Agkistrodon piscivorus

Agkistrodon piscivorus is a venomous snake, a species of pit viper, found in the southeastern United States. Adults are large and capable of delivering a painful and potentially fatal bite. When antagonized, they will stand their ground by coiling their bodies and displaying their fangs. Although their aggression has been exaggerated, individuals may bite when feeling threatened or being handled. This is the world's only semiaquatic viper, usually found in or near water, particularly in slow-moving and shallow lakes, streams, and marshes. The snake is a strong swimmer and will even enter the sea. It has successfully colonized islands off both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

The generic name is derived from the Greek words ancistro (hooked) and odon (tooth), and the specific name comes from the Latin piscis (fish) and voro (to eat); thus, the scientific name translates into “hooked-tooth fish-eater”. Common names include variants on water moccasin, swamp moccasin, black moccasin, cottonmouth, gapper, or simply viper. Many of the common names refer to the threat display, where this species will often stand its ground and gape at an intruder, exposing the white lining of its mouth. Three subspecies are currently recognized, including the nominate subspecies described here. Its diet consists mainly of fish and frogs but is otherwise highly varied and, uniquely, has even been reported to include carrion.

Regions of the African Union

The member states of the African Union are divided into five geographic regions of the African Union.

List

North

Southern

East

West

Central

Sixth Region

The AU considers the African diaspora as its sixth region.

References

Congo (pinball)

Congo is a Williams pinball machine released in November 1995. It is based on the motion picture of the same name.

External links

Penthouse Forum

Penthouse Forum, sometimes simply Forum, is a magazine owned by FriendFinder Networks, the publishers of Penthouse magazine.

History and profile

Penthouse Forum was started in March 1970 as a supplement to Penthouse. Unlike the main Penthouse title, Penthouse Forum is more journalistic than pornographic, and features editorials and opinion pieces on controversial contemporary topics. It features regular monthly columns titled "On the Boards", "On the Beltway", and "On the Edge". It also features a section for the "Letter of the Month".

Notable contributors

Alastair Campbell, a journalist and Tony Blair's former Director of Communications, was a contributor to the magazine, as was Chad Varah, the founder of The Samaritans charity and an Anglican priest, who was a consultant on sex education for the magazine.

In July 2006 the rights to the UK edition were licensed to Trojan Publishing.

See also

References

External links

Forum (KQED)

Forum is a two-hour live call-in radio program produced by KQED-FM, presenting discussions of local, state, national and international issues, and in-depth interviews. The program began in 1990 as a politics-oriented talk show, created and hosted by Kevin Pursglove. Since 1993, it has been hosted by scholar, author, professor, and former KGO Radio host Michael Krasny, who broadened the program's scope to a cross-section of current events.

The format of Forum varies from show to show, but generally involves an in-person interview followed by public Q&A via phone or email with one or more subjects, often nationally prominent authors and scholars. The program airs for two hours on weekday mornings, with an hour repeated in the evening.

References

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Forum (Roman)

A forum (Latin forum "public place outdoors", plural fora; English plural either fora or forums) was a public square in a Roman municipium, or any civitas, reserved primarily for the vending of goods; i.e., a marketplace, along with the buildings used for shops and the stoas used for open stalls. Many forums were constructed at remote locations along a road by the magistrate responsible for the road, in which case the forum was the only settlement at the site and had its own name, such as Forum Popili or Forum Livi.

The functions of a forum

In addition to its standard function as a marketplace, a forum was a gathering place of great social significance, and often the scene of diverse activities, including political discussions and debates, rendezvous, meetings, et cetera. In that case it supplemented the function of a conciliabulum.

Every municipium had a forum. Forums were the first of any civitas synoecized whether Latin, Italic, Etruscan, Greek, Celtic or some other. The first forums were sited between independent villages in the period, known only through archaeology. After the rise of the Roman Republic, the most noted forum of the Roman world, the Roman Forum in Rome itself, served as a model of new construction. By the time of the late Republic expansions refurbishing of the forums of the city had inspired Pompey Magnus to create the Theatre of Pompey in 55 BC. The Theatre included a massive forum behind the theatre arcades known as the Porticus Pompei (Colonnades of Pompey). The structure was the forebearer to Julius Caesar's first Imperial forum and the rest to follow.