Andrea Thompson
Rebecca Andrea Thompson is an American actress, known for her roles on the television series Falcon Crest, Babylon 5, JAG, 24, NYPD Blue. Andrea Thompson was born January 1960 in Dayton, Ohio; when she was six, her family moved to Australia. She left high school at 16, after an extended period of travel, she moved to New York City, she began modeling and studied acting at the Strasberg Studio and the Herbert Berghof Studio under Uta Hagen. Thompson began her career as a voiceover artist, her first significant film role was in the 1987 film Wall Street. In 1989, she was cast on the soap opera Falcon Crest as the scheming Genele Ericson during the show's final season, played photojournalist Maggie Dawson in the Season 3, Episode 2 of the series Quantum Leap. In 1991, she played Nurse Helen Caldwell in the comedy film Delirious. In 1993 she was cast on the science fiction television series Babylon 5 as telepath Talia Winters. Thompson left the series at the end of its second season. Thompson moved on to join the cast of JAG midseason as Commander Alison Krennick, an aide to the head of the Judge Advocate General of the Navy.
She was among several actors who left the show when it was canceled by NBC after one season before CBS picked it up. She went on to play Detective Jill Kirkendall on four seasons of crime drama NYPD Blue, leaving in April 2000 to pursue a career in journalism. Thompson started to prepare for her journalism career in 1999, by earning her GED and working arduously for one year with Jack Hubbard, associate director of Stanford University's News Service and a veteran journalist of CBS News. During this time, she took a writing seminar with KGO-TV's feature reporter Wayne Freedman, she began her work with CBS affiliate KRQE in Albuquerque, New Mexico as a general assignment correspondent for $26,000 per year. Thompson joined CNN Headline News as an evening anchor in June 2001. CNN had laid off 400 of 4000 employees in January, was refocusing on personalities to draw in younger viewers. "A lot of people gave her credit for leaving her career to pursue journalism," said one CNN insider. Her first words on-screen as anchor were "Hi, I'm Andrea Thompson, unless you've been living in a cave, you already know that."
Her hiring generated controversy in journalism circles because Thompson had just one year of journalism experience at that point. Nude pictures and videoclips of Thompson taken from her 1980s-era movies began circulating on the Internet, causing some embarrassment for CNN. Thompson left the network in March 2002, it was speculated at the time. During an appearance in January 2003, she made a statement indicating she left CNN because she disagreed with the way the news was handled, "Basically... you just give the viewers enough to scare the hell out of them, not any real valuable information. And we saw so much of that after Sept. 11 that I thought was, irresponsible."After leaving CNN, she went to work for Court TV, introducing episodes of NYPD Blue and Forensic Files, as well as narrating the documentary series The System. She began hosting Psychic Detectives in 2003. Thompson had a recurring guest role as Doctor Nicole Duncan on the third season of the television series 24, first appearing on that show in November 2003.
In 2007, she appeared in season two of Bones in the episode "Spaceman in a Crater". Thompson was married to David Guc, to Babylon 5 costar Jerry Doyle, she has a son named Alec. Andrea Thompson on IMDb
Actor
An actor is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film and television; the analogous Greek term is ὑποκριτής "one who answers". The actor's interpretation of their role—the art of acting—pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. Interpretation occurs when the actor is "playing themselves", as in some forms of experimental performance art. In ancient Greece and Rome, the medieval world, the time of William Shakespeare, only men could become actors, women's roles were played by men or boys. After the English Restoration of 1660, women began to appear on stage in England. In modern times in pantomime and some operas, women play the roles of boys or young men. After 1660 in England, when women first started to appear on stage, the terms actor or actress were used interchangeably for female performers, but influenced by the French actrice, actress became the used term for women in theater and film.
The etymology is a simple derivation from actor with -ess added. When referring to groups of performers of both sexes, actors is preferred. Actor is used before the full name of a performer as a gender-specific term. Within the profession, the re-adoption of the neutral term dates to the post-war period of the 1950 and'60s, when the contributions of women to cultural life in general were being reviewed; when The Observer and The Guardian published their new joint style guide in 2010, it stated "Use for both male and female actors. The guide's authors stated that "actress comes into the same category as authoress, manageress,'lady doctor','male nurse' and similar obsolete terms that date from a time when professions were the preserve of one sex.". "As Whoopi Goldberg put it in an interview with the paper:'An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor – I can play anything.'" The UK 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 common term used in major acting awards given to female recipients. With regard to the cinema of the United States, the gender-neutral term "player" was common in film in the silent film era and the early days of the Motion Picture Production Code, but in the 2000s in a film context, it is deemed archaic. However, "player" remains in use in the theatre incorporated into the name of a theatre group or company, such as the American Players, the East West Players, etc. Actors in improvisational theatre may be referred to as "players". In 2015, Forbes reported that "...just 21 of the 100 top-grossing films of 2014 featured a female lead or co-lead, while only 28.1% of characters in 100 top-grossing films were female...". "In the U. S. there is an "industry-wide in salaries of all scales. On average, white women get paid 78 cents to every dollar a white man makes, while Hispanic women earn 56 cents to a white male's dollar, Black women 64 cents and Native American women just 59 cents to that."
Forbes' analysis of US acting salaries in 2013 determined that the "...men on Forbes' list of top-paid actors for that year made 21/2 times as much money as the top-paid actresses. That means that Hollywood's best-compensated actresses made just 40 cents for every dollar that the best-compensated men made." The first recorded case of a performing actor occurred in 534 BC when the Greek performer Thespis stepped onto the stage at the Theatre Dionysus to become the first known person to speak words as a character in a play or story. Prior to Thespis' act, Grecian stories were only expressed in song, in third person narrative. In honor of Thespis, actors are called Thespians; the male actors in the theatre of ancient Greece performed in three types of drama: tragedy and the satyr play. Western theatre developed and expanded under the Romans; the theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, acrobatics, to the staging of situation comedies, to high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies.
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, scenes or recitations from tragedies and comedies and other entertainments were popular. From the 5th century, Western Europe was plunged into a period of general disorder. Small nomadic bands of actors traveled around Europe throughout the period, performing wherever they could find an audience. Traditionally, actors were not of high status. Early Middle Ages actors were denounced by the Church during the Dark Ages, as they were viewed as dangerous and pagan. In many parts of Europe, traditional beliefs of the region and time period meant actors could not receive a Christian burial. In the Early Middle Ages, churches in Europe began staging dramatized versions of biblical events. By the middle of the 11th century, liturgical drama had spread from Russia to Scandinavia
C-SPAN
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network is an American cable and satellite television network, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States federal government, as well as other public affairs programming; the C-SPAN network includes the television channels C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, C-SPAN3, the radio station WCSP-FM, a group of websites which provide streaming media and archives of C-SPAN programs. C-SPAN's television channels are available to 100 million cable and satellite households within the United States, while WCSP-FM is broadcast on FM radio in Washington, D. C. and is available throughout the U. S. on SiriusXM via Internet streaming, globally through apps for iOS, BlackBerry, Android devices. The network televises U. S. political events live and "gavel-to-gavel" coverage of the U. S. Congress, as well as occasional proceedings of the Canadian and British Parliaments and other major events worldwide, its coverage of political and policy events is unmoderated, providing the audience with unfiltered information about politics and government.
Non-political coverage includes historical programming, programs dedicated to non-fiction books, interview programs with noteworthy individuals associated with public policy. C-SPAN is a private, non-profit organization funded by its cable and satellite affiliates, it does not have advertisements on any of its networks, radio stations, or websites, nor does it solicit donations or pledges; the network operates independently, neither the cable industry nor Congress has control of its programming content. Brian Lamb, C-SPAN's chairman and former chief executive officer, first conceived the concept of C-SPAN in 1975 while working as the Washington, D. C. bureau chief of the cable industry trade magazine Cablevision. It was a time of rapid growth in the number of cable television channels available in the United States, Lamb envisioned a cable-industry financed nonprofit network for televising sessions of the U. S. Congress and other public affairs event and policy discussions. Lamb shared his idea with several cable executives.
Among them were Bob Rosencrans, who provided $25,000 of initial funding in 1979, John D. Evans, who provided the wiring and access to the headend needed for the distribution of the C-SPAN signal. C-SPAN was launched on March 19, 1979, in time for the first televised session made available by the House of Representatives, beginning with a speech by then-Tennessee representative Al Gore. Upon its debut, only 3.5 million homes were wired for C-SPAN, the network had just three employees. The second C-SPAN channel, C-SPAN2, followed on June 2, 1986 when the U. S. Senate permitted itself to be televised. C-SPAN3, the most recent expansion channel, began full-time operations on January 22, 2001, shows other public policy and government-related live events on weekdays along with weekend historical programming. C-SPAN3 is the successor of a digital channel called C-SPAN Extra, launched in the Washington D. C. area in 1997, televised live and recorded political events from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time Monday through Friday.
C-SPAN Radio began operations on October 9, 1997, covering similar events as the television networks and simulcasting their programming. The station broadcasts on WCSP in Washington, D. C. is available on XM Satellite Radio channel 120 and is streamed live at c-span.org. It was available on Sirius Satellite Radio from 2002 to 2006. Lamb semi-retired in March 2012, coinciding with the channel's 33rd anniversary, gave executive control of the network to his two lieutenants, Rob Kennedy and Susan Swain. On January 12, 2017, the online feed for C-SPAN1 was interrupted and replaced by a feed from the Russian television network RT America for 10 minutes. C-SPAN announced that they were troubleshooting the incident and were "operating under the assumption that it was an internal routing issue." C-SPAN celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1989 with a three-hour retrospective, featuring Lamb recalling the development of the network. The 15th anniversary was commemorated in an unconventional manner as the network facilitated a series of re-enactments of the seven historic Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, which were televised from August to October 1994, have been rebroadcast from time to time since.
Five years the series American presidents: Life Portraits, which won a Peabody Award, served as a year-long observation of C-SPAN's 20th anniversary. In 2004, C-SPAN celebrated its 25th anniversary, by which time the flagship network was viewed in 86 million homes, C-SPAN2 was in 70 million homes and C-SPAN3 was in eight million homes. On the anniversary date, C-SPAN repeated the first televised hour of floor debate in the House of Representatives from 1979 and, throughout the month, 25th anniversary features included "then and now" segments with journalists who had appeared on C-SPAN during its early years. Included in the 25th anniversary was an essay contest for viewers to write in about how C-SPAN has influenced their life regarding community service. For example, one essay contest winner wrote about how C-SPAN's non-fiction book programming serves as a resource in his charitable mission to record non-fiction audio books for people who are blind. To commemorate 25 years of taking viewer telephone calls, in 2005, C-SPAN had a 25-hour "call-in marathon", from 8:00 pm.
Eastern Time on Friday, October 7, concluding at 9:00 pm. Eastern Time on Saturday, October 8; the network had a viewer essay contest, the winner of, invited to co-host an hour of the broadcast from C-SPAN's Capitol
Right-libertarianism
Right-libertarianism, or right-wing libertarianism, refers to libertarian political philosophies that advocate natural law and a major reversal of the modern welfare state. Right-libertarians support private property rights and defend market distribution of natural resources and private property; this position is contrasted with that of some versions of left-libertarianism. Right-libertarianism includes laissez-faire minarchist liberalism. Right-libertarianism developed in the United States in the mid-20th century from the works of European writers like John Locke, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises and is the most popular conception of libertarianism in the world today, it is referred to as a continuation or radicalization of classical liberalism. The most important of these early right-libertarian philosophers was Robert Nozick. While sharing left-libertarians' advocacy for social freedom, right-libertarians value the social institutions that enforce conditions of capitalism while rejecting institutions that function in opposition to these on the grounds that such interventions represent unnecessary coercion of individuals and abrogation of their economic freedom.
Anarcho-capitalists seek complete elimination of the state in favor of funded security services while minarchists defend night-watchman states which maintain only those functions of government necessary to safeguard natural rights, understood in terms of self-ownership or autonomy. The non-aggression principle is described as the foundation of present-day right-libertarian philosophies, it is a moral stance. The principle defines "aggression" and "initiation of force" as violation of these rights; the NAP and property rights are linked, since what constitutes aggression depends on what libertarians consider to be one's property. Because the principle redefines aggression in right-libertarian terms, use of the NAP as a justification for right-libertarianism has been criticized as circular reasoning and as rhetorical obfuscation of the coercive nature of libertarian property law enforcement; the principle has been used rhetorically to oppose such policies as victimless crime laws and military drafts.
While there is debate on whether left and socialist libertarianism "represent distinct ideologies as opposed to variations on a theme", right-libertarianism is most in favor of private property and property rights. Right-libertarians maintain that unowned natural resources "may be appropriated by the first person who discovers them, mixes his labor with them, or claims them—without the consent of others, with little or no payment to them"; this contrasts with left-libertarianism in which "unappropriated natural resources belong to everyone in some egalitarian manner". Right-libertarians believe that natural resources are unowned and therefore private parties may appropriate them at will without the consent of, or owing to, others. Right-libertarians hold that societies in which private property rights are enforced are the only ones that are both ethical and lead to the best possible outcomes, they support the free market and are not opposed to any concentrations of economic power, provided it occurs through non-coercive means.
There is a debate amongst right-libertarians as to. While anarcho-capitalists advocate its abolition, minarchists support minimal states referred to as night-watchman states. Minarchists maintain that the state is necessary for the protection of individuals from aggression, breach of contract and fraud, they believe the only legitimate governmental institutions are the military and courts, though some expand this list to include fire departments and the executive and legislative branches. They justify the state on the grounds that it is the logical consequence of adhering to the non-aggression principle and argue that anarchism is immoral because it implies that the non-aggression principle is optional and that the enforcement of laws under anarchism is open to competition. Another common justification is that private defense agencies and court firms would tend to represent the interests of those who pay them enough. Anarcho-capitalists argue that the state violates the non-aggression principle by its nature because governments use force against those who have not stolen or vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud.
Many argue that monopolies tend to be corrupt and inefficient and that private defense and court agencies would have to have a good reputation in order to stay in business. Linda and Morris Tannehill argue that no coercive monopoly of force can arise on a free market and that a government's citizenry can not desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency. Libertarian philosopher Moshe Kroy argues that the disagreement between anarcho-capitalists who adhere to Murray Rothbard's view of human consciousness and the nature of values and minarchists who adhere to Ayn Rand's view of human consciousness and the nature of values over whether or not the state is moral is not due to a disagreement over the correct interpretation of a mutually held ethical stance, he argues that the disagreement between these two groups is instead the result of their disagreement over the nature of human consciousness and that each group is making the correct interpretation of their differing premises.
These two groups are therefore not making any errors with respect to deducing the correct interpretation of any ethical stance because they do not hold the same ethical stance. The idea of taxation as theft is a viewpoint found in a number of p
Bruce Willis
Walter Bruce Willis is an American actor and singer. Born to a German mother and American father in Idar-Oberstein, Germany, he moved to the United States with his family in 1957, his career began on the Off-Broadway stage in the 1970s. He achieved fame with his leading role on the hit television series Moonlighting, he has since appeared in over 70 films and is regarded as an "action hero", due to his portrayal of John McClane in the Die Hard franchise, other such roles. His credits include Death Becomes Her, Pulp Fiction, 12 Monkeys, The Fifth Element, The Sixth Sense, Sin City, Moonrise Kingdom, The Expendables 2, as David Dunn in the Unbreakable film series: Unbreakable and Glass, he made his Broadway debut in the stage adaptation of Misery in 2015. As a musician, Willis released his debut album, The Return of Bruno, in 1987, he has since released two more solo albums, in 1989 and 2001. Willis is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two People's Choice Awards.
He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006. Walter Bruce Willis was born on March 1955, in the town of Idar-Oberstein, West Germany, his father, David Willis, was an American soldier. His mother, was German, born in Kassel. Willis is the oldest of four children with a sister named Florence and two brothers and David. After being discharged from the military in 1957, Willis's father took his family back to Carneys Point Township, New Jersey. Willis has described himself as having come from a "long line of blue collar people", his mother worked in a bank and his father was a welder, master mechanic, factory worker. Willis attended Penns Grove High School in his hometown, he was nicknamed "Buck-Buck" by his schoolmates. Willis joined the drama club in high school, acting on stage reduced his stutter, he was appointed student council president. After he graduated from high school in 1973, Willis took a job as a security guard at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant and transported work crews at the DuPont Chambers Works factory in Deepwater, New Jersey.
After working as a private investigator, Willis turned to acting. He enrolled in the Drama Program at Montclair State University, where he was cast in the class production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Willis left school in his junior year in 1977 and moved to New York City, where in the early 1980s he supported himself as a bartender at the West 19th Street art bar Kamikaze. At the time, he lived in Manhattan, he performed as an extra in Paul Newman's closing summation scene in The Verdict in 1982. Willis headed to California to audition for several television shows. In 1984, he appeared in an episode of the TV series Miami Vice, titled "No Exit". In 1985, he was the guest actor in the first episode of the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone, "Shatterday", he auditioned for the role of David Addison Jr. of the television series Moonlighting, competing against 3,000 other actors for the position. The starring role, opposite Cybill Shepherd, helped to establish him as a comedic actor, with the show lasting five seasons winning him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Television Series Musical or Comedy.
During the height of the show's success, beverage maker Seagram hired Willis as the pitchman for their Golden Wine Cooler products. The advertising campaign paid the rising star between $5–7 million over two years. In spite of that, Willis chose not to renew his contract with the company when he decided to stop drinking alcohol in 1988. Willis had his first lead role in a feature film in the 1987 Blake Edwards film Blind Date, with Kim Basinger and John Larroquette. Edwards cast him again to play the real-life cowboy actor Tom Mix in Sunset. However, it was his then-unexpected turn in the film Die Hard as John McClane that catapulted him to movie star and action hero status, he performed most of his own stunts in the film, the film grossed $138,708,852 worldwide. Following his success with Die Hard, he had a leading role in the drama In Country as Vietnam veteran Emmett Smith and provided the voice for a talking baby in Look Who's Talking, as well as its sequel, Look Who's Talking Too. In the late 1980s, Willis enjoyed moderate success as a recording artist, recording an album of pop-blues titled The Return of Bruno, which included the hit single "Respect Yourself" featuring The Pointer Sisters.
The LP was promoted by a Spinal Tap–like rockumentary parody featuring scenes of Willis performing at famous events including Woodstock. He released a version of the Drifters song "Under the Boardwalk" as a second single. S. Willis returned to the recording studio several times afterward. Having acquired major personal success and pop culture influence playing John McClane in Die Hard, Willis reprised his role in the sequels Die Hard 2 and Die Hard with a Vengeance; these first three installments in the Die Hard series grossed over US$700 million internationally and propelled Willis to the first rank of Hollywood action stars. In the early 1990s, Willis's career suffered a moderate slump, as he starred in flops such as The Bonfire of the Vanities, he gained more success with Striking Distance but flopped again with Color of Night: another box office failure, it was savaged by critics but did well in
Babylon 5
Babylon 5 is an American space opera television series created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski, under the Babylonian Productions label, in association with Straczynski's Synthetic Worlds Ltd. and Warner Bros. Domestic Television. After the successful airing of a test pilot movie on February 22, 1993, Babylon 5: The Gathering, in May 1993 Warner Bros. commissioned the series for production as part of its Prime Time Entertainment Network. The first season premiered in the US on January 26, 1994, the series ran for the intended five seasons, costing an estimated $90 million for 110 episodes. Unlike most television shows at the time, Babylon 5 was conceived as a "novel for television", with a defined beginning and end; the series consists of a coherent five-year story arc unfolding over five seasons of 22 episodes each. Tie-in novels, comic books, short stories were developed to play a significant canonical part in the overall story; the series follows the human military staff and alien diplomats stationed on a space station, Babylon 5, built in the aftermath of several major inter-species wars as a neutral focal point for galactic diplomacy and trade.
Babylon 5 was an early example of a television series featuring story arcs which spanned episodes or whole seasons. Whereas contemporary television shows tended to confine conflicts to individual episodes, maintaining the overall status quo, each season of Babylon 5 contains plot elements which permanently change the series universe. Babylon 5 utilized multiple episodes to address the repercussions of some plot events or character decisions, episode plots would at times reference or be influenced by events from prior episodes or seasons, unusual at the time. Many races of sentient creatures are seen frequenting the station, with most episodes drawing from a core of a dozen or so species. Major plotlines included Babylon 5's embroilment in a millennia-long cyclical conflict between ancient, powerful races, inter-race wars and their aftermaths, intrigue or upheaval within particular races, including the human characters who fight to resist Earth's descent into totalitarianism. Many episodes focus on the effect of wider events on individual characters, with episodes containing themes such as personal change, subjugation, corruption and redemption.
Babylon 5, set between the years 2257 and 2262, depicts a future where Earth has a unifying Earth government and has gained the technology for faster-than-light travel. Colonies within the solar system, beyond, make up the Earth Alliance, which has established contact with other spacefaring species. Ten years before the series is set, Earth itself was nearly defeated in a war with the intellectual Minbari, only to escape destruction when the Minbari unexpectedly surrendered at the brink of victory. Among the other species are the imperialist Centauri. Several dozen less powerful species from the League of Non-Aligned Worlds have diplomatic contact with the major races, including the Drazi, Vree and pak'ma'ra. An ancient and secretive race, the Shadows, unknown to humans but documented in many other races' religious texts, malevolently influence events to bring chaos and war among the known species; the Babylon 5 space station is located in the Epsilon Eridani system, at the fifth Lagrangian point between the fictional planet Epsilon III and its moon.
It is 0.5 -- 1.0 mile in diameter. The station is the last of its line, it contains living areas which accommodate various alien species, providing differing atmospheres and gravities. Human visitors to the alien sectors are shown using breathing equipment and other measures to tolerate the conditions. Babylon 5 featured an ensemble cast which changed over the course of the show's run: Michael O'Hare as Commander Jeffrey Sinclair: The first commander of Babylon 5 assigned to be Earth's ambassador to Minbar. Bruce Boxleitner as Captain John Sheridan: Sinclair's replacement on Babylon 5 after his reassignment, a central figure of several prophecies within the Shadow war. Claudia Christian as Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova: Second in command to Babylon 5. Jerry Doyle as Michael Garibaldi: Babylon 5's Chief of Station Security. Mira Furlan as Delenn: The Minbari ambassador to Babylon 5. Born Minbari, she uses a special artifact at the start of the 2nd season to become a Minbari-human hybrid. Richard Biggs as Doctor Stephen Franklin: Babylon 5's chief medical officer.
Andrea Thompson as Talia Winters: A commercial Psi-Corps telepath that works aboard the station. Stephen Furst as Vir Cotto: Diplomatic aide to Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari. Bill Mumy as Lennier: Diplomatic aide to Minbari Ambassador Delenn. Tracy Scoggins as Captain Elizabeth Lochley: Babylon 5's station commander following Ivanova's departure. Jason Carter as Marcus Cole: A Ranger, one of a group of covert agents who fight against the Shadows. Caitlin Brown and Mary Kay Adams as Na'Toth: Diplomatic aide to Narn Ambassador G'Kar. Robert Rusler as Warren Keffer: Commander of the Zeta Wing, one of Babylon 5's small fighter fleets. Jeff Conaway as Zack Allan (guest season 2, main
