Taxi!

Taxi! is a 1932 American Pre-Code film starring James Cagney and Loretta Young. The movie was directed by Roy Del Ruth.

The film includes two famous Cagney dialogues, one of which features Cagney conducting a conversation with a passenger in Yiddish, and the other when Cagney is speaking to his brother's killer through a locked closet, "Come out and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!." The provenance of this sequence led to Cagney being famously misquoted as saying, "You dirty rat, you killed my brother."

Also, Taxi! marks the first occasion when Cagney dances on screen, as Matt and Sue enter a Peabody contest at a nightclub. To play his competitor in a ballroom dance contest, Cagney recommended his pal, fellow tough-guy-dancer George Raft, who was uncredited in the film. In a lengthy and memorable sequence, he scene culminates with Raft and his partner winning the dance contest against Cagney and Young, after which Cagney slugs Raft and knocks him down. As in The Public Enemy (1931), several scenes in Taxi! involved the use of live machine-gun bullets. After a few of the bullets narrowly missed Cagney's head, he outlawed the practice in his future films.

Taxicab

A taxicab, also known as a taxi or a cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice. This differs from other modes of public transport where the pick-up and drop-off locations are determined by the service provider, not by the passenger, although demand responsive transport and share taxis provide a hybrid bus/taxi mode.

There are four distinct forms of taxicab, which can be identified by slightly differing terms in different countries:

Taxi (Bryan Ferry album)

Taxi is the eighth solo studio album by Bryan Ferry, the former lead vocalist for Roxy Music. The album was released on Virgin Records in April 1993, over five years after the release of his previous album Bête Noire. This was Ferry's third solo album since the second demise of Roxy Music in 1983, ten years earlier. The album was a commercial and critical success, peaking at No. 2 in the U.K., it was certified Gold by the BPI.

The first single, "I Put A Spell On You" was the album's only top 20 hit in the U.K., peaking at No. 18. The second single, "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" narrowly missed the U.K. top 20, peaking at No. 23. The third and final single, "Girl Of My Best Friend" peaked at 57.

Production and recording

When Ferry was asked about the album, he said "Since I started work on the Taxi album, everything has gone great for me. The last two years have been terrific, but I had three or four miserable years. Doing the Taxi album was the start of getting things right. Just getting something done quickly and efficiently was very gratifying. Finishing something I liked and getting back into singing again, getting away from my own writing temporarily was a good thing."

Fare

A fare is the fee paid by a passenger for use of a public transport system: rail, bus, taxi, etc. In the case of air transport, the term airfare is often used.

Fare structure is the system set up to determine how much is to be paid by various passengers using a transit vehicle at any given time.

A linked trip is a trip from the origin to the destination on the transit system. Even if a passenger must make several transfers during a journey, the trip is counted as one linked trip on the system.

Uses

The fare paid is a contribution to the operational costs of the transport system involved, either partial (as is frequently the case with publicly supported systems) or total. The portion of operating costs covered by fares - the farebox recovery ratio - typically varies from 30%-60% in North America and Europe, with some rail systems in Asia over 100%.

The rules regarding how and when fares are to be paid and for how long they remain valid are many and varied. Where the fare can be generally be predicted in advance (such as fixed fare systems) fare is usually collected in advance; this is the usual practice of rail and bus systems, who usually require the payment of fares on or before boarding. In the case of taxis and other vehicles for hire, (where the total fare will not be known until the trip is completed) payment is normally made at the end of the ride. Some systems use a hybrid of both, such as a rail system which requires prepayment of the minimum fare in advance, and collecting amounts above the minimum (if the net cost of the trip exceeds the minimum fare) at the end of the trip.

Act! (Italy)

Act! (Italian: Fare!, F!) is a centre-right political party in Italy, based in Veneto.

The party is led by Flavio Tosi, mayor of Verona and former leader of Liga Veneta–Lega Nord, who was ejected from it in the run-up of the 2015 Venetian regional election, due to his opposition to Matteo Salvini's political line.

Act! was immediately joined by three deputies (Matteo Bragantini, Roberto Caon, Emanuele Prataviera), three senators (Patrizia Bisinella, Raffaela Bellot, Emanuela Munerato) and four regional councilors in Veneto (three elected with the Tosi List for Veneto and one with Il Veneto del Fare). All of them were Tosi loyalists who followed him out of the League.

In July Michele Boldrin, leader of Act to Stop the Decline, sued Act! as the names of the two parties looked too similar.

In September a fourth deputy joined the party: Marco Marcolin, also from Liga Veneta–Lega Nord.

In October Act! became an occasional supporter of the centre-left government led by Matteo Renzi, whom Tosi held in high esteem, fueling rumors that the party might either enter in stable alliance with or join Renzi's Democratic Party.

Infrared cleaning

Infrared cleaning is a technique used by some film scanners and flatbed scanners to reduce or remove the effect of dust and scratches upon the finished scan. It works by collecting an additional infrared channel from the scan at the same position and resolution as the three visible color channels (red, green, and blue). The infrared channel, in combination with the other channels, is used to detect the location of scratches and dust. Once located, those defects can be corrected by scaling or replaced by inpainting.

Method

The three color dyes in typical color film emulsions are largely transparent to infrared light, so the infrared image is almost uniformly clear, unlike the RGB images. On the other hand, dust and scratches absorb in the infrared. Any dust spots or scratches appear as dark marks in the infrared, making them easy to find and compensate for.

Pixels that are partially occluded (for example, the dust only obscures a small portion of the pixel) may be corrected by scaling. The infrared pixel value indicates the fractional amount of the occlusion, and RGB values can be scaled appropriately.

Struggle (TV series)

Struggle (simplified Chinese: 奋斗; traditional Chinese: 奮鬥; pinyin: Fèndòu) is a highly popular Chinese television drama which aired in 2007. The series is directed by Zhào Bǎogāng 赵宝刚 based on the award-winning novel of the same name by Shí Kāng 石康. This 32-episode play earned unexpectedly high audience ratings, primarily due to the popularity of its cast and their fashion style.

Synopsis

The series is about the China's Post-80's generation after graduation from college. Protagonist is a promising architect. He has two fathers, and he found two ways of life. He has two lovers, and he has two different feelings. He has an ideal, but has led to another way of reality side. The most valuable of him is non-stop struggle.

Reception

Struggle was well received by its post-80's generation audiences. Many rated the series highly, calling it "a milestone in Chinese TV productions" for the innovative break-away from the traditional style of Chinese television drama. The series' recreation of realistic youth life was also praised by its audience, most of which feel it was the first Chinese television drama to successfully convey the feelings, attitudes, ways of thinking, colloquial language of the generation.