Featured pictureChoice of the week: the first page of the autograph manuscript of Chopin's well-knownPolonaise in A flat for piano (1842). Scholars can work back from such evidence as the strike-throughs, the handwriting, how the ink dried, and the spacing of the chords and bar-lines, to reveal aspects of how the composer conceived and penned the music. The "shadow" of an adjacent page pressed against this one can be seen.
The Signpost welcomesVejvančický (nom) as ournewest admin. Vejvančický, from the Czech Republic, has more than 16,000 edits and two and a half years' experience in a wide range of areas, including new-page patrolling, and our currently backlogged speedy deletion and AfD processes. He hasan impressive list of mostly Czech-related pages he is working towards creating at the English Wikipedia.
Jersey Act (nom), an attempt by the English thoroughbred-breeding establishment to ensure the "purity" of their breed. However, it never really worked as they intended (Ealdgyth andMalleus Fatuorum).
George Macaulay (nom), a Yorkshire cricketer in the 1920s and 1930s who managed to offend important people and never fitted with the cricket establishment because of his aggression and hostility (Sarastro1)
Nguyen Chanh Thi (nom), a South Vietnamese general who tried and failed to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem in 1960, and escaped to Cambodia. He was responsible for three months of riots and mutiny in South Vietnam (YellowMonkey).
Francis Tresham (nom), who, according to nominatorParrot of Doom, is considered by many to be "the dirty little sneak who wrote the Monteagle letter, a piece of evidence which allowed the government to find Guy Fawkes sitting in the dark, waiting to light the fuse which would have blown up the House of Lords, and killed the king and all those with him."
Andrew Johnston (singer) (nom), which nominatorJ Milburn previously nominated for deletion. He asks whether this is the first such victory rescued from the jaws.
Choice of the week.The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewerJimfbleak to select the best newly promoted article from this week's offerings, together withthe four promotions last week.
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My benchmark for the quality of a Wikipedia article is whether I find myself reading from start to finish an article on a subject of which I know nothing; all ten of these FAs passed that test. It was interesting to discover that it seems to have been perfectly acceptable for a teacher in Nixon's America to enrol her charges as political cheerleaders, although less of a surprise to find that Yorkshire cricketers can be nearly as irascible as their Australian counterparts.
Jersey Act, perfidious Albion at work again, was a small but perfectly formed example of what a good collaboration should be, andBring Us Together was a fascinating peek into the US of 40 years ago. However, overall I was torn between two of the five biographies,Francis Tresham and Barnes. For me,Sid Barnes with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 edges it, if only because it's harder to write well about something as intrinsically boring as cricket than it is for a gunpowder plotter!
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Featured lists
From FLChoice of the week: Competitors ready themselves for theGordon Bennett Cup 2007 in Belgium Ten lists werepromoted:
Choice of the week. We asked FL nominatorAngChenrui for his choice of the best:
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Tough choice really, considering that almost all the featured lists have to do with pop culture and sports. I foundList of battlecruisers of the Royal Navy—an exception here—highly informative and well-written.List of Best in Show winners of Crufts was a good read as well, since its not everyday that you hear about championship-winning dogs. I liked the last two in the list above; I suppose many of us here can identify with the music listed there. However, Choice of the week goes toGordon Bennett Cup (ballooning) for me. The Cup is the oldestgas balloon race in the world, as you would find out, and the article sure piqued my curiosity. In this age of technology and faster-than-sound travel, it is a pleasure to be reading about slower-cruising aerial vehicles. Of course the competition is not without incident too; last month's race saw the disappearance of two Americans, both of whom were never found.
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Featured pictures
New featured picture mentioned by the judge:PET is anuclear medicine imaging technique that produces a 3D image of functional processes in the body. But is the body turning clockwise or anticlockwise? Can you switch your perception from one to the other?Five images werepromoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
Uranus (nom), massive Solar Systemgas-giant planet, taken by the NASA's spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986. Structural details are just discernable at the full resolution.
Choice of the week.Nergaal, a regular reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates, toldThe Signpost: "A good variety of pictures was promoted to featured status this week, but in the end, the choice is a pretty obvious one. It is rare that the project receives a donation of a high-quality artefact such asa copy of the original 1842 manuscript ofChopin'sPolonaise in A flat, Op. 53, for solo piano. It is a high-quality scan of the score of one of the most popular compositions by Chopin. The composer's own autograph is visible in the top right corner of the page. Notable mentions are well deserved by other two promotions: the colorful animated projection of awhole-body PET scan, as well as anotherhistoric image, taken byVoyager in 1986 of theseventh planet."
Wow, do we have a Wikipedia article explaining this optical illusion? I found that closing my eyes momentarily and reopening them often "reset" my brain into thinking that the image was rotating in the other direction. — Cheers,JackLee–talk–08:12, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Scarily, i found the body rotating one way, the "innards" the other, at the same time. Awkward. Great image, though. Cheers,LindsayHi08:59, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
After staring at the rotating image for 15 minutes I looked down at the Sea Egg image and its spines started growing! --Ϫ09:49, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On a completely different note, I just thought that congratulations should go J Milburn for nominating an article for deletion and when the result was keep, instead of thinking "oh well, bugger it", actually doing the hard yards and getting it to FA. A remarkable effort.Jenks24 (talk)16:14, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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