The jig is a form of lively folk dance in compound metre, as well as the accompanying dance tune. It developed in 16th-century England, was adopted on mainland Europe where it became the final movement of the mature Baroque dance suite. Today it is most associated with Irish dance music, Scottish country dance and the Métis people in Canada. Jigs were in duple compound metre, but have been adapted to a variety of time signatures, by which they are classified into groups, including light jigs, slip jigs, single jigs, double jigs, treble jigs; the term jig was derived from the French giguer, meaning'to jump' or the Italian giga. The use of "jig" in Irish dance derives from the Irish jigeánnai, itself borrowed from the Old English giga meaning "old dance", it was known as a dance in 16th-century England in 128 time, the term was used for a post-play entertainment featuring dance in early modern England, but which'probably employed a great variety of dances, paired, country or courtly': in Playford's Dancing Master'the dance game in ‘Kemps Jegg’ is a typical scenario from a dramatic jig and it is that the combination of dance metre for steps and non-metrical passages for pantomime indicates how a solo or ensemble jig might have been danced by stage players.'

The dance began to be associated with music in 68 time, with slip jigs 98 time. During the seventeenth century the dance was adopted in Ireland and Scotland, where it was adapted, the jig is now most associated with these countries; the jig is second in popularity only to the reel in traditional Irish dance. It is transcribed in compound metre; the most common structure of a jig is two eight-bar parts, performing two different steps, each once on the right foot, one on the left foot. As with most other types of dance tunes in Irish music, at a session or a dance it is common for two or more jigs to be strung together in a set, flowing on without interruption. A light jig is the second-fastest of all the jigs; the performer's feet leave the ground for long, as the step is fast performed at a speed around 116 at feiseanna. There are several light jig steps, varying with each dance school, but one step is standard in all light jigs; this step is grind. This is the right side version of it: Put your weight on your left foot and lift your right foot off the ground.

Hop on your left foot once. Hop on your left foot again, bringing your right foot back behind your left foot and shift your weight onto your right foot, leaving your left foot in the air. Dancers use the phrase "hop, hop back" for these three movements, there is a slight pause between the hop, hop back; the next movement is a hop on your right foot. You shift your weight on your feet, left-right-left-right; the phrase for this whole movement is: "hop, hop back, hop back 2-3-4." To do the step on the left foot, reverse the left and right directions. Slip jigs are in 98 time; because of the longer measures, they are longer than the reel and the light jig, with the same number of bars to the music. The dance is performed high on the toes, is considered the "ballet of Irish dance" because of its graceful movements that seem to slip the performers across the floor. Slip jigs are performed at a speed of 113 at feiseanna. Single jigs should not be confused with slides. Musically, the single jig tends to follow the pattern of a quarter note followed by an eighth note, whereas the pattern for the double jig is three eighth notes twice per 68 bar.

Hop jigs are the fastest of all jigs next to light jigs, but the term hop jig causes some confusion, as some people use it for a single jig, while others use this term to refer to a tune in 98 time. Among the latter, some do not distinguish it from a slip jig, while some reserve the term to a slip jig variant that has special characteristics, in particular an emphasis on 1/4–1/8 pairs. Treble jigs are performed in hard shoes, to a 68 time metre, they are characterized by stomps and clicks. Many set dances are performed in treble jig time, a few being Drunken Gauger, Blackthorn Stick, The Three Sea Captains, St Patrick's Day. Two types of treble jigs are performed at feiseanna: the traditional and non-traditional treble jigs. Beginners will do a treble jig at traditional speed, while more advanced dancers will dance the non-traditional treble jig at 72 bpm. In 19th-century America, the jig was the name adopted for a form of step dancing developed by enslaved African-Americans and adopted by minstrel show performers.

Danced to five-string banjo or fiddle tunes in 22 or 24 metre played at schottische tempo, the minstrel jig was characterized by syncopated rhythm and eccentric movements. Jig dancers employed a repertoire of "hits" on the heel or toe, ""hops" on one foot, "springs" off both feet as well as various slides and shuffles; the most famous early jig dancer was Master Juba, an African-American who inspired a host of white imitators, many of whom performed in blackface. John Diamond, an Irish-American who competed with Master Juba in a series of "challenge dances," was among the most prominent of these white minstrel jig dancers. Minstrel jigs, as well as clogs and breakdowns, were crucial to the evolution of 20th-century tap and sof

The ashy-throated parrotbill, is a parrotbill. In old sources, it may be called Alphonse's crow-tit; the native range of this species extends from south-west China to northern Vietnam, it might have become naturalised in one area in Italy. This is a medium-sized tawny-coloured parrotbill with the large bill typical of these birds; the specific epithet commemorates the French ornithologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards. Placed in a distinct parrotbill family Paradoxornithidae or with the Old World babblers in the Timaliidae or the tits and chickadees in the Paridae, they are now included with the typical warblers in the Sylviidae, they might be less close to the great parrotbill –, in the "Paradoxornithidae" – than to Chrysomma, or to the fulvettas which were included in the wastebin genus Alcippe. Another relative might be the wrentit, the only known American member of the Sylviidae in the modern circumscription; the former two, also the wrentit, were traditionally considered Old World babblers. Together with the other lineages of parrotbills and the golden-breasted fulvetta and species in the genus Rhopophilus form an Asian counterpart to the westward radiation of the typical warblers.

Rather than two genera – Paradoxornis and the monotypic Conostoma –, the parrotbills are better considered several independent lineages which show pronounced convergent evolution, due to adaptation to reedbed habitat and a more granivorous diet than their skulking warbler-like ancestor. In this case, the ashy-throated parrotbill would be assigned to genus Sinoparadoxornis. A population of parrotbills was first discovered in northern Italy in 1995, at the Riserva naturale Palude Brabbia, between Cazzago Brabbia on Lago di Varese and Varano Borghi on Lago di Comabbio. In March 1998, 21 individuals were captured and photographed, provisionally identified as ashy-throated parrotbills, it is not clear, whether the birds are indeed S. alphonsiana, its close relative the S. webbiana, both species, or hybrids between them. While they do not seem to be brown-winged parrotbills, certain identification to species may be impossible without analysis of both nDNA and mtDNA sequence data; the population is believed to originate from birds escaping from a nearby bird-trader.

By 1999, the number of birds in the swamp had grown to at least a hundred individuals. By the early 21st century, the birds are well-established as resident breeders, they are the only self-sustaining parrotbill population found in Europe, as it was discovered that the bearded reedling – long believed to be an aberrant parrotbill – is a distinct lineage with no known relatives among the Passerida. Contrary to their western Eurasian relatives, these East Asian birds are small omnivores adapted to living in reed beds. In its native range, the ashy-throated parrotbill inhabits bamboo stands and areas with tall grasses; the parrotbills in Brabbia Swamp Nature Reserve inhabit common reed beds and drier land overgrown with meadowsweet, grey willow and giant goldenrod. It feeds on arthropods and buds; as in its relatives in genus Sinoparadoxornis, its eggs are small by parrotbill standards, whitish- to light-blue and unspotted. This bird will disappear if wetlands are drained, but its range is considerable and much of its habitat is remote and little accessed.

It is thus considered a Species of Least Concern by the IUCN. Alström, Per. P. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 38: 381–397. Doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2005.05.015 PMID 16054402 PDF fulltext Bangs, Outram: Birds of western China obtained by the Kelley-Roosevelts expedition. Field Mus. Nat. Hist. Zool. Ser. 18: 343–379. Fulltext at the Internet Archive BirdLife International. "Paradoxornis alphonsianus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN. 2008. Retrieved 12 May 2009.old-form url Boto, Alberto. Quaderni di Birdwatching 1. HTML fulltext Boto, Andrea Galimberti and Richard Bonser The parrotbills in Lombardia, Italy Birding World 22:471-474 Cibois, Alice: Mitochondrial DNA Phylogeny of Babblers. Auk 120: 1-20. DOI: 10.1642/0004-80381202.0. CO. Zool. Scripta 35: 149–186. Doi:10.1111/j.1463-6409.2006.00221.x Pasquet, Eric. Zool. Scripta 35:, 559–566. Doi:10.1111/j.1463-6409.2006.00253.x Robson, C.: Family Paradoxornithidae. In: del Hoyo, Josep. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. ISBN 978-84-96553-42-2 Walters, Michael: Colour in birds' eggs: the co

Museum de Oude Wolden, abbreviated as MOW, is a regional museum in the village of Bellingwolde in the Netherlands. The museum focuses on art and history of the regions of Oldambt and Westerwolde in the east of the province of Groningen; the museum opened on 10 August 1973. In the first decades, it exhibited historical objects documenting everyday life. In the late 1990s, the museum started to exhibit artworks of artist collective De Ploeg and magic realist painter Lodewijk Bruckman. Since 2012, it has a permanent display of paintings by temporary exhibitions; the museum is an independent foundation, funded by the municipality of Bellingwedde. From 2013 to 2016, the museum had around 4,700 visitors per year, it is one of the lesser-visited museums in Groningen. Museum de Oude Wolden is located at the Hoofdweg in the village Bellingwolde in the municipality Bellingwedde in the east of the province Groningen near the Dutch–German border, it is situated in the north of the region Westerwolde. The old museum building is the restored backhouse of a former mansion of which the fronthouse was destroyed during a World War II bombing.

In 1977, the building was expanded with a new wing for 150,000 guilders. In 2012, the building was renovated and received a new glass entrance, which cost 223,000 euro in total. Streekmuseum de Oude Wolden was opened on 10 August 1973 by the mayor of Bellingwedde Jurjen Jan Hoeksema. In the late 1960s, the province of Groningen requested the national government for subsidy to open a new museum in Bellingwolde; the subsidy was not granted, but the state paid indirectly for the restoration of the museum building via a subsidized employment project. In 1976, the museum exhibited historical objects from the regions of Oldambt and Westerwolde, such as agricultural machines, traditional costumes, archaeological and geological finds. After the expansion in 1977, the museum had enough space to hold temporary exhibitions, group the historical objects thematically, display a 19th-century grocery store inventory. By the late 1980s, a barber shop and shoemaker's inventory were shown in the museum. In 1988, the newspaper Nieuwsblad van het Noorden called the museum "charming" and wrote: "A museum like De Oude Wolden is meaningful because of its rather complete documentation of everyday life in the 19th and early 20th century."In 1998, the museum started to exhibit paintings by artists of De Ploeg, an artist collective established in the city Groningen.

In 1999, the museum exhibited paintings by Lodewijk Bruckman, who lived in Bellingwedde for some years. At the time, the press described De Oude Wolden as a museum with historical artefacts and artworks by De Ploeg and Bruckman. In 2003, De Ploeg celebrated their 85th birthday with an exhibition in the museum. In 2010, seven 17–19th-century icons with an estimated value of 23,000 euro were stolen during a break-in in the museum. At the time, the museum offered a reward of 2,500 euro for tips that would lead to the recovery of the icons; the museum dropped the word streek from its name and now calls itself Museum de Oude Wolden. Since the renovation in 2012, the historical objects and the artworks by De Ploeg are no longer on permanent display, the museum now focuses on art and history with Bruckman's paintings and temporary exhibitions. In 2017, the museum became an independent foundation, although the municipality of Bellingwedde still owns the building and the collection; the museum has a permanent exhibition of paintings by Lodewijk Bruckman.

Bruckman lived in Bellingwolde in a hotel opposite to the museum from 1987 to 1989. He donated 21 paintings to the Bellingwedde municipality in 1988; these paintings, which are now exhibited in the museum, are still lifes in a style, described as realistic, surrealistic, or magic realistic. The museum has two concurrent temporary exhibitions: a larger exhibition spanning several months and a smaller monthly exhibition that features a regional artist; the smaller exhibitions are called 24K, which refers to an area around the museum with a radius of 24 kilometers where the artists are from and the supposed 24 carat quality of the artworks. The larger temporary exhibitions since the renovation in 2012 include: Typisch Hollands! with works of nineteen Dutch artists Het einde, een nieuw begin with works by De Ploeg Weer terug in Groningen with works by Chinese artist Zhuang Hong Yi Vooruitgangsvisioenen about the history of canalization in Westerwolde 24K XL with works of 27 regional artists from previous 24K exhibitions Net echt with more than 40 works by Lodewijk Bruckman Voor de draad ermee about quilting and textile art Want reizen is ook verdwalen with works by Dutch artist Yvonne Struys Streekgenoten with photography of the region Westerwolde Onder Vuur about the First Münster War of 1665–1666 24K XL with works of 20 regional artists from previous 24K exhibitions 100% Maya with works by Dutch artist Maya Wildevuur Duizend Dingen with various objects and art works from the museum collection Trillingen with works by 24 artists of the collective VanTyNaarLo Uit Siberië with works by artists from Tyumen, Siberia Verknipt with works by quilting collective De Duikvlucht The museum is a foundation

The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period, China until the 17th century; the idea of a spherical Earth appeared in ancient Greek philosophy with Pythagoras, although most pre-Socratics retained the flat Earth model. In the early fourth century BC Plato wrote about a spherical Earth, by about 330 BC his former student Aristotle provided evidence for the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds. Knowledge of the spherical Earth began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from on. Despite the scientific fact of Earth's sphericity, pseudoscientific flat Earth conspiracy theories are espoused by modern flat Earth societies and by unaffiliated individuals using social media. In early Egyptian and Mesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a disk floating in the ocean.

A similar model is found in the Homeric account from the 8th century BC in which "Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and of all gods."The Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts of ancient Egypt show a similar cosmography. The Israelites imagined the Earth to be a disc floating on water with an arched firmament above it that separated the Earth from the heavens; the sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon and stars embedded in it. Both Homer and Hesiod described a disc cosmography on the Shield of Achilles; this poetic tradition of an Earth-encircling sea and a disc appears in Stasinus of Cyprus, Mimnermus and Apollonius Rhodius. Homer's description of the disc cosmography on the shield of Achilles with the encircling ocean is repeated far in Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica, which continues the narration of the Trojan War. Several pre-Socratic philosophers believed that the world was flat: Thales according to several sources, Leucippus and Democritus according to Aristotle.

Thales thought. It has been argued, that Thales believed in a round Earth. Anaximander believed the Earth was a short cylinder with a flat, circular top that remained stable because it was the same distance from all things. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the Earth is rides on air. Xenophanes of Colophon thought that the Earth was flat, with its upper side touching the air, the lower side extending without limit. Belief in a flat Earth continued into the 5th century BC. Anaxagoras agreed that the Earth was flat, his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone. Hecataeus of Miletus believed. Herodotus in his Histories ridiculed the belief that water encircled the world, yet most classicists agree he still believed the Earth was flat because of his descriptions of literal "ends" or "edges" of the Earth; the ancient Norse and Germanic peoples believed in a flat Earth cosmography with the Earth surrounded by an ocean, with the axis mundi, a world tree, or pillar in the centre.

In the world-encircling ocean sat a snake called Jormungandr. The Norse creation account preserved in Gylfaginning states that during the creation of the Earth, an impassable sea was placed around it: And Jafnhárr said: "Of the blood, which ran and welled forth out of his wounds, they made the sea, when they had formed and made firm the Earth together, laid the sea in a ring round. About her; the late Norse Konungs skuggsjá, on the other hand, infers a spherical Earth: If you take a lighted candle and set it in a room, you may expect it to light up the entire interior, unless something should hinder, though the room be quite large. But if you take an apple and hang it close to the flame, so near that it is heated, the apple will darken nearly half the room or more. However, if you hang the apple near the wall, it will not get hot. From this you may infer that the Earth-circle is round like a ball and not near the sun at every point, but where the curved surface lies nearest the sun's path, there will the greatest heat be.

In ancient China, the prevailing belief was that the Earth was flat and square, while the heavens were round, an assumption unquestioned until the introduction of European astronomy in the 17th century. The English sinologist Cullen emphasizes the point that there was no concept of a round Earth in ancient Chinese astronomy: Chinese thought on the form of the Earth remained unchanged from early times until the first contacts with modern science through the medium of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. While the heavens were variously described as being like an umbrella covering the Earth, or like a sphere surrounding it, or as being without substance while the heavenly bodies float the Earth was a

In China, a city cluster is an defined type of megalopolis, whereby government policy is to knit the area together more and promote development through transportation and communication links. The policy began in 2005 with the province of Hunan promoting Chang-Zhu-Tan city cluster as the example; the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2012 identified 13 megalopolises: Chang-Zhu-Tan, Chongqing, Greater Beijing i.e. Jingjinji, Greater Shanghai, Greater Xi'an, Greater Zhengzhou, Greater Guangzhou, Hefei economic circle, Shandong peninsula, Greater Shenyang and Wuhan. Up to 2018, there are nine approved megalopolises in China. In 2017, the National Development and Reform Commission stated that plans for six city clusters had been completed in 2016, five in 2017, with eight more forthcoming for a total of 19 city cluster plans by 2020; the new city clusters identified in 2017 were Lanzhou-Xining, Hohhot-Baotou-Ordos-Yulin, Guanzhong Plain, Western Taiwan Straits Economic Zone, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area.

The dates in Approval and Issuance column are the dates of the State Council's approval and the dates of the National Development and Reform Commission's issuance of the development plans of the megalopolises respectively. The plan of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area was directly issued by the State Council as Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. List of regions in China List of country subdivisions by GDP over 100 billion US dollars List of urban areas by population List of metropolitan areas by population List of urban agglomerations by population List of cities by population Global city Megacity Metropolis Megalopolis Metropolitan area Urban agglomeration List of metropolitan areas by population World's largest cities List of cities in the Far East by population

Northwestern Ontario is a secondary region of Northern Ontario which lies north and west of Lake Superior, west of Hudson Bay and James Bay. It includes most of subarctic Ontario, its western boundary is the Canadian province of Manitoba, which disputed Ontario's claim to the western part of the region. Ontario's right to Northwestern Ontario was determined by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1884 and confirmed by the Canada Act, 1889 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. In 1912, the Parliament of Canada by the Ontario Boundaries Extension Act gave jurisdiction over the District of Patricia to Ontario, thereby extending the northern boundary of the province to Hudson Bay. For some purposes, Northwestern Ontario and Northeastern Ontario are treated as separate regions, while for other purposes they are grouped together as Northern Ontario. Northwestern Ontario consists of the districts of Rainy River and Thunder Bay. Major communities in the region include Thunder Bay, Dryden, Fort Frances, Sioux Lookout, Red Lake and Atikokan.

There are several dozen First Nations in Northwestern Ontario. Northwestern Ontario is divided between the Central Time Zone. Northwestern Ontario is the province's most sparsely populated region — 54 per cent of the region's entire population lives in the Thunder Bay census metropolitan area alone. Aside from the city of Thunder Bay, Kenora is the only other municipality in the entire region with a population of greater than 10,000 people; the overall population of Northwestern Ontario has been in decline over the past decade due to a downturn in the forestry sector, although some individual municipalities within the region have seen modest population growth over the period. Northwestern Ontarians tend to lean left politically due to the history and influence of labour unions, a growing environmental ethic, a large Indigenous population. At the federal level, Northwestern Ontario is represented by Liberal MPs Bob Nault in the Kenora District, Don Rusnak in Thunder Bay—Rainy River, Patty Hajdu in Thunder Bay—Superior North.

Provincially, PC Greg Rickford represents Kenora—Rainy River, NDP Judith Monteith-Farrell represents Thunder Bay—Atikokan, Liberal Michael Gravelle represents Thunder Bay—Superior North. In 2005, some residents of the region expressed dissatisfaction at the level of attention paid to the region by the provincial government. Some, most notably former Kenora mayor Dave Canfield, Fort Frances town councillor Tannis Drysdale, have proposed the idea of the region as a whole, or parts of it, seceding from Ontario to join Manitoba, although the campaign did not attract widespread public support. Northern Ontario Northeastern Ontario Gateway to Northwestern Ontario History