Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-10/Featured content
The weird and the disgusting
From the authors: Well, now we have your attention, yes, one new stomach-turning featured article we could hardly bear to read beyond extracting the blurb; and one new featured picture might just as well have been titled Woman having sex with octopuses—regarded as too lewd even to display on the featured-picture nomination page. We leave it to readers, if they're so inclined, to access these items. Meanwhile, we draw your attention to two new featured portals, which in their quite different ways concern major issues of the day.
Featured portals
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* Portal:Renewable energy (nom), which comprises 19 selected articles (3 FAs and 9 GAs), 11 biographies, 17 quotations, 9 DYKs, and 22 selected pictures. Renewable energy comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, elevated water, ocean waves, tides, and geothermal heat, which are naturally replenished. About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from hydroelectricity. New renewables (small hydro, modern biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, and biofuels) accounted for another 2.8% and are growing rapidly. Elekhh, who nominated the portal with substantial assistance from Johnfos, told The Signpost that it "was born in a moment of enthusiasm for the idea and is the result of group effort. While it was initially put together in a relatively short time, it was continually refined over a longer period. There was a lot of support for creating a renewable-energy task force within WikiProject Energy, but this has yet to be implemented. If anybody is interested in joining the task force, they'd be welcome." picture at top
* Portal:Supreme Court of the United States (nom), the highest judicial body in the United States and leads the judicial branch of the federal government. The justices are nominated by the US president and confirmed with the "advice and consent" of the Senate. The court has a fascinating history in the governance and politics of the US, and some of its judgments, such as Roe v. Wade, have changed the course of American history. An insight into the court's significance, and the philosophical dimensions of writing dissenting judgments, is captured in what Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told National Public Radio in 2002:
- "Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.' But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow." (picture at right)
(Nominated by Cirt)
Featured articles
Six articles were promoted to featured status:
* McDonnell XF-85 Goblin (nom), an American prototype fighter aircraft conceived during World War II. It was a diminutive jet aircraft featuring a distinctive egg-shaped fuselage and a forked-tail stabilizer design. The prototypes were built and underwent testing and evaluation in 1948. Flight tests showed promise in the design, but the aircraft's performance was inferior to the jet fighters it would have been facing in combat, and there were difficulties in docking. (Nominated by Sp33dyphil)
* Seacology (nom), a non-profit charitable organization headquartered in Berkeley, California, that focuses on preserving island ecosystems and cultures around the globe. (Visionholder)
* Xeromphalina setulipes (nom), is a species of fungus that was first collected in 2005. It was described and named in 2010, and is known only from oak forests in Ciudad Real Province, Spain. (J Milburn)
* HMS Princess Royal (1911) (nom), the second of two Lion-class battlecruisers built for the Royal Navy before World War I. (Sturmvogel 66)
* The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (nom), a 2010 Dutch body horror film that tells the story of a German doctor who kidnaps three tourists and joins them surgically, mouth to anus, forming a "human centipede". It has been described as "the most horrific film ever made", and as "torture porn". (Coolug)
* Heidi Game (nom), a hard fought American football game remembered because the ending was not shown by the TV network, enraging many viewers. Al Davis, who died Saturday, plays a role in the article. (The Writer 2.0 and Wehwalt)
Featured lists
Seven lists were promoted in the past two weeks:
* List of songs in Green Day: Rock Band (nom) (Nominated by Drilnoth.)
* Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster (R) (nom) (Killervogel5.)
* The Simpsons (season 10) (nom) (Theleftorium.)
* 1948 Summer Olympics medal table (nom) (Miyagawa.)
* List of accolades received by the Spider-Man film series (nom) (Crystal Clear x3.)
* List of centuries in women's Test cricket (nom) (SpacemanSpiff.)
* List of Square video games (nom) (PresN.)
Featured pictures
Seven images were promoted. Please click on "nom" to view medium-sized images:
* Canon 5D Mark II (nom; related article), a 21.1-megapixel full-frame CMOS digital single-lens reflex camera made by Canon. It succeeds the EOS 5D and was announced on September 17, 2008. (created by Charles Lanteigne).
* Cape Petrel (nom; related article), in flight, East of the Tasman Peninsula, Tasmania, Australia. Photographer User:JJ Harrison said, "We only have a couple of deep-ocean bird photos featured, and all of them to my knowledge are taken on land near breeding sites. I recently went on a pelagic trip about 25–30 km off the coast of Tasmania to photograph some of them. Because the swell was 2 to 3 meters, which eased in the afternoon, it was often difficult just to keep the subjects in the viewfinder. Fortunately my camera's auto-focus was up to the task!"
* Shy Albatross in Flight (nom; related article), a common seabird of the Southern Ocean. (created by User:JJ Harrison; picture at right)
* Brown fur seal (nom; related article), hauling-out on the Hippolyte Rocks off the east coast of Tasmania, Australia. The species is the largest and most robust fur seal, with a large and broad head with a pointed snout that may be flat or upturned slightly. (created by User:JJ Harrison).
* Nail-clippers-variety (nom; related article), well, they're nail clippers. (Created by Commons editor Evan-Amos, who gives some tips for photo-taking on his user page).
* Tako to Ama (nom; related article), an erotic woodcut of the ukiyo-e genre by the Japanese artist Hokusai. From a three-volume collection of shunga erotic prints first published in 1814, it is the most famous shunga Hokusai ever produced. Playing with themes popular in contemporary Japanese art, it depicts a young ama diver sexually entwined with a pair of octopuses.
* Jeff Dunham and Achmed (nom; related article), American ventriloquist and stand-up comedian with his puppet-character Achmed the Dead Terrorist. Dunham has appeared on numerous television shows. Time magazine has observed of his characters, "All of them are politically incorrect, gratuitously insulting and ill tempered." (created by Richard Mclaren). picture at right
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