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= = = Phil Boyd = = = |
Philip Ewing Boyd (June 5, 1876 – November 16, 1967) was an Olympic rower who won a silver medal for Canada in the 1904 Summer Olympics. |
= = = Aleksandr Maksimov = = = |
Aleksandr Maksimov may refer to: |
= = = German Football Manager of the Year = = = |
The title Football Manager of the Year (Trainer des Jahres) has been awarded in Germany since 2002. The award is determined by a poll of German football journalists from the Association of German Sports Journalists ("Verband der Deutschen Sportjournalisten") and the publication kicker. |
= = = Color Splash = = = |
Color Splash is a television show on the U.S. cable network HGTV, hosted by David Bromstad and Rustle J Kuntz . |
The series was created for Bromstad after winning season one of "HGTV Design Star". It debuted March 19, 2007, on HGTV. The show focuses on transforming rooms by dramatic uses of color. |
The show also features color specialist and carpenter Danielle Hirsch, who debuted on "HGTV's Design Remix" starring Karen McAloon. |
"Color Splash" relocated from San Francisco to Miami in 2010. |
= = = Islam: Beliefs and Teachings = = = |
Islam: Beliefs and Teachings is an internationally recognised book by Ghulam Sarwar of the Muslim Educational Trust. It was published by Sarwar as the first English textbook for madrasa students in Britain . |
Overseas editions: French, Norwegian, Romanian, Chinese and Bengali |
Sarwar notes in the preface, that ""I feel humbled to note that 275,000 copies of my book 'Islam: Beliefs and Teachings' have been printed in England since 1980"". |
The Independent newspaper call it a ""popular school textbook"" |
The Times newspaper say that it is a ""standard text for Muslim religious education"" |
Ed Husain states that ""The first book I read about Islam in English was "Islam: Beliefs and Teachings" by Ghulam Sarwar"" and goes on to state that after only being taught about Islam orally by his family, Sarwars book ""filled a gap"". |
As he was taught that Islam and politics do not mix he says that ""one part of the book has stayed with me."" This being the chapter "Political System in Islam". He says that Sarwar said that Politics within Islam is fundamental. |
Husain goes on to say that ""What I did not know at school was that Sarwar was a business management lecturer, not a scholar of religion. And he was an activist in the organisations that he mentioned Muslim Brotherhood and Jamat-e-Islami. Sarwar's book was not the dispassionate educational treatise it purported to be."" and that ""He was also the brains behind the separation of Muslim children from school assemblies into what we called 'Muslim assembly', managed by the Muslim Educational Trust (MET) [of which Sarwar is the Director]. What seemed like an innocuous body was, in fact, an organisation with an agenda. In my school, a Jamat-e-Islami activist named Abdul Rabb represented the MET and awarded us trophies and medals for our performance in MET exams. Ostensibly it all seemed harmless, but the personnel all belonged to Jamat-e-Islami front organisations in Britain. Their key message was that Islam was not merely a religion but also an ideology that sought political power and was beginning to make headway."" |
However, when Husain quotes Sarwar on page 21 of "The Islamist" regarding politics and Islam (page 169 of Sarwar's book), he does so but, although not wrong, he words the quoting very differently from what is actually written in Sarwar's book. |
Additionally, as discussed above, Husain mentions that ""What I did not know at school was that Sarwar was a business management lecturer, not a scholar of religion."" However, it says clearly in Sarwar's book that he ""obtained his first degree in Commerce and a masters in Business Management from the University of Dhaka, Bangkladesh"" and that ""For three years he taught Business Management to first-degree students in City College"". |
It must be also noted that the book was written in collaboration with Usamah K. Ward, Prof Dr. Muhammad Abdul Jabbar Beg, Dr. Faruq Nurul Arefin, Dr. Muhammad Qamarul Hasan and Nasreen Sarwar, Farhat Yasmeen Sarwar, Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood (Rosalyn Kendrick) (former head of Religious Studies) and Syed Dohan Nuh. |
Sarwar writes in the preface of the 8th Edition that: |
= = = Tis Agapis Maheria = = = |
Tis Agapis Maheria (Love's piercing) (Greek: "Της Αγάπης Μαχαιριά") is a dramatic television series by Stratos Markidis and a screenplay Yvonne Metaxaki raised by ANT1. The series takes place in Crete and narrates the vendetta between two families,"Stamatakides" and "Leventogiannides". It first aired in January 16, 2006, the series had two seasons. The first season of 21 episodes and the second season of 42 episodes. |
Two families separated by deep hatred... A feud that rose a century ago. A vendetta that has lasted a century. Now, an unlawful daughter born twenty years ago from a forbidden love, returns in the midst of the incessant quarrel that has spilled much family blood on both sides. The news fall like a bomb in the village. |
In guest roles |
Leventogiannis Family |
Stamatakis Family |
= = = Norcot = = = |
Norcot is an area of the suburb of Tilehurst in the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire. It is also an electoral ward of the Borough of Reading. |
Norcot ward is the far eastern sector of the Reading borough portion of Tilehurst. As a commonly used suburban area, Norcot centres on Norcot Road and the upper Oxford Road on Norcot Hill. It is electorally partly in Norcot ward and partly in Kentwood to its west. All these areas form a mixture of suburban and urban parts of West Reading. The original hamlet was near the junction of Norcot Road and Romany Lane and was largely made up of Norcot Farm in the north-east of old Tilehurst parish. The name means 'North Cottage' and has a southern neighbour Southcote, below Tilehurst church and manor. |
The Norcot Water Tower, built at the end of the 19th century, is somewhat older than the more prominent Tilehurst Water Tower. It is 50ft high, a Grade II listed building and since 2002 has been converted into a luxury apartment. Norcot School was built in 1906. In its lifetime, it was both a senior and a junior school. It closed in 1989. Like much of Tilehurst, Norcot Hill was used for the extraction of clay for brickmaking. In the 1920s, S. E. Collier's transported the clay via overhead cables to their main site in the Dee Road area of Tilehurst. St George's Church, Reading was built on the north-eastern edge of Norcot in 1886, largely to service the soldiers of the nearby Brock Barracks. Norcot Mission Church was started in 1929 to serve the new Norcot council estate. It started in a hut on land rented from the Pulsometer Engineering Works. The church moved to a permanent building in Brockley Close in 1972. The post office is on the Oxford Road. |
The ward of Norcot is west of the town centre and is bordered by Kentwood (the far western ward), Battle (the inner western ward), Southcote and Tilehurst wards. |
As with all wards, apart from smaller Mapledurham, it elects three councillors to Reading Borough Council. Elections since 2004 are held by thirds, with elections in three years out of four. |
In the 2011, 2012 and 2014 a Labour Party candidate won each election. |
These Councillors are currently, in order of election: Graeme Hoskin, Jo Lovelock and Debs Absolom. |
= = = George Strange = = = |
George M. Strange (November 9, 1880 – June 22, 1961) was a Canadian rower who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics. He was born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba to George William Strange and Elizabeth Johnson and died in Toronto in 1961. He is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery with wife Lillian Georgina Hall Tate. At the 1904 Summer Games, held in St. Louis, he was a member of Canadian rowing team that won the silver medal in the men's eight. |
= = = Utah State Aggies = = = |
The Utah State Aggies are the athletic teams that represent Utah State University. The school fields 16 sports teams – seven men and nine women – and compete in the Mountain West Conference. |
The first intercollegiate athletic event in the school's history took place on November 25, 1892, when the Agriculturalists defeated the football team from the University of Utah, 12-0. The football program has a rich history (Merlin Olsen and Phil Olsen are alumni) throughout the mid-20th century, but has struggled lately, following two ill-fated stints as an independent program and two more years in the geographically distant Sun Belt Conference, after the Big West Conference, which had housed the Aggies since 1978, elected to stop sponsoring football in 2001. USU's other teams remained in that conference until the school was invited to join the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in 2005. USU had lobbied to join its in-state rivals Utah and BYU in the WAC for many decades prior to 2005, but were only allowed in after the two other schools had left to form the Mountain West Conference. Subsequently both Utah and BYU departed the Mountain West Conference and USU was invited to join that conference, where they currently reside. |
Recently, the men's basketball team, under coach Stew Morrill, has become a nationally respected program, with several conference championships and trips to the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. The basketball program has been one of the most successful programs in the country since 2000, winning at least 23 games in each season, many conference championships, and appearing in the NCAA tournament numerous times. In fact, many Aggie sports have been extremely successful for many years, though this is often overlooked due to the recent futility of the football team. |
Following the great heights of the 1960s and 70's, Aggie football has fallen upon hard times in recent decades, leading to a disproportionate lack of USU sports coverage in statewide and national media. Many of the Aggie faithful attribute the decline to administrators at both Utah and BYU freezing then-superior USU out of the newly formed WAC. However, other factors cited as leading to the decline include a failure to upgrade facilities until recently, a lack of donors to athletics, and the complacency of past athletics directors. The futility of the football program has had an extremely negative effect on the perception of the university as a whole, and it is something that the Aggies are only now recovering from. 2011 saw the first winning season in many years, a bowl game, and in May 2012, an invitation to the Mountain West Conference, which will give USU its first stable, promising conference home in a half-century. |
However, former athletic director Scott Barnes recently inked deals with TV stations, replaced the head football coach, raised funds, and accomplished numerous necessary reorganizations, despite the athletics department's dismal budget in comparison with other state and conference schools. In large part due to his efforts, USU Athletics was crowned the 2009 National Champion of the Excellence in Management Cup, which seeks to identify the university that wins the most championships with the lowest expenses. The Aggies brought in WAC championships in five sports during the 2008–09 academic year, tied for the most in school history. |
As of January 2016, Aggie football has an overall record of 547–533–31 (.506) |
After many years of futility, the Aggies experienced a renaissance under head coach Gary Andersen, who replaced Brent Guy following the 2008 season. The 2011 campaign was the team's first winning season in many years, resulting in a postseason bowl berth. 2012 has brought the school's first-ever 10-win season and WAC championship (its first outright conference championship since 1936), and national Top 25 rankings in all three major polls. Andersen left USU after the 2012 season and has been replaced by his former offensive coordinator Matt Wells. |
The Aggies have played in eight bowl games in their history, winning three. The team's first victory came in the 1993 Las Vegas Bowl against . The team has made three consecutive bowl appearances, the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, in 2011 and 2012, and the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, in 2013. The team lost to Ohio in the 2011 edition and defeated Toledo 41–15 in the 2012 edition. In 2013 USU defeated Northern Illinois University in the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl. |
USU football is played at Maverik Stadium, which seats 25,100. |
The men's cross country team has been impressive in recent years, winning the WAC title for the past five years in a row—each year since joining the WAC. Members of the team have garnered numerous conference and regional awards, and have competed in the NCAA Championships. Likewise, the men's track and field team has long enjoyed success, with a bevy of All-American athletes from decades past. In recent years, the team has also won WAC championships in 2007, 2009, and 2010 (outdoor) and 2008 and 2010 (indoor). |
Golf has spent many years attempting to return to the heights achieved in the early 1980s by alum Jay Don Blake. As a member of the Aggie golf squad, Blake won the NCAA Championship in 1980 and was named NCAA Player of the Year in 1981. He turned pro that year, and in 1987 joined the PGA Tour, where he has one victory and several top-10 finishes, mostly in the early '90s. He has won three times on the Champions Tour. |
The tennis team has a difficult time attracting major recruits due to the lack of indoor on-campus facilities. The team trains and plays its home matches at an upscale local gym. Despite this deficiency, the team has produced a number of athletes who have won all-conference honors in recent years, drawing from both local and international talent pools. |
Of women's sports at USU, gymnastics has probably been most successful historically, heading to the postseason 26 times, including five trips to the national championships. The soccer team has been successful as of late, finishing the 2008 season with a perfect record in conference play, as well as a WAC title. Despite falling in the conference tournament in 2009, Aggie soccer landed three players on the All-WAC first team. |
Women's volleyball and softball are two of the sports at USU that boast of national championships in their history. In 1978 the Aggie volleyball team defeated UCLA to win the AIAW Large College volleyball national championship. The following year, the team fell to Hawaii in the championship match. |
The Aggie softball team has appeared in four Women's College World Series, in 1978, 1980, 1981 and 1984, winning the AIAW Division I softball national championship in 1980 and 1981. |
Neither team has returned to such heights in recent years, though each has been consistently good. The women's tennis team struggles with the same disadvantages as the men's. |
The women's basketball program began rebuilding in 2003 after a 16-year absence. At the time, USU was the only Division I school that did not have a women's basketball program besides the mostly male Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel. It took eight years for Utah State to post a winning record, finishing the 2010–11 season at 16–15 after reaching the second round of the WNIT. The 2011–12 team finished 21–10 for the first 20-win season in school history, exiting the WNIT in the first round. Following the season, Raegan Pebley, who had been head coach since the return of the sport, was hired away by Fresno State, with Jerry Finkbeiner being hired as her replacement. |
The most used sports venue is the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum, where basketball, volleyball, and gymnastics events are held. TV and radio announcers visiting the Smith Spectrum for the first time commonly state that the spectrum is one of the loudest basketball venues in the country with one of the most enthusiastic crowds in the country, rivaling Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University. It is a tradition that near the beginning of games the crowd chooses one player from the other team who commits a blatant foul, taunts the crowd, etc., and every time that player touches the ball the entire crowd boos loudly until he passes the ball. This pressure on opposing players created by this tradition has cut many outstanding players down to below average while at the Spectrum. |
The football team plays in Maverik Stadium, slightly north and west of the main campus. The stadium had natural grass until 2004, when artificial turf was installed. Romney Stadium is built on a hillside, and appears much smaller from outside than it actually is, as much of the seating and the field are below street level. In 2009, the field at Romney Stadium was named Merlin Olsen Field, in honor of the Hall of Fame alumnus. |
The name Aggies, short for Agriculturalists, is a fixture of many universities that began as land-grant and agricultural colleges. Early USU sports teams were sometimes simply referred to as the "Farmers" as well as the Aggies, though the former name was never official. Beginning in the 1930s, an image of a "bean-pole farmer" with a pitchfork in hand and hay stalk in mouth began to be used to represent the college, though this too was never made official, and disappeared following the transformation into a full-fledged university in 1957. |
During the late 1960s and early '70s, a movement began on campus to shed the Aggie name in favor of the Utah State Highlanders, but the movement met with widespread opposition and was abandoned. The name "Highlanders" was a nod to the university's historic ideological tie to Scotland, which came about very early on in the college's history, mostly due to the university's setting on a hill in a high mountain valley. In fact, for a brief period, USU's teams were indeed nicknamed the "Scotsmen" as well, and a remnant of this era lives on in the current and popular fight song "The Scotsman". |
A November 7, 1901 meeting decided that the college's official color would be blue. It originated as more of a royal blue, morphing fully into navy by the 1920s. The term "Big Blue" came about in the 1960s simply to refer to the uniform color, as opposed to any particular mascot. The image of a bull first appeared on a football game program in 1975, and the following year it was adopted as USU's mascot. |
For a few years, USU used an actual white bull, painted blue, which was brought to sporting events and corralled on the sidelines. However, when the Smith Spectrum was built, there were concerns with the bull ruining the floor. For a short time, the bull was outfitted with red rubber boots, which did not pan out and the bull was retired. |
In 1987 USU Student Athletics Vice President John Mortensen decided that Utah State should still have a mascot and spent $750 on a costume for Big Blue. The costume was somewhat of a disappointment because it was royal blue, not navy, had real animal horns, and was not easy to move around in. |
The costume has since undergone at least one redesign, but is now one of the most active and recognized college mascots in the region. Possibly Big Blue's most well-known antic was his tradition of rappelling from the JumboTron to kick off team introductions for men's basketball games. He also enjoys crowdsurfing. As of 2003, four of the six people who had played the Big Blue role had gone on to become mascots for professional sports teams. |
The HURD is the student section at Utah State University. The HURD started in 2006 and has grown every year since. Beginning as a club in the USU Student Association, the HURD moved to total inclusion of the entire USU student body in the summer of 2012. At capacity, the HURD fills 6,500 seats at Romney Stadium for USU Football and 4,000 seats in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum for USU Basketball. The HURD helps organize major activities, with leadership and help from the HURD Committee, such as tailgates, camp outs, away game watch parties and more for the student body and community. Drawing from its motto "Be Seen. Be Loud. Be HURD!", the HURD ensures that the teams who visit Utah State University will experience the best atmosphere in the country for collegiate athletics by being known as one of the craziest student sections in the country. |
The Aggies' principal fight song is known as "Hail the Utah Aggies" as well as simply "Fight Song". It was composed in 1933 by Mickey Hart, with words by Darwin Jepsen and Mark Hart. The main verse is sung twice, with the chant once in between. |
The popular Scotsman song was composed by student Ebenezer J. Kirkham, class of 1918. At athletic events, "The Scotsman" is often sung immediately following "Hail the Utah Aggies". The words are sung twice through without a break, accompanied by synchronized arm gestures originally created by a small students in Section K of the Spectrum in the early 90s to represent milking of a cow by hand eventually spread to the entire student section. The motions are yet another example of USU students ingenuity creating longstanding traditions at sporting events. During the final words of the second "verse", the students' pitch often rises to a full-out yell. |
<poem> |
Show me the Scotsman who doesn't love the thistle. |
Show me the Englishman who doesn't love the rose. |
Show me the true blooded Aggie from Utah |
Who doesn't love the spot . . . |
Where the sagebrush grows! |
</poem> |
Listed here are the conference championships from the Big West era (beginning in 1978) to the present in the Mountain West Conference. |
Men |
Women |
Men's Basketball |
Football |
Golf |