Twin Peaks was a television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation, headed by Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), of the brutal murder of a popular and respected teenager and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). Twin Peaks's pilot episode was first broadcast on April 8, 1990 on the ABC Network, which led to another seven episodes being produced, and a second season, which aired until June 10, 1991. The show was set in a small fictional Washington-town of the same name, and was primarily filmed in Snoqualmie and North Bend.[1]
Twin Peaks became one of 1990's top-rated shows, a critical success both nationally and internationally. Reflecting its devoted cult fan base, the series became a part of popular culture, referenced in other television shows, commercials, comic books, a video game, films and song lyrics. Declining viewer ratings in the long-running second season led to a cancellation. In 1992, the series spawned a prequel; the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, which attempted to connect the events leading up to Laura Palmer's death.
Read more, HERE.
A conference call is a telephone call in which the calling party wishes to have more than one called party listen in to the audio portion of the call. The conference calls may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the call, or the call may be set up so that the called party merely listens into the call and cannot speak. It is often referred to as an ATC (Audio Tele-Conference).
Conference calls can be designed so that the calling party calls the other participants and adds them to the call. In most cases, the participants are able call into the conference call themselves, by dialing into a special telephone number that connects to a "conference bridge" (a specialized type of equipment that links telephone lines).
Usually, most companies use a specialized service provider who maintains the conference bridge, or who provides the phone numbers and PIN codes that participants dial to access the meeting or conference call.
Three-way calling is available (usually at an extra charge) for most customers on their home or office phone line. To three way call, the first person one wishes to talk to is dialed. Then the Hook flash button is pressed and the other person's phone number is dialed. While it is ringing, flash is pressed again. This will put the three people together. This option allows callers to add a second outgoing call to an already connected call.
Businesses use conference calls daily to meet with remote parties, both internally and outside of their company. Common applications are client meetings or sales presentations, project meetings and updates, regular team meetings, training classes and communication to employees who work in different locations. Conference calling is viewed as a primary means of cutting travel costs and allowing workers to be more productive by not having to go out-of-office for meetings.
Conference calls are used by nearly all United States public corporations to report their quarterly results. These calls usually allow for questions from stock analysts and are called earnings calls. A standard conference call begins with a disclaimer stating that anything said in the duration of the call may be a forward looking statement, and that results may vary significantly. The CEO, CFO, or Investor Relations officer then will read the company's quarterly report. Lastly, the call is opened for questions from analysts.
Conference calls are increasingly used in conjunction with web conferences, where presentations or documents are shared via the internet.
Conference calls are also beginning to cross over into the world of podcasting and social networking, which in turn fosters new kinds of interaction patterns. Live streaming or broadcasting of conference calls allows a larger audience access to the call without dialing in to a bridge. In addition, organizers of conference calls can publish a dial-in number alongside the audio stream, creating potential for audience members to dial in if and when they wish to interact.
Conference calls can also be used for entertainment or social purposes, such as the party line or a group call. People call in to a specified telephone number, and are connected to conversations with other callers. This serves as a way to talk to and perhaps, subsequently, meet new people. However, conference calls are most commonly used by businesses.
Flat rate services are now being offered which enable conference call users to have unlimited access to a conference bridge at a fixed monthly cost. Because telecommunication carriers offer free long distance bundled with local service, this alternative is gaining widespread popularity for budget conscious businesses and non-profits.
In the UK, there are conference services offered on a pay as you go basis where the cost of the phone calls (using 0844, 0870 or 0871 numbers) from each of the participants covers the cost of the conference service. With this service type there is no monthly charge and usually no contracts to sign.
Prepaid conference call services allow businesses and individuals to purchase conferencing services online, and conduct conference calls on a pay-as-you-go basis. Typically, a conference call PIN and it's associated calling instructions are displayed immediately online after being purchased and/or sent via email. Generally, prepaid conference call services are used with a landline telephone, mobile phone, or computer, and there is no need to buy additional expensive telecommunications hardware or add/switch long distance service. Some services allow you to start or join a conference call from virtually any country worldwide--with appropriate telephone access.
Large telecommunications providers such as AT&T, Embarq (formerly Sprint), Verizon and other large to medium conferencing service providers maintain a dominant position in the conferencing niche; servicing many of the World's biggest brands. However, the Internet and improved global VoIP networks have helped to significantly reduce the barrier of entry into this niche.
Several vendors in the US now offer free conference calling. Such services generally require users to dial a long-distance phone number to be connected to their conference.
Free conferencing is different from traditional conference calling where the organizer of the conference call pays either a flat rate fee or per minute charge or a mixture of both. It has no organizer fees and allows for multiple people to meet at the price of their long distance connections.
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) defined a technical specification (TS 24.147) for conferencing within the IP Multimedia Core Network subsystem (IMS) based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), SIP Events, the Session Description Protocol (SDP) and the Binary Floor Control Protocol (BFCP).
![[nepotism.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBvjv13gTR69H-nRgqCbgBWBwAC5ed9jFKzsj_qpWOw_SSpLs0bILDCrkLXmkyhVgBTgww1ARiRSJl2JUOwX449fOoPelxrJMCOPN1oE_DjG8GCltE7ZdjyTz6G3CaxeGLBCjOf8lFQm-S/s1600/nepotism.jpg)
Nepotism gained its name after the church practice in the Middle Ages, when some Catholic popes and bishops — who had taken vows of chastity, and therefore usually had no children of their own — gave their nephews positions of preference such as were often accorded by fathers to sons[1]. Several popes are known to have elevated nephews and other relatives to the cardinalate. Often, such appointments were used as a means of continuing a papal "dynasty". For instance, Pope Callixtus III, head of the Borgia family, made two of his nephews Cardinals; one of them, Rodrigo, later used his position as a Cardinal as a stepping stone to the papacy, becoming Pope Alexander VI[2]. Coincidentally, Alexander elevated Alessandro Farnese, his mistress's brother, to the cardinalate; Farnese would later go on to become Pope Paul III[3]. Paul also engaged in nepotism, appointing, for instance, two nephews (aged fourteen and sixteen) Cardinals. The practice was finally ended when Pope Innocent XII issued a bull Romanum decet Pontificem in 1692[4]. The papal bull prohibited popes in all times from bestowing estates, offices, or revenues on any relative, with the exception that one qualified relative (at most) could be made a Cardinal.
Nepotism is a common accusation in politics when the relative of a powerful figure ascends to similar power seemingly without appropriate qualifications. For example, the popular British English expression "Bob's your uncle" is often thought to have originated when Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, promoted his nephew, Arthur Balfour, to the esteemed post of Chief Secretary for Ireland in what was widely seen as an act of nepotism.
More recently, when U.S. Senator Frank Murkowski was elected Governor of Alaska, he appointed his daughter, State Representative Lisa Murkowski, to fill the remaining two years of his seat and was accused by some of nepotism. John F. Kennedy was accused of nepotism for his appointment of his brother Robert Kennedy as Attorney General.
Many countries in the world have examples of this tilt towards dynastic rule, such as:
At some point, nepotism at high levels of government might serve to create what are in effect monarchies in nominal republics. In Syria, the case of the al-Assads mentioned above is one example. In Egypt, the likely similar succession of Gamal Mubarak to the Presidency upon Hosni Mubarak's death is equivalent. In Iraq, had there not been an overthrow of the government of Saddam Hussein with the US-led invasion, it would have been highly likely that his younger son, Qusay Hussein, would have succeeded to the presidency.
Outside of national politics, accusations of "nepotism" are made in instances of prima facie favouritism to relatives, such as:
Nepotism and Cronyism deny ordinarily qualified people access to income and power. This can have long term and short term impacts on a society depending on the extent of the takeup and social acceptability of these practices.
Places where nepotism is known to have a negative impact on a society
Why is nepotism necessarily bad for a society? It allows incompetent people to get into power and stay in power for long periods of time with no oversight.
Jill Kinmont Boothe (born February 16, 1936 in Los Angeles, California) is a former American ski racer who competed in the mid 1950s.
Jill Kinmont grew up in Bishop, California, skiing and racing at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. In early 1955, she was the reigning national champion in the slalom, and a top prospect for a medal at the 1956 Winter Olympics, a year away. That was until her near-fatal downhill accident at the Snow Cup in Alta, Utah, which resulted in paralysis from the neck down. It occurred the same week that Kinmont, weeks shy of her 19th birthday, was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine. [1]
After her rehabilitation she went on to graduate from UCLA and earned a teaching credential from the University of Washington. She married in November 1976, and had a long career as an educator first in Washington and then in Beverly Hills, California. She taught special education at Bishop Union Elementary School from 1975-96 in her hometown of Bishop. She is an accomplished painter who has had many exhibitions of her artwork.
Kinmont was the subject of two movies: The Other Side of the Mountain in 1975, and The Other Side of the Mountain Part II in 1978.
