Oracle (workhouse)

The Oracle was a workhouse that produced cloth in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. The Oracle shopping mall, which occupies a small part of the site, takes its name from the Oracle workhouse.

History

In the 17th century, clothiers in Reading were facing competition from the north of England, where taxes were lower. On 30 December 1624, John Kendrick a clothier died leaving £7,500 to the Reading and £4,000 to Newbury to help their cloth industries. John Kendrick's father and brother had a textile factory in Minster Street. The factory was sold to the Council for £2,000, and alterations were carried out to make it suitable for use as a workhouse. The new facility opened in 1628. It stretched from the top of Minster Street 30 m down along the Holy Brook. William Kendrick chose the name "Oracle" to honour his brother John, whose idea launched the facility.

The Oracle remained in use until the 19th century, and the building was demolished in 1850.

References

The Oracle (The Matrix)

The Oracle is a fictional character in The Matrix franchise. She was created by The Wachowskis, and portrayed by Gloria Foster in the first and second film and Mary Alice in the third film. The character also appears in the video game Enter the Matrix and the MMORPG The Matrix Online.

Overview

In the first film, she is a mysterious but powerful figure, incongruously depicted as a cheerful old lady who smokes cigarettes and bakes cookies. She possesses the power of foresight, which she uses to advise and guide the humans attempting to fight the Matrix. Later, she is revealed to be a sapient program who is integral to the very nature of the Matrix itself. Whether her power of prediction is deterministic or not is a concept given much treatment in all three films. She herself claims that she lacks the ability to see past her own choice, explaining that no one, including herself, can see past a choice they do not understand. It becomes clear in the films that her power cannot be used to predict the ultimate consequences of Neo, who possesses free will when he defies the Architect.

Spider Riders

Spider Riders (スパイダーライダーズ ~オラクルの勇者たち~, Supaidāraidāzu ~Orakuru no Yūsha-tachi~, Spider Riders ~the Heroes of Oracle~) is a series of science fiction novels first published in December 2004, published by Newmarket Press written by Tedd Anasti, Patsy Cameron-Anasti and Stephen D. Sullivan (books 2–3). The stories became the basis of the anime series produced by Cookie Jar Entertainment of Canada and Bee Train of Japan. The three novels are titled Spider Riders: Shards of the Oracle, Spider Riders: Reign of the Soul Eater, and Spider Riders: Quest of the Earthen. Spider Riders broadcasts on Teletoon, This TV, and used to broadcast on Kids' WB!. Koichi Mashimo co-directed the staff at Bee Train with Takaaki Ishiyama. Writer Yosuke Kuroda adapted the novels. Robert Pincombe and Shelly Hoffman wrote the English version.

Plot

Eleven-year-old Hunter Steel searches for the legendary inner world by following the instructions in his grandfather's journal. He enters a cave where he finds a mysterious manacle that attaches itself to him. A spider startles Hunter, who falls into a hole to the center of the Earth and into the subterranean world of Arachna. There, he discovers a small group of elite warriors struggling to survive and to save Arachna from the attack of giant insect mutants. The warriors are children, each fighting with the help of their own 10 ft (3.0 m) battle spiders. They call themselves "Spider Riders". In the English TV series, the ages of the characters were reduced.

Vice (character)

Vice is a stock character of the medieval morality plays. While the main character of these plays was representative of every human being (and usually named Mankind, Everyman, or some other generalizing of humanity at large), the other characters were representatives of (and usually named after) personified virtues or vices who sought to win control of man's soul. While the virtues in a morality play can be seen as messengers of God, the vices were viewed as messengers of the Devil.

Over time, the morality plays began to include many lesser vices on stage and one chief vice figure, a tempter above all the others, who was called simply the Vice. Originally, the Vice was a serious role, but over time his part became largely comical. Scholar F.P. Wilson notes, “Whatever else the Vice may be, he is always the chief comic character”; this comic portrayal is explained thus: "In theory there is no reason why vice should not be put upon the stage with the same seriousness and sobriety as virtue: in practice, however, dramatists, and many a preacher, knew that men and women will not listen for long to unrelieved gravity”. In his Declaration of Popish Impostures from 1603, Bishop Harsnet wrote that "It was a pretty part in the old church plays, when the nimble Vice would skip up nimbly like a Jacke-an-apes into the Devil's necke, and ride the devil a course, and belabour him with his wooden dagger, till he made him roar, whereat the people would laugh to see the Devil so Vice-haunted.”

Law & Order: UK

Law & Order: UK is a British police procedural and legal television programme, adapted from the American series Law & Order. Financed by the production companies Kudos Film and Television, Wolf Films, and Universal Media Studios, the series originally starred Bradley Walsh and Ben Daniels, though the latter was succeeded by Dominic Rowan. This is the first American drama television series to be adapted for British television, while the episodes are adapted from scripts and episodes of the parent series.

Premise

"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: The police who investigate crime, and the Crown Prosecutors who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories."

Law & Order: UK is a British adaptation of the American Law & Order franchise, one of the most successful brands in American primetime television.Law & Order: UK is based in London and duplicates the episode format of the original series.

The first half focuses on the perpetration of a crime and the related police investigation typically culminating in an arrest, while the second half follows the legal and court proceedings in an effort to convict the suspect. The show dwells little on the characters' back-stories or social lives, focusing mainly on their lives at work.

Vice (TV series)

VICE is a documentary TV-series created and hosted by Shane Smith of Vice magazine. Produced by Bill Maher, it uses CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria as a consultant, and covers topics using an immersionist style of documentary filmmaking. It premiered April 5, 2013, on HBO. The show's second season aired in 2014 and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series or Special.

On May 7, 2014, HBO renewed the show for two more seasons. The 14-episode third season began March 6, 2015, one week after the hour-long "VICE Special Report: Killing Cancer" aired on February 27. Vice's fourth season is set to air in 2016.

Synopsis

It follows VICE journalists and founders Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi, and segment hosts Ryan Duffy and Thomas Morton as they go to different parts of the world interviewing people on political and cultural topics. Subjects include political assassinations, young weapons manufacturers, child suicide bombers, Indian and Pakistani border politics, the Chinese one-child policy, climate change, and bonded laborers in Pakistan's brick kilns, featuring the work of human and labor rights activist Syeda Ghulam Fatima.