Action photography refers to the taking of photographs of moving objects, typically at sports events. Action photography requires a camera shutter speed of at least 1/500 of a second, any slower and the action will be blurred. This implies the use of faster photographic film, generally recommended is 400 ASA or faster film, but this is low resolution and grainy, particularly when photographs are enlarged to A4 size or larger. Modern cameras often try to over rule the photographer with low light warnings, and refuse to operate if the camera believes the light is too low for the shutter speed. A method of avoiding this is to load the camera with 200 or 400 ASA film, but set the camera to a faster film speed, often double that actually loaded. Photographs may be slightly under exposed, but can be lightened after processing.
A long lens is essential for photographing sporting events. 500 mm or even 600 mm being ideal, but 300 mm will often suffice, and the lens needs to be of at least reasonable quality and aperture size, certainly no worse than F5. Camera bodies are least significant. But if using auto focus it can be found that cheaper cameras are too slow to auto focus, and quick manual focusing particularly with a long lens is a highly skilled craft. Research Action Photography
Anarchists are a revolutionary sect or body setting forth as the social ideal the extreme form of individual freedom, and holding that all government is injurious and immoral, that the destruction of every social form now existing must be the first step to the creation of a new world (Anarchy). Their recognition as an independent sect may be dated from the secession of Bakunin and his followers from the Social Democrats at the congress of the Hague in 1872, since which they have maintained an active propaganda. Their principal journals have been La Revolte published in Paris, the Freiheit published in New York, Liberty published in Boston, and the Anarchist published in London. The Anarchist congress held at London in 1881 decided that all means were justifiable as against the organized forces of modern society. Research Anarchists
Baha'ism is a religion founded in Iran by Baha'ullah with about five million adherents throughout the world. Following the suppression of the millenarian Babi movement Babism in Iran and the execution of its leader, the Bab, in 1850, Baha'ullah declared himself in 1863 to be the new prophet heralded by the Bab. Baha'ullah acknowledged the revelations of earlier prophets such as Jesus and Muhammad, but held that the single identity of God must be re-taught by new prophecy to each generation.
Baha'is believe in the spiritual progression of the world to unity and their ideal is an international community with one language. Baha'i temples are open to the faithful of all creeds. A Universal House of Justice administers the religion, with its centres in Haifa and Akko (Acre) in Israel. There is no clergy or ritual; spiritual practice includes daily private prayer and an annual period of fasting, which ends with the festival of Now Ruz, the Persian New Year at the spring equinox. Baha'is stress the equality of women and the importance of monogamous family life.
Although Baha'is regard the Koran and Muhammad with reverence, to Muslims the Baha'is are heretics who have displaced the Koran from its position as the final and most important revelation; this has led to persecution in Iran since the religion's inception, with renewed force since the Islamic revolution of 1979. Furthermore, the location of the Baha'is world centre in Israel has led to an association of Baha'is with that country and made the Baha'is a target of anti-Semitic sentiment. Research Baha'ism
Brahmanism is a religious and social system prevalent amongst the Hindus, and so called because it was developed and expounded by the sacerdotal caste known as the Brahmans. Brahmanism is founded on the ancient religious writings known as the Vedas and regarded as sacred revelations, of which the Brahmans as a body became custodians and interpreters, being also the officiating priests and the general directors of sacrifices and religious rites.
As the priestly caste increased in numbers and power they went on elaborating the ceremonies, and added to the Vedas other writings tending to confirm the excessive pretensions of this now predominant caste, and give them the sanction of a revelation. The earliest supplements to the Vedas are the Brahmanas, more fully explaining the functions of the officiating priests. Both together form the revealed Scriptures of the Hindus.
In time the caste of Brahmans came to be accepted as a divine institution, and an elaborate system of rules defining and enforcing by the severest penalties its place as well as that of the inferior castes was promulgated. Other early castes were the Kshattriyas or warriors, and the Vaisyas or cultivators, and it was not without a struggle that the former recognized the superiority of the Brahmans. It was by the Brahmans that the Sanskrit literature was developed;
and they were not only the priests, theologians, and philosophers, but also the poets, men of science, lawgivers, administrators, and statesmen of the Aryans of India.
The sanctity and inviolability of a Brahman are maintained by severe penalties. The murder of one of the order, robbing him, etc, are inexpiable sins; even the killing of his cow can only be expiated by a painful penance. A Brahman should pass through four states: First, as Brahmachari, or novice, he begins the study of the sacredVedas, and is initiated into the privileges and the duties of his caste. He has a right to alms, to exemption from taxes, and from capital and even corporal punishment. Flesh and eggs he is not allowed to eat. Leather, skins of animals, and most animals themselves are impure and not to be touched by him. When manhood comes he ought to marry, and as Grihastha enter the second state, which requires more numerous and minute observances. When he has begotten a son and trained him up for the holy calling he ought to enter the third state, and as Vanaprastha, or inhabitant of the forest, retire from the world for solitary praying and meditation, with severe penances to purify the spirit; but this and the fourth or last state of a Sannyasi, requiring a cruel degree of asceticism, are now seldom reached, and the whole scheme is to be regarded as representing rather the Brahmanical ideal of life than the actual facts.
The worship represented in the oldest Vedic literature is that of natural objects: the sky, personified in the god Indra; the dawn, in Ushas; the various attributes of the sun, in Vishnu, Surya, Agni, etc. These gods were invoked for assistance in the common affairs of life, and were propitiated by offerings which, at first few and simple, afterwards became more complicated and included animal sacrifices. In the later Vedic hymns a philosophical conception of religion and the problems of being and creation appears struggling into existence; and this tendency is systematically developed by the supplements and commentaries known as the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. In some of the Upanishads the deities of the old Vedic creed are treated as symbolical. Brahma, the supreme soul, is the only reality, the world is regarded as an emanation from him, and the highest good of the soul is to become united with the divine. The necessity for the purification of the soul in order to its reunion with the divine nature gave rise to the doctrine of metempsychosis or transmigration.
This philosophical development of Brahmanism gave rise to a distinct separation between the educated and the vulgar creeds. Whilst from the fifth to the first century BC the higher thinkers amongst the Brahmans were developing a philosophy which recognized that there was but one god, the popular creed had concentrated its ideas of worship round three great deities - Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, who now took the place of the confused old Vedic Pantheon. Brahma, the creator, though considered the most exalted of the three, was too abstract an idea to become a, popular god, and soon sank almost out of notice. Thus the Brahmans became divided between Vishnu, the preserver, and Siva, the destroyer and reproducer, and the worshippers of these two deities now form the two great religious sects of India. Siva, in his philosophical significance, is the deity mostly worshipped by the conventional Brahman, while in his aspect of the Destroyer, or in one of his female manifestations, he is the god of the low castes, and was often worshipped with degrading rites. But the highly cultivated Brahman was still a pure theist, and the educated Hindu in general professes to regard the special deity he chooses for worship as merely a form under which the One First Cause may be approached
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The sharp division of the people of India into 'civilized' Aryans and crude non-Aryans had a great influence upon Brahmanism, and thus the spiritual conceptions of the old Vedic creed were mixed in later Hinduism with superstitions and customs belonging to the so-called aboriginal races. Suttee, for example, or the burning of widows, has no authority in the Veda, but like most of the darker features of Hinduism is the result of a compromise which the Brahmanical teachers had to make with the non-Aryan races in India. The Buddhist religion has also had an important influence on the Brahmanic.
The system of caste originally no doubt represented distinctions of race. The early classification of the people was that of 'twice-born' Aryans (priests, warriors, husbandmen) and once-born non-Aryans (serfs); but intermarriages, giving rise to a mixed progeny, and the variety of employments in later times, profoundly modified this simple classification. Innumerable minor distinctions have grown up, so that amongst the Brahmans alone there are several hundred castes who traditionally cannot intermarry or eat food cooked by each other.
The Brahmans represent the highest culture of India, and as the result of centuries of education and self-restraint have evolved a type of man considered by the West as distinctly superior to the castes around them. They still had great influence at the start of the 20th century, and occupied the highest places at the courts of princes. Many, however, were driven by need or other motives into trades and employments inconsistent with the original character of their caste. Research Brahmanism
A constitution is the fundamental law of a state, whether it be a written instrument of a certain date, as that of the United States of America, or an aggregate of laws and usages which have been formed in the course of ages, like the English constitution. The ideal constitution is that established by a free sovereign people for their own regulation, though the expediency of other forms at various stages of national development cannot but be recognized. The chief of these are: 1. Constitutions granted by the plenary power of absolute monarchs, or constitutions octroyees; such as Louis XVIII's Charte. 2. Those formed by contract between a ruler and his people, the contract being mutually binding - a class under which, in a great degree, the British constitution must be placed. 3. Those formed by a compact between different sovereign powers, such as the constitutions of the German Empire, of the United Provinces of Holland, and of the Swiss Confederation.
In regard to political principles, constitutions are; 1. Democratic, when the fundamental law guarantees to every citizen equal rights, protection, and participation, direct or indirect, in the government, such as the constitutions of the United States and of some cantons of Switzerland. 2. Aristocratic, when the constitution recognizes privileged classes, as the nobility and clergy, and intrusts the government entirely to them, or allows them a very disproportionate share in it. Such a constitution was that of Venice, and such at one time those of some Swiss cantons, for instance, Bern. 3. Of a mixed character. To this, latter division belong some monarchical constitutions, which recognize the existence of a king whose power is modified by other branches of government of a more or less popular cast. The British constitution belongs to this division. Research Constitution
A nation is a body of people, organised into a single state. One of the most characteristic of the ideas of the Age of the Renaissance was that of the Nation and its sovereign independence - an idea still very active in our own days. The Middle Ages had been dominated by the Catholic ideal of world unity. The great institutions of those ages were international - for example, the Feudal System, and above all the Church and the Papacy. Latin, too, was an international language; and though the various peoples had their own languages, the continual use of Latin in both Church and State affairs helped educated men to regard themselves as members of one society, the society of Christendom. Above all, these peoples - English, French, Spanish, Italian, German - were all members of one Church. All belonged in some measure to the Christendom of which the heads were the Pope and the Emperor. Then, gradually, from the early days of the Renaissance, the newer idea of the 'Nation' took root, and this in time changed the unity of 'Christendom' into the disunion of 'Europe'.
Modern Europe is dominated by national feeling and is divided into independent national states; and these have no longer even the common bond of one Church. Europe has lost as well as gained by the disappearance of medieval Christendom. She has gained, because the old feudal divisions in most countries meant internal disunion, civil warfare, and baronial tyranny. But Europe has also lost, because the old ideal of a united Christendom has disappeared in the jealous rivalries of warring nations. From time to time attempts have been made to check these dangerous rivalries. But the problem of international peace and co-operation - of a 'society of nations' - is one which mankind is still trying to solve in a satisfactory manner. The nations which took the lead in Europe in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were those that first achieved national unity, and the chief of these were France, Spain, and England. Italy, which had given so much to the world in art and letters, did not share in this political change. Great men lived in Italy - in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, and Milan - but all these cities were the capitals of small states. In short, Italy was not a nation; hence she became from 1494 the prey of powerful neighbours. As with Italy, so with Germany.
The Holy Roman Empire was an empire only in name; in practice, Germany contained three or four hundred separate States. Both Germany and Italy retained, until even the nineteenth century, their internal divisions and discords. France, Spain, and England had achieved national unity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whereas Germany and Italy had to wait another three centuries - and some of our problems to-day are due to the fact that they are still comparatively new nations. The means by which national unity was brought about in France, Spain, and England was the monarchy. It was their kings who saved and made these countries - saved them from feudal anarchy and made them into nations. It was monarchs like Henry VII and Henry VIII of England, Louis XI and Francis I of France, and Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain who united their countries under a strong rule, and led them to a great destiny. A Holy Roman Emperor (Maximilian) contrasted the new monarchs with himself as follows: 'The Emperor is indeed a king of kings, for no one feels bound to obey him; and the King of Spain is a king of men, for, though resisted, he is still obeyed; but the King of France is a king of beasts, for him none dare gainsay.' Research Nation
Pool hustling is an occupation in which a professional pool player invites games of pool with unsuspecting members of the public who consider themselves to be quite good. An ideal victim is one who brags about his playing ability. The first game will always be lost by the hustler, who will then perhaps play and lose another game before inviting the victim to place a wager on the game. If the wager is small, the victim may win and be invited to play for a larger wager, when the stakes are sufficiently high, the hustler wins the game conclusively and walks away with the money. The scam is in the deliberate deception of the victim who is led to believe that the other player is not quite such a good player as they are, as distinct from an honest game in which the professional will invite a wager and play to win the wager. Research Pool Hustling
Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organisation based upon the public ownership of the means of production and support of the poor, weak and needy by the strong and rich, and first proposed by philanthropic churchmen of the 19th century, men like Samuel Barnett. The term socialism (first coined in England by Robert Owen in 1816) covers a wide range of positions from communism at one extreme to social democracy at the other, and is therefore difficult to define with precision. It is less easy to say what socialists are for than what they are against, namely untrammelled capitalism, which in socialist eyes enriches the owners of capital at the expense of their employees, provides no security for the poor, and sacrifices the welfare of society to private gain. Most socialists have responded by arguing that the community as a whole should own and control the means of production, distribution, and exchange to ensure a more equitable division of a nation's wealth, either in the form of state ownership of industry, or else in the form of ownership by the workers themselves. They have also often advocated replacing the market economy by some kind of planned economy. The aim of these measures is to make industry socially responsible, and to bring about a much greater degree of equality in living standards. In addition, socialists have argued for special provision for those in need, in the form, for instance, of a welfare state.
Socialism as a political ideal was revolutionised by Karl Marx in the mid-19th century, who tried to demonstrate scientifically how capitalist profit was derived from the exploitation of the worker, and argued that a socialist society could be achieved only by a mass movement of the workers themselves. Both the methods by which this transformation was to be achieved and the manner in which the new society was to be run remained the subject of considerable disagreement and produced a wide variety of socialist parties, ranging from moderate reformers to ultra left-wing communists dedicated to upheaval by violent revolution. A revolutionary upheaval is represented by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto published in 1848 as necessary in order to replace capitalism. Bernstein in his book Evolutionary Socialism published in 1898 states that capitalism can be modified and changed by gradual, parliamentary methods. These debates have been somewhat overshadowed in recent years by the question of whether socialism is viable at all as an alternative to capitalism. Most Western socialists now opt for social democracy, others for market socialism. It is only in certain developing countries that traditional socialist aims still attract widespread support among political leaders. Research Socialism
The Social Contract is a term common to the philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries, embodying the old theory that civil society originated in a contract. It has been supported by very diverse arguments, and used to support conflicting conceptions. Generally it is assumed and original state of nature in which everyone did as they liked; from which state of miserable anarchy people escaped by making a contract with someone to protect them, thus organising society. In England this theory was accepted by such opposed thinkers as Hobbes and Locke, and in France Rousseau afterwards gave a new meaning to the term. In the Contract Social, published in 1762, he discarded the theory of an original state of nature, and sought his arguments from philosophy rather than from history. His state, and ideal conception, is founded upon man's universal desire for freedom, which can only be secured by a contract which each makes with all, and in which each surrenders his will to receive it back again as part of the whole. In this state the people themselves are sovereign, and affairs are settled by the general will, of which each person forms part. Research Social Contract
Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy that developed from Cynicism. Stoicism was founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium in Cyprus around 300 BC and is essentially a practical philosophy, the source of its ethics being the ideal of the wise man after the pattern of Socrates, who perceives that the true good of man lies not in outward objects, but in the state of the soul itself. A follower of
Stoicism is known as a Stoic. Research Stoicism
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Action Photography
