Awakenings

Awakenings is a 1990 American drama film based on Oliver Sacks' 1973 memoir of the same title. It tells the true story of British neurologist Oliver Sacks, fictionalized as American Malcolm Sayer (portrayed by Robin Williams), who, in 1969, discovered beneficial effects of the drug L-Dopa. He administered it to catatonic patients who survived the 1917–28 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. Leonard Lowe (played by Robert De Niro) and the rest of the patients were awakened after decades of catatonia and have to deal with a new life in a new time. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards.

Directed by Penny Marshall, the film was produced by Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, who first encountered Sacks's book as undergraduates at Yale University and optioned it a few years later. Awakenings stars Robert De Niro, Robin Williams, Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson, John Heard, Penelope Ann Miller, and Max Von Sydow. The film features a non-speaking cameo from jazz legend Dexter Gordon (who died before the film's release) and then-unknowns Bradley Whitford, Peter Stormare, and Vincent Pastore play a doctor, neurochemist, and psych-ward patient, respectively. Also, a then-unknown Vin Diesel was in the film playing a psych-ward orderly, but he was uncredited.

Awakenings (book)

Awakenings is a 1973 non-fiction book by Oliver Sacks. It recounts the life histories of those who had been victims of the 1920s encephalitis lethargica epidemic. Sacks chronicles his efforts in the late 1960s to help these patients at the Beth Abraham Hospital (now Beth Abraham Health Services) in the Bronx, New York. The treatment used the then-new drug L-DOPA.

In 1982, Dr. Sacks wrote:

The book inspired the 1982 play A Kind of Alaska by Harold Pinter, performed as part of a trilogy of Pinter's plays titled Other Places, and a documentary television episode, the pilot of the British television programme Discovery. It was also made into a 1990 Oscar-nominated film, Awakenings starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

The 1976 edition of the book is dedicated to the memory of poet W. H. Auden, and bears an extract from Auden's 1969 poem The Art of Healing:

'Healing',
Papa would tell me,
'is not a science,
but the intuitive art
of wooing Nature.'

Prior to his 1973 death, Auden himself wrote: "Have read the book and think it a masterpiece".

List of Stargate Universe episodes

Stargate Universe is a Canadian-American military science fiction television series created by Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper as a spin off from its sister shows, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.

The show has stand-alone episodes as well as multi-part episodes, and it also has more season-long story and character arcs running through every episode than any other Stargate series. Brad Wright was hopeful that the show would last three or more seasons. On December 16, 2010, Entertainment Weekly reported that the show would end after the second season.

Series overview

Television series

Season 1 (2009–10)

The first season consists of 20 episodes. Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper wrote the three-parter series opener named "Air", which was originally planned to be a two-parter. The first two parts of "Air" premiered on Syfy on October 2, 2009, with regularly weekly airing beginning on October 9, 2009. "Fire" was originally going to be the title for episode four, but the story and script was too big to be able to fit into one episode, so the producers changed it to become a two-parter called "Darkness" and "Light", therefore pushing all future episodes forward one slot. "Justice" was the mid-season finale. The back half of the first season aired on Friday April 2, 2010 on Space and Syfy.

Vandals

The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe, or group of tribes, who were first heard of in southern Poland, but later moved around Europe establishing kingdoms in Spain and later North Africa in the 5th century.

The Vandals are believed to have migrated from southern Scandinavia to the area between the lower Oder and Vistula rivers during the 2nd century BC and to have settled in Silesia from around 120 BC. They are associated with the Przeworsk culture and were possibly the same people as the Lugii. Expanding into Dacia during the Marcomannic Wars and to Pannonia during the Crisis of the Third Century, the Vandals were confined to Pannonia by the Goths around 330 AD, where they received permission to settle by Constantine the Great. Around 400 the Vandals were pushed westwards again, this time by the Huns, crossing the Rhine into Gaul along with other tribes in 406. In 409, the Vandals crossed the Pyrenees into the Iberian Peninsula, where their main groups, the Hasdingi and the Silingi, settled in Gallaecia and Baetica respectively.

Vandal (tanker)

Vandal was a river tanker designed by Karl Hagelin and Johny Johnson for Branobel. Russian Vandal and French Petite-Pierre, launched in 1903, were the world's first diesel-powered ships (sources disagree over which of the two, Vandal or Petite-Pierre, was the first). Vandal was the first equipped with fully functional diesel-electric transmission.

In the 1890s oil industry searched for an economical oil-burning engine, and the solution was found by German engineer Rudolph Diesel. Diesel marketed his technology to oil barons around the world; in February 1898 he granted exclusive licenses to build his engines in Sweden and Russia to Emanuel Nobel of the Nobel family. The Russian licence cost Nobel 800,000 marks in cash and stock of the newly founded Russian Diesel Company. The Saint Petersburg engine plant was a quick success; it started with diesel-powered industrial pumps for oil pipelines and soon grabbed the mass market for flour mill engines. It produced more diesel engines than any other concern in the world.

Vandal (record producer)

Vandal is a Techno, Breakbeat and Electronica producer from Sheffield, England. He is currently recording for Meat Katie's LOT49 record label.

Background

Vandal's first vinyl release was in 2000 through big beat label Plastic Raygun, Vandal went on to release three more singles and five remixes via Plastic Raygun before moving to Meat Katie's LOT49 record label in 2005. Vandal released the album 'Tonight We Riot' through LOT49 in 2010. Although Vandal had been releasing singles for a decade 'Tonight We Riot' was his debut long player, featuring collaborations with Ryan Shuck from the American band Julien-K amongst others.

Discography

Singles

Albums