B is the perceived benefit that would be received if that person's favored political party or candidate were elected, D stood for democracy or civic duty, but today represents any social or personal gratification an individual gets from voting, C is the time and financial cost involved in voting.
Since P is zero in most elections, PB is near zero, D is thus the most important element in motivating people to vote. For a person to vote, these factors must outweigh C. Experimental political science has found that when P is greater than zero, this term has no effect on voter turnout. Enos and Fowler conducted a field experiment that exploits the rare opportunity of a tied election for major political office. Informing citizens that the special election to break the tie will be close has little mobilizing effect on voter turnout. Riker and Ordeshook developed the modern understanding of D, they listed five major forms of gratification that people receive for voting: complying with the social obligation to vote. Other political scientists have since added other motivators and questioned some of Riker and Ordeshook's assumptions. All of these concepts are inherently imprecise, making it difficult to discover why people choose to vote. Several scholars have considered the possibility that B includes not only a personal interest in the outcome, but a concern for the welfare of others in the society.
In particular, experiments in which subject altruism was measured using a dictator game showed that concern for the well-being of others is a major factor in predicting turnout and political participation. Note that this motivation is distinct from D, because voters must think others benefit from the outcome of the election, not their act of voting in and of itself. There are philosophical and practical reasons that some people cite for not voting in electoral politics. Robert LeFevre, Francis Tandy, John Pugsley, Frank Chodorov, George H. Smith, Carl Watner, Wendy McElroy, Lysander Spooner are some moderately well-known authors who have written about these reasons. High voter turnout is considered to be desirable, though among political scientists and economists specializing in public choice, the issue is still debated. A high turnout is seen as evidence of the legitimacy of the current system. Dictators have fabricated high turnouts in showcase elections for this purpose. For instance, Saddam Hussein's 2002 plebiscite was claimed to have had 100% participation.
Opposition parties sometimes boycott votes they feel are unfair or illegitimate, or if the election is for a government, considered illegitimate. For example, the Holy See instructed Italian Catholics to boycott national elections for several decades after the creation of the state of Italy. In some countries, there are threats of violence against those who vote, such as during the 2005 Iraq elections, an example of voter suppression. However, some political scientists question the view that high turnout is an implicit endorsement of the system. Mark
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