In western music, a motet is a vocal musical composition, of diverse form and style, from the late medieval era to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margaret Bent, "a piece of music in several parts with words" is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the 13th to the late 16th century and beyond; the late 13th-century theorist Johannes de Grocheo believed that the motet was "not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts". In the early 20th century, it was believed the name came from the Latin movere, though a derivation from the French mot, had been suggested; the Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, the Italian mottetto was used. If the word is from Latin, the name describes the movement of the different voices against one another.

Today, the French etymology is favoured by reference books, as the word "motet" in 13th-century French had the sense of "little word". In fact, the troped clausulas that were the forerunner of the motet were called motelli, soon replaced by the term moteti; the earliest motets arose in the 13th century from the organum tradition exemplified in the Notre-Dame school of Léonin and Pérotin. The motet arose from clausula sections in a longer sequence of organum. Clausulae represent brief sections of longer polyphonic settings of chant with a note-against-note texture. In some cases, these sections were "substituted" for existing setting; these clausulae could be "troped," or given new text in the upper part, creating motets. From these first motets arose a medieval tradition of secular motets; these were two- to four-part compositions in which different texts, sometimes in different vernacular languages, were sung over a cantus firmus that once again was adapted from a passage of Gregorian chant. It is increasingly argued that the term "motet" could in fact include certain brief single-voice songs.

The texts of upper voices include subjects as diverse as courtly love odes, pastoral encounters with shepherdesses, political attacks, many Christian devotion to the Virgin Mary. The vast majority of medieval motets are anonymous compositions, there is significant re-use of music and text, they were most popular in northern France and Paris. In the 14th and 15th centuries, motets made use of repetitive patters termed panisorhythmic. Philippe de Vitry was one of the earliest composers to use this technique, his work evidently had an influence on that of Guillaume de Machaut, one of the most famous named composers of late medieval motets. Other medieval motet composers include: Adam de la Halle Johannes Ciconia John Dunstaple Franco of Cologne Jacopo da Bologna Marchetto da Padova Petrus de Cruce Willelmus de Winchecumbe The motet was preserved in the transition from medieval to Renaissance music, but the character of the composition was changed. While it grew out of the medieval isorhythmic motet, the Renaissance composers of the motet abandoned the use of a repeated figure as a cantus firmus.

Guillaume Dufay was a transitional figure in this regard. During the second half of the fifteenth century, motets came to adopt the cantus firmus technique found in contemporary "tenor masses," in which the cantus firmus was stretched out to great lengths compared to the multivoice counterpoint surrounding it; this tended to obscure the rhythm supplied by the cantus firmus, apparent in the medieval isorhythmic motet. The cascading, passing chords created by the interplay between multiple voices, the absence of a strong or obvious beat, are the features that distinguish medieval and renaissance motet styles. Instead, the Renaissance motet is a polyphonic musical setting, sometimes in imitative counterpoint, for chorus, of a Latin text sacred, not connected to the liturgy of a given day, therefore suitable for use in any service; the texts of antiphons were used as motet texts. This is the sort of composition, most familiarly designated by the term "motet", the Renaissance period marked the flowering of the form.

In essence, these motets were sacred madrigals. The relationship between the two forms is most obvious in the composers who concentrated on sacred music Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose "motets" setting texts from the Canticum Canticorum, the biblical "Song of Solomon", are among the most lush and madrigal-like of Palestrina's compositions, while his "madrigals" that set poems of Petrarch in praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary would not be out of place in church; the language of the text was the decisive feature: if it is Latin, it is a motet. Religious compositions in vernacular languages were called madrigali spirituali, "spiritual madrigals". Like their madrigal cousins, Renaissance

On September 14, 2013, Jonathan Ferrell, a 24-year-old former college football player for the Florida A&M University Rattlers, was shot and killed by police officer Randall "Wes" Kerrick in Charlotte, North Carolina. Kerrick was charged with voluntary manslaughter. Ferrell was unarmed at the time, he crashed his car, went to a house in the Bradfield Farms neighborhood and "banged on the door", The resident Sarah McCartney called the police, three officers came. Ferrell ran towards them, whereupon one of the officers fired a taser at Ferrell and missed. Kerrick opened fire on Ferrell, shooting him twelve times and killing him. A toxicology test of Ferrell's blood showed he was not intoxicated; the day following the shooting, Officer Randall "Wes" Kerrick was charged with voluntary manslaughter, was released on $45,000 bail from jail. On January 21, 2014, a grand jury declined to indict Kerrick with voluntary manslaughter. On January 27, a second grand jury did indict Kerrick on a voluntary manslaughter charge.

On August 21, 2015, a 26th District judge declared a mistrial in the case after the jury reached a deadlock, with eight jurors on one side and four on the other. The Attorney General of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, said. On May 14, 2015, the city of Charlotte settled a separate lawsuit with Ferrell's family for $2.25 million. On August 21, 2015, after the mistrial declaration, protesters took to the streets of Charlotte. Several areas of the city were shut down as a result, two people were arrested. On October 2, 2015, Kerrick resigned from the police force

Procoptodon is an extinct genus of giant short-faced kangaroos that lived in Australia during the Pleistocene epoch. P. goliah, the largest-known kangaroo that existed, stood about 2 m. They weighed about 200–240 kg. Other members of the genus are smaller, however. P. goliah was known for living in semiarid areas of South Australia and New South Wales. These environments were harsh, characterised by vast areas of wind-blown sand dunes. However, the area around Lake Menindee, in western New South Wales, had a cooler, wetter climate at the time Procoptodon existed; the surrounding area was a mosaic of sclerophyll forest, woodland and plains, but sand dunes would have formed along the edges of the Menindee. Fossilized footprints have been found on Kangaroo Island. Procoptodon physiology was similar to that of the contemporary kangaroo; these sthenurines, or short-faced kangaroos, included species that were more than three times the size of the largest kangaroos today. The largest, P. goliah, weighed up to 240 kg.

These animals lived alongside modern species of kangaroos, but specialised on a diet of leaves from trees and shrubs. P. goliah kangaroos were giant and short-faced, distinguishable by their flat faces and forward-pointing eyes. On each foot, they claw somewhat similar in appearance to a horse's hoof. On these unusual feet, they moved through the open forests and plains, where they sought grass and leaves to eat, their front paws were strange. They may have been used bringing leaves within eating distance. P. goliah was unable to hop as a mode of transportation, would have been unable to accelerate sufficiently due to its weight. Broad hips and ankle joints, adapted to resist torsion or twisting, point to an upright posture where weight is supported by one leg at a time, its broad hips allowed for another important modification - large buttocks - a feature shared with other walking species. However, some ambiguity surrounds the possible locomotion of P. goliah. Some research suggests that this species was the largest hopping mammal to have existed.

Research suggests that the most optimal weight for a large hopping marsupial is 50–60 kg. Larger animals the massive P. goliah, would be more at risk of tendon breakage while hopping. If P. goliah were to have travelled by hopping, the highest possible balance between size and speed would have been peaked, because its body would have been the largest possible to be carried by this method of locomotion. A more suggestion, based on the apparent anatomy allowed by the bone structure of P. goliah, is that unlike modern kangaroos, which are plantigrade hoppers at high speeds and use their tails in pentapedal locomotion at slower speeds, Procoptodon was an unguligrade biped, walking in a fashion similar to hominids. Locomotion mechanics and physiology have been investigated through the examination of muscleoskeleton scaling patterns; the largest, P. goliah, weighed up to 240 kg. For P. goliah, tendon stress was identified, which indicates limited locomotor capabilities, exposing a correlation between body mass and locomotion abilities.

Ruptures in tendons demonstrate strain in elasticity of muscles in the limbs, which provides evidence that the hypothesised ability for P. goliah to hop may have been unlikely. Due to its locomotive performance, the species may have been vulnerable to human predation. Fossils of giant short-faced kangaroos have been found at the Naracoorte World Heritage fossil deposits in South Australia, Lake Menindee in New South Wales, Darling Downs in Queensland, at many other sites. A full-sized, lifelike replica is on permanent display with other ancient native Australian animals at the Australian Museum; the genus is paraphyletic, derived from Simosthenurus. These animals lived alongside modern species of kangaroo, but specialised on a diet of leaves from trees and shrubs, their robust skull architecture and shortened faces have been thought to be related to increased masseter muscles used to chew foods. Dental microwear of P. goliah supports a browsing diet. Large bicuspids, crenulated dental crowns, a massive bony jaw present in the fossil evidence of P. goliah would have been required to process and digest a substantial amount of leafy fodder.

Stable isotopic data suggest its diet consisted of plants using a C4 photosynthetic pathway associated with grasses. In this case, chenopod saltbushes found throughout semiarid Australia were considered a more source of the C4 signature. [An intensification in aridity during the second half of the Pleistocene propagated the evolutionary progression of P. goliah to adapt to an abundance of dry vegetation. Evidence that P. goliah was the most distributed species among the Pleistocene macropodids throughout the continent shows that this species was adapted to a tougher diet than any other extinct Pleistocene sthenurine. Similar to Macropus giganteus, Procoptodon has molar patterns that indicate they had a similar, herbivorous diet and were grazers, but determining specific diets and preference of extinct herbivores is admittedly difficult. Through the study of isotopic composition of Procoptodon goliah tooth enamel, in addition to biomechanical bone features, dietary clues and feeding behavior have been deduced.

The osteological characters furnish evidence of P. goliah's ability to handle fibrous veget