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A Veritable Cornucopia
By Dave Sikula
Mon, November 22, 2010, 12:01 am PST

Fred Rogers
Darn right we're thankful for Mister Rogers.
Wanna make somethin' out of it?
Thanksgiving is, for better or worse, a holiday identified with abundance. It's only appropriate, then, that the week leading up to Turkey Day is chock-a-block with events, anniversaries, and just plain oddities. But what are we waiting for? Let's go!

We begin Monday with a couple of icons of the 1930s. In 1899, composer Hoagy Carmichael was born. Though musically untrained, Carmichael became enamored of ragtime and jazz at an early age, and went on to write such standards as "Stardust," "Georgia On My Mind," "The Nearness of You," and "Heart and Soul." In 1980, Mae West died at the age of 87. West was an actress who specialized in a shocklingly overripe and aggressive sexuality - in fact, she was arrested in 1927 on morals charges for her Broadway play, "Sex." To her dying day, she insisted that she was as sexually alluring as ever, even starring as an octogenarian sex symbol in 1978's "Sextette."

On the opposite end of the sexual spectrum was the gentle and avuncular Fred Rogers, who donated one of his "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" sweaters to the Smithsonian Institution on this date in 1984. There's no report on what happened to his sneakers.

Perhaps they were stolen by one of the host of shady characters we'll note over the next two days. For example, Monday is the anniversary of the 1718 death in battle of Edward Teach - better known as the notorious pirate Blackbeard, who terrified the West Indies. If not Teach, perhaps the culprit was Henry McCarty (aka William Bonney), who terrorized the American West as the thieving Billy the Kid (born November 23, 1859). Or maybe it was William "Boss" Tweed, the uber-corrupt boss of Tammany Hall who ran New York City in the 1850s and '60s, and was arrested and returned to Manhattan in 1876 after fleeing to Europe.

If one were of such a mind, one might see the death of Blackbeard or the jailing of Tweed as evolutionary "thinning of the herds;" an appropriate thought, since Monday is the 141st anniversary of  the publication of Charles Darwin's book, "On the Origin of Species." Darwin's ideas are pretty deep, and are best contemplated by either a Rhodes Scholar or a comics geek – both of whom are in luck Monday, as not only will the 2010 Rhodes Scholarships be announced, but (following a computer meltdown earlier this month), tickets for next summer's San Diego Comic-Con will go on sale. If history is any indication, they'll sell out within minutes, so you've probably already missed your chance. (Or you could have, if the computers hadn't crashed again.) If that's the case, you may want to salve your hurt feelings with some television, perhaps even sinking to watching tonight's premiere of "Skating with the Stars." (Because there's nothing we need more than another eccentric actress falling on the ice in another phony reality competition.)

On a serious note, for those of us of a certain age, November 22 will always signify the 1963 death of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Forty-seven years later, most of us still remember where we were when we heard the news.

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Archived under: 18th Century, 1920s, 1930s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 19th Century, Actors, American History, Anniversaries, Assassinations, Awards, Birthdays, Books, California, Celebrities, Charles Darwin, Children´s TV, Comic Books, Comics, Composers, Contests, Conventions, Crime, Criminals, Dead Celebrities, Education, Events, Evolution, History, In Character, Legal Cases, Murder, Museums, Music, Music History, New York, Old West, Pirates, Presidents, Reality TV, Science, Sex and Sexuality, Sweaters, TV, Texas, Thanksgiving, The West
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Monsters and Heroes
By Dave Sikula
Mon, August 30, 2010, 12:01 am PDT

A still from
The most famous shot in "A Trip to the
Moon." Special effects have gotten
slightly better in the century since.
Welcome once more to The Spark, your weekly digest of events and happenings and information in the Yahoo! Directory to help you appreciate them more.

As we begin this last Spark before the Labor Day holiday, we have to ask just where in the heck the summer went. Seems like it was Memorial Day about five minutes ago, and now kids are back in school and Fall is lurking around the corner.

Anyway, let's look at the week ahead.

Monday:

It's a day for monsters and creators. In the former category, we have Benedict Arnold, who on this day in 1780, secretly promised to surrender the Continental Army's fort at West Point, NY, to the British. Arnold was an egomaniac, who was frustrated with the lack of attention he had received, and what better way to get attention than to commit treason?

Speaking of outsized egos, we note that today would have been the 127th birthday of Huey Long, the "Kingfish" who ran Louisiana like a private fiefdom until he was gunned down in 1935. Long ruled the state as both governor and senator, and his campaign slogan of "Every Man a King" mixed populism and fascism in equal measure.

But let us not mention only those who destroy, let's celebrate those who create. When thinking of monsters, one almost automatically turns to thoughts of Dr. Frankenstein and his creation, for which we owe thanks to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born in 1793, she wrote her novel, "Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus," at the tender age of 18.

And where would kids (and parents) be today without Babar? Laurent de Brunhoff (born in 1925), is son of Jean de Brunhoff, who created the elephant king, and who continued his adventures when his father died.

Of course, those kids grow up to be teenagers and young adults, and where would they be without Robert Crumb, who turns 73 today? Crumb was in the vanguard of the underground comix movement of the 1960s, and he’s still active and creative, and his influence on modern pop culture is incalculable.

And what would pop culture be without the Beatles? One hesitates to guess, but you can try to get a handle on it this week at the International Beatle Week in Liverpool, England.

Of course, the Beatles played in the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York when they made their American debut in 1964, and that theatre is today home to the Late Show with David Letterman, which made its own debut in "the Ed" in 1993.

A nice contrast to end the day. Gazillionaire Warren Buffett hits the big 8-0 today, and out in the Nevada desert, Burning Man begins. The best thing we can say about Burning Man is that it gets all those people who want to go to Burning Man in one spot away from the rest of us.

Tuesday:

More monsters. In 12, Gaius Caligula was born. Though the surviving sources are incomplete, Caligula was one of the most notorious Roman emperors of them all, known for the stories of his cruelty, instability, and sexual perversion. (We won’t deal with them here, but you can find the stories easily enough.)

But Caligula isn't the only monster we note. On this date in 1888, Mary Ann Nichols was murdered and became the first of known victim of Jack the Ripper.

And, of course, in 1928, Berlin saw the premiere of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s "Die Dreigoschenoper" (known in English as "The Threepenny Opera"), with its main character, the vicious murderer Captain Macheath, better known as "Mack the Knife." In 1959, Bobby Darin had a huge hit with that song (which is really odd, when one considers it's about a mass murderer killing people), and Friday will see the 51st anniversary of that song being banned by WCBS radio in New York City. At the time, there had been a series of teenage stabbings in the city, and the station didn't want to those crazy teens any ideas.

And while marijuana possession is small potatoes compared to all of the above, we see that, in 1948, actor Robert Mitchum was arrested in a Hollywood drug bust, and was eventually sentenced to 60 days in prison, a scandal which in those days threatened to kill his career, but nowadays would rate only a passing mention on "Entertainment Tonight."

All this talk of criminals and murderers makes us long for a hero, and fortunately, in 1942, "The Adventures of Superman" radio series began airing on the Mutual Broadcasting System.

Wednesday:

All we have for today is that in 1902, George Melies’s "A Trip to the Moon," was released in France and became the world’s first science fiction film.

Thursday:

So, in 490 BCE, the Athenian army was at Marathon, battling with Persia. The herald Pheidippides was sent to Sparta for help. He ran the 150 miles in two days, but because of religious laws, the Spartans couldn't send any help, so he ran back. In spite of not having the extra troops, Athens won the battle. And poor Phidippides took off again, this time running the 26.2 miles from Marathon to Athens to carry the news of the victory. He gasped out his last words, "We have won," and dropped dead of exhaustion. The lesson: do not underestimate the usefulness of warm-ups and warm-downs.

In 1666, the Great Fire of London began in the wooden house of King Charles II's baker. By the time it ended three days later, more than 13,000 houses, including St Paul's Cathedral, had burned to the ground -- but amazingly, only six people had died.

If you were living in England in 1752, tomorrow would have been September 14th. While most of the rest of the world had switched from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar in 1582, the stubborn Brits had stuck to their guns. But, after nearly 200 years, there was an eleven-day discrepancy between the two calendars, and the English had no choice but to convert. There were actual riots, as people cried, "Give us back our eleven days!" But it was to no avail. Great Britain and her colonies were dragged kicking and screaming into the 18th century.

Speaking of fighting against reality, in 1934, singer Russ Columbo accidentally shot himself to death. Columbo was a wildly popular singer and actor, and when he killed himself (with an antique gun that was supposedly unloaded), his friends thought the news would prove fatal to his mother, so for the last years of her life, those friends created an elaborate ruse, sending postcards and letters from far-off locations, and using his records to simulate a radio show. In 1944, Mrs. Columbo died, never suspected that her son had died a decade before.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday:

Let's talk about pioneers this weekend.

First, there's Louis Sullivan, born in 1856. Sullivan is, for all intents and purposes, the man who invented the skyscraper. Since Chicago had had its own giant fire in 1871, Sullivan had the opportunity and the laboratory to erest steel-framed buildings that towered over anything built before.

In 1833, 10-year-old Barney Flaherty answered an ad in "The New York Sun" and became the first world's first newsboy, which is why we celebrate Newspaper Carrier Day today -- at least for those relatively few Americans who still have newspapers carried to them.

Sunday would have been the 163rd birthday of Jesse James. Jesse was not the first Western outlaw, but he was the first to become world famous while plying his dubious trade.

1885 saw the opening of the Exchange Buffet in New York City. It was the first self-service restaurant (read, "cafeteria") in the United States. We don't know if they served chocolate (we'd guess yes), but whether they did or not, it's World Chocolate Day Friday, so you can serve yourself and indulge.

In 1888, George Eastman registered the trademark "Kodak" (for the clicking sound a camera's shutter makes) and received a patent for his camera that used rolled film. Eastman's "Brownie" camera came from the factory loaded with enough film for 100 photos. When the roll was complete, the customer would mail the whole camera back to the factory in Rochester, NY, where the pictures would be developed and sent back along with a new camera.

Sunday is the 81st birthday of comedian Bob Newhart. Newhart is a two-time pioneer, having been in the forefront of the stand-up comedy revolution of the 1950s, when he transformed himself from "button-down accountant" to a comedian with the top-selling album in America. Then, in the '70s, his sitcom, "The Bob Newhart Show," set new standards for writing, ensemble acting, and just plain goofiness.

The weekend before Labor Day always marks the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. While it's easy to criticize the telethon for its corniness and out-of-date show business aesthetic, it's impossible to deny Lewis's commitment and ability to raise money -- nearly a billion-and-a-half dollars since 1966.

Lastly, we'll note the 98th birthday of the late avant-garde composer John Cage with 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence.

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Of Actors, Authors, Aliens, and Ads
By Dave Sikula
Mon, August 23, 2010, 12:01 am PDT

Michael Rennie as Klaatu in
Don't even think of throwing
a tomato at Klaatu
Welcome back to The Spark, your weekly guide to Yahoo! Directory resources for the week's events. It’s not a jam-packed week, we’ll admit, but in the words of Spencer Tracy, there’s not much meat on it, "but what’s there is cherce."

Monday:

In the late 1890s, Fannie Farmer wrote a wildly-popular and influential cookbook; a book which virtually guaranteed results by standardizing measurements. On this day in 1902, she opened her own cooking school, "Mrs. Farmer's School of Cookery," beginning a mania for cooking, food, and recipes in America that continues to this day.

In 1912, dancer Gene Kelly was born in Pittsburgh. Kelly was (in our opinion) the second-greatest dancer in the golden age of movie musicals. Not content to be merely a hoofer, Kelly soon moved into co-directing (with Stanley Donen) his films in an attempt to make dance in film not just entertainment, but art. And in such films as "Singin' in the Rain," "The Pirate," and "An American in Paris," he succeeded.

As popular as Kelly was, his fame paled in comparison to that of Rudolph Valentino, though. Valentino emigrated from Italy in 1913 with virtually no money, and by 1921, he was one of the biggest stars in the history of the movies, and certainly one of the greatest screen lovers ever. He died of peritonitis in 1926, setting off a frenzy that makes Michael Jackson's death look like a chamber of commerce picnic. 100,000 people showed up at the funeral, and when the body was taken to Los Angeles by train, probably hundreds of thousands more turned out in hopes of getting a look at the coffin.

Two championships this week, one ending and one beginning. In Las Vegas, the Miss Universe pageant will name its winner (still no word if extraterrestrials will show up), and in Paris, the World Badminton Championships will begin in an attempt to find the greatest shuttlecock artist of them all.

Tuesday:

A day for noting historical events. In 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted in Italy, with an explosive force some 10,000 times the force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Although the explosion wiped out the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, it was a boon for modern archaeologists, since those cities were almost perfectly preserved in cocoons of lava and ash.

In 1456, Johannes Gutenberg finished printing his first edition of the Bible. That Bible was double-edged: movable type made knowledge easier to disseminate to the masses, but those masses couldn’t afford to buy such expensive books.

Speaking of double edges, in 1891, Thomas Edison applied for a patent for the movie camera, but it couldn’t have been of much use, since he didn't apply for the patent for film until 1897.

In other patent news, in 1869, Cornelius Swarthout received his for inventing the waffle iron, making sure Southerners can enjoy breakfasts any time of the day. And while they were never patented, it was around this day in 1853, that Native American Chef George Crum invented potato chips at Moon's Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York. (Which is why you'll still sometimes see them referred to as "Saratoga chips."

And if you want a way to work off the calories from all those waffles and chips, you can emulate Duke Kahanamoku, whose 120th birthday this is. Kahanamoku was the native Hawaiian native who, if he didn't invent surfing, certainly popularized it.

Wednesday:

More food events today. In Buñol, Spain, La Tomatina begins, as thousands gather to, yes, throw tomatoes at each other. Why this is considered a good idea, we can't say. For those in a mood for a less-messy celebration, we point you to Mitchell, SD, where the annual Corn Palace Festival kicks off with a concert by Kenny Rogers. Every year, Mitchellites decorate their Moorish "Corn Palace" with husks of corn to create fabulous edible murals. This year’s theme is "Through the Ages."

In birthdays today, we begin with two men who are best known for two sentences. The first is actor Michael Rennie (1909). Rennie had a reasonably distinguished film career after World War II, but it was his appearance in 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still" that cemented his iconic status. Starring as the alien Klaatu, his instructions to the late Patricia Neal to give to the robot Gort, "Klaatu Barada Nikto," are known to even those who never saw the movie. The second is Walt Kelly (1913). In the 1950s and '60s, it would have been hard to find any American who was better-known than Kelly. A writer and cartoonist, he created the "Pogo" comic strip that, for years, poked fun at American society and politics. In 1970, to commemorate the first Earth Day, he pictured the strip's eponymous possum hero confronting the disaster his swamp home had become and proclaimed, "We have met the enemy, and he is us ..."

Two other birthdays are for men who are known for their overall bodies of work rather than for individual utterances: Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (1918) and Sean Connery (1930). Bernstein had a fairy-tale beginning to his career when, in 1943, he took over conducting the New York Philharmonic on a national radio broadcast as a last-minute substitute for music director Bruno Walter. The reception was overwhelming, and over the next half-century, Bernstein turned out symphonies, operas, and musicals like "West Side Story," and spanned the globe conducting orchestras and educating the public as to the power of classical music.

Connery had a brief career as a stage actor and bodybuilder before landing the role of James Bond in 1962. Although he's been mostly retired from acting since 2005 (not wanting to deal with the "idiots in Hollywood"), his role as Bond ("...James Bond") will forever define him -- well, that and his appearances on Jeopardy! ...

In these days of controversy of the 51 Park center in New York, we were struck that on this day in 1902, the first Arabic daily newspaper in the U.S., "Al-Hoda," began publication in New York City.

Thursday:

Today would have been the 70th birthday of Don LaFontaine, whom you know, even if you think you don't. LaFontaine was the movie trailer voice-over guy, who transfomed the phrase "In a world where ..." from a cliché to a monument.

In 1946, George Orwell's "Animal Farm" was published, much to the chagrin of schoolkids everywhere. Not that it's not a fine and important book, but it's gotten classified as just another notch in the summer reading belt and lost a lot of its power. Speaking of animals, there's that old saying that every dog has his day? Well, since today is National Dog Day, we guess this is it. And speaking of dogs, it was on this day in 1957 that the Ford Motor Company rolled the first Edsel off of the assembly line. And speaking of disasters, we can't help but think that the recent oil gusher in the Gulf was made possible at least in part by the good folks of Titusville, PA, who began operating the world's first oil well on this day in 1859.

Readers of a certain age will feel ancient as we note that Macaulay Culkin turns 30 today.

Friday:

The only things to note today are the birthdays of two men who couldn't be more different. In 1912, the King of the Jungle was "born" when Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan of the Apes" was published. And it's the 58th birthday of Paul Reubens -- better known in his persona of Pee-Wee Herman (and need we mention that Pee-Wee will open on Broadway in Ocotber?)

Saturday and Sunday:

This is a weekend to celebrate the births of groundbreaking creative artists.

In 1828, it was Leo Tolstoy, who's best known for his long and complex novels like "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" that deeply explore human psychology and relationships.

In 1898, writer and director Preston Sturges was born. Sturges had a streak of cinematic creativity in the 1940s that has never been matched, turning out a string of ten comedies that remain unrivaled for their characters, dialogue, and sheer lunacy. By 1948, he was all but washed up, but in the years before, he was unrivaled.

Actress Ingrid Bergman was born in 1915. After acting in 11 Swedish films in the 1930s, she was signed by American producer David O. Selznick, and spent the next 40 years making film classic after classic. From "Casablanca" to "Notorious" to "Murder on the Orient Express" (for which she won an Oscar), she left a series of indelible performances.

In 1917, comic writer and artist Jack Kirby was born. Kirby was "the King" of comics, with an imagination that was as limitless as the cosmic stories he illustrated. The list of characters he created or co-created -- Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, and the Challengers of the Unknown -- is enough to make any creator wish he'd have come up with just one of them.

1920 saw the birth of saxophonist Charlie Parker. Although deviled by drugs and alcohol in his brief 34 years, his postmodern method of playing jazz and bebop has influenced players ever since. Unfortunately, his genius came at a great cost. He lived high and hard, and when he died in 1955, the coroner estimated his age at between 50 and 60.

Speaking of "War and Peace," we should mention that, in the former category, Saturday will see UFC 118 and in the latter, Sunday is the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

And, finally, we note that on this weekend in 1922, the world heard its first radio commercial. The ad, which aired on New York station WEAF, was for the Queensboro Realty Corporation of Jackson Heights, who was trying to sell folks on their Hawthorne Court apartment complex in Queens.

Who knew then that one company's $100 investment would later turn into a multi-billion-dollar industry that would influence us all -- or try to?

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National Bathroom Reading Month: Number Two
By Liz Gill
Mon, June 7, 2010, 12:01 am PDT

Mannequin on a toilet
You don't even need to be human
to enjoy a good read on the toilet
(Photo by bixentro)
Last week, we offered some recommendations for quality media in honor of National Bathroom Reading Month. Today, we divulge more of our preferred potty periodicals.

Dave S.: Back in the 1920s and '30s, critic and raconteur Alexander Woollcott had a photo in his bathroom of himself reading on the toilet, with the caption, "Laxation and Relaxation." To those of us who use a bathroom break as a chance to take a few personal moments of quiet time, the choice of reading material is crucial -- but it's a fine formula. Nothing too heavy or complicated. By the time one gets back to it, subtleties and plot points may be forgotten. Too light, and you use up too much material too quickly and constantly need to find replacements. Joke books and comic collections don't work for me. They may be amusing, but most of them don't live up to repeated readings. For me, I find anthologies work best: material that's not so long that I prolong my visit beyond reason, but still compact enough that I don't find myself running short. On the current reading list: Richard Roeper's "10 Sure Signs a Movie Character is Doomed," Roger Ebert's "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie," and Scott Saavadra's "Flee, Puny Humans!"

Helene K.: So at our residence we have three favorite bathroom books: "I Can Has Cheeseburger" (best of), "What’s Your Poo Telling You," by J. Richman ad Anish Sheth M.D., and John Gray's "Men are from Mars and Women from Venus." We also have our collection of "Asterix" and "Tintin" comics. When we recently started potty training our son Max, a new book appeared: "Big Boys Use the Potty."

Heather S.: I used to read magazines like mad in college, but once I started working full time (and I discovered the Internet), I didn’t have much time to sit and flip through pages of pretty photo shoots. Now, whenever I get my new copy of "Glamour" magazine, I stash it in the bathroom between reads. And yes, I have taken my laptop into the bathroom once or twice ...

Joel E.: I bring an iPad or laptop into the bathroom and read Y! Front Page; no joke!

In a classic "Seinfeld" episode, George discovers that taking reading materials into the bathroom can have severe consequences (he takes a book into a bookstore bathroom and it is immediately "flagged"). I think of this episode every time I see a library book in our powder room, and wonder whether the librarian will somehow know ...

What are your favorite tomes of the toilet? Do you replace the "Weekly World News" with "The New Yorker" when guests come over? Are you among those who carry your computer to the can? Or do you only have time for a tweet?

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Directory categories: Literature, Toilets, Magazines, Book Reviews, Bathroom Humor
Archived under: Books, Comic Books, Literature, Magazines, Reading, Roger Ebert, Toilets
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National Bathroom Reading Month: Number One
By Liz Gill
Fri, June 4, 2010, 12:01 am PDT

Little girl reading on a potty chair
You're never too young to start
(Photo by Andy Eick)
Here at The Spark we've recently demonstrated that not only are we dedicated to pointing you in the direction of the best content on the Web, but we can also suggest some quality literature as well. Today we turn our attention to a genre that is discussed less often than children’s books, but that is, arguably, equally important. June is National Bathroom Reading Month. The Bathroom Reader’s Institute started a movement more than two decades ago devoted to providing quality reading materials tailored to the unique needs of bathroom browsers. Although none of our colleagues currently relies on the official book, we have assembled what may be the beginning of a Canon of the Commode, in hopes that our suggestions might make your quality time even better.

Adam B.: "The New Yorker." Cartoons or poems for the quick one. Longer articles and fiction for the longer sessions.

Mike M.: While resting on my porcelain throne, the latest issue of "Entertainment Weekly" is my choice of pastime.

Max C.: When I'm on the can, I tend to like to read something short, because uh ... getting caught up with a chapter that takes too long really stinks. For those times when quick short read is needed, any of the numerous "Garfield" comic strip books are great! Simple panels, funny jokes, and short reads are perfect for being flexible for however long you want to read it for. I recommend the earlier books because the new comics just aren't as good anymore. Another great one is "The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book" by Bill Watterson. This famous collection of full-color Sunday comics centering around mischievous Calvin and his furry little friend Hobbes is a classic, full of excellent visuals and well-written jokes. The pacing is just right, and makes a trip to the bathroom just a bit more enjoyable. "Time Magazine" is another good one, but if not magazines, then definitely the Calvin and Hobbes.

Jason L.: proves to be a connoisseur of classic comics with a mature theme.

While you ponder these suggestions, we’ll meditate on the topic, and produce more ideas for you.

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Directory categories: Literature, Toilets, Magazines, Book Reviews, Bathroom Humor
Archived under: Books, Comic Books, Literature, Magazines, Reading, Toilets
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