1.
Burbank, California
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Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States,12 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The population at the 2010 census was 103,340, Entertainment, Nickelodeon Animation Studios, NBC, Cartoon Network Studios with the West Coast branch of Cartoon Network, and Insomniac Games. The city is home to Bob Hope Airport. Burbank consists of two areas, a downtown/foothill section, in the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains. Burbank is the easternmost city in the San Fernando Valley, Burbanks neighbor, Glendale, is the westernmost city in the San Gabriel Valley. The city was referred to as Beautiful Downtown Burbank on Laugh-In, the city was named after David Burbank, a New Hampshire-born dentist and entrepreneur who established a sheep ranch there in 1867. Historically, this area was the scene of a skirmish which resulted in the unseating of the Spanish Governor of California. Remnants of the battle reportedly were found many years later in the vicinity of Warner Bros. Studio when residents dug up cannonballs, by 1876, the San Fernando Valley became the largest wheat-raising area in Los Angeles County. But the droughts of the 1860s and 1870s underlined the need for water supplies. A professionally trained dentist, Dr. Burbank began his career in Waterville and he joined the great migration westward in the early 1850s and, by 1853 was living in San Francisco. At the time the American Civil War broke out he was well established in his profession as a dentist in Pueblo de Los Angeles. In 1867, he purchased Rancho La Providencia from David W. Alexander and Francis Mellus, Dr. Burbanks property reached nearly 9,200 acres at a cost of $9,000. Dr. Burbank wouldnt acquire full titles to both properties until after a decision known as the Great Partition was made in 1871 dissolving the Rancho San Rafael. Dr. Burbank also later owned the Burbank Theatre, which opened on November 27,1893, though the theater was intended to be an opera house, instead it staged plays and became known nationally. The theatre featured famous actors of the time including Fay Bainter and Marjorie Rambeau, when the area that became Burbank was settled in the 1870s and 1880s, the streets were aligned along what is now Olive Avenue, the road to the Cahuenga Pass and downtown Los Angeles. These were largely the roads the Indians traveled and the settlers took their produce down to Los Angeles to sell. At the time, the primary long-distance transportation methods available to San Fernando Valley residents were stagecoach, stagecoaching between Los Angeles and San Francisco through the Valley began in 1858
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
Actor
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An actor is a person who portrays a character in a performance. Simplistically speaking, the person denominated actor or actress is someone beautiful who plays important characters, the actor performs in the flesh in the traditional medium of the theatre, or in modern mediums such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is ὑποκριτής, literally one who answers, the actors interpretation of their role pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. Interpretation occurs even when the actor is playing themselves, as in forms of experimental performance art, or, more commonly, to act, is to create. Formerly, in societies, only men could become actors. When used for the stage, women played the roles of prepubescent boys. The etymology is a derivation from actor with ess added. However, when referring to more than one performer, of both sexes, actor is preferred as a term for male performers. Actor is also used before the name of a performer as a gender-specific term. Within the profession, the re-adoption of the term dates to the 1950–1960s. As Whoopi Goldberg put it in an interview with the paper, Im an actor – I can play anything. The U. K. performers union Equity has no policy on the use of actor or actress, an Equity spokesperson said that the union does not believe that there is a consensus on the matter and stated that the. subject divides the profession. In 2009, the Los Angeles Times stated that Actress remains the term used in major acting awards given to female recipients. However, player remains in use in the theatre, often incorporated into the name of a group or company, such as the American Players. Also, actors in improvisational theatre may be referred to as players, prior to Thespis act, Grecian stories were only expressed in song, dance, and in third person narrative. In honor of Thespis, actors are commonly called Thespians, the exclusively male actors in the theatre of ancient Greece performed in three types of drama, tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play. Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under the Romans, as the Western Roman Empire fell into decay through the 4th and 5th centuries, the seat of Roman power shifted to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. Records show that mime, pantomime, scenes or recitations from tragedies and comedies, dances, from the 5th century, Western Europe was plunged into a period of general disorder
4.
American Broadcasting Company
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The network is headquartered on Columbus Avenue and West 66th Street in Manhattan, New York City. There are additional offices and production facilities elsewhere in New York City, as well as in Los Angeles and Burbank. Since 2007, when ABC Radio was sold to Citadel Broadcasting, ABC originally launched on October 12,1943, as a radio network, separated from and serving as the successor to the NBC Blue Network, which had been purchased by Edward J. Noble. It extended its operations to television in 1948, following in the footsteps of established broadcast networks CBS, in the mid-1950s, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres, a chain of movie theaters that formerly operated as a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. Leonard Goldenson, who had been the head of UPT, made the new television network profitable by helping develop, in 1996, most of Capital Cities/ABCs assets were purchased by The Walt Disney Company. The television network has eight owned-and-operated and over 232 affiliated television stations throughout the United States, most Canadians have access to at least one U. S. ABC News provides news and features content for radio stations owned by Citadel Broadcasting. In the 1930s, radio in the United States was dominated by three companies, the Columbia Broadcasting System, the Mutual Broadcasting System and the National Broadcasting Company. The last was owned by electronics manufacturer Radio Corporation of America, in 1938, the FCC began a series of investigations into the practices of radio networks and published its report on the broadcasting of network radio programs in 1940. The report recommended that RCA give up control of either NBC Red or NBC Blue, at that time, the NBC Red Network was the principal radio network in the United States and, according to the FCC, RCA was using NBC Blue to eliminate any hint of competition. Once Mutuals appeals against the FCC were rejected, RCA decided to sell NBC Blue in 1941, the newly separated NBC Red and NBC Blue divided their respective corporate assets. Investment firm Dillon, Read & Co. offered $7.5 million to purchase the network, Edward John Noble, the owner of Life Savers candy, drugstore chain Rexall and New York City radio station WMCA, purchased the network for $8 million. Due to FCC ownership rules, the transaction, which was to include the purchase of three RCA stations by Noble, would require him to resell his station with the FCCs approval, the Commission authorized the transaction on October 12,1943. Soon afterward, the Blue Network was purchased by the new company Noble founded, Noble subsequently acquired the rights to the American Broadcasting Company name from George B. Meanwhile, in August 1944, the West Coast division of the Blue Network, both stations were then managed by Don Searle, the vice-president of the Blue Networks West Coast division. The ABC Radio Network created its audience slowly, the network also became known for such suspenseful dramas as Sherlock Holmes, Gang Busters and Counterspy, as well as several mid-afternoon youth-oriented programs. S. From Nazi Germany after its conquest, to pre-record its programming, while its radio network was undergoing reconstruction, ABC found it difficult to avoid falling behind on the new medium of television. To ensure a space, in 1947, ABC submitted five applications for television station licenses, the ABC television network made its debut on April 19,1948, with WFIL-TV in Philadelphia becoming its first primary affiliate
5.
Desperate Housewives
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Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama and mystery series created by Marc Cherry, and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. It originally aired for eight seasons on ABC, from October 3,2004 to May 13,2012, executive producer Cherry served as showrunner. Other executive producers since the season included Bob Daily, George W. Perkins, John Pardee, Joey Murphy, David Grossman. The storyline covers 13 years of the womens lives over eight seasons, the series features an ensemble cast, headed by Teri Hatcher as Susan Mayer, Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo, Marcia Cross as Bree Van de Kamp, and Eva Longoria as Gabrielle Solis. Brenda Strong narrates the series as the late Mary Alice Young, appearing sporadically in flashbacks or dream sequences, Desperate Housewives was well received by viewers and critics alike. It won multiple Primetime Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards, from the 2004–05 through the 2008–09 television seasons, its first five seasons were rated amongst the top 10 most watched series. In 2012, it remained the most-watched comedy series based on data from Eurodata TV Worldwide. Moreover, it was the third-highest revenue earning series for 2010, the show placed #56 on Entertainment Weeklys New TV Classics list. In 2011, it was confirmed that Desperate Housewives would conclude after its eighth season, by the end of the series, it had surpassed Charmed as the longest running hour-long television series featuring all female leads by two episodes. The main mystery of the season is the suicide of Mary Alice Young. The second season premiered on September 25,2005, and its central mystery is that of new neighbor Betty Applewhite, Susans love life becomes even more complicated as her ex-husband Karl Mayer is engaged to Edie and is also started to incline towards Susan. Lynette goes back to her career in advertising while her husband Tom Scavo becomes a father, and Gabrielle decides to be faithful to Carlos. Paul is framed and sent to jail not for the murder he committed in the previous season, the third season premiered on September 24,2006. In the third season, Bree marries Orson Hodge, whose past, meanwhile, Lynette has to adjust to the arrival of Toms previously unknown daughter to the home. The Scavos also experience tension as Tom wants to start a pizzeria, Gabrielle goes through a rough divorce, but finally finds new love in Fairviews new mayor. After being run over by Orson in the season finale, Mike falls into coma. Edie sees her chance to make her move on Mike, Susan loses hope that Mikes memory will return and in the process moves on to a handsome Englishman whose wife is also in a coma, while her daughter Julie Mayer starts dating Edies nephew. Elderly neighbor Karen McCluskey hides something in her freezer, a shooting at the local grocery store leaves two characters dead and changes everyones lives forever
6.
CBS
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CBS is an American commercial broadcast television network that is a flagship property of CBS Corporation. The company is headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City with major facilities and operations in New York City. CBS is sometimes referred to as the Eye Network, in reference to the iconic logo. It has also called the Tiffany Network, alluding to the perceived high quality of CBS programming during the tenure of William S. Paley. It can also refer to some of CBSs first demonstrations of color television, the network has its origins in United Independent Broadcasters Inc. a collection of 16 radio stations that was purchased by Paley in 1928 and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System. Under Paleys guidance, CBS would first become one of the largest radio networks in the United States, in 1974, CBS dropped its former full name and became known simply as CBS, Inc. In 2000, CBS came under the control of Viacom, which was formed as a spin-off of CBS in 1971, CBS Corporation is controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, which also controls the current Viacom. The television network has more than 240 owned-and-operated and affiliated stations throughout the United States. The origins of CBS date back to January 27,1927, Columbia Phonographic went on the air on September 18,1927, with a presentation by the Howard Barlow Orchestra from flagship station WOR in Newark, New Jersey, and fifteen affiliates. Operational costs were steep, particularly the payments to AT&T for use of its land lines, in early 1928 Judson sold the network to brothers Isaac and Leon Levy, owners of the networks Philadelphia affiliate WCAU, and their partner Jerome Louchenheim. With the record out of the picture, Paley quickly streamlined the corporate name to Columbia Broadcasting System. He believed in the power of advertising since his familys La Palina cigars had doubled their sales after young William convinced his elders to advertise on radio. By September 1928, Paley bought out the Louchenheim share of CBS, during Louchenheims brief regime, Columbia paid $410,000 to A. H. Grebes Atlantic Broadcasting Company for a small Brooklyn station, WABC, which would become the networks flagship station. WABC was quickly upgraded, and the relocated to 860 kHz. The physical plant was relocated also – to Steinway Hall on West 57th Street in Manhattan, by the turn of 1929, the network could boast to sponsors of having 47 affiliates. Paley moved right away to put his network on a financial footing. In the fall of 1928, he entered talks with Adolph Zukor of Paramount Pictures. The deal came to fruition in September 1929, Paramount acquired 49% of CBS in return for a block of its stock worth $3.8 million at the time
7.
Rob Lowe
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Robert Hepler Lowe is an American actor. He came to prominence in the 1980s, playing teen and young adult roles in such as The Outsiders, Oxford Blues, St. Elmos Fire. However, he continued acting in less prominent film roles, and went on to roles in television series such as The West Wing, Brothers & Sisters. Lowe was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, the son of Barbara Lynn, a schoolteacher and native of Ohio, and Charles Davis Lowe and his parents divorced when Lowe and his younger brother, actor Chad, were very young. As a result of a virus during infancy, he is deaf in his right ear, Lowe was baptized into the Episcopal church. He is of German, English, Irish, Scottish, on the show Who Do You Think You Are. Lowe found out one of his ancestors, Christopher East, was a Hessian soldier. His ancestor was fighting under the command of Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall and was captured at the American Victory at Trenton, as an American POW, his ancestor was given a choice, and took the option to stay in the US. Lowe was raised in a traditional setting in Dayton, Ohio, attending Oakwood Junior High School, before moving to the Point Dume area of Malibu, California. Lowe attended Santa Monica High School, as did fellow actors Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, Robert Downey, Jr. Sean Penn and his breakthrough role was his big screen debut in 1983, when he and Emilio Estevez were cast in Francis Ford Coppolas The Outsiders. Lowe played the role of Sodapop Curtis, the brother of the main character Ponyboy Curtis, Lowe and Estevez reunited in St. Elmos Fire, making them the two more prominent actors from the group known as the Brat Pack. He then received his second Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the mentally disabled Rory in Square Dance, in August,1987 he performed on stage, playing Baron Tusenbach in Chekovs The Three Sisters at The Williamstown Theatre Festival. Lowe is well known for playing Sam Seaborn in the television series The West Wing from 1999 to 2003 and his performance in the show garnered Lowe a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and two Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor in a Drama Series. Lowe was drawn to the role because of his love of politics, and his longstanding personal relationship with Martin Sheen. When the show premiered, Seaborn was considered the lead, Lowe and series creator Aaron Sorkin soon found themselves at odds over the networks meddling with the show, most notably the network demanding changes in the Sam Seaborn character. Eventually, Lowe left the series, not long before Sorkin, during the final season of The West Wing, Lowe returned to his role of Sam Seaborn, appearing in two of the final four episodes. In 2011, Lowe appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and stated that he left the show because he did not feel he was being respected, after leaving the show, Lowe was the star and executive producer of a failed NBC drama, The Lyons Den. In 2004, he tried again in a series entitled Dr. Vegas, in 2005, he starred as Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee in a London West End production of Sorkins play A Few Good Men, the first time the two had worked together since The West Wing
8.
Michael J. Fox
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Michael Andrew Fox, OC, known as Michael J. Fox, is a Canadian-American actor, author, producer, and activist. Other notable roles have included Marty McFly from the Back to the Future trilogy, Fox was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease in 1991, at age 29, and disclosed his condition to the public in 1998. Fox semi-retired from acting in 2000 as the symptoms of his disease worsened, since 2001, Fox has mainly worked as a voice-over actor in films such as Stuart Little and Disneys Atlantis, The Lost Empire. On the CBS TV show The Good Wife, he earned Emmy nominations for three years for his recurring role as crafty attorney Louis Canning. Fox has also taken recurring guest roles and cameo appearances in Boston Legal, Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm and he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2010. He also was inducted into Canadas Walk of Fame in 2000, Michael Andrew Fox was born on June 9,1961, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to Phyllis, an actress/payroll clerk, and William Fox, a police officer and Canadian Forces member. Foxs family lived in cities and towns across Canada because of his fathers career. The family finally moved to the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby, British Columbia and his father died on January 6,1990, from a heart attack. Fox attended Burnaby Central Secondary School, and now has a named for him in Burnaby South Secondary. Fox, at age 15, starred in the Canadian television series Leo and Me produced by the CBC, shortly after his marriage, he decided to move back to Vancouver. Fox was discovered by producer Ronald Shedlo and made his American television debut in the television film Letters from Frank, as he explained in his autobiography, Lucky Man, A Memoir and in interviews, he needed to come up with a different name. He did not like the sound of Michael A, Fox during a time when fox was coming to mean attractive and because his middle initial sounded too much like the Canadian eh. He also didnt like the sound of Andrew or Andy, so he decided to adopt a new middle initial and settled on J, Foxs first feature film roles were Midnight Madness and Class of 1984, credited in both as Michael Fox. Shortly afterward, he began playing Young Republican Alex P. Keaton in the show Family Ties which aired on NBC for seven seasons, in an interview with Jimmy Fallon in April 2014, Fox stated he negotiated the role at a payphone at Pioneer Chicken. He received the role only after Matthew Broderick was unavailable, Family Ties had been sold to the television network using the pitch Hip parents, square kids, with the parents originally intended to be the main characters. However, the reaction to Foxs performance led to his character becoming the focus of the show following the fourth episode. At its peak, the audience for Family Ties drew one-third of Americas households every week, Fox won three Emmy awards for Family Ties, in 1986,1987, and 1988. He also won a Golden Globe Award in 1989, Brandon Tartikoff, one of the shows producers, felt that Fox was too short in relation to the actors playing his parents, and tried to have him replaced
9.
Ozzy Osbourne
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John Michael Ozzy Osbourne is an English singer, songwriter, and actor. He rose to prominence in the early 1970s as the lead vocalist of the metal band Black Sabbath. He was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979 and went on to have a solo career, releasing 11 studio albums. Osbourne has since reunited with Black Sabbath on several occasions, recording the album 13 in 2013 and his longevity and success have earned him the informal title of Godfather of Heavy Metal. Osbournes total album sales from his years in Black Sabbath, combined with his work, is over 100 million. As a member of Black Sabbath, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, at the 2014 MTV Europe Music Awards, he received the Global Icon Award. Osbourne appeared with son Jack in the 2016 worldwide travelogue docuseries Ozzy & Jacks World Detour, Osbourne was born in the Aston area of Birmingham, England. His mother, Lillian, was Catholic but non-religious, and she worked days at a factory and his father, John Thomas Jack Osbourne, worked night shifts as a toolmaker at the General Electric Company. Osbourne has three sisters named Jean, Iris, and Gillian, and two younger brothers named Paul and Tony. The family lived in a small two-bedroom home at 14 Lodge Road in Aston, Osbourne has had the nickname Ozzy since primary school. Osbourne dealt with dyslexia at school, drawn to the stage, he took part in school plays such as Gilbert and Sullivans The Mikado and HMS Pinafore. As a Birmingham native, he has a strong Brummie accent, upon hearing their first hit single at age 14, he became a great fan of The Beatles. He credits the bands 1963 song She Loves You for inspiring him to become a musician and he said in the 2011 documentary God Bless Ozzy Osbourne that as soon as heard She Loves You on the radio, knew wanted to be a rock star for the rest of life. Osbourne left school at 15 and was employed as a construction site labourer, trainee plumber, apprentice toolmaker, car factory horn-tuner and he attempted to commit burglary, stealing a television, a handful of baby clothes, and some T-shirts. He spent six weeks in Winson Green Prison when he was unable to pay a fine after being found guilty of robbing a shop, to teach his son a lesson. In late 1967, Geezer Butler formed his first band, Rare Breed, the band played two shows, then broke up. Osbourne and Butler reunited in Polka Tulk Blues, along with guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward and they renamed themselves Earth, but after being accidentally booked for a show instead of a different band with the same name, they decided to change their name again. They finally settled on the name Black Sabbath in August 1969, the band had noticed how people enjoyed being frightened, inspired, the band decided to play a heavy blues style of music laced with gloomy sounds and lyrics
10.
Firefly (TV series)
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Firefly is an American space western drama television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon, under his Mutant Enemy Productions label. Whedon served as a producer, along with Tim Minear. The series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new system and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity, Whedon pitched the show as nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things. In this future, the two surviving superpowers, the United States and China, fused to form the central federal government, called the Alliance. According to Whedons vision, nothing will change in the future, technology will advance, but we still have the same political, moral. Firefly premiered in the U. S. on the Fox network on September 20,2002, by mid-December, Firefly had averaged 4.7 million viewers per episode and was 98th in Nielsen ratings. It was canceled after eleven of the fourteen produced episodes were aired, despite the relatively short life span of the series, it received strong sales when it was released on DVD and has large fan support campaigns. It won a Primetime Emmy Award in 2003 for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series, TV Guide ranked the series at No.5 on their 2013 list of 60 shows that were Cancelled Too Soon. The series takes place in the year 2517, on a variety of planets, the TV series does not reveal whether these celestial bodies are within one star system, only saying that Serenitys mode of propulsion is a gravity-drive. The film Serenity makes clear that all the planets and moons are in one large system, the emigrants established themselves in this new star system, with dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Many of these were terraformed, a process in which a planet or moon is altered to resemble Earth and this resulted in many of the border planets and moons having forbidding, dry environments, well-suited to the Western genre. The show takes its name from the Firefly-class spaceship, Serenity and it resembles a firefly in general arrangement, and the tail section, analogous to a bioluminescent insectoid abdomen, lights up during acceleration. The ship was named after the Battle of Serenity Valley, where Malcolm Reynolds, former sergeant in the Independents and it is revealed in Bushwhacked that the Battle of Serenity Valley is widely considered the loss which sealed the fate of the Independents. Throughout the series, the Alliance is shown to govern the system through an organization of core planets. The central planets are firmly under Alliance control, but the planets and moons resemble the 19th-century American West. Settlers and refugees on the worlds have relative freedom from the central government. In addition, the areas of space are inhabited by the Reavers
